Summary: Zach and Laurie start to find common ground as she recovers from her venture into the fog.
Notes: Yes, this is going into some sort of body horror territory. There's so much left unsaid about the mycorrhiza in the film that you can do... anything with it.
AO3 Link
previous chapter | next chapter
chapter ii. mycorrhiza madness.
Zach had been alone for at least three months.
When he and Olivia realised that their ways of working were completely different and their goals were never going to align properly, it was better to go their separate ways.
Still, he wasn’t too far from her. Maybe a few hours’ trek through the forest at most. He didn’t plan to seek her out unless it was absolutely necessary. The pick up point between the two of them served as a means of him dropping off the photographs to her if she so desired them so she could see and understand what he was trying to do in the name of Parnag Fegg and communicating with the spirit of the forest. He didn’t want to control it - he wanted to appease it.
His long daily walks in the forest often led him to the odd person, couple, or family seeking some form of escape from the pandemic that had been wrought on the rest of the world. Some of them had come from the base with rangers, some of them had stumbled down the wrong path.
Well, wrong for them.
Zach saw it as an opportunity to prove his devotion - something of which Olivia hadn’t quite understood.
Tableau after tableau, photo after photo.
He wondered if it would ever be enough to get a sign from Parnag Fegg. The marks on his body, the stones he’d sewn into his skin - they were all so he could prove himself and show that communication was better than subservience. That he was part of the earth just like the woodland spirit, just like the mycorrhiza that Olivia was studying.
His way of communicating was more beautiful.
He wanted to connect with it in a more intimate way.
That’s why he did what he did. Even if it felt repetitive and boring at one stage.
Then something interesting happened one night.
It had been weeks since he had been sent anyone for sacrificial offerings and art.
Weeks.
He was beginning to doubt that more strays would come his way.
Until fraught screaming and crying woke him one from his sleep.
Frowning, Zach switched on the lights, pulled on hoodie and slipped his trainers on before heading outside to see what all the racket was.
He stopped short when he saw the mist dissipating, and a hysterical woman coming out from it with an enormous backpack on her.
She also came to a stop and stared at him.
“You,” she said.
“Me?” was his reply. Did she know him? Did he know her?
“You!” she repeated, before promptly collapsing to the ground and violently convulsing.
Zach sprung to action, bounding over to help. This wasn’t a stray. This was someone who had come here with intent, and she had gotten lost in the fog. The further he went from the tent, the dimmer the light became but there was enough for him to see what he was doing.
Whoever she was, she looked horrified as she lay there practically seizing.
“It’s alright…” he told her gently, crouching down and beginning to take hold of her backpack straps. For a moment she calmed. “Let me get this off you.”
It was difficult, but he managed it. Slinging it onto his own back, Zach estimated she must have had a few weeks worth of supplies in there. What the hell did she have in mind? Why was she even here in the first place? How had the mist gotten to her?
Zach then scooped the woman up into his arms and started to head back to the tent, which was when she started crying and screaming again. The bloody spores in the fog. They’d be the end of everyone if it ever got out of this damn forest. If Parnagg Fegg ever allowed it to leave the forest.
“You have to calm down,” he said. “Stop crying, it’ll only make it worse.”
He slipped inside the tent and she appeared to be getting worse if anything.
“For god’s sake…” he muttered.
He set her down on the camp bed where she started to settle down. He was able to take a good look at her now: somewhere around five two, long blonde hair tied into a plait, definitely not built for living a life in the woods despite what she had clearly brought with her.
Zach put her backpack down and noticed that the front pocket was partially open. He probably shouldn’t be going through her things but he’d never seen anyone in such a state because of the fog before. He pulled out a plastic bag of the remnants of psychedelic mushrooms.
He sighed. Yep. Inexperienced with what lay within the forest, that was for sure.
“Are you joking?” He turned back towards the woman, who was now more conscious and lying on her side facing him. “You thought it was a good idea to take psychedelics and walk through that fog? What did you think was going to happen? Hmm? Stupid woman…”
He threw the bag into the depths of the tent, somewhere. He’d worry about it later. Right now: he had a woman who was either going to be one of his sacrifices or something else. He wasn’t sure what yet. He needed to figure it out quickly.
Zach went over to her.
“Can you tell me your name?” he asked.
“...Aur…”
Oh good, she was garbling. He frowned at her, trying to make sense of it. “Aura?”
