Chapter warnings: Horror. Violence. Death. Murder. Violence against minors. Main character death (Kind of?). Taphophobia. Suicide. Manipulation/emotional abuse. Misogyny. Dead Dove: do not eat.
“Easy,” Yoongi inched forward across the grass, hands splayed out the same way one would soothe a frightened animal. “Easy…” His voice dropped to a low mumble meant mostly for his own ears, knees bent, head dipped, and eyes narrowed in concentration as he licked his lips.
A cat closing in on its prey.
He lunged, feet kicking forward into a full sprint, arms held out to close around an invisible victim that slipped right through his grasp.
“Fuuuuccckk!” Yoongi tossed his head back in anguish, hands coming down to rest on his knees while he caught his breath. “I’m too fuckin’ old for this shit.”
Jungkook shifted in his spot next to Y/n, hands stuffed in his coat pockets and sunglasses perched on the bridge of his nose. He sniffed, pushing his glasses up to hide the humored crook of his mouth. “Try again.”
With yet another lengthy string of curses, Yoongi hopped into a jog to the other side of the field, scanning the area for his next target.
“You’ve gotta lean into it more!” Jin shouted out to him from his comfortable spot reclined on his own personal (rather fancy, might she add) folding chair behind them, feet propped up on one of the bleachers, and an open bag of homemade trail mix nestled safely in the divots of his puffy winter coat. A snack he promptly choked on when Yoongi responded with his middle finger held high over his head.
Y/n shook her head with a light laugh, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she turned back to give the van behind them a cursory glance. If a police cruiser or unsuspecting guest just trying to visit the public playing field, maybe throw a ball with their kid, or a group of dads reliving their high school years with some buddies, they’d risk accidentally seeing a small pile of passed-out bodies propped in the back of their van.
She could see it now: trying to explain to a very skeptical officer about why and how there were two people knocked out in their backseat. They were simply traversing the spirit realm, totally not drugged or dead! Shaking her head at the thought, she turned her attention back to the field where Yoongi was hot on the tail of someone she could sort of see.
That was her job today, working on her sight.
Right now, they looked like blurs of water darting through the air, or the waves of heat that rise off sunbaked asphalt. But it was better than nothing.
A cold wind blew through the field, biting through her coat and skin, chilling her bones. Nosing her way into her collar, she tucked her chin in the fabric and sank into the warm cocoon she had constructed.
Jungkook peeked over the edge of his glasses. “You’re cold.”
His elbow jutted out from his side to create the perfect sized gap for her own arm, a silent command for her to huddle closer. Not even bothering to fight it, she closed the few feet of space between them and plopped her cheek on his upper arm. “It’s December and we are outside. This is cruel.”
Jungkook hummed to himself, face following the blurs of motion in the game of ‘tag’ they were watching. His nose twitched. Then he shouted out like a soccer coach. “You have to get closer.”
“Thanks, Captain Obvious! Never would have fucking guessed.” Yoongi snarked from a dozen or so yards away, blatantly out of breath.
A phantom laugh echoed through the air, just a half second of melodic joy, but it was all she needed to recognize Jimin. He had volunteered to be one of the runners this time, leading Yoongi around the field while he tried to really hone both his own psychic abilities, and learning a few tricks from Hoseok’s. As of yet, he had only successfully grabbed them three times out of the probably near fifty attempts.
“It’s his speed,” Jin shook his head dejectedly, shuffling the nuts, chocolate, and granola pieces in his palm while he spoke. “He has to speed that up.” Tossing the scoop in his mouth, he shouted, “Pick it up!”
Y/n watched Yoongi speed up in spite of Jin (or perhaps encouraged by him), racing down the length of the field after a mostly invisible blur. If Y/n had to guess by the height and width, she suspected it was Namjoon.
While everyone was training their psychic and physical capabilities, Namjoon was getting comfortable with traversing between realms in case of emergency, and he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself, treating each time like a researcher's expedition, documenting the experience with a scientist's level of detail and efficiency.
It gave him hands-on experience with his concoctions and potions, giving him the ability to tweak things like effectiveness, durability, control — and most importantly in Y/n’s opinion — the taste.
If things were working well enough, Namjoon could have them able to individually control when the spell would take effect. He was close (ish), experimenting with the level of lemon grass, boiled sacred fig, and homemade strawberry syrup or juice for flavor. His setup in the greenhouse looked like that of a mad scientist, droppers and scales brought out from their dusty boxes to test just how much of each ingredient he needed for it to still have its intended effect. No matter how much they poked fun at his collection, he was severely bettering the digestion of the mixture.
His most recent addition had actually been grape juice, something Y/n had caught him pouring into the newest batch with a raised brow. He simply shrugged, unscrewing the cap and pouring in a few glugs. “It’s the ingredient and the intention that counts. Sometimes you have to work with what you have.”
Shifting her cheek against Jungkook’s bicep, she thought she felt something nudge her hip, the cold breeze it came with causing goosebumps to erupt over her skin. Small arms wrapped around her thigh, pins and needles seeping out from beneath their touch and down her limb. Y/n unwound one of her hands from Jungkook’s arm and lowered it to rest over where she could feel the pressure of a body leaning into her side.
“You’re giving him a run for his money, huh, Gänse?”
The energy of her sister gripped her leg tighter, her youthful giggles heard over the tired shouts of the man currently doing laps around the quick-footed blur of Jimin. As if he could hear them teasing him, Yoongi’s neck snapped towards the group of make-shift coaches, glaring with one finger pointed threateningly towards Y/n. “I see you!”
He barreled towards them, leaving Jimin to wonder where his pursuer had gone. The hold on her leg moved to tug at the back of her pants, hiding behind her body like it would save her from Yoongi’s pursuit.
Yoongi was on the defense beside her, hopping this way and that to block the escape of the invisible little girl that was all but shrieking with laughter at his silly antics. With a shout, he made hands to grab her, chasing her down the field line back towards the other players. Y/n watched them go with a soft smile, already planning how she was going to tease Yoongi for being so soft with Matilda tonight.
Metal clinked against metal, a set of keys jingling while being spun in aimless circles around a long finger. “How’s it goin’ so far?”
Sneakers took their time crunching across dying grass, settling besides Jin. The ziplock bag rustled — a wandering fist inviting itself in.
“Yoongi 3, walkers 10.” Jin answered.
Hoseok snorted. “Jeez, thought he’d do better than that.”
Stiffening, Y/n pretended it was the winter air that made her muscles coil tighter, not the added presence. Jungkook’s dark eyes slid down to regard her carefully, but upon noticing no real threat, he went back to his supervision of the ‘game’.
Yoongi paused halfway across the field, face scrunched with distaste and a whine grinding out of the back of his throat. “I would be better off if you were here to help!”
“You gotta do stuff alone every now and then. Builds character.” Hoseok quipped back, settling down on the empty bench by Jin.
Unfortunately for Y/n, Jungkook didn’t seem to be the only one to notice her sudden shift in demeanor, a new set of eyes boring into the back of her neck.
“I’m going to run to the bathroom, why don’t you keep my seat warm for me?” Jin stood up with a stretch, gesturing down to his rather comfy looking set up with a sweet smile. Before she could protest, Jin was already shuffling down the edge of the field, playfully motioning like he was digging with a shovel or dodging a punch in a boxing ring. “Lean in it. Leeeaaan in it.”
“I’m going to kill you!” Yoongi’s voice echoed across the field.
Y/n tried to refuse the obvious ploy at getting her to sit down and relax by turning her face back to the game, taking her job as a supervisor seriously. However, her painfully caring and obnoxiously stubborn boyfriend had other ideas.
“Go sit. It’s warmer there.” Jungkook gave a pointed look to the chair, then a light shove with his elbow when she didn’t move. “Go.”
Glaring at him, she mouthed the word ‘traitor’ like she actually meant it (she didn’t), and slunk towards Jin’s seat that was a bit too close to Hoseok for her liking, but moving the chair would be too obvious.
Hoseok looked up to her like a guilty puppy, expression brightening at her approach. “H-hey.”
“Hey.” Y/n fell into the seat with her arms crossed.
“Ma let me out early,” Hoseok used the collar of his leather jacket to scratch his cheek. An explanation given like she was owed one, which she was, just not for that.
Y/n hummed flatly. “Did she really?”
There was a pause, then a weak chuckle. “No.”
The fight to keep the edges of her lips down was hard, yet she succeeded. She didn’t want to give him the privilege of making her laugh yet.
While he had really pulled through and helped her with Taehyung over the weekend, he had yet to apologize for his behavior — really apologize. He was clearly trying (in his own way), making extra effort to be energetic and upbeat, attending evening hangouts or participating more in ‘book club’, staring at her when she spoke to the point it was almost unsettling…
He was trying.
And she could see that.
She just wasn’t going to let him smooth it over with kind smiles and extra jokes like he usually did. This time, for once, she wanted him to actually say it.
“So…” His foot started to tap against the bench below his feet. “How’s Taehyung?”
That got her to look at him. She was not expecting him to be interested in talking about Taehyung at all, let alone genuinely sound concerned about his well-being.
“He’s…” Swallowing down her surprise, she bit her cheek. “He’s fine. Just hanging back to practice so we don’t have anymore...accidents.”
“Right,” Hoseok coughed, digging the toe of his shoe into one of the metal screws. “Does he have any shows left this month?”
“No,” Y/n responded curtly, frankly uninterested in small talk about the man he supposedly hated when there were more pressing issues to discuss. “They canceled them for the rest of the year.”
“Yikes.” Hoseok blew a big puff of air from his cheeks with a low whistle, and that was the end of that discussion — or so she thought for a few blissfully quiet minutes.
“How about his headaches? They still pretty bad?”
Turning to face him head-on she wrapped her arms tighter around herself, willing her voice to sound stern and guarded instead of raw and defensive. “Why ask? I’m not trying to sound mean, I just don’t quite understand why you care so much after you’ve made it evidently clear that you didn’t.”
His eyes went wide, body frozen in place, his defenses drawn in the shape of a tense, placating smile that kept twitching. Squaring his shoulders, he tried again. “I was just…”
Pinching the bridge of her nose with a sigh she continued. “Look, I don’t need you to love him. I actually don’t care what you think about him. But I’m not going to let you use him as a scapegoat for what happened last week. I’m really thankful you helped out when you did, but that isn’t an apology, and I won’t take it as one. If you want to fix this, I have to hear you say it. With words. You said we’ve both changed, so it shouldn’t be unfair for me to ask that the way we do this-” she gestured a finger between them, “-changes too.”
Leaning her chin down into her collar like a bunny would their scruff, she exhaled softly, keeping her burning eyes level with the playing field. She just wanted this rough patch with him to be over.
“I’m sorry.”
A noise of shock bubbled in the back of her throat, so sudden she choked on her own spit when it tumbled out. “W-what?”
“I’m sorry,” Hoseok repeated, the way his voice cracked in the middle softening the landing of the apology. “I’m sorry for being a dick. For not talking about it with you — or anyone really — and expecting you to just know things instead of being the one to bring it up. For having expectations I didn’t...I didn’t communicate effectively. It wasn’t fair, and I’m sorry.”
The words sank into her consciousness like a pebble thrown into a warm pond, slowly lowering down until it disturbs the sediment below. Feelings kicked up with the dirt: frustration, irritation, sadness...relief. It wasn’t the best apology she had heard by miles, but it was something he had put effort into — something that made his bottom lip red from how much he bit at it while speaking and his palms slick with sweat. It was real, not just something he was doing because he felt like he had to.
Instead of letting herself cry for the umpteenth time that week, she graced him with a soft smile, the kind that had her cheeks warming and her heart fluttering with hope. “I accept your apology.”
“Thank fuck,” Hoseok practically melted in his seat, pretending to fall over dead, hand clutching at his chest. “I thought I was going to die.”
He stole a laugh from her just like he always somehow did, and she used a hand on his knee to shove him playfully. “Yeah yeah. Did Jin help you with that?”
He shot up in his seat, looking around guiltily. “No…”
“uh-huh. Sure. Because you use words like ‘communicate effectively’ regularly.” She used air quotes generously
“I can if I want to,” Hoseok leaned back on his elbows in a show of over-zealous confidence. “Don’t you know, you’re friend can be smart sometimes.”
“Emphasis on the sometimes,” Y/n rolled her eyes, but dropped the teasing, letting the silence fall more comfortably between them than it had in weeks while she watched Matilda expertly dodge another one of Yoongi’s attempts to nab her.
Sneakers scuffed on metal again, and a zipper buzzed from being repeatedly played with. Anxiety disguised as nonchalance. A habit that was going to make her bite through her cheek if he didn’t stop.
Up it buzzed, down it hissed. Up it buzzed, down it hissed. Up-
Hoseok’s voice saved him from losing his zipper privileges. “Hey Y/n? While we’re talking, I wanted to-”
“Hey, shitheads! It’s your turns to fuck around the field, isn’t it?” Yoongi pointed, out of breath and dripping cold sweat on hot skin, to where Jin was returning from the concrete restroom.
Hoseok’s brow twitched and his cheeks blossomed ruby red, the hands in his pockets balling into fists at his sides. “Sure, Grandpa. Be there in a sec!” With newfound urgency, he spun closer to Y/n, his knees ghosting her leg. “I just wanted to see if-”
“Let’s go slowpokes! No more fuckin’ around!” Yoongi clapped his hands in time with each purposeful step, the sound echoing across the park as he jogged back over to the bleachers.
“-Maybe we could-”
The older boy was at the bleachers in a blink, grabbing Hoseok by the shoulders and pushing him up towards the van. “Lights out, Midas. Get your ass in the van before I decide it’s your time to meet god.”
Hoseok sputtered out as he was herded away from Y/n, looking dejectedly over his shoulder to see where she still sat. Jin followed after them, all of his playful quips dried up in the face of having to play the game he had set. “I-I don’t think this is necessary-”
Yoongi suddenly had all the stamina in the world, moving quickly to cart Jin into the middle of the field. “Sure it is,” he grumbled. “I think the pros should show us how it's done, huh?”
While Jungkook and Yoongi got Jin settled on the field, Y/n remained in the canvas chair, left wondering what it was Hoseok had been so desperate to tell her before he had been interrupted. Biting her lip, she felt butterflies that had been long hidden in their cocoons begin to test out the cramped muscles of their wings in her stomach, fluttering up her throat and beating rapidly in the back of her mouth until it was all she could hear.
Things weren’t perfect with them, but they were on the path to fixing it. And dare she say it made her excited to see him again — to spend time getting to know this Hoseok.
“Ah, shit.” Yoongi stooped down to pick up the water bottle at her feet, twisting off the cap and gulping down half of it in one go. In his haste, two drops of water escaped through the holes on the sides of his lips and dribbled down his chin, just beginning to slide down the curve of his throat when they went flying with a shake of his sweat-dampened hair.
Y/n squealed when they landed on her face. “Gross!”
“What’s gross is what you all just put me through,” Yoongi argued back, using the mouth of the bottle to point at the chair. “Up.”
She simply sat there blinking up at him stupidly, the command going in one ear and out the other.
His shoe knocked at her boot. “My turn.”
“Oh,” Y/n stood from the seat quickly, albeit a bit reluctant to lose the heat it offered.
Yoongi plopped himself down with a huff, shooting a quick glance over her shivering body that she didn’t catch. It was subtle. The quick flick of his tongue over his bottom lip. A shift of his dark jeans against the canvas chair. Another handful of rapid, noncommittal looks. Then, sounding almost annoyed, he tapped the back of her thigh with two fingers. “Sit down, you’re blocking the view.”
She mumbled out an apology for being in his way and moved to shuffle over to the bleachers, suddenly jerked back by the circle of long fingers on her wrist. “Not there, doofus.”
The hold on her wrist tugged her backwards, guiding her into the seat and onto one of his lean thighs. She gasped, startled by the sudden movement but also unbelievably scandalized at the most open display of physical touch she had ever witnessed from him.
Wiggling so she was leaning back against the curve of the chair, she hesitantly lowered her cheek into his shoulder, unsure whether or not he was messing with her as payback for laughing too hard when he fell on his face the first round.
His skin was warm through his long-sleeve, the fabric thin enough to feel the residual race of his heart from the exercise and the soft give of his skin beneath her. She couldn’t help but sigh as she melted into the heat, one of her hands subconsciously coming out to fiddle with the hem.
“Don’t get too comfortable. This is only temporary.” Yoongi’s voice graveled out.
“Then why do it in the first place?” Y/n dared to ask, looking up through her lashes at his pink dusted cheeks.
He scoffed. “Don’t get any dumb ideas in that head. It’s just because the bleachers are wet. Jin would throw a fit if any of us caught any more colds this week.”
“Uh-huh.” Y/n enunciated the last syllable teasingly. “And it has nothing to do with me being cold?”
“Nope.” In contrast to the immediate dismissal, one of his hands worked up under her coat to splay out over her waist, nearly making her gasp as the hot skin of his palm met the chilled skin of her middle.
