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roseglazedlens · 7 months

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⦑ THE FUCKING DEAD ⦒ 𝐁𝐨𝐲’𝐬 𝐕𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧

➠ series masterlist | ⏪prologue | 🔃girl's route | ⏩resolution |

𝐒𝐌𝐔𝐓┇𝐇𝐎𝐑𝐑𝐎𝐑┇𝐃𝐀𝐑𝐊𝐅𝐈𝐂┇𝐂𝐇𝐎𝐎𝐒𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐀𝐃𝐕𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐄 LEON S. KENNEDY X AFAB GN! READER CARLOS OLIVEIRA X AFAB GN! READER synopsis: Leon, Carlos, and you, ventures into the laboratory downstair to investigate the mysterious gas. Something about the place doesn't sit well with you... content: 𝐒𝐌𝐔𝐓 𝐌𝐃𝐍𝐈, 𝐃𝐔𝐁𝐂𝐎𝐍, canon-typical violence, zombie fucking, threesome, love triangle, positions (doggy, cowgirl, eiffel tower), double penetration (one hole), oral (m receiving), throatpie (extreme), creampies (extreme), grinding (a lot), face-fucking, swallowing, overstimulation, multiple orgasms, gaping, frotting, masturbation (reader), use of restraints (handcuffs), impregnation kink, degradation kink, corruption kink, breeding, cum inflation, womb fucking, body indentation, fingering, zombie transformation, body worship, body horror, cumdump, mutual(?) pining. mentions of: sexual experiments, medical syringes, disagreements, fist fights, wounds (graphic), blood (a lot), firearms, knives, & death. a/n: thank you all of you sweethearts for waiting on & supporting this series, it means so deeply to me, really. my recommended order is to read girl's route before this to build tension, but it is optional (though appreciated). lots of plot in this installment, enjoy!!! « 12.2 k words | general masterlist | ao3 | reblogs appreciated! »

Your objective today—retrieve the concentrated sample from Arias’ mansion and escape.

And so far, things have been smooth sailing. A bit too smooth sailing. In the span of three hours with you and your team in this freakish mansion, not an enemy appears in your sight. Nothing formidable or sentient anyway, just stray zombies along your path that you silently eliminate without mercy and afterthought. This is nothing to you—after all, you have survived countless zombie outbreaks prior to this, and that had ingrained you with reflexes and level-headedness to combat any feat.

Thoughts about the saferoom, again, drifts into the back of your mind. You recall a constant hiss whispering from the vents, and a brooding gas before dispersing into thin air—seemingly left the five of you unscathed. You have suspicions that this may be an ambush, but of what kind?

It never hurts being too careful in this line of work, especially with bioweapons. One wrong move, and it’s game over. No re-dos or second chances. Despite your reluctance to split up into two teams, you agree to join Leon and Carlos to seek the laboratory downstairs—which Rebecca suspects to be the source of the gas—and find the cause of this unexplained mystery.

There are no lamps in the hallway leading to laboratory, only the full moon illuminating the silent, cramped corridor. You smell death on the floors, the mould deafening your nose with a hint of what smells like rot in all four corners. The walls are lined with formal sitting down portraitures of Arias, Arias’ father, and his father before, dating back to the first Arias in the 1800s. Then, the paintings repeat, over and over down this bottomless stretch of wallpaper.

“How’re you holding up?” Leon approaches you from your side, a palm resting on his forehead and on yours to check your temperature.

Ever since you contracted a slight cough, Leon checks on your condition regularly, perhaps more doting than his other teammates. His excuse: “Just making sure my team is safe”. And it makes sense—Leon is a natural protector after all, especially among his friends. He verifies your temperature, normal. Then your pulse, normal enough, perhaps a tad faster than usual.

“For the third time today, I’m good. Eyes forward, Leon.” You roll your eyes to the side, gesturing at the direction in front of him with your Blacktail pistol.

“Just checking in.” Leon lets out a harmless grin, unphased by your cold reaction. His free hand brings itself onto the crown of your head, almost instinctually, threading through strands with slow, loving movements. The ruffling gets your attention, but this time, you don’t dust his hand off your head like you normally would.

He notices this. “Something’s on your mind. What is it?”

“It’s nothing.” You remove his hand from your head, fixing your hair to keep your hands busy in the lie.

“That doesn’t sound like nothing.”

Leon sees through you anyway, like always. He leans in now, close enough that you can feel his breath against the tip of your nose. You peek up, the cerulean in his gaze peeled onto every twitch of your reaction, swimming in the sight of you. A little self-conscious, you clear your throat lightly, but audible enough for Leon to notice how close he is. He backs away in arduous embarrassment.

You change the topic quickly before things turn more awkward from here. “Just thinking about Jill and Ada, that’s all.” And that is the truth, to some degree. Ever since the girls ventured upstairs to Arias’ office, you can’t stop thinking about them.

“Oh, they’ll be fine. I may not trust Ada, but I gave Jill my word.” Leon nods. “I’ve worked with them both—I know they got this.”

Leon does his best to reassure you, and as much as you appreciate the gesture, some part of you can’t shake away this weighted feeling within. There is no reason to doubt their abilities; as they have proven to be beyond competent with their jobs. The five of you have been selected for this mission, for this very reason.

“Yeah.” You agree, albeit a bit forced. “You’re right.”

“That’s the spirit.” Leon’s features relax, chest puffed up slightly in confidence that he can comfort you. His hand comes up to meet you on the cheek, lightly pressing your cheeks together. “Getting so worked up for your friends. It’s really cute when you do that.”

“Yeah sure. You say that with just anything about me.” Leon had called you cute so many times, the word starts to sound like sarcasm.

“Well that’s because I-”

A bare tint of redness creeps onto Leon’s face, barely visible when shaded behind the moonlight. Leon stumbles on the words to explain himself, but before he can tell you them, a hand comes down to press hard on one of his shoulders. Leon breaks his train of thought when he almost falls into his unbalanced leg.

“What about me, pretty boy? Any compliments for me?” Leon turns to find Carlos and his signature smirk. He mutters something underneath his breath, a curse of some sort, and he brushes the hand off his shoulder.

“Haven’t found a thing to compliment you on.” Is Leon’s only snarky response. When it’s not about you, he always finds a comeback effortlessly.

“Oh come on, y’know I’m just joking.” Carlos laughs, slapping a few times against Leon’s back, playful yet hard. “Besides, we know you’re the cute one here, Leon.”

“I’m not cute. And don’t call me pretty boy.” For how often Leon uses the word ‘cute’ on you, he sure hates to be called that.

“You don’t have to get worked up by a nickname, pretty boy. It’s a compliment.”

Leon locks his eyes on Carlos in his razor-sharp gaze, but for some reason, Carlos is relaxed, unthreatened by Leon’s cautions. Until Leon breaks eye contact first in bitter acceptance. “I’d rather not be called that, thanks.”

“Are you sulking? If you want a hug you can just say so, little man.” Carlos brings his arm around Leon’s shoulder, which Carlos knows he despises. Their height and size difference is distinct, and Carlos immediately overpowers Leon in his domineering grip, suffocating Leon just a tiny bit.

“Whatever.” Leon is only able to struggle free when Carlos loosens his grip. Carlos smiles widely while Leon scowls harder.

Things between the two of them had always been unpleasant. With Carlos’ playful dominance and Leon’s stubborn seriousness, their first meeting in Raccoon City immediately hits it off the wrong way. Around you, the duo tries to be cordial to each other, sweeping their disputes under the rug, but it’s no secret to you—resentment always bubbles through.

You toss a stern expression between the two of them, so they surrender from each other’s throats and continue forward in deafening silence, until the three of you finally arrive at the laboratory door. There is a sign: [AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY]. The door is slightly ajar. On the other side of the door, it’s dark.

“Don’t mind if I do.” Carlos walks in first without hesitation. You and Leon follow behind him.

The room reeks of antiseptics, sterilization and behind all of that, the familiar artificial smell that jabs painfully into your nose. You bear with it, letting your flashlight aim forward. A faint blue light glows from a corner of the lab—some sort of lit-up computer screen. The three of you move closer to the light source.

“I’ll go around and find a light switch.” Leon says, and you see the illuminating circle of his flashlight move away from the two of you as it rustles into a different direction.

“Ah shit. My batteries’ flat.” Carlos taps at his dimming flashlight, and it turns off completely. You stand in the darkness, alone, and then you hear a creak. Probably from an appliance somewhere or a trick of wind. But in the shadows, your uneasiness doubles.

“Carlos. Are you there?” No reply.

There’s a brush of air behind you. You convince yourself it’s yet another trick of wind. But this wind, it comes right up on your shoulder, unusually soft and unsuspecting. Then, you feel a presence right beside your ear, tickling your cheeks with its luscious tendrils.

“Boo.”

The sound is no louder than a whisper, but the squeal that flees your lips is bloodcurdling nonetheless. You twist your hips with your entire body weight, swinging the Blacktail in the air out of reflex with the force of your entire elbow. Your other hand readies itself on the hilt of your knife, preparing to unsheathe and attack the figure as another line of protection in case it decides to strike again.

Your gun whiffs in the air, thankfully, missing your target. “Porra! Watch where you swing that.” The darkened figure says.

The fluorescent lights hum into life now as Leon clicks the power switch against the wall. You see Carlos ducking his head behind you. One second too late and you may have wiped the smug grin off his face with the blunt of your pistol—for better or worse. Carlos’ hands fall to his knees, suppressing a deep laugh that rises from his chest.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Carlos! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” Your let your relieved hands drop from the hilt onto your sides.

“Your heart raced for me, didn’t it?”

“This is lame. Even for you.” You roll your eyes so far back to avoid making contact with his victorious smirk.

“Don’t you mean ‘charming’?”

He brings himself closer, lifting your chin up with his thumb and index fingers so your eyes are forced to meet with his. The audacity of it all makes your grimace crack into an unwilling grin, corner of your lips upturning with a will of its own. “You wish, Carlos.”

“Hell yeah, made you smile.”

You force yourself to grimace again. “Keep your mouth shut, or I’m gonna hit you for real this time.”

“Well, d’you feel better now?”

Carlos relaxes into your gaze, eyelids drooping and hazel irises dilating. Despite almost being scared out of your wits mere seconds ago, your nerves are now easing, heartbeat regulating into a constant pattern. You are grateful to have Carlos as your companion. He can warm up a room in a heartbeat, always finding ways to make everyone comfortable. And to you, that’s no exception.

“Thanks.” Carlos grins, cockier than usual, so you correct yourself. “Though your methods are terrible.”

What you didn’t notice is Leon already stalking towards the two of you, awfully curious what kind of exchange you two are having that requires such loving glances. Leon’s eyes set himself on top of Carlos first, arm reaching around your waist to pull you closer to him without speaking a single word.

“Having a good talk?” Leon doesn’t break eye contact with Carlos when he closes his fingers around your waist, catching you off guard.

“Uh ha- hey, Leon.” You feel Leon’s grip tighten, and something is telling you not to irritate him any further. Unfortunately, Carlos does not share the same sentiment.

“Take it easy, pretty boy. You upset?” Carlos lets out a chuckle, whether his intentions are to provoke or to jest, you aren’t quite sure.

“No—not at all.” But Leon’s word contradicts his actions, seemingly moving you ever so slightly away from Carlos. Leon cocks up his head, puffing out his chest to channel his larger frame, even if it only make him just a few inches shy to match Carlos in height.

“Just a bit of harmless fun, that’s all.” Carlos shrugs his shoulders, casting a wink to your direction. “Isn’t that right, sweetheart?”

“That’s enough, dickhead.” With eyes burning with a fury, Leon tugs at Carlos’ neckline, forcing him to look eye to eye. But Carlos feels no intimidation. In fact, his stance is open, slapping himself on the chest a few times to taunt his anger.

And that’s all it takes for Leon to throw the first punch. He aims his swing directly at Carlos’ face, too sudden, that neither you nor Carlos is expecting it. Carlos manages to bring his arm forward just in time to block it, taking the impact of the blow on the sides of his forearms. Carlos merely smiles in amusement like it didn’t hurt, but the spot already starts to redden.

After the first hit lands, Leon raises his fist again, unsatisfied. You quickly put yourself in between the two, stopping the fight before more injuries occur. “Enough!”

Leon pauses, of course, he would kill himself first before he hurts you in any shape or form. His fist hovers in the air, and it lowers, slow and reluctant.

The boys’ earpiece fizzles into life, and Rebecca is immediate to comment about the duo.

“What’s going on between you two? Do I need to have a word with Jill?” Rebecca lectures in her teacher voice, so loud that you can hear it through their earpieces. Nobody messes with Jill. She can, and will, teach them a lesson in less than savoury means. Leon releases Carlos by the collar, casting him aside that manages to falter Carlos’ footsteps.

“Anything but that.” Leon smooths his own shirt as he pleads for his innocence.

“You’re taking this too far, Rebecca. We don’t have to resort to violence.” Carlos too, the first real fear of the night flashes between his eyes.

“Good. Promise to behave.” Rebecca says. “Such big babies, I swear to god.”

“Speaking of Jill, haven’t heard from Jill and Ada in a minute.” She thinks out loud, before closing with a final remark. “I’ll get in contact with them. Good luck, three of you. Don’t cause trouble.”

The line closes, and with the lights turned on now, the three of you start to explore the laboratory. This time, nobody messes around after heeding Rebecca’s warning, focusing on the task at hand.

The big lamp flickers, ticking like some sort of timer, as the three of you enter the space. It looks weirdly futuristic, floors polished so clean that it reflects everything above, making you see double. Lined against the walls, you find workstations, refrigerators, and foreign machines (a dispenser perhaps?) that doesn’t quite make sense to you. In the centre, illuminated by a ring of fluorescent lights, displays a gas tank triple the size of you, like a strange kind of monument.

A gas funnels out the top shaft, hoisting the substance into the vents up above, presumably, to the safe room where the five of you were. As you approach the control panel, the synthetic, nasty smell overwhelms you so much you have to clutch your nose. You press the red square button. The tank stops rumbling, and no more gas runs out from the other end.

“This must be how they did it.” Leon comments, pacing around the cylinder to read the labels on it, but the ink had been melted into illegibility. “I can’t read any of the labels.”

“So you were right, pretty boy. It’s an ambush.” Carlos says. They had known that the five of you are coming. But for how long?

You think this through. If this is an ambush, why had there been no attack? There must be a reason the three of you are standing on your feet right now, and not becoming zombie fodder in Arias’ schemes. “Nothing about this makes sense.”

Leon nods in agreement, but there is still more in this room they haven’t investigated yet. He walks into the direction of the monitor screen. “Maybe we can find more info here.” The two of you follow.

A team works here, or at least used to, with how loose paper scatters across the floor and the aftermath of test tubes fallen into thousands of pieces, ruining the surface of the station with corrosive liquid. Whoever worked here had to evacuate, fast. And it didn’t seem that long ago either.

Leon clicks with the mouse a few times, and it boots up, flickering into life. He enters the first profile, and to no one’s surprise, he reads: “It’s password protected.” You tsk out loud, bumping your fist on the desk with slight frustration. “Please scan employee card for access.” The scanner pad lights up.

“Where are we gonna find an access card?” Leon asks.

Carlos looks around the laboratory, and behind the tank, he sees a double glass window looking into a separate, contained room—an interrogation room of some sort. A labcoat figure lies in the centre of that room, and in front of her chest, a lanyard prints a single word in bold: STAFF. Bloodstains surround the figure; the woman lays limps on the medical bed. Maybe even dead.

“Score.” You and Leon turn around and join Carlos in front of the glass window.

“I don’t like this at all.” You say, can’t help but notice the blood looks fresh.

“Sounds like someone’s scared.” Carlos is quick to pick on you, entertained by how your grip is putting pressure onto your Blacktail, shaking ever so slightly.

“Ha. You wish.” You quickly straighten yourself up. “Bold of you to think you can scare me twice.”

“Oh don’t worry. I won’t resort to cheap tricks like that. But if you’re scared, you can always jump into my arms.” Carlos jokes, but you know enough to tell there is always a bit of truth behind his playful demeanour. You roll your eyes in response, determined to not give him a reaction that will set you up for more teasing.

“That’s enough, Carlos.” Leon brings his hand down right between the two of you, a little furrowed eyebrow hangs on his face. “You’re going too far.”

“Unless you want to take one for the team, pretty boy?” Carlos’ eyes land on Leon, and there it is again, the spark of hatred. It quickly dissolves as they slowly recall Rebecca’s threat.

“We shouldn’t separate. Let’s go in together. That guarantees our best chance of survival.” Leon, of course, comes up with the most logical answer. But Carlos is anything but logical right now. He wants to see Leon tremble in fear.

“C’mon pretty boy. You afraid?”

Leon hesitates for a second; his pride not allowing him to refuse the challenge. Especially not to a guy like Carlos. There is something in Leon that wants to prove himself in front of you. “Fine. Just no funny business, Oliveira.”

“Oh, you flatter me.” Carlos holds the door open for Leon, mocking a condescending bow just to add fuel to the fire. Leon hesitates one more time before moving. He thinks to himself: in spite of their disagreements, Carlos is not the type to sabotage the team. Still, that isn’t his main concern. Leon is more worried about what Carlos will do to you without him there.

“Aww, miss me already?” Carlos provokes.

Against his better judgement, Leon steps in the room with resolution. The heavy door closes behind him. A faint click of metal hinges come together resonate from the other side. There is a tiny exposed window at the door for Leon to see through. He mouths and gestures the word from the soundproof room: “I’ll be watching you.”

Carlos smiles. “Watch me as much as you want.”

LEON

The interrogation room is bright, clinically so. The walls are tiled with white, and there is nothing else in the room but the medical bed in the centre. It certainly doesn’t look like a room used for interrogations, but more of an experiment chamber, for isolation and observation by researchers from the other side of the screen. Just being in the room sends a shiver up Leon’s spine.

The lone researcher on the bed starts to growl, waking from its slumber, and rushes forward to attack Leon with its twisted, crushed fingers. Leon draws his CQBR assault rifle and takes out the zombie’s head. It collapses onto the floor harshly as Leon swaps out his magazine.

“H-Help…” The researcher groans, before her head plops onto the cold, bleached tiles.

A moment of weakness overcomes Leon as the zombie speaks. He momentarily forgets that he is fighting a zombie; did he just shoot a human? But it definitely looked like a zombie—lifeless skin and erratic movement—there’s no doubt about it. Yet at the zombie’s death, it speaks like a human uttering their final breath. And were those tears running down his cheeks? Leon had never seen a zombie like this.

He checks the body one more time to make sure it’s dead. There is no movement. He rolls the body to face the ceiling, so the lanyard can be easily removed around her neck. Upon close inspection, that is when Leon realises the body is stark naked underneath the lab coat. What kind of experiments is Arias doing here?

There isn’t any time to waste or to contemplate about the dead. Leon looks away from the body out of respect, covering it up. When he circles the lanyard over her head, something falls on the floor behind her. A gentle thump with something shaking inside. The lady was holding a square case, guarding it with her life. There is a report taped onto the top of the case. Picking it up, Leon reads it:

CATHY WHITE DECEASED Female, Caucasian Success Rate: 48% The latent virus had been injected into the subject prior before moving to Phase 2. The subject’s vitals are normal throughout. On Day 3, prototype [__] (the word is smudged with blood) was released, upon inhaling the smoke, the subject started to show signs of zombie infection. Symptoms include: high pain tolerance, cravings for human flesh, heightened sexual arousals, violent outbreaks, enhanced speed and physical strength. During the transformation, the subject’s breath oozes with pheromones to attract their prey. Handle them with caution. The subject also remained sentient, and when interrogated with their memories, was able to successfully recall events dating back to the subject’s childhood. That makes it possible for them to disguise among other humans. In the final phase, subject is successfully impregnated, however, both the baby and mother died during childbirth. With further investigation, we can refine the virus so the infant may survive. The subject's teeth discharges traces of their blood, using their teeth as a weapon to transmit the virus into a new host. We have provided a cure in this case, to use for emergencies only.

Parts of this document feel very familiar to your current situation. So this zombie—no, this researcher—she’s still conscious? Leon clenches his fist together, heavy guilt coursing through his body for killing a civilian. Yes, even if it was for self-defence, it still guilts at his chest regardless.

Now with overwhelming urgency, Leon needs to find this cure fast. He needs to show you and Carlos this document and watch for all these symptoms.

Leon flips to the next sheet, containing rows and rows of scientific jargon and exact numbers and results to this experimentation. None of this comprehensible to Leon, but perhaps it may be useful for Rebecca. He opens the case underneath it. There is one medical syringe inside. It has a clear substance with a metallic shimmer. There should be another syringe inside, but it’s missing.

So this is the cure? If Leon sends all these data back to Rebecca, she may be able to use this for her research. As Leon thinks about Rebecca, his earpiece lights up, speaking of the devil, and Leon answers the call immediately.

“Rebecca! I found some info on the virus.” Leon says as he pockets the access card, case, and report all into his gear. “There’s some other interesting stuff in here too. I’ll send them over ASAP.”

“We need to talk, Leon.” Rebecca tries to keep her voice calm, but it’s apparent that she had been running around her lab. “Something bad has happened.”

“What’s going on?”

“Jill… Ada… I can’t reach them… I think they’ve turned.”

“Turned? Turned when?”

“I’m not sure.” Urgency floods at her words as she types something hastily in the background. “I think they are. The last thing I heard was something grumbling in the background, like a zombie. Then silence. I can’t reach them anymore.”