She made a noise. “L…”
“Laura?”
She made another odd noise at him.
“Laurie?”
“Hmm…” Clearly more lucid than before, she rolled onto her back with wider, open eyes.
“I’m Zach, by the way,” he said, pressing a hand to her forehead. “Hmm. You’re fine. Almost overdid it, didn’t you?”
“I - I didn’t…” she couldn’t catch her breath. “Water? My - my - bag.”
He went back over to her bag to fetch her water bottle, coming back to help her drink it. He had a hand at the back of her head as he helped her raise it, and he resisted the urge to dig his fingers into her soft hair. Zach had been without actual company for three months, and sacrifices were hardly that.
“What are you doing all the way out here?” he then asked Laurie, helping her lie back down and setting the bottle down too.
She managed to get out: “You. I - I think.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You came looking for me?”
“Maybe,” she sighed, placing a hand on her chest. He watched her curiously for a moment as she took a few deep breaths.
A million questions started to run through Zach’s mind; a million questions that were to be saved when Laurie was recovered from her stint in the fog.
“Rest,” he said, going to grab a heftier duvet from one of his storage boxes and placing it over the woman. “You’ll need it after all that.”
Laurie appeared to settle down quite quickly after that.
Zach pulled up one of his chairs close by so that he could watch her whilst she slept, thinking about all the possibilities of why she was there.
How could she have been looking for him?
Was it Parnagg Fegg sending him someone worthy?
Did he go through with what he’d usually do when people were sent his way?
He’d have to figure it out when she woke up. He’d have to get the story out of her. It was surprising she even survived the spores in the fog if she’d been on mushrooms in the first place. There’s no way any other normal person wouldn’t have snapped because of it. This woman in front of him had fought her way through it until she got out the other side.
That was the closest the fog had been to his tent. Ever. Had it overtaken Olivia’s base camp? Was she okay?
No.
He couldn’t think about her.
Even if he did leave her photographs of the people sent his way.
But that was work; that was scientific.
It wasn’t personal.
This… this with Laurie here and now? This was a personal choice he had to make.
To teach or to kill. To discover or to maim.
He tilted his head to the side as he surveyed her.
She was twitching in her sleep. Unsurprising, considering the convulsions from not ten, fifteen minutes ago. At the same time, she looked peaceful. Who wouldn’t after that ordeal? Something in him was tempted to remove her long hair from the plait so he could see the colour of it properly. So he could feel it. He wasn’t sure where the urge came from - perhaps it was down to the fact the next morning could go one of two ways?
Zach sank further down into his chair, eyelids drooping closed. It was much too late. This was something for the next morning. It didn’t matter that the lights were still on. He was asleep in minutes.
--
Zach watched as a silhouetted figure made its way through the fog. Back to him, searching for something. He followed after them, unafraid of what would happen. This was a dream, after all, and the fog couldn’t affect him in his dreams.
He couldn’t tell if it was meant to be day or night with how unnecessarily bright everything was and how the person ahead of him was shown to him. He couldn’t make out who it was. They were moving urgently so he followed them in the same way as if they were a guiding light for him despite the shadow figure they were.
Eventually the pair of them broke through the fog to see the standing stone at the edge of Olivia’s camp.
The figure dropped down in front of it, crying out in pain.
Zach slowed in his approach, not wanting to frighten them any further. Were they frightened? They must have been if they were in pain.
Another shadow rose up from the ground by the stone.
Zach stopped.
He knew exactly who that was; what it was.
A smile formed on his lips, and he sped up towards the person on the ground-
--
Zach woke with a start.
He’d barely been near that fog last night and it had somehow creeped into his mind.
He rubbed his eyes and glanced over at Laurie, who was wide awake.
They locked eyes.
He hadn’t noticed last night how beautiful her eyes were: round and hazel, wide and almost alarmed at the fact the pair of them had taken to staring at each other so abruptly on waking up. He watched as she pulled the duvet tighter around herself and trembled.
“Not feeling up to scratch?” he asked her.
Laurie shook her head. “Not really…” she murmured in response. She brought a hand out of her cocoon and inspected it as it shook. “Jesus Christ. I’m not - I’m not a sap, I promise.”
His lips twitched upwards for a moment, amused. “So you didn’t know about the fog, then?”
“Nope.”
“What do you know? Why are you here?”