Y/n cuddled closer. “Not even a little bit?”
“Not even a little bit.” Yoongi couldn’t even look at her when he spoke, keeping his gaze on Jin’s careful run like doing so hid the obvious flush to his face and the shake in his voice.
She bit her lip to withhold a giggle at the sight, only making the color on his face deepen despite his stubborn attempts to hide it.
“Keep up that laughing and you’ll be sitting on the grass.”
That was a lie though, and she knew it from the way his index finger started to draw circles on her hip.
That was until a wicked grin twisted his features, his free hand clenching into a fist that he pumped in the air. “Kick his ass, Matilda!”
_________________________________________
February 10th, 1929
To Lisolette,
I hate to burden you with this, but I do not know where else to go.
I am frightened. So very frightened.
Alain is changing before my very eyes. Around everyone else he is just as he always has been, kind, loving, and doting on the girls and me. But during the night, he is some other beast entirely.
He paces our bedroom, restless and confused. In his sleep he cries for me, and wakes with a shout, leaping out of bed and brandishing towards the corner of the room at nothing. And his eyes — oh Lizzy, I wish you could see them — they turn into this awful shade I’ve never seen on anybody before. Sometimes when he gets like that, it is like he doesn’t recognize me. He tells me he dreams of snakes and dark waters that whisper to him to do horrid things. Things I wouldn’t dare repeat.
When morning comes and he wakes, he remembers nothing of the night. And when I recount them to him he looks at ME like I’m mad! And sometimes, Lizzy, I think he is right.
Because sometimes during those nights, I almost believe I can see them too. That I can hear the voices whispering in the dark and calling his name. I am beginning to doubt myself; I am beginning to doubt my husband.
He is still upset about what Professor Kim had said at Christmas, and I wonder if that is what is making him so ill. I have stopped taking lessons from Mr. Jung as of late, but it doesn’t seem to matter. He is always asking me if I was with him! He is so convinced that it makes me doubt my own mind, and whether or not I had seen him that day and forgotten.
And worst of all Lizzy, I am beginning to question what he tells me. Those voices in the dark are so very loud, and they sound so real. They are saying things to me about Ani, Lizzy. Things that you used to say to me.
You don’t think they are true, do you?
And if they are, do you think I should be worried he could...do it again?
I can’t believe I said that! What an absurd thought! Forget I’ve said anything. I will patiently wait your response, I would love to hear how Olaya is doing! How many words is she saying now? Many, I imagine.
-Candida Morel
“It was an accident, Deetz. I don’t know what else you want me to say! I found her that way!”
This is not how Candida had expected the night to go. They were supposed to be planning a service, sending out notices to loved ones — ones with her daughter’s name on it in formal calligraphy, inviting them to come pay their respects to a face she should be kissing goodnight.
Countless “shoulds” that meant nothing to their current circumstances. This conversation should have been a team effort. It should have been easy. It should have been over by now. Though as of late, nothing was easy with Alain, and they hadn’t been for quite some time. Her worst fears were coming to life, and there was no letter she could write this time to make them easier to swallow.
Pinching the bridge of her nose, she bit back a sigh. “I don’t need you to say anything. I just wish you would be honest with me-”
“I have been nothing but honest with you. You don’t believe that I would lie to you about something like this, do you?”
Candida froze, the common household noises that usually slipped beneath the surface of her subconscious now grated on her nerves. Each slow, echoing tick of the grandfather clock in the study a room away hammering at her eardrums until each one made her flinch. Louder. Louder they clanked, like a prison guard pacing outside a cell. The creaking old bones of the house stretching in the wind framed her cage.
Suddenly she felt trapped.
“Is it your sister? Is that what has poisoned your mind?” Alain drew nearer, his expression more desolate and pained. “What has she said to make you turn on me like this? When we need each other most?”
She shook her head once, avoiding his face. “No, this isn’t about Lizzy.”
His finger grazed beneath her chin sweetly, tilting her chin up as he whispered, “Is it the Jung boy?”
Anger flared low in her belly. Was his doubt so strong that he should accuse her now, in a moment such as this? Her heart still raw and her mind completely scattered.
Unable to stop the flicker of rage, she smacked his hand away from her face so violently it stung her palm. “No, it has nothing to do with him.”
Alain’s nostrils flared, his owlish eyes stretching even wider, thin lips dipping into a frown. “Then what is it? Have I upset you?”
Now she felt smothered. Too frightened to say the true answer, but unable to lie. No answer was right when he was so intent on misinterpreting it.
“Our...Our daughter is dead, Alain. And here you are, asking whether or not I am upset, and accusing me of something you know I would never do. You know I love you too much.” She had to speak carefully, afraid of setting off the temper that had grown in recent months. She missed the days when speaking her mind was not an issue around him. Now she was beginning to doubt what her own mind said in fear of thinking the wrong thing at the wrong time. “Please, I just wish to finish drafting the letter, I’m quite tired…”
It seemed to be the correct formula this time, for he cooed, cradling her head and lurching her forward into his chest. “Oh my darling, what have I become? I am so very sorry, I promise to make it up to you, yes? Tomorrow, at the theater.”
The cold touch of his palms on her cheeks make her nauseous. “You are still performing tomorrow?” She asked breathlessly.
“Of course I am, why wouldn’t I?” Alain stroked the hair on the back of her head tenderly.
Candida swallowed, steadying a shake in her voice that gave away her disdain. “Your daughter died yesterday, Alain.”
His grip tightened, and he shoved her back to search her face frantically, a few strands of his meticulously styled hair falling loose. “What is that supposed to mean?” Desperation grew into mania, and with his grip he began to shake her about as though he could make her answer fall out with enough disturbance. “What does that mean, Deetz? What are you implying? That I didn’t...That I didn’t love her?”
Clawing at his grip, she felt fear crack through her abdomen like a whip. “I n-never s-said-”
“You think I killed her, don’t you?”
The room went cold, as did the eyes that looked down at her with narrowed precision. Emotion drained from his face and hands, leaving him a limp shell before her. Nothing like the animated and dramatic husband she had fallen in love with.
Candida rushed to reassure him, for maybe it would snap him back out of this haze. “Of course not! ”
He cocked his head to the side and stared, looking at everything and nothing at the same time, muttering to himself all the while. “Yes…you think I’ve killed her. Frightened. You’re so...very...frightened…Has Lisolette convinced you of anything else? I bet she has you thinking I had done the same to Ani.” His body ballooned with rage, each word adding spit to a fire that burned his temper hotter. “I bet she has filled your head with lies! Lies! You lie, she lies — all of you lie. I would never hurt my daughter! I loved…”
“I know you loved her,” His wife floundered for an excuse to his current state. “You are sick, that is all. Sick with grief! You need to...rest…”
With a breaking voice he stumbled back, iris’s bleeding back into their normal shade as he raised a finger to point at Candida . “She was my little girl...You’re sick….Sick to think I would have done something so vile as to kill my own daughter!”
Next thing she knew, he was slumped back in the dining room chair, his own heat melting him into a sticky, tearful mess that slobbered into a handkerchief with pathetic enthusiasm. “Sick. We are sick. Sick…so so so sick…”
Heart still racing from the encounter, she found herself stumbling back into the closed doors, fingers grasping for the handle to freedom.
Dark eyes emboldened with a rim of gold peeked over the cloth clenched to his face, his lip wobbling faster. “You are scared of me. Please, don’t be. I still love you. I love you so much…” He fell off his chair and crept onto his knees, dragging himself across the floor with ragged breath and shredded voice. “I love you…I love you…”
The door handle finally caught in her fist, and she fled from the room, racing up the steps to the only place she could think to go for a moment of peace.
Pinks muted to grays in the dark of her daughter’s room, the floral accents nothing more than blurred spots to her adjusting eyes. On the bed, her only remaining daughter lay, crumpled up under a heap of blankets so thick Candida was scared that she couldn’t breathe.
With trembling hands, she brushed aside layers of cotton until she uncovered her small face, cheeks tacky to the touch and eyes swollen shut. Candida whimpered, feeling hopeless where she was supposed to be a leader. Her daughter needed her, and here she was, sniveling and making things worse with her father.
But her father was the one to kill her sister, no?
“No. No. NO!” Candida rubbed the thought out of her head with fingers dug in her temples. These thoughts were tearing what little family she had left apart, and if she didn’t stop them, she could risk losing them.
All she had to do was keep her safe. Safe from her husband, and safe from whatever infection had plagued his mind. With a kiss to her daughter’s forehead, she promised not to let it spread.
_________________________________________
A light dusting of snow settled over the grounds, thin enough for the blades of grass to stick their little heads above and breathe in the cold, unforgiving night air. Naked trees held up frozen limbs lined with white, shaking off any loose flakes with the blow of wind, creating uniquely patterned craters in the layer below. A picture-perfect view of early winter.
Y/n couldn’t find the space in her head to enjoy it.
All the season told her was that time was ticking in minutes she counted with mindless tasks.
Five were spent steaming her dress for the wedding. Another ten lost to helping Namjoon decide on which one of his botanical-themed socks he should go with (the answer was obviously the black one with embroidered ferns). His tie was unfortunately already selected, a crisp burgundy to match the charcoal gray suit Hoseok’s sister had picked out for them to wear.
Then 30 more minutes swirled down the drain of an extra-long shower, her hands itching to do something to pass the time between now and the following evening. The boys' suits were already hung up, the tags run over with a whispy kiss of her lips when they weren’t looking — a good luck charm or a mindless manifestation of her wish to protect them.
While Yoongi and Jimin were adamant that there was nothing to fret over, and Jin was always there to confirm that the plan in motion was safe, Y/n’s gut still tumbled around with every possible way this plan could go wrong. Maybe she wasn’t as strong as she had thought, because it seemed that the run in that previous weekend had formed a crack in her foundation, her confidence leaking through.
She almost felt bad, for she could see the way her anxiety had started to ebb into her companions.
At their most recent run on the field, while the game itself was played with laughter and sarcasm, there was a different kind of tension in Yoongi’s pinched brows when he dove for Hoseok’s invisible ankles, or in the way Jungkook would push himself to run faster than the last attempt.
Jin’s intuition was telling him how things were going to go as long as they followed their plan perfectly, which meant everyone had to follow it — perfectly.
Rubbing her hands together to bring some feeling back into her numb fingertips, Y/n stepped out of the shower, wrapping herself in a plush bathrobe Jimin had gifted her as an early holiday present. He had heard her complaining about the cold bathroom while she simultaneously refused to do anything about it one too many times, even going as far as to attach a new hook to the back of her bathroom door for it to always be within reach.
Now she paced, bare feet slapping against the floor while her lotion soaked into her skin, hands wringing themselves to prunes in front of her.
Hours. She had hours before she needed to be up and in a makeup chair, taking up the job as the ‘messenger’ from the men’s room to the women’s and grabbing the bride any snacks or drinks she pleased. Not quite a bridesmaid, but not just any other guest. Bridesmaid was a title she had willingly forfeited five years ago. His sister never said that outright, but she didn’t have to. And she didn’t blame her.
Honestly, Y/n didn’t mind. Being on her feet and distracted by making sure the groomsman’s shirts were tucked and snatching plates of gourmet meats and cheeses to feed the bride would probably do her some good.
But what about now? Could she run downstairs and beg for someone to let her steam the dresses one last time, or double-check that all the lights were properly plugged in? Maybe she could single-handedly volunteer to hold her finger on the fuse box to make sure no funny business happened when it mattered most.
The reality of possibly ruining one of the most important days in the Jung’s lives was finally beginning to weigh on her shoulders.
With a weary sigh, she leaned near the window, running one of the leaves of her new marbled pothos through her fingers, tracing the lines of the handmade sigil with the other hand.
Still not quite sure what it meant, she often liked to sit with it; touch it with reverence and admiration while she spoke in spilling whispers to it. Meditated on it when she thought she could hear it thrumming back to her.
Right now it was speaking, pulsating with energy that rumbled up through the roots and stalks and swayed the heart-shaped leaves. The plant danced in her pot, bristling as one would wave a hand.
It was then that a knock sounded on her door, her leaves never ceasing to dance while she was yanking it open, probably faster than the other person had expected her to open it — what with the way Jin nearly jumped out of his skin, his hand still raised from knocking.
For a moment they just looked at each other. He knew. She knew. There was no need to overexplain or pour herself out on the floor for him to mop; it was probably the reason he was here in the first place. Her eyes zeroed in on the box cased in his hands.
“What’d you bring?”
He shook the box at eye level. “Uno.”
Pulling him in and shutting the door behind him, she let him sink onto her mattress, spilling the cards out into his hand and shuffling them without a word. Turning her attention back to the plant, it still swayed with phrases she couldn’t hear. Strange. For she had thought once Jin was inside that the plant would have stilled.
So she tested something out.
“Hi.”
The plant still moved, but Jin had lifted his gaze from the cards to the side of her face tentatively. “...Hi?”
Y/n frowned, reaching out her senses to that of the pothos. In her head, she heard the same word repeating.
'Guest. Guest. Guest.'
“Guest…?” Y/n snuck a glance at a very confused Jin out of her peripheral. “You mean Jin?”
At the sound of his name, the plant stopped its minuscule sway, saying his name once with finality.
'Jin.'
Spinning on her heel, she looked at Jin curiously, finding him already mirroring her expression. “Can you try something for me?”
“Sure?”
Grabbing his hand, she led him back to her door, opening it up and politely pushing him out. “Stay out here for a few seconds, then come in again. I just want to test something…”
Jin humored her (though he looked like he was definitely questioning her sanity), and did as he was told. When he twisted the doorknob open again, she heard it this time, so quiet she had to focus on listening to catch it.
The leaves swayed, and the voice announced his arrival.
'Jin.'
“Huh,” Y/n mused with a small smile, leaning her hip against her desk.
Jin had stopped just beside her. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, it’s just — I know I’m going to sound crazy when I say this — but I think I charmed my plant to talk to me. Like a guard dog or something.”
Her companion pursed his lips, eyeing both her and the plant in a way that told her he was trying to think of how to word what he wanted to say politely.
Rolling her eyes, Y/n threaded their fingers together and brought them up to the plant, putting all her focus into opening herself up to Jin, like how Yoongi used to do with her. His energy felt soothing on her body like ice on an aching joint; cooling to her frenzied nerves like a cold glass of sweet tea on a hot day. Assuasive. A personal lullaby wrapped in cotton and wool and placed over her shoulders for her to snuggle into.
“See?” Y/n whispered up to him, the plant letting out her final call of his name.
Jin shifted his weight from one foot to the other, subconsciously bringing them closer to one another. “I...I hear it.”
That had her beaming, proud of her own strengthening abilities. “Really?!”
He observed the way the curve of her smile plumped her cheeks and spawned a new gleam in her eye, the tips of his ears swapping shades. “Yeah.”
“Yes!” She fist bumped herself at being able to transfer her energy without Yoongi's help, releasing his hand and moving back towards the bed, folding her legs beneath her body and tucking her robe beneath them. “Let’s play a round or two. I could use the distraction.”
Following after her, Jin lowered himself near her pillows, dealing out the first hand and slapping the draw pile in the middle. Halfway through the game, Y/n had her suspicions that Jin was letting her win — because he had to be — somehow every color-changing card he laid down had always matched up with whatever she had the most of, even if he didn’t have any.
It was sweet, yet another reminder that he was always trying his best to look out for them.
For her.
“I don’t say thank you enough,” Y/n spoke out of the blue, slapping down one of the three cards she had left.
Jin tilted his head slightly, eyes carefully avoiding the exposed skin where her robe had slipped down her shoulder after her first victory. “For?”
She shrugged with a motion towards the cards, growing a bit shy. “Doing this.”
He tried to wave it off with a light-hearted chuckle, placing down one of his many cards. “It’s just a card game.”
Fingers stopped pinching her next card, leaving it half out and suspended in order to fix him with a knowing look. “You and I both know it isn’t.”
“What is it then?”
“It’s a card game that just so happens to be played when I’m stressed out of my mind. It’s a trip to the store when I’m spiraling in my room. It’s an iced coffee from my favorite spot in town after a rough day.” Y/n listed each item with careful emphasis, folding her cards over themselves in favor of grabbing one of his hands. With her heart hammering in her ears, she skimmed a kiss on one of his knuckles.
Jin’s eyes glazed over for a second, audibly swallowing down a nervous sound, blinking rapidly at where her lips still hovered over his skin.
“Thank you.” Y/n restated her gratitude softly.
All they could hear for was their shared breathing and the distant shuffle of family making themselves at home in their rooms after long days of travel in from overseas, the pull to say something else — do something else stronger than ever when it felt like the moment was just theirs.
He peeled his hand from her grasp, only letting himself have one quick swipe of his thumb over her wrist before he was grabbing for his cards again, clearing his throat of something stuck in it.
“It’s your turn.”