“Shit.” Horror sinks into Leon’s face, panic settling into adrenaline. Leon thought he had more time before someone got into danger.

“This is a much aggressive virus, Leon. All of you, get out of there, now.” Rebecca makes another call in the background simultaneously. “I’m sending back-up. Hold on tight.”

“I think I know what caused this. The gas is an ambush. I saw it in the lab report. But how?” Leon thinks with his fingers between his chin.

“Before I lost signal, there was a message. The word ‘water’. Not sure what that means.”

Water. What can this mean? Some kind of water source—A river? Rain? And after a short moment of reasoning, something clicks in Leon’s head. It makes sense now. He knows how Arias had been ambushing them right from the very beginning.

“The water. Of course.” All the evidence is connecting inside Leon’s brain.

“What’s making sense, Leon?” Rebecca almost cries out to snap Leon out of his ‘aha’ moment.

“There’s more than one virus. You have to be infected twice to turn.” Leon reads the report once more, clarifying all the details in his head.

“So you’re talking about some sort of water supply working in conjunction with the gas?” Rebecca asks.

“Yes. If my guess is right.”

“Are you saying Jill and Ada drank the water supply…?”

“Not just Jill.”

Leon spins his head with utmost urgency, hoping that he is wrong. There are only two people who have drank from the water bottles in the safe room, and one of them is presumed dead. Darting across the tiny window through the door, Leon catches something in the corner of his peripheral. The tall muscular figure leaning down; both of his hands cupping your cheek, and Carlos’ lips right on top of yours.

It’s too late.

CARLOS & YOU

Carlos closes the big metal door shut, his hand swiftly going around the lock to secure it in place. That’ll teach Leon a lesson. Don’t worry, he’ll let Leon out when the time comes. But won’t it be so funny to see him struggle the door open? Carlos chuckles devilishly under his breath, and he turns to find you leaning against the tank, watching Leon take down the researcher on the other side.

Even when it’s just the two of you, your eyes somehow always finds its way to Leon. Carlos joins your side, trying not to feel defeated so soon. The two of you stand in silence for a moment, before you abruptly break it:

“You can be a bit nicer to Leon, you know.” You cross your arms as you speak, eyes catching on the clock above the glass that leaps to your attention. The antique décor stands out decadently amongst the futuristic laboratory; its clockface a gold emblem plate of a lyre, a snakehead at each curved end of its arm. You pay no mind to Arias’ strange interior design decisions and return your gaze to Leon.

“Of course you’re on his side.” Carlos sighs through his smile. He follows your sight to stare at whatever you’re looking at too. He can’t tell what you’re thinking through your blank expression.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” You toss him a side eye.

“Leon swung first.” Carlos says, massaging at the spot in his arm, bruising a swollen purple. “It hurts you know. Pretty boy is such a heavy-hitter. If I didn’t know better, I’d assume he wanted to knock me out. And hey… If you’ll give me a kiss, it’ll heal faster.”

You ignore Carlos. “You were making comments.”

“And he took those comments personally.” Carlos shrugs; there is no remorse in his eyes. And then he sighs heavily, but not heavy enough to take the weight off his chest. “You have no idea, huh.”

Carlos stands right in front of you, pulling you by your hand, meeting you face to face. You peek at him before looking away flustered. He seems sincere, no longer that playful smile or teasing about kissing you, like there is something he needs to tell you. “Do I have to spell it out to you?” Carlos’ voice is husky yet when he leans in.

You clear your throat, feet planting to the floor to not let Carlos push into your space any further. Turning your head, you gaze strongly into his eyes. “What’re you talking about?”

“C’mon, can I make this anymore obvious?”

Carlos pulls you into his embrace, cutting off the tension bubbling towards the surface, and wraps his arms around you. His lips crashes onto yours, and his tongue is telling how long Carlos had been wanting you, waiting for you to notice. The kiss is gentle at first, slightly hesitant. After your lips are accustomed to each other, Carlos grows bolder, rolling your bottom lip between his, and you smack your teeth open to taste your tongue against his. It tastes like the soft bud of a candy. Carlos grasps you hard now, pulling you in for a deeper kiss. There is something in that kiss that changes your brain chemistry, almost like magic. Your lips part, taking a heavy breath from the action.

“Is this obvious enough?” Carlos mutters, and you nod obediently.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

The abrupt, punching noise is coming from the door. The knob turns erratically a few times, but it doesn’t click open. Its hinges slams against the lock mechanism. You can hear muffled screaming from the other side.

You should let Leon out, you think, but Carlos traps you in his assertive kiss once more. Both of his hands come around your back, circling them in his tight, comforting hug. Even when your body commands you to move, you can’t. Do you really enjoy the kiss so much?

Leon bangs onto the glass, it doesn’t break; instead, you can hear the hollowed hard thump in front of you. You look at Leon, suddenly guilty for no reason, and your hands come forward to push Carlos away. But your hands are weak in his love.

“Eyes on me, darling.” Carlos takes control of you, peppering kisses on the corner of your lips. What you and Carlos have together isn’t kissing anymore—it’s more like an exploration of tongue, leaving you to gasp for air whenever your lips temporarily parts, just to close them together in his eagerness.

“Leo—” kiss. “—Could’b—” another kiss. “—in troub—”.

Carlos peppers kisses on the corner of your mouth, down your exposed neck ready for him, and into the crook between your shoulder. His curls tickle against you lightly, and you let out a slight giggle as he kisses you down.

“Que pescoço bonito…” Carlos mumbles, his lips softening around your skin. It starts with a light, teasing bite, nothing far of a nibble. All of the sudden, the lovingness mutates into something else, something possessive. He suckles the soft skin between his lips, focusing on a particular spot, and it sends a light pain onto your neck.

“Carlos… I think that’s enough now…” You wince slightly.

But he doesn’t pull away. Worse—Carlos sinks his canines into your skin, ripping out the flesh from within and feeding onto the softness with it a twinkle of joy in his eyes. Pieces of your muscle fall out, blood streaming from the sides of his mouth as Carlos’ head cocks to the air, swallowing his meal in a loud content gulp. You fall to the floor, faint groans muttering in agony; your hands try to press down the wound, but the bleeding just won’t stop.

The door bangs louder. Leon thinks, “fuck it,” as he lunges his entire body weight against the door that holds him hostage in this tiny room. The lock clangs, hinge weakened from the impact, and so Leon spin kicks right underneath the knob and it finally breaks, crashing open outwards.

“The hell is wrong with you!” He resists the urge to pin Carlos against the wall right at this instant. That’s not the time or place now, Leon needs to take you to safety first and foremost.

He sprints towards your direction to pick your fallen self from the floor, blood mixed with flesh crumbs trickling like a muddy stream through the gaps of your fingers, pooling around your head. Leon checks your pulse: You are still breathing, thank goodness for that. But not for long. The forked veins along your wrists starts to darken, until they are fully visible through the river of your arms: you’re turning.

He retrieves the case from his gear, then the syringe. Leon can’t let you turn—not you, anyone else but you. Turning you sideways, he removes the syringe cap, crosses his fingers, and injects it right below your shoulder cap. You start to pant, muffled like something is strangling you in your sleep and eating you out from the inside. The agonised moans escalate louder and louder, until it finally stops.

Leon’s heart tightens. He checks your pulse again, but there is none. The black veins continue to crawl closer inside of you, twisting and turning through the labyrinth to reach your heart’s core.

“Shit, shit, shit! The cure isn’t working.” Leon throws the empty syringe across the floor, and it breaks into shards on the floor. “C’mon. Stay with me. Please.”

As if his pleas have been heard, your hand rises, coming on top of his hand. Leon lets out a sigh of relief for a second, before your fingers tighten with the strength of a bear on top of his clenched fist, digging your claws into it. Your eyes fly open, and Leon sees your irises dilating so far it turns hollow, void of colour and soul.

“Leon…” Your words tear through his heart in a million different ways.

“Not you too.” His voice hitches.

Your fingers hook into Leon’s pliant skin, until it bleeds through the calloused surface on the back of his palms, dragging them down for a straight cut. A sharp pain runs along his hands, nothing Leon can’t handle, but it will most likely leave a scar. He somersaults backwards, hand coming down to prepare his rifle, and ready to aim when he recovers into a stand. Leon can’t bring himself to aim at you. So he aims his gun’s barrel directly at Carlos.

Carlos doesn’t react, merely licks his bloodied lips clean. “Look at him, poor little thing.”

Leon clenches his gun and twists the selector on his rifle, firing a burst of three rounds directly at Carlos. They all miss. Carlos dodges all three bullets with animalistic speed, smiling through it, and disappoints when Leon holds his fire at the sight.

“What do you want, Oliveira?” Leon spits out; there’s no use wasting ammunition right now.

“Just a bit of fun, pretty boy.” Carlos utters, his grin stretching so wide that his features become distorted. “Care to play with us?”

“Fat chance.”

Blood is no longer gushing out of your neck. The hand supporting it lets go, finding the blood dry. If there is supposed to be pain, you don’t sense it. In fact, you feel the opposite. Recharged and spirited than ever before. Your body moves like butter, but then again, you don’t remember moving them.

Your body creeps behind Leon’s back, and push down his two elbows, clasping the two arms together behind him in one swift momentum. The rifle falls to the floor. “I’m so hungry, Carlos.” The whines that escape your mouth are not yours even if it did comes out of your own. It plants love marks on Leon’s trapezius, tainting his pale skin with redness. “Can I have him already? I want him now. so. bad.”

Somewhere within you cringe at those words, but your physical manoeuvres with a mind of its own, regardless of your intentions. It chases your thoughts away, until it falls and falls into a dark well behind your sockets. And with one final push, your mind shuts you out, numbing your resistance as your hollow grin turns wider.

“Remember. He isn’t ours.” Carlos corrects you, but you don’t seem to be listening, merely focusing on the blond in front of you. “But we can still have a bit of fun.”

“Fun, fun…” You smack your lips like a mechanical doll, inching them closer to Leon’s lips through the blankness of your gaze. The warmth of your skin fades as your nails grasp against his neck with aggressive affection, like you can and will break his neck out of his cuteness. Leon flinches his face sideways, holding in his nostrils to not take in your poisoned breath even as you drool over his checks like a beast in heat. Despite how you have taken form of your human body, that’s the end of the resemblance between the real you and this… monster.

An idea forms in Carlos’ head right before you sink your teeth into Leon, and he stops you. “Don’t turn him yet.” Carlos says. “I want to taste him fresh.”

Your lips twist in disappointment, in spite of your intrigue, you are unable to keep your lips filling the entirety of Leon’s neck with your love marks. Under a different kind of circumstances, Leon would absolutely love this from you. But this isn’t you. He doesn’t know if any part of you is still inside.

“So what d’you say, pretty boy? We’ll treat you really well.” Carlos says. Surely, Leon won’t agree to this. Perhaps a swift death will be less agonising than whatever the two of you have in store for him. At the same time, Leon remembers the piece of important evidence in his gear. He can’t afford to die right now—the hope of mankind lies in his pocket.

As Leon pauses to consider his options, his earpiece cries out, and Rebecca blurts from the other side of the call: “Leon! I’m sending a chopper to the rescue. Mike’s on his way. I need you to stall for time before he arrives.”

Leon pretends he never heard the transmission in fear of rousing suspicion. Stall for time, huh? Leon can certainly do that. There is nowhere else out of here. Between him and the exit, it’s roughly fifteen feet. He can run now, but it will not take the two of your combined forces long to catch up. If he plays your stupid games, Leon may have a chance at survival. And so does humanity. Maybe.

“Fine.” Leon says. “Think I can fit it in my schedule.”

“Charmer as always, pretty boy.” Carlos grins, bringing Leon’s chin up to bring him in for a kiss. Carlos purrs into the kiss, and the gentle, tingling vibration sends a gentle gulp down Leon’s throat, almost rising into a moan, but he refrains it—out of pride.

“Fuck off.” Leon utters the word quietly.

“You kinda like this, don’t you?” Even if it’s the truth, Leon will never admit this, especially knowing that he, to some degree, is still the dickhead Carlos he knows. But damn, Carlos can sure kiss well. So much so that Leon is leaning in, increasingly harder to resist the onslaught of warm softness on top of his own. But like hell Leon would ever admit to something like this.

You break away his wrists, unable to wait any longer. Your knees and palms land against the icy floor, eye level to his crotch. Leon swallows, taking in the sight with a mix of reluctance and eagerness.

You smack your wet lips when you pull Leon’s zipper down. Leon swallows halfway, holding his breath instead. This is all part of his ploy to stall time for the rescue, but the sight of you—zombie or not—on your knees in front of him had been the item of his imaginations for years. For a moment, watching your eyelashes flutter underneath him with a drunken expression, like a trick of the light or his imagination, Leon thinks it’s you. He has fantasised about the different scenarios to catch you in this position, but now in person, Leon doesn’t even know where to put his hands.

Noticing this, you let out a youthful giggle. You unbuckle his pants, and the chuckle stops when you see how his dick already tents over his black compression underwear, a ring of precum luring you to have a taste at it.

“Look at you, baby. All ready for me.” You bring down the elastic of his underwear, and it springs up to welcome you.

If you can only use one word to describe Leon’s dick, it’s ‘beautiful’. His long and slender cock is adorned by a few purposeful veins that reaches to the seams at the end of his shirt—it’s the dick of a Greek god. And it looks so fucking tasty. Precum beads over his tip almost immediately, tearing up at the sight of you watching him with such intent, tempting you to soothe it. And so you do, lapping at the slit of his tip, licking a bead off, just for another to immediately pool on the slit, over and over again.

“This is wrong.” Leon says, but his gaze is cemented at the bead on your tongue, disappearing when you pull it back into your mouth.

“Then tell me to stop then.” Leon tries to, his hand placing firm on both of your shoulders. But when he pushes you off, his hand goes limp against his better judgement. “See, you can’t.” You resist with all your strength to slow, licking around the crest of the tip. Leon shivers in Carlos’ kiss, moving his hand to under your chin, wanting to see you clearer in the light.

“Ohh.” Your grin grows wider and wider, staring back with all seeing eyes. “I get it now. You have a crush on me.”

He withdraws his hand too swiftly for an innocent man. “You’re wrong.”

“Your face is giving you away. And so is your cute dick.”

Leon is defensive, immediately, and despite how much he wants to tell you otherwise, it may be too late for those words. Leon’s leg turns into rubber as you breathe onto his shaft, and for a fearful second of weakness, he wants to tell you the biggest secret that he had been holding close to his heart all these years. Leon snaps out of the thought. If he wants to ask you out, he’s going to do it properly, not like this.

“Shut up.” He quips back. “Did I tell you to stop? That mouth should be wide open, sucking me off right now.”

Leon felt a little guilty saying that, but that’s the only thing that can probably stop you from continuing this conversation. And it does work. Leon’s unexpected command immediately pools your underwear as you swallow your defiance into the back of your throat, simply murmur and obey: “Yes, sir.”

For you, so far, you had just been teasing him. Playing with your food before devouring it. But now, you want him all. Without much force from your end, your mouth opens to take his fat cock. The length of him doesn’t deter your cheeks to hollow out to suck him in with much enthusiasm. The warmth of his dick contrasts against the cold dead body, and it makes your whole body tremble in ecstasy.

Slowly at first, you move in front of the first half of his pulsating shaft, in spite of your lower pain tolerance, you don’t wish for your jaw to fall out before you finish your first dessert of the day. His dick curves when he enters, prodding against your soft palate as you widen out your throat to take more of his size. You think to yourself: How wonderful it would feel if he was hitting you from the back, but you are unwilling to let go of his tasty length, salted lightly with his taste.

The words that leave Leon’s mouth contradicts himself, mumbling apologies through series of whimpers, as if he was speaking to you, the real you, and not whoever you had become in the crossfire of Arias’ experiment, until an interruption by a gruff voice that sets you back to cruel reality where you are already gone.

“Baby… Let me have some fun too.” Carlos touches your waist, guiding your hips to lift into the air and feet to stand, all whilst your mouth is still occupied with another man’s sex. You can’t see what goes on behind you, only hearing the haste shuffling and the clink of a belt unbuckling and zips forcing open. Its tip meeting at the end of you, preparing.

“God, you’re drippin’ wet.” Realisation sets in that your juice is running down both of your thighs generously, air conditioning blowing on them and making your legs cold. Your underwear has been sticking against your legs since you first saw Leon’s dick, coming in your pants through the eagerness of it all without noticing it.

Carlos guides your underwear off your pathetic self, which you’re grateful for having the sticky fabric leave your body and let your wetness flow freely without obstructions. Carlos runs two fingers along the stripe of your cunt. “So swollen… You like being looked at, don’t you?” You shiver when the pad of his finger rests a little too long on the head of your clit, pressing it like a button that instantly discharges your lovely juices on Carlos’ palm. He lubricates his other finger with it, then dips two fingers inside of you, finding it already loose and ready. Despite the stickiness, Carlos slurps at his dripping finger like melted ice cream, savouring every bit of your taste.

“Just like how I imagined it…” He corrects himself. “No, even better.”

The virus has coursed through your body rapidly, and every second your sexuality is unsatisfied it throbs a sharp pain straight into your gut. You can imagine it must be the same for Carlos too, using up his entire willpower not to thrust into you raw and to relief some of that pain off his body.

As you draw your lips out of Leon’s cock, relaxing against his tip, you ram yourself backwards. Your cunt swallows the entirety of Carlos’ warmness and girth, moaning a deep, lusted sigh. Carlos groans too, low and heavy, taken aback by your forwardness.

“God… Fuckin’ hell…” Carlos adjusts himself; his hands grabbing a handful of your ass, squeezing it so tight it fills out his fingers. He fucks you doggy style, with not much reservations from his part either. Your eyes roll back at the impact, mouth ajar with Leon’s cock in your mouth. Jealousy gets the better of Leon, and with a heaved pump, he thrusts himself right into your gaping mouth, hitting against the back of your throat that triggers a gag reflex in you. A blend of your saliva and Leon’s precum rolls down your jaw, making a satisfied response that is incomprehensible from the way Leon fucks your mouth while glaring at his competition.

“Oh, so that’s how it’s gonna be, pretty boy?” Carlos smiles at Leon in return, accepting the challenge, thrusting you into your cunt faster and harder than ever before, determined to make sure you moan the hardest when he fucks into you.

“Get to work, baby.” Through your blurry haze, it becomes harder to tell who is speaking, even if their voices sound distinctively different. So you obey the voice anyway—satisfying both by slurping Leon’s dick faster, while simultaneously arching your back to help Carlos reach further inside of you. It gets messy, really messy as the obscenity of you gets fucked on both ends permeate through the empty laboratory.

“Baby, you can take a bit more than this, can’t you?” Leon pats your head, and you nod eagerly.

You have already taken his entire length all the way to the base, what more can he mean? But Leon finds a way to make you feel even better by shoving himself even deeper down your throat. Your jaw unhinges to accommodate his force, his balls pressed firm onto your chin. Fear settles for a second before realising there is no pain, and you can take him even deeper with your jaw unhinged like this. You reposition yourself, and his dick prods further at the back of your throat, then down your windpipe, stretching the narrow tube wide open. His tip pokes out of the skin, outlining his tip onto your throat like a forbidden adam’s apple.

“That’s it, good work. You can drink my cum too, right? You kinda have to now.”

Leon had never felt anything like this before. It was phenomenal, downright terrifying how much he enjoys it. Something he thinks isn’t possible—and it shouldn’t have been—but you have outweigh his expectations once again. That doesn’t mean he did not hesitate at first, especially when he sees how the tears run down lightly along your cheek, and your jaw twitching with a burning sensation that weighs at your throat. Your eyes meet his with a desperate gaze, so fucking dirty with how you plead for him to cum with your eyes alone.

So he fucks into your face one last time, and the white sticky goodness comes undone in your throat. Even if it doesn’t hurt, it is uncomfortable for your windpipe to be stuffed with hot, thick cum that chokes you against his limp dick.

Carlos can feel you tightening up fast, more stickiness within as Leon groans out a distressed howl, and your torso shudders heavily again. He knows you had just came with him inside, ripples and ripples of pleasure taking control of your body. He fucks your cunt into your overstimulation as the pleasure continues to hit you in waves from your behind.

“Oohh baby. You look so fuckin’ hot right now, baby.” His hand grasps your cheeks tightly, leaving behind a firm handprint on your luscious booty. “You want me to fuck a baby into you, huh?” Behind you, Carlos lets out a growling moan, the soft tendrils falling over Carlos’ face as you clench your insides and threaten to keep you there, letting your walls ride against the sex.

“I got a big load coming. Can you handle it?” You nod again and again. Even if you already came once, it’s not enough. You want more.

Carlos races to the edge of bliss, and he comes so unexpectedly, thinking he still has a bit longer. But nevertheless, Carlos watches his tip release thick white strings into your cunt, then plugs it back far inside of you as your second release crashes on top of your first.

“The perfect fucking cumdump.” are Carlos’ final words as he draws himself out, plopping his weight against your back in exhaustion.

With your body stuffed full, you lie in the pool of your own pleasure, liquids flowing into each other. Carlos huffs his chest, burying his chest into your back, losing sight of Leon in their post orgasms. Your neck exposes upwards to the sky, pulsing to Leon’s attention. The three of you remain there for a while, every breath a struggle to catch up with the intensity of the aftermath.