Laurie was silent for a moment. “I have coffee in my bag, if you’d be so kind as to make some before I start to talk.”
He paused, rather taken aback at the quite blunt tone she’d give him. Not quite the damsel in distress he initially thought last night. He’d also not had coffee in several months, so that was a nice surprise.
“Alright,” he said, getting up and having a good stretch before going back to her backpack to fetch the very full jar of instant coffee. Not the brand he’d usually go for but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Zach still had some large bottles of water lying around and set about boiling some water in a pot on the little camp stove under the now-watchful eyes of Laurie. He tried his best to ignore her for the time being as he put together the hot beverages except he’d noticed that she was finally sitting upright and trying to emerge from the duvet he’d given her. Still shaking. Still not quite there yet.
“Isn’t the caffeine going to make it worse?” he asked, pouring from the pot into two cups. He handed one to her. “You look like shit.”
“As if you look any better,” she scoffed, blowing gently over the top of her cup. Laurie tried a cursory sip but it was still far too hot to even attempt. “Thank you, though. For bringing me here.”
Zach hummed and sat down in the chair by her again. “Seems like you would have made it here anyway.”
“Yeah… maybe.”
“Explain.”
He rested his elbow on the arm of the chair and propped his chin up with his hand, eyeing Laurie intently now. He needed to know what the hell she was doing out here before he did anything else, because if there was even the slightest chance that she felt the same as him in regards to what was in the forest… oh, this was going to be the best day ever.
“I dreamed about you,” she confessed, shyly, avoiding his piercing gaze. “It started when I got furloughed from work during the lockdown. I didn’t - I didn’t have anything to do in the day so I mostly just got high off of mushrooms and started looking into local folklore.” Laurie glanced up at him through her eyelashes and shot him a small smile. “Led me to Parnag Fegg, these woods, what it means to worship him, what devotion means… and then my dreams started becoming weird. I think that’s what I get for doing mushrooms before bed. I didn’t know that you were the person I was looking for. But when I stepped out of the fog last night and saw your silhouette? It was the same as what I saw in my dreams. I’ve been looking for you this whole time and I don’t know why. I’m meant to be here with you. For what reason? I don’t know. Is that weird?”
Zach thought back to his dream. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t think that’s weird at all. I’ve been out here long enough.”
“How long?”
“Probably about five months,” he said. “Going by the last time I managed to get a haircut anyway.” Granted, his hair was still well above his shoulders. It certainly felt messier than it used to.
“Long time to be on your own out here.”
“No, I was with someone for two months… my - my ex-wife,” Zach mumbled. “Didn’t really work out, so we went our separate ways.”
Laurie shuddered and twitched again, which had Zach sitting straight again to pay more attention to her.
“How so?” she then asked, gripping onto her cup too tightly to stop the shaking in her hands.
“She takes a more scientific approach to what lies in the forest. Mine is more artistic,” Zach said cryptically.
“How so?” she repeated.
It wasn’t that Zach thought Laurie was prying a little too hard, it was that he couldn’t tell her what his art was. He couldn’t tell her that he killed people, surely? Or that he would put them to sleep and take photos of them to appease his god before killing them? That he’d occasionally drop copies of the photos off to his ex-wife as a ‘just in case?’
“How do you show devotion?” he countered. “For the spirit in the woods?”
“I draw. I journal. I take mushrooms,” Laurie finally took a sip of her coffee, but her face fell when she swallowed. She set the cup down on the ground next to her, lying back down on the bed. “Which I don’t think I should have done last night.”
“You said it yourself you didn’t know about the fog,” Zach said with a frown. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” she squirmed on the bed, throwing the duvet off as she very obviously broke out into a cold sweat. “Something. I might - I might throw up.”
Zach froze for a moment before jumping to action.
The first thing he found was a shallow bowl.
He held it out for Laurie as she leaned over the side of the bed and violently gagged - almost choking at one stage - before a completely undigested mushroom dropped out of her mouth, a trail of saliva leading up from it to her lips. Zach was both horrified and curious about the fact that it looked like one of the ones from her bag.
As if she’d never eaten it at all.
Laurie stared down at it confused, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“What the fuck?” her voice came out hoarse and she cleared her throat. “That’s - I ate that last night.”
She sat up properly, now seemingly completely fine. No tremors. Nothing.