Y/n’s face felt hot and she fumbled for her small stack, unintentionally sending them tumbling off her bed and splattering on the floor. “Shit-”
“I got it,” Jin was already crouching down to sweep them up, holding them up to her with a small laugh. “You probably shouldn’t be bending down anywhere.” He smacked the edge of the sage colored robe with the cards.
It was at that moment that y/n realized just how under-dressed she was, completely distracted by his arrival and her own thoughts. “I’m sorry!” She squeaked out, tying the bow around her waist fiercely and giving it an extra knot for good measure.
“It’s fine,” He reassured her genuinely. “As long as you’re comfortable.”
“I know, but I’m just here almost flashing you for like, an hour!” Y/n couldn’t help but poke fun at herself. “You could’ve said something if it bothered you.”
At that Jin looked down to his cards like they held the answers to the meaning of life, nibbling on the plush of his lower lip. “I-it’s not that it bothers me...I was just-”
“Knock knock!” Jimin sang sweetly, poking his head around the door, eyes widening at the duo. “Oh, I wasn’t aware you had company.”
'Jimin.'
Y/n turned to her plant with growing awe. How had she not heard her the first night she brought the pot home? It felt so obviously loud now.
“We are just playing a few rounds,” Jin answered for her. “Want to join?”
Jimin hesitated, looking torn between coming in and passing out on the spot. He looked exhausted. Between training, work, helping with the wedding (because this man is incapable of telling someone ‘no’), and meeting up with everyone for book club, he has been nonstop moving for weeks.
“If you’re too tired, you can go to bed. It’s okay.” She reassured him, padding over to the door to wrap his middle in a tight hug. “I’ll see you in the morning, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Jimin let out with a defeated sigh. “I’m sorry, I wanted to get here earlier…”
“Don’t apologize, you’re busy.” Squeezing him tighter for emphasis, she landed a kiss on his nose. “Go sleep.”
He practically melted into her, forehead coming forward to rest against hers. “Alright. I’ll be here first thing to help you carry stuff down.”
“And if you’re not, don’t fret about it.”
She leaned in to peck his mouth, but just as their lips brushed he was turning his head down the hall like someone had called for him.
“Any gossip?”
Jimin stepped back, hands falling from her waist to land in his pockets. “Looks like the Min’s made it in. Matilda wants to go say hi.”
“O-okay,” Confused as to why Matilda couldn’t go alone, though not questioning it, Y/n let him go with a brief goodnight.
One thing she couldn’t stop replaying in her mind during her next round with Jin, was how Jimin hadn’t leaned back in to kiss her. Even when her eyes started drooping, and she found her cheek supported on Jin’s knee while she gave the age-old ‘I’m not tired!’ complaint when he offered to help her into bed — she would find the pads of her fingertips running over the split skin of her lip; the place he refused to touch.
If she was being honest with herself, she couldn’t recall the last time he had actually kissed her.
_________________________________________
The obnoxious ticking of the clock was much harder to hear from her room, and for that she was grateful. But as for much else, well, she found it quite difficult to find anything to be thankful for.
It hadn’t even been a week since her fight with Alain, and now Candida found herself in her room perched on the edge of her bed across from the local doctor, his brief case laid open and his legs crossed, peering at her through a set of silver spectacles. “How many days did you say?”
Alain answered quickly from her side. “Not days, doctor. Weeks.”
The man before them hummed, bristling the thin hairs of his graying mustache and thumbing at his chin thoughtfully. “And this all started before Louise’s passing?”
“Yes, long before. I think this has just...heightened her symptoms.” Her husband rubbed a hand on her forearm to soothe her, yet his touch had the opposite effect. A loving touch gone rotten, souring her mouth from the inside out.
Candida tried to squirm away from him, but there was nowhere else to go besides to squash herself against the headboard. What she would have given to morph into some termite that could mouth its way into the crevices of the wood and hide there where no one would find her. Especially not him.
Plucking his spectacles up to size up a particularly large smudge, the doctor ran the edge of his coat over the glass. “Has is gotten any worse since the last I’ve seen you, Miss?”
“For something to be worse, that something would have to exist,” Candida muttered, ripping her arm from Alain’s grasp and folding them over herself. “There is nothing wrong with me, doctor, that I can assure you.”
Alain pulled a comically large frown at the loss of her touch and gestured to his wife. “This is exactly as I told you. She won’t let me near her anymore. She is absolutely beside herself most nights, and nothing ever calms her.”
“I am grieving.” She bit back.
“Abnormally so,” Alain corrected. “She doesn’t even want me to work anymore.”
Candida drew back, anger huffing like an overworked furnace that coughed steam from her ears. “That isn’t what I’d said! I said that you should take off for a few days-”
“She is lying doctor. She insisted I practically quit just last night!”
Oh, how Candida wanted to strangle him right then and there. She growled, clenching her fists and baring her teeth. Hungry to prove her point — to prove her own innocence that it manifested in a blinding rage. “Why, I ought to-”
Then she saw it, that flickering gleam of satisfaction within a flash of golden rings in his eyes. She was doing exactly what he wanted her to. React.
“Now, now, Miss Morel, I think it would do you some good to have a seat.” The doctor was touching her now, urging her to the plush of her bedside and chiding her like one would a child. “No need to get yourself worked up.”
Then they shared a look. A quick nod of the head and a flick of the eye. A beat of that never-ending clock boomed from down the hall.
“Darling, why don’t you go work on one of those paintings, hm? I will escort the doctor out.”
It wasn’t a question; it was a quiet demand for obedience. And if she defied, she ran the risk of making herself look worse. But if she complied, she looked weak.
With silence as her protection, she escaped the confines of the stuffy room and made way for the front door, passing where Adelaide sat in one of the plush armchairs with her remaining daughter, a book split open on her knee that she read aloud from. Everything in her told her to rush over and scoop her daughter up and run — perhaps call up her sister and escape down south where Alain couldn’t follow. But she refrained.
Grabbing the door handle she paused, taking notice of an opened letter tucked beneath the others, the handwriting all too similar to that of a letter she had received herself that very morning. What business did her sister have sending Adelaide a letter? What could she say to her but not to her very own sister?
Without thinking, she snatched it with the stealth of a barn mouse, and poked the flap up to peer at the words within, heart in her throat as she awaited the moment Adelaide might come around the corner.
To Adelaide,
We are set to arrive at the train station on the morning of the twentieth. Despite your previous reassurance, I have still chosen to leave our daughter at the ranch under the care of Emilio’s family. While I trust that you would do everything in your power to secure her safety, I am sure that you could understand my hesitation in bringing her to the Estate in light of the most recent events.
It took a whole lot of convincing for Emilio to even let mereturn.
I look forward to hearing from you in regards to Candida’s most recent doctor’s visit. She has refrained from mentioning anything of it to me, and I know now is not the time to pry into a broken hearted woman's privacy. Though her most recent letter worries me.
Forgive me for being brazen, but I think it would do her some good to take some time away from the house. Perhaps you can help me convince her and our mother that some time spent down in Texas with me will do her some good. I know my head always feels lighter the longer I am away from the Estate.
Sincerely,
Lisolette Medina
P.S. Try and keep my mother together, won't you? For Candida’s sake. Her head is screwed around enough as it is, and she doesn’t need her adding stock to the pot–though I’m sure you know that already.
P.P.S. Keep mother away from house until our bags are stowed away to our room. I am bringing my gun as we discussed, and I know that might send her to the heavens if she saw it.”
Candida’s mind ran a thousand miles a minute. Beneath Lizzy’s letter was the very letter Candida had sent her over a month prior, folded into threes so it wouldn’t be caught at a first glance.
Had Adelaide held the same suspicions as she? Have her and her sister been communicating about this right under her nose? What did she need a gun for? Certainly not her husband...
Tucking it in her hand and making her leave for the hotel, she headed to where she knew she could find the person she wished to speak to before she had been distracted. And never in her life did she think she’d be saying that about her cousin of all people.
Once she was finished with him, she could stow herself away in study and ponder what her stolen information meant.
She found Clay bent over a script in the theater hall, observing the dancers as they went through their usual warm-ups and routines, a sharpened look in his eye that never dulled, like he was able to dissect their efforts with no more than a glance.
“Clay,” Candida called for him from halfway down the aisle, his head snapping at the authority in her tone much like it always had.
With a roll of his eyes he stood, sizing her up with that same examiners blade. “What is it you want? Shouldn’t you be off mixing colors with the mason, or singing duets with the Jung boy?”
“I need you to cancel the opera showcase this upcoming weekend.”
Taken aback, he almost laughed at the absurdity of her request. “What do you expect me to do that for?”
“Alain needs a break, and he refuses to listen to me.” She crossed her arms and gave him the best ‘no nonsense’ look she could muster. “If you can manage, I’ll play whatever part you want in one of your plays.”
Delight sparked across his features, but that quickly dispelled into squinted suspicion. “What do you get out of it?”
“It is as I said. He needs rest.”
Clay pursed his lips, unconvinced. Then, as annoyingly perceptive as always, he caught sight of the letter in her hand. “What are you doing with mail that certainly doesn’t belong to you? Does Adelaide know you have that?”
She instinctively hid the envelope behind herself. “That isn’t important.”
“So she doesn’t know,” Clay began to smile in a way that already made her blood boil. “I suppose she should. I have no reason to protect you.”
“Now isn’t the time for your antics, Clarence. This doesn’t concern you.”
His nose curled at the name, and in retaliation, his hand shot out before she could stop it to swipe the letter straight from her hand, holding it above his head like a trophy. “If it isn’t important, then I guess it wouldn’t hurt if I were to give it a read, hm?”
“Don’t-”
With quick fingers, he pinched out the note and dashed down to hop the front of the stage, annoyingly proud and pacing the edge, stretching his smile wide with teeth ready to sink into something he could us to spit back at her.
But his smile fell the longer he read. His eyes moved faster, his stroll stuttered to an aimless wander.
His hands shook.
“What is this?”
Candida shrugged, feigning innocence. “If it isn’t mine. How should I know?”
Clay jumped from the stage, waving the letter in front of her face. “Tell me now what this means, before I beat it out of you.”
“Your threats might have worked when we were children, but now you hold as much weight as a roasted goose.” Candida stole the note back, shoving it in her pocket. “Why do you care so much?”
His jaw clenched, squaring it off more than it usually did, a spitting image of his late father. “This-” he gestured to the note, “-is my business.”
Candida saw what could almost be fear flash in his eyes, and she felt herself speaking before she could stop it, a mere whisper beneath the music wafting up from the pit. “Do you know of Ani, too?”
His gaze narrowed, and she could’ve sworn she saw a bead of sweat form on his temple before he swiped his hand over his forehead. Then he turned back to the stage, hands fisted at his side while he stopped down to pick up his forgotten script. “No. I have no idea what you are referring to.”
Her gaze followed his form around the red velvet seats where he had hiked his shoulders up to his ears and pulled his legs beneath him, nose tucked back into the endless scrawl of black ink on white pages. It was unlike him to stay so silent; to leave her alone without any childish jabs or sniveling insults.
It rattled her, made her voice unsteady and her mind run. “I won’t let this go. Whatever it is you know, I will too.”
Clay ignored her, mouthing the lines on the page with more passion than before.
“I mean it, Clarence.”
He flipped a page, bringing his knees in closer. A coward, as always.
About halfway up the walkway he called out to her, keeping his eyes downcast. “I would leave it alone, if I were you. Snakes don’t take too kindly to meddling mice.”
_________________________________________
Y/n’s feet ached, and it wasn’t even noon yet.
The women were all getting ready at the hotel, up on the top floor where the biggest suites took up the space of multiple rooms, offering the luxury of a separate communal space complete with a dining table and plush couches to spread out on. But the men? They were all the way down at the guest house.
She was working this wedding like the secret service, a walkie clipped between her breasts and phone on constantly.
It was almost funny, seeing her all dressed up to the nines in winterberry reds, hair done with enough product to keep it in place for the next week, and face plastered with expensive makeup, while she was sprinting in a pair of tennis shoes down the gravel path to the guest house because one of the moronic groomsmen had forgotten his fucking shirt.
Hoseok met her at the door, an apologetic wince on his face. “I told ‘em like a million times-”
“I know. Just take it before I decide to use it as a makeup wipe.” Fuck, she was already sweating. Thank god it was cold out, or else she’d be shelling out another couple of hundred bucks to get everything redone.
Hoseok tucked the button down under his armpit and moved to shut the door, stopping as if he remembered something. “Wait, did you also bring the-”
“Painkillers?” Y/n scooped a small bottle from the cups of her dress, diving back in for more. “Electrolytes? Bandaids? Sign, sealed, and delivered.” She smacked them in his hands. “Just wipe the sweat off.”
“Lifesaver,” he tipped the bottle towards her like a shot glass, eyes scanning her outfit from head to toe. “You look really good by the way.”
“You keep saying that lately,” Y/n teased, stretching her quads like she was about to run cross country. Yet he wasn’t wrong — she knew how good she looked. A vintage sweetheart cut cinched in all the right places, the color deep enough to not be blindingly vibrant. Even when tied above her knees haphazardly with an extra hair-tie so she wouldn't trip while running, she still knew it looked good.
Hoseok bit his lip and bounced his shoulders. “I guess I just want to keep saying it.”
Y/n ignored the hot feeling in her chest and face, shaking her hands out to cool off in the December air. “Anything to return to sender?”
“Nope.”
They locked eyes, his lips twitching like he wanted to say more, fingers curling around the storm door until his knuckles turned white. Before he could, the walkie went off on her chest.
“Bride to Y/n, over.”
Tearing her eyes away from his she plucked it up towards her mouth. “Here.”
“Can you make sure they have the rings? I told his brother to grab them before we left.”
She didn’t even need to ask Hoseok, for he had already taken it upon himself to skirt back into the house, hollering out to the groomsmen from the entrance way with a voice loud enough to carry. All it took was one tight-lipped deadpan face from him through the window for her to get the message.
With a deep sigh she responded into the mic. “I’ll be delivering them shortly, over.”
“I hate him,” Y/n groaned up to him, the ‘him’ in question being the grooms air headed brother. “Why did they give him one of the most important jobs? Like, where are Jimin’s soldiers when we need them most?”
Hoseok clicked his tongue, a mischievous smile taking up his features. “I could always give him a good scare. See if Matilda is up for any playing around.”
Y/n could’ve kissed him right then and there if he had let her. “You’re my hero.”
“I try sometimes. Now get waddlin’, Ducky, before my sister has a nervous breakdown.”
With shared giggles they saluted each other, and she began her sprint back to the hotel with a fire under her step. From the treeline, she could hear his voice booming through the house, commanding the men to get in line with a seriousness she had never heard from him before. In the past, he was the one who needed corralling, but here he was, pretty much acting like a drill sergeant to this group of bafoonish men.
Was it hot? Maybe. There was nothing more attractive than competence.
She was really liking this new version of him.
If there was one thing she was right about the night before, it was that she definitely didn’t have any time to overthink their plans. If anything, she had actually almost forgotten about them behind the razzle-dazzle of helping a vendor unload thousands of dollars' worth of winter greenery and flowers, falling into quick step with Jin’s mother as she steered everyone with a project manager's precision.
There wasn’t even time to return the side hug Yoongi’s father had tried to give her while she zipped by the kitchen he was loitering around, or to ogle at the way Jungkook’s pants fit and Namjoon’s shoulders filled out his suite jacket. (That’s a lie; she unapologetically stared for approximately eight unbroken seconds before they noticed and shooed her on her way).
Time had gone from moving too slow to moving way too fucking fast, only an hour left until the ceremony that she needed to be promptly seated in the second row for.
She found a moment of refuge behind one of the decorative plants near the curved stairs down to the theater, shoving a handful of crackers and a few grapes she had stolen from the bride's room in her mouth like a rat with its secret hoard. Her stomach was ready to stage an insurrection if she didn't give it something.
“Mind it I join?”
Y/n looked up with bugged out eyes and cheeks bulging, face littered with crumbs. Yoongi smirked down at her, a small paper plate in his hand of his own and his suit jacket folded in the crook of his elbow.
Forcing the food down with a grimace, she choked out a response. “Depends. Are you here to send me on another goose chase?”
“No,” Yoongi snickered, already lowering himself to squeeze in next to her. “Move over loser, I’m hiding from your mom.”
Obliging with a roll of her eyes, she inched barely enough to give him the space to be flush to her side. “Good luck with that. She’s on something today.”
“Trust me, I know.” Yoongi scooped up one the muffin he had swiped from an unsuspecting waiter and took a large bite from it. “Everywhere I look, she’s there, coming towards me with yet another fucking set of string lights to find an outlet for. This wedding is going to be visible from Mars.”
Y/n made a humored grunt around one of her crackers. “I would hate to see the electric bill for this weekend.”
They fell into a comfortable silence munching on their contraband, shoulders, hips, and knees sandwiched against one another. Y/n braved finally bringing it up.
“Is everything ready?”
Yoongi used a napkin to wipe a few crumbs from his lip. “Just about.”
His fingers hovered over his half-eaten muffin, picking at the pieces of what remained. “I just have to take the package downstairs and put it in the locker.”