Then, Leon drops his head—his eyes catch sight of the tactical gear he is wearing. His combat knife reflects the fluorescent lights in its sheath at his breast, then Leon looks back at the two of you, paying himself no mind. It’s an opening. If he hits you on the crook of your neck at the top of your spine, it may not be fatal, but it will allow a moment of paralysis, just enough for him to break free and flee to safety.

Leon slows his hand as he reaches for the knife, not to startle either you or Carlos. You are oblivious, choking up his cum and coughing it onto the floor. His fingers reach the hilt now, curling along it as draws the knife out of the sheath slowly. And with a deep breath, Leon plunges the knife down, aiming straight into the back of your neck. It never made it that far. The blade is caught by a rough hand.

“What’re you doing?” Carlos questions as his eyes land on Leon, perhaps giving him the benefit of the doubt. But it’s no mistake what Leon’s intentions are with how the knife is maimed towards your head. “You know, I can see your reflection on the floor, right?” Carlos’ expression turns dark, crooking into a displeased frown that warns Leon, once again, that his attempts are fruitless. The sharp end runs through his fingers, and he lets the blood drip down his palm. “Such a bad boy.”

Carlos yanks the weapon away from Leon, spinning the hilt in the air, and catches it securely between his bloodied palm. He rounds one arm around Leon’s chest, and the other hand lining the blade parallel against Leon’s neck. “If you want to live, do as I say.”

Leon knows better than to struggle against a man holding a weapon to his neck. He does as Carlos says, backing himself into the isolated room under Carlos’ guidance, pushing the door with the broken hinge aside as they enter. Carlos kicks the dead body away from the bed, and it lolls limply to the other side of the room.

“Lie on the bed.” Carlos demands and Leon obeys, climbing on top of the medical bed. The texture of the mattress resembles weak foam when Leon drops his weight on top.

Leon’s wrists are forced to jerk backwards before the top of his head. He winces at the touch of cold metal circles around his left wrist, and it clicks. The chain goes around the metal headframe, and Carlos repeats the same on Leon’s right wrist, securing tight with finality. Leon watches you and Carlos tower over him, the fury of two disappointed parents overseeing him. Leon struggles his arm free, but he recoils when the chains tug him back.

Is this the end for Leon…?

Clothes start to come off; Carlos strips off every remaining fabric and gear on him, and you follow too. Leon’s clothing—cuffed against the bed had to be ripped off his body, allowing witness to the most intimate parts of their bodies. Carlos makes the first move—not giving Leon a moment to breathe when he jumps on top of Leon’s figure, locking his splayed body down. He struggles underneath, wiggling and kicking Carlos off in desperation, but he’s too strong.

“Don't resist, Leon. It’ll hurt more if you do.” There’s a void of emotion in Carlos’ words, and the speed of a cheetah as he plunges his sharp teeth into Leon’s reddened neck, marked with your loving insanity. As he leans down, Leon can see the veins around his eyes bulging and pounding like a heartbeat. Fear takes over Leon; he desperately wrestles Carlos off him as a last ray of hope. But all of it turns futile when Carlos manages to bite into a bit of that skin—and a bit of that skin is all the venom needs to take over the host, contaminating his blood, his cells, with the dreaded disease.

“Fuck!” Leon yells from the bottom of his lungs, and the part where his teeth lands burns, even if it doesn’t bleed furiously. The entirety of his left arm is turning numb, and that feeling spreads across his body, trying to reach his heart and mind, and clouds away his sight. It reaches further into Leon’s system, and he coughs out blood from the corner of his mouth.

“Hang in there, pretty boy. It’ll feel good very soon.” Leon hurls a loud scream at Carlos. “Here, I’ll help you take the pain away.”

Carlos strokes himself, still lubricated from your juices, and so is Leon. That makes things easier for Carlos to let the crest of his dick meets at Leon’s base, running it up the length of the slender shaft. Leon flinches, holding back a displeased yet relishing whimper that surprises Carlos, and he wants to hear more of that cute sound.

“Such a pretty boy with a pretty dick, Leon.” Carlos whispers into his ear, their tips circle each other a few more times, and it does help Leon subside the pain, but the lack of friction isn’t enough, almost unbearable as the virus attacks his body.

Leon’s dick twitches in agony, and he whimpers once more. Carlos whistles with delight. “You want more, pretty boy?”

“Only if you stop talking so much shit, Oliveira.” Leon uses whatever movement that isn’t restrained by the cuffs to urge himself closer to the fat, girthy cock. Carlos’ dick taunts him into submission, and Leon does not like Carlos having so much power over him.

“That works with me.” Carlos raises his eyebrows, licking his bottom lip with a lust-laden expression. He brings both cocks together, rubbing them parallel against each other’s shafts and jerks it up and down. Carlos can feel his dick grinds along Leon’s vein, and their precums start to overflow all over, making the duo moan in unison.

Seeing them dripping onto each other makes you feel left out. You have been fingering yourself against the wall this entire time, but your wrists turn sore, and the stimulation isn’t enough anymore. You need more. Carlos sees you through the corner of his peripheral, and he gestures you to join them, squishing around to make room for you in the middle.

You heave on top of the bed, with Leon feeling most of the weight at the bottom. The metal hinges scratch hard against the frame with its abrupt impact, probably exceeding the weight limit. But that’s not on the list of your priorities right now. If the bed falls apart from fucking too hard, then so be it.

You grind along both of their lengths, having them fuck you between your folds. The three of you continue to move against each other, rubbing, grinding with fervour to relish in the friction on each of your sensitive parts. Every time one of the tips brush your clit, your cunt drips wet and coats their dick with your juice.

After their dicks have been lubricated, the boys lean back so their dick points the sky to receive you inside of them. Taking turns, you lower yourself onto Leon and Carlos’ lengths one at a time, instantly adapting around each of their length and girth with a harsh whine, bouncing from one dick to the other.

But Leon doesn’t want to share you at all. When you plunge down onto him, he uses this opportunity to thrust into you from below over and over until you suck him in desperately, each thrust relieving a bit of pain from his and your gut. You let him—unwilling to withdraw yourself from easy pleasure.

Carlos’ tip rubs against the gap between Leon’s dick and your cunt. “Hey, make some room for me.”

“Why’re you squeezing in here? Use the other hole.” Leon takes up more space inside of your cunt out of spite.

“And let you have all the fun, pretty boy? I don’t think so.”

“C’mon. Help us out.” Carlos presses a warm pad of finger onto the skin of your belly, and that urges you to reposition yourself. You adjust so Leon lays closer to your clit, leaving Carlos enough room to enter from the other end. “That’s it, baby. You really want us to fuck you in the same hole, huh? That’s how cock hungry you are?”

“I… Fuck… Yes, please...” Whatever dignity remains in you is gone now, excited by the idea of having your guts penetrated by two fat dicks; carnal needs turns into blind desperation.

“As you wish, baby.” Carlos moans, lining his dick in your pussy right above Leon’s, and the crest of Carlos’ tip crawls into your cunt with much strain and patience.

“It's not going to fit, Oliveira. You’re too fuckin’ big. Get off.” Leon grumbles.

Carlos glares at Leon to stop whining, then soothes your back with a gentle press to encourage you more. “You can do this, baby. You'll make it fit, won't you?” Another inch of Carlos slides inside of you, and you howl in slow agonised enjoyment. Both of them together is too much, even for you. The pleasure swoons into you, flushing your skin a colder red as your pussy throbs open some more.

Half of Carlos’ fat cock slides inside of you now, almost making it all the way. A wave of overwhelming anguish surges to your stretched out entrance, and the ghastly sound behind your throat wants to cry out loud. Instead, you chew on your tongue, hard, bursting the taste of your blood onto your palate.

That is when Leon drops his voice to a whisper for your ears only: “Hey, don’t hurt yourself. Bite onto my hand if you need.”

Even after everything that has happened, Leon only ever offers you his kindness. You appreciate the sentiment, a bit touched. Under his sweet encouragement and almost chewing off half of Leon’s arm, you gape your hole wider. Carlos’ arm tenses as he fucks his entire cock in with one final push, filling every crevice of your cunt with their shapes bent against your walls.

“Puta merda… It’s so tight in here.” Carlos breath chokes in the back of his throat, but he’s smiling.

“No shit, Oliveira. Your fault for forcing yourself in.” Leon kicks Carlos in the thigh with his free foot that’s not buried under the pressure.

Carlos moves first, stretching you out, and Leon groans at the back and forth friction against Carlos’ pulsating dick. Your breath is ragged, feeling both dicks cramped inside the tiny hole, until Carlos utters: “Gonna fuck both our babies into you.”

Your breath quickens in unruly speed as they start to move, taking turns thrusting inside at varying speeds and aptitude, not allowing your pussy even a moment of rest. Leon pulls back when Carlos forcefully thrusts in, then it reverses with Leon’s length curving up ever so perfectly to read your g-spot, fucking against your sensitive womb so deeply as the tip indents at the skin of your belly with every heaved thrust. Sometimes they thrust in at the same time, but most times, they like to make it distinct which dick is fucking you.

It's this competition they have going, to see who can make you moan the loudest. And right now, there is no clear winner. The cockiness in Leon and Carlos dies out as the pleasure renders them unable to speak, communicating their pleasure solely through a chorus of pleasured outcries, and you are the main vocalist.

The tip of their dicks throb inside of you; Leon and Carlos sensing that they are both close. Tossing each other a raised eyebrow, they scheme something with their eyes alone. They nod in sync—one slow nod, two slow nods, and on third—Leon and Carlos explodes their pent up nut inside of you, stuffing you with what feels like almost endless shoots of cum until it rims your cunt with white, overfilling, and eventually bursting out from within you like a water fountain from the other end, gushing your hole so full your belly grows almost double size.

As Leon releases himself into you, his vision suddenly turns hazy as nausea washes over him from the sheer ecstasy of it all. Until eventually, his sight falls into darkness.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

Leon wakes to the voice of someone mumbling the four-word ritual over and over. His bareness is sticky, sweating into the mattress of the bed. Moving his hands, he remembers they are still cuffed against the bed frame. Leon looks above him to find the cuff rusty on the chains, and he may be able to break them if he uses a bit of force. Leon tugs at the chain over and over till his delicate wrists are scratched and bleeding. He brings down the chain harshly one more time, and it finally breaks apart.

Leon rises from the bed, examining the scene. You and Carlos are not with him in the room—where have they gone? That same tune rings inside his head once more, singing in shrieking calmness.

Tick, tock, tick, tock. His life seconds numbering, Tick, tock, tick. It stopped short, never to go again.

Leon falls to the floor. The throbbing pain against his forehead upsets him further, and Leon recalls the events of what happened, and remembers—that he’s no longer human. But for whatever reason, he can still think for himself. Through the corner of his eye, he catches something stuck between the metal post of the bed.

Leon’s guts urge him to reach for it. And he does, retrieving a small cylinder from the dusty metal, and opens his palm to find a syringe. It labels ‘S’ in faded text. He remembers seeing something similar in the case, and there was a missing syringe inside. Could this be what he was looking for?

There’s not much time left, as the voices in his head grow louder and louder, deafening his thoughts out and pushing his conscience further behind his mind. Without hesitation, Leon removes the cap and injects it in himself.

The sharp end pierces into Leon’s skin, a harsh sting floods into his body, then the pain and the song fades away like a distant memory. All the pain hits him at once—his injured neck, half-eaten palm, the soreness of his wrists tied up against the frame for what seems like forever, even the tip of his dick is burning from the energetic activities from today.

Regardless, there is no time for self pity. Leon rummages through his gear for his employee card, and rushes back to the main laboratory in front of the computer. He plops himself on the swivel office chair as the taps the ID on the scanner, and it beeps green, logging in successfully.

There are almost every document Leon needs here. Information about Prototype A and Prototype S, its composition and construction, research material, all of it. Prototype S? Leon hasn’t heard this before, not even in the confidential documents Rebecca provided at the start of the mission.

“Rebecca, come in.” Leon calls into his earpiece, but he is met with fuzz and cracked static. The signal is jammed. But it doesn’t matter—most importantly, Leon needs to send all this data back to Rebecca ASAP.

Leon removes his watch to place it on the RFID scanner, moving all the files into his watch that will synchronise the documents to Rebecca’s laboratory. Leon watches the upload percentage, fifty percent… sixty… seventy percent. When the bar hits seventy-five, the monitor fades to black.

What? Leon clicks at the screen a few times but it’s unresponsive. He spins backwards from his chair, clicking on the solitary red button to boot the system. There is no light. The power cord had been pulled out from behind. And the other end of the wire meets you with a familiar face Leon had seen many times from the wanted posters.

“Agent Kennedy.” Glenn Arias. Leon isn’t expecting Arias to be so calm, so weighed down by age.

Arias holds up an emblem hanging by a long gold chain, pendulating it in front of him. There’s a singular clock hand on it, ticking down the seconds. What on earth is that symbol? Leon doesn’t realise this then, but it shares the same sigil as the antique clockface.

Whatever Arias is trying to do with this technique—it does not work for Leon as he lunges forward. Arias resorts into drawing his pistol, unloading his rounds at Leon’s head. Leon ducks in response, spinning the office chair, and the bullets fire into the backrest, missing Leon completely. Arias swaps out his magazine, and this gives Leon just enough opening to swing a side kick with the momentum, his heel forcing the pistol off Arias’ hand.

The weapon goes flying, landing on the bleached tiles with a harsh clang. It’s victory for Leon. He can arrest Arias here and now, and end the misery for the millions who have suffered through his schemes. That is, until, a quickened whisk of air follows Leon from behind, its strong force grasping him on his neck through a familiar domineering grip.

“Son of a bitch.” Leon winces, struggling to keep his eyes open as he watches Carlos clench his suffocating hands around Leon’s neck. You surface right behind him, waiting for your orders as you watch indifferently at Leon’s suffering. The orbs in your eyes are pitch black now with a reddening centre, stripping away whatever natural colour and glaze that used to look so pretty.

“Good job, the two of you.” Arias dangles the chain again; you and Carlos dart your gaze onto the strange symbol, mouthing the familiar words in silence: Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

Arias raises a graceful finger and brings it down. Carlos strikes Leon towards the floor. A bone or two breaks somewhere within him. His throat stings and burns. Leon tries to sit up, but the pain is too overwhelming for him to stand. Arias presses his black aniline leather shoes against the back of Leon’s neck, holding him there, crushing that pretty little neck of his if Leon even dares to move.

“Seems like you really enjoyed yourself, Agent Kennedy. Might have to charge you for this one.” Arias’ expression tries to be placid, but still, it cannot hide the amusement in his face.

Through strangled breath, Leon utters. “How do you know my name?”

“You work for the government, don’t you?” Arias’ face twists into disgust, like he just ate a whole lemon. “Leon S. Kennedy.” He lets the name roll off his tongue. There is a heavy pause as Arias seems to be recalling something. “I hate guys like you who think they’re always right.”

“And the guy who makes bioweapons is better?” Leon scoffs in disbelief, almost uncontrollably, and it causes the burn in his throat to flare up. “T-Talk about hypocritical.”

“I never claim to be better. Only smarter.” He toys with the emblem skilfully between two fingers, and stops the spin halfway.

“You should have been executed.” Leon growls.

“And somehow fate is on my side. Yet again.” Arias retrieves Leon’s watch from the scanner, and pockets it along with his gold chain. Arias turns the other way, walking towards the exit, visibly bored. He was hoping to have a bit more fun with Leon. But now, the game is over before it even began.

“T-Th-They’re coming f-for you.” Leon’s cracked voice grates against the background. Arias immediately stops in his tracks, turning his neck to Leon without moving the rest of his body.

“Who’s coming?” Aria’s voice is quiet yet demanding.

Leon tries to speak, but the words escape him through a weakened, quiet voice, barely audible. Arias stomps back to him, planting his leg back onto Leon, cleaning the dirt on his sole onto his bare neck. “Talk. Now.”

Leon grins, biting back blood inside of his mouth. He doesn’t say anything.

“TELL ME.” Arias’ eyes burn a deeper red, a rage blazing through the torch in his eyes and seethes out of his ears. You and Carlos gets into position, fully intending to do whatever it takes to make Leon talk. Arias waves them away. “You better fucking tell me right now.”

Leon responds with a tight-lipped smile, still strained from his injuries.

Arias resists himself from punching the smugness out of Leon, stroking at his wedding ring instead. It calms him immediately to feel the familiar mineral around his finger, knowing that it means more to him to sully the vows of his love with the blood of someone as pathetic as Leon. Arias closes his eyes to recollect himself in a deep breath. When he opens them, a smile hangs on his face like nothing happened.

“Doesn’t matter. You have already lost.”

“You should be. He’s a tough fella. Killed so many villains like you.” Leon spits on Arias’ shiny shoes, testing Arias’ composure to the limits. “And he’ll take you down, and that stupid empire of yours.”

Arias’ fists clenches fully in an instant, so hard it bleeds right through his palms. Brows furrowing so hard it comically pops out his veins. He finally cracks, feet pressing down so hard that Leon groans and chokes. But even so close to his death, Leon looks arrogant in Arias’ perspective.

Letting this man die so easily? Not a chance.

And with newfound determination to prolong his agony, Arias dangles the chain in front of you and Carlos, murmuring a final discontented order:

“Take him to the cage.”

thanks for reading! come check out my other works. —yours truly, rose. PORTUGUESE TRANSLATION: (thank you @navstuffs ilysm) Puta merda = Fucking shit Porra = Fuck Que pescoço bonito = Such a beautiful neck kissing @scar-crossedlvrs for the beta read, my carlos specialist @navstuffs, for helping me with the portuguese! and @j3llyd0nut for keeping me sane and not distracted by jjk thirsts through discord calls!! please check them out i love them so so much!!!! taglist (open): @j3llyd0nut @ovaryacted @daydreamrot @madcap-riflette @access--granted @obsolescent @briermelli @secretiveauthor @ghosty-frog @navstuffs @slowcryinginthedark @rentaldarling @lesbntired @redvleanli @vinsiliors @whoisgami @gaylorvader @wxwieeee @eddsthemunson © roseglazedlens — please do not repost, plagiarise, or feed to ai.

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zoandreez · 10 months

Text

i know, i read her diary ┊ ➶ ｡˚ 　　° neteyam drabble

pairing: neteyam x metkayina!reader

summary: the tulkun have returned! after a quick journaling session you ran out to see your soul sister once again, not bothering to hide your journal. tuk stumbles upon it, and sees a certain someones name.

word count: 1.2k

warnings: fluff

a/n: first five paragraphs is a diary entry if you didn't catch that !!

"it had been about three and a half months since the suli family came to awa'altu for uturu, or 'a sanctuary for my family,' as toruk makto called it. excluding him and his mate, there were four of them.

"tuk, the youngest. she is a sweetheart, and she reminds me so much of tsireya when she was younger. i love catering to her like an older sister, making rock bracelets and waist beads with her, and helping her attach memories to her songcord, like her ilu's tooth, and the first shell she saw when she landed in awa'altu for the first time.

"lo'ak, the younger brother. he was a troublemaker, but had a kind soul. he is misunderstood, and i can see that. i wish ao'nung with stop picking on him, but he admits it's just an older brother instinct. he respects lo'ak, just finds his "freakish features" (earned a smack from tsireya) mockable.

"kiri, the older sister. i adore kiri, she adores me. she was an insanely quick learner, and was the first one of the four to master ilu riding. she loves the ocean as much as i do, and will go swimming with me when the ocean was cool at night to see the bioluminescence during eclipse. me, her, tsireya, and tuk made an unstoppable group.

"lastly, neteyam, the oldest brother. i like neteyam. not in the way i like the other three, no. i like.. neteyam. at least i think so. i like his beads at the ends of his braids, and that they shake every time he moves. i like his gentleman mannerism, and that he never overstepped or showed disrespect when me or tsireya was teaching him the way of water. he was pretty, even if he had a thin tail and long skinny limbs different to me. he showed me his banshee one day, and it was beautiful. just like him. i can talk to him about anything. except for this. he won't know about this. i don't think i'll ever tell him how i enjoy the spots on his face and how they frame his eyes, or the way his tail sways when he hears something funny, or that"

you stopped for a moment, shaking out your hand from consistent writing. and almost as if it was perfect timing, tsireya popped her head in the marui. "sister! the tulkun have returned!"

you perked your head at the comment, and immediately stood up. you hadn't seen your soul sister in forever. similar to your mother's soul sister, r'oa, your soul sister was also a composer of songs. you couldn't wait to hear what she had for you today.

you walked out the marui, yipping for your ilu. before you got on, you heard the familiar shout. "what's going on?" neteyam said to you. before you could answer, tsireya came from her circle of the island.

"the tulkuns have returned! our brothers and sisters are back!" she said, resulting in many yips and dives into the water. you gestured for neteyam to follow you, and smiled as you went under the water.

you dove and swam past many reuniting soul ties, before you laid eyes on your sister. you swam up to her, eagerly waving. "hello, my love!" you signed to your tulkun. "my sister. how have you been?"

"i've been great. i met a boy," you signed shyly.

"really? i have found a mate as well," your tulkun wailed, squinting as a sign of happiness.

you turned and saw neteyam, before bringing him over.

"this is neteyam," you signed, as he waved at your sister. "he doesn't know, though." you giggled.

"know what?" he signed back. you exchanged a glance with your tulkun before shrugging, and spinning with her. he watched you as you elegantly extended your body, aligning yourself with your soul sister's effortlessly. he smiled at your eagerness to be with her once again. you climbed on her back, and brought neteyam to her fin as she sped in the water. you enjoyed her fast swimming, and wanted him to experience that too.

eventually, eclipse neared. you closed your journal of your writing for the day, telling it all about how neteyam met your soul sister. you left for supper in the main pod, as tsireya told you about her soul sister's gossip.

walking to your marui after dinner, you noticed something was off. it took you a while, but it hit you.

your journal was missing.

you went straight to tsireya, who had no clue where it went. ao'nung? no clue you even had a journal. kiri hadn't seen it. neither had ronal. lo'ak was.. awfully quiet.