Zach stayed crouched by the camp bed for a moment, eventually sitting down on the ground and putting the bowl down.
“What did it feel like? The fog?” he asked her.
She mulled over the question carefully, picking up her coffee and taking a more hefty chug of it without issue. “It felt like something was inside me. Something living. I don’t know what it wanted to do. Well - it rebuilt that mushroom.”
“Communication,” Zach whispered, eyes wide as he still stared at the reconstituted mushroom, lost in his own thoughts. “What would happen if we…? No. I couldn’t… Not her…”
“Sorry?”
Zach jumped a little, turning his attention back to Laurie in the real world. She was worried, and rightly so.
Even though he wasn’t in the mindset of killing her, he did want to have an experiment of his own.
“I had a strange dream last night,” he said. “Getting close enough to the fog granted me a vision. Is that how you view your dreams? As visions?”
She nodded.
“And you said you draw?”
She nodded again.
“Good. We might be on the same page yet.”
Zach stood up and went to rifle through one of his first aid boxes for the sleeping pills he kept on hand. He didn’t overtly present them to Laurie - in fact, he simply slipped them into his pocket obviously enough for her to have more questions - and went to sit next to her on the camp bed.
“I won’t show you my art just yet,” he said to her. “It might frighten you.”
She side eyed him.
“Right…”
“How do you feel about being part of a little experiment for me?”
The worry dropped from Laurie’s face to be replaced with consideration. She glanced between Zach and the mushroom with curiosity which only started to cause excitement to bubble in him. The fact she felt like she was meant to be here said it all.
Notes: Thought this was going to be a longer chapter, but I wanted to get to Zach more quickly.
AO3 Link
prologue | next chapter
chapter i. once upon a time...
“You can’t go!”
“I can and I will. No point in me hanging around here - I need to do something whilst I’m not working.”
“It’s only furlough,” Phillip reminded Laurie, watching as she plaited her long, blonde hair and all decked out in hiking gear. “You don’t need to do all this.”
She rolled her eyes and tied off the end of her plait with a hair bobble, grabbing the brush and stuffing it in her oversized hiking backpack. She looked around the bedroom: that seemed to be the last of her things.
“Just because you don’t understand doesn’t mean you need to put me down,” she told him, getting off the bed and going to slip her hiking boots on.
“Are you forgetting there’s a pandemic on?”
“Of course I haven’t, but I doubt I’m going to run into anybody in the fucking forest, Phil,” Laurie snapped. “Let me have this. I don’t care if it’s all some sort of mumbo-jumbo, I want to connect with the local folklore. Is that so bad?”
“It is when it’s like you’re in psychosis with it…” he muttered.
“Oh - fuck you!” Laurie picked up her backpack and got it on, storming out of the room as she did so with Phillip chasing after her. “I knew moving in with you was a bad idea anyway. I should have listened to my mum - you’re pathetic and have no vision for your life. It’s like all you wanted was to win me. What then? What did you think was going to happen?”
“That’s not fair, Laurie,” he sighed, hanging back as she stopped at the front door with her palm resting on the handle.
“And why is that your response to every argument?” she scoffed, turning to look back at him. “Do you feel that entitled to me that you think I’ll just give up a fight? That you think because you have me you can’t possibly lose me?”
Phillip was silent.
“Fuck sake. We’re done. I don’t know when I’ll be back. If I die, I’ll make sure a message gets to you. But I’m not missing, so don’t even try it.”
“Have you told your mum?”
“Yep. She expected this to happen sooner.”
Laurie didn’t even pick up her keys or wait for his response as she abruptly left the flat. She pulled a mask out of her pocket and hooked the little straps around her ears before making her way out of the building. Until she was out in the woods, she didn’t want to risk anything. And thankfully, she’d be risk free within about twenty minutes.
The streets were empty save for the odd person going on their mandatory daily walk with their dog. Laurie kept her head down if she was given odd looks about the size of her backpack. She was short in height around five foot two so it likely looked more comical than necessary, not to mention the fact that why would anybody be heading off with a giant backpack in these conditions regardless?
The moment she reached the edge of the forest she took off her mask and pocketed it, glad to be in a position where she’d be away from people. She was doing her own thing. Something that she needed to do.
Laurie entered the forest, shielded from the daylight and anything else that would come her way.
She took off the mask and slipped it back into her pocket with a smile on her face.
Where to go now?
