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olivetreehugger · 3 years

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SnK Scouts/Veterans as Health Care Workers

Note: features Eren, Mikasa, Armin, Jean, Connie, Sasha, Levi, Erwin and Hange. A part two to my “SnK Warriors as HCWs” post found here. warning: mentions of blood, trauma, gore (it’s healthcare). Also, I know Hange is nb, I headcanon them as female, so I will be using she/her pronouns.

Eren: this boy is definitely too involved in everything and has too many people depending on him at once to not be a nurse. The kid barely passed the NCLEX but that didn’t stop him from applying to every trauma center within a 25 mile radius of him. He got hired as a night shift trauma ICU nurse and he frequently picks up shifts in the ER. He wears the cheapest scrubs he can find, often stained with ink in the pockets area. He isn’t a shitty nurse per se but there are tasks that still need to be done at the end of his shift and he gives a crappy report that’s missing too many details. Nurses hate picking up his patients, it’s always a mess. His charting is really spotty and he gets called into the manager’s office all the time to fix it.

Still, he tries really hard to improve his time management and skills. He wants to be like his friends Mikasa and Reiner, who are the best nurses he knows. He wants to be involved in the traumatic cases and emergencies because he wants to learn as much as he possibly can. He’s really good at wound care, for some reason (hint hint). He’s kinda cocky sometimes too, which can be troublesome when Dr. Galliard is working. People know to steer clear of those two when they’re both in the ER. Also, Eren always has a black cloud around him; whenever he works it’s gonna be a hella busy day in the hospital. Lots of emergency surgeries, intubations, codes and deaths. He’ll always jump in to help you if your patient is crashing, though, no matter how busy he is.

Mikasa: she’s a prodigy. She was a straight ‘A’ student in nursing school, got a perfect 75 on the NCLEX and was immediately hired to the trauma ICU after doing a short internship there. She worked night shift for a year but her sleep schedule was so so fucked she started having night terrors, so she switched to day shift. Eren still calls her a traitor for it :/. She keeps trying to get him to switch over but he just hisses at her and threatens to chug a case of Monster energy drinks. She hasn’t given upon him yet, though.

This girl’s work ethic is beyond measure. She comes in exactly at 6:30 am, looks up her patients, takes report, gives a great update to the doctors when they round, and provides impeccable care to her patients. She knows exactly which treatments the doctors will order before they even speak. She’s incredible at inserting IVs--everyone in the hospital knows Mikasa Ackerman can put an 18g in a 90 yr old lady’s arm AND get blood return (just trust me, it’s flipping impossible). She has great skill when it comes to emergency situations and is a big believer in team work. If she notices your patient’s crashing and you don’t know what to do, she’ll calmly coach you and save your patient, too. All before lunch time.

It doesn’t take Mikasa long to be promoted to charge nurse. When she’s in charge all the reports, paperwork and audits are completed before shift change. She divides the patient assignments really well and is very fair to the new grads. All around she’s an incredible nurse and leader on her unit, but don’t be fooled. If it’s been a rough day, Mikasa will get in her car and sob so loud her throat goes raw. A lot of people depend on her and working in a trauma ICU is really, really demanding. A lot of patients are demanding, rude and busy. She has a lot of trouble with stress management and is thinking of cutting her hours down so she can catch a break. Someone please hug her <3

Armin: for some reason my brain is just SCREAMING respiratory therapist. Like, I imagine this beautiful blond boy in gray scrubs (the color for RT’s in my hospital) going around helping intubate patients, giving nebulizer treatments and doing blood gases. I can just see him huffing and puffing when the attending doctor is overzealous about weaning vent support. -“Why are we changing the patient to pressure support? do you see how tachypneic he is on volume control?”

-“are you gonna put in the order? if not, your patient’s gonna be on PRVC all day, I’m not changing it without an order”

-“Doc, the patient looks like crap and their blood gas looks like death...oh, you still wanna extubate? ok, well I’m gonna leave the ventilator in here just in case. better yet, let me call a pastor in here, too.”

This kid is sassy af and he knows it. He’s smart af too, knows everything there is to know about the lungs and respiratory care. Knows every ventilator mode better than most doctors. Will certainly tell a resident off for ordering the wrong type of inhaler for a patient. He’s so damn intelligent that he even made the ice queen Annie melt like a popsicle.

He has no chill when it comes to his patients and even less chill (like -4078875874670) when a doctor gets in his way. For this reason, Armin has recently been toying with the idea of going to PA school so he can have a little more autonomy. He works al over the hospital, usually frequenting the trauma, CV, and medical ICU. The nurses there love him.

Jean: Jeannie boy. Baby. Sweetie. He’s also a nurse. He is strictly dayshift and trauma. When he first started, he thought he’d do a year in the ICU and then go to CRNA school. He didn’t want to be around sickly patients with hopes and dreams and fears--it was too icky for him. But, over time, he learned that he LOVED trauma. Jean loves the controlled chaos that comes with the ugly, bloody messes that roll in through the ICU’s doors. He always gears up for trauma season (summer time) by bringing Dunkin Donuts iced coffee for everyone on the unit (day and night shift because he’s a supportive king). He gets really good at dealing with arrogant trauma residents and ortho docs who think they’re hot shit. When Jean sees a resident yelling at a nurse, he jumps in and threatens to have their license revoked. He will dig under their skin and page them incessantly throughout the day, too, just to get back at them. Jean is not a fan of lateral violence in the workplace, no sir.

He always, always makes sure every room is stocked and new bags are hanging for the next shift. He has a thing where if things aren’t properly organized on the unit his brain just spazzes. He’s on the unit council and education committee because he also loves to teach the new grads. He also doubles as charge nurse, when management can’t be there (there can be one or more charge nurses amongst the staff, they usually work different days, though) He and Mikasa work so well together, teaming up to get tasks done, coding patients, running them down to get scanned, etc. People joke they’re the mom and dad of the unit. It makes them both blush <3 (Eren doesn’t like it, lol)

Jean loves to see patients healing from horrendous injuries, he’s constantly cracking jokes with the awake patients to try to make them feel better, and he’s really good at calming anxious family members down. Our boy just makes such good connections with people. He’s the guy you call when your confused patient is one second away from ripping his breathing tube out. He can convince the most restless, agitated patient to chill out. He’s got the voice for it. Also people love his mullet. It looks great.

Connie: I really didn’t know at first but I feel like Connie would make a great physical therapist. He’s got great energy, he’s funny and I could see him dancing to Earth, Wind & Fire in front of his patients to hype them up for therapy. He’d be very sweet with them

Sasha: I’m sick and tired of the food jokes, quite honestly. She’s more than that. In my mind, she’s an occupational therapist, helping disabled patients learn to feed, dress and clean themselves again. She works directly with Connie as they round on all their patients in the hospital, they make a great team! She’s extremely patient and would make a very good nurse, but is unsure of where life is taking her. That is until she meets Niccolo the dietician in the cafeteria, and she falls hard. He encourages her to follow her heart and she does!

Levi: Hm. This one stumped me. Levi is a bit...cold. It’s not like he has incredible social skills. He’s meticulous and focused and kinda mean? He reminds me of an anesthesiologist, tbh. Like he’ll sedate the shit outta you for surgery, makes sure you don’t die on the table, and then drops you off to the unit as fast as he can. He never takes off his mask while in the hospital and he scrubs maybe four times before surgery. He is very good at medication calculations and knows everything about nerve blocks, intubation, pain medication and sedation. He can look at a person and just KNOW what kind of sedative to give and how much. Your blood pressure will never bottom out while he’s there, he’ll warn the surgeon and immediately get that norepinephrine started.

If Zeke is the one operating, Levi is on his ass to finish up the surgery ASAP and to not linger, because Zeke takes his time and ignores the tele monitor alarming in the background. After surgery, this 5′2 demon will scream at the 6′ resident about the importance of blood pressure management and sedation in neurosurgical patients. Levi plays no games and he also just really hates Zeke lol

He seems like a jerk but genuinely cares about getting his peeps through surgery. His favorite surgeon to work with is Hange Zoe, because she’s brilliant and fast, but also cognizant of her patient’s hemodynamics. Levi likes taking trauma cases as long as it’s with her. When he drops a patient off to the trauma ICU or goes there to intubate, he makes sure Jean or Mikasa are there because he knows everything is gonna go smoothly. He trusts them a lot. He likes Armin, too and even let him intubate a few times. On his breaks, he’s drinking tea and reading a Williams & Sonoma catalog or scrolling through cleaning Tik Tok lol.

Erwin: This man. This beautiful and hunky beefcake. Omg. I HC him as someone who went to nursing school, became a charge nurse on the trauma unit back in the early 2000′s and fell in love with it. Erwin would eventually fall in love with leadership and educating, too. He went back to school and earned his Doctorate of Nursing Practice (a practice doctorate). He managed the trauma unit for ten years before his brilliant leadership skills and wicked smart brain got him elected as the Director of Trauma Surgery recently. He is the first person with a nursing degree and DNP to ever accomplish this, so it’s very controversial. A lot of toxic doctors threaten to leave the hospital for this (because they’re assholes), but Erwin threatens to fire them in response and it usually shuts them up.

He often holds lectures in the hospital auditorium. With a mind and voice like his, people are so drawn in by him. He advocates for nursing staff, for reimbursement when continuing their education, better staffing, parking, etc. He makes nice with doctors and gets them to sign petitions for the nurses to get these things. He’s a bit manipulative He’s also a fantastic manager and director, he’s really good at negotiating things. The nurses and residents all love him because he rounds on every ICU frequently, brings food, and asks them how he can help. He can be a bit daunting because of his height and deep voice but once he starts talking to you, you just get sucked in. All around an absolute king.

Hange: This character reminds me of a trauma surgeon and intensivist (ICU doctor) we have, Dr. Omi. A great surgeon, really really smart, but takes absolutely NO bullshit. She will yell at you if you freeze during intubating. She wants you to recite every step before you take it, otherwise she’ll take the tube from you and do it herself. In surgery, she’s the same way. She wants you to learn, but by her standards. If she asks a question, you better know the answer or fess up right away, she doesn’t like the “uhms” of uncertainty as you try to search for a shitty response. Either you know it or you don’t. And if you don’t, she’ll teach you. Yeah she can be rough around the edges, but she’s got a big heart. She loves her trauma team. She buys them breakfast and gives them funny personalized gifts. One time, she bought an apply tree for Mikasa and brought it to her car at the end of a shift. Mikasa forgot to plant it and it died in her backseat. Hange will sometimes ask, “Mikasa, how’s your apple tree growing?” and Mikasa will lie through her teeth. “It’s growing!” Fess up, Mikasa. Those google search apple trees are starting to look familiar.

All around Hange loves to work and teach. She is a wonderful trauma surgeon and has saved tons of lives.

#snk headcanons #attack on titan #eren jaeger #mikasa ackerman #armin arlert #jean kirstein #connie springer #sasha braus #levi ackerman #erwin smith #hange zoe #lama writes

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waywardwrestlewritingwaif · 3 years

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Fortune’s Rule, Part Four

And here it is, the final section of Fortune’s Rule! I hope you enjoy! I don’t know, maybe “enjoy” isn’t the right word for this story. You’ll see what I mean.

Part One, Two, Three

Pairing: Damian Priest x OFC

Word count: 2,615

Content advisory: smut, dark/ supernatural themes, brief references to drug addiction

The next night, you have a narcotics anonymous meeting before work. There are two new people and normally you like to know what spurs a person to come here, quietly hoping that one of them will have a story as horrible as yours so that you can finally confess to someone.

You need to get it outside of you.

Damian’s voice has been echoing in your head since you left him last night. Although he didn’t specifically say that this meant confession, you don’t know how else it would work. Would that even work, though? Just because you tell your truth, does that mean that it’s no longer locked up inside you? Or does it get locked back in and just hang like a toxic cloud over everyone you tell it to. It’s not like it’s safe for you to chance it.

You know that certain people are required to keep your secrets. And technically speaking, you don’t know that you’ve done anything illegal. Immoral, yes. Plus there’s a chance that someone is looking for the money you carry around your body like a lodestone.

You want to tell Damian. Part of you wonders if you even need to tell him, or if he knows your sordid story already. He knows something. He knew something when he put his face between your legs last night. He knew you had a bad story attached to you but he still said that you deserved to feel relaxed.

What you want most of all is to see him again. Your body hasn’t stopped buzzing. Even when you slept- much better than usual- you dreamed of him, of his touch and dark eyes, of him leading you forward through foggy ground, leading you out of the woods where you’d been trapped.

You stay quiet during the meeting, lost in your thoughts, and leave as soon as things are officially over. Often when you have a meeting, you’re a few minutes late for work because you chat a little with the other penitents. This time, you’re a few minutes early.

It’s not a busy night, so you find yourself staring across the street, waiting for signs of life. They never materialize. A few guys hang around until late, one of them obviously trying to chat you up, but by about quarter to two, they go on their way and you can lock up.

You drag out the closing process, looking out the window frequently to no avail. Finally, you have to leave in order to stop yourself from spending the whole night sitting in the dark and waiting for him to arrive.

In a last, desperate move, you dart across the street and ring the doorbell.

“Damian,” you call softly, “it’s me. Can I come in?”

But there’s no answer. You feel like he’s in there somewhere, like his dark energy swirls around you like a vortex. Nothing but silence.

So you trudge away home. Tonight, your body feels heavy and cumbersome. The electricity that’s been coursing through you for 24 hours dissipates into a deep ache. You drag yourself to bed feeling old and broken down. Your ribs are sore. Your back is sore. Your legs are sore.

Your head pulses and it feels like there are bits of sand or glass pressing into your scar, as if it was still an open wound. Sleep comes at you thick and dreamless. You’re aware that you are alone in the dark, steeling yourself for your monsters to approach, but in the end you’re alone, oppressed by the quiet and loneliness. In a way, it’s worse than the nightmares.

This is not restful sleep. You try to take a nap the next day but it doesn’t quite happen. So you drink too much coffee and spend hours jittery and anxious. You’re early for work again because you need something to do and you tell yourself that you can keep your eyes off the shop across the street, even though you know it’s a lie. Even when people start to arrive, you’re cutting glances out the window. Around 11:30, the sign flashes to life and it’s all you can do to stop yourself from throwing all your customers out immediately so that you can see him.

Be good, you tell yourself. He’s there and that means you can see him again.

A number of people pass in and out of his shop and you hate every single one of them for getting to spend time with him while you’re stuck here. It feels like hours before the place empties out even though it’s only one. You clean up faster than you ever have before and sprint across the street.

The doorbell is answered immediately when you ring and you feel such relief when you step across the threshold that you want to cry out. But then it’s immediately supplanted by more anxiety.

Damian appears with a thin bohemian looking woman, his hand resting affectionately on her shoulder. The look she gives you makes it clear that she hates seeing you there as much as you hate seeing her. Damian ushers her outside, leaning through the door so that you can’t make out what he says to her nor if he touches her as they say their good nights.

He steps back inside, locking the door and heading back to the cash without acknowledging you.

After a moment, he glances up, grinning and rubbing at his chin.

“Another satisfied customer,” he purrs.

You stand there, dumbfounded, staring at his pleased expression, wishing that you could melt like a candle on the spot. He fiddles with his cash register, counting out some bills and putting them in his pocket. Finally, he looks up at you, his expression confused, like you’re behaving very strangely.

“Something the matter?” He asks casually.

“I didn’t realize…” You’re at a loss for how to continue. It hadn’t occurred to you that there were other women in the picture. It hadn’t occurred to you that what he did to you was just something he did. It hadn’t even occurred to you that you had been eager to see him because you’d felt that something special had happened between you.

“You thought that we were a couple?”

“No,” you insist, “that’s not it. I just didn’t know it was something you did for everyone.”

He laughs. “Well it’s not something I do for everyone. But if that’s what’s needed then it’s a service I’m happy to provide.”

“A service,” you repeat dumbly. “I guess maybe I should pay you, then.”

“I told you it was on the house.” He quirks an eyebrow. “You’re really mad.”

“No. I should go.”

“Stay,” he purrs. “Come in back with me. We’ll talk.”

“Talk.”

He pulls aside the curtain to the back room and leans against the door frame. There’s something feral about him, and you have to admit that part of what makes him so intensely desirable is that he gives off this untameable air. So you bow your head a little and once again enter the red-lit room where he first put you under his spell.

He strolls over to the bathroom and you see him swig some mouthwash before he comes to join you. Most men would make some effort to conceal what they’d been doing or what they expect to be doing with you but Damian clearly couldn’t care less. He walks over to where you’re seated at his divining table and places a long hand at the side of your head and leans down to speak.

“I’m glad you came,” he whispers, his lips fluttering against your skin.

He takes his place on the other side of the table but there are no cards, no attempts to see your palm, no crystal ball.

“I guess I thought maybe I was special,” you grumble.

“You are special.”

“You know what I mean. Special enough that you might want to focus on me for a bit.”

“Who says I don’t?”

“Ok, this is going nowhere.”

“Your scar is brighter.”

“What do you mean brighter?” Reflexively, you touch your hand to your forehead and are a little surprised at how the mark seems very cold to the touch.

“It looks brighter when you’re hurting. It didn’t have any kind of light in it when you left the other night and I was hoping I did a good enough job to spare you at least a few more days of pain.”

“It’s just a headache,” you answer, noticing for the first time that your head is hurting quite a bit.

“You know that’s not the kind of pain I meant.”

“Right, you’re concerned about the pain in my soul.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Not at the moment.” The two of you sit in silence for a few minutes until something simply comes out of you unbidden. “I think I lost my soul in the accident.”

Damian raises his eyebrows as if he’s shocked, although somehow you get the feeling he isn’t. “Was the accident your fault?”

“No,” you tell him, shaking your head to emphasize your point, “definitely not. It was stupid that I was even around. I shouldn’t have been there.”

“So why were you?”

“I don’t know,” you groan. “I was with my boyfriend. I just sort of did whatever he did. I didn’t think much about it.”

“But he’s not the reason you think you’ve lost your soul.”

You shake your head, memories of the woods, the sound and the smell of the river, of how cold and wet you were, of how heavy the satchel of money felt whenever you tried to move, all those memories push in on you with all their weight until you feel tears leaking from your eyes. You hug your bag with the remains of your fortune, Cynthia’s furious appeals for help ringing off the inside of your skull.

Your vision is blurred and so you don’t notice that Damian is in front of you until he lifts you to your feet and kisses you, his tongue licking the tears from your lips. You shouldn't give into him so easily, but it’s like his kiss makes you feel alive again and the heat of his body dissolves the heavy chill that’s settled over you.

As the two of you pull apart, you see his eyes flash towards a corner of the room that has another curtain.

“Is that the inner sanctum?” You joke quietly.

“That’s where I sleep.” He strokes along your jaw, tilting your head back to face him. “Would you like to see?”

“Am I allowed?”

“You are when I invite you. And if you want to.”

You nod and his lips are on yours again, more passionate and energetic. He guides you to the part of the room hidden behind the thick tapestry and gently pushes you down on the enormous bed which is practically the only thing there. He lights a few candles that are in the windows before crawling over you, one hand roaming under your shirt and up your chest until he catches your breast, pinching and lightly twisting the nipple as he plants a delicate string of kisses on the underside of your jaw.

“You sure you want this?” He asks, his voice deeper than ever.

“Yes. Absolutely.”

He slides your shirt off and licks at your nipples while he reaches down to rid you of your skirt as well. You kick off the worn boots you have on as he sheds his own shirt. You’re almost unable to move as your eyes hungrily admire his carved, tattooed body, but your fingers fumble their way to his belt buckle of their own accord, working with him to loosen it and remove his pants. He’s wearing nothing underneath and so you’re immediately greeted by his cock, a few shades darker than the skin of his body, long and taut like the rest of him.

You lean forward to take him in your mouth, reveling in the earthy taste of him, the drops of precum that oil your tongue while you sigh and him around him. He lets out a series of low, lusty sounds before grabbing your hair and pulling you off him, throwing you back against the bed.

The second your back hits the mattress, it’s like you black out for a second, it’s like you fall right back into your brain, into the memory of your night in the woods, so vividly that you feel that same buzzing sensation through your whole body as you fell asleep there, of how aware you were of the too-bright moon fading to darkness over your shivering form.

Then you’re back in Damian’s bed with him, the steady flames of the candles putting stars in your eyes. The man pins both your arms with one of his and draws his prick through the soaked flesh of your sex.

“You ready for this?”

“Yes,” you whine.

He pushes in hard and rough, biting down on your throat and the insides of your arms while he pounds into you. It’s almost enough to be uncomfortable. Almost. You can feel the orgasm building inside you with every stroke and touch, building for what feels like an impossible length of time. It’s like your body is rising and tightening as it approaches the threshold of ecstasy like nothing you’ve ever felt before. Damian’s gorgeous body is damp with sweat but he shows no signs of tiring. In fact, it’s like he gains energy the longer and harder he fucks you.

“Do you feel that?” He pants, his dark eyes gleaming, the candlelight reflected in their depths.

At first, you don’t know what he means but then you feel the orgasm break over you at the same time as he releases inside you. But that’s not all. He continues to move and the feeling of your orgasm goes on, not in waves but at a constant pitch until you’re so sensitive that the movements are as painful as they are pleasurable. He too appears to plateau indefinitely, his sounds and movements increasingly wild and bestial.

He presses a heavy hand over your face, pushing your eyelids closed.

There you are under the moon in the forest, crouched on the ground. You’re staring at your own form, wrapped around the bag of money, taking shelter behind the fallen tree. It’s like seeing yourself while you sleep but that’s not it. You can still feel the pain in your limbs but it’s fading, your nerves going numb. You’re colder than you’ve ever been, freezing.

You sit there and watch your unmoving body, feeling the sensation draining from it.

Damian slides his hand down to your throat, squeezing lightly and bringing you back to him, just for a second. Then you’re thrown back to watching. And you stare as the body, your body, shudders and the air hisses from it. Blood drips from the wound on your head, onto the tree trunk and down to the ground, splattering the leaves beneath. You look into your own glazed eyes. They do not look back.

“Where are you?” Damian snarls, his movements finally slowing a little.

“I’m in the forest,” you croak, shuddering at the pain in your head and ribs, which feel like they’ve been crushed.

“Where are you?” He hisses again, licking your cheek and nipping the flesh.

The realization is like a blow. “Dead,” you rasp.

His movements still at last and he lifts himself over you, his entire eyes black with flames trapped inside them.

“Where are you?” He asks a final time.

You cry a little, afraid of what’s to come, but finally you speak.

“In hell.”

#damian priest fanfic #damian priest imagine #nxt imagine #nxt fanfiction #wwe fanfiction #wwe imagine #wayward wrestle writing

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suituuup · 4 years

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Could do where Beca actually joined Barden two years later than she should’ve because she initially joined the army, but was sent home after she lost both her legs in a horrific battle. She meets Chloe but is reluctant to have any kind of a relationship because she is so insecure about her body.

so this is what it feels like

rating: m

word count: 3,6k

ao3 link

Barden University.

Beca looks at the sign and heavies a deep sigh as the car rolls forward, stopping at the curb a few minutes later. The driver steps out and takes her wheelchair out of the trunk, setting it up next to the open passenger door.

“Need any help?”

“I got it,” Beca mutters, shuffling to the edge of the seat and easily transferring to the chair. “Can you just hand me my bag? Thanks.”

She sets it on her lap and starts rolling away towards the main building, catching people staring. “What are you lookin’ at?” Beca spits out, glaring at a group of boys who instantly glance away.

She doesn’t want to be here. She was perfectly happy across the world, working for the Army. She had friends there, a family. A landmine took that away from her, as well as her two legs.

She was flown back to the States after an emergency amputation and moved in with her dad and the step monster. The following year was rough, as Beca dealt with both depression and PTSD. Numerous therapy sessions helped her figure how to live again and slowly dragged her out of her grieving state. She eventually agreed to her dad’s suggestion about going to college, figuring she couldn’t stay hauled up in the house forever.

She picked English as a major, as she’s sort of a book nerd, but she’s got no idea of what kind of job she wants to do.

She likes music and enjoys messing around on her computer making mixes but… it won’t ever be good enough for her to actually make a living out of it.

The first few days of classes are uneventful, except for the way people keep looking at her. Beca figures they’ll get used to it sooner or later, but for now, she glares.

She hangs out at the library a lot or at the coffee shop on campus to work on her mixes.

She’s at the library one afternoon, rolling up an aisle to get the book she copied the reference from on one of the computers.

“Damn it,” she mutters when she realizes it’s on one of the higher shelves, which are out of reach.

“Need any help?”

Normally, Beca would say I got it, because she hates relying on other people, but one, she really doesn’t have it and two, the words die in her throat when she takes a good look at the stranger.

A redhead, with the most vibrant eyes and smile Beca’s ever seen.

Her brain eventually reboots and she blushes slightly out of embarrassment for taking so long to reply. “Um yeah. Could you grab me that green book on the top shelf?”

“Sure thing,” the stranger chirps, standing on the tips of her toes to grab it. “Here you go.”

Beca takes it, setting it on her lap. “Thanks.”

She’s about to roll away, when the girl speaks again. “Would you be interested in joining an acapella group?”

Beca’s eyebrow shoots up. “Aren’t you supposed to be able to dance, too?”

“Not necessarily. I mean, we could figure something out, if you’re interested.”

“I’m not. I don’t— I don’t even sing.”

“Oh. Okay. Too bad.” She winks. “See ya around.”

She continues on her way, and Beca on hers.

Beca sees her again two weeks later, at the Barden Beanery. She’s stuck outside because the damn automatic door won’t work and of course it’s starting to rain.

“For fucks sake,” she grumbles, hitting the button once more.

“I’ll get it for you.”

Beca looks over her shoulder to see that same girl from the library heading over. “Oh. Hey there, acapella nerd,” she teases as she manœuvres her chair to roll into the coffee shop. “Thanks.”

“No worries,” she replies, smiling softly. “Wow, this place is packed.”

Beca nods towards a table in the corner. “I think those guys are leaving.”

“Nice catch. Mind if we share?”

Beca shrugs. “Yeah, sure.”

She tucks her chair in the free space at the table and opens her backpack to pull out her laptop, ordering a black coffee and a slice of carrot cake when the waitress comes by.

She and the redhead work in silence for a while, Beca with her headphones on (one ear left uncovered) as she messes around with her mixes. She soon loses herself into the music, bopping her head up and down to the rhythm.

“What?” She asks when she catches the other girl staring, blue-grey eyes peering at her above her laptop.

“Nothing,” she murmurs, a serene smile on her features. “I was just wondering what your name was.”

“Oh, right. I’m Beca.”

“Beca,” Chloe repeats, nodding. “I’m Chloe.”

“Cool to meet you, Chloe the nerd.”

“I’m not a nerd!” She cries, laughing.

“You’re in an acapella group, so you’re a nerd by definition.”

Chloe rolls her eyes. “Fine.”

They work together for another hour, Chloe bidding her goodbye when she has to get to rehearsals. Beca sticks around until 7, heading back to her hall to head dinner.

“Hi!”

Beca looks up to see Chloe popping down on the seat across from her at that same table as three weeks ago. It’s a week later, and the place is near empty this time around, so Beca’s confused as to why she decided to sit with her.

“Um, hello?” It looks like Chloe’s here to stay, and Beca can’t say she minds? Weird. “You look happy.”

“I am! The Bellas and I are competing this weekend.”

“Competing?” Beca cocks an eyebrow. “So this acapella thing is pretty serious, then?”

“Totes!” Totes? “Our plan is to get selected for the National championships in NYC.”

“Wow. Well, I hope you guys make it.”

“Thanks! You should come check us out if you don’t have anything planned.”

Beca scrunches you her nose. “I don’t know how I feel about being in the same room as so many nerds.”

A laugh flits past Chloe’s lips. “What are you working on anyway?”

“Um, mixes. I mix music.”

Chloe’s eyes adorably pop wider. “You mix music?? That’s so cool. Can I listen?”

The normal Beca would have said no in a heartbeat. She didn’t plan on making any friends, the last year’s events making her more withdrawn and more of a loner. But there’s something about this Chloe, something Beca can’t pinpoint, that makes it impossible for her to say no.

“Yeah sure, if you want to.”

Beaming, Chloe switches chairs to sit next to Beca as Beca takes off her headphones to hand them over. She selects her Titanium + Bulletproof mashup and hits play, taking a sip from her drink as it starts.

The look on Chloe’s face as she listens, one of pure enjoyment, makes Beca’s chest swell with something unfamiliar.

“This is amazing!” Chloe nearly shouts, shrinking in her seat when people’s heads turn towards her. In a lower tone, she adds, “Sorry.”

Beca chuckles. “Yeah? You like it?”

Chloe takes off the headphones. Her eyes are sparkling, the same way Beca’s do when she listens to something she’s really into. “I really do. Have you thought about making a career out of music?”

Beca shrugs. “I did, yeah. I thought about going to LA, but my dad didn’t like that idea because he doesn’t believe there’s a career to be made. He wants me to try college first, for at least a year. I think he’s still pissed about me enlisting in the Army without telling him.”

“How long were you in the Army for?”

“Only a couple years,” Beca says, motioning towards her legs next. “Then this happened.”

Chloe grimaces. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well…” her shoulder lifts in a half shrug. It took her while to reach that state of mind; to stop being angry at the world for what she was going through. She learned to accept her handicap and to live with it, even if some days prove to be really fucking difficult. “It is what it is.”

She doesn’t know why, but that weekend, she finds herself attending that acapella competition to check out the Bellas. The songs suck big time and the outfits are questionable, but Beca is too enthralled by Chloe’s beautiful voice to really care about the rest.

“You came!” Chloe exclaims in surprise when she spots Beca at the end of the show. She’s bending down to hug Beca before Beca can protest, and Beca feels her face heat up as she awkwardly pats her back.

“Congrats on being selected,” she says when Chloe pulls away, her lips stretching in her first genuine smile in a long while.

“Thanks! What are you doing later?”

“Um… nothing planned. Why?”

“Wanna order pizza and watch something on Netflix?”

Chloe’s question makes Beca hesitate for a few beats. She truly doesn’t know what Chloe sees in her, as it’s not like Beca has made any efforts to strike up a friendship, but she has to admit that spending time with Chloe is nice.

“Sure, yeah.”

The night turns out to be one of the best Beca’s had in a while. She doesn’t remember laughing that much since before, and it’s all thanks to Chloe and her dorky sense of humor and positive energy. They hang out more over the next few weeks, either at the coffee shop or at Beca’s dorm, and Beca quickly develops a crush on her new friend, berating herself as soon as she acknowledges her feelings.

Even if Chloe does feel the same way, which is unlikely, it’s not like she’d go out with someone like Beca.

“I need your help,” Chloe blurts one day, plopping down across Beca at their usual table.

“What’s up?” Beca asks, glancing up from her book.

“Our set list sucks. There’s no way we’ll make it through to the ICCA’s.” She sighs, then nibbles on her bottom lip for a couple seconds. “I was thinking… maybe you could make us a setlist? We’ll totes pay you.”

Beca rolls her eyes. “You don’t have to pay me. But would Aubrey be okay with me helping?”

“She will be, I’ll talk to her.”

They spend the next few hours brainstorming songs, eating pizza and drinking root beer on the floor of Beca’s room.

“How ‘bout Don’t You Forget About Me? It’s a cool song,” Beca suggests; they’ve been stuck on the third song for over thirty minutes. “So while a few of you sing the end of Price Tag, the lead could start singing Won’t you, come see about me, I’ll be alone, dancing you know it baby,” Beca sang, faltering when she caught Chloe’s weird look. “What?”

“You can sing!” She nearly shouts, her jaw dropped as she shoved Beca’s shoulder. “What the fuck, you told me you couldn’t!”

Beca chuckles. “I was afraid you might harass me if I told you I could,” she pauses, eyeing Chloe. “Am I wrong?”

Chloe grimaces, blushing slightly. “No. We were really desperate at the start of the year.” She shakes her head. “I can’t believe how good you sound.”