"lo'ak.."

"....tukhasit."

"WHAT?"

"i saw her reading something earlier when i came back from seeing payakan. while dad was cursing me out, she ran out to neteyam. so he probably has it."

your face flushed. the one person you wouldn't want to see it has probably saw it. and that was bad. calmly, you went to his room in the sully's marui. nearing it, you didn't want to be too direct, so you hid under it. treading water, you listened through the netted floors as he spoke.

"i don't know what she meant by 'he doesn't know.' i don't think she meant having a crush on me, although i wish she did." you froze. your heart was the only thing moving at this point, fluttering at his words. neteyam liked you?

"don't worry. she likes your skinny tail and fancy beads. i know, i read her diary." the familiar voice hit you. tuk? you froze as you listened. you would have been upset, but he felt the same way.

"you did?"

"mhm!" she cleared her throat before you heard pages rustling. you froze. she still has it? you had to compose your laughter as she tried her best impression of you.

"today, my soul sister met neteyam. we spoke all about how i liked him, but it was a close call. i saw him watching, so i brought him over. im not sure if he saw what i was saying about him, but he doesn't know much of the sign language anyways.

"she took the two of us for a ride. i loved hearing his laughs, and me and her exchanged a warm feeling. i think she likes neteyam too. hopefully not in the way i do. i'll elaborate later, after supper. i have got to hear what tsireya's soul sister said about lo'ak."

she slammed the book shut, and sighed. "there you have it!"

"wow.. she really likes me?" neteyam said, taking it in for a moment.

"in her words exactly, 'at least i think so.'"

"so we're reading diaries now?" you said, appearing from behind the wall. tuk shrieked, and you chased her along the beach playfully. you caught up to her and scooped her up. "you're lucky he likes me back, you'd be dead."

"do i like you?" neteyam said, popping up behind you. you dropped tuk from the sudden voice.

"shit. sorry, tuk! (i'm alright!)" you turned to neteyam. "i dont know, do you?"

"yeah, i do." he said, inching closer. your body heated up as he leaned to your ear to whisper something. "at least i think so." he grinned before turning away and leaving. you stood there for a moment, stunned.

"okay girl, go get some!" you heard tuk say, mouth stuffed with sand from when she was dropped.

"we have got to get you away from lo'ak and his slang."

a/n: this is something light, only because idk what my next part of my ao'nung series will be. i might just drop hcs and stuff like this for a while

#neteyam x reader #neteyam te suli tsyeyk'itan #neteyam te suli tsyeyk'itan x reader #avatar #avatar the way of water #neteyam x metkayina!reader

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captainkirkk · 4 months

Text

✩ WEEKLY FIC ROUND-UP ✩

All the fics I’ve read and really enjoyed in the past week-ish. Reminder: This list features any and all ratings and themes. Please look at tags and warnings on ao3 before reading.

Shadowhunters

Enthrallment by smilebackwards

It does look a little bad, Parmela thinks, looking at it from outside. As more specialists had been called in for consultation, they’d decamped to one of the larger conference rooms—eschewing attendance at A, B, AB, & O: The Impact of Blood Type on Non Subject Specific Blood Magic, because this was vastly more interesting and potentially important—and there are a round dozen high-level warlocks clustered around Alec, poking at him with magic.

Or: Alec attends the Magical Inventions and Advances convention in hopes of recruiting warlocks for another Downworld Cabinet. The warlocks, however, are more interested—and concerned—by the blue magical aura following Alec around.

temporal fraternity by envysparkler

Damian clears his throat. “I require your assistance.”

The words come out easier with the benefit of practice and the knowledge that no one will remember them tomorrow. Today. Tomorrow-today.

The Umbrella Academy

cut me open and i still bleed red by aletterinthenameofsanity

Part 1 of the odds were never in our favor

Ben knows his fellow mentors pretty well, for how long he's spent here, behind the screens of the Games, watching as his tributes die.

Allison, from District One, has a way with the sponsors. Just a word placed here or there, stealthily dropped into conversation, and she can get her tributes the shit they need.

In his time as a Mentor, Klaus has developed a habit of drinking to get through the Games, and through the rest of his life, really- anything to avoid the truth of what's happening, the ghosts of the children he and Ben have sent to their deaths.

Very few people remember what Five’s name was before the Games. Caesar Flickerman and the Gamemakers nicknamed him that when he took out the entire Career Pack on his second day in the Arena.

Vanya’s the newest Mentor, the victor of the Seventy-Third Hunger Games.

Diego’s one of Ben’s oldest not-quite friends. A Victor from District Ten, he’d gone into the Games knowing how to kill an animal.

All the other Mentors Ben knows try never to get attached. Luther, on the other hand, doesn't forget a single name.

(A story of seven victors of the Hunger Games and the lives they live as Mentors.)

Danny Phantom

The Promised Land by redrobin1989

Danny Fenton has been running for years, from his abusive parents, from Vlad's experiments, from his freakish powers. He expected to be running his whole life until he found his way to a small town that felt like the home he'd never had.

M!ik

Study Dates Are Not Real Dates by StormySteady

A very important exam is coming up, and Asmodeus is trying his hardest to get Iruma and Clara to study for it. But his soulmates have other ideas.

Star Wars

Starlight, In All Its Forms by Soap_And_Lye

When Luke was eight, he was taken from his home on Tatooine and delivered into the hands of the emperor and his right hand.

When Luke was sixteen, he overheard the emperor's plans to steal a tiny Force sensitive child and saves him first, before being caught and dragged back to his masters' keeping.

When Luke was eighteen, he finds that same child on Gideon's cruiser, and spares both him and his family, including a silver clad Mandalorian.

And when Luke was twenty-four, he is captured by the Rebellion (captured or did he just let it happen? Really up for debate) and secretly sent as a prisoner to Mandalore, where Mand'alor Din Djarin rebuilds his planet and raises his son.

And the rest was history. Or the beginning.

Clone Wars

will you be an anarchist with me? by a_alene

Once the Kenobi floodgates are opened, they cannot be closed. Cody has apparently been keeping an itemized list of disagreements, and he is determined to tell Rex each and every one of them.

Kenobi refuses to listen to Cody’s input. Kenobi throws himself into battle with no regard for previously established battle plans. Kenobi uses the Force so recklessly and obviously that every undercover assignment is blown within the first few minutes. Kenobi is a hypocrite who berates Cody for sidestepping protocol, but flouts it himself at every opportunity.

CT-7567: bet you wish you had skywalker now

CC-2224: I wish for nothing but the cold embrace of space

Right. And he says Kenobi’s dramatic.

(Marshal Commander Cody and High General Obi-Wan Kenobi of the 212th cannot stand each other. Rex doesn't know why this is his problem.)

poetry is what you find (in the dirt in the corner) by fivecenturiesverse

(In which Cody becomes an anonymous poet after the war and his brothers find out.)

Rex launches forwards immediately and so does Bly, because he can admit to himself that he likes gifts. He likes gifts a whole lot more than Cody and Wolffe, anyway, who both act like martyrs who don’t need any material love. “Poetry, vod?” Bly asks, incredulous. “Cody’s right, you are going soft.”

“It’s by a clone,” Fox says, defensively, “it’s quite good, actually. For poetry. It made Sergeant Hound cry at the service.

#happy monday everyone xx #weekly fic round up #fic recs #my posts #sw recs #shadowhunters recs #m!ik recs #dp recs #tua recs #dc recs #misc recs #7 different fandoms on this round up and it doesn't even capture all the different fandoms i've been reading #just the ones containing fics i want to rec #goddamn

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hp-hcs · 7 months

Text

😜💖 friendship is magic 😌✨ (Chapter Four of The Doll) — slytherin boys x gn! ‘the boy’ (2016)! reader

❕new addition of Regulus Black❕

tws: dolls, obviously; reader referred to as ‘it’ (presumed inanimate); mentions of past child character death(s); mentions of a house fire—implied arson; violence; & murder

based entirely off of the 2016 film ‘the boy’. just slow plot shit this chapter, i’m afraid

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Determined to find the source of the leak, Blaise tromps back out to the hall to find wherever the L/Ns stashed their pole hook to open the attic. Tucked away in a dusty corner is where Blaise finds it, and he carries it back into Y/N’s room with a pleased expression.

This was going to be a piece of cake. If Blaise could find the leak and patch it up, maybe the L/Ns would put in a good word with the courts and shorten their sentences. Or his, anyway.

Slowly raising the pole hook up towards the ring handing from the attic ladder, Blaise missed multiple times, the ring bouncing off of the hook.

“Hey.”

“Holy fucking-” Blaise startles and drops the pole hook, taking a step back. The figure standing in the doorway of Y/N’s room waves awkwardly.

“Sorry- I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m Regulus? Er- Regulus Black? I’m the grocery boy for the L/Ns.” He trails off, motioning to the milk crate he held against one hip that was practically overflowing with produce and wrapped butcher’s packages.

“Oh! Yes, yeah, sorry. Uh, house just has me on edge is all,” Blaise rubs the back of his neck in embarrassment. “Do you need help with the groceries?”

Regulus’ eyebrows raise and he smiles. “That would be fantastic, actually,” he turns on his heel, already starting down the stairs.

Blaise has to jog to catch up, following the spry boy ahead of him down to the kitchen. Regulus is maybe a year younger than him, but has far too much energy for five in the morning.

“So why are you lot here? The L/Ns aren’t exactly known for their warmth and welcoming-ness. If you’ll excuse my bluntness, they don’t really have a propensity for entertaining guests.”

“They’re on vacation. Uh, we’re here as part of a…community service punishment,” he winces as he skates around the truth.

“Ah, nice,” Regulus seems unruffled as he puts away a carton of eggs. “What are they making you do? House-sitting?”

“Uh, babysitting.”

Regulus hums. “Ah, really? They didn’t take Y/N with them? That’s pretty surprising.”

Blaise startles. “Please tell me you don’t also think it’s…”

“Alive? ‘Course not. But it’s better to just humor them. Mrs. L/N gets awfully upset if you mention anything about it being inanimate, and this job pays too well for me to want to piss off my employers.”

Blaise laughs. “That’s fair. So…was there really an Y/N? Like, an actual one?”

Regulus nods, handing him a stack of cans and motioning towards the cabinet they belonged in. “Mhm. We were never allowed to play with them when we were kids. My older brother always called them freakish. And Mr. L/N only ever described them—the one time I asked, back when I very first started working for them—as odd.”

Blaise pauses halfway through stacking apples in the fruit bowl. “You knew them? Like, you were the same age?”

“They were a year or two older than me, but yeah,” Regulus accepts the mug of coffee Blaise offers with a quiet thanks, sitting down with him at the kitchen table.

“Anyway, story goes that they were playing out in the woods with Brahms—he was their only friend, that I know of—and they got in an argument or something… Mr. Heelshire—that’s Brahms’ dad—found ‘im by the river, skull all smashed up. The police chief wanted to question Y/N, you know, just to cover all the bases, but nobody could find ‘em and then-”

Regulus makes a fwoosh noise, setting down his mug to spread his hands out as if to imitate an dramatic explosion.

“Boom! The L/Ns’ house completely burned down. The only person inside? Y/N L/N.”

Regulus takes a sip of his coffee before speaking again. “Look, I’m not saying they’re connected, but…”

Blaise shivers, cracking his knuckles anxiously. “How long ago was this?”

“Oh, a while. Happened when I was real young. I think Y/N was…eight or nine. Should be just about a decade since then.”

“So why the doll?”

“Nobody knows,” Regulus shrugs. “They rebuilt the house after the fire, and then the doll just showed up one day. It’s creepy as fuck, I’m aware.”

“Just a bit,” Blaise drawls.

Regulus laughs. “You seem cool, man. D’you wanna come hang out with me sometime? I could take you to the good restaurants in town for like, lunch or something. Lord knows you gotta get outta this house.”

“Sounds great,” Blaise grins. “Would be nice to hang out with literally anyone other than those guys. I love ‘em, but y’know.”

“Well, if you’re not busy, how ‘bout today? There’s this awesome old-school diner that makes the best onion rings-”

Regulus chatters on, promising to pick Blaise up at noon for lunch. Blaise smiles, actually smiles, and tells him he can’t wait. After walking him out to his car, Regulus calls from the window, in a sing-song voice,

“See you soon, Blaisey-Waisey!”

Merlin, he’d get along great with Pansy, Blaise muses as he walks back towards the house.

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tangledinink · 10 months

Text

Chapter Twenty-Five of I'm Sorry, Teenage Mutant What Now? is now up! There's a certain theme in this chapter you'll never guess what it is. Read it on ao3 or below the cut.

[ prev ]

“Alright. So,”

Mikey stared up at his older brother curiously, leaning against Leo slightly, the two of them settled down on the couch. Donnie was perched on the arm of the opposite side, slumped slightly and tapping away at his phone-- but also clearly listening to their eldest brother, stood up before them in the Lair as if he was about to give a presentation.

“About the whole… turtle thing,”

Donnie immediately sighed, making a face, and Raph threw up his hands in protest.

“I ain’t even said anything yet!” He cried, exasperated, and Donnie shot him a dry look.

“Yes, and I already dislike it.”

“Aw, come on, Dee, give him a chance!” Mikey protested, picking his head up so he could offer Raph an encouraging little grin. He knew this wasn’t exactly, like, a favored topic of discussion in the household, but it wasn’t like they could just ignore it, either! At least not all the time.

“Okay, so, I’ve been thinkin’ about it a lot lately, and don’t y’all kind of think that it might sort of be… safer?”

“No,” Donnie said.

“Donnie…!”

“He has a point!” Mikey protested, crossing his arms over his chest. “I mean, we have shells when we’re all turtley. If Raph had been a turtle on our last ninja mission, his ribs wouldn’t have gotten all messed up!”

“Exactly!” Raph said, pointing, seeming very pleased that at least one of his brothers was offering some support. “Look, I know you guys don’t like it, and that’s… fine! I mean, I’m not askin’ ya to like it! I just think, maybe, it’s somethin’ we should consider for at least, like… ninja mission stuff?”

Leo wrinkled his nose, seeming unconvinced to say the least.

“I dunno,” he said. “I mean. Yeah, sure, I guess, arguably, they’re a bit more sturdy, but… we’re not really used to even walking in those bodies yet. Let alone fighting! I know adrenaline is a kickass drug and all, but doesn’t it kind of seem like more risk than it’s worth?”

“You still can’t walk?” Mikey questioned, giving Leo a curious look, his brows furrowed.

Leo paused, slowly turning his head to give Mikey a long stare, his expression strained.

“... Excuse me?”

Mikey frowned, tilting his head to the side. “I can help if you want! It’s not that hard once you get the hang of--”

“I’m sorry,” Donnie interrupted, his head snapping around. “Are you implying that you have been spending your free time willingly futzing around in a mutant turtle body just for the fun of it?”

Now it was Mikey’s turn to stare, his head bobbing around from brother to brother, trying to see if either of them were joking-- waiting for someone to say psyche.

Wait, were they for real?

“... None of you have checked yourself out in turtle form at all?” He gawked.

“No! Why would we?!” Leo cried, throwing up his hands.

“‘Cause! That’s, like, us!” Mikey argued, throwing his hands up in turn, imitating his brother. “You’re seriously telling me you’re not even a little bit curious!? You guys are all just ignoring it!? We find out that we have magick mutant animal forms, like, freakin’ animorphs, and you don’t even wanna bother seeing if we have any cool powers or turtle abilities or anything?!”

“Have you actually read the Animorph books? Because if you did I’m pretty sure--”

“That’s not the point!” Mikey interrupted Donnie with a whine. “When I’m a turtle, I can, like, go inside my shell! If some bad guy was trying to, like, stab me or something, I’d be totally screwed,” he argued, crossing his arms firmly over his chest with a pout. “But if I was a turtle, I could just pop into my shell and I’d be totally okay!”

“I cannot believe what I’m hearing right now,” Leo muttered. “We find out that we’re secretly freakish mutant reptiles, and you think it’s a fun hobby--”

“I’m not saying that, Leo!” Mikey protested. “But what’s the point in just ignoring it? If you don’t check it out, you’re never gonna get used to it. Besides, Raph is right!”

“Thank you, Mikey,” Raph sighed. “You guys don’t have to do it all the time or anything! I just think… It might be a worthwhile option to explore. I don’t want anyone getting hurt,” he sighed, rubbing the back of his neck, his eyes kind of sweeping over them all, as if he were making sure they were all still here and uninjured and accounted for.

“Plus, it’s kind of cool once you get over the whole, like, world-shattering parts of it!” Mikey chirped, moving to grab at his bracelet. “Here, watch, lookit what I can do--”

Both twins immediately slapped hands over their eyes, loudly protesting in tandem.

“Don’t you dare--!”

“I am not looking and you cannot make me--”

“Hamato Michelangelo if you take off that fucking bracelet right now I will murder you--”

“I am OPTING OUT, thank you VERY MUCH, we are so not doing this today!!!” Mikey blinked in surprise, and then absolutely scowled, releasing his hold on the bracelet. Oh, so Donnie could go have a breakdown in the Hidden City in his turtle form, but he wasn’t allowed to show them his shell thing!? So unfair…

“You guys are being babies!”

“Nope! Nope, not today! I’m out! Fuck this!” Leo responded, hopping up to his feet and making a hasty retreat towards the Lair stairs. “You play turtle all you want, I am not involved!”

“Agreed,” Donnie huffed, and he was right behind his twin.

And then there were two of them left in the Lair.

Mikey sulked, sinking back down onto the couch and pursing his lips. “Aw, come on…”

Raph watched the other two go, laughing kind of nervously before he hesitantly moved to join the other, sitting down beside him. “Sorry, big man,” he said, ruffling his hair gently. “You can still show Raph if you want?”

Mikey sighed. “Maybe later,” he said, wrinkling up his nose. “I thought they’d at least be kind of okay with it by now! I mean, it’s been how long?”

“I think it’s just… a little harder for them than it is for you,” Raph said with a weak shrug, hesitating a bit, and Mikey frowned, turning his head slightly so he could catch Raph’s eyes.

“What about you?”

Raph laughed sort of nervously, looking to the side.

“Well. I mean. I don’t… like it. I mean. I ain’t you. But it’s… it’s… alright. I mean. I meant what I said! It might be good for us. Keep us safe ‘n all.”

Mikey raised a brow. “And…?”

Raph hesitated for a bit, and sighed. “I mean. Look, Mikey, it’s a little… scary. I’m a lot bigger than you guys! And… sharper!”

“Yeah, but you’re always bigger than us!” Mikey protested, leaning against his brother, burrowing up against him.

“Yeah, I know,” Raph said. “And that was scary once, too. But it’s… It’s fine. I dealt with it,” he said, shrugging a little, frowning to himself. “So now I just gotta…” He broke off briefly, setting his expression for a moment. “Now I just gotta learn it again. That’s all.”

He sighed very softly. And Mikey frowned a little.

“I’m used to being big and scary. I’m used to people being afraid of me sometimes,” he said. “So. It’s nothin’ I can’t handle.”

“Yeah, but…” Mikey began slowly, kind of shrugging a bit. “I mean. We’ve never been scared of you or anything. You know that, right? We don’t care if you’re bigger than us,” he pointed out. “We never have! And we don’t care if you’re spiky, either, I mean… all our turtle forms are weird.”

Raph forced a small laugh.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know,” he said, sort of waving off his concerns. “That’s not… I mean. I dunno, Mikey, it’s just sorta complicated. I mean. There’s just kinda… there’s less things you can be when you’re big, you know?” He said slowly, resting his chin in his hand. “It’s… you know. It’s hard, sometimes. Being strong and careful at the same time. Even when people aren’t careful with you. And making sure you don’t hurt anyone and… all that.” His eyes looked a tiny bit far off for a moment, like he was remembering something. “And… you guys can kinda do whatever you want! You can be all… little or bouncy or feminine or cute or delicate or whatever the hell else, and you just… can’t really do that stuff when you’re big. Once you get big enough, you just kinda gotta… There’s just stuff you can’t do anymore.”

Mikey paused a moment.

This was… the first he was ever hearing of this.

Was this… really how Raph thought?

“Yeah, you can!” He protested, his brows twitching a bit, furrowing as he stared up at his brother. “Raph, of course you can be all that stuff! Why couldn’t you!?”

Raph scoffed, shooting the other this little half-hearted half-smile. “Well, I mean, I guess I technically can? It’s just not as simple as it is for you guys,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I mean, you guys can do half of that stuff without even trying! And no one would even bat an eye. But it’s just… It’s not really the same for me? It’s like…” he scoffed softly, seeming almost amused. “Raph can pick up the rest of ya, but none of you could pick up Raph! It’s a little different!”

Mikey pursed his lips, giving Raph a pointed scowl.

“Well, you’ve never let any of us try,” he argued. And Raph laughed.

“Yeah, ‘cause you’d hurt yourself!” He teased, and Mikey socked him in the arm without too much heat to it.

“You don’t know that! We’re way stronger than we look!” He insisted. “And all that other stuff! I mean-- you could totally do that stuff, Raph! Just because you’re bigger doesn’t mean you can’t be cute!!! What kind of--!? I mean!!! Raph!!!”