She had no plan whatsoever: she wanted to let her intuition guide her as she explored the forest and tried to seek out the person she’d been dreaming about for the past several weeks.
If they were even a real person.
She’d not confessed to her boyfriend that she’d been dreaming of someone else every time she’d had the mushrooms they’d been cultivating. They were all in a plastic bag in the front pocket of her backpack - Phillip would soon find out she’d taken them all. The mushrooms had induced very odd dreams for her most nights of the week. Aside from pulsating walls and a distorted reality when she was awake, falling asleep gave her psychedelic dreams that would border on nightmares for anyone who wasn’t used to it.
Naturally she’d dreamed of the folkloric god she’d been researching for fun. That didn’t frighten her. Why would it? It didn’t matter to her that Parnagg Fegg was a local story to scare children from going too far into the forest. She wasn’t a child. There were ways to flatter Him. She supposed her dreams were one way - the creative mind at night when not working came up with glorious visions of red and green and standing stones.
Aside from the woodland god, there was a person. A man. She could never make out his face but he often appeared as some sort of backlit being, beckoning to her.
As if he understood her.
What she could gather from him is that he wasn’t the tallest man in the world but she wasn’t the tallest woman in the world either. He had a lithe enough body, and his hair seemed to be growing out. That was all.
All Laurie could figure out was that he must be in the forest somewhere.
He must believe in Parnagg Fegg too, whoever he was.
She would while away the time in the forest by sitting to draw in her little sketchbook or use a stick to draw in the dirt. She’d read somewhere that the spirit liked art, so she wanted to at least leave a piece of it for him in the forest as she trekked through it day by day.
Her sleeping bag was enough for her at night.
The deeper she went - the further she was from home - the stranger and more vivid her dreams became. Intentional marks across skin. Bright lights reflecting red and green. The man coming ever closer. It didn’t feel menacing when he seemed to get closer to her in her dreams. It felt comforting to some degree.
Laurie wondered if this was how she was connecting with nature and seeking out the secrets of Parnagg Fegg.
She wondered if the man would know more than her about it all. There was always that chance.
Five days and nights into her journey of slow discovery, a mist settled in in the forest just before Laurie went to bed.
She didn’t think too much of it. She scribbled a few notes about it in her journal as she munched down a couple of mushrooms before bed as per usual.
But then it started to… creep towards her.
Envelop her.
Something was wrong.
This mist wasn’t a normal mist.
Laurie hurriedly swallowed the mushroom she’d been chewing on and packed up her things as fast as possible. The mist was more like a fog that she needed to navigate and escape. It didn’t feel right. It made her want to sneeze, as if pollen had gotten into her nostrils and she’d not taken any hayfever tablets. She put her backpack back on, and started on a trek.
But where the hell was she going now?
Even if she did have a map, it wasn’t going to help her now.
No matter which way she turned, there was no knowing what was the right way. She did her best not to panic and walked in a straight line as best as she could, hoping that she wasn’t double back on herself and what had been a peaceful journey over the last few days.
Things started flashing in front of her eyes.
Her dreams had become walking nightmares.
She could feel something in her throat, making its way down to her lungs; to her stomach. It was in her head and it was making her see things that weren’t there: the shadow of something that could have easily been one of her drawings straight off the page.
Laurie knew in her logical mind that whatever she was seeing in the fog with her wasn’t real, but she couldn’t help but walk towards the shadows that looked like Parnagg Fegg even if everything in her told her not to do that because there’d be nothing there.
It was in her eyes and her brain too - whatever it was; whatever was going on to make her feel confused.
She wanted nothing more than to throw up what was inside her. It didn’t matter that the mushrooms hadn’t digested, she was nauseated at the thought of them right now. As if-
As if the earth had connected with them.
Something had connected with them.
Is that why she felt so odd?
Is that why she had been dreaming so much recently?
What was in the damn fog?
The more she traversed into it the thicker it became.
The more disoriented she became.
At least Laurie was going in a straight line, right?
She used the trees as anchors when it felt too much to go on. She still pressed on, though. She wanted to get out and she was in too deep now.
After what felt like hours of the most nauseating experience of her life, Laurie noticed the fog beginning to feel like a mist again. She made a run for it.
But that made everything worse.
The fog felt like it was trying to claw her back in, the moment she exited. It was calling her to come back. She didn’t want to go back in there.