Embarrassment wrinkles the bridge of Beca’s nose. “I’m pretty rusty. Your voice’s beautiful, though.”

“Thanks, Becs.”

They work on the arrangement for another two hours, and just like that it gets past midnight, but it’s done.

“We did it!” Chloe cheers, throwing her arms up. She hugs Beca tightly, almost making her topple over from the force of it. “You’re the best.”

“Jesus, Chlo,” Beca laughs, hugging back and momentarily melting into the soothing embrace, kind of never wanting to let go.

Chloe’s eyes flicker down to her mouth when she pulls away, and Beca barely has time to inhale before Chloe’s lips are on hers, soft and tender and just… right. Beca loses herself into the kiss for a second; a blissful second where her mind goes blank, before her insecurities slam into her brain at once and wrench her out of the liplock.

“I’m-- I’m sorry, I thought--”

“Well you thought wrong,” Beca mutters, gaze fastened on her thighs. She can’t. She can’t start something and have Chloe change her mind when she realizes she could do much better than Beca. “Can you go, please?”

“I… okay.”

Chloe swallows and hastily gathers her stuff, the door soon clicking shut behind her.

Beca doesn’t see her for a week; she doesn’t go to the coffee shop, preferring to stay hauled up in her room to work through her frustration.

A knock at the door cuts through her thoughts one night as Beca is chilling on her bed messing around with more mixes.

“One sec,” she calls out, shuffling to the edge of the mattress and transferring herself into her wheelchair. She rolls to the door and unlocks it, pulling it open as she backs up to make room. Chloe is standing on the other side. “Hey.”

“Hi,” she says, her greeting uncharacteristically quiet. “Can I come in?”

Beca nods and backs up some more, waiting for Chloe to slip inside.

“Aubrey loved the setlist,” she murmurs with a soft, albeit nervous smile. “She says thank you.”

Beca nods. “That’s good, I’m glad.”

A sigh puffs past Chloe’s lips. “I’m really sorry about the other day. I shouldn’t-- I shouldn’t have kissed you.”

Beca wets her lips, finding the courage to meet Chloe’s eyes. “I shouldn’t have snapped. You didn’t do anything wrong, it’s just--” she sighs, struggling to find the right words.

“Just what?” Chloe presses gently.

“You don’t-- you don’t want this.”

Chloe tilts her head to the side. “What are you talking about?”

“Look at me,” Beca raises her voice, motioning towards her amputated limbs. Tears burn behind her eyes as the frustration that’s been bubbling up inside of her finally bursts out. “I don’t have legs, Chlo! I can’t walk, I can’t dance, I can’t-- do normal person stuff.”

“Beca…” Chloe whispers, taking a few steps forward and kneeling in front of Beca’s chair. Beca averts her eyes, hating that she’s on the verge of crying. “Look at me,” she coaxes gently, reaching up to cup Beca’s cheek. “It breaks my heart for you that you don’t get to do those things anymore, but it doesn’t change how I feel about you, or the fact that I want to be with you.”

Beca blinks, the shield surrounding her heart splitting open and vulnerability shining in her eyes. “You… want to be with me?”

Chloe simply smiles. “I thought that was pretty obvious.”

Beca’s eyes flutter shut for a few beats as she puffs out a breath, trying to tame down her insecurities about her body and letting people in in general.

“Hey,” Chloe murmurs, squeezing her hand. “I don’t want to make you do anything you’re not ready for, alright? If you do feel the same way, we can take it slow. You set the tone.”

Chloe’s words soothe the anxiety swirling in Beca’s belly and her heart swells; she trusts Chloe and her intentions and god, she really wants to be with her, too.

Leaning forward, she cups the side of Chloe’s neck and brushes her lips across hers. Chloe hums, smiling against Beca’s mouth before she kisses back.

“I’m taking you out on a date tomorrow night,” she says when they eventually pull away.

Mind still tipped upside down from that kiss, Beca blinks and nods, a dizzy smile spreading across her lips. “Alright, nerd.”

The next few weeks turn out to be amazing as they easily fall into a relationship dynamic. They hang out even more, texting whenever they’re not together. It’s kind of gross, how happy Beca feels, but she figures she deserves it after everything.

“Can we um— pump on the brakes a little?” She asks breathlessly one evening, squeezing Chloe’s waist as she straddles Beca’s lap.

“Yeah, of course,” Chloe rasps, smiling sheepishly. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I liked that, I just— I’m not there yet.”

She’s terrified Chloe might not find her attractive or worse, be grossed out when she finally sees Beca completely naked.

“That’s okay,” Chloe assures her, pecking her lips. “You set the tone, remember?”

“Thank you,” Beca murmurs, truly appreciative of Chloe’s selflessness. “Hey, so um, I have my first physical therapy session with my prosthetics next week and uh, I guess I would like it if you could be there?”

She’s had countless appointments over the last few months to get measurements and fittings for her prosthetic limbs, and she would finally see whether or not she could walk in them next week. While she’s been wary so far about including Chloe to that part of her life, she knows she’ll need someone there for emotional support, and she can’t think of anyone better than her amazing girlfriend.

Chloe’s eyes widen. “Yeah? That’s exciting!” Softening, she adds, “Of course I’ll be there.”

Beca is a nervous wreck by the time her appointment comes around. After much internal back and forth about whether she wanted Chloe to be in the room while they set up the prosthetics and for her to see her stumps, Beca eventually figured she would sooner or later anyway.

Chloe doesn’t show any signs of being grossed out once Beca’s pants are off, and she even grabs Beca’s hand and presses a kiss to her knuckles, as though reading Beca’s mind and guessing she needed some sort of reassurance.

Once the technician slipped the sleeves and liners on Beca’s residual limbs, she straps the prosthetics on. “How does that feel?”

“So far so good.”

“Alright, ready to take some steps?”

Anticipation and slight nerves swirl in Beca’s guts as she nods, moving her wheelchair in front of the metal bars. She puts the brakes on and with the technician’s help, rises to her feet.

Her trembling hands reach for the bars as the technician holds onto her waist with a belt in case she loses her balance.

“Let’s try a couple stationary steps first,” she advises, and Beca manages to lift one foot after the other, familiarizing herself with the feeling. “Great job. Let’s try a couple steps?”

Beca nods, exhaling slowly and gripping the bars tighter as she moves her right foot ahead, then her left. It’s wobbly and the sockets are a bit uncomfortable, but she knows it’s just a question of getting used to. Tears sting her eyes because she’s walking again, and while she knows the road ahead is still long, she also knows she’s going in the right direction.

“Doing okay?” The other woman asks as Beca takes another two steps.

“Yeah, I just need a small break.” It’s much more exhausting than she thought, sweat beading on her forehead already.

Chloe’s grinning from ear to ear when Beca glances back at her. “You’re walking, babe.”

“Yeah,” Beca exhales with a disbelieving laugh. “I won’t take you out dancing right away, but someday.”

Someday.

Chloe takes her out for a celebratory dinner after and once they’re back to Beca’s dorm and on her bed to watch something on Netflix, Beca doesn’t reach for her computer, capturing Chloe’s lips in a yearning kiss instead.

Their make out session quickly turns hot and heavy, and Beca whips her top over her head at some point, staring at Chloe with darkened eyes.

“Are you sure?”

“I love you,” Beca murmurs instead, cradling Chloe’s cheek tenderly. “I’m so sure.”

Chloe’s eyes soften, and a dazzling smile spreads across her lips as she kisses Beca. “I love you, too.”

Time slows down after that as they explore this new window in their relationship, and Beca doesn’t feel one bit uncomfortable about her appearance, not when Chloe is showering her body with so much love.

The next couple months are pretty much perfect. Chloe and the Bellas win the ICCA’s, Beca continues making progress in physical therapy, to the point where she’s able to walk short distances with just the help of a cane.

On Chloe’s graduation day, she shows up not in her wheelchair but on her feet, intending on surprising her girlfriend, who has no idea she got that far. She spots Chloe talking with her family across the room after the ceremony and slowly but surely makes her way over, gripping the bouquet of flowers in her right hand tighter as nerves over meeting Chloe’s parents sprout in her belly.

“Oh my god,” Chloe croaks, her eyes widening and a bright smile lighting up her features when she finally sees Beca.

“Hey you,” Beca greets with a lopsided grin, laughing softly when Chloe shakes her head in awe and tucks herself into her arms. Beca inhales her scent, closing her eyes as she basks in the closeness. “Congratulations. I’m so fucking proud of you.”

Chloe kisses her softly, taking the bouquet from her to slip her hand into Beca’s now free one and gently tugging her to the older pair.

“You must be Beca,” Chloe’s dad says, his eyes the same vibrant blue as his daughter’s as he extends his hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“You too, sir,” Beca replies, accepting the handshake.

“Please, call me Mike.”

“And I’m Alice,” Chloe’s mom introduces herself next, her smile warm and genuine.

“You’re joining us for lunch, right?” Mike asks, offering a matching smile.

Beca smiles and her heart warms, not having expected an invitation. “Um, yeah, sure. I’d love to.”

Chloe kisses Beca’s cheek once her parents start to make their way to the car, walking slowly to match Beca’s pace.

“What?” Beca asks when she notices Chloe is staring at her profile.

“Nothing,” Chloe murmurs, squeezing Beca’s hand. “I’m just really happy.”

The Beca from a year ago would have never thought she’d know what it felt like; to be loved and loving someone like she did Chloe. Yet, here she is, the happiest she’s ever been, and she’s got the feeling it’s just starting.

“Me, too.”

#bechloe #bechloe fanfic #chloe beale #beca mitchell #pitch perfect fanfiction

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internalsealpanic · 4 years

Text

Radio Silence

Summary: You take Tim with you to a family reunion hoping to monopolize his time. You may have forgotten to tell him a few things. For example, the haunted radio.

masterlist

a/n: I’m sorry for the wait. I forgot that I am no longer used to describing atmosphere. This isn’t my best work but I hope you like it. This was based on my family’s tradition of sitting in the dark on Halloween listening to scary stories on the radio. This is mainly Tim Drake x Filipino!Reader because I realley wanted to try my hand at a bilingual character. You will see misspelling of words in the dialogue. That’s intentional on my part. There will be translations.

“Yes, Nay, he’s the one in the picture,”

“No! It’s the guy with-” You blow out an exasperated breath. You hear Tim snicker behind you and you dedicate half your brain cells to coming up with the best way to kick his ass. “Yung mukhang Koreano. Yeah. Yeah. Dat one.”

“Yes, he looks more like a white boy. Mistiso.” You explain curtly.

“Yes, he’s smart. I hab standards,” Tim raises a disbelieving brow at you. You stick your tongue out at him but nearly bite it off when your grandmother speaks again.

“What do you mean doubtful?!” Tim looks absolutely delighted. A cheshire smile curling on his lips as he leans back into your couch. You glare at him then at your phone then at the ceiling then past that to glare at whatever god was up there.

“THAT WAS ONE TIME! Justine was an-” You mutter trying to remember the word. “- an anomaly and you know it!”

“…..”

“Ok der were 2 anomalies!”

“3”

“Ok maybe Tim is the anomaly, but seriously, Nay, he’s fine,” You snarl, the jaggedness of your Gotham accent rearing its head. You wince but do not apologize. This will bite you in the ass later but you didn’t say it. You don’t like the taste of the word.

“No. I mean if you don’t want us to embarrass you at the church social then- Yes, I have been going to church,” You can see Tim rolling his eyes and mouthing liar with a twitch of his lip in the corner of your vision. “No, he’s not the showy type. Nay, I gotta go. The food’s burning,”

“Yes, Nay, I lab you bery mach,” You sigh into the phone letting your grandmother’s lather your tongue cutting into the briskness of your consonants. It held the same euphoria as taking off your shoes after a particularly long day.

“Unless you’re Dick, you can’t burn cereal,” Tim cut in carting you away from your reverie.

“Watch me, Drake,” You huff throwing a pillow at Tim almost making him drop his cereal bowl.

“So, can Gotham survive without Red Robin for a weekend?”

“Shouldn’t you have asked me this before telling your grandma that you’re taking me?”

“I’m just double-checking,”

“How considerate,”

“To be fair, your schedule is already volatile as is," You huff snuggling up to him on the couch. It was too cold in Tim’s apartment. You think a rich kid like him could afford to turn up the heat. Though, you aren’t exactly going to complain about an excuse to cuddle him.

Tim doesn’t make a move to push you away. Instead, he wraps his arm around you pulling you closer. This was the type of easy affection you two had become accustomed to. This was also the thing that will make your Schrade even more convincing. "True, but I asked Cass and the others to cover for me. Plus, your grandma sounds like she likes me,”

“Considering you don’t have a criminal record and aren’t currently being investigated, you immediately rocketed to the top of her list,” You answer absentmindedly stirring your cereal and taking a bite.

Tim whips his head to you and gives you a concerned look which you return with a smile full of cereal. He blanches at you, shaking his head and grabbing the remote to unpause the Star Trek episode you two were watching. You both prop your feet up and chew your cereal slowly, not feeling any reason to hurry.

How long has it been since you started? You’re pretty sure it was 1 AM when you started.

As if reading your mind, Tim looks at his phone, winces then turns back to the screen without another word. You quirk your brow at him but decide that there is some truth to the saying ignorance is bliss.

You were gonna hate yourselves come noon.

It’s noon, the sun has the audacity to show itself, and you hate yourself.

You definitely, unequivocally hate yourself.

You groan in the passenger seat, head pressed against the cool window. The faint warmth of the sun glancing off your skin makes the tinges of nausea circling the periphery of your senses come to life. Your stomach does a cartwheel and you think- you’re sure you’re going to throw up but you aren’t gonna do that.

No way in hell are you gonna do that. Not when you’ve finally conned your way into monopolizing Tim’s attention for the weekend.

Ok, yeah, sure it was the result of some miscommunication between you and your cousin who then passed on the miscommunication to the whole goddamn family but that’s just what you call a happy accident.

You blow out a breath, greedily taking in all the coolness of the glass pressed against your skin calling your mind back to your body. You weren’t really good with handling the not sleeping thing.

“You ok?” Tim asked his eyes flickering between you and the alarmingly empty road. There was worry in his eyes whether it was the fact that you looked like shit or the fact that the road you were on looked like the opening to a terrible 80s slasher flick. It was Halloween after all. It would be pretty perfect. Dread licks at your stomach at the thought.

You let the silence lapse. In the corner of your eye, you see Tim’s hand tighten on the steering wheel. You stare at the expanse of farmland stretching to the horizon debating whether to humor his question or to let him stew.

“I’m fine,” You picked the third option.

“You don’t look fine,” Tim deadpans, turning to you.

“Stop looking then-” Tim scowls at you his pouty lips pulling into an angle. You sneer. “-You don’t look too good yourself, Kirk,”

Tim makes an offended noise. You look at Tim, really look at him, for the first time in hours. Tim, as per usual, looked obnoxiously handsome even though he was running on at most 30 minutes of sleep and had eye bags running down his face. Somewhere lost in his contemplative expression was the blindingly obvious hint of self doubt. You’ve seen it tons of times.

You peel yourself away from the cool glass to look Tim in the eyes. Dread swims in the pools of teal looking straight back at you. Tim’s mouth edges between a pout and a frown. You soften, shifting in your seat angling until your body is facing his.

“Whatever it is you’re overthinking it,”

“You don’t even know what I’m thinking!”

“Ay,” You chuckle and shake your head. “Tim, it’s you. You overthink everything. I don’t need to be a mind reader to see that,”

Tim huffs. Maybe he was overthinking things.

“ ‘sides, I don’t see why you would be nervous 'bout meeting my family,”

Has it occurred to you I want to date you for real at some point? Tim thought a little frustrated.

You laugh when he frowns but instead of teasing him any further. You flick the radio on. Your hackles rise as it crackles to life. A smile flickers on your face when ‘All-star’ comes on. You cry out, a noise of shrill joy filling the air.

“Oh my god” Tim breathes, running his long fingers through his dark hair. “You absolute dork,”

“Kettle. Pot.” You grin.

Tim snorts as you loudly sing along with the radio. Unfortunately for him, your enthusiasm for the song was infectious. Somehow you both managed to miss every beat of the song.

You somehow felt like you were definitely forgetting something.

6 cans of monster and 5 things of 5-hour-energy drink later, you arrived. Tim’s nice-looking car pulls into the dusty gravel driveway of a rather large and old colonial looking house. Seeing the robust form of the large house looming in the distance injected your veins with a stifling source of dread.

You love your family to bits but sometimes their presence weighed so much. You can feel their words already pecking at you, drawing pit and pieces of your self into frayed fibers. All you can think about were the comments hushed behind palms and the dissecting gaze of dark eyes. Your mouth feels dry and you can already feel your feet pivoting back towards the car.

Tim reaches for your hand, lacing his slender fingers between yours. He smiles at you squeezing your hand. You can feel him rattling from his own anxiety but his effort steadies you. You grin at him and squeeze back.

Your teeth click the entire walk up to the large oak doors. Tim squeezes your hand again, his teal eyes sweeping over you with a concerned glint. You furrow your brow and somehow he understands and raises his hand to knock on the door.

The door bursts open. Music and laughter wash over you as hands hurry you into the front hall.

“Nay! Dito na sya! May dalang gwapo!” (Mom, y/n’s here and they brought someone handsome.)

About 20 heads turn to look at you. Tim feels some embarrassment from the attention but that doesn’t last too long as in the space of about 5 seconds, those 20 heads were swarming you both, pulling you into hugs, shaking your hands, and ruffling your hair in varying degrees of force and order.

“Beh, you’ve grown so big” Your aunt coos squishing your face.

“Nena, look at this guy,”

“Tita, he doesn’t have any tattoos,” Your little cousin marveled looking bug-eyed as she lifted Tim’s shirt. You swat her away but take a quick second to subtly admire Tim’s sculpted abs. Your aunt scolds him and your uncle drags you to the main room where more guests were sitting chattering or screaming at a foreign horror movie.

All the apprehension bundled into your stiff shoulders dissolves like seafoam against the overwhelming warmth of the festivities. The raucous laughter drags the roughness of Gotham away from your tongue. In place of your slow, careful syllables are quick clattering consonants and concise vowels. Your vowels were still elongated and angled to a sharp point unlike the nearly musical words of your cousins but as you said before ‘Gotham has its way of burying itself in your bones’. Tim just never thought about how saliently it showed itself in words. He wonders how his accent (folded, neat, and sterilized) sounds to you. He wonders how dull he sounds to you.

You have teased him about it. You’ve teased him endlessly about the way upper-class Manhattan just rolls off his tongue, how Alfred’s British affectations worm their way into his syllables. What you don’t tell him is how the smooth velvet of his words lull you into a hypnotic state that steals every bit of oxygen from your lungs. What you can’t make yourself tell him is that you would gladly spend your whole life listening to him read a fucking phone book.

The festivities were lively and informal. Jokes flying every which way. All alternating between your native tongue. You laugh into your drink, hiding the hesitant curve blunting your infectious smile. Tim nudges you to ask what’s wrong but you simply nudge him back and shake your head as if he had said something funny. Your relatives didn’t seem to notice your demeanor or if they did they left it alone.

Tim decides to leave it alone for now. Instead, he leaned into the flow of conversation. His years of speaking at galas working their magic on your aunts. They bombarded him with questions. Most of which sounded like screening questions at the embassy. You snarled at them more than once to knock it off but Tim shook it off. He knows they’re just worried about you the same way he worried for you. Well, not the same way but it was their way of showing they cared. He lets himself be immersed in the conversation. It’s more like he tuned into the sweet sound of your laughter but made sure to dedicate enough restraint to not look like a love-sick puppy.

“Tanga!” (MORON!)

“Baliw!” (Crazy!)

“E gago ka pala, di ba halata yun?” (No shit sherlock, isn’t it obvious?)

Tim is at best confused as he watches the volley of words between you and your cousin. Your voices rising above the blaring karaoke. Anthony (?) clamps a hand on his shoulder and laughs as he watches you and Martin (?) hurl insults at each other. In the corner of your eye, you watch his reactions checking if he understood a word. He isn’t fluent but he understood bits and pieces. He’s heard you mutter angrily about customers enough times to distinguish an insult.

“Dun worry about 'em. They won’t fight. They’re stupid but they’re not that stupid. ‘Sides, they’re too afraid of Nay for that,”

Tim gives Anthony a doubtful look. Anthony chuckles at him, clapping him on the back urging him to keep watching. He does if only to make sure you’ll be alright. When he does, he tunes into your words. Tim marvels at how musical you sound as you trade another round of rapid-fire jabs with Martin, how at ease you seem. Tim makes a mental note to get you to teach him. Though, he wasn’t entirely sure how he would justify it. Admittedly, part of it was just wanting to spend more time with you.

He can probably swing it.

A surge of protectiveness crowds his veins when Martin grabs at you but his hand is swatted by a cane. The air crackles with a sharp snap. The room plunges into silence. A small woman with silver hair stands tall and imperious at the other end of the cane. You and your cousins stiffen.

“Hi Nay,” You trail off with a distinct lack of grace. You swallow the lump forming your throat, robbed of any coherent thought by the stinging look in her eyes. You felt bare under her gaze. Layers and layers of skin peeling beneath the weight of her attention. Fury flickers like firelight across her dark eyes. Your skin suddenly felt like lint and you were sure you would catch fire.

A pause.

A bated breath held for what felt like an eternity.

“Iha(Iho), It’s been so long,” She says, softening. Her wrinkled face stretches into a kind smile that made you think of freshly cooked vegetables. Her cane folding to her side as she loops her arm over your shoulders. “It’s nays to see you,”

A choked sound comes out of you and you feel something shake loose. “Missed you too, Nay,” You breathed. Tim feels awkward, fidgeting in his place.

The soft smile on your grandmother fades a little. Her sharp eyes appraising Tim. The look wasn’t particularly venomous, but it left Tim feeling like he’d been cut open and analyzed. He wasn’t entirely sure of why you were all so scared of her before but now he fully understood.

She relinquishes her grip on you and urges you to go back to Tim. You frown a little, giving her a suspicious look which she returns innocently. You let out a little breath before walking back to Tim’s side. She gives him another long once over before silently strolling away. His stomach churned but eased at your touch. You still look uneasy but you don’t fuss over it. Not when Martin decides that he wasn’t quite done with bickering.

The festivities went on as normal. Maybe with a little less cussing going around. But Tim barely noticed when your laugh, free of any hesitance, echoed sonorously in his ear as he held you close.

Roz presses a drink into his hand. “Congrats, you’ve survived round one of Nay’s hazing,”

“Round one?” Tim hiccups into his drink. He coughed. The beer was strong. A strangely potent amount of alcohol that made his throat burn.

“Yeah, Roz, that was more like round 2.” You mutter sullenly, distinctly taking no sips of the drink Roz had also handed you. The paranoid Bat-part of his brain screams that he’s been poisoned. He’s struggling not to let it win over but your conversation wasn’t helping.

“Nay will eat him alive,”

“I mean. She’ll do it nicely,”

“Pfffft, right! Ok, Tony, name one time she’s been nice.”

“How about-”

“The thing with Y/n earlier doesn’t count,”

“Why not?”

“There was a hidden agenda,”

“Oh shit! The bitch is right- Ow! You are!”

You look at Tim apologetically and squeeze his hand. Somehow this does not calm his nerves, but he tries his best to ease into his touch.

On the trip here, you warned him that it was going to be exhausting. He assumed, incorrectly, that you were exaggerating. After all, he’s survived snobby rich people and his family. Your family seemed nice. He can survive a nice family dinner.

But what you neglected to tell him was that it would be sheer chaos. He definitely wasn’t prepared for the sensory overload. The house was almost unbearably loud compared to the manor. Every corner was filled with people chattering, playing games, eating, and doing anything to entertain themselves. Sure, Tim was used to chaos but he was more accustomed to short bursts. He wasn’t quite as prepared for the seemingly endless stream of conversations and liquor.

You had definitely not prepared his poor unassuming introverted ass well enough. Not even halfway through the night, Tim was ready to crash. The 20 minutes of sleep he got beforehand had not helped.

You, the angel that you are, guide him away from the party. You drag yourselves down the wide yawning corridor to the grand staircase.

Lit only by the thin veil of moonlight, the house showed its age. Walking up the stairs and walking through its hallways was like falling through time. The halls were lined with paintings, all landscapes and still-lifes. He’s thankful for that small mercy. His head swimming in liquor, he is reminded of the portraits at Wayne Manor and how their eyes burned at you as you passed.

The lack of portraits doesn’t make the house any less creepy mind you. Religious fixtures line the halls, crucifixes affixed to every arch-like mistletoes. There were doll-like statues of hollow-eyed saints at every corner table. It might have been the dancing moonlight but Tim swore he saw one of them move. Tim suddenly wishes he hadn’t ingested so much liquor.

Before long, you make your way to a bedroom. How the hell you knew which one to put him in was anyone’s guess. You lead him into the room. Touch gentle and careful as you coaxed him in. Soft jazzy music echoing hauntingly. The dancing moonlight and the solid shadows of the room highlighting your gorgeous features, drawing his attention to your plush lips. You lean over him to make sure he was indeed still part of the living. Liquid courage surging in his face, he presses his lips to yours. It’s cautious. He gently runs his hand through your hair, pulling you towards him with a push. The press of his lips is restrained, more of a question than a demand. Slightly chapped lips press against your sweet and searching.

Tim remembers the warm press of your lips, the way the pads of fingers trail against the soft fabric of his shirt, your warm breath fanning against his cool skin, then nothing.

Knock

KNOCK

Tim grouses into his pillow. Tim was having an absolutely wonderful dream. He could still feel your warm lips against his. Tim squeezes his eyes trying to go back to sleep.

Knock

KNOCK

‘1 AM’ the antique analog clock at the nightstand reads.

“I’m up!” He lies burying himself further into the thick sheets.

His brothers really needed to stop breaking into his apartment at 1-

KNOCK

Tim nearly falls out of bed when he remembers where he is. He jams a shirt over his head and some sweatpants before stumbling to the door.

“Hey Tim, you coming?” Anthony asks through the crack of the door.

Tim opens the door a little wider. “Where?”

“Outside,” Roz shrugs vaguely.

“Whe-”

You step out of your room, extremely hesitant. Your knuckles were turning white from apprehension. You look at Tim, surprise plain in your eyes. You flinch heat rising to your cheeks. Tim remembers the texture of your soft lips. He wishes that wasn’t a dream. You glare at your cousins who give you a confused look.

“Roz, he-”

“Awwww, ‘insan, you’re actually coming?” Martin mocks clapping you on the shoulder drawing, what Tim considers, an adorable squeak from you. His heart almost leaps from his chest when your warm body presses further into Tim’s side. You can’t hear it but Tim’s breath stutters in his chest. He loops his arm around you protectively. Martin gives both of you a sly conspiratorial look.

You scowl at Martin. Glaring with as much intensity and intimidation your burning cheeks would allow. Roz swats him over the head making him almost topple down the steps before Anthony even gets a chance to rebuke him. Instead, Anthony turns to you, brows furrowed. “You sure you want to come? Nay said-”

“La a!” Martin protested. Roz rolls her eyes and swats him again. “Dipshit’s right. Nay didn’t say jack,”

“Then why did you swat me?”

“E, I felt like it e,”

“Bish, whose side are you on?!” He snarls but before he can lunge at Roz, Anthony is already dragging him by the scruff of his neck.

“Shhhhhhhhhhh! Not so loud. The kids will hear us,”

“I for one will not help you wrangle tita’s crotch gremlins,”

“We’re going to be late and Nay is going to unleash hell upon us,”

Anxiously, you tug at Tim urging him to follow your cousins as they filed out through the back door.

“Where are we going?” Tim hisses.

All four of you share a look.

“We’ll explain,” You promise.

The journey was eerie. Punctuated by the fact that none of you explain jack. The walk was entirely silent, devoid of bickering or any sort of conversation. He can see the silence driving both Roz and Anthony mad. You honestly look like you’re going to keel over. The odd thing was that even the birds were silent. Not a single sound penetrated the thick canopy of juniper trees.

You wonder the woods guided only by the thin ribbons of silver light peaking through the thick clouds of leaves. Tim can feel your pulse as it thundered in your chest. No matter what was going on he would keep you safe.

You arrive in front of a rusted gate half a foot shorter than Tim. It was small, easily climbable with plenty of spiraling pieces to stick your foot into for purchase if needed. Your eyes cut to Roz who fished out a key he’d seen perched on one of the coat racks. Hesitantly, you held your hand out for the key. Roz, on the other hand, all but slammed it into your hand, grinning in a mix of absolute glee and relief. Your teeth click as you worked the lock. He wants to suggest just going over it but you seem quite adamant and he wasn’t about to push your nerves.

Finally, the lock gives in.

You all file in one at a time in a sort of practiced motion. Beyond the gates was a path with its stones polished from a shine from use. The scarce light coming from the canopy of trees rippling against them. It lit the rest of the way still keeping the surroundings in deep shadow.

The path ended in front of a small dilapidated stone structure that seemed too small to house anything.

“Age before beauty,” Martin jeers, bending down dramatically urging Roz to go in. She, in turn, shoves him in with a swift kick. The dark interior of the structure swallows him whole. Her dark eyes cut to you. You swallow but ultimately you shrug off Tim’s hold and relinquish your death grip on Tim’s arm. You let out a shaky breath as you step over the threshold. Just like Martin before you, the shadows leave no trace of you.

Tim reaches for the last bit of your swaying blanket. Roz taking the chance shoves Tim over the threshold, his vision goes pitch black.

“See you there, lover boy~”

The darkness is all-encompassing making his eyes completely useless as much as he tries to adjust them. Instead, he strains all of his other senses. He feels the press of moss-covered walls closing in on him. The staircase only seemed wide enough to let one person pass at a time. The stairs wind in shallow predictable patterns. The scent of moss and burning firewood grew heavy as he made his descent. Distantly, he could hear the soft padding of your shoes against the stone but he also heard the crackle of jazzy music. It was the kind he only heard from the old black and white movies Bruce and Alfred watched. It was oddly familiar but he couldn’t place it. The smooth baritone of the singer rattles in his head. A shiver of mild discomfort travels up his spine.

After what feels like an eternity, Tim emerges. His eyes slamming shut from the sudden brightness of his surroundings. He blinks, eyes adjusting to the light. His eyes take in his surroundings.

He was in a clearing. It was man-made, constructed using the same stones that lined the path you’d taken. The stone walls were covered in moss and ivy, but the stone that did peak out reflected the moonlight freely raining drown from the clear autumn sky. In the center of the space, sit 9 people including yourself. All cast in the warm glow of the crackling bonfire. It is a living thing, raging and casting shadows sharpening and obscuring features.

“I’m so glad you could join us, Timothy,” Your grandmother calls out as she fiddles with the nobs of the old radio perched in her lap. It crackles uncooperatively despite her efforts. He can’t pry his eyes away from it even as he takes his seat next to your shivering form.

Without much thought, Tim pulls you close. You tremble, teeth still clicking eyes wild and fixed on the radio. The radio is a curious thing. It’s an old model. It’s sleek but dotted with various nobs and switches. If he had to guess, it was something out of the 1960s. In the periphery of his senses, he hears Roz and Anthony step out of the staircase and take their places in the circle with Roz sitting right next to your grandmother.

Your grandmother stops fiddling with the radio then turns to Roz who is now comfortably seated. Your teeth chatter and your shoulder hitch as they silently converse. Roz inhales then exhales. Her dark eyes sweep over all of you making sure she had your attention. Based on the silence and the still forms, she did. She sits a little straighter, her shoulders rolling back.

She throws herself into a tale. It was a story she’d heard long ago about a man, a house, and a secret. Her calm voice carries over the soft roaring of the bonfire. It wasn’t the scariest tale Tim had heard but Roz told it well. Well enough to draw squeaks from several people including yourself.

Tim relaxes catching on to the turn of events. He lets you press into his side as you make your feeble attempt to get away from the story. Tim chuckles at the amount of theatrics you’ve all put into building up to this little gathering. However, all his smug skepticism vanishes when Roz finishes her story.