Y/n gulped. She hadn’t seen the mirror Candida had been trapped in since the last big showdown. Suddenly, the cheese wasn’t sitting well in her stomach, the herb-infused crackers turned into mushy cardboard in her mouth. “Where is she?”
Yoongi remained indifferent save for the subtle flutter of his lashes as he looked down at his plate. “Right over there.” He finally dropped the now disintegrated pastry, his appetite also lost. “I didn’t want to drag her by while you were sitting here.”
“It’s fine.” It didn’t feel fine. “I can handle it. I’ll have to see her later anyway.”
At this, Yoongi shifted to meet her gaze, a cloudy expression taking over while he prodded over her face with watchful eyes. “You gonna be okay tonight?”
“Yeah.” Y/n responded with a shaky breath that threatened to disprove her answer. “You?”
“Yeah.”
His voice trembled.
His fingers resumed sifting through the doughy pastry for the loose poppy seeds, putting them into a pile on the side of his plate.
A heavy sigh.
A lick of his lips.
“Just promise me something.” Yoongi ground his jaw. “If she comes after you again, don’t try and be brave. I don’t think I can…We don’t know if I’d be able to…Fuck-” he cut himself off with a curse, squeezing his eyes closed to drop his head back against the wall. “Just don’t go off trying to be a hero if things hit the fan.”
Y/n tried to lighten the mood. “Careful, Yoongs. You’re starting to sound worried about me. Wouldn’t want that tainting your record.”
One of his eyes cracked open, then the other; his face coming down to look at her so earnestly she had to remind herself it was Yoongi in front of her.
His eyes flicked down to her mouth — a movement so delicate and vulnerable she barely caught it — though she didn’t miss the way it snagged her breath, the air around his head churning with the faintest halo of soft lavender.
Then the moment was gone, cut off by a sharp sigh and a grunt as he clambered to his feet. She took his offered hand in a daze, still unsure if she had misread his signals.
“See you at the reception?”
Y/n nodded distantly, letting him take her plate to one of the trash cans as she started back towards the lobby, already hearing a distant call of her name fall from someone’s lips — something about the table settings and favors — things that didn’t feel as important when thoughts of how soft his lips might feel plagued her mind.
Until the image of him lugging down an object wrapped in a set of old sheets down the stairs tempted to put her in another nervous spiral while she finished up any last minute tasks.
Her head spun in circles in time with each guest she politely nodded to, strutting past them to her seat and finally letting herself breathe. A habit that would be easier if there weren’t dozens of eyes coasting over the back of her head, whispering behind hands and making pointed gestures her way, all the doing of family and friends who probably didn’t expect to see her anywhere near this place.
The one that hurt the most was her sister, stepping in draped in some exquisite creation of silk and satin, arm hooked around that of her foreign boyfriend, whom she had heard her mother mention. Y/n stood so fast she her chair rocked on its feet, waving frantically for her sister to look up at her, to come say hello, and maybe introduce her to the mystery man on her arm.
But she didn’t.
Amelia glanced up almost like an accident, averting her eyes to one of Hoseok’s aunts and greeting them with a million dollar smile.
That’s fine, she’s probably feeling a lot of emotions that she doesn't want to display at someone’s wedding, Y/n reasoned, lowering back into her seat trepidly with a tight throat. That’s probably all it was.
Probably why she hadn’t called or texted even though she knew she was back.
Seats filled up around her without her really noticing. Jungkook was a couple of seats down with his dad, while the three empty seats beside her remained empty. Jimin was with the Kim’s, Taehyung was further back with other staff, and the Min’s were situated directly behind her.
Amelia was supposed to sit with her; her mother had intended to sit with her but got stuck catching up with one of her aunts; and of course, her father wasn’t present. He couldn’t be even if he wanted to.
So Y/n stayed in her seat, chin up, shoulders back, and legs crossed like she wasn’t feeling more alienated than ever while everyone relished in the reunion. She supposed she had done this to herself. But would she have done it had they not treated her the way they did? Was she really the only one to blame for it?
The procession started with a classical rendition of an 80’s love song as a compromise for both her and her soon-to-be husband's tastes, their perfectly dressed bodies pacing like dolls down the aisle she had broken a sweat helping to lay out. It was gorgeous, the light on Hoseok’s sister’s face worth every ounce of energy she had spent to prepare it.
Hoseok himself stood proudly next to his new brother-in-law, bearing the box of rings he wasn’t supposed to be holding. Y/n shot him a subtle look, just a flick of the eyes and a twitch of the brow down to the engraved wood.
He merely angled a quick pointed look to the groom's brother in the back of the crowd, his shirt stained blush from a spilled glass of wine, and a drunken smile dragging down his face.
Y/n scowled. She had ran to get him that shirt.
Shaking her head, she turned back to Hoseok to shoot him a thumbs up. He returned it with a cheeky grin and a wink, his gaze faltering when he noticed the empty seats beside her.
Seats she was suddenly being shoved into when he had finished his duty and returned to the aisle, tiptoeing into her row.
“What are you doing here?” Y/n whispered to him, bewildered.
“I’m supposed to sit after they exchange.” He whispered back like it was obvious.
“Yes, I’m aware. But you have a seat in the front!”
He shrugged, leaning back in his seat and hogging up the edge of hers. “S’fine. This one has more room anyway.”
As much as she wanted to shove him up to the seat in front for making people ogle their way — God — Y/n didn’t realize how nice it felt to have someone sitting with her. His presence helped shield her from the gossiping aunts and belligerent uncles hissing about how and why she was alone, conjuring up their own theories as to why she left in the first place and what she must have done to deserve her fate. To them, the arm he tossed over the back of her chair foiled all their conspiracies with a clear message.
She belongs right here.
Y/n watched with misty eyes as they exchanged their vows, the romantic, sappy atmosphere getting to her no matter how hard she tried to fight it. Another special moment to look back on and remind herself as to why they were doing all of this. And now she was crying for a different reason — just for the sake of letting herself cry for something good and not something exhausting.
A crumpled tissue flopped into her view. “You need?”
Gratefully, she accepted the item from Hoseok’s grasp, carefully dabbing at her lash line. He really was a godsent today.
“You know,” Hoseok whispered, voice much lower than before. “We make a pretty good team.”
“Always have,” She rebutted, tucking the tissue into her palm.
He chewed on that for a second, clicking his tongue. “Not always. But we’re getting better with it. I’m trying to at least.”
Y/n didn’t know what to make of that, ignoring the weird feeling for the sake of staying present in the moment, where bridesmaids and grooms men hid tears behind stony faces and the parents sobbed in the front row.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that I like being a team. I like getting to work together on...things.” He started again, never quite letting her or her heart refocus on the view in front of her.
Y/n wrenched her wet eyes from the front to peer up at him. “Me too…?”
“No. Like…” His whisper gave out, and he raced to catch it. “Like together.”
Oh.
“But you said you couldn’t-”
“I know what I said,” Hoseok cut her off. “But if you’d let me try, I’d like to give this a go. A real try. I’m here, manning up and asking for what I want. And I want that-” he nodded to the ceremony in front of them, “-with you.”
“It’s not just me, it’s everyone.” Y/n reminded him. “We might not be able to do the whole fancy ceremony and paperwork.”
His body inched closer. “I know.”
Before she knew what she was doing, one of her hands reached across his lap to intertwine their fingers. “If you really try…”
“I promise.” Hoseok answered with conviction that shook her to her core, squeezing her hand. And she could feel it in his chest through their touch, his sincerity bleeding out of his palm into her hand for her to hold, trusting her not to drop it.
The crowd around her burst into cheers at the couple under the arch sharing a tender kiss, her hands moving up to absentmindedly clap along with his still wrapped around her fingers. There was still so much more to talk about — boundaries to flesh out, a real sit down conversation to be had — but right now she couldn’t find it in her to feel anything other than contentment.
It just felt right to call it what it was. What it always was. Even with the fights and the disagreements, or the distance. They were supposed to be together forever as friends, lovers, or scheming accomplices...whatever they needed to be. Always evolving and ever changing. The only controlled factor was that it was them.
Another realization that nothing had changed from ten seconds prior to now but a name.
The intention had always been there, since that night in those tents; a promise made that both souls intended to keep.
_________________________________________
January 29th, 1930
Dear Lizzy,
I fear for myself, and I fear for my daughter.
I fear that I am a mouse, and my enemy a clever viper that hides in his skin.
If he should eat me, I beg that you will do what is best for Madeline. I promise I will tell you everything once you arrive.
-Candida.
The doctor’s visits became more frequent, as did the waking dreams that kept Alain from getting any real sleep. Candida could hear the dreams, see them swirling from his head and pouring out his mouth in careless mutterings he had no wherewithal to quiet.
Though paranoia kept her from reaching out to anyone that might help, her trust in her sister wavering, and under no circumstances was she interested in offering Adelaide a look into her mind. Clearly, they were beginning to believe the lie that Alain had spun that it was she whose mind had fluttered out the window with the coming of summer, and not him.
Isolation was spinning her out of control, giving her too much time to speculate. To think. To tape together the shattered pieces of her husband's mind that he spilled in secret. Something was in him, she was sure of it. But if no one would listen to her, she would have to make them listen to her.
First, she had to make some sort of escape plan should things head south. While she couldn’t depend on her sister to understand exactly what was happening, there was no other person she would trust with her daughter more than Lizzy.
So she prepared, putting aside little bits of money that no one seemed to miss, slipping an extra dress or pair of stockings beneath the loose floorboards of the guest room across from her daughters room. It became obsessive, until all she knew how to do was hide. Tuck. Slip. Stuff. Check. Think.
Thinking led her in dangerous directions.
It led her down. Down into the basement where her daughter had been found. Crouched along the dirt floor and digging like a dog sniffing out a trail. She felt more animal than human on days like this. She didn’t sleep, didn’t eat. She only watched, staying in the guest room staring at the light beneath the door in case the shadows tried to speak, or his footsteps tried to wander to their daughter to act out the vile things he whispered in his sleep. She was becoming something else in her journey to discover who he had become, and she couldn’t stop it.
Couldn’t hide from the wary looks and the muffled laughter whenever she decided to show herself at the crowded breakfast table.
With a wave of his hand, Ernst quieted the bubbling laughter erupting from Clay’s mouth, turning to address her softly. “You look...different, dear.”
She kept her eyes on her untouched plate, and offered her father a shrug. “I suppose I am.”
Alain piped in from across the table, nodding to her plate with a wide frown and pleading eyes. “It must be because she refuses to eat. I can’t imagine that is helping her...predicament.”
“I’m not in any predicament,” Candida shot him a glare. “I am perfectly sound.”
Another accidental bark of laughter came from Clay, which he hurriedly quieted behind a sip of his drink. But the damage was done in regard to the hoard of young boys propped up near him, the tallest of the twins imitating his laughter.
The smallest tilted his head, the porridge he was intently working through momentarily forgotten. “Why are you laughing, Duane?”
“Because Tanchen Dee looks funny,” He whispered back.
“Oh.” Bear didn’t seem convinced quite yet, though with his brother’s influence, his mouth moved into something that could be considered a smile. Seonggi, the Kim’s boy, sat ramrod straight, eyes wide and unsure as he flittered between looking at her and his friends. With one silent shake of the head from his father, he retreated back to his breakfast.
“That’s enough from you, boys.” Ernst clicked his tongue. “Why don’t the lot of you run along now and find something to entertain yourselves with?”
Duane whined, glaring sharply with the clouded expression of a brewing tantrum at his grandfather. “B-but I’m still eating-” Before he could explode, Bear whispered something excitedly in his ear, at which his expression flipped around to one of mischief. “Nevermind! We can leave!”
The group of boys whispered and tripped over one another in their haste to fasten their coats, and Candida called out to them just as they were shoving hats atop their heads. “Take Maddie with you, won’t you?”
Begrudgingly Duane obliged, scrunching his face up and leaning into the study doors to call for her, oblivious to the tense standoff between the adults.
“She is in her lesson,” Alain began to reason with her with that same saccharine, condescending tone he had been using as of late dripping from his tongue.
“And she deserves a break.” She snapped back.
He frown twisted deeper. Angrier. “She only just started.”
“If the boys are permitted to play, so can she.” With that, she took a harsh bite of whatever was on her plate, teeth scraping against metal.
Alain forced a polite smile. “I had just managed to get her to sit still for Adelaide.”
“Well, then I am sure the activity will do her some good.”
His eye twitched, his smile melting into surprise, a brief flash of worry crossing his features and spine curling inwards at how he clearly had upset her. Then it shifted, leveling into something flat and unimpressed. Candida didn’t care about his injured pride; all she cared about was the slim ring of yellow rimming his dark eyes when he opened his mouth. “Then I suppose I should go with them. To make sure they aren’t getting into any sort of trouble.”
There. There it was.
The snake.
Candida leapt to her feet, knocking her chair back and tripping over the upended legs in her haste to press back against the wall. “Look! Look at him! He is there — crawling amongst us!”
“What is?” Ernst furrowed his brow and inspected Alain’s face, somehow missing the shift in color that looked so obvious to her.
“The last of her sanity,” Clay snickered to himself, earning a sharp glare from his uncle.
Ignoring him, she answered. “The snake.”
At that Clay’ bristled, hands stilling around his spoon and a gaze instinctively running over Ernst’s reaction and the side of Alain’s face.
“Now, now, darling,” Her ‘husband’ stood, the gold bleeding like ink spots towards his pupils. “Let’s not do this here. Did you get enough sleep like the doctor ordered?”
She hated how convincingly he molded concern out of clear control, the rest of the room looking to her as though she was the strange anomaly, not the morphing man before them.
“I can’t sleep when I know you are slinking through the halls, waiting to eat us!”
Ernst sighed deeply, rising to her side and guiding her towards the hall with firm hands on her shoulders. “Come, let’s get you some rest. How about a book, hm? I can read to you if you’d like — that always used to work after you would have those nightmares.”
Candida’s pleas were shushed with a heavy quilt and a quiet murmur of whatever thick novel he already had tucked into his coat. Though nothing soothed her worries when she could still hear the endless pacing of the clock from the study, and Alain’s unassuming shout out to the boys in the yard, asking if he could join them.
Of course they said yes — he had always been so good at making them laugh.
Tales of romance and courting dances were drowned out with the images her mind conjured of the giant serpent slithering amongst them, earning their trust while he sharpened his teeth, already coiled around whichever victim he decided to unhinge his massive jaws and swallow next.
_________________________________________
“Can I have more?” Y/n made grabby hands for the roll of paper towels tucked under Taehyung’s armpit.
He wrapped a wad around his palm and passed it over, shouting over the punch of the music on the speakers. “This good?”
Using the ball to sop up the spilled mixed drink one of the plastered bridesmaids had splashed all over this side of the dance floor, sh watched the white turn shades of maroon. Of course, she had volunteered to be the one doing it; she was intent on making sure all of the unsuspecting family members thoroughly enjoyed their time just in case something happened. Even if it was just the power that went out for a song or two, she was going to limit their exposure as much as possible.
It was easy to hide the fact that she hadn’t been drinking by getting her hands dirty with random tasks anyway. Pick up a drink, take half a sip when Jin’s dad was watching, put it down. Pick up another, make a show if how good it tasted, then leave it to sweat on a cocktail table in the lobby. She moved like a well-oiled machine when it came to duping their parents.
The two clambered to their feet to dispose of the paper towels, keeping close together.
She was Taehyung's buddy for the first part of the reception, for it was a lot easier for them to be publicly affectionate in a way that wouldn’t make anyone look twice if they disappeared off somewhere ‘more private’. With the reception an hour in and the guests getting sloppier and less aware of their surroundings, their time was almost up, simply just waiting for Jin’s signal to scatter.
This suspense was only comparable to that of when she was little, a blow up sea turtle gripped in her hands like a vice while she waited back stage for her turn to perform an elementary tap routine to a crowd of dozens of bored parents. The rush of hot blood in cold limbs and a nausea she couldn’t stop swallowing down, heart hammering in her mouth in anticipation of whether or not she’d be laughed at or applauded. All of it coming to reside painfully in her abdomen.
They were split into three groups: defense, offense, and middle. Jin would be lingering close to the lobby to distract the parents, a common face they could look for in the crowd if they got suspicious. Hoseok and Jimin were messengers, rotating between popping their heads into the party and wandering back to the theater as needed, keeping nosy guests away from the area.
The rest of them were in the theater, assuming their designated roles. Namjoon holding down the wards with his pockets leaden with tinctures and charms; Yoongi was in charge of the mirror and offering spells from his books he thought were helpful; Jungkook and Y/n would work together to purify Candida with her as bait; and lastly Taehyung was...well…putting his skills to good use.
The man in question tapped the back of her knuckles three times.
Jin had given him the signal to go down first.
Taehyung’s lips ghosted the shell of her ear, his breath warm as he whispered. “Meet me in five, hmm?”