That was when she saw him, silhouetted against some lights from a makeshift tent behind him.
Was it the man from her dreams?
“You,” she said.
“Me?” came the reply, cutting through the blurred perception of her current reality.
“You!” Laurie repeated.
She looked between him and the fog behind her, slowly dissipating out.
As it went, so did her sanity.
Laurie collapsed.
And the psychedelic mushrooms well and truly kicked in.
Half conscious, eyes rolling into the back of her head, and convulsing on the ground, Laurie was stuck between reality and the worst trip of her life. Colours exploded behind her eyelids as if they were stars turning into supernovas at rapidly increasing rates. She wanted to claw at her constricted chest, as if the thing that had crawled in was squeezing her from the inside. Her limbs were out of her control, locked in place as she shook on the ground.
All through that, she could just about hear the man approaching her.
She could only hope he was friendly.
“It’s alright…” he murmured. The words came to her through a fish bowl now. “Let me get this off you.”
He began to wrestle with Laurie’s ridiculously large backpack, managing to carefully remove it from her. She couldn’t see what he did with it, but with the rustling she assumed he must have put it on. Then, strong arms scooped her up from the ground and she cried out - not from pain, from surprise. He made hushing noises at her as he walked with her in his arms through the forest and away from the awful fog she had stumbled through.
Laurie desperately tried to open her eyes to see where they were going but the supernovas were turning into tendrils that were joining whatever was squeezing at her lungs deep within. As if it was pulling her back into herself, trying to trap her somewhere nobody on earth could make out. For a moment she caught a glimpse of the real world once more, and saw a large camp made from tarpaulin and plastic sheets.
That was all she saw before she was semi conscious again, the tendrils turning into the veins of her eyelids.
“You have to calm down,” the man hushed her again. “Stop crying, it’ll only make it worse.”
Crying?
Had she been crying out this whole time?
Laurie hadn’t even been aware.
“For god’s sake…” he muttered more to himself than anything, setting her down on something soft. Something lightly rattled as she continued to shake, and she knew she’d been set down on a campbed.
She wasn’t so far gone she couldn’t recognise sounds and what things were. If anything, it was helping bring her back to reality. Besides, she was clearly far enough away from the fog now that real oxygen was starting to reach her brain and lungs again. That certainly helped to calm her down, and she slowly became more and more aware of her surroundings as the awful visions and tightness started to fade from her.
Laurie just about rolled onto her side and was able to open her eyes to a double-visioned sight of the man opening the front pocket of her backpack and pulling out the last of her mushrooms.
“Are you joking?” He turned and held it up to her. “You thought it was a good idea to take psychedelics and walk through that fog? What did you think was going to happen? Hmm? Stupid woman…”
She had no time to be offended, not even when he tossed the mushrooms into the corner of the tent somewhere. If ‘tent’ was even the appropriate way to describe the makeshift bungalow this man had clearly made for himself.
He approached Laurie on the camp bed, where she was finally able to make out his features.
Piercing, scrutinising blue eyes that had mischief dancing in them. His hair was growing out and greying - it had reached just before his ear lobes in length in a small waterfall of messy waves. The makings of a beard covered the lower half of his face, currently emphasising the shape of his rather plump lips. He wore a dark fleece over his shirt and jogging bottoms. He looked tired, and that was when Laurie realised she must have woken him up at this time of night.
“Can you tell me your name?” he asked.
Laurie tried to make her mouth work. “...Aur…”
He frowned. “Aura?”
She made a noise of discontent. “L…”
“Laura?”
She made an “e,” sort of noise at him.
“Laurie?”
“Hmm…” she hummed in agreement, rolling onto her back and her head swimming. She let out another whiny noise in protest of her dizziness, but at least everything was settling back to normal now. She was able to get a good look of where she was, and the tent really was more of a mini bungalow than anything.
She was in a corner on a camp bed, but in another corner there was a rudimentary set up for a kitchen, some cold boxes and other small storage spaces too, along with a few chairs and a table. There was plastic sheeting acting as a doorway leading to elsewhere in the large tent, and then an open set of sheets that led outside. A few rather fluorescent lights lit up the space inside.
“I’m Zach, by the way,” he finally introduced himself. Zach then reached up to press a calloused hand to Laurie’s forehead for a few seconds. “Hmm. You’re fine. Almost overdid it, didn’t you?”