He jumped forward, grabbing onto his brother’s face so he could stretch and squish his cheeks angrily.

“You’re already cute all the time, idiot!!! You don’t have to be small to be cute!!! That’s stupid!!!”

Raphael scoffed, laughing loudly, trying to bat Mikey away, though Mikey was suddenly aware, in a way that he usually wasn’t, that he was taking care to temper his strength. He wasn’t just batting at Mikey the way Mikey would bat at him. Every movement he made was careful and deliberate and planned. He thought about every jab or swipe that he made at his siblings.

Mikey was almost ashamed that he had never thought about his before.

He was never gentle with Raph when he jumped on him or grabbed at him or climbed on his shoulders because it never felt like he had to be. Raph was over a foot taller than him. He probably had at least a hundred pounds on him. Mikey had always been the smallest, and while he certainly wasn’t weak by any means, Raph was a goddamn wall of muscle. An unstoppable force! He had never met anything that Raph couldn’t push and bend and sway if he tried hard enough. So every time they met an obstacle, they all just… looked at him and waited for him to take care of it.

He… Yeah.

He was big.

Mikey supposed he had always looked at his brother and came to that conclusion, and then never thought any further on the subject. He had always expected Raph to be big and strong and sturdy. He had never wondered if he wanted to be anything else.

Why did he do that?...

Mikey let go of Raph, and he climbed back down off of him, sitting next to him on the couch instead of half on top of him. And he sighed deeply.

“You’re not scary,” Mikey said after a second, blinking slowly as he slowly settled back down on the couch. “And you can do all that other stuff, if you want to. We would let you,” he pressed. And he frowned, and he kept quiet for a moment.

“... I’m sorry it feels harder,” he finally said, tilting his head to the side slightly. “And… we’re not always careful with you.”

Raph stared at him for just half a second, hesitating for only the slightest moment before laughing again and waving him off. “What are you talkin’ about? You don’t gotta apologize, none of ya’ did anything wrong! This is Raph’s thing. It ain’t your problem,” he insisted, but Mikey wasn’t so sure that that was exactly the case.

He would work on it.

Because Mikey was suddenly so, so sure that this was something he wanted to fix. And something that he could do.

This was still the something that he could give to them.

“Still,” Mikey finally said, shrugging a bit and taking a long breath before getting up to his feet. “Do you still wanna see me do the shell thing? It’s really cool!” He offered, wiggling his brows at his older brother, and he chuckled in reply, nodding.

“Yeah. Yeah, sure, big man, show me your thing,” he invited, and Mikey grinned.

---

“Raph!” Mikey chirped excitedly, spinning around on his heels so that his back was facing the older brother. “Here! Les’ play piggyback!”

“Okay!” Raph agreed easily, absolutely beaming at the invitation, wasting no time in scampering over to Mikey. Their trip to the zoo, which had so far been absolutely abound with all sorts of excitement, to Mikey’s absolute delight, had taken a short departure from the previous energy while their dad tried to calm a squabble between his other two brothers. This was a bit less to Mikey’s delight. He wasn’t really sure what they were carrying on about, ‘cause he hadn’t really be paying attention. Those two were always fighting about something. He thought maybe it was about hair? Whatever. The point was, just sitting here and listening to them whine was boring.

But playing piggybacks?! That was fun! They could make a game out of it or something--

“Jump on--”

Their dad paused from his current task in peacemaking, however, just long enough to grab Raph by the shoulder right as he was about to make good on his baby brother’s invitation and jump on top of Mikey’s back. Before it even began, the game came to a grinding halt.

“You’re too big for that, Red, you’ll hurt him,” Dad bit out quickly, sparing them the most momentary of glances. “Play a different game.”

And just like that, he was back to his previous duty, trying to talk the twins through their latest drama in between their protests and tears.

Mikey paused, blinking in surprise as he processed this.

They couldn’t play piggyback? But…

“No fair…” He whimpered, his lower lip wobbling a little. He wanted to pretend he was a Jupiter Jim spaceship or something! And Raph could’ve been Jupiter Jim!

Raph hesitated visibly, glancing between their dad and Mikey, his brows furrowed. And after a minute, he sort of forced a smile, leaning over to grab Mikey and shake his arm a bit.

“That’s okay, Mikey! I don’t have to piggyback you,” he assured quickly. “You can just piggyback me, instead! Raph doesn’t mind. That way we can still play! Alright?”

And Mikey grinned.

---

Okay. Alright. You can do this. It’s not a big deal. You have this totally under control--

Donnie’s hand lingered over the bracelet on his wrist.

And then at the last second, he flinched away like he had just been bitten, a short, high-pitched whine escaping him as a full-body shiver ran up and down his body. Nope, nope, nope!!! He did not have it!!! It was a big deal, actually, ugh, no, no, no, just thinking about it felt gross. How the hell was he supposed to consider this when just the idea made his stomach flip!?

Donnie growled softly in annoyance, laying his head down on his desk with a solid thunk, glaring down at the polished surface as if it were personally responsible.

God. It just felt so fucking alien.

Had they really spent the first five years of their lives like that?

No matter how much evidence was piled up in front of him, Donnie still struggled to wrap his mind around such an idea. I mean, that was practically a third of his life! And he just forgot about it?! He had a near-photographic memory! How did something like that happen!?

Part of him wanted to not believe it at all. It would certainly be easier to be in denial.

But, much to his annoyance, far too many things just… made sense.

He had too many memories, some recently resurfaced and some long-ago explained away, to simply dismiss the idea. He felt pretty stupid thinking about it now, quite frankly. Yeah, of course normal kids don’t have memories of ‘playing pretend’ in sci-fi movie-magic high-def like that!!! Obviously!!! None of his other memories were like that, were they!? When they would pretend to be Jupiter Jim or Lou Jitsu or whatever when they were older, it was exactly that, wasn’t it? Just them-- just kids playing make-believe games.

And yet he had just accepted the easiest thing. The most logical, most reasonable thing was just to believe that memories were weird and leave it at that, and that their early childhood was probably kind of fucked up, but human the entire time, and go from there.

Because… of course it was. Obviously, it was. Anything else would have been insane!

It was still insane. Even if it was, apparently, the truth of the matter.

It had been so much easier to blame all the freaky things they did as kids on something else. He and Raph bit people like feral pomeranians as kids simply because they hadn’t had the chance to socialize with other children before, of course. Not because they were carnivorous reptiles, prone to bouts of hunting instincts taking over. And he and his siblings got so sleepy in the cold and adored their heated blankets simply because poor circulation ran in the family. Not because they were literally made of cold-blooded creatures! That would be crazy. And Leo and he’s penchant for communicating entirely in animalistic clicks and chirps throughout early childhood-- a habit that still lingered even now? It was a twin thing, obviously, and nothing else. Because that would be crazy!

Not them literally talking to each other in fucking turtle or anything!

‘Cause how the hell would that work?

How the hell else would Leo fucking squeaking at you make sense, dum-dum? He thought bitterly to himself. It had been years and years now since they had properly employed their ‘twin language,’ but Donnie was pretty sure that it had never been a proper language at all. It wasn’t like they had any words in it, or they ever discussed what certain noises meant beforehand, at least not that he could recall…

But they could still always understand what the other was saying regardless, couldn’t they?

Donnie groaned softly, lifting his head back up just so that he could rub at his temples. Christ, thinking about all of this was just giving him a migraine. He quietly asked the universe what he had ever done to it for them to make his life a fucking joke. What was this, a parody of some Marvel comic or something!?

He hated thinking about it.

But…

He reached for his wrist again.

He touched the little crystal, his fingertips just barely brushing the surface.

He quite nearly gagged, another horrid shudder running up his spine as he spiraled back into a retreat. Ugh, god, he couldn’t just not think about it, either! Every hair on his body was standing on end, and he grit his teeth, forcing himself to start reciting pi in his head instead. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.

He ran his fingers across the seams of the compression sleeves on his arms, reminding himself that they were there before he quickly turned back to his computer, snapping open several files and syncing up his headphones with the bluetooth.

He smacked the play button, and whatever random EDM playlist he had queued up on Spotify immediately began blaring through his ears, drowning out everything else.

Much better.

He sighed deeply, narrowing his eyes slightly as his gaze roamed over the screen. It was fine. He was fine! All he needed was a distraction for a little bit.

He had already made a decent amount of headway in trying to recreate Baron Draxum’s research, translating and decoding everything he could remember from the notes he had reviewed and documented in his lab. It was patchworked at best, but it was the only solid information he really had on the mutation project…

That, and himself.

Donnie set his jaw, scrolling his way through the data sheets he had compiled.

He had made some decent headway. But he could always make some more.

---

Quite frankly, Leo had felt, like… great recently? Which was pretty insane, given the general state of things, and also how fucking awful he had felt not the long ago. And, like, sure, things were still kind of rough and he wasn’t exactly tickled about the whole situation, but somehow, at the same time, everything was just…

So good.

He had really only been on T for a few weeks, so he was pretty much sure that nothing had actually changed yet and it was in his head, but he had literally never felt so fucking good about himself before. His brothers had taken the time to inform him of how fucking insufferable he and his ego had become, and Leo didn’t even care, because damn right he looked good and obviously everyone should know about it, too! He had started taking about eight million selfies every day because he wanted to document the process, Dee, it’s science, I’m coming for your brand, shouldn’t you be supportive of this kinda thing?

But it was just, like… even if nothing had changed yet, at least not noticeably, it was… It was going to. It was an active work in progress and he was just so goddamn thrilled about it. And like, yes, okay, things were weird and kind of scary right now and he was spending a lot of time doing ninja training and trying to stop the actual literal end of the world, or whatever, and that was sort of a lot of pressure? But here was the thing-- and he would never admit it out loud--

But he sort of didn’t mind any of it.

Because yeah, all the ‘ninja training’ stuff was difficult and boring sometimes, but he got to do it with his family.

And, like, yeah, some of the stakes here? Were a lot, and it was terrifying if he thought about it too hard.

But him and his siblings and his dad? They were all doing it together.

If word that he was enjoying hanging out with his family ever got out, obviously his rep would be ruined, so he had to take it to his grave. But he was. He was, like… happy. Happier than he had been in a while, in between everything else, in between the worry about his dad and the concern for his siblings, sure, but he was also, like…

Weirdly happy.

Was that bad?

Oddly enough, he was really, stupidly happy right now, and maybe he just didn’t…

Didn’t want to give that up…?

Leo frowned a bit, biting the insides of his cheeks as he spun his bracelet idly around on his wrist, his nose wrinkled up a bit.

It was silly, really. It wasn’t as simple as “if you take it off, you’ll be miserable again.” Things were obviously different than they had been before, when they first got home, in a lot of ways! There was no formula, no clear cut-and-dry cause-and-effect, he didn’t know that that would happen, it was just…

Well, what if he was?

What if he tried to do ‘turtle stuff,’ or whatever the fuck Raph had said exactly, and then everything was horrible again? What if everything just went back to the way it was?

Right now, Leo was pretty sure that he, like, liked himself. Like, actually for real! Almost all of him, even! He could look at himself in the mirror again, he could shower without crying, he could post selfies on his instagram and stand to be filmed and looked at and wear make-up and nail polish without having a crisis-- all things that he loved to do! All things that he had missed so, so deeply when he had hated himself too much to enjoy any of it.

He hadn’t liked hating himself. And he didn’t wanna do it again.

But what if he took it off, and then he did?

What if he took it off, and then there was no solution this time? He couldn’t start T a second time. So what if he just got… stuck…?

Leo groaned loudly, tilting his head back and burying his face in his hands, scrubbing at his eyes.

This is so stupid! Raph is right and you know it! And none of this shit even makes any sense! Why would you go back!? It wasn’t the turtle thing, it was-- it was everything, it’s not that simple, and even if it was, you still need to get over it…!

“Did something happen?”

Leo jerked in surprise at the sound of his father’s voice-- he hadn’t even heard him passing through the hallway, and yet now here he was leaning against the doorframe. Ahhh, stupid ninja father…!

Rapidly righting himself, Leo straightened his back and cleared his throat, attempting to wave his father off. “Oh, they just kicked Dean off of the Bachelorette, which is obviously messed up because he’s clearly the hottest one there? I mean, I know it’s all, like, the producers, or whatever, but come on--”

“Mmm-hmmm,” Dad said, nodding thoughtfully as he slowly made his way into the other’s room, leaving him the time to chase him away if he wanted to. (But Leo himself was surprised to find that he didn’t.) “And…?”

Dammit, usually Dad always fell for Bachelorette based lies. Leo hesitated a second, staring up at the ceiling and tugging at one of his own curls-- straightening it out and then letting it go, feeling it bounce up against his cheekbones.

(He loved his hair. He loved loving his hair. He had come so close to cutting it off, and if he had, he would have been fucking devastated now. What if he ended up hating it again? What if he did cut it off…? He didn’t want to cut off his hair!... He loved his hair…!)

“Do you think we’d be, like… better fighters as… turtles, or whatever?”

His dad hummed thoughtfully, sitting down at the edge of his bed and seeming to consider this for a moment. “Well. I don’t know about that. But I suppose there could be advantages,” he finally said. “Though there could be drawbacks, as well. Why do you ask?”

He sighed deeply.

“Well. Raph thinks-- I mean. Raph said that he thought maybe it’d be, like… safer, or whatever. And we’d get beat up less if we had, you know, shells and body armor and stuff? And…! I mean, he’s right, we probably would be, but I don’t… we’re not used to it, and, and it’s different, and it’s, you know, it’s not stealth, obviously, so I’m not--”

He frowned deeply, wrinkling up his nose.

“I still don’t… like it. I guess is the problem, actually,” he admitted.

Dad sighed thoughtfully.

“Well,” he finally said. “That is certainly understandable. I don’t like what I look like without the bracelet, either,” he admitted, looking slightly to the side, his eyes dancing away for just a moment before he managed to herd them back. “I do admit that being safer and less prone to injury does sound very nice to me…! But that is just me being selfish. And your father,” he laughed. “... I do not want any of you to get hurt. And I… I would like you to be safe. But no one will force you to be in any body that makes you unhappy, Blue. That’s not safe, either, and I suppose I can’t…” He sighed a bit, sounding almost frustrated. “It wouldn’t be fair for me to prioritize one over the other.”

Leo frowned a little, wrapping his arms around himself.

“But you do think we’d be safer, don’t you?” He pressed.

Dad kind of floundered for a second. “I don’t want to tell you what--”

“Yeah, yeah, our bodies, our choice, you love us, other quotes from parenting books, blah blah blah. I get it, Dad,” Leo scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Like, thanks, or whatever. But I want your actual, honest opinion, okay? Do you think we’d be safer if we were turtles when we fought and went on missions and stuff?”

It took his dad a little bit to respond, and Leo did his absolute best to his patient, only fidgeting a tiny bit.

“It is… not simple. I think there are situations where you’d be better served as humans, but I… I do think there are situations where you might be better off as turtles, too,” he finally admitted, and then gave a short, somewhat strained laugh. “Thank goodness you were all turtles when you were little. I think you may have all ended up with brain damage otherwise with how often you threw each other around…! I was always shocked by how resilient you were, even when you were tiny, but I was certainly grateful for it, as well!...”

Leo kind of screwed up his face for a moment, tilting his head to the side.

“Well, then how come you don’t fight without your bracelet? We don’t want you to get hurt either, you know.”

Dad seemed almost surprised for a moment, staring at Leo for a second, and then, to his quiet surprise, he laughed.

Leo scowled, rolling his eyes and crossing his arms over his chest, waiting for his Dad to stop snickering.

“Okay, let me in on the joke already, Pops--”

“Blue,” he finally said, shaking his head a tiny bit. “I am not a turtle. You know that, don’t you…?”

Now it was Leo’s turn to stare at the other for a moment.

“You’re not!?”

“No!” Dad laughed. “I-- I’m sorry. I should not…! I suppose you would have no way of knowing, it just…!”

“Why the fuck aren’t you a turtle if we’re turtles!?” Leo cried. “Why wouldn’t I think you’re a turtle!? The rest of us are turtles!!! Obviously, you should also be a turtle!!! If you’re gonna do a bit, then commit to it!!!”

Dad just laughed, wiping a few tears from his face.

“If you’re not a turtle, then what the hell are you?!” Leo cried. And it took a second, but Dad’s laughter died back down.

And then the two of them were just sitting in silence. Leo looked at his dad. And his dad looking at his own feet.

Leo winced, immediately backpedaling.

“Sorry. Forget I said that. You don’t have to--”

“I’m a rat,” Dad said, before he could even finish his sentence. “I was mutated with a rat.”

Leo stayed quiet for a second, slowly processing this.

He hadn’t actually expected his dad to… answer him.

A rat. Their dad was… part-rat.

For a second, he just sat with this new information, turning it around in his mind a few times and considering it. And to his quiet surprise, all of a sudden, when he reached back through his memories, he could feel soft fur on his skin. And he could recall whiskers tickling his face; a sensation long forgotten, but suddenly paired quite definitively with the feeling of being wrapped up in his dad’s arms, back when he was still tiny, or having a good-night kiss pressed onto his forehead at bedtime as a toddler.

A rat.

That… made sense, actually, now that he knew it.

That felt right.

But still, the next thing he said was, “Why the fuck are we turtles and you’re a rat?”

Dad chuckled, shaking his head. “I could not tell you, my son.”

“Who the fuck was in charge of this!? Turtles and a rat? Seriously?! Wait, is this why you have eight million snacks hoarded away in your room!? And can always tell if we snuck snacks or didn’t brush our teeth and stuff!?”

“Well, I don’t think the rat thing was really planned--”

“Good! Because, uh, lowkey, I’m just saying? Kind of fucking racist!” Leo exclaimed, throwing up his arms, and Dad nearly choked this time on the absolute snort of laughter that erupted from him, bowing his head to cover his face with his hands, his shoulders absolutely trembling with barely contained hysterics.

“You know what, Blue?” He finally got himself together enough that he could bite out a reply through wheezy breaths. “You are absolutely right.”

---

“Daddy,”

Yoshi sighed softly at the sound of the quivering, sobbing cry of his youngest son, reluctantly pausing in his current task of attempting to clean up the kitchen area and turning to instead meet the child, running to him on toddling little legs and wiping the tears from his face.

“What’s the matter, my son?” He questioned, kneeling down to meet him. Mikey came crashing into him at full force, throwing himself into his chest, and Yoshi grunted softly at the impact, just barely managing to not lose his balance and remain upright.

“It’s n-not f-faiiirrrrrr…” Mikey wept miserably, grabbing fistfuls of his fur and curling up in his arms, hiccuping pitifully as he looked up at him with wide eyes.

“What’s not fair? What happened?” He questioned, his brows furrowed slightly with concern at the absolute distress his child was in.

“I--” He broke off for a second to sob, snuffling loudly and huffing to try to catch his breath, needing a moment before he was able to continue. “I w-want a tail, too…!”

Yoshi blinked slowly.

“Orange, you have a tail.”

“No, I don’t!” Mikey shrieked in distress.

“Yes, you do! You have a little tail right on your butt under your shell right here! I can see it!”

“That doesn’t count!” Mikey wailed, and Yoshi sighed softly.

“What do you mean it doesn’t count? It’s a tail!”

“But it’s little!” Mikey sobbed. “I w-want a long tail, like Donnie and Raph and you! It’s no fair!!! I can’t even see mine!”

Oh, for god’s sake…

“Orange, I cannot give you a different tail.”

“But it’s no fair!” Mikey shrieked. “I want a tail like your tail!!! It’s no fair!!! How’s come you get’ta have a long tail!?”

“Michalangelo, I have a rat tail because I am a rat.” He couldn’t believe he was explaining this. “And you have a turtle tail because you’re a turtle.”

“B-but Donnie and Raph are turtles and they have long tails!”

“Well, they are different types of turtles,” Yoshi said with a shrug. Mikey sobbed.

“B-but-- But I want one too!”

Yoshi resisted another sigh.

“I know. I am very sorry, Mikey. I would give you my tail if I could,” he tried to soothe, and goodness, would he. He knew that his children took great joy in grabbing onto it and hanging on while he dragged them around, (one of Yoshi’s least favorite games, quite frankly,) but he despised the thing. It was annoying to lug around, always pulling at his lower back, and just a constant reminder of every way that he was wrong now. He didn’t think he would ever be able to quite adapt to having an additional limb.

There were many things he had grown used to by now, though he still didn’t like them. He had learned to tolerate the absolute power that scent ruled over his life now. He had reluctantly grown to accept the blurriness of his vision. He had adapted to the odd teeth in his mouth and how they grew, doing his best not to allow them to get out of hand and became painful (though he was not always the best at this,) and had grown to accept the whiskers on his face and how they twinged when they brushed something, the fur covering his body, the claws on his hands and feet and how his legs bent in a different way now.

But the tail? The tail he still couldn’t quite accept. It was just too different. Maybe with some more time, he would, but… He wasn’t exactly convinced.

Mikey continued to sob, and Yoshi huffed a bit, slowly easing himself back to his feet, keeping the toddler tucked up against his chest while he cried. He got the impression that it might take a bit before he was ready to accept this fact of his life and calm down again…

So he supposed he would just have to figure out how to finish cleaning the kitchen and carry a sobbing toddler at the same time.