Y/n shuddered with the run of his lips down her cheek, cold sweat starting to bead on the back of her neck. “Y-yeah.”
He bit back a chuckle at how easily she was genuinely effected by even the slightest of his touches, the alibi believable to anyone who happened to look over. Then he was gone, sauntering off through the lobby with an air so inconspicuous, Sherlock Holmes probably wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a crowd.
She counted the seconds after he left, moving her hips gently from side to side to the beat of the music and the pulse of strobe lights, her friend's bodies gradually vanishing behind the flash. Time moved slowly, her ears thrumming with the pressure of underwater currents, sweaty, screaming guests jumping and jostling her on all sides — she probably looked drunk.
Good. It made her job pretending easy then.
Jin found her eyes in the crowd, bobbing his head to the rhythm with an added beat somewhere in the middle, a slight jerk of his head that would be missed by anyone not looking for it.
Now it was her turn to melt; to seep through the cracks of commotion and squeeze out the other side, fixing her dress and clasping the walkie to her ear like she was listening to a command that didn’t exist.
The hotel thrummed like a living being beneath her feet, following each step with curiosity and vague interest as it always did. Each step rippled like a flare shot into the sky, telling the spirits exactly where she was, not bothering to quiet the click of her soles on tile. It was their goal to get their eyes on her after all.
Descending the stairs was an easy mindless task. Gripping the handle reminded her she had control. Taking a deep breath at the bottom was a moment with herself, a moment of forced quiet before they shattered it.
“Curtain call,” She whispered to herself, swinging open the heavy red doors to the theater.
Taehyung’s warm vibrato resonated throughout the space and beckoned her closer, his scaling warm-ups climbing higher and flowing louder with each crest and dip.
“Can you hear it from back there?”
Yoongi leaned over the tech box railing, plucking a headset from his ears.
“Hear what?” Y/n rubbed the sweat off her palms.
Yoongi grumbled under his breath, displeased with her answer. After tinkering with the buttons and switches, she heard what he was referencing: the emotional swell of strings singing through the speakers. “How about now?”
“All good,” Y/n gave him two thumbs up.
Yoongi ran a hand through his well-defined curls, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Awesome. Can’t wait to lure in some unsuspecting ghouls this evening with...Puccini. Very badass.”
Taehyung’s warm-ups cut abruptly short. “Hey! Opera can be badass!”
“Says the guy that threatened my life with a tater tot at the prospect of me telling anyone about it,” Y/n pulled a humored snort from her tool box, somehow having a bit of joviality left to offer.
Taehyung wagged a finger at her. “Wrong — it was, in fact, a hash brown. I would never threaten a beautiful lady such as yourself with a weapon as dangerous as a tater tot.”
“Tater tots are higher on the offensive scale than hash browns?” Namjoon made a face from his spot on the floor of the center aisle where he was pouring thick rings of homemade salt mixtures around the singer's feet. “Is that research peer-reviewed?.”
“Exponentially more offensive,” Taehyung reached down for a small plastic cup of water. “Research not needed.”
Namjoon paused. “But you can smack someone pretty substantially with a hash brown.”
“And you can choke on a tater tot.”
“And I want to plug my ears with both of them so I don’t have to hear this bullshit,” Yoongi ground out from his perch, stomping down the stairs to supervise the construction of salt rings. Folding his arms, he scanned the perimeter of the room with his lip pulled up between his teeth. “Where’s the kid?”
“Here,” Jungkook closed the door to the mezzanine behind him softly, making sure he heard it click twice before looming behind them. “Y/n’s station is ready.”
They exchanged a few uncertain glances, loitering around for a beat just waiting for someone to say the final words that everyone seemed to hesitate to form.
“Let’s get this over with then,” Yoongi brushed past Y/n to where Jungkook had just come from, holding the door open with the toe of his dress shoe and waving for her to enter first. “Menaces first.”
Rolling eyes at his antics, she slid past him to climb the first few steps. This hall was cold and cramped, dense walls of stone barricading the thin spiral staircase up to the seating area, barely wide enough to house two people standing side by side. Their breaths rebounded off the walls back to their ears, making the backing track for Taehyung’s performance almost inaudible.
“Keep those boys in line down there for me, ‘kay?” Y/n tossed back to him over her shoulder, hoisting her skirts higher up her knees so she wouldn’t trip. “They need you down there to keep their heads on straight.”
What she said like a joke landed a lot heavier than she intended, her words suddenly tasting bitter when drenched in dread. She gulped that down to with a straight face, hoping she didn’t give him the same effect.
Silence answered her request, making her stomach twist.
It wasn’t within Yoongi’s character to forgo a perfectly good opportunity to tease the younger boys, her steps stalling when she could no longer hear Yoongi’s. She turned to face him.
“Yoongi-”
Cold stone dug into the back of her exposed shoulders, a stark contrast to the warmth his grip on her upper arms offered. In that moment she saw his dark eyes glistening in the dim overhead light, his breath intermingling with her gasps.
And then he was kissing her.
Hot, a bit messy, and bruising; an act of desperation and impulsivity. She barely had time to thread her fingers through his hair before he was pulling away, cheeks flushed and hungry for air.
“What was that for-”
“I figured now was as good of a time as ever. You know, since everyone else is hopping on the 'you' train.” He joked, though his voice shook about as much as the rattling bass from the speakers on the other side of the building. His thumb ran over her bottom lip, voice melding into something deeper, and so very soft. “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”
“I won’t-”
“Promise me.” The pressure on her bottom lip increased, keeping her from saying much else.
She nodded, letting their noses brush against each other purposefully. “I promise.”
There was so much purple surrounding him. He looked like a god nestled on a bed of lavender clouds that churned and whirled with different eye-catching shades. Fear. Apprehension. Excitement.
Yoongi pulled away much sooner than she would have liked, giving her back a gentle shove up the last few stairs, sporting a laid-back, borderline cocky grin as she struggled to recover from the whiplash he had given her. “Get moving. Don’t want the guard dog whining before anything even starts.”
Y/n couldn’t form anything coherent but a nod, taking off the last step and darting through the empty red seats to the aisle she was supposed to make camp in — a thin ring of salt surrounding a spot just big enough for her to stand still in. Any wrong move and she’d be vulnerable should anyone decide to show their ugly faces.
Everything churning inside of her was coming to a head, the last of the preparations being finished with murmured conversation below. She heard them agree to start, a series of grunts, then the lights dimmed, and the music began.
Now she just had to wait and see if they’d get applause or be ushered off the stage.
For how much of a stink Taehyung threw about his feelings on performing opera, his voice was absolutely divine, the tenor vibrato echoing off the walls and bouncing over empty seats that didn’t feel as deserted as they looked.
The air grew dense, storm clouds accumulating over a tumultuous sea; that crawling feeling of being watched returned tenfold.
Spirits were peeking their heads through walls and finding seats to a show they were drawn to, deciding whether or not they wanted to take the bait.
The energy leapt and rippled like cracking ice on a frozen lake, an airy hissing sound floating up from the mirror she couldn’t really see.
All she could see was the corkboard back and the edges of the ornate gold detailing, but she assumed by the growing alarm on Taehyung’s face that it was a good thing her vision was limited.
The lights flickered once in warning, and then she was falling out of the mirror into a heap.
Crawling across the red carpets on weak and wobbly limbs, each strike of her palms leaving blooms of dark wet rug in her wake, sinking in until they squelched, continuing to release that god-awful keening hiss that struggled to exit her mouth around such rattling breaths. Candida inched further down the aisle, eyes locked ahead on where Taehyung stood center stage, his shadow stretching higher along the back wall from the angled flashlight. As if it too wished to run away from her advances.
Y/n leaned over the railing to watch, breath caught in her throat and a deafening thrum of blood in her ears. She knew at any moment that she might have to act — put herself in the line of fire to give her companions the chance to attack.
Just as Candida reached the stage, she was flung back by an unseen force, feet walking aimlessly forward through a barrier that wouldn’t budge.
Namjoon’s wards.
Yoongi leapt up from his spot behind the mirror and wielded a large handmade bundle that billowed out the tip with clouds of smoke, reciting the same incantation he had the day they had captured her. Only this time Jungkook wasn’t just an aid: he was the main event.
He stepped into the circle without hesitation, tattooed palm flattening against her forehead and angling her biting mouth back so she couldn't gnaw at the flesh of his forearms with her aching gums.
Candida screamed, cried, wailed — any sound she could pry out of her own mouth catapulted across the theater and echoing in Y/n’s ears until they started to ring.
A creak of arthritic metal had Y/n whirling from the sight to the rest of the mezzanine sprawling behind her, watching a growing number of figures find seats in plush chairs.
Duane had kicked back in the first row near the stairwell, arms folded behind his exposed skull that was now caked with dried black ichor and glistening in the dim show lights. A few rows behind him sat her grandparents, staring straight ahead at Taehyung’s wavering performance with arms loosely intertwined.
On the right side of the hall were the twins, racing each other across the walkways and smacking the back of the seat just behind Y/n if they got there first. Lithe and blindingly fast, they were able to get within feet of her in a matter of seconds.
Against the railing like he was a renowned critic, was Clay, his face his own likeness, head tilted to the side with a sly grin that cracked his square jaw in two. Someone stood next to him, another man of a similar look and build, speaking the same language they had spoken at the guest house to each other in hushed tones. Brothers, no doubt.
But the most terrifying one of them all was the one who sat in the seat behind her that the children weren’t pummeling; legs crossed, chin perched between his thumb and forefinger, dark pulsing eyes trained on her face. The scientist observing his experiment in a glass bowl.
In his free hand he held the pistol she had given him all those months ago, tapping tirelessly against the metal of the chamber in a silent show of power. An interrogator. A professional. A sharp shot and quick of wit.
Bear.
She said his name in a breathless whisper, the sound barely audible over the sounds of Candida struggling against Jungkook’s grip or the buzzing strings, his putrid smell muted by the waft of silver smoke from below.
The more she looked at him, the more she realized he might not smell at all. Unlike the others, his face and skin weren’t torn or decaying in large chunks. He was almost completely normal, save for the slow, almost unnoticeable drip of black from the bottom of his jaw and the venomous black eyes.
He blinked at the sound of his name but said nothing. Just continued to pick at the metal and watch. His gaze felt like cold water over ice — his posture told her he had the upper hand should she try to step out of the salt. He could probably will the flimsy barrier to bend if he tried, as he knew exactly how they worked.
Licking her dry lips, she called down to the group below. “We may have...We may have some company.”
Yoongi briefly squinted up to the sound of her voice, forehead starting to sparkle with sweat from the efforts of his spell. “How many?”
Jungkook faltered against Candida, and for a second it looked like she might throw him off.
“Focus on her!” Y/n shakily ordered. “I’ll keep my eye on them.”
“That doesn’t answer my question!” Yoongi grunted.
“Just keep helping Kook...” Y/n kept her eyes locked with Bear’s. The twins blurred back up the walkway to the top row. Clay and his brother snickered at a joke she couldn’t hear, the two of them completely unfazed by her presence. Duane crossed his ankles over the railing a few yards down, and her grandparents had yet to move.
She was completely surrounded — and they all knew it.
“I got it up here.”
Candida’s screams grew pained once more as Jungkook pushed through her brain with more force, prodding through the ridges and searching for any kind of grip on her MADness. For a moment, Bear’s beady black eyes moved to glance at his aunt’s suffering. A subtle curve of his brow showing piqued interest.
But it wasn’t just him — they all turned to watch her. A circus act for their entertainment, or a stakeout to monitor just what they were up to, Y/n couldn’t quite tell.
“You should give up on her,” Bear calmly suggested. “She isn’t worth this trouble.”
“No can do,” She forced an apologetic smile. “I think she is.”
Bear’s expression remained neutral — scarily so — if she didn’t know any better she could’ve been fooled into thinking he was safe at first glance.
“What you want, you won’t get from her.”
Y/n leaned her back against the railing for some sense of security while putting on a display of nonchalance. “Then what will we get?”
Looking over her change in posture with calculating eyes, he kept his answer to himself for a few long seconds before sharing it.
“I already told you. You won’t get what you want.” His pointer finger kept its unwavering rhythm on the metal, and Y/n couldn’t hold back the gulp at the threatening glint of it.
“Hold tight Y/n,” Yoongi shouted through gritted teeth. “Almost there.”
“Need me to come up there?” Namjoon offered, already making a move towards the door.
That seem to perk Duane up from his bored slump, head twisting to look towards the stairwell at the slightest whiff of fun.
“If he comes up here, I will shoot him.” Bear said it like he was informing her of the weather, not cold-blooded murder. And she had witnessed firsthand how quick he was to fire when in combat, so she wasn’t interested in finding out how well a ghost's gun worked against the living.
Panic pooled in her abdomen, and she hastily croaked out a response before his dress shoes could get past the first step. “No! Stay down there!”
Damn her voice for cracking.
“You sure? My work is done down here.” Namjoon’s voice echoed closer, his shadow growing up the stone walls of the stairs.
In one swift movement, Bear had the safety off and the gun cocked, aiming directly where Namjoon’s head would be when he breached the second floor. “One last warning.”
“Namjoon, don’t.”
His shadow stalled at the middle, the first few strands of hair starting to peek up from below. He must’ve sensed the urgency in her voice and hesitantly started back down. “Are you sure, Y/n?”
“More than anything.”
With that, he begrudgingly inched back down, not entirely convinced he shouldn’t just finish his journey up. A breath she didn’t even know she was holding whizzed through her mouth when she heard his steps returning to Yoongi’s side, and in response Bear lowered his gun back to his lap, and Duane grumbled with disappointment.
“Good,” Bear said the word like he was complimenting her, and it landed heavy in her stomach. “Next, I want you to tell them to stop this mission. It is futile, and a waste of energy. You should be spending the time living amongst yourselves, not pushing towards an inevitable loss.”
Y/n stood her ground, even if her legs were shaking. “I can’t do that. We have to finish this.”
That seemed to ruffle the feathers of the spirits in her vicinity, Duane growled low in his throat, and Bear stretched out the side of his neck like it had tweaked the muscles in it. “Trust me, Entlein. I want you to finish this mission as much as anybody, but even I know when it is time to admit defeat.”
Irritation flared beneath her ribs, making her skin hot with repulsion. “You’re wrong. And you’re not Bear. Bear would never tell us to give up.”
He laughed heartily, his smile uncannily familiar. “I have, on many occasions, given up. You do not know me like you think you do. So I suggest you listen to the wisdom I am so graciously bestowing on you.” Bending forward at the waist, he over-enunciated himself with an uncharacteristically animalistic hiss. “Give. Up.”
Behind them, Candida let out another agonized wail, and Jungkook ground out a short, “Almost have it.”
A shiver ran through the air, the pressure of the room starting to collapse down on them with a strength comparable to the depths of the sea; bone crushing and soul sucking strength. Doom crept in all sides, and once again she felt like that little kid on a rickety stage, staring out into a theater with no applause.
Bear flitted between Y/n, and the view of the commotion below. “Tell them to stop.”
She shook her head, feeling faint and out of breath. “No.”
Candida screamed again, the sound ringing out through the room. The spirits of the second floor came to a stand, anxiously peering down their noses, backs straightening and conversations quieted.
“Tell them now. Tell them that I will shoot you dead if they don’t.” His finger moved hauntingly slow against the metal.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
All over Y/n’s body, her hair stood on end, the temperature dropping rapidly. She couldn’t do more than shake her head and whisper. “N-no.”
“Holy fuck-” Yoongi began as Candida started to convulse, the dark fragments of smoke and inky water pouring out of her mouth and nose like a waterfall.
White hot heat seared through the flesh of her upper arm, her vision blotching with color and her body going limp on the railing against her will. And then there was red, so much red all over her hands and splattering over gold crusted railings.
She screamed before she could stop herself, and that one sound was enough to stop the ritual cold. An unplanned imperfection.
Yoongi and Namjoon were gone from her sight in seconds, tearing up the aisle towards the stairwell. Jungkook instinctively jumped at the sound, grip slipping from Candida’s forehead for only half a second.
But a half-second was enough.
Candida placed both hands on his shoulders and shoved him into the first row, his fall breaking the line of salt and scattering the grains over the orchestra pit. Candida was already hoisting herself up the stage to a very frozen Taehyung, crouched to try and run around her after to follow after Yoongi or help Jungkook he couldn’t decide.
The ghostly woman blocked his path, closing in on him rapidly with lashing teeth and swiping hands. Once she managed to grab his shoulders she hung onto them like her life depended on it, clawing at the front of his suit and threatening to drag him towards the ground.
Then Taehyung’s skin grew very pale and his eyes started to roll into the back of his head, his knees dropping one after the other.
“H-help Taehyung — Someone-” Y/n cried out for Jungkook to move through eyes already blurring with tears and pain.
At the sound of her voice, Candida’s neck snapped, golden eyes blazing so bright they seemed to change to a fiery amber at the thrill of her next target. She moved fast, faster than Jungkook, letting Taehyung topple straight into his arms in favor of spawning next to Y/n. Hovering over her just like she had done, forehead nestling against hers, mouth open in a silent scream.