The static from the radio vanishes. Its various nobs move without assistance and its switches click into place. The same baritone voice carries from the radio. Tim doesn’t hear what it says as his mind reels. He turns to you and opens his mouth to ask but Anthony begins his tale before Tim can even formulate his question. Beside him, you fidget with his sleeve shaking hands clenching and unclenching on the fabric.

Tim remembers how much you hate ghost stories. You’d once gotten sick with a fever just from watching horror movies. At this point, you were on the verge of tears. Your breathing slowed abnormally as Martin finished his story. The radio predictably did not whirr to life after his story. Through your chattering teeth, you give your cousin a vicious smile which he volleys by sticking his tongue out petulantly.

It’s your turn.

You squeeze Tim’s hand twice before worming out of his grasp. You flutter your long lashes, lightcatching in them looking golden as the fire flickered urging you to delve into your story. You roll your shoulders and let your blanket and apprehension slide away in one smooth action.

You tell your story.

Your countenance still and grave as you tell a story of crossroads and terrible choices.

The radio huffs, seemingly amused by your effort.

“Well, y/n,” The radio coos. Your name drips like molasses from its speakers. It’s unsettling how crisp it sounds. Its voice absent of static as it addresses you. “You sure do know about bad choices. I believe so does that young thing- Pardon me. Young things swimming in the harbor. They’re just a tinsy bit cut up about it.” The radio teases almost sounding gleeful. You nod gravely, stomach reaching the floor.

Harbor?

You settle back down into your seat. Tim nudges you, cocking his head to the side to question you. Your fist clenches and unclenches in your lap before you look him in the eyes again.

“Case,” You mouth silently.

It clicks.

The harbor.

The bodies.

That’s what the radio meant.

Someone clears their throat urging Tim to tell a story. He stumbles through a half-remembered urban legend he heard from Steph awhile ago. His mind far too preoccupied with the new information to really devote to any theatrics.

His turn passes.

And the stories continue as he mulls over the information.

It’s your grandmother’s turn. Your hand grips Tim’s arms white-knuckled. You attempt to swallow down the fear but it catches in your throat constricting your airway. The flames dance casting her face in sinister shadows that bring out all the sharp angles in her features. Her smile curls cruel. Her bony fingers trace the seems and delicate patterns embossed on the old radio. Static erupts loud then dies down just as quickly. Her smokey voice fills the air. Heavy and commanding. The story spills from her lips smooth and velvety slick with gore and unspoken horrors. None of you dare to speak. Some don’t even breathe. Your hands scrabble for purchase on Tim’s shirt as you bury your face in his chest. You feel him wrap himself around you shielding you the best he can. Ear pressed to his chest, you can hear Tim’s pulse hammering. The terror soaking through to his bones. He remains steady. Unflinching even as the story reaches its climax.

The flames flash, fade, then flicker.

The radio crackles.

The smooth baritone of its voice distorting into something undeniably inhuman.

Shadows dance.

Their hands reaching out as the flames did. A hard yank from one of them nearly topples you out of Tim’s arms. He shifts you both away from their grasp. He glares fiercely at them making sure you’re safe.

Sorrowful moans fill the air but your grandmother is undeterred.

With a shrill cry from the radio, everything dies down.

The shadows retreat.

The fire simmers down now small and tame.

Everyone lets out a breath. Both of you could feel everyone unfurl. Tense muscles, locked jaws, tight chests all loosen with the end of the story.

For a long moment, the entire circle is still. Then your grandmother stands up. The rest follow her in a mostly quiet procession up the steps.

“Roddy was harsh this year,” Martin whines.

“Nope, you’re just terrible at it. I mean hell even y/n got an answer. It was creepy as all shit but they got an answer,”

“Uh- Is it a good time to ask what just happened?”

Your cousins turn to you.

“You really didn’t tell him anything, did you?”

“How do you propose I bring up the demonic radio?”

“Pffft,”

“Pirst, it isn’t demonic. Do you really think Nay would have kept it if it was?”

“She lets Martin hang around,”

“…….”

“Dis is a good point,”

“HEY”

Tim clears his throat.

“Raaayt, Ok so… once a year we tell the spooky radio stories so we can get answers or our future told,”

“Was the whole creepy walk necessary?”

“Nope,” You answer in chorus.

“It’s just our way of psyching up for it,”

“It’s your guy’s way. Tita at least let’s me hum songs,”

“Well excuse me for not wanting to listen to you sing,”

“Is there anything else you guys want to tell me?”

“Aside from y/n really not wanting to tell-”

You snarl at your cousins, red-faced and bearing your teeth. Martin and Roz cackle as they run. Anthony has the decency to at least look slightly apologetic as he runs.

“Y/n… What aren’t you telling me?”

“Tim, I- I’m- Damn it- I-” You put your hands on your face. You try to calm your breaths. “Look Tim, I-”You take another breath. “I’m sorry. I kissed you but you were drunk-”

“Wait that wasn’t a dream?” There’s a flicker in Tim’s chest.

You look at him mortified. You want the ground to swallow you whole. “Yeah, I- Tim, I know it’s- I’m sorry.”

He remains silent.

Your stomach feels like it’s going to burn up.

“I-”

“I want a redo,”

“A what?”

“A redo,”

a/n: I will rework the ending at some point but thank you for reading!

taglist: @batarella, @anothertimdrakestan, @lucy-roo, @multifandomgirl-us, @idkmanicantenglish,@birdy-bat-writes, @boosyboo9206, @americasmarauders (I wanna drag you into Terry hell), @l-horizon11

#Tim Drake #tim drake imagines #tim drake x reader #my writing #batboys #batboys x reader #spooktober #fake dating au

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writer1 · 3 years

Text

A regretful Wolf and his Beauty

Chapter Eleven

Beast!Rex x Fem!reader

Summary: As punishment for his actions, young prince Rex was cursed to become a monster by a witch. The only thing that saved him from his fate was an enchantress, who gave him a condition. He has to find true love in order to redeem himself and he only has until the last petal of the enchanted rose falls. Rex's family helps you by guiding your way into his heart. Rex's fate now lies in your hands.

A/N: This is a collaborative fic with @ahsokatano-thetogruta.

Warnings: mistreatment of kids, abuse, experimentation, neglect, guilt, small mention of injury.

Ezra doesn't have much in life. He's been too busy following Maul around that he hasn't really learned how to make time for himself. Not knowing what to do with himself means going to Maul and making sure that he is okay and if he needs anything. If Ezra doesn't do something right, it will end up with him either getting shouted at or beaten. Sometimes it will be both.

He sits on his small, broken bed as he takes care of his freshly made bruise. He doesn't know what he's doing wrong, but he always makes sure that he does better, even if it's still not enough. His thoughts of running away linger in his mind for moments at a time, and today they are screaming at him to escape, run away as far away as he can. But he reluctantly decides against it.

The pain from his leg makes him tear up a little, but he fights through the pain. Ezra's parents died when he was 6 years old. He was wandering around the streets for a while until a Zabrak found him and took him in. Maul doesn't really care for Ezra, he just wants to use him and make him do things that he is too lazy to do himself, things like cleaning, bringing him drinks and running errands.

All the work he does makes the young boy feel exhausted every night, and he'll go to bed late and wake up early to have things ready for Maul. It's almost already midnight, so Ezra listens out for Maul, hearing him go to his room and get into bed. Ezra knows that he's safe to go to sleep now, knowing that he won't be needed until morning. He tucks himself in, forcing his eyes shut as he slowly falls asleep.

xxx

A few hours later and after some much needed discussion, Kix and Jesse both rush towards the west wing, they need to tell Rex about what you know. Neither of them can believe that you already figured it out, you’ve only been in the castle for about four days, and most of those were spent alone in your room.

They arrive in the room to see Rex, Stutter, Cody and Obi Wan, they stop talking once they see the frantic look on Kix’s face. Jesse, in his bird form, flies over and lands on Cody, folding himself back into a paper man, Kix flies over as well. Rex looks between the two. “What’s wrong? Is Shiny okay?”

Kix and Jesse look at each other nervously, neither knowing what to do about this, Kix, being the medic, flies forward. “Yes. She seems to be a little better. She was starting to feel weak again when we left, but she did have a few visitors, so that’s normal.” Rex smiles, happy to hear that you’re getting better. He still feels guilt over what he did.

“That’s good, but what's wrong, the two of you looked frantic when you came in?” Cody would have an expression of confusion on his face if he had one. Jesse sighs and steps forward. “The thing is, Shiny... she knows.”

“What? What do you mean Jesse?” Rex asks. Jesse frowns. “She… She knows about the curse.” Rex’s eyes widen significantly, he feels fear fill him. “WHAT!!! Did you tell her?!” Jesse shakes his head frantically. Stutter cowers a little, he hates to hear yelling. Rex’s ears press against the back of his head when he sees Stutter cower.

“Sorry, Stutter. I didn't mean to shout, I just…I don't understand how she could have found out.” Rex has an expression of a cross between stress and confusion. Jesse rubs his paper neck nervously “Well, she figured it out. Kix was telling her the story of how I was his first patient, saying how I got a blackeye. That's how she figured out we were once human.”

Rex doesn't look impressed at all and he huffs, trying to control his temper “I see… I guess there's no hiding it now.” his head lowers a little as he thinks of what to do next.

He feels nervous thinking about how you may think of him as more of a monster now that you know that he was once human, and that a prince can be such a beast. “We better go and talk to her.” everyone nods at Rex and follows him out of the room.

xxx

You awake to see that you are the only one in the room. Kix and Jesse had left you to get some rest, but you ended up falling asleep for a few hours. After being in bed for so long, you feel fed up and need to stretch out your legs a little. Kix had said that you have to stay in bed and to call someone if you need something, but you honestly can't take it anymore.

A little wobbly, you manage to stay on your feet without feeling the need to sit back down on the bed. As steadily as you can, you leave your room and walk down the corridor to explore a little. You feel fatigue take over your body again, so you slide down the nearest wall and sit down, trying to catch your breath after using the little energy you had.

Sitting down, you look up to see a framed painting hanging up on the wall. Two boys, an older one with black hair and a younger one with blonde hair, stand together in partly formal and partly casual clothes, smiling as the one with a scar on his face wraps an arm around the other boy's shoulder.

They look very similar to each other, like they are closely related. Brothers maybe? The blond one looks younger than the one with the scar, who looks more like a young man.

Lost in thought, you hear your name being called out. “SHINY?!” The voice is loud and deep, making you realise that it's Rex. Kriff, he must have gone to check on me in my room. You think to yourself as Rex gets closer. “Shiny!! Where are y- There you are. What are you doing on the floor?” Worry consumes him as he gently helps you stand upright.

“I got tired of being in bed, so I went for a wander. But I guess that didn't end so well…” You look down and then back up to see Rex's concerned expression. “No, it didn't. C'mon, let's get you back to your room.” You nod, but just before you leave, your interest is still focused on the painting of the two boys.

“Rex, who are those people in that painting?” you point up to the painting of the two boys. His concern turns into nervousness, remembering that you know about Kix and Jesse being human before, but he doesn't know if you know that he was once human too.

You look closely at the painting and then back at Rex a few times, realising that the colour of the blonde hair in the photo is the exact same as Rex's fur. Your eyes widen in realisation. “Is...Is that you?” You ask, pointing to the youngest of the two boys.

Rex sighs. “Y-yeah, that’s me, and the other is my older brother, Cody.” You can feel Rex’s nervousness in the force, and even though you are still mad at him, you feel bad for making him feel this way. “Are you okay?” Rex nods, though he still feels nervous.

“Yeah, I’m okay.” You look back at the painting. “How old were you in this?” you ask him, he smiles, there was a nice memory with this painting. “I was thirteen, it was my birthday that day. Cody is seventeen.” You smile, turning to Rex, but he suddenly frowns. “This was painted only a few months before…” You know exactly what he’s talking about.

“Before you and the other’s were cursed?” He nods. “You were so young, who in their right mind would curse a child? What happened?” Rex grimaces. “I… I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s get you back to your room.” You nod, not pushing the issue. You follow him back to your room, something’s changed. You don’t feel anger towards him anymore, just sadness and a sense of empathy.

You both arrive back at your room, and you lean against Rex as you start to feel weak again, he helps you over and into your bed. You notice the others in the room.

There’s a desk and a paintbrush, who you haven't met yet, along with Obi Wan, Kix and Jesse. “H-H-Hello.” the paintbrush flies up to you as you lay in your bed again. “I-I’m Stutter! R-Rex's younger b-b-brother.”

You smile at the sweet paintbrush, he’s so adorable. “It’s very nice to meet you, Stutter.” suddenly Kix flies up to you, he does not look happy in the slightest. “And what were you doing out of bed?” You smile sheepishly, you know that it was stupid to get out of bed while you’re this sick.

“I...I was bored and just wanted to have a little walk around, but I guess it didn't really end well.” Your sheepish look grows as Kix huffs. “Well at least you're back in bed now. From now on, unless you are back to full health no getting out of bed unless necessary. Am I clear?”

“Yes, of course. Sorry if I've caused you any trouble.” You hear a shuffling sound moving closer to you. Turning your head a little, you see a desk stopping just beside you. “It's okay, Shiny. We're all just worried about you.” Everyone in the room, who can, nods in agreement. “I'm Cody.”

“It's nice to meet you, Cody. You must be Rex's older brother.” you smile at him. “What's it like having younger siblings? I'm an only child you see.”

“It's nice to have brothers to hang out with. I'm also an older brother to Fives, Echo and Stutter, who you've met, and also Bly and our youngest sister, Ahsoka, but you haven't met either of them yet. Though I do have the best embarrassing stories about Rex when he was younger.” Rex presses his ears back a little in embarrassment, scowling slightly at his older brother “Cody, please don't…”

“I'd love to hear them!” You say with enthusiastic interest. If Cody could, he'd be smirking playfully at his Rex'ika “There was a time when Rex was five years old, he tried to feed me some slices of Meiloorun from his mouth.” You do your best to hold back a laugh, while feeling Rex's embarrassment through the force. The chuckles from around the room finally make you break into small laughter.

Rex feels his face heat up. He wants to be annoyed at Cody, but hearing stories about his past makes him feel happy, though that story is quite funny, so he can't help but chuckle as well.

Obi Wan clears his nonexistent throat, causing everyone to turn to him. “I loved that story, but we do need to discuss a certain something with Miss Shiny here.” Rex’s ears press back, you can feel his nervousness in the force.

Cody sighs. “Obi Wan’s right, we wanted to talk about the curse with you, Shiny. Since you figured it out, what do you know so far?”

You look at Rex, then turn to Cody. “I figured out that you were all human once, and Rex told me that he was thirteen and you were seventeen when it happened, but thats all. I saw a painting of the two of you, and asked him about it.” Cody hums to himself, happy that you didn’t figure out too much. The group had already discussed what to tell you.

“Did Rex tell you what happened that night?” Rex shakes his head. “Can you tell it, Cody?” The desk does it’s best to nod, you can feel sadness from everyone, Obi Wan walks up to Rex, patting him on the back. “Don’t worry, little one. Cody and I can tell it.”

The knight then turns to you, the desk shuffles around to face you more as well. “The day we were cursed was Christmas day, Rex was thirteen years old. He had woken up on the wrong side of the bed, so he was tired and cranky, but he did his best to join in on the fun.” You nod along, thinking about the boy in the picture.

Cody continues on. “We had a few bumps that piled onto Rex’s already bad day, it started with him breaking a vase, then the kitchen was out of his breakfast, then he was pranked by Fives and Echo. he snapped at them then him and I got into our own fight over how he had treated them, we made up later but it just piled on to the things that had already went wrong. Then she showed up.” You can hear the venom in Cody’s voice when he says the word she, and the force is suddenly filled with the feelings of anger and hatred from everyone in the room.

“She? The woman who cursed you?” You ask and Obi Wan nods. He places a comforting hand on top of Cody. “Yes, though she wasn't just any woman. She was a witch, named Ventress.” Obi Wan almost hisses the name out, hating saying it.

Cody continues after calming down. “She then decided to pretend to trip over and spill some drink on Rex's favorite outfit. When the drink was already starting to stain his shirt, Rex lost it and snapped at her. Ventress then found the perfect opportunity to use her magic for fun. Then…” Cody takes a deep breath in and out before speaking again. “Then she transformed Rex into this werewolf. Everyone else in the castle got turned into inanimate objects.” Cody wants to frown, but he can't.

Obi Wan feels Cody's sadness and anger, so he traces his scar to comfort him. “The other knights left just after breakfast, so they weren't here at the time of the curse. It seems that Ventress made them forget about us.”

“That was about twelve and a half years ago, we also realized that we don’t age right. We haven’t aged as fast as we should have at all, for example Rex is twenty-four, while he should be 25. But a few years ago we all stopped aging for two years, none of us understand it.” You nod. You can’t believe that this happened to them.

“I'm so sorry that this has happened to you all, no one deserves this.” Rex looks at you, he can see the sincerity in your eyes. He can’t believe that you don’t hate him anymore, at least not fully. You let out a yawn as your eyes become heavy. “We'll let you get some rest now, Shiny. Call us if you need anything.” You smile at Rex. “Thank you, Rex. Thank you everyone for telling me your story.”

Rex smiles at you. “Well, you did figure it out first. Now get some rest, just call if you need anything.” You nod, turning over and falling asleep almost immediately. Rex and the little group all leave, Kix is already planning to check on you in about an hour, and so is Rex.

Rex finds that it’s nice telling someone about the curse, it felt good to get it off his chest. Everyone is going to be happy, they don’t have to hide that they were human. The only thing Rex has told everyone is not to tell you about them being royalty, he doesn’t want you to know that he is a prince.

They all walk off in different directions; Rex wanders off towards the west wing, while Jesse, Kix and Stutter find Sabine to have an art session. Obi Wan and Cody, on the other hand, go to their shared room to spend some time together.

A few years ago, they both wanted to be in the same room together. They decided on this after they had talked about taking their relationship to another level. As kids, they would always sneak into each other's rooms to cuddle at night.

Cody would be so scared during stormy nights, so he used to run to Obi Wan's room. Obi Wan would keep him safe and comfort him until he felt better, though he would never stop giving Cody affection. They both enjoy sleeping together, giving each other sweet and loving kisses until they fall asleep.

Anakin and Rex would also always sneak in with the two. First it was just Rex sneaking into the bed on stormy nights, Obi Wan and Cody always provided comfort. Then Anakin joined in when he came to the castle at nine years of age, the young boy was always so frightened at night.

Rex made it a habit to check on Anakin, even though he was only a year older. If the younger of the two was having trouble sleeping, Rex would lead them to Obi Wan's room where Cody would already be there. The two older brothers would always provide comfort, especially to Anakin once he joined.

This went on even after the curse, only stopping when the boys got older. It still happens once in a while during the worst storms, or when Anakin has flashbacks of his life as a slave.

Most times, Cody and Obi Wan will just end up falling asleep with each other when they are super relaxed, but nevertheless they always enjoy being with one another, no matter what it is they do together. Obi Wan walks beside Cody, who shuffles along beside him, while having a hand placed on his table top. It makes the both of them feel like they are holding hands together as they walk. Cody has gotten better with moving around, but it can still be pretty difficult sometimes, physically and mentally. “Here we are.” Obi Wan pats Cody gently before opening the door.

He lights an oil lamp as Cody shuffles sideways through the door and over to the side of the bed, ready for when Obi Wan lies down beside him. Obi Wan feels himself smile, laying down on the bed and draping an arm over Cody. He thought being in his armour while laying down would be uncomfortable, but it just feels like his human body.

It's still strange when he tosses and turns, hearing the creaking and scraping of metal, though he has gotten used to it over the years of being like this. Same with Cody, he's still not fully used to not being able to walk or do the things that he could before the curse. At least they both still have each other.

Cody lets out a humming noise crossed between happiness and sadness, making Obi Wan reach out in the force to feel how his Fiancé is feeling. “Are you alright, Cyare? I can feel that you are a little sad.”

“I'm okay, I just… telling Shiny about when me and Rex were younger just...brought back memories is all.” Cody wants to smile, but not having a face means that he can't show his expressions very well, so he has to show them through his words. “It's been so long, Sweetheart. Everyday it becomes a little bit easier, but also more difficult at the same time all at once.” Cody lets out a small sob for a moment. “I wish things were how they were before all of this.”

“Oh, Cyare.” Obi Wan strokes Cody's scar gently as he sits up and leans down to press his helmet against Cody, kissing him lovingly. Cody takes in a deep breath as he composes himself to carry on. “I-If only I hadn't fought with Rex that day, then maybe he would have been a bit calmer. Maybe this wouldn't have happened. Maybe we could have gotten married by now. Maybe-”

“Cody, it's alright, Cyare. This isn't your fault. It's no one's fault except Ventress'. If she hadn't purposely spilt her drink on Rex, then we would have been fine. And about the fight, you were only looking out for your other Vod'ika. Though it wasn't right, it just goes to show that you care about protecting those close to you.” Obi Wan traces Cody's scar. “And that's why I love you, Cyare. I'll never stop loving you, because you are so wonderful.” He can feel Cody's sadness fade away into nothingness, being replaced with emotions of love and adoration.

“Thank you, Sweetheart. I love you too, so much.” He leans up into Obi Wan before relaxing again, starting to feel a little tired. “I feel slightly tired, could we take a nap together?”

Obi Wan nods as he reluctantly pulls his face away from Cody to lie back down. “Of course we can, I'd love to.” He places an arm over Cody again as his non-existent eyes drift close, so does Cody's. It doesn't take long before they both fall asleep and dream nice dreams about each other.

xxx

Rex walks to his room, he’s deep in thought at the moment. He has no idea how you knowing about the curse is going to affect everything. “Hey, Rex!” Rex is startled out of his thoughts by Anakin, who’s standing by Rex’s bed in the west wing, Rex sighs.

“What are you doing up here, Anakin?” Rex asks in confusion, not that it’s weird for the knight to be up here. Most of the time you can find Anakin sitting in the west wing, having been there for hours talking to Rex, it was like that before the curse, and stayed the same even after.

“I’m just here to talk to my friend, besides I… I heard about what you said to Miss Shiny.” Rex’s ears press against the back of his head, he knows that what he said was bad. “I know that it was bad, are you mad at me?”

Anakin wishes that he could smile, just so that he could comfort his friend. “No, I know you Rex, you wouldn’t hurt anyone. You are the nicest werewolf I know.” Rex chuckles, cracking a smile. He raises an eyebrow at Anakin as well. “Aren’t I the only werewolf you know?”

“Yeah, but you’re still the nicest. Probably. So, you might finally get a girlfriend! Let me give you some relationship advice!” Rex groans. “Just because you and Padmé are together doesn’t mean that you are the relationship expert, and...can we please not talk about relationships right now, Ani? I just want to talk about anything else but that right now.”

Anakin can hear the little bit of a pleading tone in Rex’s voice, he decides to stop joking and talk to Rex about other things. Anakin knows when Rex needs a break. “Yeah, of course. Let’s talk about having another knight in the castle, it’s been so long since I’ve had someone new to spar with!”

Rex smiles, watching Anakin walk over to the bed. He jumps on, sitting criss crossed as he usually does. Rex smiles, he sits on the end of the bed, across from Anakin who’s up near the pillows. “So, has Shiny told you about how she got her nickname?”

Rex looks at Anakin with a confused look. “Nickname? I thought that was her given name.” Anakin shakes his head. “No, a few of us were talking to her this morning. She told us that her given name is Y\N, but the way she got the nickname, Shiny, isn’t really a nice story.” Rex looks at Anakin with a confused look. “What do you mean?”

Anakin sighs. “Well… I guess that her village doesn’t approve of female knights, at all! She’s the only one and nobody, but a retired knight, would train her, especially in the force and how to wield it. She got her nickname because the other male cadets would make fun of her all the time, calling her Shiny, which if I remember correctly, means naive and new for knights in certain places.” Rex feels anger at your village for treating you like that, he’d heard his father talk about the abuse towards female knights in other kingdoms before, but to hear that it’s happening in his own kingdom is even worse. And he can’t even do anything about it.

“That’s not right! At least she likes the nickname, but still.” Anakin nods in agreement. “Yeah, all the knights here already offered to train her, including me. She deserves to be trained, everyone in the village also called her odd for being a knight.” Rex can’t believe that you had been treated this way, it’s disgusting.

“It is going to be nice to have someone closer to my age to train with, it was getting kind of tiring, always training with someone older. Sometimes I wish that you were a knight instead of a prince.” Rex chuckles. “But then who would you protect, Ani? I did appoint you my private protector, there's no one I trust more than my best friend.”

"Yeah, there's no one I trust more than you either Rex. You were my first friend ever." Anakin goes a little quieter, Rex knows that he is thinking about when he first arrived. "You okay Ani? I know that it's hard to think about… about before you came here."

"I… yeah. I wish that I could have saved my Mother, I miss her so much, Rex. And I wish that she could have met everyone, especially you. I know that she would absolutely love you."

Rex chuckles, then he frowns. "Even like this?" Anakin looks at Rex, nodding. "She's the kind of person who doesn't care about what you look like, it's what's inside that matters."

“Your Mother sounds like she was a very caring person. I know that she'd be so proud of you, you've done so well to be where you are now. The kingdom couldn't have asked for a better Knight. Nor I, a better friend.” Rex gives Anakin a friendly, toothy smile. He's glad that his fangs don't scare anyone, especially his younger siblings.

“Thank you, Rex. I really appreciate it, you've been there for me, helped me through the darkest and most difficult times of my life, so I'm glad that I get to serve in protecting you. And I’m honored to call you my brother.” Anakin shuffles towards Rex, leaning forward a little to give him a hug. Rex sighs and hugs him back. Their friendship has only grown stronger over the years, even after the curse.

“You're welcome, Ani.” Rex whispers, letting his instincts take over and giving Anakin a little affectionate lick. Anakin chuckles, this isn’t the first time Rex has done this, he just doesn’t understand how the armor doesn’t hurt his tongue.

xxx

As dusk begins to fall, the candles along the corridors are lit up as 99 sweeps his way down the halls, cleaning up for tomorrow. He enjoys cleaning around the castle, knowing that his hard work and help is appreciated.

The bad batch are currently in the ballroom, making conversation with each other. “It's so cool that there's someone new here, especially that she is a knight too!” Wrecker exclaims, his face showing much excitement. “Yes, it'll be nice to get to know them.” Tech nods and agrees, reading a book from the library that Jocasta Nu had given him to read. He himself is a book, and for some reason he can control the movements of other books too, so he is able to flip through the pages and read them whenever he likes.

“It's not that exciting.” The grumpy hatstand pulls a face. “Oh cheer up, Cross.” Hunter nudges his twenty three year old brother, before throwing himself across the almost empty room to hit a target board of wood that Hardcase had chopped up for him to train with. He floats back to his brothers. “Another knight will be super fun to train with too! I wonder how skilled she is.”

“I can't wait to play some music for her!” Wrecker suddenly starts messily playing music using his keys. The way he plays sounds good but bad at the same time. Crosshair wishes that he had actual hands to cover his non-existent ears, or something to whip at the piano. “Wrecker, knock it off.”

“Aha, sorry Vod. I'm just so excited!” Tech and Hunter nod in agreement as Crosshair just eyerolls. He doesn't want to admit that he is slightly curious to meet you, so he just pulls his usual grumpy face.

The door swings open, making the bad batch turn around to see 99 sweeping his way over to them. “Buir!” They all shout, making their way over to him. He feels himself smile at his sons. “Hello you four, are you all alright?” They all nod happily.

Hunter flings himself past 99, showing off his knife throwing skills. “Nice one, Hunt’ika!” Hunter feels himself smile, wishing that he could show it, He’s the only one out of his brothers who doesn’t have anything that resembles a face. “Show off!” Crosshair yells at him, but Hunter knows that his brother is being his normal grumpy self. He starts to feel a little tired, panting as if he’s out of breath. 99 and his brothers notice immediately.

“You’ve tired yourself out again, Hunt’ika, go rest on Cross’ika.” Hunter turns to the hat rack, who has a worried look on his face. Crosshair nods, waddling over, he leans down and picks the little knife up in his hooks. “You rest, Ori’Vod. I’ve got you.” Hunter nods, letting his body go… limp? In Crosshairs hooks.

No one knows why Hunter always gets tired out when he floats, their best guess is that it’s because of his enhanced senses, but they can’t know for sure. Crosshair gets tired easily as well.

Crosshair holds on to Hunter gently as he rests, he hates when his Ori’Vod tires himself out like this, the first time this happened the knife had kept going and passed out for about a day. It was scary for everyone, especially their youngest, Tech. They couldn’t see him breathing, the only way they figured out that he was alive and only passed out was when his Buir had leaned down and heard Hunter’s quiet, steady breathing.

Tech floats up, nuzzling Hunter’s face, making him chuckle, he then does the same for Crosshair, Wrecker and 99.

The bad batch all show their love with touches instead of words, it’s how 99 had gotten them to trust him originally. All four of them were touch starved and abused by their parents, not to mention experimented on.

He also gave their name the bad batch a much nicer meaning than what their parents, mainly their mother, had used it for. He said that their abilities make them unique and special, that they are all loved no matter what their parents did to them.

25 years ago...

Their parents called them the bad batch because they were all failed experiments.

Hunter was their parents' first born. At night, his cries would be so loud they were almost deafening. Their parents didn't think that his cries were above the normal level that a baby cries at. A few years later when he reached the age to start understanding what people were saying, he could see their lips moving but no sound at all could be heard. It had then occurred to his parents that he was born deaf.

They then tried experimenting on him to bring his hearing back. They'd use a serum that they'd inject into him in different doses for a few days until it was time to let it get to work. The sound around him was like thunder banging against his eardrums.

He had woken up at night to a rainstorm, the water hitting his windows. It scared the force out of him, making him feel frightened of the sounds that had always been there but unable to make themselves present to Hunter.

His parents were happy with the results that the serum had worked, but then they were disappointed that he was kept up at night because of all of the noise. They had failed, making his hearing and senses too good. They pushed him aside, trying to work on making it better. Hunter would lose sleep and cry with how much his ears hurt. The pain had lasted about a year, but he was still kept up for hours at a time for years.

Two years after Hunter was born, Crosshair came along. He was born premature, he was a little sick with a few deficiencies and had his mother, Nala Se’s, skinny build. He was sick for the first few years of his life, after His brother’s experiment failed, his parents experimented on him next.

They tried to cure his sickness for a whole year, they failed, managing to make him sicker than before, they did however make his eyesight much better than before.

Whatever they gave him made his hair turn grey as well, so whenever they'd look at him, they'd think about how weird he looked. they threw him to the side as they did Hunter.

His parents always ignored him when he got sick, leaving Hunter to try to care for Crosshair the best he could, even though he was only three, nearly four, years old. His enhanced senses allowed him to be aware of dangers, keeping him safe from anything that might harm him whole having to take care of his Vod'ika.

Wrecker was born a year after Crosshair. He was the smallest out of the three of them, but after two years, he hadn't been growing much at all, staying small. He was way too skinny for his height, unlike Crosshair who was the tallest of them.

Their parents noticed that he was very weak as well, so they decided to experiment on him next. Their plan was to make him strong and healthy, but they never expected what happened.

Wrecker had gotten so strong and his physique was not like his brother's at all. He was a lot more muscular and his frame was broad. At night, the serum they used on him would make his body, especially his muscles, hurt a lot, also causing his growth spurt pains to start early.

His pain would be unbearable sometimes, but Hunter would help him through it the best he could. Once Crosshair was a few years old, he'd start helping Hunter to look after his little brother.

Five years after Wrecker was born, they had a new baby brother, Tech. He was the tiniest and weakest out of all of them, their parents thankfully learned their lesson after Wrecker and didn’t try to fix it. He had horrible eyesight once he got older, but no one cared. Except for Crosshair, Wrecker and Hunter, who all took care of him, their parents simply stopped caring. Their father left after Tech was born, he grew tired of having failed and deficient children.