---

Raph was the biggest brother. The brother who was the biggest. It was his job to keep an eye on all his little siblings and make sure everyone was okay and following the rules, and he was pretty good at it, too, he thought. In addition to this, he was captain of the school’s football team-- he had been shocked when the votes were tallied up in his favor, because he was only a junior, after all, not a senior like the captain usually was, and were they sure!? But evidently, they were, and the honor had gone to him-- and Raph thought that he actually did a pretty okay job at that, too. It had been a really good season last year. They went to states and everything!

Not only was he captain of the football team, but he currently held the title of captain of the swim team, as well, and the basketball team, and the wrestling team. And quite frankly, he wasn’t sure why in the world he kept ending up in the captain’s chair? He had never really thought of himself as a leader before, and even now, he was hesitant to wear such a title…

But if he had learned one thing about leading people so far, it was that you had to lead by example.

And it wasn’t fair for him to ask Donnie or Leo to tolerate being in weird, alien mutant forms if he wasn’t willing to stomach it too.

Which he could do! He knew he could. He just…

Needed some practice. That was all.

He had been down here for about twenty minutes now, just lazing about in the Lair and trying to get used to being like this. He had spent quite a bit of time pacing and wandering around before he had finally ended up here, plopped down in the middle of the room on his stomach, his arms curled up under his head as he took quiet note of his tail and how it felt sliding back and forth behind him-- just trying to memorize the weight and the movement of it, listening to the soft noise of scales on concrete.

Shhhh shhhh.

He had just been starting to think, yeah, okay, this isn’t actually so bad when he heard telltale footsteps coming from the stairs.

And when Donnie looked over from the stairwell and saw him, he froze. And Raph froze, too. He certainly hadn’t expected Donnie to tear himself away from his projects to come down here. He had opted to take advantage of the open space in the Lair rather than the privacy of his own bedroom, fearing that he might knock stuff over or ruin them in his turtle form, but now he was suddenly kind of questioning that decision.

And for a long, pregnant moment, it was just quiet between them. And he stared at Donnie. And Donnie stared at him. And before Raph could figure out what the hell he was supposed to say, Donnie began moving again, finishing his descent down the stairs into the basement.

“I need a break from the Lab,” he muttered, sort of absently, almost nonchalant, kind of gesturing to the laptop that he had under his arm. “Is it cool if I hang out in here for a while?”

It took Raph a second to actually process what Donnie was saying and formulate a response. But then eventually, he nodded.

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Okay, cool,” Donnie said, and after a moment of kind of looking around, seeming to consider things, he went over to the couch. Grabbing one of the many spare blankets that lived there, he carefully spread it out over top of Raph-- arranging it just enough so that he could kind of climb half on top of his brother, both of them curled up beneath the soft fabric, any sharp edges or points from Raphael’s shell covered well enough that Donnie could snuggle up against him.

It was rare that Donnie was interested in anything even vaguely resembling cuddles. He hardly even liked people touching him. Certainly, he wouldn’t allow strangers to touch him. Or anyone that he didn’t completely trust. A majority of the time, it was just his family that could expect the possibility of any kind of physical closeness-- and only when he felt safe enough to allow for such things.

A comfortable, warm weight pressed up against Raphael’s back, soothing and pleasant. He could feel the familiar sensation even through his shell. Raph kept still for his little brother as he felt him get comfortable against him, snuggled up close and settling in to relax.

“Is this okay?” Donnie asked after a moment.

“Yeah,” Raph immediately responded. “This is okay.”

“Cool,” Donnie said.

Raph’s tail kept on waving from side to side behind him, though at a slightly quicker tempo now as he settled, allowing his eyes to slide shut.

Shhhshhhshhhshhhshhshhh.

---

Donnie stayed like that for about two hours, with Raph dozing in and out for much of it, before he finally took his leave. He had accomplished just about all he could from his laptop out here, and though he had, in fact, needed a break from the Lab, he didn’t wanna spend that much time away from it.

His research called.

He was pretty sure Raph was still asleep, so it was easy enough to very slowly, very quietly creep his way off of him, rearranging the blanket to ensure he was still covered up properly before making his way back up the Lair stairs. And while he knew that Leo had gotten home, (he had popped down at some point to grab something, and given him and their oldest brother a very odd look that Donnie couldn’t quite interpret,) he was somewhat surprised to find him camped out in the kitchen, bent over the island and reading something on his phone. His head popped up as soon as Donnie emerged from the basement-- and if he had been waiting for them.

“Finally finished with your cuddle sesh?” He teased in an almost sing-song tone, tilting his head to the side. Donnie huffed, rolling his eyes.

“Die,” he muttered in response, carefully closing the basement door behind him and beginning to make his way to the stairs. Leo was chasing him, however, much to his chagrin.

“Oh, come on! You barely ever want anyone to breathe in your direction. It’s an event whenever you’re in the mood to actually, like, cozy up to someone,” he pressed, pocketing his phone as he trailed after Donnie, hopping up the stairs right after him.

“Why would I want anyone to breathe in my direction?” Donnie scoffed, shooting the other a glare. “That sounds disgusting. And I’m allowed to have the occasional special exception and be in the mood, thank you very much,” he growled, hunching his shoulders slightly. “Besides, it was…”

He pursed his lips slightly.

“Mutually beneficial.”

“Uh-huh…” Leo said slowly, quirking a brow slightly, looking Donnie up and down for a moment like he was trying to figure that out, and then seemingly deciding that it wasn’t the priority right now. “But so, like… it is a special occasion, then?”

Donnie frowned a bit, giving the other a quizzical look. “What do you mean?”

“I mean. Like,” Leo shrugged a bit, sort of crossing his arms over his chest. “Like. Yeah. You’re allowed to not wanna be touched and then have special exceptions when you do wanna be touched and, like, you’re down with cuddles, and all that, so, I mean…” He sort of trailed off for a second, his eyes wandering away, before they snapped back over once again. “But like. This is one of those times? When you, like… are down?”

Donnie blinked slowly.

“Leo, what the hell are you--”

“Can I hug you?” Leo bit out, cutting him off before he could get too far, and Donnie sighed deeply. Ah. That’s what this was, then. Jesus, why couldn’t he just open with that?

“Yeah, Leo, you can hug--”

He didn’t even get through the words before his brother was crashing into him all at once, nearly costing him his footing with how he jumped for him, wrapping his arms around him and squeezing him so tightly that Donnie was pretty sure his compression sleeves were jealous. They had to kind of grab the wall to catch their balance again, stumbling slightly.

“Jesus, Nardo, could you--!?”

“You scared me so fucking bad,” Leo hissed out, his voice pinched tight and muffled for how he had buried his face in Donnie’s shoulder, absolutely clinging to him.

Donnie blinked in surprise, taking a moment to process this, wondering if he had misheard the other. “What…?”

“Never, ever disappear like that ever again,” Leo continued, tightening his grip on him slightly, which Donnie hadn’t even thought was possible. “I was so fucking scared, you bitch. I thought something really bad might’ve-- and it was my fault, too. I’m sorry. I’m-- I’m really sorry I was such a dick then. I didn’t mean it. I was just upset and I know that we already did this but I couldn’t fucking touch you then and-- I didn’t--”

Oh.

So that’s what this was about.

“Leo, it’s okay--”

“Shut up,” Leo mumbled, his voice trembling a bit, and Donnie didn’t really have a good refute for that. So he looped his arms around Leo instead and hung onto him back. He didn’t usually do that. Hugs from his family members were overall acceptable, but he didn’t always enjoy hugging back, at least not for long, but…

You know. Special exceptions and all that. In that same vein, he kind of wrinkled up his nose at the wetness against his neck, but he could tolerate it.

It was fine. He could tolerate it for this.

Even though they were still halfway up the stairs, the two of them eventually, slowly sank down until they were both sort of awkwardly bundled up together on the stairs, half on top of each other, half flopped down the slope. Donnie kind of had to stick out a leg so he could brace his foot against the wall and keep them from sliding, but that was okay. He didn’t really wanna try to move the two of them anywhere, even if this would be easier if they were literally anywhere else in the house.

“I’m really glad we’re twins again,” Leo sobbed, and Donnie nodded a tiny bit.

“Yeah. Me too.”

“I-- I really w-want us to stay twins.”

“We’re going to, Nardo. Calm down.”

“I don’t want you to leave.”

“I’m not leaving, Leo,” Donnie said, and actually? It kind of felt really good to get to say this next part out loud.

“I’m not going anywhere. Are you?”

Leo sobbed weakly in response, shaking his head a tiny bit.

“Okay. Good. Then we’re gonna be okay,” Donnie mumbled, squeezing him slightly. Wait, was he actually tearing up a tiny bit…? God dammit. Leo knew he hated crying, this asshole…

“I’m sorry I was a bitch before.”

“Yeah. You were kind of a bitch,” Donnie agreed, laying his head down, allowing himself to rest his cheek against his twin brother’s curls. “But there were, admittedly… Extenuating circumstances. And I… suppose I am also sorry. For running away. And scaring you,” he muttered, sighing a little. “... I just didn’t know what else to do.”

“Don’t do it again.”

“Not currently planning on it,” Donnie mumbled, pressing himself closer to the other.

“I love you.”

“Yeah, okay. I love you too.”

“... I like it when we’re twins,” Leo hummed. “‘Cause then we’re not fucking basic bitches. We’re twins.”

“Yes, we are, of course, obviously a cut above the average citizen,” Donnie agreed easily, trying to discreetly wipe at his eyes.

“Yeah,” Leo sniffled, hiccuping a bit, and then finally, slowly, his iron grip began to loosen a bit. And after a bit longer, the two untangled themselves slightly. Leo kind of scrubbed at his face with the sleeves of his hoodie, flushed bright red and still slightly teary-eyed.

“Hey,” Donnie finally said, after watching him for a moment, sort of raising a brow. “Are you… like… good…? Or…?”

Leo snorted softly, a watery little chuckle escaping him.

“I-- I’m actually, like… really good, lately? So… Yeah?” He laughed weakly, brushing some of his hair from his face. “I actually think I’m, like… Really good right now, which is, like, stupid, and weird, and probably doesn’t make sense? But… yeah.”

Donnie gave the other a look.

“This is good for you?”

“... Yeah?” Leo laughed. “I just. Fuck,” he sighed deeply, swiping away a few more tears. “I just. I just really wanted to hug you and shit. Like. Before? Uhm. But I knew you didn’t want to, and touching and shit has been weird for you lately, so… You know,” he kind of shrugged weakly. “... I just… waited.”

Donnie blinked slowly. And Leo scowled, rolling his eyes.

“Do not tell me I need a therapist right now, or I swear to god, I will unplug everything in your room while you sleep--”

Donnie raised his hands to sign.

‘You should really--’

“DO NOT SIGN IT AT ME EITHER, JESUS CHRIST--”

---

The cool mist that accompanied his ancestors anytime they manifested themselves into the physical world tickled at the curves of Michelangelo’s cheeks, soothing the sting of the hot tears sliding down his face. He hiccuped softly, watching as the Hamato Spirits twisted into the world before him; one by one curling from the open scroll like smoke until he was surrounded by them.

“Good afternoon, young Hamato,” Ghost-Sensei spoke, and somehow, his voice seemed gentler than it usually was. Mikey choked on another sob at this alone, drawing his knees up his chest and bowing his head down. “What troubles you?”

Mikey sniffled softly, wiping at his face a few times and drawing in a deep, shaking breath.

“I-- I think I fucked up really bad,” he croaked, and he hated how his voice shook. He took several more long, purposeful breaths, but it did little to soothe the tremble in him. He hated how little say he had over his own body. Over his own thoughts and feelings.

He was trying so hard. Why wasn’t this working?

“Our purpose is to listen and offer guidance, Michelangelo,” Ghost-Sensei reminded.

“I--” Mikey hesitated for just a moment, staring down at his own feet, tightening his grip on himself slightly. “I. I was-- I thought I-- I was g-getting better, but I--”

He hiccuped miserably.

“I got too excited and I-- I burned Sarah,” he whispered. “We were-- we were w-working on a project together, at school, earlier, and I, I was holding onto one of the papers we were sk-sketching on, and I-- I didn’t mean to! It just-- it just happened! I wasn’t trying to--”

“Does she know that the fire started because of you?”

Mikey sobbed, shaking his head a tiny bit. “N-no, I don’t th-think so--”

“Then it will be okay,” they said.

Mikey swallowed hard, his brows furrowing as he glanced up to them.

“But I-- I hurt her--”

“It was a mistake,” Ghost-Sensei said. “Sometimes, mistakes may happen, and people may get hurt. It is very unfortunate. But it happens in life. And if you train,” they added, their voice pressing ever-so-slightly. “Then we can ensure that it does not happen again.”

Mikey swallowed hard.

He kept quiet for a second.

And then he nodded.

“This is why we train,” Ghost-Sensei explained gently. “There is great power in the Hamato bloodline. But that is not something that can be taken lightly. There is a reason for each and every one of the Hamato Clan traditions, Michelangelo. Even the ones that we may not always enjoy,” they sighed. “There is a good reason. The mystical energy you wield is very special. But if you cannot learn to control it,” they warned. “Then you are a danger. Not just to yourself. But to the people around you as well. Do you understand?”

Mikey took a few more long, shaking breaths. And he nodded again.

“Good,” Sensei said. “... It will be alright. We are your family, Michelangelo. We can help you. And none of this is your fault. You should have been taught all of this a long time ago. You have a great destiny,” they said, their tone almost fond. “... It’s a shame you have not been set up for success. But we can still change those things. And we can teach you everything you need to know.”

Wiping away the tears from his eyes, Mikey sniffled softly.

“Okay,” he whispered.

“But this needs to be your focus, Michelangelo,” Sensei continued. “Not anything else. This is not something that can share your mind with other things. There are many people depending on you now. You are the last descendant of the Hamato bloodline.”

Mikey faltered, frowning as his shoulders hunched slightly.

“No, but-- my brothers are--”

“They are not like you,” Sensei pressed. “They don’t understand the weight of this power like you do yet. And they don’t feel the world’s energy like you can, do they? You are the one who wears the mark of our clan in your spirit. And you are the one who must protect the world. The potential you have…! You can already do so many things that they would struggle to bear,” The spirit drew back slightly, his eyes sweeping over him a few times.

“But it’s different for you.”

Mikey stiffened as he felt a shiver curling up his spine under their eyes.

“The Hamato Clan will always be here to guide and support you. And you will always have your family to lean on,” they said. “But you have been given a great gift, Michelangelo.”

They dipped their head slightly, lowering themselves just enough so that they could catch Michelangelo’s eyes with their own. It seemed to cut right through him. There was ice in it. But the cold didn’t hurt to touch, somehow.

“To be a Hamato is a great sacrifice,” they whispered. “It is a difficult destiny to bear. We were not put on this earth for ourselves, or to live an easy life.”

Mikey took a breath in.

“But you have the chance to spare them from so much, Hamato Michelangelo. This is a beautiful gift you can give to them.”

And again, they said,

“Do you understand?”

And Mikey let the breath back out.

And he nodded.

[ next ]

#sorrywhatnowau #sorrywhatnowau fic #rottmnt #rise of the tmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt #tmnt 2018 #rottmnt au #rottmnt human au #rottmnt fanfiction #rottmnt raph #rottmnt mikey #rise raph #rise mikey #rise michelangelo #rottmnt michelangelo #writing #fanfic #fidgetwing

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kailutopia · 9 months

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The Freakish Five - Part 4

╔════════ Basics ════════ ╠ Name: Lilliane Vexdow ╠ Earthly Zodiac Sign: Capricorn ╠ Gender: demi-girl ╠ Gender presentation: feminine/androgynous ╠ Pronouns: she/they ╠ Orientation: bisexual, polyamorous

╠═══════ Appearance ════ ╠ Height: 1m66 ╠ Body Mods: ears piercings, belly button piercing, angel fangs piercing, nose piercing; a little lilly of the valley tattoo on her inner left forearm ╠ Other: night blue eyes, fangs ╠═══════ Personality ═════ ╠ Briefly: badass scholar, assignated driver ╠ Green Flags: acts of services all around; helps people to stay hydrated ╠ Beige Flags: tends to penguin pebble; assignated driver and mom friend of the friend group ╠ Negative traits: passive aggressive af; finds it hard to communicate ╠ MBTI: INTJ(-A) - Architect ╠ Enneagram: Type w ╠═══════ Tastes ════════ ╠ Favourite food: sushi ╠ Most hated food: pineapple on pizza ╠═══════ Quirks ════════ ╠ Quirkiness: wear rings, stims with her rings all the time; likes rock and classical music the most ╠═══════ Magic ════════ ╠ Species: vampire ╠ Magic's Origin: vampires get control over an element ╠ Magic: controls water ╠═══════ In World ═══════ ╠ Role in the Sanctuary: part of the Freakish Five; teaches the Sanctuary's children; helps with the cleaning ╚═════════════════════

Picrew

#kai's world #actually madd #madd #para #immersive daydreaming #maladaptive daydreaming #p!lili #the freakish five #the fruity five #in the gremlin den #in kaigweny's den

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vetteltea · 6 months

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Mick Schumacher and The Sound of Snow Crunching [no warnings]

Day 8 of the Vetteltea Advent Calendar

The Schumacher ranch was never on your list of potential places you would be staying in the build-up to Christmas.

Originally, your best friend had insisted on you coming, if only for a few days. However, nature had a cruel way of adjusting plans; a freakish snowstorm had suspended all travel out of the area; with the weather not expected to calm until days after the big day, it was almost certain you would be spending an impromptu Christmas day with Gina. Her mother had been all-too excited, reminding you that you had always been part of the family, either way.

And then…there was Mick.

You were no stranger to your best friend’s younger brother; when you were five and he was three, he had shyly offered you a flower, stolen from his mother’s garden in a sweet attempt of showing you his affection. Gina had immediately shouted at her brother to leave you alone, you were her friend, after all.

His undying crush never ceased; even after you moved away for school and he was engrossed into karting, he lived for the days you would attend one of Gina’s competitions, accompanying her to see Mick driving across all different global locations. Had it been a coincidence that his first points scored had been whilst you were in attendance? He wasn’t sure, he just knew it was an outright joy for you to be there.

He adored having you around, secretly punching the air with his fist when Corinna had insisted you stay for the big day, promising they would do their utmost to get you back to your own family as soon as possible.

Mick hadn’t had a moment to speak to you without Gina or his parents present, not until right now. It was late, the only reason he had left his bed was to let Angie outside after her persistent whining. The youngest Schumacher was only dressed in his joggers and a soft t-shirt, pulling on his boots as he reached the french doors to the porch.

He suspended for a moment, entranced by two things. The first was the snow; it had become heavier, the weather report had been correct when it had been insistent there would be a White Christmas. Standing in the snow, body dipped in the automatic lights from the porch, was you.

You were only dressed in your pajamas, head tilted to watch the delicate snowflakes fall from the dark sky. You must have been freezing, though clearly the temperature wasn't affecting your trance onto the weather. Mick could have stood there forever, simply watching as the girl he had adored since he was a toddler stood looking ethereal.

Angie however, had other plans. The crunch of the blanket of snow underneath paws drawed you from your moment, head snapping to see the puppy bound through the snow, letting out a delighted bark upon seeing another friend outside. You can’t help but laugh, the furry bundle jumping up, clearly delighted in the weather.

A second pair of footsteps are echoing around your ears, turning your attention away from Angie and seeing the blonde-haired boy step through the ankle-deep snow to stand by your side, his companion only continuing to burrow through the soft snow.

“You must be freezing.” Mick comments, his gaze fixed on you whilst your own watches Angie, leaping through the snow.

“I am…” You trail off, foot lifting, the snow falling off your shoe. “But I haven’t seen snow like this in so long…I wanted to experience it.” You realize how incredibly sad that must sound, but Mick shakes his head, lifting one arm to rest around your shoulder and pull you closer. He’s taller than you now, not the acne-prone teenager you had watched on a Go-Karting track. Broad, warm, and so incredibly handsome.

“I get it. You still don’t get much snow, do you?” He remembers the conversation you had at dinner the previous night, how his mother wanted to know every detail of your new life, how it must have changed so much from when you were a young girl in pigtails. You had shaken your head in response, looking up to Mick’s features, now impossibly close to yours.

“No. We don’t get…much of…” You trail off, attention lost as Mick’s lips draw closer to yours. He may have been Gina’s brother, but at that moment, he is so much more, and right now? His lips drawing and brushing against yours in the snow is all you can think about. Instinctively, your arms wrap around his torso, the arm which had rested around your shoulder only pulling you closer, bodies pushed closer to one another.

When he pulls away, his lips stay millimeters away, hot breath fanning over your skin as he giggles, he giggles. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do that?”

#Mick Schumacher #MS47 #Mick Schumacher x Reader #Mick Schumacher Imagine #Mick Schumacher One Shot #Mick Schumacher x You #Reader Insert #F1 #Formula 1 #F1 x Reader #Mick Schumacher Blurb #Mick Schumacher x Y/N

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tennessoui · 2 months

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exploiting the body politic au -

“Oh,” Aayla says, and Anakin looks up from his phone. Aayla’s looking at her own phone, collapsed on her back on the couch. “Why’d you try glasses when you could have just passed these around to the bored suburban moms?”

“What?” Anakin says and leans over. He gets a deft kick to the ribs for his troubles, but then Aayla passes over her phone and—and all she’s been doing is scrolling through some male model’s recent press or something because all the pictures are of the same guy in various outfits, looking various levels of handsome while doing normal people things like picking up groceries or getting out of his car or leaving a coffee shop. “Probably cause these have nothing to do with Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he says, handing the phone back to her. “Are you trying to say you think I should grow a beard? Cause I’ve been thinking mayb—”

“Stop,” Aayla interrupts, holding up a hand. “First of all, I would never tell you to grow a beard. No one is ever going to tell you that. Second of all, that is Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“No it’s not,” Anakin says automatically. “Kenobi is like, old.”