Both of her hands planted on the side of Y/n’s head, squeezing so tightly she thought her skull would pop open.
Yoongi was at the top of the stairs now, but she couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t hear whether or not his shouts were for her or were because one of the ghosts had lunged at the taste of fresh prey.
No matter how hard she fought to stay present, she couldn’t.
Fear and desperation gnawed her into a hollowed shell of bones and numb flesh, and then it stopped.
Her heart slowed.
And she was gone.
_________________________________________
Winter came and left like a silent blizzard, buried in a heavy cold with air that burned the mouth to breathe. Each night she waited, certain that it would be the one. Each morning, she paced around the halls, looking out the windows to see if her sister had finally arrived to take them away.
Any day now, she was set to visit for the spring holidays, and Candida would tell her everything she knew. The confessions told under moonlight through sleeping lips of murder and violence, and the hiss of the snake. Then she would beg her to take them with her on the way home (not that Lizzy would need much convincing), and that would be the end of it.
The days were warmer, the birds singing out their love songs, the morning grass always smelt of rain and wet earth, and Alain was growing even more desperate. His endless professions of suffocating devotion did little to steer her off her path. Neither did the doctor’s gentle nudges to get some ‘fresh air’ and a change of scenery.
“This isn’t you, Deetz,” Lisolette shook her head, astonished at what had become of the room.
The guest room had become her personal bunker, barely slept in, but somehow still wrecked and unkempt. She had an assortment ‘weapons’ lining the empty drawers — stolen shoestring punctured with needles, kitchen knives, rusted scissors, a collection of rocks — anything she had managed to accumulate.
“It is, it is me,” Candida rushed to reassure her, trembling where she stood. “You will see. I will show you tonight when he goes to sleep. You will hear it. The snake hisses every night under the protection of the clock. No one can hear him when it chimes. But I do!”
Lisolette looked caught between smacking some sense into her sister and dragging her by the arm halfway to Texas. Either option would have sufficed in that moment. “You’re talkin’ nonsense, Deetz.”
“I’m not. I’m not.” Candida hugged herself around the middle with an adamant shake of her head. But it was futile, because she knew how she sounded. It didn’t take a genius to understand why she was encouraged to stay hidden in her room when guests appeared on their doorstep, or to eat her meals in the privacy of kitchen. She knew exactly what she looked like. But she wasn’t crazy, and Lisolette would be her only chance at being believed. “He’s in the floors, I know it. The walls too. I can hear him in there — please, you have to believe me, Liz. Just one night. Just stay with me one night and I shall prove it to you.”
“Have you mentioned all of this yet to Adelaide? What does she think of all this?”
“No. I can’t. She already thinks I’m mad like the rest of them.”
Lisolette shifted from one foot to the other, entirely uncertain about the whole ordeal., testing out the weight of the gun case in her hands like she would rather throw it out the window than keep such a weapon around her sister. “I will stay, but only if you agree to tell Adelaide come morning. She might be more help than you think.”
Thus she stayed, leaving her husband on the first floor in favor of taking part in this late night stake out. Candida didn’t blame her. Not one bit. Even when Lisolette’s eyelids fluttered closed, and her cheek pressed to side of the dresser while she slept. She had traveled all day, and worked all morning. It wasn’t her fault.
Really, it wasn’t.
It is why she didn’t have the heart to wake her — not until she knew for sure the creak in the floorboards she had heard was real, and not another trick of her mind.
He was so still she almost missed him. Dark suite from the day prior still buttoned and smoothed out on his shoulders, standing with his back to her room while he loitered about the doorway. Then his hand turned the knob twice, jiggling it open and letting himself in.
Candida kept her eyes closed so he wouldn’t know she was awake; listened while he rummaged through the drawers and murmured to himself, hiding his stolen prize beneath his coat and stepping over the women’s slumped bodies to escape back in the hall.
With a new rush of life breathed into her body, she shot up and crawled from her perch on the floor to peek through the crack he left in the door out into the hall.
All thoughts of their stakeout left her mind the second she saw the door to her daughter’s room open, her mind blank as the grandfather clock clacked away from the first floor, muffling his footsteps to anyone near. She was up on her feet, padding across the hall to the cracked open door, sticking her nose in to be sure the scent she followed wasn’t imagined.
It smelt of iron and rust, a powerful stench that gagged her instantly, her stable hold on the door faltering as her palm pressed it open wider.
The room was a blur darkened shadows and blue tinged morning, the hulking figured of her husband crouched by the bed twisting in her stomach. He looked too out of place to be innocent. Too quiet to be welcomed.
“Wh-what have you done?” Candida couldn’t look away from the growing seep on the blankets, a spot the rising sun would never reach.
Alain looked far away, eyelids pressed so far back it was like he didn’t have any at all, head twitching and turning like a creature inspecting the flesh of its victims for something left to eat. “I did what I had to do to save you. To save us.”
When he stood she could see it clearer: the red hands and the blood stained kiss on the forehead of a child whose eyes would never open again. “She was going to take you away from me. You were going to leave me.”
He stumbled closer, the knife still glinting in his hand. “You know too much.”
“I don’t know anything,” Candida shook her head, still entranced by the shade of crimson blossoming in the rising sun.
“Our time is up.” Alain moaned. “You know more than you should. It is not good for you to know so much — it is making you sick. You have made me...unworthy.” He raised the object in his hand, inspecting the handle as though it wasn’t him who had already wielded it seconds prior. “It is better this way. We can all be together this way.”
And in that moment she must have been mad just like he said, because she didn’t even hesitate. Didn’t cry. Did not even find a shout left in her to give. Taking the knife and plunging it-
“Through the back, you said?” The doctor scribbled something else down in his notebook.
Candida blinked blearily. “The chest.”
He stopped, looking up at her over the rim of his spectacles. “The hole was through his back.”
Her nose twitched. “I shoved it all the way through.”
Another pause. “And the girl?”
Unable to face him any longer, she turned to watch the green treetops sway through the window panes. “He killed my daughter.”
It was like nothing had changed.
A doctor sat across from a bed, asking her questions in a room that felt too empty. Accusing her of being something she wasn’t. This new room was warmer though, as would be expected for one so high up and away from everyone else. The attic was the perfect place to store the things one wished to forget about.
“I see.” The doctor tapped his pen to the corner of the page. “Any new thoughts of harming yourself, or anyone else?”
Candida lied, shaking her head and tipping her gaze down towards her hands. A sudden nausea washed over her — as it always did when she looked at them. They were stained in ways the naked eye could not see. Breath racing out of her mouth before she could catch it, she felt the world closing in, and heard the horrid whistling laughter of the snake still pulsing from the walls of the Estate.
Her husband may be dead, but the demon had shed his skin in search of a more formidable home for its new size, finding safety somewhere else she had yet to find. Building a nest. Licking venom soaked lips at the prospects of all the youthful flesh it could consume.
From the corner of the room, Adelaide shifted, observing the conversation carefully. “I think that’s enough for today, doctor.” She walked over, dropping a hand on Candida’s shoulder and giving it a short squeeze.
“Of course,” He snapped his notebook shut and pushed it into the secure flap of his bag, throwing it over his shoulder and bidding them farewell. “I will be back in a few days time. Please, if anything comes up until then-”
“I will call, I assure you.” Adelaide followed him down the creaking steps, their voices growing softer. When she returned, she was steeled behind thinly pressed lips and that unbreakable strength she constantly put off, shoulders back and head tall.
She sank herself down onto the mattress next to Candida, and let the birds fluttering out the window speak their song uninterrupted. Only when they traveled to some other branch did she speak.
“You should have informed me of what was happened the moment it began.”
The younger woman shrunk beneath her reprimand, but did not dare speak up to defend herself.
“You must know the lengths I have gone to acquire this house. To keep you hidden. How far we are all sticking our own necks out to cover up the mess that has been made.” Then she sighed, fists clenching at the fabric of her skirts and shoulders dropping. “But it is not you that made the mess, is it?”
Candida risked a look at the woman from the corner of her eye, taken aback by the sudden softness.
“I am partly to blame. I thought what little I could do was enough, but I think I have met my match. He has continued to build strength right under our very noses, and I was too naive to think I could stop it alone.”
“The snake?” Candida croaked.
Adelaide nodded. “The snake.” She swallowed, hand hovering over her niece's and whispering. “He was my responsibility, but I was too much of a coward to deliver the final blow. Still now, I don’t have what it takes to stop his endless hunt. But if you are willing...there may be a way...”
For a few freeing seconds, Candida felt normal for the first time in over a year. To be believed made her feel human. Then the pain resurged, yanking her humanity back from the edge of freedom and smothering it till it choked, using the limp corpse as a stool to crawl into the empty space its absence left and taking control of the reins.
And just like before, she didn’t hesitate. After all, what did she have to lose? “How do I kill it?”
The basement wreaked of mildew and animal musk, the jungle of thick low hanging wires and rainwater sodden floors making their trek quite the journey. Through the walls hummed the romantic strings of the ballet performance above them, the crowd nonethewiser to what was occurring just under their feet. The leak through the cracked cement walls offered the dirt floor some structure, making the shapes Adelaide drew in them more prominent.
Large swooping circles with even smaller characters inside, their frames allotted a bit of breathing room over the edge of the circle. Candida counted the bowls at her feet repeatedly, the steady climb up to the number seven soothing her mind that threatened to wander.
She must stay focused. Intention was crucial, as Adelaide had instructed.
“Sit here.” The older woman gestured the center of her contraption, unable to look at her face for too long.
Candida did as she was told, knees folded beneath her and sinking into the mud. Then she watched with rapt attention as Adelaide took hearty pinches from each bowl to mix some sort of paste that stained her fingers a shade of green so dark it was almost black. Without warning, she reached for the younger woman’s hand and pricked her thumb, letting the thin red droplet blend into the plant matter and disappear. When she winced at the pain, Adelaide averted her attention back to the bowl to give it one last mix. “My apologies. It must be taken, not given.”
Testing the consistency by rubbing it between her thumb and index finger, she fixed her eyes on Candida, releasing her hold on her arm. “Once you do this, there is no returning. You do understand that, don't you?”
Candida almost laughed. “What is there for me to return to? Most people think I am dead, and the rest think I am insane.”
Adelaide didn’t laugh, her jaw set and her gaze beginning to tremble. A whisper as soft as her touch to the younger woman’s cheek broke through her usually stiff countenance, an image of the woman she once was shining through glistening eyes and a wobbling lip. “Every time I look at you, I only see the little girl who would beg me to let you stay in my room when she couldn’t sleep.” She blinked rapidly, pushing away the moisture that built along her lash line. “You are so brave. And I am sorry that you have to be, Engelchen.” The finger coasting the apple of her niece's cheek fell, and the moment of weakness dispersed.
“It is ready,” she announced suddenly, wiping her fingers off on the edge of the bowl and clearing her throat. “Are you?”
Candida stared straight ahead. “More than anything.”
Mirroring her resolve, Adelaide nodded, holding the mixture up at eye level. “Then I need you to eat.”
Scooping it up with a starved urgency, Candida bit back a wave of rising bile as the bitterness bit the back of her throat, working its way down to her stomach like sludge. With a fist pressed to her mouth to keep it down, she returned the bowl and waited for further instruction.
“Lay back, child.” Adelaide fretted over her with shaking hands, guiding her shoulders to the ground, situating her hair so it wasn’t in her face — anything to make her feel fine as her insides began to spasm. “When the sleep takes you, remember, you must focus on building up your own strength before you face him. Don’t let the snake tempt you into unfair battles. He has been building his physical presence, yes, but his power lies in the work of his tongue. If he finds a weakness, he will use it to his advantage.”
Candida didn’t flinch as the burn seeped into her bloodstream, inching closer to the pulse in her chest that began to slow. Her breathing grew shallow, her mind nothing but a haze of color and heat. Reaching for Adelaide she found her hand and held it still.
“You seem to know a lot about this snake...does he...does he have a name?”
Adelaide froze. She looked over one shoulder, then the other. Peered through the basement hall as though expecting the creature to be coiled in the threshold, watching.
“Please, Tanchen...If I am to fight him off, I should know his name.”
When Candida’s were punctured by a deafening hitch-pitched ring, Adelaide finally leaned over and whispered into her ear.
“You already know of it. His name is that of my brother.”
Candida wanted to lurch forward in horror, for her brother was her own father. Could that be true? Could her father really be behind all of this? Had his insistence to keep her quiet been a means to an end?
“My...my father d-did this to m-me?” White foam drowned out her worries, sliding down the column of her throat for her to choke on.
Adelaide pressed her lips into a thin line and apologetic wince, a reassuring hand pushing her shoulders back to the ground. She kept them there, soothing the ache that built in the muscles and joints as they seized, keeping her lips sealed as the last beat of Candida’s heart fluttered to a stop.
_________________________________________
Y/n awoke stricken by those annoyingly perky rays of sun bleeding through the thin skin of her eyelids, her body held by the freshly fluffed cushions that smelt of freshly mowed grass and summer sun. Her head was pounding from the onslaught of visions she had succumbed to, the image of Adelaide’s face bending nearer still burned into the back of her retinas.
She didn’t gave to open her eyes to know where she was, the smell and soft buzz of the record player in the room over telling her all she needed to know.
Great. The fucking guest house again.
With a groan she rolled onto her side, cursing herself for managing to get trapped within the mysterious boundaries of this other, time-fucked world. Blinking away the rays of light, she nearly tumbled off the seat and onto the hardwood floor when she came face to face with the Candida she had come to recognize, over-sized amber eyes hovered less than a foot from her face.
Clammy hands shot out to catch her, stopping her from getting a taste of the floor and holding her still, giving her spinning vision a chance to right itself. Instincts told her to flee, but the curiosity birthed by all she had just seen was stronger than her common sense.
“Was that...did you show me that?”
Candida nodded slowly, keeping her grip on her arm light.
“Was that real?”
Again, she nodded.
Blinking a few more times, she hoisted herself to an upright position, subconsciously pulling herself away from the woman’s helpful touch. “Can you like, not speak or something.”
In response to her question, Candida opened her mouth wide, displaying her lack of teeth and a shriveled up lump of scar tissue where her tongue once was. When Y/n made a face of horror at the sight, the woman almost smiled, reaching for a piece of paper and a pen she kept on the table. It looked to be a half written grocery list, but it would do.
Beneath the collection of produce and dairy, she scribbled out something for her to read.
‘Sometimes I can. It takes a lot of energy to overcome what they did to me. They cut them all out when I was buried in an effort to keep me silent.’
Pushing down her fear, Y/n continued her interrogation with full intent to milk this spirit for all she was worth before Jungkook could yank her out of here. “What happened to me? Is everyone okay up there? What was all that with Adelaide?”
Candida held her hands up and motioned for her to slow down, taking pen to paper as fast as her wrist could manage.
‘They are worried, but fine. The enemies have been kept at bay. Adelaide put me to sleep.’
“Like a dog?” Y/n raised a brow at the woman.
Snorting a bit, she wrote again.
‘In a way, yes. But the ritual used is one done to embolden the spirit of the sacrificed. To create a being stronger than a ghost, to bind their soul to earth for eternity. A being that is not angel, nor demon. Simply put, one that must feed to survive.’
Y/n inched back from her again, eyeing the note dubiously. “Feed on what?”
‘Whatever they choose.’
“And what did you choose?”
She flipped the paper back for her to read. ‘The death of the snake’. Before Y/n could ask any clarifying questions, she was already writing.
‘At first, when I woke, I made it my mission to thwart as many of his efforts as possible. Each time he would make his move to capture someone ease’s soul, I would counter it, and thus get stronger. Adelaide would help in any way she knew how — leaving me offerings, helping me handle small incidents with bells or spells, or keeping distractions at bay. But when all that stopped, I began to weaken. He moved too fast, and too silently. I couldn’t keep up.
The night your sister died I was at my weakest. I begged for help in any way I could, and in the process frightened away anyone willing, either with my own manifestation or the legacy they all spun for me. I tried to stop him, but I was too slow. He fed. And I withered.
That was when he got to me too, swallowed me whole and used me for his own doing. He takes. Finds your softest point and stabs until there’s nothing left to bleed. Drinks you up until there is nothing left but the bones and the skin, leaving the worst of you to rot under his thumb.
That’s what he eats. He needs people to be afraid, so he can eat them.’
The paper shook in Y/n’s hold. “And the snake is…?”
‘I can not say his name or else he could find me, but I can show you. Adelaide lent me the memory once I had fallen asleep.’
“Is that what this place is? Memories? Dreams?”
Candida made a so-so motion with her hands. ‘To an extent. I made this place to keep what little was left of them alive once they’d been eaten, living out their past to save them from the present. Some of them are unaware of where they are, others can wake but choose not to.’
Y/n slowly came to her feet, pacing around the glass top table while she processed everything she said. “If you take me to that memory, will he wake up too? Would he be able to see me?”