“I - I didn’t…” Laurie’s voice caught in her throat, still breathless. “Water? My - my - bag.”
Zach dutifully went to get it for her, helping her raise her head and tip some of it down her throat. She wasn’t able to swallow properly and choked on the first sip so that idea went out the window. She coughed and spluttered whilst Zach set the bottle on the ground and sat down, his knees up and arms resting on them as he cocked his head to the side and surveyed her instead.
“What are you doing all the way out here?”
There was a lengthier answer to that question, but Laurie could only manage: “You. I - I think.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You came looking for me?”
“Maybe,” Laurie sighed, realising how tired she was now that her ordeal was over. She placed a hand on her chest, her heart racing away underneath it. She tried to take a few deep breaths to no avail.
“Rest,” Zach then said, standing up again and going to grab something out of storage. “You’ll need it after all that.” He came back with a duvet that was a little rough around the edges but that was to be expected considering he’d been living out here for… some time, at least, was all Laurie could garner.
He placed the duvet over her, and Laurie snuggled down gratefully under it.
She dropped off to sleep almost immediately despite the bright lights that were on.
i know you said that zach fic wasn’t going to be frequently updated but…….any idea when the next chapter might come out? i’m so sorry i don’t think i’ve ever been so impatient in my life - it’s not just my desire for a zach fic but also you’re such a fantastic written with all the tlog fics you’ve done xxxxx
Hiya!
Hopefully this weekend or early next week? I'm actually working on Chapter 1 right now.
I've got a loose story arc planned out for it. Some of the more fun/explicit things that happen further down the line I've already written.
And thank you for your kind words about my TLOG fics. I have an Ollie/Reader one I need to get back to. Plus more of "dream blunt rotation" to add to the pile. The next installment of the dream bluntverse still follows the Fast & Furious naming conventions, so the third part will be called "the dream blunt and the rotation: vasey drift."
I'll try to get the Zach fic updated ASAP. It's nice to know people want it.
i know you said that zach fic wasn’t going to be frequently updated but…….any idea when the next chapter might come out? i’m so sorry i don’t think i’ve ever been so impatient in my life - it’s not just my desire for a zach fic but also you’re such a fantastic written with all the tlog fics you’ve done xxxxx
Hiya!
Hopefully this weekend or early next week? I'm actually working on Chapter 1 right now.
I've got a loose story arc planned out for it. Some of the more fun/explicit things that happen further down the line I've already written.
And thank you for your kind words about my TLOG fics. I have an Ollie/Reader one I need to get back to. Plus more of "dream blunt rotation" to add to the pile. The next installment of the dream bluntverse still follows the Fast & Furious naming conventions, so the third part will be called "the dream blunt and the rotation: vasey drift."
I'll try to get the Zach fic updated ASAP. It's nice to know people want it.
The Zach/OC fic is not going to be frequently updated. I have no plan and are letting the characters lead me on this one. It's gonna be relatively dark in places I'd imagine.
Summary: Laurie’s mushroom-induced hallucinations and dreams lead her deep in the forest to Zach. It soon transpires that she might just be on the same wavelength as him. Will it be both of their undoings? Zach/OC
Notes: I don't know where I'm going with this fic yet. It's going to be darker than what I usually write, that's all I can say. It's also set pre-film.
AO3 Link
next chapter
prologue: i know you
Dreams were often funny things, even without the fact they bled into her reality. It had to mean something, right? Was Parnag Fegg itself communicating with her? Or was it just the mushrooms?
It didn’t matter anyway.
Whatever was happening, it had given her purpose again.
Like everyone else she had hated being locked inside. She hated not feeling the sun on her skin and nature at her fingertips. The yearning to be at one with the earth had gripped her soul like no other and that’s why she’d fallen deep into the folklore hole.
Something had been calling to her in her dreams from the very moment she read about Parnag Fegg. It only intensified when she found the stash of long unused mushrooms her boyfriend had. Sometimes she wondered if what she saw in her dreams was even the spirit of the forest, because it looked too much like a man.
It’s why she had quietly slipped away from her boyfriend in the dead of night against all other sane advice.
She had to find out what it was for herself.
No matter how long it took.
No matter the cost.
-
He’d had enough of his wife, so he left.
She didn’t understand Parnag Fegg like he did.
She didn't understand that an old god like that couldn’t be controlled.