Tech was three, and his brother’s found that he loved to learn. Little Tech craved new information, but he had a hard time learning new things like walking, talking and other normal things, he just didn’t develop the skills. As soon as the other three figured it out they did their best to hide it from their Mother, they knew that Tech would be an experiment like them if she found out.

It was all for not, Nala Se quickly figured out about Tech’s disability, the young boys tried to fight her when she came for Tech, but she sedated them. She started to give Tech a new serum, it made him smarter, but much smarter than she had wanted. She hated it.

After the serum was given to him, Tech would get severe headaches at night, and his dreams would be intense from all the new knowledge he would learn from books during the day. He would let out tiny whimpers at night from the pain and visions he had during his dreams, so his brothers would often sleep together.

Tech would be sandwiched in the middle, while being comforted by his brothers when his dreams got too much for him to handle. Thinking about his brothers being near him would give him something to focus on instead of several different thoughts at once. The three boys hated that they had let Tech down, and they hated their parents.

Even though they were neglected by their parents, they still had each other to take care of one another. Not long after Tech had turned four, their Uncle 99 had come to visit. When he turned up, she grimaced at the sight of him, the way his back was hunched over. “What do you want?” what a way to greet your brother who you haven't spoken to in years.

She was so jealous that 99 got to live in the castle to clean around for the prince, their nephew. Rex didn't allow her to visit him after what he told him about Nala Se, how she would be nasty to him. “I've come to visit you, Nala-”

“Don't you dare use my name. Get out of here, I don't want to see you!” Before he leaves, he sees four boys down the hallway of the house, peeping out of a room. “Who are they?” Nala Se whips her head around, making the boys run away in fear. “Nothing, just failed experiments. A bad batch.”

99 feels anger rise in him. “They aren't nothing. I'll ask again, who are they?” Nala Se huffs in annoyance, not even going to bother to fight with him. “They are my sons.”

99's eyes go wide “And you think you can just call them Experiments? Failed experiments at that! A bad batch? How could you say that! They are children. Also I have nephews?” he's angry that Nala Se, his own sister, hadn't even bothered to tell him about his four nephews. “Let me in please, I’d like to see them.”

“No.” Her answer was quick and short, almost said as a warning. “I made you leave years ago for a reason, there's no need for you to come back. You live with the prince now, living a wonderful life while I'm stuck here, trying to have the perfect family, yet my son's won't let me.”

99 doesn't bother to fight with her, he doesn't have the strength to, so he turns and heads back to the castle. He thinks about what he should do now, he wants to go to young Rex, but the child is still mourning his parents. 99 sighs, those kids his sister had need help, she called them experiments. He grew up with Nala Se, 99 knows what she does with experiments.

99 hobbles into the throne room, he sees his two young cousins, Rex and Cody, talking. They turn to him once he walks in. “Uncle 99! How was your visit with her.” 99 sighs, he can hear the anger in 15 year old Cody’s voice. “It didn’t go well at all, I need some help from Rex.” Rex perks up at that, the 11 year old jumps up off the throne, walking over to his uncle, Cody follows behind.

“What do you need Uncle? Did she do something?” 99 shakes his head. “No, she has four sons there, Cody, she didn’t even call them her sons at first, she called them failed experiments.” Cody’s face turns into an expression of disgust, Rex’s does the same.

“She actually called them that!? That’s not right. At all.” 99 nods sadly. “That’s why I need Rex’s help, I want to go down with some of the knights, this can’t go on any longer!”

“I agree Uncle! What about you, Cody?” Cody nods in agreement. “We can send Plo, Mace and Obi Wan to arrest her, if our parents were here, they would be furious. They already were with the way she had treated you!” Rex’s parents had been furious, and so had the crowned prince, even if he was young at the time.

She was banished from ever coming to the castle. Nala Se had come to the castle a few months ago after they had died, she didn’t know that Rex had known about everything, the young prince had made sure that she knew exactly what he and the family thought of her.

With not a moment to waste, 99 was on his way back to Nala Se's house with Plo, Obi Wan and Mace right behind him, ready to rescue his four nephews. They got to her house and knocked on the door. “Nala Se, this is knight Plo Koon, protector of his royalty, Prince Rex. We have been reported that you have been mistreating four young boys, your Sons.”

There's no reply, so Obi Wan uses the force to unlock the door. Mace runs in first, seeing that the house is in darkness with the curtains shut. It looks abandoned.

After doing a sweep of the house, they were about to leave before they heard a child crying. The knights and 99 share a worried look with each other then rush to one of the bedrooms. They try the door but it's locked, so they use the force to open the door.

They see the four boys huddled together behind the bed. 99 hobbles over to them, speaking softly. “I-It's alright now, you're safe. Everything is going to be okay.” Tech stops crying and sniffles as he sees 99 smile softly towards him. Hunter can sense that he isn't dangerous, but he doesn't trust them.

99 reaches out a hand “Here, come with us. We'll keep you safe.” Tech, Crosshair and Wrecker look towards Hunter, making sure that it is safe to go with them. Hunter stands up first, picking up Tech who wraps his small body around him. Hunter nods at 99 and the knights as Wrecker and Crosshair stand up and follow close behind their Ori'Vod.

Hunter keeps an eye on the adults as they walk out of the house, he doesn’t trust them. Every adult he’s met in his life has experimented on him and his brother’s, who's to say that these ones aren’t different. Hunter carries Tech as they walk to the castle, the little boy is already sleeping, but Hunter, Wrecker and Crosshair are all very tired too, but they know not to ask for help.

“Are you three tired too?” Hunter looks up to see the one man looking at him, he’s the one that was at the door earlier. Hunter bites his lip, looking back at his exhausted brothers, then nods. Everyone stopped, the knights had been watching the boys too.

“I can take the little one from you, lad.” Hunter looks up at the Keldor, he doesn’t know what to do. “It’s okay, you can trust us. I’m 99, the Keldor is Plo and the other two knights are Mace Windu and Obi Wan.” Hunter eyes them and nods. “Okay, I’m Hunter. This is Tech, the big one over there is Wrecker and the skinny guy is Crosshair.” Hunter gestures to each of his brothers as he says their names, the knights and 99 nod. Plo walks over slowly, opening his arms for the sleeping kid in Hunter's arms.

Hunter’s hold automatically tightens around Tech, but he calms down and places him in Plo’s gentle arms. Tech immediately wraps his arms and legs around the Keldor, who chuckles. Hunter then see’s the other knight, Obi Wan, walk over to Crosshair and pick him up.

Crosshair protests a little but then settles down, letting out a big yawn. Then the knight Mace walks over and picks up Wrecker, he grunts a little, but is able to lift him better after he closes his eyes in concentration. Hunter doesn’t know why.

Plo then moves Tech around so that he’s on his hip, which is not an easy feat with how the four year old clings in his sleep. The Keldor then leans down and picks Hunter up, holding the two boys in his arms. Hunter’s eyes start to close, but not before he sees and feels 99 pet his forehead lovingly. He does it for each of the boys, 99 knows that these boys are going to be his son’s, he can feel it.

Taglist: @ellie1366 @pro-fangirls-unsocial-life @lightning-wolffe @pinkiemme@captainrexisboo @trash-dino-5000

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saeyoungs-sunflower · 4 years

Text

A Piece of You: Chapter 4

Pairing: Zen x MC

Synopsis: After the death of his sister, Zen is entrusted with raising her daughter. Six years later and MC has settled into RFA, but she just wants to be back on the roof with the love of her life like she was two years before. But dealing with teenage years, dragged out engagements and a lot of unsaid feelings, you start to lose a piece of you. Or, perhaps, find a piece you had that had been missing the whole time.

Warnings: None!

Song: Things You’ve Never Done - Passenger

⇦ Previous Chapter

***

To be honest, Zen was not having a good day.

Although, he wasn’t having a particularly bad one either, it was just…a day. He aimlessly wandered through the convenience store, idly picking things off the shelves and chucking them into his basket, a gaping emptiness inside him that he couldn’t label as anything other than boredom, and he wasn’t even sure it was that. He had done this routine enough times that he didn’t even need to think about what he was buying anymore, his muscle-memory guiding him to each isle and each section.

On second thought, perhaps he really was just bored. He had the week off work and Gi was at school during the day, and to top it all off, the RFA chatroom had been dry as hell lately. Not even Saeyoung was logging in that often to start drama or blabber on about physics for half an hour. Zen was in desperate need of something, anything to do.

“Hyun, sweetie! How are you doing today?” the older lady at the counter beamed.

The creases of her face were enhanced at the sight of Zen approaching, a kind glint in her eye and a gentle spirit to her. Zen couldn’t help but return her warm smile as he lifted his basket onto the counter, “I’m well, thank you, So-yi. And yourself?”

“Same as ever,” she winked, making Zen chuckle, “How’s our little Gi? Still a little terror?”

“Oh, don’t even get me started. You know she got in trouble last week for hiding her teacher’s keys in the fish tank?”

She guffawed, and Zen chortled despite himself, “That’s a smart little girl right there. Sounds just like her daddy.”

“More like her mother, actually…” Zen’s voice trailed off, his smile faltering a little as the light behind his eyes diminished ever so slightly, but enough for the woman to detect.

So-yi had been the owner of the local convenience store since Zen had moved into the area, and from the moment she laid her eyes on the broken man, the broken child, she knew she would have to look out to for him. When he stumbled in at three in the morning requesting liquor and cigarettes, she would sneak a packet of aspirin and a sandwich into the bag as well. Then when he came in to buy diapers and baby wipes, she would slip some cookies in. Little by little, she started to see some colour in his cheeks and a honesty in his smile as he wished her a good day. She was the only person in his life who knew him when he was Hyun, and stayed to witness him become Zen. She was the closest thing to a mother that he had, and he the closest thing she had to a son. It was perfect timing, for the both of them.

So-yi promptly changed the subject, “Have you seen this?” she said, handing him a flyer from the stack that stood proudly next to her. It appeared to be advertising some jazz band playing at a nearby bar, for one night only. “I’ve seen them before, real good music, I’ll tell ya. Came in last week asking if I’d be willing to sell some tickets here, and you know I’m a sucker for jazz. They’re playing tomorrow night, I think you’d enjoy it.”

Zen considered it for a moment. Gi was going to be with Jaehee tomorrow night - by her request - so he’d just be home alone anyway. And maybe…if he asked…

“Sure, sounds like a fun evening,” he looked down to his feet, his shoelaces suddenly very intriguing to him, “Can I get two, please?”

So-yi’s smirk widened, and she didn’t even bother to hide it, “Planning to take someone special?”

He returned the grin in amusement, “Calm down, So-yi. It’s not like that.”

She handed Zen the tickets along with his bag, shooting him a mischievous look, “Mmhmm, okay then. Well, I can’t wait to hear all about it.”

Zen rolled his eyes playfully, “There’ll be nothing to hear about. She’s just a good friend,” he called over his shoulder, waving her goodbye as he left the store. Her smile grew wider.

Oh to be young, So-yi thought to herself. Oh to be so naive.

***

Zen pulled up to the school just as kids in tutus started to filter out the doors, darting towards open arms and stumbling into their parent’s embrace. He smiled fondly, getting out of the car and making his way to find his own little monster.

“Daddy!”

Zen didn’t even have time to turn around when Gi threw herself at him, almost toppling him over, though he managed to save himself with an outstretched arm before he smacked against the concrete. He clutched his chest in feign defeat, crying out dramatically as Gi clambered off, “Oh, the beast has slain me. I will never recover, I am mortally wounded!”

“Dad, stop, you’re not at work right now,’ she tutted, crossing her arms, “Such a drama queen.”

“You’re no fun,” he teased, and she stuck out her tongue in response. “How was ballet?” he asked, grabbing her hand as he started to lead her back to the car, only to be stopped by a tap on his shoulder.

“Excuse me, are you Gi’s guardian?”

Zen’s mouth twitched as he swivelled around, carefully watching Gi in the corner of his eye. She seemed unfazed. Good. “I’m Gi’s father, yes. Is there something I can help you with?”

“Oh yes, of course. My mistake,” she said flatly and turned to the young girl, “Gi, why don’t you go and play whilst I have a quick chat with your dad? It’ll only take a moment.”

Gi looked to Zen and he gave her a subtle nod, an indication for her to go. She ran off excitedly, and Zen started to feel a tad defensive about the situation, “So, what did you need to talk to me about?”

They sat down on a nearby bench in the playground, the teacher crossing her legs and her chin stuck out. She eyed him, almost scrutinisingly as she began to talk, “I wanted to talk to you regarding some…concerns I have about Gi’s progress and behaviour.”

“Right,” Zen began, attempting to keep his expression neutral, “What are these concerns exactly?”

“Well, whilst we always value enthusiasm and freedom of expression, her energy could be considered as, how should I phrase this…uncivilised at times. Of course, we want to encourage our students to embrace their passions, and we want her to continue to dance.

He clenched his jaw and counted to ten, trying with all his might to stay calm. It wasn’t working, “Okay. With all do respect, if you feel that her dancing is, as you say, ‘uncivilised’, then isn’t your job to teach her the ‘correct’ way of ballet?”

If she was caught off-guard by Zen’s bluntness, then she did a brilliant job of hiding it, “There’s only so much we can teach her, Mr Ryu. And any how, we believe that the problems are rooted further than just her lessons.”

“I want to know exactly what you mean by that.”

“Ballet is about grace and precision, there is a femininity to it, whereas Gi currently demonstrates a rather wild and boisterous approach. Gi is at an age where her behaviour is heavily effected by her environment, and therefore we feel that this behaviour may have something to do with her slightly wilder upbringing and life at home-“

Zen had stood up now, fists clenched and breaths staggered, “This is ridiculous, Gi is six years old. If she enjoys to dance, then for Christ’s sake just let her dance her way. This isn’t the Royal Ballet. She is a child.”

“A child with incredible potential, Mr Ryu,” she explained evenly, which did nothing to calm Zen’s vexation, “I wouldn’t have said anything if I didn’t think it mattered. Gi is not like any student I’ve taught before. She has an immense athleticism, and with some discipline, I have faith that she will go far with her ballet. She is capable of great things.”

“I’ve heard enough, you lost me when you brought her home-life into this. You have no right to make comments on her ‘wild’ upbringing. Does she have a typical upbringing? No. Because guess what, it’s pretty damn hard to achieve ‘normal’ when her mother is dead and her biological father is nowhere to be found. Mind your own damn business,” he spat, already walking towards Gi, picking her up and storming to the car.

The drive was eerily quiet, only the sound of Zen’s heavy breaths could be heard as Gi silently watched out the window, blissfully unaware of the event from just before. Zen’s hands were gripping the steering wheel so tight that his knuckles were white, and his teeth were gnawing on his bottom lip in an attempt to prevent himself from shouting his anger at the top of his lungs. He was absolutely fuming.

It had gone from ‘just a day’ to a bad day real quick. He needed to calm down.

He needed to call her.

***

The coffee shop was bustling when MC joined Zen, relief instantly washing over him as he caught a glimpse of her through the glass door. They ordered their drinks, and they settled down at a little table in the corner, Zen’s hands still shaking slightly as he placed his cup down.

For the first few minutes, MC remained quiet. She knew by now that when Zen needed to talk, he really needed to think. So she sipped on her coffee whilst she patiently waited for him to gather his thoughts, and prepared herself to give him her undivided attention. He needed to be heard, so she needed to listen.

As soon as he opened his mouth, the words came tumbling out in an exasperated mess. MC was pretty experienced with Zen’s emotions at this point, but today she could tell that something had really hit a nerve with him. He was passionate with his explanation, but MC also clocked a despair in his voice, an ache in his eyes. Zen wasn’t just angry, he was hurt.

“She just…like what does that have to do with anything? Who has a meeting about a student’s home-life when the child seems perfectly happy at school?” he asked defeatedly, his fingers fiddling with the handle of his cup, “Why can’t they just let her do ballet her way if that’s what she wants.”

MC nodded along, reviewing the situation as she took another sip of her drink, “Well, is it what she wants?” Zen eyed her curiously, so she continued, “You said that the problem was that she is incapable of being elegant and graceful when dancing, but is she incapable or is she unwilling?”

Zen looked down into his now empty cup as he considered MC’s words. He had sat in on many of Gi’s classes, and whilst she always seemed satisfied after class ended, she seemed…frustrated during it. Zen always thought it was because she couldn’t get the moves right, but now he wondered if there was something else at play, “I guess she does always appear discouraged during her lessons, like she’s being held back. But she adores dance, it’s all she talks about. She always says that she likes to move with the music, but ballet just seems too restricting. She’s tried other kinds of dance but she likes how ‘pretty’ ballet is…”

“Has she ever considered figure skating?”

Zen quirked an eyebrow. MC chuckled, “Figure skating. She’ll get to use her power and athleticism so she won’t feel held back, but then she can still incorporate the elegance and ‘prettiness’ of ballet. There’s an ice rink that just opened nearby, you should let her give it a go.”

“I don’t know…I don’t know if it’s best to just stop it all together.” MC gave him a glare. “I just don’t want her to end up like her teacher, MC. She’s so..odd!”

MC placed down her cup and leaned forward on the table, waiting for Zen to focus on her, “Zen, I think it was odd that she brought that up as well, but don’t you think she did it because she was desperate? Because she knew that Gi was special? Can you not at least let her try it? You never know, she might surprise you.”

Zen sighed, recognising that MC was right. She very well might be a natural, and even if she wasn’t, as least she tried. “Okay, I’ll bring it up with her. Thank you, MC.”

MC merely smiled and dipped her head, clearly not understanding how loaded that ‘thank you’ was.

They continued to chat casually for a while, when Zen quickly had a realisation, “Oh! I meant to ask you, are you free tomorrow night?”

MC’s face dropped a little, a response that was small enough to go unnoticed anyone, but not small enough to go unnoticed by Zen, “I’m sorry, I have plans with Chul tomorrow night.”

Of course, how could he forget? Obviously he couldn’t just assume that she would available any night of the week anymore. She was in a relationship. She was busy.

The dull ache he felt in his chest surprised him, a disappointment that he couldn’t have anticipated. This was the first time that she had other plans, that she didn’t have time for him. Had he taken her company for granted? Had he taken her for granted? Was this, after all they had, the beginning of the end?

But, the end of what, exactly?

“Ah, no worries,” Zen replied easily, his acting skills being put to good use, “It was nothing, just wanted to hang out. How are things going with Chul anyway?”

“Good,” she responded, a smile playing on her lips and her eyes regaining a bit of their usual glimmer, “Really good.”

“I’m glad,” he said and felt a pang of guilt, because Zen didn’t like to lie, and he certainly didn’t like to lie to MC. But he was going to have to get used to it.

The following evening Zen went back to the convenience store, his best shirt on and the two tickets in hand. So-yi watched him curiously, a melancholic expression on her face. Zen walked up to the counter, “Would you like to come with me?”

She smiled sympathetically at him as she mentally connected the dots, “Of course, sweetie. I get off my shift in five minutes. I’ll meet you outside.”

And so they strolled to the bar together, So-yi holding onto Zen’s arm as they laughed and sang through the street. Not many men his age wanted to spend their Friday night with a little old lady like her, but Zen wasn’t most men, which made So-yi’s heart ache a little more for him. He deserved the world.

She didn’t ask about the girl, because she knew that, even if he hadn’t realised it yet, she was someone special, and she had said no.

She’ll come around, So-yi thought.

They always do in the end.

***

“Saeran, come look at this.”

Saeran strolled over to the couch, milkshake in one hand and a soda in the other. Chucking the can to Saeyoung he sat next to him to get a good view of the laptop that was balanced on his twin’s knees, examining the screen as his eyebrows furrowed, “What is this?”

“I-uh…may have done a background check on Chul.”

Saeran sighed, giving his brother a pointed look, “You know MC told you not to. She’s gonna kill you.”

“I know. I know I wasn’t meant to but I just wanted to be sure and-“

“Wait, is this a criminal record?”

Saeran studied the document, taking in every detail, and his heart dropped when a certain set of words caught his eye.

REASON FOR ARREST: Assault

“It says in his notes that he got into a fight at a bar,” Saeyoung added gently, cautious of Saeran’s reaction, “In his statement he said that it was self-defence-“

“They’re together right now, correct?” Saeran said smoothly.

“Um, yeah. MC said they were going ice-skating, but why do you-“

“I’m going out. I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Saeran, you can’t just go and interrogate or beat up the guy. We don’t even know what happened.”

“I’m not going to, I just need to see for myself that he’s okay for MC.”

Saeran didn’t wait for Saeyoung’s reply, instead he just put his hood over his head and marched out the door, missing the look of pure defeat on his brother’s face.

It took him less than half the time it usually took to reach his destination, but as soon as Saeran walked through the automatic doors of the ice-rink, he started his search.

They weren’t in the lobby, and they weren’t in the cafe, so they must still be on the ice. He managed to sneak his way onto the rink without going to the front desk, because of course he could. Saeran had no idea how much longer MC and Chul were going to be there, and he definitely didn’t want them to catch him in the foyer. So, sneaking in it was.

Which, though he would never admit, he found more fun anyway.

After only a few seconds of glancing over the other skaters, his eyes landed on the couple. He was moments away from marching over to them to have a little chat with Chul, but was halted by one thing.

MC’s face.

Saeran had never seen her face so bright, so glowing. Not even when she bought her new apartment, not even on her birthday. Not even when she was with Zen.

Her smile met her eyes, free of restraint and absolutely beaming. And Chul looked the same way, but he was completely enraptured by her, as if he was hanging on to her every word like she was a lifeline to him. They looked happy. They looked in love.

And nobody, especially not Saeran, would ever make that look on MC’s face disappear when it was as rare as rubies. Who was he to judge a man based on his past, anyway? Saeran didn’t know Chul’s story, nor did he know the Chul in front of him particularly well, but he would give him a chance, just like MC had given Saeran a chance.

He’d tell Saeyoung not to worry, but to keep a watchful eye. Because yes, Chul gave MC a spark that had nearly died out, but when there is a spark sometimes it’s hard to see the smoke; and when there’s smoke, there’s fire.

***

Masterlist || Next Chapter

#mystic messenger #mystic messenger fanfic #mystic messenger fanfiction #mysme yoosung #zen ryu #hyun ryu #mm zen #mysme zen #zen x mc #zen x reader #zen x you #my writing

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valatheapprentice · 3 years

Text

How I knew you

(plague story/meeting Lucio)

Its been a month since Asra left. While I miss him dearly, I still hold a little anger towards him. I don’t want to understand why he wouldn’t help find a cure. Perhaps I already know, though. My nightmares have become more frequent and I have to even drink coffee to get through the day. I finally made my tonic to help me not have one tonight and I plan on taking it after helping Dr. Devorak tonight.

The hours drag by as I run between medical books and test results. My mind starts to blur everything I see when the doctor comes back into the dungeon. His eyes are wide with deep bags hanging under them. His hair even more in disarray than when he left to attend to the count. I look at him sympathetically as he sinks into the nearest chair. “What’d he say this time?” I ask.

He shakes his head as an exasperated sigh escape his lips. “Nightmare. He wants us to ‘cure’ a nightmare or something. You know, not something we can actually do.” He buries his face in his hands. “And there’ll be hell to pay…”

My heart drops a little. I take a breath, saying good bye to a peaceful nights sleep. “I have something that will prevent them.” My face drops in to a frown. “I can bring it to him. Take a breather. You’re stressed enough as it is.”

He looks at me, lacking energy to even show concern. “I should say no… But you’re right.” His eyes close as he tries to relax a bit. “Just… be careful. And watch what you say. Trust me…”

I nod and take the tonic from my bag. And start making my way up the stairs. After asking a servant where to go, I make it to the counts bedroom door. I stand there for a moment, suddenly feeling the anxiety of meeting the infamous Lucio mixed with sleep depravation. I take a deep breath before knocking on the intricately designed door.

“Enter.” An angry and sharp voice called. I open the door and do my best to hide my shock. This bedroom is almost completely overlayed in reds. I’m quite surprised by how enchanted I am by it. I stop myself from gawking at everything and look towards a visibly agitated man, staring at me with daggers. “I don’t now you. What the hell do you want.” He snaps. I’m already over this.

With the best smile I can manage, I hold up the bottle in my hands. “I’m Dr. Devorak’s apprentice. I understand you were asking about something for nightmares? “

He scoffs. “I didn’t ask.” He motions for me and I walk closer towards him. He stares at the bottle in my hand and give a distrusting expression. “I’ve never seen medicine like that.” Fighting back my annoyance, I nod, confirming his statement. “That would be because I’m a witch and I made this to prevent nightmares.”

He starts to laugh, rolling his eye. “Of course. And you expect me to just believe that? How do I know that will even work and not hurt me?”

My smile starts to fall. I don’t have the energy to pretend right now. “You know, you’re not the only person in the word who has bad dreams.”

He stares at me, standing up. Being a few inches taller, he just barely starts to tower over me. His now scarlet eyes piercing into me. “I’d watch that pretty mouth of yours if I were you.” He sneers.

I hold the tonic closer to our faces, making sure he sees it. “If it weren’t for the fact that we can’t get work done when you’re pissy, I wouldn’t even be here. So drink it, or I will. One of us is getting sleep tonight.”

His expression softens for a brief moment, taking me off guard. Before I can figure out his expression, he curls his lips in disgust and snatches the bottle from me. “The only thing saving you is my impatience. And if this doesn’t work, I’ll have you executed.”

I close my eyes to keep from rolling them as I nod. “Yes sir…”

He smirks and downs the bottles contents. He waits for a moment, waiting for… something… to happen. “Now what.”

I tilt my head, brows furrowed together. “Now you sleep?” I sigh and relax my muscles a bit. “Itd be best to try to sleep sooner than later. Trust me, you don’t want it to wear off while you’re still asleep. And let me know if you need more.”

He looks down his nose at me, but nods. “You can leave now.”

With a nod, I all but storm out the door. “Good gods.” I say to my self as soon as the doors closed behind me. “What the hell did I get myself into?” • • • Three hours. I slept for three hours before waking up in a cold sweat. A sharp pain grinds against my ribs as I labor for deeper breaths. I try to think of something to focus on, soon making a two vials of the tonic. I’m sure he is going to demand more. I’ve never dreaded going back so much. I finish blessing my work and get ready to go to the dungeons again. I pick up some coffee and pastries for Dr. Devorak and I to snack on later before clocking in. For the first few hours, everything runs smoothly. No interruptions out side of Valdemar’s check ins. As I’m in the process of writing down some findings, one of the guards hired to watch over us steps towards the center of the work area.

“uh… witch…?” He calls out, unsure of who he was calling for. I look around, seeing no one else stand up. I raise my hand hesitantly, attracting the guards attention. “The count requests your presence.” He beckons me to follow. The doctor and I share an unpleasant look before I stand and follow the guard.

I tell myself he’ll be in a better mood. That I have more energy and he’s not as bad as he wants to appear. I keep trying to reassure myself, though nothing in my mind can ease the anxiety building inside of me. I’m in my mind so much, I don’t even realize we’ve stopped at his door until the guard knocks on it. Lucio calls for us to enter. The guard let’s him now I’m here and steps back to let me in, closing the door behind him.

His eyes are slightly narrowed and a faint curve is sliced into his lips. I can’t tell if he’s irritated or amused. He sits in the bed, leaning against the headboard. “Don’t just stand there. Come here.” He orders, almost annoyed he had to say it at all.

I walk over to his bed side, stopping just a foot away. With a small smile, I make eye contact with him. “Good morning, sir. How did you sleep last night?”

He raises an eyebrow and eyes me for a moment, his face frustratingly unreadable. “Your potion worked.” As I knew it would. “Ill need one nightly.” He says casually. My heart sinks. As if I wasn’t busy enough with the research, now I have to set aside the time and energy for this. “So long as it keeps working, I’ll cover any… ingredients… you’ll need.” He smiles at me as if he just saved my life.

I nod, smiling through my disappointment. I pull out one of the bottles from my bag and set it on his side table. “I thought you’d want another. I’ll be sure to bring one every day from now on.” I take a step back, thinking I’ve said all there was to be said. “Ill be off, then.”

“Hold on.” He calls out, stopping me in my tracks. “I haven’t had much in the way of visitors. Stay and entertain me.”

A sense of unease crawls inside if me. “You’re also dying. So, I should really get back to work...”

He raises his eyebrows at me. “I’m paying for your time, I get decide how you spend it.” His voice is firm and full of warning.

“Actually,” My jaw tightens. “I’m volunteering my time. I’m not getting paid.”

Flames begin to build beneath his skin. He sits up straighter and hangs his legs over the bed. “Then I order you to stay.” His voice thunders under a cool tone.

My eyes narrow at him. My hear begins pounding. “I’ve faced worse monsters than you. You don’t scare me. I’m not going to be a play thing for you.”

His eyes widen in astonishment. I’m of sure anyone had talked back to him before. Or none that lived. I take the momentary silence as a chance to walk towards the door. “What was it you said yesterday?” I turn to look behind me, seeing a taunting smile across his face. “Work can’t be done when I’m ‘pissy’? Imagine how pissy I’ll get if you walk out.”

I bite my cheek, glaring at him. Gods, I hate that smug look on his face. I close my eyes and tuck my hair behind an ear. Why did I have to say that? Now he has one more thing over me. “Fine.” I lift my hands up in defeat. “You… win.” Ignoring that damn smirk, I walk back to the bed, arms crossed. He sits back against the headboard once again and gestures for me to sit opposite him.

I sit, avoiding eye contact. This feels really odd to me to be in the bed of a perfect stranger. I can feel his eyes on me, his gaze piercing through me. “What’s your name?”

I look at him cautiously. “Vala.” I answer quietly. He stares at me expectantly, and I sigh. Let’s get this over with. “Vala Quintus.”

He nods, continuing to stare at me with curiosity. “Why do I feel I’ve seen you before?”

“I'm not sure.” I shrug, hoping this will turn out to be pleasant. “I'd gotten in some trouble when I was younger. Maybe you saw my file then…” I trail off. He nods, not saying anything for a while. An awkward silence stretches between us, only interrupted by his coughing. Each time I straighten up, he raises his hand to stop me. “That sounds really bad, I can grab some medicine or make a potion or something.”

He shakes his head. “Not if you need to leave.”

I roll my eyes, trying to think of a quick spell that would help. “You are impossible.” Once it comes to me, I stand up and slowly walk closer to him. He looks at me distastefully and with just a sliver of fear as I hold my hand close to him. “Fortunately, I know something that helps with normal coughs. But I need to…” How do I say this? “press my hand against your neck.”

He grabs on to my wrist firmly with the gauntlet and straightens up. “What kind of fool do you take me for?” He hisses at me.

I try to snatch my arm back with no prevail. If this is him dying, I can only imagine him at full strength. “If I tried to kill you, I’d end up dead. What kind of idiot do you think I am?” I feel his grip loosening as he considers my words. “Besides, if I was going to kill you, strangulation with one hand would be a bit stupid for me.” With my free hand, I gesture towards my body, thin with barely any muscles to show. He looks down my body and back into my eyes. Begrudgingly, he releases my arm, leaving inflamed imprints around the skin. I take a breath and gently place my hand over his neck, a shock of energy I didn’t expect vibrates my finger tips. I close my eyes, ignoring the sensation and envision honey dripping gown his throat, coating it completely with my magic. Once I’m satisfied, I release my hand and back off. “How does that feel?”

He takes a few deep breaths, testing the comfort of his sensitive throat. “Surprisingly well.” A small smile rests on my face as I sigh in relief. He may be an ass, but I just hate seeing him in pain like that. No one deserves that. He stares at me contemplatively. “You’re pretty good at that, huh?”

Caught off guard, I just stare agape for a second. “I… uh… I’d say so.” I see the wheels in his head turning and I don’t know if I feel dread or intrigue.

After another bout of uncomfortable silence, he smiles to himself and reaches for some water. “So. How would you kill me?” I stare at him, blind sided and speechless. “You said if you were to, you wouldn’t have tried to choke me. So… how would you?”