‘If we move quick, we might be able to go unnoticed. I do not know what he has messed with while I was under his control. If we linger, he may show, and I will not be strong enough to fend him off-”
Her sentence was cut short when the walls breathed a shuddering breath, a thin layer of dust falling from the ceiling and the light fixtures swaying ever so slightly. The edge of Candida’s mouth quirked upwards.
‘Your reaper is trying to find his way in. Shall I let him?’
Another rattle shook the glass from within their panes, their surface thumping with the sound of a pounding fist or a scratching claw.
“He is going to take me out of here the second he gets in,” Y/n could’ve sworn she felt her palms sweat, and a distant ache throbbed through the flesh of her arm. “Is there a way that I can speak to him?”
Candida’s eyes slipped closed, fluttering beneath the overstretched skin as though she were following the very movement of someone beyond the windows.
The knocks grew louder, this time actually coming from the other side of the door. It opened not more than three inches, halted from going any further by the latched chain along the top of the door.
That was all Jungkook needed to shimmy his hand in, poking one of his white eyes through the gap.
Careful not to touch his skin, Y/n rushed to the door and steadied one of her hands on it to keep it from opening any further. “Kook — I need you to listen to me. I’m okay, and I will be out soon, I promise. I just need a few more minutes.”
His fingers wiggled further into the room, a look of concentration knitting his brows together. “I’m almost there.”
“I can see that,” Y/n almost snorted, narrowly missing a brush with his tattooed index finger, thick tendrils of black smoke stretching out to tickle the inside of her wrist. One touch of his hand and he would send her flying back into her body, no questions asked. “But I need you to wait. Trust me, remember?”
“I do trust you,” he pulled his face back from the door enough to stare down at her through the gap. “I don’t trust her.”
“You don’t have to yet.” Looking down at a sneaking stripe of his black smoke, she fanned it back through the gap only for it to nuzzle back in, kissing the skin of her forearm and winding up her elbow. “You trust me, though?”
He paused, hand still cupped around the lip of the door while he searched her face. “I trust you.”
“And I trust you to be here right when I need you,” Y/n answered. “So be here.”
“Five minutes?”
Y/n obliged with a sigh. “Five minutes. Then I’m all yours.”
Jungkook stepped back from the door frame, letting Candida slump in relief, finally free of his stubborn attempts to invade her space. The woman struggled to her feet, offering Y/n a hand to take.
Looking at it warily, Y/n mumbled across the shrinking gap between them. “We only have five minutes before he’s kicking that door down. Is that enough?”
Candida just inched her hand closer, motioning for her to take it.
So she did, warm skin meeting cold, tingles shooting up her arms and webbing through her tendons. Candida pulled Y/n through he first floor of the guest house and wrenched open the coat closet door, stopping Y/n in her tracks when she noticed that this was definitely not the coat closet.
“Is that supposed to be the basement?”
A nod.
Y/n heaved out a heavy sigh. “Of course it is.”
If she was in her body right about now, she’s willing to place bets that her heart rate is probably hitting record numbers. She can almost hear her friends panicking now as the speed picks up, and her palms grow clammy. The darkness from below swirled much like that of her dreams, whispering warnings for her to turn back. Feeding the urge to turn right on her heel and jump right through the front door into Jungkook’s awaiting arms.
But she’d be damned if she turned back right before the end. Damned if she’d let everything they’ve done until now be for nothing.
So she jumped; taking the stairs full speed without looking back, feeling the weight of her next few decisions land on her shoulders like elephants feet. If she fucked this up, she would ruin everything.
_________________________________________
“Go back to bed, Ernst.” Freidrich warned, voice even. “There is nothing that concerns you down here.”
Ernst struggled once more, whipping his head back against his sister's chin with enough force to have her shoving him into the steps behind him. He whirled on her, eyes brandishing his finger like a judge’s gavel. “What has he told you about all this?”
“He has told me quite enough!” Adelaide panted out, wiping her bottom lip that had warmed with fresh blood. “We know what you’ve done, Ernst, and it ends here.”
“What I’ve-” he sputtered out a string of ill-formed words. “What I’ve done? What about you?”
Adelaide smacked his finger from her face instantly. “Me? I have not done anything!”
“This! It is just as they said…” Ernst took a staggering step back, then another. “And here I defended you…”
“Defended me from what?”
“The rumors, Addie! I know you don’t care to listen to what others are whispering amongst each other, but I do. I must care.”
Adelaide tilted her head, exasperated and confused. “What rumors? There are many, as far as I am concerned!”
Ernst gritted his teeth. “The ones about you dabbling in the occult — sneaking off into the night to dine with witches and share tables with devil worshipers. They all said that it was done in hopes of getting me out of the way, but I never thought that...I am so lost I don’t know what to think anymore!”
Adelaide watched him right himself, the air running cold, and her breath finally beginning to even. An awful heaviness started to pull her internal organs down to her feet, leaving an uneasy queasiness in its place. “Wait...Who told you that?”
“Well, many people. But the first person to bring it up was-” He stopped, his expression dropping with the leave of his tension. Realization dawned on his features, and his neck snapped towards the dark basement. “You.”
Ernst started forwards, plowing through the space where Freidrich remained a silent observer.
The younger brother raised his hands in surrender, “Now, now, brother. Let us not be too hasty in our-”
A sickening crack resounded through the quiet night, his body sent sprawling along the dirt floor with one well-placed fist to the jaw. Ernst hauled him up by the collar, shaking him furiously. “What have you done?” He was shouting now, desperately spraying his wrath turned fear over his cheeks. “What have you fucking done?”
Blood dribbled down Freidrich’s lips which now stretched in an arrogant grin, tongue coming out to lick at the thick red liquid purposefully. “Take an educated guess, brother.”
Ernst looked around the room in a frenzy, honing in on the line of bowls and the soil-drawn circle he stood in. He nodded urgently to the bowls. “Addie — the bowls — what is in them?”
“I don’t know. I don't-” She shook her head, still trying to catch up from the turn of events. “I don’t...” Rushing to bend beside them, she found them all empty, the dark paste nothing but smears of along the bottom of the bowl. “It’s gone.”
It then hit her how little she truly knew about what they were doing, how quickly she had been fooled into following along to some ridiculous plan just by some well-placed words and flattery. Now she had nothing to go on, and her brothers were ready to eat each other alive.
Freidrich began to laugh, the sound echoing louder amongst the invading darkness of the space. Ernst growled, landing another hit to his brow bone to quiet the sound that wouldn’t end. Nothing stopped him, not even the rush of blood falling from his face or the thin, soupy foam that puddled down the front of his suit.
“You may have won for the next thirty years or so, but I will be here, forever. You will never be rid of me, for even in death I will find you. And when I do, there will be nothing you can do to stop me. I will be so powerful that you will have to listen. I will make you listen. All of this, the hotel, the house — this family — will be mine.”
Adelaide caught the sight of something glinting in the dim light, and lurched forward to shove Ernst aside. “Ernst! He has a-”
But it was no use. The small dagger was already turned inward, plunging through his own stomach and back out again, coating the man holding him up in red. Everything was red. The floor. Their shoes. Their hands.
And as his body slumped to the floor, they could still hear him. Laughing through the floorboards, whispering along the stream of the pipes; crawling up the walls and slithering through the cracks.
The scene froze like a photo frame, and Y/n crouched down in front of the still life model of Adelaide. The horror in her eyes — the regret outlined in the downward turn of her mouth.
With numb urgency, Y/n tried as best as she could to remember the colors and the shapes of what had been in the bowls. Burned the shapes in the floor in her mind.
“So stubborn. Naive.”
Y/n’s head snapped up at the voice. The image was still frozen, Ernst still stuck with his fist raised, Adelaide kneeling helplessly on the floor. But Freidrich was gone, the space where his body once was now empty.
“Reckless.”
“Candida?” She nervously called into the void, but no one called back to her. Her heart pounded in her ears as she scrambled to her feet, turning to find the doorway, only to find a swirl of darkness; the window in her dream burst into a sea of nothing. “Jungkook?”
“I warned you to stay away. To let it go…”
Y/n started towards the back of the basement, hoping that one of the many doors would take her somewhere new — the pool, the lake, the woods, the living room with the girls and the chocolates. Anywhere.
“I have been so very patient with you. All of you. Dare I say kind…”
If she wouldn’t have been in the basement all those months ago she would have missed it, but upon opening the door to the storage room she stalled, catching a neon canvas pop-up tent in the back that had certainly not been from the early 1900’s. It had been her father's when he was young, the same marker stain slashed across the back that Amelia had accidentally made one afternoon spent in the contraption.
She ducked beneath the front flap and crawled through the narrow entrance, thanking her lucky stars for such an oversight from the demon. It went on longer than it should, snaking down deeper into the ground like a tunnel, roots dangling through the loosened soil above her head and tickling the exposed skin of her back as she desperately tried to escape. Insects crawled over the back of her hand, trailing through her fingers.
Oxygen felt scarce, her lungs squeezing what little of it remained from the enclosed space.
Perhaps this wasn’t an accident.
Perhaps he had known she’d run there.
Flies buzzed in her ears as the soil turned muddy and thick, giving way to her wrists and sucking her knees in. Through the muck she could feel fleshy mounds writhing and stirring at her disturbance, cheeks, arms and lower backs. Bodies.
She screamed — a strange mix of Jungkook and Candida’s name — hoping that someone would hear her.
“Every action has a consequence. Remember that when you wake, so that you may think about what you have done.”
Finally, the tunnel opened a few meters down, a light shining through the gap. Multiple lights, really, shimmering blues and greens splattering across sparkling floors. A dance floor crowded with bodies, these ones alive and flushed from alcohol.
“No,” Y/n cried, crawling faster. “No. Not them. Not-”
The tunnel collapsed, crushing her to the mud and smothering her with heavy soil. She choked on it, unable to stop the human instinct to find air that didn’t exist. Moving her arms through the muck, she pushed herself upwards, the resistance shifting from crumbling decayed matter to a steady, smooth force that wove through her fingers and propelled her upwards.
With a gasp she broke through the surface of water, a clumsy splash to swim towards any sort of footing. She could hear it, the pulse of the drums and the upbeat twang of electric guitar reverberating through the walls.
She was in the hotel pool, swimming towards the shallow end.
There was no time to wring out the drenched fabric of her dress, for she could hear his smooth body worming over the crystal blue water after her, hissing with a forked tongue darting out to taste her fear. Licking up every drop she offered.
Y/n ran through the glass doors out into the lobby, running right through a drunk guest and tripping over the tablecloth on one of the champagne tables. The table shuddered enough to make a few loitering guests point and shrug, a smug whisper about the hotel being haunted making the group laugh.
She thought she could be sick.
Eyes darting about the room, she looked everywhere for one of her friends.
In a stroke of luck she found Hoseok poking his head anxiously around the lobby hall towards the theater, and she ran, all but throwing herself onto his arms and tugging with all her might, praying that he could hear her scream.
“Get the others — get them all! Shut it down!”
Hoseok reacted instantly, reaching into the open space for her and fisting the fabric of her soaked dress.
“Y/n?”
“Listen to me please! Shut it down! Get out of-”
A wet thud resounded through the lobby, the snake’s scaly body scraping the floor as he left puddles of blackened water in his wake.
She couldn’t see him, but she could feel him, coiling around the room like a boa constrictor, curling closer to where they stood.
Hoseok grew worried, chest heaving as he looked around blindly for her. “I’m going to…” his eyes landed on Jimin pacing from the dance hall with his brows furrowed. Listening. “Jimin! Could use a hand here...”
“Jimin! Get them out!” Y/n screamed, all but crying in desperation at this point. “Get them out! Shut it down! Please listen to me….”
He was still for only a second before he was running full speed across the lobby, not caring whether or not one of the parents or a nosy guest happened to see him. He grabbed Hoseok, barely stopping enough to fill him in.
“Find Mariah and tell her to stop the wedding. Get everyone outside.”
Hoseok reached for the space Y/n had once stood, terrified when the spot felt empty. “What’s hap-”
“Now!”
Y/n didn’t stay to listen to their discussion, racing towards the theater and leaving them in the dust to burst through the doors. As Candida had promised there were no spirits lingering here, not even on the balcony where they had crowded around her crumpled body, Jungkook’s hands resting over her forehead and eyes closed.
“Jungkook!”
His eyes snapped open to find her speeding towards him, a look of confusion crossing his features for only a second.
“Wake me up! Hurry!”
And then she jumped, landing flat along her body and willing it to accept her back in.
As she stared above, the lights dotting along the ceiling moved, forming shapes in her blurring vision. Two gleaming eyes stared down at her, a mouth open with glittering bulbs for teeth that cooed down at her.
“I hope you have it in your heart to forgive yourself. For what a god gives, he can take away.”
_________________________________________
“Where is everyone?!” Y/n reeled forward, knocking Jungkook back and ramming her forehead straight into Yoongi’s shoulder.
Namjoon blew out a massive sigh of relief from his lips. “Where is everyone? What about you? Where were you?”
Memories came rushing back to her. The performance, Bear, the gun —
“He shot me! He...shot me...” Y/n squeaked out, fingers finding the flesh of her arm that still stung with residual heat, though no visible wound was left. Her pulse slowed a few paces at the lack of blood. “It was an illusion…”
Yoongi spoke next, soothing the dull ache in his shoulder that her cranium had left. “Who did what?”
A disturbance from deep within the foundation of the hotel rattled the walls and shook the floors, and at once she was back in a state of emergency, fresh tears beginning to sting her eyes. “It doesn’t matter now! We have to get out of here-”
A second louder jerk of the building had the lights flickering overhead, the music from the wedding beginning to stutter in and out of beat.
Her breath quickened to borderline hyperventilating, feeling at once trapped like she was in the earth again and fearing that he would bring the walls down to do just that, she fought to a stand, dragging them up after her. Finding where Candida had gone would have to wait. “Now. We find the others and leave now! Ask questions later!”
They only made it halfway down the stairs before the lights went out entirely, the emergency lights blanketing them in horrid shades of red.
“Shit-” Yoongi cursed, stumbling into her back while laying a protective hand on the curve of her waist, his other gripping the railing to keep them from tumbling down the stone steps at the next lurch of the stone building.
Above their heads the emergency lights blazed brighter with a surge of power, popping one after the other above their heads and showering them with broken glass, leaving them to flounder in utter darkness.
Namjoon moved quick, shucking his phone from his pocket and using his flashlight to guide them down the rest of the stairwell through the doors. From here, they could hear the screams.
Hoseok met them at the top of the steps, out of breath and wincing in pain. “What the fuck happened down there?”
“What’s happening up here?” Y/n had to shout over the commotion coming from the direction of the ballroom and the strobe of dozens of handheld flashlights, a slow trickle of guests floundering towards the lobby with arms covering the lower halves of their faces, some of them even stopping to vomit into the nearest trash can or decorative plant.
“Still trying to figure that out, I’m trying to get everyone out but they aren’t fast.”
Another alarmed shout rang out from the ballroom, and the group of them took off towards the propped-open doors, shoving through the crowd to get to where they needed to go.
The smell hit them first — a waft of rotten meats and spoiled cheeses, and Taehyung had to gag into his suit jacket sleeve. Y/n couldn’t blame him, for none of them were better off, Jungkook tugging the collar of his shirt over his nose and Yoongi’s eyes watering.
They finally managed to push their way through the crowd and into the emptying ballroom, the entire room a mess of broken glass and splatters of molded food like a bomb had gone off at the buffet table. Mice — dozens of them — scurried from the baseboards to climb onto the heaping piles of mush now attracting flies, climbing tables and scampering atop knocked over centerpieces.
“Holy shit…” Namjoon gaped at the scene, using his broad shoulders to push them all deeper into the room towards where her mother was herding guests out the doors.
Mariah was alight with both indignation and worry, nearly keeling over when she laid eyes on them. Y/n opened her mouth to explain but Mariah silenced her. “We will talk about this later! Go help them lead guests on the lawn back to the parking lot.”
Jin’s father was leading a second charge of guests out the balcony doors with his son, the two of them ushering rivers of people out into the December night’s air.
Y/n could barely keep her head on straight, her vision spinning from the unrelenting current of bodies and the stench so strong it burned the back of her throat and irritated her airways. The floor felt unsteady as she fumbled her way across the war zone of tables to the wall, keeping one hand gripped into the draperies to guide her way through the crowd.
The floor bounced beneath her feet like a trampoline, her knees buckling from the force and her wrists taking the brunt of her fall. Jungkook was behind her, crawling up to hook an arm over the small of her back and sit her up, eyes so dark they blended into the room.
“You’re not okay.” He pleaded with her. “Get out with the guests, we will handle everything in here.”
Y/n couldn’t be bothered to listen to him past the first word, pointing up over his shoulder to the ceiling with a shout. “The chandelier!”
With one last violent sway of the room, the chandelier teetered violently from the left, than swung back to the right. The room seemed to go still, hypnotized by the pendulum ticking from one side to the other, disbelief and shock taking control of their bodies. Everyone holding on to the same sliver of wistful doubt that something so well-maintained would ever fall.