He was better off on his own doing his own research; his own experiments. It was a shame that in his rush to get away from her he’d left the Malleus Maleficarum behind.
No matter.
He knew what he had to do. He only had to believe and it would all fall into place. The sacred nature of the forest was all he needed to carry on his work in being noticed by his God. He’d be able to commune with the spirit of the forest much faster without her.
He could only hope to find someone who understood just as much as he did.
2 dream blunt 2 rotation (benjamin x reader, ollie x reader, ross x reader)
Summary: You, Benjamin, Ollie, and Ross needed a reprieve from the hell that was Royston Vasey. Naturally that meant the four of you were hotboxing your flat, and Ollie was in the cuck chair. Sequel to “dream blunt rotation.”
Notes: Yes, the title is a reference to 2 Fast 2 Furious. I’m not being all that serious with this whole ‘dream blunt rotation’ schtick, you know?
AO3 Link
It had started as a bit of a joke - only a bit, because quite frankly any idea was a good idea when you were high as fuck with three quite fit men in your flat. It was lucky that the three of them thought you were quite fit too. Also lucky that your flatmate was over at her boyfriend’s for the night, which meant the four of you could mess around in peace.
At first, that simply meant just putting on some trashy CDs and having the volume up a bit louder as you played puff puff pass. Ollie was getting better at actually smoking, Benjamin was more relaxed than ever, and Ross had been dutifully put in charge of rolling the joint this time. You’d challenged him to make a stronger one than the one the four of you had shared down at The Dog and Dart last week, and he had most certainly delivered.
The living room was a glorious haze of grassy smoke. The fire alarm was covered up and all, so there weren’t going to be any issues except for the lingering smell for a couple of days at least. Not that your flatmate would care.
Anyway: you’d found yourself leaning on Benjamin’s shoulder with your feet in Ross’ lap, practically sprawled across the two of them on the sofa. Ollie, meanwhile, was sitting on the floor next to you all. The blunt hadn’t been quite finished yet, and the only other seat available was the armchair which was quite frankly too far away for passing it around.
You couldn’t help but think about being passed around yourself, especially after those kisses you’d given the three of them the previous week. The very thought of it made you start giggling.
As you started to giggle, Ross gently stroked your bare calf. “What’s tickled you now?”
You shook your head. “Don’t worry,” you said with a smile, taking the blunt from Ollie who was actually quite put out at being on the floor and having to watch the three of you on the sofa at this point in time. You figured he had some schoolboy crush on you. Fine by you, you had a schoolgirl crush on him too. And Ross. And Benjamin.
After a couple more puffs, you held it up to Benjamin’s lips and he gratefully took his drags on it, and you slipped down from his shoulder to rest your head in his lap. “You alright there?” he asked you with a sweet smile.
“It’s kicking in a bit,” you said. “Ross, you really do roll them strong.”
“I know. I’m surprised Ollie’s lasted this long,” the man in question responded.
“At least I can smoke better now…” the blonde man huffed, getting up and going to sit in the armchair across the room instead. “But I’m done now! The room’s spinning.”
“Of course it is, Ollie, love,” you said.
“Oh, he gets the cute nickname, does he?” Benjamin teased, passing the end of the joint back to Ross who quickly finished it off. You were surprised you could see anything through the haze that had become your living room.
“It’s Ollie,” you replied with an eyeroll. “If I don’t give him the cute nickname, he’ll get annoyed. See! Look at that face.” You’d caught the fact that he was now pouting in the chair, watching as Ross started to really snake his hand up your skirt. You then jolted as his hand reached the apex of your thighs.
“Sorry…” Ross murmured, the look of a boy in trouble about him.
“No - no, it’s…” You frowned ever so slightly. You had three hot guys in your flat and one of them was clearly going to finger you, the other clearly wanted a snog, and the third one seemed put out by the whole thing but was fixated on watching it unfold anyway. “It’s fine.” You shrugged, now pulling Benjamin down to kiss you on the lips.
What an evening and night it turned out to be, all four of you high in your living room and growing far too intimate with each other. Between snogging Benjamin and Ross pumping his fingers inside of you, you were most definitely on cloud nine.
It was even funnier discovering that Ollie had gotten himself off watching the three of you, even with that little angry pout on his face.
baratheonpilled
2087
dededos
kianamaiart
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
annaxmalina