So he did just ask me that. Hesitantly, I think of an answer. “I mean…” I sigh. “Obviously, you’re stronger than me. You have more training. So anything I would do would have to be a surprise. I could poison a tonic but you’d notice. Honestly, my best bet would be some thing in your sleep…”

He raises an eyebrow. “Something like what?”

I stir in my spot as I avoid his gaze. I just want to sink into the floor. “Honestly?” I look around his room, searching for an idea to this ridiculous conversation. A pommel sneaking out from beneath his pillow catches my eye. I take a breath and point to it. “I’d hide that better. I could just use that… and bury it in your neck…”

He darts his eyes to the edge of the pillow and shoves the knife further out of sight. “You’re smart, I’ll give you that.” His face has soften towards me. “And cute. I think I’ll keep you around.”

I stare at him. My heart races in my throat. “I need to go… um… I… I need time to make your tonic. Its not something I can do in an hour and I still need to sleep so…”

I climb off the bed and take a few steps towards the door. “I’ll allow it.” He says in a cool voice, surprising me to a stop. “On the condition that you spend a part of your days in my company.” I turn and look at him, and sure enough, he’s serious. “And remember, I can make everyone’s life hell if I wanted.” • • • The last few weeks pass by surprisingly not as painfully as I had imagined. Dr. Devorak was, of course, not too thrilled with me not being able to work nearly as much, but was relieved to know the Count wouldn’t bother them nearly as often. Lucio, himself, has been a lot more pleasant than I’ve been warned about. Every visit, I’m greeted with a gift that he won’t let me refuse. Necklaces, clothing, figurines, even went so far as to find the largest crystal I have ever seen. He also has kept true to his word, replacing the herbs, oils, and juices I need for his tonic. I’ve come to actually laugh around him and finding we have more in common than I could have imaged.

He’s still pretty fickle. He continues to watch me intently when I stand from the bed. Every time he compliments me, its always about him. And whenever I catch him opening up, he snaps a little. I really can’t help but wonder where it all came from. Why is he angry and distrusting? I may never know, but I do know I may be enjoying my time though I’ll never say it.

I find myself walking a little faster today, arriving at his door far too soon for my liking. I take a moment to ground myself before knocking. After being called in, I walk through and to the bed where an intricate and cat shape crystal rests on my normal seat. I hold it in my hands, feeling a good deal of energy radiating from it. Slowly, I take my seat and look at him. “You really don’t have to keep doing this…” I look back down, feeling my chest swell with warmth. “It’s so beautiful… Thank you.” He smiles, not even bothering to hide the cockiness of his pride. “It’s the least I could do for everything you do.”

I shake my head, closing my eyes to keep from rolling them. I can’t fathom how this is nothing to him. “Still. Where do you even find these things? I mean…” I stare at the fine details on the moonstone cat. “I could travel for months and may never find something like this.”

Lucio, who seems all to happy to boast, straightens up a bit, puffing out his chest. “Let’s just say I know a lot of people and I am very persuasive.” He winks at me and I fight back the burning in my cheeks. Persuasive indeed. I stare at the stone, admiring the magic emanating from its core. “I don’t get it.” He says, bringing me back into the moment. “Why are you here?”

I look at him, dumbfounded. “I… volunteered?” He shakes his head, slightly annoyed. “Yeah, but why? You and your magic could be revered. Feared even. Play your cards right and you could rule countries! Why waste your time in a disease ridden dungeon?”

I feel my chest start to tighten. I close my eyes and fight back any sliver of a memory of Greece. Of Sparta and my parents. “Maybe I don’t want that…” I rest my head in my hand and take a few breaths before looking back at him. “I’ve hurt people before. And I hate that I did that. So I want to help make other peoples live easier. People are dropping like flies because of this plague. How could I not help?”

His eyes scrunch together. Again, I can’t read his expression. He looks either confused, worried, or in contemplation. “How do you mean? You don’t seem like the type.”

Surprisingly, I smile a little. “Well, thank you… I think.” I look down at my hands, tangled over each other. “Look, I have been open and honest to you about everything. And I appreciate your patience, but… uh… there’s one part of my life no one will know about. Not Asra, my dad, even you, sir.” I look back at him. “This is the one thing I’ll beg you not to push.”

I can see in the shape of his eyes he’s not happy with that. However, his mouth remains soft as he nods. “Is there anything you can tell me?”

I stare at him for a bit. Why the hell does he care? Of what significance am I to him? I sigh. “Back in Greece, my parents forced me into something bad. I left, which lead to worse things. I got on a boat to anywhere and ended up here. I gave myself a new name and made more horrible decisions that I already mentioned, kind of.”

He stares at me for a while. His face is soft and quiet. “Understood…” He takes one of my hands, bringing it to his lips, chapped yet somehow still soft and warm. “I’m glad you left then.”

I use every ounce of strength to fight off the butterflies he’s given me. I try to tell my heart to calm down with little success. I compose myself enough to raise my eye at him. “Aren’t you a married man, sir?”

He looks at my hand to avoid eye contact and shrugs. “Its merely a business arrangement if anything else.”

My eyes narrow as I tilt my head. “I get that. But you mean to tell me you married her and slept with her and shared a palace together, and you never felt love for her?”

He blinks at me. “I… well…” He fumbles to answer my unexpected question. His face hardens a little. “Perhaps there was a time. A short and fleeting time, but maybe. We both knew what this was going to be.”

I want to ask more, but he’s been really respectful of my wishes. I just nod. I swear I almost see sadness in his stone eyes. I look down to his hands and lift one to my lips. His skin is slightly clammy, a sad reminder of why I’m here. “It may not make a difference to you, but from what I’ve seen, you deserve to have someone care about you.”

He looks at me as if I had three heads. “Why would you say that?” He looks at me bewildered. Confusion stains he’s eyes. His lips form an almost perfect snarl. He straightens up and leans forwards towards me, his reddened eyes staring into mine, I can almost see a war inside of them. “Everything you heard about me is true. What would you know about what I deserve?”

I know he’s trying to scare me. And its almost working. I am unsure what the mood change came from, but, whether I was ready for it or not, I’m invested. “Maybe. And I’m sure you deserve a lot. But… no one deserves this.” Carefully, I reach my thumb to his cheeks, feeling him shiver at my touch. “Especially alone.”

Something in him snaps. His human hand reaches for the back of my head as he closes the distance between us. Our lips collide with a fevered passion. His claw gently cups my cheek. My brain screams a hundred reasons to leave right now, this is wrong, he’s up to something, he has the plague. Yet the electricity in my veins are completely drawn to him. My heart beats erratically as we deepen the kiss. My hand glides slowly up his chest an into his hair, a bit stiff from remaining bed ridden. I fearfully feel myself melt under the power of his touch. It terrifies me that I’m defenseless in his arms.

We feed off each others breath as we pull ourselves closer. His metal hand trails over my chest and down my back. Our tongues start to dance as the heart stopping thud of his door knocking echoes in my ears. We pull apart as quickly as we collided just before Dr. Devorak strolls in for Lucio’s nightly check up. My heart beats with such an intense speed, my blood tells me to just leave. With my face still flushed, I put on my best smile and reach for his tonic. “Looks like my cue to leave…” I said in a frantic voice and hand him the bottle. “I’ll… I’ll be by tomorrow. Good night!”

I turn before I can see their reactions and scurry out the door before they could respond. I freeze as soon as the doors close behind me. My stomach drops as I try to wrap my head around the kiss. Gods, why do I feel like an idiot? After a moment or two and my heart has calmed, I started my walk back home, and tried to ready my mind for whatever is to happen over the next few days. • • • I tried to set boundaries yesterday. I knew this had gotten too far. He’s my patient. He’s married. He’s the count. I needed restraint, which made his lips all the more intoxicating as he held me in his arms. For hours, we had stolen kisses and laughter. It was the one day his smile never lost its warmth. The aura around him was like a summers day at the beach.

I have to fight my own bubbling smile as I skipped over to his room. As I was about to knock, I am able to hear barking coughs and my heart sinks into my stomach. I rush in without a second thought and find Lucio curled under the covers, sweating and furiously shivering. I drop my bag and run to his side, placing my wrist over his head. His skin is damp and hot.

His coughing gets progressively more intense, blood appearing across his mouth and slowly trickles down his face. I press my hand on his neck and try with all of my might to soothe his that through the spastic movements of his head and chest. I start to panic seeing my attempts doing little to help. My face runs cold and my eyes widen. “Okay… I’m getting you medicine...” My voice is barely a whisper as I sprint out the room and into the dungeons, desperation ringing in my voice as I demanded something to break his fever. I don’t even thank them before racing back to his side, feeding him the medicine. I go to wet a wash cloth and place it over his pale forehead.

After about an hour, his shaking has calmed and he’s able to breathe with less complications. Dr. Devorak has already come in to check up on him. We both share a look. He’s getting worse and he needs rest. As soon as he leaves, I walk back to the bed side, my heart twisted into unknown shapes. He lays on his back, his eyes barely able to look at me. I gently comb my fingers in his now dampened hair. “Hey.” I say with a strained voice and a weak smile. “I’m going to let you rest, okay? I’ll be back tomorrow.”

He grabs my hand as I start to turn. “No, please.” His hoarse voice shatters my ears with his plea. I don’t think he’s ever utter that word to me before. “Stay with me… I… I can’t be alone.” I just barely keep myself from trembling as I turn back to him. Fear drowns out any bit of color in his face. Tears start to well in his eyes as his breath gets shakier.

I should go. I need to go. Yet my fingers wrap around his as my feet climb on to the bed to lie down next to him. I watch him fidget as he tries to get comfortable around his metal arm. “Why don’t you take that off. You’ll sleep easier.” To my surprise, he nods and removes it without a word or hesitation. He places it aside, a dead yet frightful look etched across his face. He lays back down and wraps his arm around me. I hold his head close to my chest, hoping the beating of my heart could lull him into comfort. For hours I hold him like this, not moving even as tears, sweat and blood filled mucous begin to dry on my chest. He eventually softens his breathing, finally sleeping.

A large, pulsating lump in my chest starts to scream at me. I quietly sob and tighten my embrace. I shed tears for the both of us. For the nights he’s spent afraid and in pain. For every time someone should have told him he wad loved. For everything lost, or will be lost. I cry for doing this to myself, for putting myself in this situation. I cry until my eyes close and the darkness snuffs out any remaining thought.

When I wake up, a dull pain takes over my chest, causing me to cough a little. I sit up, looking down at the stains on my skin and clothing. The spot next to me resides Lucio, sleeping deeply, but pained. I shake my head and look up, closing my eye. I take a sharp breath and carefully get out of the bed. I stretch my arms out and muffle another cough. I look to my side towards his nightstand. I tilt my head upon seeing an older book resting on it. Odd. I didn’t take him as the reading type. I pick it up, curious as to what he’s been interested in. On the cover, a strangely familiar symbol is engraved. The meaning is on the tip of my tongue, but the words escape me.

I flip through the pages, my face knitting further together. Spells? Rituals? The arcana? What the hell? I thought he didn’t trust magic. I continue to scour through the book, my throat becoming more dry and itchy, until I stop at a book marked page. Ice shoots through my veins like glass arrows.

Connecting with an Arcana as a magician

My breathing starts to quicken, only for me to begin a fit of coughs. For what felt like minutes, I struggled to inhale as my lungs forced my own breaths out into my hand, leaving no mercy. I nearly double over in fear and pain. As I feel my body relax and my throat starts to only throb, I look down at my hands, tinged red with the blood draining down my throat.

I barely have time to form a thought when I hear rustling from beside me. I look up, finding Lucio staring at me. His eyes wide and his mouth open. A fire starts behind my skin as I glower at him. He tries to speak, but his voice is silenced by the torn flesh in his throat. “No…” I say to him in a low voice. “You made a fool out of me. You were kind to me. You had me believe there was something good in you…” My voice rises frigidly. “I cared about you! I gave you my time and my magic and this is the thanks I get? You buttering me up to use me? I trusted you and you spat it in my face. And now I’m going to die because of you!” He stands up. I flinch away as he tries to touch me. “Don’t.” I step closer to him, our faces inches apart. “You are nothing. You will die alone and scared and in pain. My only regret is not being there to see it.”

I turn and storm towards the door. My blood rushes in my ears as my breaths get shallower. The last thing I hear is his last, forced attempt to atop me. “Please…” His voice was small and distorted. It sand in my mind as I slam the door behind me. I pace down the hall, making it half way before I have to catch my breath. The white fire burn as I cough keeps me from thinking this is all just a bad dream. I look down at my body and my hand, shaking from the frays of my nerves.

I continue to walk to the dungeons with my head hung over my chest. A guard stops me. “Authorized personnel only, miss.” He looks down to my chest. “Ma'am, is everything okay?”

I shake my head weakly. “Please get Dr. Devorak…” I whisper. He nods and quickly moves to grab the doctor. Soon enough, he stands in front of me. I finally muster the energy to look up. “Dear gods…” he exclaims upon seeing me. “What the hell happened?”

Tears start to fill my eyes as I feel the words bubble in my mouth. “Looks like you have another patient to research on, doctor…”

#the arcana #the arcana game #the arcane mc #the arcana apprentice #the arcana asra #the arcana julian #the arcana plague #julian devorak #count lucio #lucio morgasson

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moonlightreal · 3 years

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Fate episode 6

When last we left Elemental Academy, I was seeing doomful parallels to every Bad Ending arc in Higurashi. And sadly, I like the three adults and my genre-savvy tells me they won’t all make it through this last episode.

How much of a downer will the ending be? Who will end up screwing everything up? (my money’s on Bloom.) Who’s for the chop? (my guess is Silva and one out of Dane, Riven or Beatrix.) Will we finally learn the red truth of what happened at Aster Dell? Will we ever get the skinny on what the heck Burned Ones are? Will the show finally give me the lowdown on changelings that I’ve been whining about since episode one? Will we get the full story on Bloom’s destiny? (My money’s on no to at least three of the four.)

And I suppose we’ll finally answer the question we started with: Good, bad or irredeemable?

One last time, let’s dive in!

We pick up right where we left off, Bloom having a mental chat with Rosalind! Rosalind says, ‘Do you have any idea how special you are?”

...waitwaitwait, is there gonna be a prophecy? There’s always a prophecy! A prophecy that the Chosen one would be born in Aster Dell and that’s the real reason Rosalind nuked the place. Only she didn’t know which of the babies it was, she guessed Beatrix and she guessed wrong.

Am I right? Sorry, I barely let the episode start, let’s get back.

Rosalind encourages Bloom to bust her out. Bloom flames her eyes up.

Aaaaand we cut back to the girls in the corridor. Terra wonders what they could be talking about and Stella teases that she once heard Terra talk about dirt for two hours. I’m liking friendly Stella, but she faceturned faster than Tinx at the end of WoW!

Terra’s also worried Beatrix may recover from being frozen and come after them. Sensible, Terra! But no, Beatrix will be gone when you get back, off getting the mysterious “him.” I know how these shows work!

Ahahahaha! I’m right! Beatrix is gone! I swear I type these things while I watch, all guesses are genuine!

And then Dowling, Harvey and Aisha bust in. Yeah girls, you might’ve not done this during a Burned One attack! Harvey says “Not another word!” which nobody listening is why y’all gonna get the bad ending, and the girls follow him. Stella resurrects her inner witch to tell Aisha, ‘Hope the brownie points you get from this will keep you company when you’ve got no friends.” simmer down Stell, she was trying to protect people’s lives… Aisha goes with the girls leaving Dowling to go after Bloom alone.

Rosalind is coaching Bloom on how to burn through the barrier. Bloom’s grinning, because magic feels hot and dangerous and you just want more. Then the barrier goes down and Bloom has a moment of worry about what she’s done before she… has a very caring moment, she grabs Rosalind assuming the older fairy will need water and food after being trapped for so long. That is really sweet, Bloom. But Rosalind says, ‘No. I need magic.”

And here comes Dowling! I assumed Rosalind would steal Dowling’s magic, but when the headmistress gets there everybody’s gone.

Opening!

Bloom and Rosalind come out a door in the graveyard out in the forest. Secret passage! Dowling doesn’t know about it. Dowling doesn’t know about lots of things, according to Rosalind. Bloom really should be having second thoughts here. Rosalind has an evil face!

Harvey reads the girls the riot act. He’s wearing his army coat, the same kind Rosalind wears, from their soldier days. He’s horrified about all the girls have done. He turns to go.

And Terra jumps up, “You lied again! About Rosalind, about everything, and you’re angry with ME? You can’t punish me for not knowing something you didn’t tell me!”

Yes! Get ‘em Terra!

Stella and Musa tennis-match look from daughter to father.

Harvey just says, “I suggest you all cool down!” and leaves without facing his daughter’s very sensible argument. And he magics the doors locked.

Terra: ‘I’ve caught him in a logic trap and he’s used his magic to ground us.’

Stella: “That means you won.”

Then aisha heads for her room to “deescalate the situation by removing myself from it” and Stella calls her a rat of a teacher’s pet and Musa asks for a brief pause so she can get her headphones. She flees into her room as Stella and Aisha get into it.

There’s Sam! Hiding in Musa and Terra’s room!

Stella says everyone over five knows not to snitch, even terra knows not to snitch, and Terra gives her a look. Aisha brings the logic: burned Ones, outside! Bloom, kinda single minded! Rosalind, an extra problem we don’t need right now!

Dowling checks the stone circle. Nobody there.

When she leaves, Rosalind and Bloom appear. So Rosalind is mind/light at least. Rosalind puts her hands over the center stone and absorbs magic.

Bloom asks what happened at Aster Dell. Rosalind makes a very evil face. ‘Everything Farah told you is true. I lied to them. I told then Aster Dell was evacuated. It wasn’t.”

Bloom starts to wonder if maybe she released a baddie.

But rosalind has more to say. ‘One of the fundamental tenets of the Otherworld is that only fairies can do magic. The settlers of Aster Dell were the exception. They were humans who drew on sacrifice and death. Blood witches.”

Gee it’d have been nice to hear that fundamental tenet sometime before the last episode! 9_9

So Rosalind saw an opportunity to wipe out the totally unforeshadowed witches along with the Burned Ones. And Bloom was a fairy baby kidnapped by the witches. Her fairy parents are still unknown. Bloom’s freaking out, but Rosalind just says, ‘You weren’t safe in the Otherworld, the power inside you was too great. that’s why the witches wanted you, to use your power.” and the Burned Ones can sense Bloom’s power and want to get rid of it before it’s used on them.

Yikes! Bloom realizes her presence is putting everybody in danger!

Rosalind: ‘Sucks to be special sometimes, doesn’t it.” But now they can go after the Burned Ones! And Rosalind has another trick to teach Bloom…

Hmm, so these Burned Ones were just… around? And gathering because they sensed Bloom’s magic? I assumed someone summoned them back after not being seen for 16 years.

We go to the fighters at the barrier. Remember how last episode Bloom drugged Sky and left him passed out at the stone circle? Well Aisha found out somehow and told the teachers so Silva is giving Sky the “why did I find this out from Aisha?’ and Sky hits back with, “Why’d I have to find out about Aster dell from Bloom?” But they’re in the middle of a siege situation here so Silva logically suggests they talk about that later.

Another few specialists including Riven and a girl named Kat who knows Stella are watching Noura’s last video. Kat thinks she knows where it was shot. Silva says, “Let’s go.” Just him and five students. Riven says, ‘Without fairies? that’s fucking stupid, there’s six of them!” and Sky shuts him down; order’s an order. That’s the most twit-ish thing Sky has done this whole show.

They hear Burned Ones growling… but it’s coming from the direction of the school! Yikes! Everyone rushes back!

At Alfea, the lights, that were never bright anyway so we’d remember this is a dark show, flicker out! Terra says the electricity runs on magic and there are energy wells… Sam says he’ll go check it out. He Kitty Prydes it through the door, unbothered my the sealing spell. So if he can phase, can Terra learn it too?

Spooky empty corridors! Flickering lights! Sam all alone! Y’know Sam probably can’t do that trick Kitty does where an enemy launches at her and goes right through, because he can only phase through earth-y and plant-y stuff.

Yikes! It’s a jump scare! Burned One right in Sam’s face! It claws him and he goes down yelling in pain!

But he manages to get back into the girls’ suite to tell them there’s a Burned One loose in the school!

Back with Bloom and Rosalind, Rosalind’s encouraging Bloom to channel lots of magic. “More! Let the fire consume you! Control limits you!” bloom says she’s scared and Rosalind encourages her to embrace that feeling, to enjoy it! “And with the right people around you...”

Bloom unflames. “You mean with you.” Bloom’s realized it! “You want me to listen to you and trust you and let you guide me? I just met you.’ and that’s not all! Bloom realizes Rosalind left her on earth a danger to everyone around her, to hide her from Dowling. “Without any guidance.”

Rosalind: ‘The guidance you needed was love. Farah couldn’t give that to you. Vanessa and Michael could.” Ugh, so their names are canon. And Rosalind knew about their baby and “gave them a second chance. And I gave you a hiding place from the monsters that wanted you dead.” And rosalind says she’ll always look out for Bloom, and when this is over they’ll find Bloom’s birth parents.

I dunno Bloom, maybe ask a whole lot more about how she knew about an Earth couple whose baby had a heart defect?

It had occurred to me that Beatrix might be the other half of the changeling swap, if there’s healing magic that can fix things like that.

But no time for that, Burned Ones are in the school and the girls are stuck in their room! Bloom has to go help. She asks Rosalind if she’s charged up enough to help help. Rosalind says she can’t, “But you don’t need it. BS, Rosalind, you could totally help. But Bloom runs off leaving the lady with the evil face all alone.

In the suite, Sam is getting worse, they can’t get out, and cel phones are giving up.

Bloom races toward the school. She hears noises from every side… but there’s Sky! At least bloom seems relieved he’s ok after she spiked his drink. He doesn’t seem nearly as upset as he should be over that, but I guess we gotta save the school first!

Inside dark halls there’s Riven and Kat with flashlights. They hear noises, but it’s just some students led by a male fire fairy with a handful of flames. Kat goes with them to the “courtyard” which I’ve been calling the cafeteria, I guess it’s outside? The big set with the arches and walkway overlooking it.

So Riven’s all alone to get the rest of the students from this area! He goes into the greenhouse… and there’s Dane! And Beatrix lying asleep on a table. Dane brought Beatrix here but she’s still paralyzed from the spell and Dane doesn’t know how to help her.

Riven just says it sucks for her and she’s not worth it. Which true we’d be better off without her but also yikes, heartless much Riven?

Dane: “She cares about you and I know you care about her. Don’t act like you don’t.”

Riven shrugs and turns to go and Dane grabs him. Riven says fine, he’ll help. Dunno why they don’t just carry Beatrix to where the students are gathering, that’d be safer for everyone.

Sky and Bloom are having the “you drugged me.” conversation. And the “I trusted you, I told you things.’ and “you trusted me but you’d still have stopped me.’ and “you were gonna release a murderer and a crazy ex-headmistress.” and Bloom starts realizing everyone had reasons for what they did and Sky wraps it up, ‘just because they’re doing what they thought was right doesn’t mean that it is.”

Back with the girls, Sam’s getting worse and something is banging on the door! it’s Sky! Did he just kick his way through an enspelled door? Badass.

Sky and Stella look at each other and say hey.

Then we all head for the courtyard and comparative safety!

Dowling is magically sealing the beautiful arched doors with trees in them, she tells the boy fire fairy to get his compatriots to weld them shut, and everyone to start making barricades. Silva’s handing out armor to fairies who want it. Harvey has a whole chemistry lab set up with a lunch lady helping him. Badass Marco is still getting treatment for his injury when the girls bring Sam in for help. Sam’s in a bad way. Harvey asks why they didn’t bring him immediately and Terra reminds him they were locked in their room. Harvey flinches.

Dowling stands on the stage where we saw Luna before, as behind her fire fairies weld the doors. She tells them the situation: Burned Ones in, power out. But she got word to Queen Luna and the army’s on the way! Everyone looks at Stella when she says that. They’re safe in the courtyard… but if the Burned Ones get through before the army comes, they’ll have to fight. Dowling does her best to be inspiring, “Let’s show them what it means to be Alfeans!” But I just feel… the lack of history. And I know, we have history. Feels like we don’t.

Sky and Stella have a moment. Bloom told him Stella ran away from home. Stella: “Home’s on its way here, so that’s fun.” Sky offers to help her hide but Stella says she’d love to take him up on it but… ‘Breaking up was the right thing to do, we never should’ve gotten back together. We are codependant at best, toxic at worst. This time I have to deal with it myself.” yay Stella! Grow into a better person! Sky says she sounds just like Bloom and Stella jokes that that’s what he’s into these days.

Meanwhile Bloom is following Dowling trying to convince her not to be mad. ‘Rosalind isn’t the monster you think she is.”

Bloom, you just met her you said it yourself!

“She had a reason to lie. The settlers of Aster Dell weren’t innocent. They were blood witches. And my birth parents weren’t even there.”

Dowling just sighs and says “She certainly has a way of winning people over doesn’t she.” Dangit, I wanted her to just kill the retcon and say, “there’s no such thing as blood witches, Bloom.”

Bloom goes with, ‘is your ego so fragile you can’t even consider for a minute you might be wrong about her?” Dowling says Rosalind is just manipulating, Bloom says you’re doing that too, and Dowling sensibly points out Dowling could be here defending herself and also defending the school.

Bloom flinches from that logic but says Rosalind is still too weak.

Dowling says the stone circle is the conduit to the magic of the land. It supplies everything… like the electricity. And the barrier.

Yup. Nice job breaking it, hero! Bloom singlehandedly brings about the bad ending!

Bloom says the Burned Ones are after her, and Dowling had figured that out. Bloom says she knows how to fight them now, but Dowling points out, ‘you’re he reason we’re in this mess, you’ve done enough. Help the other fire fairies weld the doors if you want to.’

And she strides off, pausing to suggest to Aisha that the other water fairies could use her leadership.

Aisha had been coming to talk to bloom I think, but she changes her mind.

In the greenhouse Dane and Riven are making a medicine to revive Beatrix. Turns out Riven is good at potions because he used to hang out with Terra. ‘Look, I’ll deny saying this but she’s not the worst.”

Ok, that makes Riven’s nasty remark to Terra in the first episode way worse.

Riven: “I might’ve led you astray this year...’

Dane: “you didn’t. Beatrix is special.”

Riven: ‘You are gay, right? I’m not blind? I know when someone wants my dick.”

Dane: “I think you’re hot. She is too, in a different way.”

There’s nothing like a cute threesome! ...and this is nothing like a cute threesome. But now the problematic element sits up and says, ‘You made the right choice. Rosalind will be impressed. When this is all over, you’re going to want to be on our side.”

Burned Ones growl! Rosalind pulls magic from the stone circle!

And Sam is in a bad way. There was a splinter of Burned One claw near his heart. Dang, I should’ve put him on the list of people for the chop! Musa tries to use her mind magic to take some of his pain, but it’s too much for her.

Harvey starts falling apart, stuttering that he can’t get the splinter out. Terra encourages her father, and Harvey manages to pull the claw splinter out. sam’s alive, but until the Burned One that tagged him is dead it’s only a matter of time!

The fire fairy boy says he heard they have the rest of the night and a whole day before the army comes. Too long for Sam, and if the Burned Ones get through the doors too long for all of them. Bloom, who’d been watching in horror the results of her bad choices, sets her lips and strides out.

Bustle of students putting up barricades. Sky is working with Badass Marco, then he turns and there’s Bloom with an apology. “I should’ve been honest with you like you were honest with me and I’m sorry.” And she reassures him that the kiss was honest, and gives him another one for emphasis!

Sky: “If I still say I don’t believe you, can we do it again?”

Well Sky is the most sane and stable person here, he’ll be good for Bloom! And immediately her catches Bloom’s glance and says, ‘whatever you’re thinking of doing… I’m here.”

And Aisha knows Bloom’s gonna try something, because Bloom always tries something and this time she thinks it’s her fault. Stella tries the, ‘If only her friend hadn’t turned on her..” and Aisha feels bad and she’s sorry. And here’s Bloom, come to get them! It’s the last episode, we all get to go fight!

Sky’s not with them, he’s with Silva and Silva has a final confession to make. Because he thinks they’re all gonna die tonight, he wants to tell Sky the truth about what happened at Aster Dell. Because that was where Sky’s father died. But Sky thought he died in battle…

Flashback! On the plains. Silva is yelling that there were still people, the town wasn’t evacuated. He wants to run and tell Rosalind. This must be while the magic users are up on the cliff ready to call down lightning. Silva says his friends think they’re only killing Burned Ones, but Andreas says Rosalind knows the truth. And he’s going with what Rosalind said.

Silva says ‘I know Rosalind gave you a sense of purpose, I know you’re indebted to her.” backstory there, but surely Andreas wouldn’t be on side for nuking hundreds of people?! Silva says, orders or morals? And Andreas… yep, he’s Team Rosalind. he’s not gonna let Silva warn the others.

He does not say, “They’re evil blood witches, we’ll show you the evidence and then come back.” which is really the only correct thing to say here.

Punches are thrown! The two warriors scuffle. Then Andreas goes for his sword. Silva draws his own. And a few swings in, he runs Andreas through. And races to the top of the bluff to stop his friends being accessories to a massacre.

Oof! What a thing for Sky to learn! And before that, Silva says, Andreas really was a great hero. Just… flawed. As we all are. That’s not much good and sky snaps, ‘What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?” But he’ll have to work it out later because now the Burned Ones are breaking in!

Dowling and the specialists move to the front, Dowling saying, ‘Keep your emotions in check. Runaway fear leads to runaway magic.”

In the clinic Harvey and Terra battle to keep Sam alive. Terra goes to get help and finds Musa zoned out with headphones. Terra begs for help and Musa says she can’t bear to feel somebody she cares about die, not again. This Musa’s mother dies last year, and Musa was with her and felt everything. Oof! The two girls hang onto each other and cry for a moment then Terra says, ‘It’s ok. I’m not gonna let him die.” And, understanding, leaves Musa to her music. But headphones can’t shut out the sound of the Burned Ones banging on the walls!

In the courtyard terra walks right up past everybody and starts dismanteling the barricade! ‘We’re hiding when we should be fighting.” Silva tells her they’re gonna be fighting soon enough and indeed, here comes a Burned One through the roof! The boy fire fairy blasts it and Kat is ready to skewer the thing when it… passes them?

It’s looking for Bloom! Who was last seen sneaking out a trapdoor with Stella and Aisha! The banging stops, and Dowling figures out Bloom has left to draw the enemy away!

The girls emerge from the secret passage in the graveyard.

Harvey calls Terra over as she is clearly headed out to fight, but he says she needs to stay with her brother, to help him hold on until the Burned One is destroyed. Then Musa appears and takes Sam’s hand. She’ll help him as long as she can.

Outside Stella points out that her mom is on the way with a real live army, but Bloom says there’s no time for that. Rosalind taught her how to stop the Burned Ones but she has to do big magic and she’s not sure how that’ll work. She needs help. Aisha will be there with her water magic in case the forest catches fire, and Stella can hide them.

Bloom: “Rosalind wants me to believe that she’s the person I need to get through this. But she’s not.

Aisha pulls the water from the pond into a cyclone around Bloom. Bloon lights up her eyes and lifts off the ground and… transforms. Transforms-ish. Flames spiral around her arms and legs, and around her body. Bloom’s clothes don’t change but fiery veined wings open behind her, first very large then dwindling as Bloom lands back on the ground.

The designers definitely could’ve watched PGSM to get this, if they then decided to tone things way down. And why not change her clothes? I’m sure they could’ve managed something. As a live action transformation sequence it’s… ok. They were trying for something cool and they had some good ideas how to get there, the fie spirals were good, but they needed to really run with it and they didn’t. So it’s just ok.

And how the night did Rosalind know the long lost secret of how to transform?

Burned Ones advance and Bloom blasts them with fire one after another. When the last one is down, her wings go out. And where the Burned Ones fell are… specialists? People, anyway.