Well, he’s thirty-five, Anakin knows that. And thirty-five isn’t old, but it’s also certainly not devastatingly attractive.

“Give me that back,” he demands, extending his hand and grabbing at Aayla’s phone. He clicks on one of the photos on the screen at random, a shot of the bearded man carrying a paperbag full of groceries. It’s at least a few months old, because there’s a bouquet of spring flowers in the picture, balanced on top of the bag. The man’s hair looks reddish brown in the sun; his beard’s all neat and orderly and he’s wearing a light jacket over a loose shirt and slacks. Anakin was right the first time around—he’s very attractive in a way that screams look at me.

He supposes that’s something politicians could probably have in common with models, but the man in the photo is looking far too windswept and…and casual to be a politician.

But then he looks past the photo, down at its title and it says City Councilman Kenobi on Cars, Community, and Cooking in Coruscant.

It must have been a slow news day.

“Huh,” Anakin says, swiping across the phone’s screen to pull up the next picture. It’s part of the same article from the Coruscant Star, except this time, Kenobi is looking at the camera with one eyebrow raised, expression carefully crafted to look both infinitely patient and two seconds away from snapping. It must have been taken on a different day altogether because the man is dressed in a reasonably nice looking outfit, though his tie is all loose around his neck. He’s standing in his office, maybe, or a prop office more likely, leaning a bit over a very heavy and fancy looking desk, balanced on one of his forearms which is all freckly and exposed because he’s rolled up his sleeves.

“Is this what the city council is using our tax dollars for?” Anakin asks, scandalized. “Soft-core porn shoots?”

“What?” Aayla says, demonstrating a freakish level of flexibility by leaning over to look at her phone screen without removing her feet from his lap. “It’s just a photo.”

Anakin splutters. “I may have pledged my undying loyalty to my hot TA, but even I cannot admit that that is not just a photo.”

“Whatever,” Aayla says, flopping back onto her back. “Don’t screenshot it and send it to yourself to beat off to later, that’s gross.”

“You’re gross,” Anakin replies, but he tosses her phone back at her. He wasn’t going to screenshot anything. “That’s our city councilman.”

“He’s your city councilman,” Aayla corrects lazily. “I’ve decided I was going to vote for his opponent.”

All politics is, Anakin decides, is one betrayal after another.

#obikin #body politics au #long post #when this fic is finally posted yall are gonna be like #wait i read all that #in 200 word chunks #on tumblr over the course of several weeks #and i will expose myself for not editing or rewriting almost anything ever in my life #anyway this fic is so silly and unserious #very very crack adjacent which is the decompression write i need rn #and you may need to read rn <3

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missluthorwillseeyounow · 11 months

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“Your sister found me because she was ready.”

Kara frowns. “Ready for what?”

“For the truth.” Lena replies simply. “To wake up and leave the lie behind.”

“The lie?” Lena’s words bring back echoes of Alex’s message. The Matrix still has you… You’ll find me, if you’re ready to wake up. “You mean… the Matrix?”

“Yes.”

Kara leans forward, her attention caught. “What is the Matrix?”

Lena sighs, her eyes clouding over. “I’m afraid no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. Right now, all I can tell you is that the Matrix is everywhere. It’s all around us. It’s in the air we breathe, in everything we touch…”

Lena ventures a hand between them to touch Kara’s, their hands connecting in the slightest. And even though she knows that she’s not really touching Kara’s hand, her mind feeds her the sensations of it — the softness of Kara’s skin, the gentle press of her flesh under Lena’s fingers.

Lena draws her hand away, and Kara follows it avidly with her eyes. “For you to know what the Matrix is, I have to go back to the beginning. Or at least, to where it begins for us.”

Or, the Supercorp Matrix AU

[So I found an old Matrix AU from a different fandom while I was rooting through my drive, and I thought it could be retooled into a Supercorp AU. Little did I know what I was inviting into my brain, but here we are suffering the consequences. (And now I have 2 different supercorp Matrix AUs. Great.) Spoilers ahead for the OG trilogy.]

In the movies, Neo is the One, but there are other Potentials. Each Potential displays extraordinary abilities beyond the standards of normal. Kara and Lena are both Potentials. Either one of them could be the One.

It begins in the Matrix, when Lena gets adopted by the Luthors as a little girl.

The Luthors are a picture-perfect family. Powerful, affluent, and respected. The father, the mother and the golden son. And Lena - smart, angelic and pretty, the perfect daughter - is the ideal addition to make their picturesque family complete.

Except when she's about 4 or so, it becomes apparent that Lena is not like other children.

It's immediately clear that her intellect far surpasses people four, five times her age. Lena is sharp and brilliant, able to grasp complex concepts most adults cannot. She seems to see the world around her in a different way.

The Luthors are no strangers to gifted children, their son Lex was deemed a prodigy at around the same age. At first, Lionel and Lillian take this as yet another proof of how exceptional Luthors are, and Lena is proudly displayed as their indigo child.

But Lena's talent develops as fast as she does.

Soon, she begins to exhibit strange, unexplained abilities. An expensive Waterford crystal goblet in Lionel's hand explodes when Lena has a tantrum. Once, Lillian walks into her playroom to find Lena having tea with her dolls, and when Lillian enters, all heads turn to her. Lena's and all four of her Madame Alexander dolls.

Her intellect begins to surpass what defines “normal” intelligence. She predicts and successfully foils an assassination attempt against Lionel. She prevents Lex from getting hit by a driver in a car chase five blocks away.

The last straw comes when Lena finds out that the cleaning lady's five year old son has cancer.

Lena convinces Alma to take her to see him. Five hours later, a tearful Alma brings the little girl back with something akin to wonder in her eyes. "Your little girl is an angel, Mr. Luthor. Bendecida por la Virgen. She cured my Carlos! She took away his sickness! Ella es un milagro de Dios!”

However, far from seeing it as a miracle, the Luthors circle the wagons. The next day, Lena finds out Alma has been dismissed, and a shift occurs in the Luthor household.

When Lena's abilities were within the parameters of "normal", they were good, something to be proud of. But now that her gifts have proven to be beyond that, they become alien, freakish. Something to be hidden. People would be asking too many questions, and Luthors do not permit those.

Suddenly, instead of being lauded for what she is able to do, Lena is now scrutinized and examined to find out what's "wrong" with her. It begins to strain the family that is obsessed with order and perfection.

They take Lena to various doctors and put her through all sorts of tests, but none of them seem able to find an explanation for Lena’s strange abilities.

Until they meet Rhea, an educator who runs an exclusive facility for “gifted” children.

An elegant and well-spoken woman, Rhea seems fascinated by Lena. Her teaching “methods” seem vague, but out of all the specialists Lena has seen so far, she is the only one who seems to understand and make a connection with her. At the very least, they seem to speak the same language. Rhea knows about this Matrix Lena has been talking about.

Rhea asks Lena if she wants to find out what the Matrix truly is. And when Lena agrees, Rhea takes the little girl to the Oracle to confirm her suspicions that she is a Potential.

Lena is taken to a tall building, riding all the way to the top floor with her little hand in Rhea’s. On the 64th floor, they enter a glass office in which an imperious looking blond woman sits, watching her with a piercing eye.

“Leave us.”

The woman orders sharply, slanting a glare at Rhea. She is at least 6 inches shorter than Rhea, even in heels, but her tone and her face brook no argument. Rhea retreats with a seething sneer, but she complies.

“Now, you,” the woman turns to Lena with a dark look and a raised brow. It fails to intimidate Lena, who has lived with Lillian Luthor’s pointed glares for the past three years of her life. “Do you know why you’re here?”

Lena merely blinks at her. “Because I know things.”

The woman scoffs. “So do I. Doesn’t make you special.” She gestures around her at her office with a spectacular view. “I know things too.”

Lena’s eyebrows rise as well. “Not everything.”

The woman’s glare intensifies, but Lena stares her down. After a moment, a corner of the woman’s mouth lifts, and she barks out a laugh. “You’re a smart one, aren’t you?”

Lena clasps her hands behind her back. “So I’ve been told.”

“Do you know who I am?”

Lena nods. “You’re the Oracle.”

The woman snorts delicately. “Did Rhea tell you that?”

Lena regards her solemnly. “She didn’t have to.”

The woman’s eyes narrow at her, but Lena says nothing more. She is scrutinized for another moment before the woman smirks. “Alright. Since you’re so smart, why don’t you tell me what you already know.”

Lena blinks at her, responding to the woman’s scrutinizing gaze in kind. “I know that you’re not human.”

Another laugh, this time louder. Piercing blue eyes gain a twinkle of mirth. “Very good. What else?”

“I know that you’re not real.”

The woman scoffs disdainfully. “Real is an abstract concept.”

“I know that I’m dreaming, and none of this is real.”

The mirth suddenly vanishes from the woman’s gaze, and her blue eyes stare at Lena intently. “What do you mean?”

Lena sweeps her little arms across the room. “This. All of this. Everything. It’s not real. It’s just a dream.”

The woman is leaning forward now. It looks to Lena as if she is holding her breath. “And what makes you think that?”

Lena chews thoughtfully on her lower lip. “Have you ever read Plato’s allegory of the cave?”

The woman’s eyebrows rise and an amused smile dances over her lips. “Of course.”

“It feels like that. Like the people chained to the walls of the cave, watching just shadows and reflections. Other people — even my parents, even Lex — they look around them and think that this is the real thing. But all we’re seeing are just shadows. Sometimes it makes me feel confused and blurry, like I’m dreaming, but I can’t wake up.”

The woman hums and her hands form a steeple under her chin as she continues to observe Lena.

"In the story, the prisoner who is freed into the sunlight was angry and in great pain after being in the dark for so long. Why would they go through that? Why not stay in the comfort of the darkness that they’ve known all their lives?”

Lena’s gaze doesn’t waver. “Because they would finally know the truth. They wouldn’t be living in a lie anymore. They would be free.”

A smile spreads across the woman’s face, and the nod she gives is almost approving. “Is that what you want?”

“Only if you tell me the truth.” Lena nods solemnly. “Will you tell me the truth, Oracle?”

“I’ll tell you everything you need to know.” The woman chuckles. “And one more thing. Call me Cat.”

Despite their animosity toward each other, both Cat and Rhea decide that Lena is more than ready for extraction.

The only problem is that Lena, at 6 years old, is one of the youngest children to be extracted so far. Because she’s so young, it’s decided that her family should be brought with her too. Lex, by then a teenager, is given a choice: to stay in the Matrix, or go down the rabbit hole, as it were.

Lex chooses to follow his family, and the Luthors are extracted by Rhea. They are brought on-board her ship, the Daxam. All four Luthors are taken to Zion, and told the truth about everything — the lie of the Matrix, the human harvest fields, and the fact that there is no going back.

That’s when it all goes to hell.

Lionel barely lasts three months.

Unable to accept the truth that his life of power and control was all a lie, and unwilling to believe that he now exists in a world where his name holds no weight, he somehow escapes Zion and finds his way to a human pod to try to inject himself back into the Matrix.

They search for him for weeks, and eventually they find him in the pod, impaled on the metal breathing hose stuffed into his mouth with the end sticking out the back of his head.

Lillian lasts longer, but this is no comfort.

Torn from her privileged life, her resentment begins to build and build, as she’s forced to accept her new reality.

Her perfect life was stolen from her. The high-paying job, the distinguished career, the unlimited influence, the beautiful house, the comfortable lifestyle — all gone. All apparently just a dream.

And now, Lillian has woken up to the dirt and drab and heat and toil of Zion’s underground, with nothing to show for her former life but the daughter she didn’t even ask for. The same daughter who is the very reason she’s trapped here now with no chance of going back.

She refuses to reconcile with her new reality, but she is no weakling like her husband. Instead, she lets the ugly, bitter ire fester inside her over the years, until it finally comes out.

One night, Lillian enters the rough, tiny cave that has become her unwilling home, creeps into the alcove carved into rock where her teenaged daughter sleeps and pours acid over her.

Lena’s screams wake others in the neighboring dwelling, and healers are immediately dispatched to tend to her wounds. Thankfully, Lena was turned away in her sleep, and the burns were limited to her back.

By the time her condition is pronounced stable, Lillian is gone.

Without her parents, Lena is taken in by Rhea to live with her, her husband Lar Gand and their infant son, Mon-El.

Rhea keeps Lena very close, almost jealously so. She prizes the young girl above all else in their household. Most of her time is devoted to teaching Lena, training her using the fight simulations and programs on the Daxam, instructing her on how to pilot the ship.

For Lena — who had grown up under Lillian’s growing resentment and bitterness, who had just survived a horrific attack on her by her own mother — Rhea is a godsend. Under Rhea’s maternal affection, Lena thrives. She pushes her own limits during her training, masters techniques with unparalleled speed and unerring accuracy, devours knowledge programs downloaded into her mind every time she’s plugged in. She blooms under Rhea’s freely-given praise, and works harder, starved as she was for acknowledgment and affection over the years.

As Rhea’s son, young Mon-El, grows up without displaying any unique abilities, he is often shunted to the side. Despite their age-difference, Lena makes a conscious effort to spend time with him, to give him the same nurturing Rhea is giving her.

She teaches Mon-El how to make repairs to the ship, explains how the thrusters work, how the pads keep the ship in balance. He’s most fascinated by the robotic armed exoskeletons that are kept at the dock for the city’s defense. He often asks Lena to take him to the bridge to watch them, and the two of them watch the exoskeletons being loaded, Lena leaning on the top rail, and Mon-El perched on the middle one, his skinny legs swinging in the air. As Lena smiles, the young boy boldly tells her that one day, he’ll pilot one of those.

It feels… nice. Almost like having a brother again. It feels like a second chance

After all, her own brother — well, that bridge was burned a long time ago, and Lena tries not to think about it.

But it’s hard to forget when she sees him all time, a nightmare come to life, whenever she’s plugged into the Matrix.

Lena will never forget the first time she saw her brother there.

Lex had abandoned them, had left his mother and sister in Zion years ago, as soon as he was of age. She’d tried to find him, had spent weeks, months, looking for him, to no avail.

Finally, Lena had been forced to accept that Lex had met their father’s fate. He could’ve been attacked by sentinels, gotten lost in the mechanical sewers, or worse, attempted the same thing Lionel had.

Either way, the result was the same, and the guilt and pain of it had been agony, but Lena had accepted it.

Until the day she met the Agent.

Most agents were already nigh indestructible, with their speed and brute strength, not to mention the internal communication they kept with each other through the program.

But this one… this one stayed on Lena’s tail with a dogged, malicious ferocity that she couldn’t shake off. It had been dangerously close several times already as he chased her throughout the dark, rain-soaked city streets. She couldn’t get a good lock on him, and it was all she could do to follow Jack’s instructions to the nearest extraction point.

Lena’s almost there, sliding into the booth, hand outstretched to grab the phone — when she sees it.

The Agent wearing her brother’s face, a feral smile stretching his lips as his fingertips brush the corner of her dark coat. The grin turns into a snarl as Lena lifts the phone to her ear, and he misses her by a millimeter.

It had been only a second, but… it was Lex.

Lena was sure of it. So sure that she had spent months hacking into the system with Brainy’s help, trying to find out what the hell was going on.

It takes six months of hacking into the mainframe to discover the truth. Lex had succeeded where their father had not. The son had surpassed the father.

Not only had Lex somehow managed to get himself reinserted into the Matrix, the anomaly of his presence in the code had also caused a glitch in the system itself.

It takes another encounter with Lex — in his new regalia of a generic black suit, bland tie and FBI-issued sunglasses — sneering at her as he points a gun at her head, to realize yet another knife-wound truth.

Her brother has become a virus in the Matrix.

________

Kara’s experience in the Matrix could not have been more different from Lena’s.

More than a decade before Lena was born, Kara Zorel was like any normal thirteen year old girl. She went to school, hung out with her friends, had a crush on the boy living next door. She got straight A’s, and volunteered at the local senior home.

Her quicksilver mind that could spot things others couldn’t was easily considered as part of her intelligence. She was a very smart girl, after all. Her obsession with puzzles and codes was easily filed away as a quirk or a phase she was going through until she found a new hobby.

Everything about her life seemed to be on track to become ordinary, until the day of the accident.

At least, they told her it was an accident. Kara doesn’t remember any of it. All she really remembers is waiting for a train at a subway station. She remembers her father mentioning a Trainmaster who would take them away, somewhere new. To a new home, her mother had said. [This is from the 3rd movie]

And then nothing.

Kara thinks she must have been dreaming, because she can remember being left alone in that subway station — the walls were blank and a sterile white, with nothing to indicate the presence of life except Kara herself sitting on the otherwise empty bench. She can remember the feeling of waiting, waiting endlessly for the nothing that would come — no trains, no other passengers, no one else at the station with her. She can remember running along the platform tirelessly, only to end up in the same place she’d started from. She remembers the feeling of being left behind and trapped and scared. Mostly scared.

And then the next thing she knows, she’s awake on a hospital bed with Eliza Danvers sleeping on the chair next to her.

The Danvers had found her on the train platform, curled up, unconscious, on the same bench she’d dreamed of. They’d thought she was a runaway, or a missing child, but the FBI agents who had come to Kara’s hospital room had told her that her parents were dead.

An accident, they’d said. A subway malfunction that had taken out a whole car. Under investigation, the man in sunglasses and a dark suit had reassured Jeremiah and Eliza in a monotonous voice.

With no one to claim her, no other family to speak of, Kara is taken in by the Danvers. They’re good people, kind and understanding when Kara wakes up in the middle of the night with nightmares of being trapped in a white sea of nothingness.

When Kara wakes up crying and sweating, Eliza is there to soothe her and rock her in her arms until she fell asleep again. When she tells Jeremiah that everything is too loud and bright, he sits her down and teaches her to calm her thoughts and meditate.

Alex, who had gone from being an only child to having an anxious, high-maintenance little intruder in her room, is less than happy about the situation. She keeps her distance, and gives Kara cold glares from across the bedroom or ignores her completely.

Until one night when Alex sneaks back into their room from the concert she’d snuck out to earlier, and finds Kara sitting on one corner of her bed with her knees curled up. With Alex gone for most of the night, Kara had been alone and had refused to fall asleep, terrified of having nightmares again.

With only a little bit of grumbling, Alex tosses all their pillows and blankets onto the floor, and drapes one of her sheets over both their beds to make their first blanket fort. The first of many.

Curled up on the floor next to Alex, Kara sleeps soundly through the night for the first time since waking up without her parents.

Still, despite slowly settling in with the Danvers, Kara can’t shake the feeling that something is off.

It feels as if everything around her is just a little bit off-kilter. As if the world had somehow changed in the time she’d been unconscious. Or maybe she had. Either way, it feels as if both Kara and the world around her know on some level that she’s not supposed to be here. Perhaps it’s because she was meant to die along with her parents. But by some unknown anomaly, here she is, half of her present, half of her straining to join her mother and father wherever they are.

It’s not a reflection on the Danvers. Kara couldn’t have asked for a better family to care for her. And she cares for them too. Over time, Kara gains a sister she would die for in a heartbeat, instead of a roommate who barely tolerated her presence when she first arrived. Her definition of ‘mother’ slowly expands and makes room for Eliza in her heart. She finds a man to respect and admire in Jeremiah.

Still, the feeling of being out of place persists throughout the years, always in the back of Kara’s mind.

Tragedy strikes when Jeremiah disappears.

It happens quickly, too quickly. One day her foster father is there, the next he’s gone. The only clue the police get is the last voicemail on Jeremiah’s phone.

The message starts with Jeremiah’s voice, reminding Alex that he’ll be picking her up from softball practice later, then it cuts off abruptly without warning.

Ten seconds later, another voice is heard through the other end, this time a smooth monotone. It sounds nothing at all like Jeremiah, and it sends a chill down Kara’s spine.

“The Luthor girl escaped again. She has eluded us one too many times for a human. She cannot avoid the inevitable…. Send the Brother. Next time, she dies.”

Nothing is found at the scene but Jeremiah’s phone. No evidence, no ransom note, no explanation for the strange message, nothing to trace, nothing to at all to suggest that Jeremiah Danvers was there. The blank-faced FBI agents offer no sympathy when they inform Eliza of the news in a smooth, apathetic monotone.

[[In case it’s not clear, Jeremiah got turned into an agent by the other agents who were chasing Lena during one of the times she was plugged into the Matrix]]

Their little family is shocked and reeling, but they cling to one another in their grief. Kara remembers something her mother always used to say. Stronger together, Kara. Life is hard, and we cannot face it alone. We must be each other’s strengths. We are always stronger together.

Still, life goes on. Keeps moving on, even after tragedy and loss. Sometimes, Kara feels as if the world is in constant motion, its inertia having no time to waste on a young girl who feels as if she has been left behind.

The sense of alienation increases, and Kara is diagnosed with depression. Which only serves to increase her family’s concern, and puts a near-permanent look of worry in Eliza’s eyes.

So Kara puts on her brightest smile and hugs her foster mother. She talks more, smiles wider, laughs louder, and makes more friends to go out with so she’s not at home alone in her room which no longer has Alex in it.

Alex goes to college, then med school, the chip on her shoulder large enough to be seen from space. She’s determined to find out what really happened to her father, and Kara knows how stubborn she is.

But she only really finds out how serious Alex is when her older sister declares that she’s joining the FBI, and no amount of talking from either Kara or Eliza can dissuade her.

And it’s not as if Kara has a leg to stand on. At least Alex has a purpose, a direction. Meanwhile, Kara has no idea what she wants to do with her life. She meanders around after college, a little bit lost and floundering. She’s intelligent, her professors said, but she lacks focus.

Eventually, she gets hired at Catco as an assistant to the big boss herself, Cat Grant.

All of 5’4” in heels, the woman herself strikes fear into the heart of every intern roaming the halls. It’s impossible not to snap to attention when her private elevator dings and she steps out. Each click of her heels is a reminder of the power she wields, and honestly, Kara is a little terrified of her.

But she straightens her spine and her glasses, tucks her hair behind her ear, and refuses to be cowed.

And it’s as if Miss Grant takes it as a challenge to break her, because her demands become more and more unrealistic, more and more impossible. But something inside Kara tells her not to back down, to stare her right back, and wait her out. Cat Grant is a puzzle, and Kara has always been good at puzzles.

The key comes in the form of Carter Grant.

Cat tasks Kara to pick her son up from school one afternoon, and Kara finds the young boy waiting for her right outside the school gates. He’s a very sweet boy, a little shy, but he eventually tells Kara about this comic he’s been reading about a young superhero named Supergirl.

As he begins to brighten up talking about his new favorite character, Carter doesn’t notice the car coming from the other side of the street. Neither does Kara at first. But something inside her tells her to turn around.

Maybe it was a sound, an instinct, and unconscious observation too quick for her mind to consciously process. Whatever it was, it had her turning just in time to see the car heading straight for Carter.

She barely has time to pull the boy back to the sidewalk, and the car almost clips him. Almost.

“Are you okay??” Kara hurriedly checks Carter for any injuries or signs that he’s shaken up. Other than the boy’s wide eyes, he seems to be fine.

“That- that was amazing! You were so fast, Kara! You were like Supergirl! How did you do that?”

As they walk back home, Cart gushes about how awesome Kara’s save was, how she was as fast and strong as Supergirl. Kara laughs it off, but the relief that the boy is okay lingers.

The second the front door closes behind Kara, Carter pulls out a phone and scrolls through the contact list until he finds ‘Mom’.

When Cat answers, he whispers excitedly into the phone. “She did it! She was even faster than Lena by 0.02 seconds!”

“Good. Did she say anything else?”

“She mentioned her sister. Are you going to tell the Manhunter? Is J’onn going to pull them out? Or maybe Lena can come? I like it when she comes to visit.”

A rustle of paper in the background, and Cat drawls in an almost bored voice. “Not yet. She’s not ready.”

[[In this AU, Carter is a computer program designed to assist the Oracle. Kinda like Seraph in the movies. He and Cat have a very unusual relationship. He was just supposed to be a simple program to help ward her, but he was designed to be charming in an innocent and disarming way to help distract from his real purpose. Cat developed a fondness for him, so when he tries to protect her when she’s in danger, she ends up shoving him behind her and protecting him.]]

On the anniversary of Jeremiah’s disappearance, another tragedy rocks the Danvers family.

Alex Danvers disappears.

Eliza is inconsolable, but Kara… Kara is numb, at first. Denial is always the first instinct of the human mind when a shock is delivered to its system. There’s talk of a search, trying to find out where she might have gone, her usual routine, any places Alex frequents — it all rolls over Kara’s head. They’re looking for a body, but that’s not how Alex is gonna be found.

Unlike Jeremiah’s disappearance, Alex’s is not without a trail. She is an FBI agent after all. There will always be a trail, and like in most FBI cases, it can be found in the absence of one.

In this case, it’s Alex’s computer. It’s missing.

The more Kara thinks about it, the more it galvanizes her. Kara knows Alex, knows her quirks and her habits. She didn’t have many friends outside of work, mostly people from med school she’s since lost touch with. No, anything that happened to Alex would be connected to her work, and Alex kept all her work files in that computer.

She throws herself into finding it. Find it, and she finds Alex.

For months, Kara follows every lead, every loose thread she can find, all in the hope of finding the computer. Every time she comes across a dead end, she doggedly retraces her steps until she can find another lead. The chalkboard in the kitchen that used to house her grocery list desk becomes a list of all possible locations. Her desk at Catco is a disaster of papers and post-it notes — a receipt from Cat’s dry cleaners here, the number for Annie Leibovitz’s assistant there, and Alex’s bank statements piled on top.

All the while, Cat watches her. Observes her tenacity, her ability to find patterns that no one else would’ve noticed, her keen attention that allows her to find details that other people would’ve ignored.

Finally, after nearly a year of looking, Kara finds Alex’s computer in a security deposit box under the alias Alice Liddell.

It takes her all night, but Kara manages to gain access to Alex’s documents. She finds file after file on Alex’s investigation into Jeremiah’s disappearance. Articles on similar disappearances all over the world. Some incidents are identical to Jeremiah’s, some with more of a trail. The victimology is all over the place, but in certain cases, there is a disturbing pattern.

A number of the disappearances occur in National City, and nearly all of them have one thing in common. They’ve all been patients or relatives of patients at the Luthor Family Hospital — a stroke patient and his fiancee, a woman in a car accident, a man with a gunshot wound, an old lady with Alzheimer's and her widow, even three children from the cancer ward and one of their mothers. Most of these people were deceased, but there must have been some reason Alex thought otherwise. And if she was right, then there is something very disturbing going on in the Luthor Family Hospital.

Kara keeps searching the files, and finds a certain devolution in Alex’s notes. Towards the end, she seemed more and more disorganized, her thoughts more and more disjointed. And Kara feels a terrible sense of guilt at not noticing what her sister was going through.

Throughout the files, she finds multiple references Alex made to something called the Matrix. She stumbles upon a mess of a pdf that she’d originally thought was gibberish, but upon closer inspection actually more closely resembles computer code. And in the middle of the unintelligible tangle of letters and symbols, she finds a question.

What is the Matrix?

Just as Kara is trying to make sense of the question, a new message alert appears in Alex’s inbox. Kara stares at the screen. It originated from Alex’s own email. Frowning, she clicks on the message, and her eyes widen as she reads.

I’m alive.

Kara springs forward so fast, she almost dislodges the laptop from her kitchen counter. She tries multiple times to reply to the message, but nothing happens. Kara growls, and almost as if the computer can sense her frustration, another message appears.

I’m alive and I’m out.

Kara’s brows furrow. What? What the hell?

The Matrix still has you, Kara.

Kara’s frown deepens and she looks around her, checks the computer. Is this some kind of prank?

I’m sorry I had to leave, but you can’t follow. Not until you’re ready.

Ready for what, Kara thinks.

Ready to give it all up. Ready to wake up. You told me once that you felt like everything since you woke up in the subway station has felt strange, like a dream. You were right, it is. And you’ll find me, if you’re ready to wake up.

Kara’s jaw drops in shock.

Follow the white rabbit.

The message flashes across the screen for a moment, then the monitor goes black. Kara snaps it shut and pushes it as far away from her as she can.

That — what was that? A-a trick? A hallucination brought on by the lack of sleep and her hyperfixation?

She could check it again, turn the laptop back on and click on the messages again — but suddenly Kara is gripped by fear, and denial feels more like a comfort.

She packs away the computer, stowing it under the desk where she can’t see it, and goes to bed. She doesn’t sleep until 3 AM.

But of course, Kara is no coward. She’s never been one to back down to her fears. In the morning, armed with a cup of Noonan’s coffee and a clearer mind, she opens the laptop again.

She doesn’t quite have the courage to check the messages yet, but she finds another article. This time, about the [head] of the Luthor Family Hospital, a woman named Lena Luthor.

It takes no time at all for her quick mind to make a connection, but it takes a while for the rest of her conscious brain to catch up.

Luthor. She’d heard that name before. In a voicemail, the only thing left of Jeremiah Danvers. “The Luthor girl got away again.”

Lena Luthor.

That can’t be a coincidence. Alex had been looking into their dad’s disappearance, and the Luthor name has already come up more than once, and now a female Luthor.

All the research she does on Lena Luthor comes up with next to nothing. Other than business articles and some papers in several scientific journals, there’s very little mention of the woman. So far, all Kara knows is that Lena Luthor is the CEO of one of the leading tech companies in the world, dedicated to providing accessible technology and communication devices to billions of people all over the globe — their new L-Phones are popping up everywhere. She’s also apparently a brilliant scientist and researcher, invested in scientific research to help prevent and cure diseases. She also owns and is directly involved in the running of the Luthor Family Hospital, a facility known for innovative and experimental medicine.

And for all of her work and accolades, there has never been a single photograph of this woman past the age of 6. Nothing. This woman’s image has never been recorded in any way, in any kind of media, in any event, in all the years that she has been running L-Corp. How is that even possible?

Now, Kara’s definitely suspicious.

Three days after the computer is found — plenty of time for thinking, but not too much time to do something stupid, she thinks — Cat makes her move.

She summons Kara to her office and delivers her ultimatum, in the form of an offer.

“Y- You think I have what it takes to be a reporter?”

“You’re an intelligent woman, Keira. But more than that, you can see things others can’t. You observe far more than people give you credit for. You could have a bright future here at Catco.”

Cat surveys her intently over her glasses. “It’s your choice. You can take the job, or you can keep wasting your life going down this rabbit hole.”

Cat gestures toward Kara’s messy desk, but again Kara’s quick mind gives her a nudge. That’s the third reference she’s heard in as many days. Rabbit hole. Alice. White rabbit.

Kara asks Cat for time to think about it, but really, she’s already made her decision. She uses her connect as Cat’s assistant to set up an appointment, introducing herself as Kara Danvers from Catco, writing an article about the Luthor Family Hospital.

The assistant confirms that Miss Luthor would be delighted to give Catco a glimpse into the facility to bring awareness of the work they do, and confirms the time.

When Kara arrives, she is directed to the children’s cancer center. When she sees the whimsical mural of a white rabbit hopping along a trail on the walls, she knows she’s at the right place.

Kara follows the mural until she reaches a room at the end of the hall. A soft feminine voice floats down the hallway and reaches Kara’s ears.

“To begin with, tell me, do you think that these men would have seen anything of themselves or of one another except the shadows cast from the fire on the wall of the cave that fronted them?

How could they, he said, if they were compelled to hold their heads unmoved through life?”

Kara walks closer, drawn to the sound. She stops just outside the door to what is clearly a child’s hospital room. A little girl in white pajamas and a colorful bonnet sits cross-legged in the middle of the bed, listening to the dark-haired woman sitting on the chair by her side. The woman’s back is turned to Kara, but she can see the book she’s reading from. Plato.

“By Zeus, I do not, said he.

Then in every way such prisoners would deem reality to be nothing else than the shadows of the artificial objects.”

“Quite inevitably.” The little girl on the bed quotes with a smile. Kara hears a soft, amused hum from the woman.

“Consider, then, what would be the manner of the release and healing from these bonds… When one was freed from his fetters and compelled to stand up suddenly and turn his head around… and lift up his eyes to the light, and in doing all this, felt pain…”

Kara sees the moment the reader realizes that she’s there. The woman’s head turns just the slightest, and Kara can see her sharp, elegant profile silhouetted in the light. She keeps reading, but at this point, they both know she’s aware of Kara’s presence. Kara continues to listen silently.

“What do you suppose would be his answer if someone told him that what he had seen before was all a cheat and an illusion… But that now, being nearer to reality and turned toward more real things, he saw more truly?”

Just then, the little girl’s eyes snap up to meet Kara’s, and big black eyes blink owlishly at her. “Miss Lena, we have a visitor.”

The woman finally turns, and Kara gets her first glimpse of Lena Luthor. Cut-glass green eyes are perceptive as they take Kara in, and a small smile plays on the corner of red lips.

“So we do, Zuri.”

She sets the book down on the bed beside the child and rises from her seat, a pale hand extended. "Kara Danvers, I presume?"

It takes Kara a second to reply, unable to take her eyes off the woman. There’s something arresting about her, something that could probably stop anyone in their tracks. Even the way she tips her head to survey Kara is fluid and mesmerizing.

Clearing her throat, Kara takes Lena Luthor’s proffered hand. “Yeah – uh, yes.”

The woman's smile grows. "I've been expecting you."

For a moment, the words make Kara's stomach flutter, then the 'duh' moment hits her. Of course she'd been expecting her, they had an appointment. Kara's face flushes red. "I've been looking forward to meeting you, Miss Luthor."

Green eyes gain a look of amusement and crinkle at the corners. Lena Luthor looks as if she has a secret, or like she’s in on a joke Kara doesn't know. "Not as much as I have, I'm sure."

Kara's brows furrow in confusion, but before she can ask the woman what she means, the Luthor bends down and kisses the top of the child's head, before heading out the door and gesturing for Kara to follow.

[[I just love the idea of Lena reading the Allegory of the Cave to the children like she did when she was a kid, as her way of preparing them, a way of telling them that yes, extraction will hurt, it won't be easy to accept the truth, but they will be free].

[Also in this AU, the extraction points used to be the pay phones like in the movie, except those got phased out once the machines figured out that’s what the resistance was using. So Lena developed the L-phones, and made it so one would always be easily accessible. That’s the work she does at L-Corp]]

After their tour of the hospital concludes, Lena watches Kara walk out through the double doors, throwing a friendly wave behind her. As soon as she's out of sight, she pulls out an L-phone.

"Well, she’s persistent, I'll give you that."

"Told you. Who do you think she got it from?”

“I see stubbornness runs in the family.” Lena hums in amusement.

A chuckle from the other end of the line. “You have no idea.”

"How close is she?"

Alex’s voice turns business-like. "Well, she’s made the connection to you, and Kelly’s seeing some sizeable fluctuations in the code, so I'd say she’s getting there. J’onn thinks she might be ready soon. He says she’s responding quickly for someone who hasn’t had as long to adjust. Sooner if you prepare her, probably.”

“That won’t be a problem.”

“Rhea,” Lena can hear the seething disdain Alex’s voice, and thinks her mentor is probably standing over Alex’s shoulder as they speak. “Would like me to remind you that the sooner we pull out my sister —“ Lena can almost see her glare at Rhea. “The sooner you can get back to the Daxam, and this can ‘all be over with’.”

Lena shakes her head. “I’m not pulling her out before she’s ready. The consequences could be disastrous.”

“Yeah? Try telling that to your Captain.”

They’re interrupted by an excited young voice. “Hi, Lena!”

“Mon-El?”

Alex snorts over the line. “Yeah, can you believe her? She brought the kid over just to get you to ‘speed things up’.”

“When are you coming back, Lena? I miss you! I snuck into the dock last week, but M’gann caught me. She said she’d teach me how to make shells if I promised not to go past the bridge again. And Imra asked if she could come with us the next time we go to the bridge to see the loaders, I told her yeah. That’s okay, right?”

Despite the seriousness of their situation, Lena can’t help but smile a bit at the young boy’s enthusiasm. “Of course she can. I’ll be back soon, Mon-El. Stay out of trouble, and do what your ranking officer says.”

“Okay, kid, you heard the lady. Go bother Brainy and Kelly at operations. It's about time you learn to read code anyway."

Lena can hear the boy grumbling in the background, but he obeys. As soon as he's out of earshot, Lena goes back to business.

“Start a trace for Kara's pod location, and standby. Be ready to plug in when I tell you to.”

"Copy. J’onn’s gonna try to get us as close as he can, but it's the fields. We can never be too careful. And Lena…? Try to make it easy for her."

Alex’s voice softens at her request, her concern for her sister evident in every word, and Lena understands. Just as Alex understands that there is nothing easy about the truth Kara will have to see.

"I'll do what I can."

This is not the last time Kara pays her a visit.

Under the guise of her article, Kara returns to Lena again. And again.

The first time she comes over under the guise of an interview, she stays until lunch. And then takes Lena to lunch, partly to make up for ruining her schedule, and partly because the CEO confesses that she often forgets to eat throughout the day.

They eat at Kara’s favorite lunch spot, Noonan’s, where Kara is aghast to learn that Lena has never tried any of their desserts despite the café being less than a block away from L-Corp. They end up trying nearly every dessert on the menu. Or at least Lena samples a little bit of everything, and Kara finishes it all off.

They part, with some reluctance on Kara’s end, three hours past Kara’s allotted time, but Lena assures her that it was worth clearing her schedule, considering how much she enjoyed Kara’s company.

It’s only after she’s no longer in Lena’s presence that Kara realizes she’d all but forgotten about her purpose for coming, which was to interrogate her about the suspicious disappearances at the Luthor Family Hospital, and about Lena’s possible involvement in Alex’s own disappearance.

She returns, this time with the flimsy excuse of bringing Lena lunch now that she knows the CEO won’t remember it herself. Lena suggests they go out to the nearby city park to enjoy her break there.

Lena leads her to a bench on a hill and they sit there quietly, enjoying their view of the park. Lena gives Kara a shy smile. “I like to come out here sometimes. When everything becomes… too much. Sometimes, everything around me just feels so wrong and… fake. Especially with what I do. It feels like none of it, none of this is real.”

Kara turns to look at her fully, a crinkle in her forehead, and Lena wonders if she's pushing it. “What do you mean?”

“Have you ever had that feeling where… you’re not sure if you’re dreaming or awake? And you’re not quite sure if anything around you is real or not?”

Lena chances a look at the other woman. Kara is looking back at her, eyes wide and intent. It takes a moment, one long moment where Kara is just staring at her, as if trying to puzzle her out. Then she nods.

“Yeah. All time.”

“That’s how I used to feel.” Lena holds her gaze, steady green meeting wondering blue. Kara is so close right now, so close that Lena could tell her. How easy it would be if Lena could convey the truth just by looking into Kara’s eyes. But she’s not ready yet. Lena drops her gaze with a soft laugh.

“I guess I was just thinking, if none of this is real, then none of my problems there would be real, either.” She gestures back at L-Corp with a wry smile.

Kara takes the bit, and her smile softens, blue gaze losing some of its intensity.

Kara fails her mission again that time. And the next. And the next. It feels as if she forgets her problems when she’s with Lena. For the first time in a long time, it doesn’t feel like she’s out of place. The world doesn’t feel so wrong when she’s with Lena, or at least, it doesn’t bother Kara as much. She feels like… herself.

As for Lena, she knows they’re running out of time, and that the agents will catch wind of them soon. Especially since Kara is on the precipice of the truth.

But for the first time, Lena finds herself delaying the inevitable. It’s unlike her — the Potential who has spent her whole life freeing as many minds from the Matrix as she can; the second-highest ranking officer and chief engineer of the Daxam, who seizes every situation with a level head and a calm command.

“What are you doing, Lena?”

Rhea’s voice is an imperious snap, even over the line. “You have never spent this long in the Matrix since I pulled you out. You’re putting yourself in danger for a simple extraction. It shouldn’t be taking this long.”

“No extraction is ever simple. I told you, she’s not ready.”

“I know you and that Oracle—” the word is practically a hiss in her mentor’s mouth. “—think that this woman is a Potential, but if she really were that special, she would’ve been ready a long time ago. You were ready long before I found you.”

“This is different—“

“Why? Because you’re sweet on her?”

Lena’s eyes narrow. “You know that’s not why.”

As soon as Lena’s tone gains an authoritative edge, Rhea softens. “I know, my dear. But you know how I worry about you being plugged in for so long with… Lex out there. Besides, you have been neglecting your duties on the ship. Your crew needs you, Mon-El needs you. Come back home, Lena.”

Lena relents. “I will. Soon.”

But ending her time with Kara is easier said than done.

It may be selfish, but around Kara, Lena feels lighter. Her responsibilities don’t weigh as much, and the bleakness of war vanishes in the company of someone so earnest and warm and hopeful. Kara is… resilient. In spite of all that she’s been through, she remains strong, determined, and most incredible of all, kind.

Lena watches Kara with the children — the youngest Potentials, who see the wrongness of the world around them, but aren’t ready yet to be pulled out — and watches her pull gap-toothed smiles and belly laughs out of even the most solemn ones.

She extends this kindness, even to Lena — over daily reminders to eat and take care of herself, to lunch dates she tags Lena along to because she thinks Lena will forget to eat otherwise.

Once, after a successful extraction of one of Lena’s children, a somber Kara brings a small bouquet of plumerias to the little girl’s empty room. She finds Lena sitting next to the child’s empty bed.

“I’m so sorry.” Kara plucks a single plumeria from the bouquet, before setting the flowers on the girl’s pillow.

Lena shakes her head, a serene smile on her face. “Don’t be. She’s free. She’s in a better place now.”

Kara, not understanding her words, gives her a sad smile. She takes Lena’s hand and presses the single plumeria into her fingers. “I’m sure she is.”

Every day, Lena fails to tell Kara the truth, wanting to prolong their time together. And most of all, wanting to spare Kara for just a little longer. Lena can’t bear the thought of being another person who adds to everything Kara’s gone through, of being the reason why that smile dims a little more, or worse, never appears again at all.

Her hesitation nearly costs them everything.

#supercorp #supergirl #katie mcgrath #lena luthor #melissa benoist #kara danvers #me trying to write #I've been working on this thing all weekend ugh. i just wanna yeet it out there #there's more if anyone wants it #also in case it’s not clear the kid at the end of the moodboard is young Mon-El #i should sleep. ugh. i so sleepy #i forgot brainy in the moodboard *facepalm #oh well too late to add himj #gotta sleep. gotta sleep #fuckin tumblr took away all my formatting ugh #alex danvers #cat grant #nia nal

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