Dowling arrives and Bloom collapses in her arms, then Aisha and Stella rush over to help. “We did it.’

Inside Sam suddenly feels much better! Terra hugs Musa. The lights come back on.

In the greenhouse too, where Beatrix and the boys are ready to bring the bad ending! I still smell a bad ending, because we just had a good ending but there’s twenty minutes more to go! The boys say they should rejoin their classmates but Beatrix says they should wait to meet Rosalind and her dad, who have a plan. ‘The two of you can be part of it. This doesn’t have to end.”

Dane asks if it was her dad who sent her to Alfea and B says he’s technically not her dad… and here’s Rosalind coming in the greenhouse doors. She and Beatrix recognize each other though they can’t have met. B says the boys are her friends and Rosalind reads their minds. I wanna say the boys are wondering what they’ve gotten into but… no, they don’t seem to be seeing anythuing wrong with this at all.

The girls are putting Bloom to bed, talking about the good ending they think they have. Sam will be fine, Terra’s great at doctoring and she’s sad she missed seeing Bloom’s wings. Tinkerbell is mentioned and I can just hear my friend cringing as they say Bloom’s wings were cooler than Tinkerbell’s. Bloom’s parents call and Aisha talks to them, covering for Bloom. She calls it her ‘one allocated lie of the week” which is weird. Bloom’s awake and fine, she could talk to her folks. Aisha says they’ve been having killer exams and the girls giggle.

Nobody says, ‘ohmigod the secret of wings was lost ages ago, what exactly did you do? help us all learn it!” which seems like a very obvious thing for everybody to be saying.

Also being all happy and going to bed while Rosalind and Beatrix are unaccounted for is a weird choice!

Silva and some specialists are scouting for her. No luck. They find Dowling with the bodies of the ex-Burned Ones.

Dowling: “Bloom transformed, Saul. She spent one night with Rosalind and unlocked ancient fairy magic, magic we thought was lost. She told Bloom the settlers of Aster dell weren’t civilians, they were blood witches.”

And Silva seems to believe it. Which of course means he killed his friend for no good reason. If it’s true. But if it’s true why didn’t Rosalind and Andreas tell the others, present evidence of the blood witches’ crimes, and make a plan to deal with things aboveboard? So why does Silva believe it now hearing from Dowling who heard from Bloom who heard from Rosalind well after the fact? But he does believe it and this is his awful moment of guilt.

Sky too is grappling with what he’s just learned, pacing on the lawn outside the school as the night ends.

Bloom finds him as the sun rises and I gotta say, I was not expecting the night to end! Everyone heard Bloom “went full fairy last night.” Bloom says it was the first time she truly felt like herself. She says, “I belong here.” but she realizes Sky is in the same clothes as last night and asks if he’s ok. He says he’s fine, which he isn’t.

Then Dowling comes looking for Bloom. The two fairies go into the headmistress’ office. Bloom’s feeling ok after her big magic, and suddenly she apologizes for all the awful things she’s said to Dowling. “You found me when I was lost, brought me to a safe place, gave me guaidance. Surrounded me with amazing people. And I’ve been...’

Dowling says, ‘It’s forgiven.” And Bloom hesitantly asks for a hug, or maybe offers one. Dowling looks like she’s never heard of hugs before, then she stands up and she and Bloom hug. Dowling totally gets teary-eyed.

Dowling: “When I became headmistress I made a decision. To become a figurehead. To project strength. It’s what students your age need. Admitting mistakes invites uncertainty...but not admittng them means people you care about have to ask you if you hug.”

Awwww, that was sweet! Dowling says she should have been more honest and Bloom says she maybe needed time.

...are we maybe NOT having a bad ending? I mean if Stella confronts her mum that would take up the time and we could end on a good note! Nobody’s dead yet! But all that bad-ending buildup...

‘Cause suddenly we’re back on Earth and Bloom is going to tell them the truth! Which, what good will that do them? And do you even know the truth? People told you lots of things. And the rest of the girls are here to hang out over the weekend! They head upstairs so Bloom can drop the “changeling” bomb in peace.

Music plays, Bloom speaks and her mother cries and looks at a baby book, ultrasounds and a newborn hospital bracelet. They believe it too, the whole mad story of fairies and magic. Of course Bloom summoning double handfuls of fire probably does a lot to convince them.

Sweet family montage, Bloom hugging her parents, the girls at the kitchen table, eating pizza.

Back at Alfea, Silva asks Sky where Riven is. Sky just says he and Dane are probably off getting stoned. When is this? Did y’all not do a full headcount after the battle? Sky is of course not happy with his mentor. Silva just says, ‘one day I hope you’ll see everything I did was for your benefit Sky.” Which, if Silva’s parenting produced Sky the paragon of decency and Andreas’ parenting produced Beatrix the occasionally charming also slutty obsessed murderer, good point there!

Here come some doomful black SUVs! They pull around and out hop a bunch of soldiers who surround the two confused guys.

Queen Luna gets out and… arrests Silva for the attempted murder of Andreas of Eraklyon!

Yow! Poor Silva looks most confused. But there he is, Andreas gets out of an SUV still wearing his specialist vest thingy. Sky looks at his resurrected father in shock!

Dowling is looking over some graves. Rosalind suddenly turns up! Turns out the Burned Ones are a sort of zombie, they were human once so when Bloom turned them human again and dead Dowling buried them. I hope she tried to find their next of kin and stuff too. Rosalind knew about them.

Dowling: “Are there more out there?”

Rosalind: “Shit ton.”

Rosalind must’ve already met Riven, his speech patterns are rubbing off on her!

And then Rosalind delivers the prophecy. There always is one. Or in this case, “There’s a legend. It’s a thousand years old. That’s how old the Burned Ones are, by the way. They were soldiers from an ancient war. The legend is about the magic used against them. It created them. it’s powerful. It’s primal. The Dragon Flame.”

Whaaaaaat? Really? Come on.

And that’s what Bloom’s got and that’s why she could transform. Rosalind let the Burned Ones into the school to see if Bloom could do it. Dowling’s upset about the danger to, y’know, everybody.

Rosalind: “there’s a war on the horizon. The Burned Ones are nothing compared to what’s coming.”

And Rosalind says she’s taking over the school, pretty much. We go back to the front yard where Silva’s getting hauled away in handcuffs and Queen Luna is giving the ordersy and there’s Beatrix watching and inside someone’s taking down Dowling’s portrait and putting up Rosalind’s.

Soldiers march into the greenhouse and Harvey and Sam smile weakly, smart enough not to try anything against six big dudes.

We learn that Andreas has been in hiding all these years because “I needed someone to raise Beatrix.” Uh, wow Andreas is one obedient guy! He also looks a little nutty. I dunno, the very regal beard… it’s too much somehow. Next to him Beatrix smiles at Riven and Dane who are I guess her loyal retainers now.

And then, infodump over… Rosalind straight up MURDERIZES Dowling! Well first she suggests Dowling might want to run away and take some time off, but Dowling is having none of that so Rosalind kills her! And then angry rock music plays as Dowling’s body sinks into the ground and flowers come up over her, making one more grave.

The girls return from their weekend on earth wearing the awful clothes from the trailer and discover… not the three adults they were expecting!

Well that was… something. You got the bad ending all right!

So lemme scroll up and see how good my guesses were…

Nobody but Dowling died, so my death guesses were wrong. And if she’s an earth fairy she might be able to heal herself under the ground or something, I mean weirder things happen in this kind of show. Bloom did indeed doom the school by releasing Rosalind.

We learned what I guess is the truth of Aster Dell, but... unforeshadowed blood witches? Reeeeeally!? That’s what you’re going with? And we found out Burned Ones are ancient zombies created by the unforeshadowed Dragon Flame which Bloom has for some reason. You’re supposed to foreshadow the important stuff for the night’s sake! That’s how things have weight in your story, that’s how you make the world feel real like the parts of it are connected to the other parts of it! The lack of worldbuilding has been bugging me more and more, can you tell?

Anyway we get a season two. I’m pleased because I’ve enjoyed plenty of aspects of Fate, but on the other hand… Fate has turned the already weird Winx fandom into a pit of radioactive rage-bees, and I won’t be sad to put that behind us!

So what about the big question? Good, bad or irredeemable?

I expected to judge how Fate lines up as a Winx Club show, but it… just doesn’t. At all. None of the characters are the same, none of the worldbuilding is the same. It’s apples to oranges.

But as just a show… I think I’d have to go with “bad.” The way the world feels so flimsy, all the really obvious bits of Otherworldbuilding that just aren’t there until the end, or aren’t there at all. All the Earth popular culture references. Beatrix being stuck in a slut stereotype role. All the drugs. All the everyone’s lying to everyone about everything, it got really tiresome. Those things knock the show out of the “good” category.

But there was a lot to like. I have to say, all the actors did a really good job. Given the semi-mess they had to work with, they gave it all they had! Stella was so awful but put across that she’s terrible because she’s terrified. Sky was a truly good person. Beatrix and Riven are objectively terrible people but both had moments of being so charming it was hard to hate them. And Dowling, Silva and Harvey managed to hold up this flimsy worldbuilding and almost make it work. The magic was flimsy but pretty and the castle and the forest are absolutely stunning.

So it’s not good, but there’s something there. So it’s not irredeemable, though there’s a lot we have to wallpaper over with it. I’m’a go with “Bad. The show has charms but is in general bad.”

At least that’s what I think after a five-hour marathon of the last episode! We’ll see what occurs to me in days to come!

#fate the winx saga #you get the bad ending

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toonqueen · 3 years

Text

Duckvember 2020

--Game--

Just some OC stuff. Move along. Nothing to read here. NO BETA and NO WRITING GOOD DESCS JUST GOING WHERE THIS ENERGY DRINK IS TAKING ME.

PG-13 for the violence. Murder mentions. I’m sure there is a curse word. Fun on a bun stuff.

P.S. IT WAS BETAed THANK YOU @cataradical ALSO THANK YOU FOR THE ONE PART I WAS STUCK AT nnnngh

-------

“Now that I’ve got your attention, let's play a little game,” the canine antagonist’s voice drifted from the speakers, followed by loud, maniacal cackling. There was no sight of him, but the room wasn’t empty.

Faustina curtly stood up from the ground where she had fallen deep into the pit. She was less concerned about the menacing, dangerous voice as she was her clothes getting dirty. Although she was angry, it was more at her sister than this weirdo who’d trapped them here.

“‘Mr. Canis is so nice in the Nega-verse. I just wanted to see if his gas station was anything like the one in the Middle-verse. Your version, he’s such a kind old man, so… what if he’s an absolute grump here? How funny would that be… teehee.’” Faustina repeated words said to her earlier in a mocking tone. She looked around the room as she brushed off her skirt; a small cell with a single glass wall. “Yes, what a great adventure, /sis/,” Faustina growled, pounding on the glass angrily, “find out our good friend /here/ is a serial killer. /Fun times/.”

Faustina glanced up, spotting a TV screen mounted above the glass. Playing was footage of her sister, Felicity, hurrying down a hallway, surrounded by large, halved circular saw blades whirring in and out and along the walls. Faustina’s dark-haired twin was swiftly moving, twisting, dancing around them.

“/I am not a killer/!” the voice shrieked from the speakers, offended, disgusted, “I am merely a tool that creates the puzzles. It is Fate that decides who lives and who dies, not me.”

“Oh, /boy/. This is going to be a /hoot/ then. Fate. With this gal. /Wow/. Why not run me through your death maze too?” Faustina stifled her giggling.

“Because you are going to be the prize for when--or if--she gets through my CORRIDOR OF KARMA and the PRECIPICE OF SERENDIPITY,” the villain bellowed, causing the speakers to glitch a little.

Faustina had completely lost it, cackling until her stomach hurt and she doubled forward, banging a fist against the glass wall. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes, her face sore from smiling so much. “Oh, you sad, poor little--if you /only knew/ her! Oh, man, where’s my phone?” She managed to collect herself, wiping away tears and sniffing a few times. A moment to gigglesnort before deep breath. “I’m going to have to record your reaction for later, Mister I Let Fate Decide, but I’m sure as soon as she gets through your stupid game, you’ll change your tune. I bet you made it so everyone loses no matter how hard they try, right? You’re gonna be so butthurt when you realize she’s gonna get through all that.” Unable to restrain herself any longer, Faustina started laughing and snorting again, arms thrown around her belly.

“Laugh now, fool. I hope you see her get torn apart. Behold! She just now entered the GAUNTLET OF THE GILDED-- wait, where did she go?” the canine gasped and choked.

Faustina looked back up at the TV as it started flipping through channels, all showing different chambers and mazes of torture and misery. Every single one of them… empty. Just as another channel turned on, Faustina heard a light shuffling coming from the ceiling above her head.

A second later, a panel on the ceiling right outside the cell room fell to the ground. Felicity climbed out until she was standing, face to face, with her sister on the opposite side of the glass.

Faustina huffed, hands on her hips. “About time. That took you a little longer than I thought,” Faustina complained to her “hero”.

“I would have gotten here sooner, but I felt obligated to read the name plaques he put up in each room. Masquerade of Misfortune was my favorite,” Felicity replied as she placed her hands on where the glass wall met a metal wall.

“How-- /How did you get in here!/ The vents don’t--don’t even lead here!” the voice hissed and snarled from the speakers.

“Well, they do now,” Faustina said on behalf of her sister. Felicity ignored them, tugging and prying along the strip of metal before peeling it loose. A line of bolts popped free.

“No matter! That was cheating! You’ve forfeited the game, and now you will see your sister suffer a gruesome fate,” the voice guffawed sinisterly. Liquid started pouring from the cell’s ceiling, right next to Faustina.

The trapped twin sniffed, and instantly knew what it was. “Gasoline? Really? Gonna set me on fire, huh? This is just getting more and more hilarious. Maybe coming here wasn’t such a bad idea. We need to do this every week. Man, if this jerk only /knew/,” she chuckled, casually pressing a hand up against the nozzle and stopping the flow of gasoline.

“Now, Felicity, was it? How ironic your name means “fortune”. Maybe you’ll be lucky by persuading me to let your sister live. Get on your knees, and /beg/ for her life,” their captor ordered, his tone much more disturbing and ruthless.

Felicity gave him the cold shoulder. “Heat would expand the glass, and then you can crawl out through this seam,” she explained to Faustina. “The bolts are out. You’ll be fine.”

“Are you not listening to me?” the voice raged. “You need to convince me to free your sister! I decide her fate!”

“Cool, cool, all right, hellfire. Got it.” Faustina put her fingers in front of her and started to move them like she was playing with an invisible cat’s cradle string.

“Do you not /understand/, you simpletons? All I have to do is throw a lit match and your sist-- /What in the fuc--/!” the voice changed from commanding to panicked when Faustina herself burst into flames. The fire had started from her own hands, and spread across her body. Flames rolled down her skirt, thick and magma-like, setting the fuel at her feet on fire. There was an immediate rushing blow of black smoke.

Felicity backed away from the hole so Faustina and her fire could do the rest. The escaping duck showed no pain from the flames. She just shrugged and climbed out. The speakers crackled but no voice.

“/Coward/!” Faustina yelled as she got out of the cell, rolling back the glass with the heat. “Why didn’t I think of this?”

“We are underneath a gas station. Might want to tone down the fire,” Felicity suggested. She looked up at where the fuel was still dripping. A few options on what to do rolled around in her mind. “Why is this bothering me more than any other villain we fought?”

“I dunno. More the peeps we beat up tend to rob banks or fight other heroes, so, uh,” Faustina said, the flames disappearing in wisps of black smoke until not even a spark was left. The entire cell floor was covered in flames still. Despite having been set on fire, not a single part of Faustina’s body, even her clothes, had been burned or harmed. However, there was black smudging along the hem of her skirt. “... You’re gonna get my dry cleaning bill.”

“Yeah, we’ve never had to fight a killer that's been taking out… defenseless people,” Felicity mumbled, still watching the dripping gasoline.

Faustina noticed the change in her sister’s tone. “Look, I can be a reverse conscience, bein’ all for tearing this guy apart. Is that what you want to do?” Faustina leaned in close to her twin, twinkle-eyed. “Really, I’d like to have that family bonding girls’ night /finally/.”

“No...” Felicity replied quietly. Another moment’s pause, then she asked, “Can you resurrect the bodies in the freezer?”

“Yes,” Faustina said without hesitation.

Felicity opened the nearest door, finding it to be a closet with the usual cleaning supplies. She handed Faustina a push broom. Not exactly what she hoped for but it would work.

“I’ll go after him. You get the victims out of here,” Felicity said as she pointed to the hole in the ceiling that Faustina had originally fallen from.

The blonde witch gave a nod and got on the broom, flying out the available exit. Felicity took a ladder from the closet, used it to climb up into a different opening.

-------

Mr. Canis, a mild-mannered gas station owner with a shotgun in hand, was now running out of his business as fast as his legs could carry him.

Well, not that mild mannered, since he would often trap a lone 3 AM traveler or two, and force them to play his sadistic death games he held below the gas station. “A sacrifice to Fate during the bewitching hour” is what he called it. And two tired women on a road trip were just the perfect meals to feed the beast.

Metaphorical beasts. Not monsters like these two were.

Mr. Canis had made a mistake. He had seen the warning signs! …Though, could the blonde filling the super size one liter soda cup with nothing but nacho cheese really count as a warning sign? After all, she did put a fifty dollar bill on the counter and said to charge her as much as he needed for extra cheese. This weird girl who he’d now just seen catch on fire and come out completely unscathed without any show or sign of pain.

Mr. Canis wasn’t going to stick around to see what the witch’s equally oddball sister could do.

To think an hour ago his biggest concern was she might be a cop. The way she had just... inspected things on the shelves so tentatively. Actually stood there at the counter for a moment, reading the back of a bag of chips. And then, when he was ringing her up, she just smiled at him like she knew him. Asked how his day was with a strangely large amount of curiosity.

Mr. Canis assumed the woman must know him--better yet, know what he did. Knew about the puzzles, the games. Knew about the sacrifices he had made to Fate. He could see it in her eyes.

There was a rattling of metal coming from right behind him. He ran across the small parking lot, toward the grass of the surrounding woods. He heard the rattle again. Like a horror movie, he just had to check, see the source of the sound--

The canine’s feet were back on the pavement. The rattling came from the steel door to the room containing all the fuel tanks. There was faint knocking from within--specifically one tank with a small “door” locked up. Mr. Canis laughed despite his fear; one of these so-called “powerful” women were now trapped by a simple metal lock on a rusty old door.

He stopped laughing when the lock broke after another couple knocks. Seemingly with no force either. With one more push, Felicity climbed out of the tank, drenched. Instead of the strong scent of gasoline, she was soaked in cola.

Mr. Canis was all the more confused when harmless brown soda could be seen (and smelled) in the fuel tank, instead of the gasoline that would be more harmful for this girl to swim in. He was frozen, flabbergasted. How could the hoses for the syrup to the soda fountains even be out here? They must have been diluting the fuel he was using for the traps.

When Mr. Canis snapped out of his daze, he found the black-haired duck glaring back at him in silence. If looks could kill, he’d be dead and buried.

Felicity had been excited to meet the Prime-verse counterpart of the Nega-verse gas station owner she was friends with. She had expected a grumpy version of the man that ran her favorite Nega-verse stop. Maybe throw out loitering teens instead of offering them free day-old donuts. It was going to be amusing. Be fun.

Not deadly.

Mr. Canis fired a shot at her, and it missed. Missed even at point blank. Sure, she had tilted her torso just slightly left, but it should have still hit something! Mr. Canis wasn’t an amateur when it came to firearms.

Felicity abruptly grabbed the gun. One hand around the top of the barrel, and the other farther down the shaft. Mr. Canis' finger was still curled around the trigger, and he fired another shot. In an instant, she bent and raised the barrel so the shot went into the air.

Felicity gained leverage and let one hand go of the gun. Her free one grabbed under the canine’s arm. Mr. Canis was on his back in a flash when the smaller duck flipped him onto the ground.

Felicity held the gun now, aimed expertly at her would-be attacker. “Get up. Get inside the gas station.”

“Look, this is all a misunderstanding. Obviously you have the blessed fortune to get through my maze of fate. You and your sister are free to go! Isn’t that wonderful? Go ahead and be on your way!” Mr. Canis was desperate; poor excuses, he knew, but he tried. Maybe the girl would be so in shock by what happened she would just leave?

Felicity was silent, and still glaring. In that moment, Mr. Canis wished she was more talkative like the blonde. He reluctantly got up, and headed into the gas station. Felicity followed, keeping the gun pointed at his back.

“I take it you two are going to tie me up and call the cops to come get me?” he chuckled, like he’d forgotten all about the insanity of the last ten or so minutes.

That peace did not last long. Faustina was sitting on the checkout counter. Three other women were in the station as well. Very familiar women. Awake, moving, but still cold from the freezer. Glassy eyed, they actually did not look fully alive. Just alive enough.

“Are there more? Because those woods back there look very iffy,” Faustina questioned, as casually as someone would when looking for their lost keys. She sat in her billowy dress, legs crossed and hands resting on one bent knee. She smirked wide when the murderer was too shocked to reply. “What? Nothing to say? What would you like to do, dearest sister?”

“We let him choose his fate,” Felicity finally spoke up. There was a glimmer in Faustina’s eye. She had never seen Felicity prone to actual violence. This was a treat. Though, she gave a disheartened pout when her sister just had to ruin it with all the lawful goody-two-shoes stuff. “We’re calling the cops, and you better sit still and stay here while we all wait for them to arrive.”

“Those three… How are they… what is… going on?” the panic returned to Mr. Canis’s voice. The same panic when he watched Faustina burst into flames as if it were nothing but a change of clothes.

“Idiot. You have the worst luck ever. You literally, /literally/ put someone cursed by Fortuna in your fate maze, and someone blessed by demons in your fire trap. How dumb. What a /moron/. /Absolute tool!/” Faustina complained and scowled.

“I’m sure your mood’ll improve soon enough,” Felicity said, eyes rolling. She waved a hand and turned away. “I’m stepping out to call the cops. I’ve got the gun on me, but I’m sure you can handle him if he tries anything funny.”

Faustina grinned, watching her sister leave. “No problemo!” She turned her grin, now more feral, to Mr. Canis as she cracked her knuckles. “So, hey, a couple of your ‘former customers’ wanna file some complaints about your little side business here. I recommend you take them very seriously.”

Mr. Canis whimpered, looking between Faustina and the three women lumbering closer. “Are you… are you going to kill me?” he gulped.

“I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to leave it to fate. Ladies, if you get rid of him before sunrise, the spell will resurrect you. The more pain you put him through, the better the rezz,” Faustina said and grinned before turning to leave the room. She shut the door on the horrified, high-pitched shrieking and crying.

Felicity stood outside, arms crossed, like she had just caught a child eating all the cookies from the jar.

“What? You prefer I don’t rezz them?”

“I’m pretty sure you can just transfer his life force into them without the--” Felicity’s words were interrupted by a blood curdling scream.

“Yes, but where’s the fun in that? Karma’s a bitch, after all.”

------

Lawd the baddies in the Saw movies piss me off would love monster girls to beat the shit out of them. HUZZAH.

#duckvember #duckvember 2020 #negaverse #felicity de spell #faustina de spell

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thedrunkdoc · 4 years

Text

Give You Everything

AN: I haven’t written for such a long time. 7 years to be exact so please be patient with me. 🥺 This is the first ever smut drabble that I was able to finish. ☺️ Stay at home and stay safe! ❤️

~~~~~~~

“You’re fired.”

The words kept echoing inside of Baekhyun’s head as he packed his stuff from his office desk inside the cardboard box. He wasn’t the only unlucky one after their department head was switched. It had only been two days since they’ve had a new boss and four of his workmates already bid their final goodbyes to their workmates. Tough luck.

As he was finished clearing his desk, he received a text message from someone he’s indebted to. His phone started ringing after a few seconds with the caller ID of that person. He was frustrated and embarrassed. He had borrowed money to pay rent for his apartment and now he was jobless. He couldn’t say that. He turned his phone on silent and threw it on the floor.

It earned a few glances and glares from his former workmates which made him want to just be swallowed by the ground or something.

When the phone stopped ringing, he crouched down to pick it up. When he was about to stand up, he hit his head below his desk which made his glasses fall to the floor. He heaved a sigh and picked it up. There was a small crack at the bottom. Not that it would interfere with his vision or something. It just looked fucking ridiculous and it didn’t make sense for someone who’s wearing formal clothes to have a broken pair of glasses.

Baekhyun was having a nice warm bath in his unpaid apartment. He stayed there for 4 years, ever since he landed his job, and now he’s in danger of losing his place. He stood under the shower for almost half an hour contemplating whether or not he should move back in to his parents’ house. He never got along with his father and his mother would be heartbroken if she found out that he lost his job. He was desperate to feel some sense of relief after all that happened today. He wanted to feel okay.

He wore a white button-down shirt and headed to the only place he knew he could find solitude- the club. If he was going to leave the city and head back to his mom and dad, he needed a good memory to go with him. He wore a decent ensemble for the night, it screamed I-got-fired-from-my-job-but-at-least-I-still-have-something-nice-to-wear.

He sat on one of the bar stools and ordered a glass of whiskey, on the rocks. He usually ordered one with coke but he didn’t need to wake up early in the morning anymore so he didn’t mind getting a little more knocked out that he usually would.

He took in the aroma of the drink as he sniffed it in a manner which showed just how much he missed the euphoric feeling of getting wasted. But he missed something else, too. Something that would make him feel even more relaxed than being dead drunk. Sex.

But he was a strong believer that sex should be sacred and it should only be done with feelings. Which is why ever since he broke up with his girlfriend two years ago, he never had the chance to do the deed, not that he thought about doing it with somebody, anybody at all.

He was about to go for his drink, bottoms up, when you blew on his ear. He looked at you with wide eyes, as if it was his first time seeing a woman. You looked classy with your red lipstick and a black dress with a plunging neckline which showed how gifted you were.

“A bottle of Tequila, please.” Your voice a mix of seductive and sweet.

Baekhyun’s eyes landed on your legs. You noticed him staring. You liked the fact that you were able to catch his attention. You’ve been looking at him, observing him, the whole time ever since he got inside the club. Then you took his glasses off.

“Seems like you had a rough day.” You put his glasses in his shirt’s pocket. “Lose the glasses. It ruins the look.” You said as you took the bottle of Tequila that the bar tender put in front of you.

“Who are you?” He finally asked out of curiosity.

You stood up and headed towards the VIP lounge. “If you really wanna know, follow me.”

You disappeared in the crowd as quickly as you appeared in front of Baekhyun. You were determined to get laid tonight, and you were thirsty for the new and innocent face.

Baekhyun put his glasses back on and gulped his drink. He left his payment under the glass and followed you to where you vanished. He knew something was going down tonight. And he was ready to take the bait. He had nothing to lose anyway.

You sat on the couch and poured two shots of Tequila. That’s how confident you were that Baekhyun was going to follow you. You crossed your legs and laid back to look as relaxed as possible when he comes barging in that door.

And you were right. There he was, standing right by the door frame, catching his breath. Trickles of sweat formed on his forehead and you couldn’t help but imagine how hotter he looked when he had even more sweat coming out from every pore of his body.

You stood up and walked towards him, arms crossed in front of your chest. You pulled him inside and shut the door closed. You escorted him to the couch and offered the drink that you poured earlier.

“Thanks.” He whispered under his breath before chugging down the two shots that were meant for the both of you. You liked where this was going.

“So, tell me your story.” You said as you sat down beside him, legs crossed, body facing towards him, making sure that he caught a sneak peak of your lace panties.

He swallowed the lump on his throat at the sight of what was in front of him at that moment. “Why should I?” He managed to ask with a slight tweak in his voice. He was tense.

“Because I can make you feel better.” You answered with a sinister smile plastered on your face.

He ignored you and kept on drinking shot after shot after shot. That’s when you knew that the saying ‘One Tequila. Two Tequila. Three Tequila. Floor.’ was a big motherfucking lie. This guy could go on forever.

He was already almost halfway the bottle, when he stood up and said that he needed to pee. You knew what would happen next. He’d leave the room and he’d never come back. It’s a style used by younger men who either had girlfriends they couldn’t cheat on or they just really wanted the drink.

In his case, you knew it was the latter. Besides, you knew that after seeing you, this wouldn’t be the last time that he stepped inside of this club.

“Alright.” You said with a hint of disappointment in your voice.

He took a step towards the door and looked at you before finally going out of the room.

You were frustrated. You’d been craving for him ever since the moment your eyes caught him coming inside of this place club.

You were about to leave and look for another man who’d be willing to have sex with you but you just didn’t have the energy. You wanted Baekhyun and him only.

You closed your eyes and leaned back after taking two consecutive shots of Tequila. Your thoughts are toying with you because you could only see him. You started to imagine that he was naked right in front of you.

Your imagination took you to another world. A world where Baekhyun was fucking the life out of you. A world where you reached your climax after climax after climax. You liked the thought of Baekhyun ramming your pussy while he was on top of you. The vivid view of his sweaty face drove you crazy and before you knew it, you were already starting to touch yourself. You played with yourself because your playmate left you. And that frustrated you even more.

You arched your back as your fingers grew tired of going in circles on your clit just to satisfy you. If Baekhyun wasn’t going to fuck you tonight, you still had to cum to redeem your pride.

And just like that, you’ve reached your climax. A sense of fulfillment doused over you as you let your hands fall to your sides while you catch your breath.

Three consecutive claps snapped you back to reality.

You sat up straight and saw Baekhyun leaning on the door, enjoying his view of the show that you just laid out for him before his eyes.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” You asked, embarrassed.

“One second I tell you I need to go to the bathroom, the next second, I find you playing with yourself.” He retorted, arrogance flaring from his eyes which you noticed turned completely from innocent to a fucking sex monster who was ready to devour you. He clicked his tongue. “You didn’t think I stood you up, did you?” He shook his head from side to side. “Is that what you think of me?” He stood up straight. “I just lost the glasses to fit your preferences.”

“I said what the fuck are you doing here?” You repeated, this time louder and stronger. You were embarrassed as fuck but he didn’t have to know that.

“What’s your name?” He suddenly asked.

You found the opportunity to turn things around for him and push him off from his cloud nine. “Y/N.” You answered calmly. You stood up and walked towards him. “The owner of this club and everybody who is inside. Including you. I own you.”

“I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you’re wrong.” He said looking down to you. It was only then that you realized how tall he was. “I am Byun Baekhyun, and I own you tonight.” He said with a smirk. “Kneel.”

His command set a fire inside of you. ‘Maybe he was turned on when he saw me’ you thought to yourself. Or maybe he was thinking of fucking you to begin with.

You followed and knelt in front of him unbuckling his belt all the while. You pulled his pants down and teased his clothed dick with kisses and light bites. You heard him groan. It sent shivers down your spine. Baekhyun has been radiating what they call ‘big dick energy’ the whole night and there you were kneeling in front of his manhood.

You pulled his underwear down and was astonished by the marvelous thing that was dangling from his crotch. It was so beautiful that you thought about marrying him for a second so you could have his dick all to yourself.

You started stroking it. Lightly at first, until it got a little bit rougher. You could see on his face that he wasn’t liking it. It kinda made you feel sad. This technique always worked on all the other guys you’ve fucked with.

His hand found its way at the back of your head. You thought it was a signal telling you to suck him. But his touch was light. He lifted you up slowly so you could stand. “You know why I wanted to know your name?” He didn’t wait for you to answer. “So I can manipulate you like this.” He lowered his lips to your ear and said something that you’ve heard so many times before but you were sure he said it the best. “Y/N, Blow me.”

His command made you even more wet. Your lace panties were starting to soak in your lady juices but you didn’t mind. You walked towards the couch again and laid down, your head dangling from the edge. Baekhyun knew what was going on. He followed you and knelt right in front of your face so your mouth was at the same level as his hard on dick.

You slowly teased him by licking the top of his head while still jacking him off. You wouldn’t normally lay down like this. But because Baekhyun’s cock was so big, you knew it’d destroy your throat if you tried to force it down there at a wrong angle.

You got his tip wet then sucked and licked his balls every once in a while, to get him in the mood. Sex was important, but you could never skip the roleplay.

When you felt like you were ready, you licked the shaft just to give it a bit of lubrication because you knew it was going to hurt. You slowly opened your mouth, wider and wider as more of his dick came inside. You slightly pull him closer by his ass signaling that he can go in deeper if he wanted to.

Tears flooded your eyes as you felt his last inch inside of your mouth. You wanted to stop because you couldn’t breathe but you saw that he was liking it, loving it even. You let him thrust his dick up and down your throat as he reached for the straps of your dress. You help him take them off to which he protested, “Just the straps. Don’t take off the dress.”

Baekhyun had a knack for ladies who wore sexy dresses while he fucked them. He found them to be more attractive. He took his dick out of your mouth after a few more pumps and helped you stand. You could feel a sore throat coming in the morning but that was the least of your concerns as of the moment.

He sat down and lifted your dress exposing your black, lace panties. “You thought these would go unnoticed? You used this to seduce me.” His statement made you blow out a huff of air. You would answer, but the truth is you can’t speak because your throat fucking hurt.

You didn’t expect much from him because he didn’t seem like the type to be rough. But the way he treated you at the moment said otherwise.

He leaned on the backrest of the couch and held his arms out straight in front of him. He gave you a nod. You didn’t know what he meant by that. “It’s not fair to eat me when I can’t eat you.” He said in the sexiest manner.

You sat on his arms, making sure your feet were dangling from the back of the couch just so he wouldn’t bear all of your weight. Your hands were on the table behind you so to help with your steadiness. Your pussy was right in front of his beautiful fucking face. At that moment, you were confused. You didn’t know how the hell would he be able to lick your clothed cunt.

He slowly moved his face closer and used his tongue to push your panty to the side. You mentally thanked who the hell ever invented the g-string because it moved swiftly aside. The next moments sent you skyrocketing to cloud nine. It was like his tongue was specially made for your clit. The way it moved around it, the speed was perfect, and most of all, the pressure when he tongue fucked you was more than enough to send your hips going in circles.

Baekhyun was an expert in this. He perfectly knew what he was doing. He knew how to do you right. You couldn’t wait any longer. You set yourself down and took your panties off in front of him putting it inside his shirts pocket where his glasses used to be.

You made sure your pussy was ready for the coming pain and pleasure before you carefully sat on his huge dick. Your walls closed in on the skin of his manhood while you move in deeper. You could feel your insides filling with lady juices just by the mere insertion of Baekhyun’s big cock inside of your super wet cunt.

You started bouncing up and down on his dick while your hands were entangled in his hair. “Are you really this tight or is my dick really just big?” He asked arrogantly which made you want to make him cum for you more.

He was sucking on your left nipple, circling his tongue when needed, while his left hand was fiddling with your right boob. His right hand was supporting your back and spanking your ass whenever he feels like it.

If there was one thing which was sure to keep him as horny as he was, it was to tell him he can cum inside you. But you weren’t going to tell him straight to his face like that. It was boring. Baekhyun wasn’t boring. In fact, he’s the closest thing to heaven.

You unbuttoned his shirt one by one, planting kisses on his neck in the process. When his shirt was completely undone, you planted a kiss on his lips. He smiled. He liked it. You went in for another one, this time a sloppier version. Your tongue danced with his inside his mouth. You’d occasionally suck his tongue like the way you sucked his dick and he’d bite your lower lip to the point where it almost bled.

You bounced. You grinded. You bounced and then you grinded again. Whenever you would cum, you’d add a mark on his back. Your nails were long enough to pierce his skin lightly, just enough to tell anyone who’d see it that he had a good time with you.

Baekhyun met every thrust halfway which made you even more ecstatic. The euphoria sent you to another dimension. Your moans drowned the loud music outside. And you had proved your imagination right. Baekhyun was way hotter when he was sweating more.

“Y/N.” He managed to say in between moans and groans.

“Yes, sweetie?” You asked in between hard and deep breaths. You were growing tired but you weren’t going to stop.

“I got fired.” He answered.

You knew. Because his boss was a regular at your club. And yesterday, you overheard him talking about firing a ‘nerd’ today. His descriptions exactly pointed to Baekhyun when you saw him tonight. You didn’t have the slightest care about whoever it was he was going to fire. But when you saw him earlier, everything changed.

You didn’t answer. But you knew you had to hold him in any way possible. If he was this good at what he does, he needed to get paid. You thought about making an offer.

“I will give you everything if you fuck me whenever I want you to.” You bargained.

He smirked. “Whenever you want me to? Honey, I could fuck you everyday.” He answered.

His thrust meeting yours went deeper and harder and you felt your g-spot being rammed. It was driving you crazy. It didn’t take long for you to reach your climax.

“Baekhyun!” You exclaimed while you thrusted deeper and faster.

“Y/N. I’m cumming, Y/N!” He shouted.

This was the moment. You knew he wanted to push you away so he wouldn’t cum inside of you. But that was one thing to keep him coming back for more.

You both thrusted faster, harder, and deeper. You wrapped your hands around his neck and exclaimed “Cum inside me, baby! Let’s cum together!”

You felt his jizz shoot inside of you and you felt limp. That was by far your best sex experience. You let yourself crash onto him for a couple of minutes. His hands were on his sides, as is telling you that you drained all of his energy.

You snapped back to reality. You knew he needed a reward for being such a great partner. You stood up and walked over to your bag, took an envelope with a shitload of money in it, and placed it on his chest. “Like I said,” You fixed your dress and your lipstick. “I will give you everything.” You grabbed your bag and walked to the door. “I’m on birth control. See you again tomorrow, sugar.” You said and left.

#baekhyun #smut #kpop #kpop smut #kpop imagines #exo baekhyun #baekhyun oneshot

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be-ready-when-i-say-go · 4 years

Note

Calum + Feel by Post Malone ft. Kehlani

Thanks, babe!

________

Quiet Winds

They were established. They weren’t together. Those were the rules. That was the line drawn in the sand. Calum liked it like this. It made things easier on his part. He didn’t have to fuss with feelings, and he didn’t have to ease someone else’s fears. She got it. She understood the game and played it well. They meet at an industry party and it was mostly by a comedy of errors. She was grabbing a snack and Calum was getting a drink at the bar. Their items were both placed down at roughly the same time and as they reached for them, a wave of commotion traveled up from the dance floor. People that weren’t paying attention had stumbled into them. Her tray sliding behind the bar and Calum’s drink splashing over him.

When they turned to see what the problem was, they locked eyes for a moment, both trying to make sure that what had happened was real. Both of them pressed into the wooden bar counter, Calum reached out for her hand. “No sense in us dying here,” he joked, waiting for her to take hold of his palm. He spied a less dense spot over to his left. He wasn’t going to leave her behind.

She snorted. “We’d be fighting upstream.”

“So are we suffocating here or what? All I’m hearing are excuses.”

She could see something blue on his white shirt. The bathrooms were to her right. If she followed him, it would only serve to stain his shirt. She took his hand and pushed to the right. She started with excuse me and ended with just brushing and gently tapping on people’s shoulders so she could pass. When she deposited Calum in front of the restrooms, she smiled. “I never have any excuses.”

The shiny material of her shirt reflected even in the dim lights of the corner. The neckline traced down her body, exposing her cleavage and down almost to her navel where it sat tied in a pretty bow. Calum, aware that the stain was setting as the seconds past, only grinned. “So there won’t be any excuse when I find you later tonight and ask you to come back to my place?”

She liked that. The freedom to do herself and gracefully exit, or accept and still have her fun. “Should I spill a drink on myself so you remember who I am?”

“Babe, I could never forget you.” Calum winked at her and then stepped into the bathroom. His shirt was a lost cause he figured, after a few seconds of dabbing cold water onto it. So he opted to unbutton it and let the tank underneath show, along with the scattering of his tattoos. He wiped the potentially sticky substance off his jacket and washed it his hands.

That lands Calum, here. Standing towards the back of the crowd, watching her up behind her set up, headphones only covering one ear. She grins, arms pumping as the crowd cheers for her set. Calum’s aware he’s close to breaking a rule. He’s tittering on that line of not being seen together in public. But he heard she was back in town. It wasn’t from her and that didn’t surprise him. She rarely told him if she was back in town before she arrived.

Taking out his phone, Calum records a few seconds of her and then slips out the door. He lingers down the block before finding a small pizza shop still open at the near witching hour. He grabs a slice, watching the guy cutting through the crust and sliding it onto the not thick enough paper plate. He’s never really explored this deep into her city but he likes the feel of it. They didn’t live too far apart in theory. Traffic was always bad, so Calum hadn’t ever really ventured this far south before her. But now, he was doing it more often. The slight anonymity of it. No one cares about who he is. Grabbing some napkins, Calum settles at a table. He realizes it’s a little lopsided but not enough that it’s unable to eat off. With a bite down, he sends the video to her.

He watches people laughing through the window. They continue on down past the little pizza place, their lives revolving around something, something greater than greasy food. His phone buzzes from his pocket half an hour later. Calum’s downed two slices by now and he partially regrets it. But it was too good not to have a second slice.

You get lost?

Calum laughs. No. Thought I’d drop in and see you in action. He sends the text and his fingers work over the screen again. My place or yours?

Mine is closer technically.

See you soon.

He lingers around the block a little longer, stopping by a random bar. Just to kill time. Let her get home first. He doesn’t order a drink as he slips into a stool at the bar. He just watches, listening to the music shaking the skeleton inside him. The nightlife used to excite him more, he used to live for bar hopping and turning back more beers than he was keeping track of. He likes that sometimes, but he enjoys his quiet nights more as he stuffed himself on greasy food and watching bad TV shows with Duke. He likes peace.

Sure this wasn’t exactly the most peaceful arrangement. A game of cold shoulders but longing glances and shy smiles. But it definitely didn’t have a lot drama. They enjoyed something and Calum wasn’t going to extrapolate on it too much. He would just enjoy this ride. He pulls into her driveway and sees her living room lights on. His knock on the door only sits unanswered for a second before she cracks open the door.

He waits for the door to close before he takes her into his arms. She holds into his neck as they kiss. The way he’s let the scruff grow out and scratches at her skin feels good. But she lets a giggle escape her when it scrapes along her neck. She pulls away, a coy smile on her lips. “That tickles.”

“Oh yeah?” Calum pulls the beanie off and sheds his sweatshirt. Both items fall onto the couch. She knows that look on his face. The slight quirk of his eyebrows dares her to run. Her bare feet can’t carry her down her hallway fast enough. Calum chases after her. Her fingers just barely catch the molding of her bedroom door before Calum’s wrapping his arms around her waist and hauling her up.

Their laughter bounces around in her empty house. “You monster,” she teases as he continues to scratch her with his barely existent beard.

“You won’t be saying that for long.”

They stumble into her room and she’s tossed onto the bed. Calum pauses to slip out of his sneakers before crawling over her. She’s going to be the death of him, he figures when she kisses him again. Her touches melt into his skin and he knows he’s never the same after being with her. She plays a good hot and cold game. She knows how to turn out in the bedroom, the way she can make him feel makes Calum swear he’s going to fall in love with her. And maybe that’s a dangerous thought to have. But Calum doesn’t care as he breathes in her scent, his arm draped over her bare waist. She scoots closer to him. She hums, her body melting into the mattress and into Calum’s warmth. It feels right. Just to lay with him.

Calum wakes only to a faraway smell of pancakes. Her side of the bed is empty. His arm still hugging the spot she once was. He groans for a moment and his stomach growls. It’s the only thing that makes him expend energy to gather his clothes, sans his jeans from the night before. She stands in her kitchen, in his green empathy sweatshirt. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” she returns, handing him over a plate.

They sit at her dining room table and Calum compliments her set from last night. She asks about the album. They talk about the stars. If there’s a particular one that determines someone’s fate. If everyone had their own star in the sky and it was the one that they were supposed to listen too. But it’s just so hard when there are thousands of other people’s in the way, if that’s why it was so hard to find purpose when all you could see was other people’s successes hindering your own.

“Got another gig soon?” Calum asks after their conversation lulls.

“Tonight.” She watches the way he nods, cutting another piece of pancake for himself. Maybe they were playing with fire. Would this peace of no label eventually burn them? “I can get you in if you want.”

His cheeks warm, wondering if he should utter the truth. She doesn’t watch him but he watches her the way she stares out of the window. It’s easier to admit the truth when the truth doesn’t stare you in the eyes. “I might’ve bought a ticket already.”

She snaps her head in his direction. The disbelief has blown out her eyes. “You what?”

“I bought a ticket,” he answers.

She bites onto her lower lip. It doesn’t really help keep the smile at bay. “Thanks.” Her chest is warm and she ducks her head, desperately wishing her air would kick on to cool her down. She had it set at a decent temperature, so she could always bundle up if she wanted but never be too warm.

Calum gathers his jeans from her room and when he reenters the living room. He knows the sweatshirt is done for. She’s burrowed into it. “I’ll let you have that one,” he concedes. Just like he’s let her keep the old Maine and watermelon t-shirt. “But I get to take back the gray one.”

She grumbles, hoping that if she throws enough of a fit he’ll retreat on the offer. Calum’s reasonable so she knows she’s only being a sore loser. After Calum refuses to back down, she sighs out, “Okay, that’s fair.”

He returns to her room and finds his gray sweatshirt in her closet. It smells like her detergent and perfume. That’s the only reason why he didn’t cave. If she hadn’t had it for so long, if he didn’t know she was so engrained into the threads, he would’ve left without a word. He kisses her forehead before leaving. “Tell Duke I said hi, okay?” she calls.

“Of course. You still good to watch him next month?”

“Yes. Cleared my schedule for it.”

“Thanks. Again.”

She thinks about the rules. They were established. They weren’t together. Had they walked over the line? Had a quiet wind come through and wiped away their boundaries?

-H

If you’d like, you can send me a song + a boy and I’ll write a little blurb. These are being written in the order they are received. Once a day is the plan for these to be posted. Just a little something fun for me to do in between projects and before I move for school.

#calum hood #calum hood blurb #calum hood fic #calum hood fanfic #5sos #5sos fic #5 seconds of summer #5 seconds of summer fic #calum 5sos #song rec #asks #answered #song blurb #h writes

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marvelousbirthdays · 4 years

Text

Happy Birthday, fergumeister

November 18-A 5+1 format of Bruce/Tony being domestic with each other, for @fergumeister

Written by @ozhawkauthor

5 times Bruce and Tony took care of each other, and 1 time they realized it’s not because they’re Just Good Friends.

(Diverges from canon during AoU. If only canon had diverged from canon during AoU… but I digress.)

“I mean, thanks for catching me, but ouch. Everything hurts.”

“Don’t thank me, it was the Other Guy,” Bruce said, stuffing his hands in his pockets and shrugging.

“Yeah?” Tony shot him a sharp glance. “I’m not falling for that. You might have Fury convinced that Hulk is an entirely separate entity, but that ‘I’m always angry’ line gave you away. So I’m gonna say again… thanks.”

Bruce hesitated, and finally said quietly “You’re welcome.”

“So.” After a moment of awkward silence, Tony swiped his hand over the screen. “This is the plan for the Tower. Your apartment’s here, and these are the labs. Anything you want, it’s yours.”

“Anything?” Bruce queried. “You mean, within reason.”

Tony turned to grin at him, jerked a thumb at his own chest. “Billionaire. Nothing is unreasonable, except occasionally my ego.”

Bruce couldn’t help it. He laughed.

“Seriously, I can’t believe you fell asleep while I was explaining it all!”

“I was up all night,” Bruce defended himself, “helping stabilize Pepper. Which you asked me to do, I should point out.”

Tony shrugged sheepishly. “Well, it’s my fault she got dragged into this mess with Killian. I promised I’d figure out how to cure her of Extremis, and let’s face it, if anyone’s going to figure out how to cure weird biologically-induced superpowers, it’s the man who’s spent the last decade researching them.”

Bruce gave him a fond, exasperated glance. “I failed, remember?”

“Only at curing yours. I have faith you’ll be able to help Pepper.”

Bruce shook his head, but Tony’s faith in him was definitely heart-warming. And the fact was, he already had some ideas of where to start. Pepper was definitely going to be all right.

Eventually.

“Lie the hell down, Tony. You’re not getting out of that bed. It’s all over bar the shouting, anyway, and Rhodey’s gone to give Steve and Natasha any backup they might need.”

Tony opened his mouth to argue, and Bruce shot him a ferocious glare.

“Do I need to call the Other Guy out? You’re in no state to put your armor on.”

“Hmm,” Tony said, but his eyes were already drifting closed again, the aftereffects of the operation to remove the shrapnel endangering his heart making him tired. “You’re kind of sexy when you’re bossy.”

“You’re cute when you’re behaving yourself,” Bruce murmured. “But I’m not gonna hold my breath hoping for it to become a regular occurrence.”

“Tony. Tony!”

“Mm hm?” Tony dragged his gaze away from the mess of circuitry he was poking around in, long enough to look up and notice the cup in Bruce’s hand. He reached out and took it. “Thanks. Ugh, is that kale?”

“It’s wheatgrass, and it wasn’t for you.” Bruce reclaimed the cup.

“Good, because it’s gross. JARVIS, I need more coffee.”

“No, you don’t. Cancel that order, JARVIS!” Bruce waved off the robot trundling towards them with a coffee cup held in an outstretched claw. The robot froze before turning to one side and pouring the coffee into the sink.

“My coffee!” Tony wailed.

“I’m cutting you off. You’ve been up for fifty-seven hours.”

“But the Iron Legion…” Tony gestured with the soldering iron in his hand. Bruce unplugged it at the wall socket.

“Will still be there tomorrow, and you know what’s worse than not having an Iron Legion? Having a malfunctioning Iron Legion because you were up for fifty-seven hours and made a mistake.”

Tony grumbled under his breath, but he also put down the soldering iron. “That wheatgrass stuff isn’t all that bad,” he muttered as Bruce pulled an arm around his shoulders and guided him towards the elevator.

“Is that a hint that you’d like one of your own?”

“Or maybe just a bit more of yours.” Tony gave him puppy-dog eyes, and as usual, Bruce couldn’t resist.

“Fine, take it. Drink the lot down. Probably more vitamins than you’ve had in a month. Now, you’re going to bed. I’ll send breakfast when you wake up.”

“Yes, Nanny,” Tony said compliantly, and Bruce chuckled.

“You don’t fool me for a minute, but I’ve got your number. I’m going to tell JARVIS to keep you locked in your suite with no toys to play with for twelve hours at least.”

“Damn Pep for giving you those override codes anyway,” Tony gumbled. “Never should have made them in the first place.”

“Smartest thing you ever did, even if you were drunk and suggestible at the time.” They’d reached Tony’s suite, and Bruce helped him over to the bed, watching as Tony collapsed face-down onto it. With a sigh, Bruce leaned down to unlace Tony’s boots, making a face at the smell. “JARVIS, do not let him out of this suite until he’s slept, eaten and showered.”

“Yes, Mr. Banner,” the AI agreed.

“You gotta stop burning this candle at both ends, Tony,” Bruce murmured quietly, one hand coming down lightly to touch the now-unconscious billionaire’s face. “Sooner rather than later, you’re gonna flame out… again.”

Bruce couldn’t stop shaking. What the witch had done had destroyed every tiny bit of his hard-won control in an instant, and the mess… he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the ruination he’d wrought on downtown Johannesburg.

“Don’t look.” Tony put an arm around him, and Bruce shuddered, trying to flinch away. He didn’t deserve sympathy or caring. He was the monster, and the monster had done this.

“I’m gonna kill that Sokovian bitch for this,” Tony grated, pulling Bruce closer, and Bruce finally broke down. He hadn’t cried in so long, terrified the loss of control would let Hulk out, but Hulk seemed far from the surface right now, almost as though in shock at what he’d done. Tears began to run down Bruce’s cheeks and he leaned closer to Tony.

“Sh. Sh, it’s all right.” Tony held him tighter. “Everything’s gonna be all right. I promise.”

Natasha was trying to call him back. Hulk hit the screen, silencing the soft voice. He didn’t want it. Didn’t want any of it. They couldn’t make him go back.

The sky outside the jet’s window was darkening to the blackness of space when a different voice spoke, not from the screen. Overriding the speaker the jet’s autopilot used to acknowledge voice commands, Tony’s voice spoke to him.

“Hey, big guy. Fight’s over.”

“Fight never over!”

“No.” Tony sighed, a gusty, weary sound. “It’s never over. Never will be, I think. But today’s fight is done, at least. You coming back? I could use your help.”

“Hulk not good help.”

“You gotta be kidding! We couldn’t have done this without you. I couldn’t do this without you.” Tony was silent for a moment, and then he said softly “I don’t want to do this without you, Bruce.”

“Bruce not here.”

“Of course he’s there. He’s you, and you’re him. You’re both incredible, so strong in different ways… and I need you. Both of you.”

There was nothing but raw honesty left in Tony’s voice, and Hulk groaned, unable to sustain the rage.

Bruce stood in the jet’s cabin irresolute for a moment, looking up at the stars, and then he sighed and reached down to grasp the controls.

Landing the jet on the Helicarrier brought back so many memories. This time the huge flying aircraft carrier was full of shell-shocked refugees rather than SHIELD agents, but Bruce still saw a few familiar faces.

Tony was in the very briefing room where Fury had first explained the Loki problem to them, lying flat on his back on the conference table. He turned his head as Bruce walked in, and Bruce sighed as he saw the bloodshot eyes, the way Tony lifted one hand as though to wave and then let it flop to the table.

“You overdid it again, didn’t you? And you couldn’t find anywhere more comfortable to lie down than on a table?”

“Floor’s more comfortable but I was afraid someone might step on me.” Tony shut his eyes. “Boat’s pretty full.”

“Oh, Tony.” Without thinking, Bruce reached to place his hand against Tony’s cheek. “What am I gonna do with you?”

Tony smiled without opening his eyes. “Anything you like, since you came back.”

“Couldn’t leave you,” Bruce admitted.

Tony put his hand up to lay it against Bruce’s, eyes opening again to reveal a startling vulnerability in their depths. “I don’t know what I’d do if you left me,” he said quietly.

“I’m not going anywhere.” Bruce took a deep breath, admitted the truth he’d been holding deep inside for way too long. “You’re stuck with me, Tony. I’m in love with you.”

“About time you finally admitted it.” Tony was too tired to produce more than a feeble smile. “But your timing is shit. I don’t have the energy to do anything about it!”

Bruce chuckled, pulling off his sweatshirt and rolling it into a ball to put under Tony’s head. “Get some rest. We’ll talk when you wake up.”

“Damn right we will.” Tony’s eyes drifted shut. “Thank you for coming back, Bruce.” His voice was slurring with exhaustion.

“Always,” Bruce whispered, leaning down to kiss Tony’s forehead before grabbing a chair and parking his butt in it. He wasn’t leaving Tony’s side, not for Fury, not for anyone. The world was just going to have to accept them as a pair.

#Bruce/Tony #Bruce Banner #Tony Stark #5 + 1 things #domestic

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onsgiftexchange · 5 years

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Theory of An End - GureShin Vampire AU (R17+)

◈ Pairing: GureShin ◈ Characters: Hiiragi Shinya, Ichinose Guren, Hyakuya Yuuichirou ◈ Genre: Vampire AU ◈ Warnings: Major Character Death, Character Death, Blood, Mild Gore, Heavy Angst, Violence, Injuries, No Happy Ending, Lovers to Enemies ◈ Word Count: 8888 ◈ Summary:

Not a soul was left alive to forgive him for the sins he wrought. Shinya would have–he saw it in his eyes the moment he opened the door to perchance the only means of reprieve offered to him. He would have been welcomed, loved, and protected for all he was worth had his jealousy over Shinya finding happiness in the comforting familial bond with a blameless child not tinged his perspective red.

Author’s Notes: Hi, Feli here! (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡ I am Renee’s Secret Santa for the ONS Gift Exchange. I hope you enjoy reading GureShin suffering!

Misery was a weighty, burdensome concept best left alone and out of the forethoughts of people; there was no rhyme or reason to it, only the torment of knowing it was inevitable. But who had the time or the energy to think about it?

At the current moment–roughly eighteen minutes past seven in the evening–such burdening thoughts about the absurdity of fate’s infliction of torment were nowhere near the focus of the man’s mind as he ushered his laughing child down from their kitchen counter. The man, Hiiragi Shinya, held onto his son’s tiny frame as he carefully set him down onto the floor, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a mirth he recently allowed himself to feel for the first time in over seven years.

He felt safe, warm, happy with the family of two he made for himself. All it took was two other failures for him to finally get it right. Shinya knelt next to the boy, using both of his hands to cup the round face full of flour and chopped vegetables.

“How do you expect us to eat dinner when you’re wearing half of it on your face, Yuucchi?” He laughed with the softest, fondest note carrying in his tone across the messy kitchen. It was a sound that surprised and comforted him, especially when he received a whimsical snicker from the child before him.

“It’s not half, papa!” Yuuichirou placed his small hands on the older man’s own cheeks and smeared his grimy fingers across the soft skin to mirror his own face. “Now it’s on you!”

“Oh, it’s on little man!” With a lively battle cry Shinya began chasing his little bundle of joy around the kitchen, causing bounties of laughter to erupt into the room. It had been ages since Shinya allowed himself to feel so young and free, unburdened by past grievances and forgotten promises. The absolute light of his life never ceased to bring unbridled happiness to their little home of two.

After several minutes of entertaining his son’s amusement, Shinya swooped in to pull the eight-year-old off his feet and swung him in the air. “Come on Yuucchi, we need to clean up after supper, not make more of a mess you little monster!” The older man blew a raspberry on Yuu’s floured cheek, which caused the child to shriek with laughter and squirm in his grasp.

“Papa, that tickles!” Yuu grinned widely, showing off his missing front tooth that was lost just the other day. The sight of the absolute purity of his child made Shinya feel so soft and mushy inside, for he knew his little baby boy had him wrapped around his finger.

His heart clenched at Yuu’s innocent little cherub cheeks raising to rosy peaks under the coating of food on his face. Had he not disciplined himself earlier to the power of a child’s smile, he would have continued up until the early hours of the morning playing with Yuu. As it stood, he had work in the morning and Yuu had a strict bedtime that was fast-approaching.

Shinya sighed and rose to his feet, extending his messy hand for Yuu to grasp, another wave of content and bubbly affection making his chest flutter and the need to shower his child in all the love he had to give stronger. “Let’s get you cleaned up. If you do a good job of washing up for the night, I might think about letting you stay up an hour later.”

The tiny gasp of excitement filtered up towards his ear, and Shinya chanced a peak down at the small child looking up at him with wide sparkling eyes and a challenge written all over his face. “Can you do it by the time I finish washing the dishes?”

Yuu nodded. Then nodded again, with a small tug at Shinya’s hand as further affirmation. “I’ll do it before you finish! Way before! I’m going to be the fastest shower-er you’ve ever seen!” The smile on Shinya’s face grew wider before he released Yuu’s hand and ruffled his hair, earning him a soft hey! and small, delicate hands swatting his own away.

“Good boy. I’ll check up on you just to make sure you’re all right. Go get ‘em, tiger!”

Finishing off their usual banter, Yuu hunched his back and hissed, pretending to be one of the big, terrifying jungle cats he and his adopted father loved so much. He pawed at Shinya’s arm like it was his next big meal before dropping the act to give his beloved parent a quick hug and a rushed okay. Almost as fast as he agreed to the challenge of bathing himself, Yuu scampered off to their upstairs bathroom, leaving Shinya alone in their kitchen.

Alone with the empty plates of dinner; alone with the silence of solitude one too many times revisited; alone with the thoughts he told himself he didn’t have time for.

Where did he go?

That was the question that haunted Shinya’s thoughts at night, when Yuu was fast asleep in his arms and he only had his endless trail of thoughts to keep him company in the wee hours of the morning.

Seven years. Seven long years of pain and constant questioning of his adequacy as a lover and future spouse. Seven years of replaying their final moments together before he left in the blink of an eye, with no trace as to where he disappeared into the night. Seven years wishing he could change what he said.

Two young men sat in a small house with only a few candles to light their shelter. One sat hunched in his seat at the dinner table, tightly gripping a mug of coffee, while the other tersely strapped on various weapons to his belt and shoulder holsters.

“I’m going out tonight to do some perimeter scouting, don’t wait up for me to get back.”

The silver-haired man, without turning from his slouched position at the dinner table, waved dismissively to the dark-haired man standing in the open doorway. “Do whatever you want Guren, see if I care.”

The man, Guren, shrugged and fastened his knife to his belt. “If you’re going to be a little bitch about ‘safety protocols’ you should write a damn book.”

The other man visibly tightened in his posture and bit out, “Just fucking leave already. Maybe don’t even bother coming back if you still hold your damn attitude about those protocols that are meant to protect everyone.”

Guren released a grunt of sarcastic amusement while attaching the sheath to his sword to his hip. “I bet you would get a kick out of the irony if I turned up dead. You would finally get to say ‘I told you so’, just like you always wanted, huh Shinya?”

SLAM.

Fists smacked down onto the unsteady wooden table in a moment of unchecked fury. Barely retaining even a sense of control, Shinya started, “OH YOU-”

Before the man could even begin his tirade, the door was slammed shut on his words.

And just like that, he was gone, leaving Shinya with the sound of the slammed door ringing in his ears. Leaving him alone in their small home they built together, never to return, and left with only regrets of words he wishes he could take back.

If only he had known the consequences of letting him go that night.

Realistically, Shinya knew Guren had to have died then, likely too cocky in his own actions and got caught up in more than he could chew, but the man couldn’t bring himself to believe that he was dead. He spent night after night waiting for him to return, hoping that this feeling of abandonment was only temporary and that he would soon no longer be alone in the reticent, reclusive house.

Hoping he would have the chance to say he was sorry.

Boy, was he fucking wrong about that.

The first week left him spiralling into an abyss: Shinya couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t get out of bed without Guren. The physical ache of losing his other half, his partner, his friend, his lover, his everything burnt gaping holes into his body and heart; it sucked him dry, almost as if a pitiful horde of dirty blood-drinking leeches pried open his neck and had their fill. Every night he screamed for the one man he cared for to return to him. Every morning he wept for the other’s soothing, firm embrace to quiet him like it used to.

The first year left him empty: Shinya threw himself into his work, into dangerous battles against mob upon mob of vampires. He didn’t care what he did, who he hurt, or what happened to him, so as long as he enacted revenge for his fallen lover. That year, while his number and positions rose amongst the vampire slaying corps, his sanity tumbled. He became belligerent; trigger happy–an unfortunate carbon-copy of Guren’s flaws neatly packaged into one desolate bachelor–all-too-ready to drop his responsibilities in order to kill the bastard creatures that ripped his happiness from him in the span of one night. It disgusted him that he became the very thing he despised, but also comforted him in the depths of delusions, where he could pretend that Guren was somehow still with him to keep him company.

Eventually, his willingness to throw his life away for the sake of reprisal came to bite the blue-eyed man in the ass. Tasked with protecting a hospital during an evacuation outside of vampire territory, Shinya failed to defend a handful of patients from a group of nobles. He failed to support his team when they demanded his backup, and he was almost expelled.

Expulsion would have been fine. He accepted it. Then one of his former teammates–one of his and Guren’s long-standing friends–made the heated comment about Guren’s demise being because of Shinya’s lack of vigilance during a dispute on the way back to headquarters for a mission debriefing, and the young Hiiragi lost it.

Without any further thought, he raised his weapon at the fool with an expression void of emotion and eyes blazing in icy rage.

He was put on compassionate leave immediately following the incident.

Then he met Yuu.

There were very few survivors from that hospital, and tiny, two-year-old Yuu had been one of them. He was picked up from an abandoned experimental cult laboratory and brought to the medical base for treatment, and after Shinya’s failed mission, he was moved to a more secure medical facility. Feeling sorry for himself, the older man proceeded to visit the survivors to reinforce the guilt surrounding his inability to protect them like he should have.

Yuu looked so small and was dwarfed in his hospital bed, extremely malnourished and thin due to his mistreatment from whatever cult he was rescued from. Despite his condition, the smile he gave Shinya when he entered his room was so wide and bright it gave the man whiplash. How could someone so broken and utterly pathetic smile so easily like everything was right with the world, like everything was right in Shinya’s world?

Oh how quickly he changed his mind.

Within a matter of days the silver-haired man was printing his signature on adoption papers and taking his little Yuucchi home to his lonely and empty home. Within a day the place was lit up with warmth and contentment beyond whatever Shinya had seen within the last year.

Yuuichirou and Shinya. They completed each other, like the rice and curry in Yuu’s favourite dinner-time dish. Yuu was the sunshine to Shinya’s rain, and Shinya was the love that Yuu never received. The two of them were a team, and together they healed each other’s ugly wounds left by lost souls and chipped time on their clocks. Without Yuu, there was no meaning to existence, because that tiny child gave Shinya new meaning to the word “life”.

Yuu was his chance to mend a life after he broke another.

Shinya heaved a deep sigh, dropped his arms to hang limply at his sides, and stared blankly across the threshold of their home. The setting sun, whose fleeting rays of light painted the pristine white walls sickly shades of red, cast shadows within the living room and accentuated the loneliness he felt crawling up the pit of his stomach to settle under his sternum. A dull sensation he couldn’t describe caught in his throat, and Shinya forced himself to turn back into the kitchen, away from the front door, and away from the frantic what ifs threatening to break to the surface of his mind.

It was absurd to entertain the possibility that maybe the front door might open and his tiny, misshapen family could be a little bigger; it was foolish to regress back to the weak shell of a man waiting for a corpse to rise from the dead holding a bouquet of roses and an apology card; it was stupid of him to hope and dream, but that’s all he had left of the love shared between him and Guren.

The sound of running bath water added to the white noise of the house, Yuu’s clamouring upstairs setting Shinya’s nerves at ease for a moment or two. Leave it to him to set aside his stormy emotions to ensure the safety of his child. Which reminded him–

“Yuu!” Shinya called out, loud enough for his son to hear him upstairs. While he awaited a response, he rolled up the sleeves of his sweater and turned on the faucet to allow a steady stream of hot water to run over the dirty dishes.

“Yeah?” The child’s voice rang clear against the walls, puzzled at the sudden call of his name.

“Make sure you wash your hair, too! I don’t want to see any breadcrumbs or chicken pieces in there!”

A pause. The silver-haired man, with his hands reaching for the sponge and dish soap, heard the unmistakable titter of amusement, and couldn’t stop the small smile fighting its way back to his lips despite the nature of his thoughts only seconds ago.

Yuu brought out the best in him, and he would not have it any other way.

Just before Shinya had finished washing and drying their dinnerware, he heard the clambering of heavy footfalls down the stairs before his son burst into the kitchen in his favourite yellow pyjamas, a faint trail of water droplets falling behind him from his still damp hair.

“Papa, I finished before you, I win!” Yuu’s triumphant grin was contagious as he marched around the kitchen chanting, “I win, I win, I win!”

Setting aside the last plate, Shinya dried his hands and turned to face his child. “Not so fast, Yuucchi, your hair is still wet!” The older man snatched the bath towel from Yuu’s grasp and placed it down on his small head to playfully rub it around. “If anyone won it’s me!”

Yuu pouted and crossed his arms in defiance as his father dried his hair under his gentle hands. Mumbling with an attitude Shinya was sure he hadn’t taught him, he grumbled out, “You never said anything about my hair needing to be dry…”

Arching a sculpted brow and making an exaggerated thinking face, the older man said, “You know, you are right. Guess I forfeit my win! You can stay up an extra hour as your reward.”

Most people would say that Shinya was spoiling Yuu, and that he needs to learn how to discipline the child for his own good, but he could not help it. The smiles and grins and laughter were all worth a little spoiling every now and then, since Shinya had gone so long without any of those things during the worst period of his life.

Yuu cheered, jumping with a punctuated fist pump into the air. Shinya steadied him, quietly reminding him that his hair was still damp and that he might slip if he wasn’t careful. Regardless of the safety warnings, Yuu began tugging at Shinya’s shirt to encourage the older man to follow him up to their shared bedroom to watch television for the extra hour Yuu could stay awake (even though he was already eight years old, he still insisted Shinya protect him from the nightmares haunting him and the vampires threatening to break apart their family.)

Carefully disentangling the little raveonette’s delicate hands from his clothing, Shinya ran his fingers through Yuu’s hair–full of affection, full of apology.

“Calm down, sweetie. Papa has a few more things to take care of before he calls it a night. You run ahead to bed and I’ll join you in a few minutes, okay?”

“Aww… can I help clean up?” Yuu pouted, evident that being away from his father was not something he liked doing often. Certain memories of Yuu’s separation anxiety flare ups flashed across his mind, throwing him back to four years ago when the child began preschool and the reality that he wouldn’t be attached to Shinya at the hip hit him harder than any of the other children. With that suddenly weighing heavily on his conscience, Shinya took Yuu’s other hand and gave it a comforting squeeze.

“You did a great job cleaning yourself up. Let me finish super-duper quickly–I promise I won’t leave you alone for longer than five minutes.”

“… You promise?”

“Cross my heart.”

The expression on Yuu’s face looked uncertain, anxious, like he sensed something foreboding in the atmosphere, waiting in the shadows for the perfect moment to strike. Shinya figured Yuu was truly averse to being left alone for any period of time, deciding that physical reassurance might ease his strained little nerves. He bent down again, silently hissing when he felt a sharp pain travel up his leg from the unexpected instability in his joints… he was too young for joint pain, but the stupidity of his vanity brought a terse smile to his lips, one that he hoped would work to calm Yuu. Cupping Yuu’s face and pressing tender kisses to his nose and cheeks, he said: “You know I’ll be there in no time. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“What if you don’t? I heard that a lot of vampires are coming and hurting little kids while their parents are gone! They stalk everyone while when no one watches! The kids at school said that it happens really fast, so what if–”

“Shhhhhhh, nothing is going to happen, Yuucchi. Our house has wards all around it to protect us, no big scary vampires can get in if I have anything to say about it,” the man lied. He knew better than to fill Yuu’s head with deceit, given the boy had a knack for always finding out the truth sooner or later. The technical flaws of the wards were too high over his own head to properly understand, much less explain to a child. Yes, their house was safe from a majority of vampires, should they lack potent Noble blood coursing through their veins; No, their house and their very lives were not safe from any vampire with a drop of Nobility. The wards could protect them from a mass of lowly cretins but would be ineffective again a single vampire high enough in the hierarchy–Shinya and Yuu would be at a single monster’s mercy, unable to escape and sentenced to death in the comfort of their own home.

Shinya smoothed the unmanageable tufts of Yuu’s hair and gave him a reassuring squeeze around the shoulders. “Papa won’t be long, go put on your favourite cartoon and I be right there, okay?”

The little raveonette seemed hesitant, but he nodded in affirmation and quietly left the kitchen for their bedroom, but not without sparing an anxious glance to the window.

With the boy now gone, Shinya’s mind began to unfortunately wander again. Yuu’s worrying only reminded him of the cruel and twisted world they live in. It was easy to forget about certain things like the danger of the virus that broke out in major cities or the blood-thirsty creatures that roamed the countryside at night. With the full and bright comfort of home that Shinya stitched together for his misshapen family, it was easy to forget how feeble life was. Shinya’s blood family was torn away from him at an early age, and Guren was taken just as easily by the creatures they both sought to destroy.

It was so easy to forget and try to move on.

Dispersing the intrusive thoughts, Shinya set himself to sorting and putting away the clean dishes in the kitchen cabinets in order to quickly return to Yuu. The poor child never did well on his own, and even Shinya himself had grown so attached to the boy that even a little separation was nerve-wracking.

Just as Shinya put away the last plate, there was a soft knock at the door. The silver-haired man paused and quickly wondered who would be out at this time of night. Only a man with a death wish would be out in the open like this, coming to Shinya’s remote and isolated home.

A second, louder knock echoed throughout the house that added to the confusion plaguing Shinya. Maybe some lost wanderer needed a place to stay for the night, away from the dangers lurking in the shadows was what he thought initially, since it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for his area. He approached the door, flipping on the switch for the outdoor light to help him better see the madman daring enough to brave the dark.

He unlocked it and opened the door enough to view the person on the other side, not at all prepared to stare into the vibrant red eyes of the man he once loved.

Before Shinya stood an almost identical copy of the man who disappeared from plain sight seven years ago, but there was an alarming, disturbing difference: skin he remembered to have been beautifully tanned and tinged in the warmest pink of life retained no colour besides that of ash; the pallor of his complexion heightened the vacant gleam in his unwavering eyes, as red as the blood rushing away from Shinya’s face.

Despite the differences, the similarities were the most painful, the most overwhelming to acknowledge: the signature down set of his lips, all business and arrogance with just a hint of compromise; the undeniable glow of worry, yearning, and love swimming within the depths of crimson, completely irrelevant to the substantial amount of time Shinya last had the opportunity to gaze into them.

He didn’t realise tears were stinging the corners of his eyes, that one hand–white knuckled and trembling–balled into a fist against his mouth, and the other gripped the door frame for support, because somewhere in his lapse of reality for the short four seconds of processing just who he was face to face with, Shinya’s knees nearly gave out. He didn’t realise the quivering knot in the back of his throat restricting his voice until he tried to whisper a name he didn’t have the luxury of pushing past his tongue in god knows how long.

“G… Guren…? Is–is that…?”

All he received in response was a quiet, resigned, mournful sigh of acknowledgement, and Shinya instinctively reached out to cup his former lover’s cheek in an action full of solace and intimacy. And it stung as his fingertips ghosted over the rock solid skin retaining nothing but a dead chill in it. Guren sighed again, in tortured comfort when the warmth of Shinya’s gentle hand seeped into his body.

“God… what did they do to you?” Shinya whispered in a broken, strained whisper he only used to share with Guren. Just like it used to be.

Amidst the pools of relief and love in the man’s now crimson eyes, there was a deep and dark pit of hatred and resignation from some years of unspoken torture and pain. Those eyes told of agony beyond what Shinya could understand, of misery that no one should ever be subjected to.

Guren tilted his face into the warmth of Shinya’s hand and spoke vaguely. “You know what they do vampire hunters, Shinya. They torture us and make us their pets.”

Before Shinya could help himself and think further of this unannounced situation, he flung himself at the dark-haired man and embraced him in a flurry of tears and consolation. He sobbed into Guren’s shoulder and let the tidal wave of seven years of abandonment and regret wash over him and be heard in his whimpers and weeping. For what seemed like hours he cried into freshly pressed white button-down shirt that Guren wore and likely stained it with his tears, but he did not care.

He was home.

After several minutes however, Shinya backed away from Guren’s unrequited embrace and mustered up a cautious tone. “How… how did you get here? There are wards all around the house and property to… keep vampires away… Unless–oh no, Guren…”

The larger man turned his head and fixed his glare somewhere on the ground, purposefully ignoring the question. Of course… if Guren could get past the wards then he must have been turned by a Noble. What an idiot Shinya was for not realizing it sooner, but then again–imagining Guren still alive after all these years was one of his wildest dreams. Shinya reached out to gently turn his former lover’s face back to meet his, red and blue eyes teeming with so many years’ worth of questions and stories to be told. Above all else, deep sorrow etched into the permanent frown lines on Shinya’s otherwise young face enhanced the regret pooling in his vision, biting the tip of his tongue.

“I-I’m so sorry… Fuck, I’m so stupid. I’m so, so stupid… was it a Noble who–who–” Shinya’s voice caught in his throat as his fingers reflexively curled around Guren’s jaw and his eyes wandered to his neck, like if he stared hard enough he could still see the puncture wounds left by a vicious monster. But it faded the moment Guren stopped walking among the living, and in place of physical scars were scars crafted of shame. Bitterness.

Remorse.

“I–If I just… If I didn’t let you go that night… you wouldn’t have… y-you… You’d have been okay,” he whimpered, low enough for the rush of his laboured breathing to carry his voice away; unstable enough that it crumbled in front of Guren as he lay out all of his self-directed blame in one final display. Shinya opened his mouth to speak again–he knew it, of course it was his fault, of course!–yet all that escaped him bubbled in his mouth as a wet sob and a hysterical rushed string of apologies.

“Guren, I’m–”

“Stop.”

The bite in the vampire’s voice made the silver-haired man visibly flinch and shy away from the other, though the tiny bit of distance was quickly closed as two strong arms wrapped themselves around his frame and pulled him into a crushing hug. “Stop blaming yourself and stop crying. Neither of us can change what happened, so stop. Please.”

Feeling those arms around him again only made the tears flow harder from Shinya’s eyes. After years of forgetting the warmth and strength behind Guren’s embrace, it was like being enveloped in a sweet memory that he refused to accept he so desperately wanted to relive. And so Shinya allowed himself to bask in the hug and shed the physical manifestation of his relief into Guren’s shoulder once more, even though the memory was not as warm as it used to be.

After several more moments of crying, the younger of the two gently pried himself out of the embrace and rubbed away the remnants of tears from his eyes. “Look at me, crying like this… we should get inside, it would be best that we don’t doddle around his time of night.”

The silver-haired man walked back into his kitchen with a heavy but relieved feeling in his steps, contrasted by the heavy, sombre out-of-place footsteps trailing behind. Guren peered sourly at the various decorations around the small house, focusing more intently on ones he didn’t remember being there seven years ago. The plethora of crudely drawn crayon art stuck to the fridge received an especially long and foreign glance–including the newest one drawn by the child, who he’s come to know as “Yuu”, just a few days prior of himself learning how to ride a bike– but Shinya paid no mind to the subtle oddities. It went unnoticed that the door was quietly locked behind Guren’s entrance.

“We have a lot of catching up to do. I’ll make some tea and maybe heat up some leftovers! You can also meet-”

“Shinya.”

The way in which Guren said his name had the silver-haired man pausing in his excited movements. He turned to meet Guren’s gaze and offered a questioning look.

“I’m afraid I’m not here for the reasons you might hope.” There were implications behind his vague words that Shinya did not understand. This moment should be a celebration, a joyous occasion of a lover returning home to his partner of years past, but Guren appeared as if he were preparing to attend a funeral.

Hesitantly, Shinya asked, “Then why…?”

“I want you to kill me.”

He… he wanted what?

Shinya kept the smile plastered on his face to keep some pseudo-semblance of control over the situation; kept his eyes unfocused to prevent any unwarranted glances at Guren and risk breaking down again. Some awful, heavy lump of dread weighing down the pit of his stomach resonated with the nagging adrenaline spike–that engaging Guren while so emotionally compromised would end terribly.

He knew this, but he was at the point where rationality and forethought came to a screeching halt the second he let his former lover into his house, unprotected and vulnerable.

“… What kind of fucked up joke–”

“I want you to kill me, Shinya,” the vampire repeated, firmer, more urgency in his trembling voice layered with so much anguish. He approached the blue-eyed man then, grasping the hands balled at his sides and bringing them up to press sweet, slow kisses against his knuckles. “I can’t keep living like this. You’re my last option.”

Shinya tried to pull his hands away, the smile on his face dropping to disbelief and fear, but the hold Guren had him in was too tight for him to slip out of unless he didn’t mind breaking a few bones. “Well, I–I’m sorry, but I can’t do that. Guren–you… you left me for seven years, and the first time I get to see you and try to relinquish the blame I put on myself for not protecting you, you ask me to kill you? Do you just really not care about how I feel?”

“Shinya…”

“No… no! No, you don’t get to disappear and then come to me because you’re too much of a coward to kill yourself. If–if you came here…” He turned his head to the side, momentarily shutting out Guren to streamline the frantic, panicked, angry, desolate thoughts hammering away in his mind. “You don’t really want to die–no, you can’t. Maybe you just want me to help… I–I can try to think of something so that we can cha–”

“Shinya.”

The tone of man’s voice vibrated with a heavy plea for the impossible. Shinya could not bear to meet Guren’s eyes and instead screwed his own shut in some in vain effort to avoid committing an atrocity such as ending an undeserving life. There was a resigned sigh, and the cold, lifeless hands of the living corpse in front of Shinya let go of his own warm ones.

The two of them were so engrossed in their conversation that they both failed to hear the quiet sound of a door opening from the upstairs bedroom.

“Papa, are you okay?” The soft timbre of Yuu’s voice echoed off the walls of the house from the bedroom, reminding Shinya that he and his long-lost lover were not alone as they used to be. Quiet thudding followed the voice as Yuu was likely coming down the stairs to check on the commotion. Shinya spared a quick glance towards the sound before he was looking back into Guren’s own lifeless ones, words of appease on his tongue before he nearly choked on a sudden realization.

We’re not alone.

The hairs on the back of Shinya’s neck rose to stand on end, forcing some unseen feeling to make the man meet Guren’s unwavering gaze. Even though it had been seven long years of separation, the vampire hunter still knew how to read Guren’s expressions like the back of his hand.

The crimson darkness in the vampire’s eyes glimmered without a single speck of relenting mercy, brought on by years of suffering in an unforgiving solitude; years of leaving his humanity behind to flesh out the beast he was turned into.

No.

“Guren I swear on all the angels if you–“

“I’m sorry Shinya, but if you won’t kill me, I’ll give you a reason to.”

One second Guren was there in front of Shinya, and in the next he vanished, leaving only the speed of his movements ruffling the ends of Shinya’s silver hair. Before the man could even process what was happening, a blood-curdling scream rang in the recesses of his mind and forced his legs to begin sprinting to the bedroom on autopilot.

Where Yuu should have been standing at the foot of the stairs, there was nothing but a dent in the wall and evidence of something being dragged up the stairs from the small scratches in the wallpaper and the banister.

In an instant, adrenaline and terror shot down his spine as his legs propelled him up the stairs. Before Shinya could make it to the threshold of his bedroom door, his widened eyes made contact with the teary, petrified ones of his son clutching his shoulder in an apparent gesture of pain and he could taste the vile hatred bubbling up from his stomach as he neared Yuu with an outstretched hand–

“Yuuichirou, run–!!”

And then the door slammed shut with enough force to splinter the doorframe.

From within, Shinya heard the heavy steps of a monster approaching the muffled whimpers of a helpless child. He heard Yuu choke on his breath in startled sob before releasing a scream that made Shinya’s stomach tear; something massive and bulky was thrown against the floor and skidded with almost perfect precision to hit the bedroom door, and it dawned on him too late that Guren was barricading him and his child inside; Yuu’s screams and whimpering grew louder, more frantic, as Shinya made out the disorderly tread of his feet on the tile.

He was scared. Scared for his child. Scared for himself. Guren be damned to the vilest cesspool in Hell if he didn’t get out of his house and away from Yuu. Shinya–breath trembling and vision swimming–braced himself as he threw his body against the hardwood door, hissing in excruciating pain when the bones in his clavicle snapped and his shoulder popped out of its socket from the sheer force he used to try to break the door open. Like an idiot, his weapon was secure and disabled under the bed–exactly how Guren taught him to store it all those years ago–and too far out of his reach to call upon his demon to rescue Yuu.

“Guren–Guren stop! STOP, PLEASE!” Shinya beat his fists against the wood over and over and over and over again in an attempt to get inside and stop the imminent massacre.

Even if he managed to bust the door open and get the gun, he’d be too late.

From behind the door, glass shattered–presumably from the window–and he heard a shocked grunt so out of place from Yuu; he heard a small body slam against several surfaces–the television which crashed to the ground; the wall that then caved in on itself; the bed which creaked and buckled under the force of the blows over it–and the blood curdling screams and howls of a child being tortured harmonizing with it.

He heard Yuu cry for him, for someone to save him; heard the little eight-year-old put up a struggle and try to defend himself by throwing what he could at Guren. But nothing worked. Those heavy footsteps still padded the floor and stopped suddenly.

For a moment, the silence preceding what Shinya knew and hoped wouldn’t happen made the entire situation feel like some terrible, terrible nightmare.

And then reality dug its barred fangs deeply, mercilessly, into his neck.

The sounds emanating from the other side of the room would plague Shinya for as long as he lived. A shaking breath, weak at first, and then seizing; soft tissue being handled roughly; a steady trickle of liquid flowing into a lethal, unstoppable cascade; and the tiny gurgles of an innocent child choking on his own blood, or what would have been left of it.

Through all of that, the only thing Shinya could focus on in his total inability to save the one thing he cherished was the garbled last words of Yuu before he heard a dull thump on soaked wood:

“…p…pa…a…”

The breath in Shinya’s chest froze as icy terror flooded his lungs. With the strength equal to only a human overdosing on adrenaline in a fight or flight response, the man rammed himself against the wooden door until the frame split and the hinges snapped out of the wall. The force of his heaving shoved the chair locked under the doorknob away, and then the door came crashing to the floor with Shinya lying on top of it, who was in too much pain from broken bones and dislocated joints to mentally prepare himself for the sheer gore in front of him.

There was so much blood. Too much blood. Far too much for an eight-year-old boy to lose and still hope to recover.

When Shinya finally lifted his head from the splintered wood underneath him, his gaze met the dull and glassy ones of his child.

His child.

Despite the stabbing pain in his shoulder, the silver-haired man still pushed himself up and crawled over to the rapidly cooling corpse of Yuu and cradled the small and bloody body to his chest. Muttering incoherently to the deaf body, Shinya felt tears spill out of his eyes and fall down his cheeks in thick waves. “No no no,” his breath hitched in a hiccup as Shinya struggled to speak, begging to the stars above that Yuu might still be able to hear him before he left this world for good. “It’s okay baby it’s okay, papa is here now, you’ll be okay–” He paid no mind to the blood pooling in his sweater and staining his pants, to the lack of warmth he only felt from Yuu some twenty minutes earlier, or to the way his baby’s body was so limp and frightfully pale in his arms.

A soft creak on the other side of the room had Shinya’s head snapping to glare hotter than all the fires in hell at the one responsible.

Guren stood with a blank expression in the corner of Shinya’s bedroom, just in front of the shattered window, soaked to the bone in his child’s innocent blood that which now stained his fingers and coated the edges of his lips. The once pristine white button-down was splattered in crimson red–the red of lost life and tainted dreams.

Everything seemed to shut off in Shinya’s brain. All feeling, all emotion, all rationality was gone. Only the searing heat of anger and revenge coated his insides and filled his body with the overwhelming fury of a parent who lost a child.

Mechanically, Shinya gently set down Yuu’s broken body and slowly stood to his feet, gritting all the way through the pain still throbbing in his shoulder and collarbone. Bracing himself against the burning injuries, the man bit out, “How could you.”

A flicker of satisfaction crossed through the man when Guren visibly flinched against the ferocity of his tone, but he did not back away.

“How could you!” The emotional and physical agony in Shinya’s voice dripped like molten lava, hot and raw and unending in its depth. Without his knowledge, the man’s eyes watered once more and spilled fresh tears down his face and stained the edges of his shirt when they dropped from his chin. Shinya was physically trembling now with barely restrained fury–born of betrayal–and despair–born of loss.

Hesitantly, Guren said, “I had to-”

“HE WAS ONLY A CHILD AND YOU TOOK HIM AWAY FROM ME!”

Angered by Shinya’s refusal to concede, Guren’s blank expression fell into a harsh furrow of his eyebrows, the savage glint in his odious eyes sending vile, vile shivers throughout Shinya’s arms and legs as the vampire’s mouth bared its fangs. He truly resembled the monster he made himself out to be that evening.

A furious, miserable sob burst through Shinya’s chest as he outstretched his broken arm to call upon his demon gun.

“You talk about how I left you, yet you bring some lowly guinea pig into my house to replace me,” he snarled, letting the full weight of his contempt settle into his voice. It was obvious that he burned with an indescribable feeling of resentment for no longer being the light of his former lover’s life–that there was something else more deserving than him to receive any of Shinya’s love.

It infuriated him. More than anything he’s ever experienced: more than losing his humanity, losing his emotions, losing his happiness, losing his future.

“You could have prevented this–”

Cutting Guren off with an enraged roar, Shinya took aim at Guren’s body, lining the barrel of his demon weapon with the space between the vampire’s eyes before firing. Whether he was truly trying to kill him or not didn’t matter–he was distraught. He wanted to reverse the last three minutes and save his child. He wanted to stop having his shortfalls return to smack him in the face.

You could have prevented this. You could have prevented Guren leaving you. You could have prevented Yuu being ruthlessly killed in the home he was told again and again was the safest place in the world. You could have prevented finding yourself alone, yet again.

The vampire, on instinct, danced out of each bullet’s path, a blurred image of white and red to Shinya’s tearful eyes. Each pass of a bullet into the hard concrete of the wall set a billow of dust into the air, adding to the pure strain of the difficulty of keeping himself composed.

“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” The silver-haired man screeched, firing blindly against the back wall of the bedroom.

“For all those years, what did that insignificant little rat give you that I couldn’t?!”

“He gave me a new reason to live! I lost that after you disappeared!” Another shot left the gun and implanted itself in the wall just a hair’s breadth away from Guren’s neck. In any other situation Shinya would have been able to precisely take off his head in one clean shot, but he was far too burdened with hatred and grief to think clearly. And perhaps on some level, there was still hesitation to end the life of his former lover.

It was still Guren.

No its not, not anymore.

That monster is not the man you once knew.

Through the flurry of hot tears still streaming from his eyes, Shinya spat out, “I trusted you.”

A soft expression overtook Guren’s face at Shinya’s pained words. “Shin-”

“I TRUSTED YOU!” Taking the dark-haired man completely by surprise, Shinya fired another round of shots to sink directly into the man’s shoulder.

Grunting in pain, Guren clasped his shoulder and became distracted with his injury just long enough for Shinya to find an opening and sprint with the bayonet end of his rifle pointed at his undead chest.

The sound of sharp steal tearing through cold muscle and tissue should have been satisfying, but it became only white noise in Shinya’s ears. Demonstrating no further hesitation on his part, he drove the two of them back with the momentum of his thrust and pushed Guren out the broken window, dragging Shinya himself with him down two stories.

The momentum flowed to a snail’s trickle as time halted around them. In the air, glass shards looked like the softest rain drops encasing a pair dancing together, suspended in moonlight and darkness. The blade of the bayonet wedged itself to the hilt in Guren’s chest, and his eyes widened fractionally as he felt the resistance of a solid structure give out to force. Above him–through his distorted vision–he watched as Shinya use the last of his strength to give one final shove, releasing the body of the gun to adjust his open position in their dual fall.

Shinya’s eyes, shimmering in a haunting blue that hardened with a wrath the vampire never thought he would live to see, locked with Guren’s as he hissed one final word before gravity took its toll on his fragile human body and the speed of time resumed:

“Suffer.”

The next instant filled the silence of the night with a tremendous thud as two bodies hit the ground, both stiff and immobile. After several seconds, Guren painfully brought himself to sit up, gritting his teeth at the two large wounds in his shoulder and chest. Snapping his head towards the body adjacent to him, he snarled bitterly, “You idiot–!”

But there was no sound from the other man. No movement in his limp limbs, no rush of blood through his veins, no soft breathing through his chest.

Nothing.

Guren stared at the body of the man lying in the cold grass next to him, whose rifle was broken into several parts scattered around them from the impact of their fall. His depthless eyes scanned the area around them to find glass shards protruding from his skin and mirrored against Shinya’s arms and legs, before the smell of fresh blood and the sound of a faltering heart pervaded his hearing.

There, not even a metre away, lay Shinya with an unreadable expression on his face–eyes closed in a serenity that would have warmed the undying flesh underneath the vampire’s skin were it not for the gush of blood seeping through his former lover’s hair and down his face; while his skin glowed beautifully under the moonlight–surrounded by the glimmering reflections given off by the innumerable pieces of glass littering the yard–Guren knew that colour was fast fading and growing duller by the second as the beating of the human’s heart spasmed uncontrollably against his crushed ribs.

The neck he remembered kissing in affection over and over again back when he was human was contorted in a way that only screamed of immediate demise.

And he continued to stare wordlessly as the reality of what just occurred sunk into him, fighting to not accept the truth that his plan to have himself selfishly killed backfired worse than he could have ever imagined. The smell of blood grew stronger as the dull thudding of Shinya’s heart tapered off into its final pulses.

A silence befell the countryside for a moment before it was punctured by a horrified scream bursting with inconceivable guilt, guttural and agonized.

Maybe the proper reaction came only after realizing the conduit through which he’d be able to achieve his goal of escape was currently dead on the ground next to him with a broken neck and a broken heart; maybe the guilt singeing into the depths of his conscience from having stalked the happy family for years on end was finally catching up to him.

Harming the child out of pure spite for simply existing as a vessel of replacement was definitely among his priorities, that much he gleefully admitted to. The well-being of the little rat that stole his lover’s attention manifested into a jealousy he couldn’t contain, and Guren came to the ultimatum that if he couldn’t be blessed with spending the rest of his life happily with Shinya, then no one could.

Yet he didn’t expect Shinya would end up dead.

It was not supposed to end like this.

It was supposed to end with Guren finally being released from ceaseless pain and suffering. He was supposed to be released from the strict grip the thirst for blood had on his dead body, which became the foremost drive of his very being to kill in order to live. He was supposed to be released from the knowledge that his body would no longer provide warmth to the one person he loved more than life itself.

And what had that brought him?

Lost in thought, Guren reflected on earlier when he finally made the decision to approach the little house in the woods and knock on the front door that he had so often just barged into like a barbarian, much to Shinya’s complaint time and time again. He fully expected Shinya to reject his mere presence and hopefully strike him down on the spot with little question, but the worst happened, and Shinya shed tears for him and invited him into the house. He offered to help him and fix a problem that could not be fixed.

A sinking feeling overtook Guren’s posture with the knowledge that Shinya had no intention of turning him away, and most likely expected Guren could fit into the family he created like nothing was wrong with the picture of a dead man walking amongst the living.

Maybe we could have been a family again.

Guren hadn’t shed tears since the night he was turned all those years ago, but now they freely slipped down his cheeks. He was so focused on ending his life for the monster he had become, that he didn’t even considered the idea that he could still be with Shinya, for at least however long they both had together.

Obviously it was too late for that now, since both halves of his potential family lay in pools of their own blood with inanimate hearts and cold skin.

Blood spilt because of his own self-centred ideology and blinding jealousy.

It now made sense; what Shinya whispered earlier. “Suffer.” It meant now Guren would have to continue to suffer in this demonic afterlife, shackled to the earth with guilt for the lives he was responsible for taking, never being able to be freed for his heinous crimes.

Guren shuddered, brushing the dirt and glass off his soiled clothing as he carefully crawled towards Shinya’s body. The sluggishness of grief pooled in his muscles mending themselves from injuries only he could recover from. As he shuffled across the grass on his hands and knees, ignoring the way a fresh wave of tears stung his eyes and a rueful whine bubbled in his chest, his memory supplied him with more evidence of Shinya’s enmity:

He never, not once, activated the curse that would end him.

The man he loved took to the grave years of resentment, abandonment that morphed from fallible feelings of love he thought would have persevered due to his disappearance; Shinya was killed for the immediate revenge of Guren murdering Yuu–the child he despised without reason apart from envy–and effectively killed himself for everlasting revenge against Guren for everything he’s put him through.

It was a nasty contradiction to the open heart he first encountered, so happy to see him.

Perhaps that’s where the guilt resided: he managed to corrupt a deep love into a listless figure of hatred. Guren felt his chest constrict painfully then, calling forth the damning glare in Shinya’s eyes before his head hit the ground. Tears quietly sliding along a blade of blood-soaked grass, the vampire collapsed back onto his haunches besides Shinya’s body, a shivering, pitiful noise of a man who lost everything but his life blending into the background of the night.

Doubling over to press his face into the bloodied shirt of a man who chose to escape into the void with someone other than himself, Guren released the first hysterical wail of sorrow in a line of many.

The existence he lived became a little more intolerable and a little more inescapable.

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