A booming crack a chorus of shouts took the room by storm, and the light fixture jerked a few feet towards the ground, held suspended by the chain that had torn through the plaster and stone. Large chunks of the ceiling rained from above, crashing on tables and smashing into pieces as the rest of the chain sliced through it like it was nothing but a thin sheet of melting ice on pavement.
The chandelier plummeted towards the ground faster than anyone could have run from, exploding upon impact. Food, mice, glass, and dust went flying; wooden tables and chairs splintered into unrecognizable piles of scrap.
Hysteria took hold of any semblance of control they had, and sent everyone scattering, stampeding over one another in their haste to escape. Guests had even begun to scale the railings instead of waiting for their turn down the thin curving staircases to the lawn.
Y/n’s cheeks stung, no doubt having been nicked by the spray of material. And before she knew it, she was being tugged to her feet, crowded between the bodies of her friends as they all formed a train of linked arms and fisted fabric, forgoing aiding the frenzy for their own escape.
Without warning, sparks spouted from the fallen carcass of crystal and gold, and the speakers blared to life at full volume, shouting the lyrics of an 80’s synth melody into their ears until they nearly bled, but no other lights had enough strength to reignite.
When they made it out to the balcony, Y/n’s ears were ringing, unable to process any other sounds as Jin joined their party down the thin stone steps, keeping rowdy frightened guests from barreling into any of them.
The grass was cold and damp, the snow from the previous night melted into muddy sludge that soaked into the hem of dresses and caked onto shiny dress shoes. It looked like a battle had taken place, guests' faces smeared with mascara, others lying flat on the ground while they caught their breath or nursed shallow wounds and twisted ankles.
“What happened, y/n?” Yoongi had her by the shoulders, trying his best to look into her eyes that couldn’t stop moving over the destruction with dazed horror. He snapped his fingers, forcing them to meet his. “Eyes on me. What happened in there?”
“I…” She looked over their circle and counted their heads.
Jungkook’s ear was nicked, and his sleeve torn but he was otherwise unfazed.
Taehyung was trying not to hurl on his shoes, but he was alive.
Namjoon hovered nearby, a pretty deep gash on the back of his hand covered from the night air with his other palm, torn between looking forlornly at the trampled bushes and her face.
Hoseok had situated himself on the ground, hissing as he tilted his head back to stretch his aching spine but was still present.
Jin was over Yoongi’s shoulder, wide-eyed and horrified at the state of things.
Six. There was only six heads.
“Where’s Jimin?” She managed to choke out. Panic rushed up on her like the bone-chilling jet of a waterfall’s stream beating her already badgered mind. She repeated herself, screaming hysterically into the crowd. “Where is he?”
Everyone looked to one another with mirrored apprehension when Hoseok spoke.
“Last I saw him he said he was going down to check on you.”
She whirled on the group that had been with her. “I didn’t see him while we were leaving — did any of you?”
She was met with dreadful silence.
Yoongi broke it with a stiff kick to the dirt beneath them and a groan. “That selfless fucker!”
“What?” Y/n asked, breathless.
“He’s been so damn adamant about learning how to check the power. I bet that’s where he went!”
Jungkook moved first, closing a field of distance in seconds towards the back entrance in the courtyard.
From over Yoongi’s shoulder, Y/n met Jin’s gaze, and in that moment her stomach fell through the dirt. His eyes glazed from distant to petrified, and in a blink he was streaking across the grass after him.
She was running before she knew it, mindlessly dashing without the oxygen in her lungs to keep up the pace. All she could hear as she ran was the tauntingly upbeat chorus stuck on a nauseating repeat, and her own breath whistling in her eardrums.
She reached the basement last, bulldozing through the thick sheets of spider webs and tripping over construction materials towards the distant flashlight. She latched onto the door frame to pull her to a sudden stop, her lungs burning from the change of cold night air to warm and dusty basement.
Her hand shot to her mouth to cover her scream.
Below the electrical panel lay Jimin, angry red lines veining up his exposed hands and forearms, disappearing under his sleeves. His eyes were stuck open, damp lines tracking down the sides of his cheeks and mixing with the fresh blood that trickled out of his ears.
“Call 911,” Jin croaked from the floor, fingers glued to the pulse point on Jimin’s throat.
Then she noticed the way Jungkook's was fastened around something she couldn't see, his knuckles white and shaking with the force with which he held it to his side.
From somewhere in the ringing sound in her ears and Jungkook’s urgent discussion with emergency services, Y/n could hear hissing through the walls layered over insufferable, everlasting laughter.
I hope you have it in your heart to forgive yourself.
heyyyyy what is up, my guys. NEW BANNERS HELL YEAH!!!! I'm lowkey obsessed with how they turned out. Now I want to make all my banners cute and mysterious. Disappeared for a bit and now I'm back with thousands of words and a dream. I know I promised a big boy of a chapter, but with how long things were getting and how MUCH lore was being dropped in these two chapters, it just felt better to split them up so it wasn't a bunch of information at once. (plus, it was crashing my doc so I HAD to). As a reward, you can expect the second half of it very soon, like within the next five days soon (maybe sooner than that). Just trying to polish up the second half so it comes out exactly as I want it.
Anyways, goodluck. I'll see you on the other side of these two sister chapters~
tag list: @kokoandkookie @rkive-joonie @singdancedreampray @erescheese @hyperfixation-station-1234 @moonxxlover@onyxthornseer @lunaryoongie
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
Sunlight streamed through the tall windows, creating pale yellow shapes on marble tile floors that inched closer to the toe of her shoes with each passing minute. Patience was something Y/n was currently trying to practice, bouncing on the balls of her feet while Jimin busied about his office to the tranquil melody beat of the old record player, having not said much since their first greeting.
“So...what first?” Y/n ventured to break the comfortable silence that had settled over Jimin’s office, still standing idly by the door where Namjoon had dropped her off after their shared breakfast. Jimin had been tasked with looking for any information that could benefit them in the upcoming weeks, and he oh-so-kindly carved time out of his busy schedule to let her join in on the search. Except right now, it was like he had forgotten they were supposed to do just that.
Jimin lingered by his desk, spine bent and brows creased, mumbling incoherently to himself to the words of one of the yellowed pages he had pinched in his thumb and forefinger. Like he had been for the past five minutes.
“First, we have to take a trip down to the archives,” Jimin began casually as if he hadn’t been completely engrossed in his reading a second prior, and Y/n jumped at the sound. “There are a couple boxes I want to look through that I think will be beneficial to our cause.”
Snatching a set of keys from a ceramic bowl on his desk, he held the door open for her to take the lead, keeping as little distance between them as possible (as he usually did). She had to squish past him to get out into the hall, barely getting two steps before his warm hand was enveloping hers, tugging her along down the polished halls of the historical society towards the basement archives.
“Watch your step,” He instructed, “These steps are old, and quite steep.”
He wasn’t exaggerating in the slightest. With a handlebar made of slender cylindrical metal and steps of cross-hatched iron, they left little to grasp onto should one think they were about to fall. Though she could understand why they were such a compact hike just by looking at the archival room — a room that was much too small for how much was stuffed into those for walls. In the center stood a set of towering filing cabinets that formed a sort of hall towards the back of the room, where the larger items were stored: paintings, furniture wrapped in protective material, boxes upon boxes with neat, chipped labels, and ceramic vases.
Along the side walls were floor-to-ceiling built-in cubby storage, lined with grayed soft totes with matching lids, all with names or dates taped onto them — some more beat up than others.
Her boots hit smooth cement, her wobbly knees finally free from those cursed stairs, giving her the chance to really look at some of the things within reach with unmeasured awe. Almost two centuries of history tucked away in this cold, stone basement.
“It’s a bit cramped, but it has a lot to offer,” His voice sounded next to her, his palm tapping the wall behind them intermittently. “They came down here a few times to damage insure it, so they kept it small to keep costs low. A meteorite could land on this building, and they’d still be able to pull this place out unscathed.”
Y/n snorted out a small laugh. “Remind me to put my birth certificate down here so I don’t lose it…”
“You say that like a joke, but we’d have just the spot to keep it for you.” Sidling between the shelves to scan the expanse of the left wall, he made a noise of satisfaction in the back of his throat when the tip of his index finger caught on the corner of a sleek, shiny label with her name on it. “Right here.”
She stepped up to it slowly, a strange feeling swirling in her gut at seeing her own name stacked near the rest. It made sense — of course the historical society would have a place for all of her information as she collected it. Still, it felt odd seeing it next to that of her grandmother. Even more so when her eyes scanned the little red label tacked beneath Matilda’s.
Deceased. She shivered at how clinical a declaration it was.
The box was in her hands before she had the wherewithal to ask if she could, the lid knocked to the side and eyes roaming the organized collection of small plastic toys, a scrap of her favorite dress, and a hand tied book of printed photos or handwritten birthday cards with one of their names listed as the recipient; big uneven letters, some backwards, wishing them a happy birthday next to crude drawings of them together.
“No wonder she was so angry,” Y/n murmured down to the mementos, each one making it so glaringly obvious that while Matilda had only been a small part of their lives, they were her everything. “All anyone did was hide her in boxes and lock them away. I guess I’d feel frustrated and vulnerable too.”
Plucking out one of the pictures that wasn’t laid out and labeled with scribbled dates in the book, she tucked it in her pocket. One where she was no bigger than the length of her forearm, laid flat on her back with her mouth slightly open and eyes wide to look at where Y/n’s blurry face pressed through the bars of her crib. Barely four months old and already revving her engines to crawl right through those bars so she could join in on the fun. She really had always been such a fighter.
Clearing her throat of the ball that had formed, she shimmied the box back into its rightful spot and turned to Jimin with a wry smile. They were here for a reason. “But she’s not the person who’s motivation we are looking for, is she?”
Jimin’s silent apology was written in the lines of the thin curve of his mouth. “No. But that doesn’t mean we can’t look.”
“I probably shouldn’t. Not when we need to focus.”
“Of course,” A switch flipped within her companion, trading out her Jimin for the one that curated exhibits and gave sophisticated answers to long-winded questions. This was his job, and she was just there to help him. “Whatever we do have on Candida is here,” Jimin tapped the side of a beaten-down tote. “However, sometimes the best way to learn about who someone was is through the eyes of others.”
His mop of blond hair trailed off deeper into the dusty basement, snagging a box here or a file there, each movement graceful and intentional, as though he didn’t even need to look at where anything was — he just knew.
“We will start here.” Those items were then dropped carefully in her arms for her to lug over to a small dinged-up metal table near the back. “And if you would put these on, please, some of the items down here shouldn't be handled without adequate safety precautions.”
A pair of latex gloves was chucked onto the table for her to wriggle her hands into, the edges barely snapping into place against her wrists, before he was back at her side, a yellow notepad and ballpoint pen placed directly in front of her.
“Here is where I want you to write down anything you can remember about your experience with her. What seemed to set her off, what you were doing when she flared, what kinds of things she had you see, and anything she has said or anything you’ve witnessed. Hoseok has already done the same on the previous pages, but before you read it, I want you to write yours.”
Y/n blinked down at the paper, fingers toying with the pen mindlessly. Nerves crawled around in her stomach and bit into the lining with acid-soaked teeth. She often tried to forget or avoid thinking too hard about what had happened with Candida, as it usually triggered an uptick in her strange pacing habits or the urge to check on her friends.
But now wasn’t the time for hesitation.
Shaking her head of her racing thoughts, she picked up the pen and let the ink glide smoothly across frail lines. Recounting everything — her first encounter in the ballroom, the visions, the hallucinations, the anger, showing up in Taehyung’s dream or the greenhouse, what she saw just a few days before at the guest house….
Then as a reward, she flicked through Hoseok’s swooping writing, soaking in the details of messy pink wallpaper, black paint, waltzing with her husband on theater stages, and her soul-sucking yellow eyes staring down from above. The impact of his fall. The heat of invisible flame.
Y/n slammed it shut. She had read enough.
Jimin quickly glanced at her over the journal he was flipping through before averting his gaze back down. Wordlessly, he slid over a box of photos with two fingers, nodding to it like he knew the thoughts spiraling in her head needed something to grab onto. “Would you mind?”
Y/n jumped at the chance for a sort of distraction. At least now she got to marvel at photos of the Estate rooms or the yard, compartmentalizing the Candida she knew with the innocent and unaware one in the photos. Alain was in almost all of them, the two of them gazing at each other lovingly any chance they could; inseparable forces unable to do anything but orbit the other.
Though hours of digging offered no direct insight into what would be the best angle to take to summon, control, and soothe Candida in record time. Sure, they could bring up her children, but she might already know where they are — she did ask her sister to watch over them after all. Looking at these pictures of a marriage dripping with adoration and had her frowning.
What could have happened to make Alain change so drastically? Obviously, something had occurred to make him so doubtful of the woman who devoted herself to him. Something that maybe mirrored Bear’s retelling of the downfall of Duane, or the deterioration of her father. He had succumbed to something otherworldly to soothe his own ego, perhaps?
But why did Candida not do something about it if she was the innocent one? Why had she taken the fall if she hadn’t committed any of the atrocities mentioned? Why was everyone so quick to believe she was capable of it, except Lisolette?
Her eyes skimmed over her own slanted handwriting on the page left open between them; vivid descriptions of tormenting visions where she would harm those she loved, the feeling of losing herself to something she couldn’t see, like every part of her character had been stripped away and replaced with fear and survival instincts.
And in that moment, she felt connected by cycles time had never bothered to correct.
Why had everyone been so quick to excuse Y/n’s own parent’s decision to replace her?
Because they had chosen an easy target — her emotions — and spun them out into piles of loose, wiry thread that looked unstable and frail in harsh lighting that they flicked on. They had created the perfect excuse to believe.
And what would make Y/n more irrational and vulnerable to some kind of sickness such as this, than ruminating on those feelings? Than thinking of that level of betrayal from the people she loved the most…
Would she even be here now, fighting for a better future without it though? Was that anger all bad?
“Wait a minute,” Y/n nibbled at the dry skin of her lower lip. “Maybe we need to go about this…differently.”
Jimin regarded her cautiously over a yellowed page. “How so?”
“Well, clearly they kept most information about her under lock and key. But with what we do know about her and Alain from Lisolette, we know that Alain absolutely obliterated their trust and then blamed her for murder — and not just any murder, her own children. I don’t think any song, food, or happy memory would erase those feelings enough to clear my head.”
Jimin pondered her thoughts, digesting them slowly. “So what is it you’re recommending?”
“If she’s anything like me, I would want revenge. Up until this summer if you’d have mentioned my mother, I would’ve started crashing out instantly, though I would’ve never passed up on an opportunity to give her a piece of my mind. Maybe that’s what we do, give her a taste of revenge.”
“So you want to make an already violent, unpredictable, blood thirsty spirit…even more violent and unpredictable?”
“Sort of,” Y/n pushed the box of pictures aside. “More like I want to give her something that she won’t be able to look away from. Something that will keep her occupied long enough to strike.”
She grappled for the box with Alain’s name on it, tossing the lid aside and rummaging within for something that might be of use to them.
Jimin guided her hands to lift an old black vintage hat from the box, eyes never straying from the artifact. “Perhaps we can look into that. But if Alain is what would aggravate her the most, that is simply of limits. Mr. Kim would-”
“We don’t necessarily need him, we just need to remind her of him.” Y/n shuffled through a stack of black and white photos. Alain perched on a wooden stool, makeup heavy and suit hemmed to perfection, posing with a lit cigar at some sort of after-party. The next was him next to his wife and children, all of them seated with legs dangling down from the theater stage like a line of nesting dolls.
“Was Alain a performer?” Y/n dared to ask while drinking in another one of Alain in quite the spectacle of a suite.
Jimin hummed. “Yes. He used to travel all over Europe to perform in different Opera houses before he met Candida. Once he immigrated here, he moved to exclusive shows at the hotel. Hold on, I believe that I have a copy of one of his programs here somewhere...” his hands flipped faster through the pages, a destination in mind that he had simply to find. A small shout rang out when his search proved successful, prying a folded-up show program from where it was jabbed into the spine of the book. Flattening it to the table, they crowded over the inked song lists with shoulders touching, cheeks nearly smushed together.
“This one here,” Jimin tapped at a vaguely recognizable Italian song. “I’ve seen him mention this one on multiple occasions by name.”
He dove back into the box, a stack of letters spilling out of his grasp which he opened and began reading from almost instantly. “My love for you never wavers…I can not wait for the day we can be together without distance…no…” Tossing that one aside he grabbed the next. “Here we go: Tonight I will be performing a new piece that I hope will move you. I shall pull from my heart the love I have for you and use it to embolden my voice so that none may leave the theater without feeling touched by your beauty. The piece entitled-”
“Nessun Dorma,” She said it for him while squinting down at the paper. “I think I know that one…”
Jimin bit back a playful grin. “ I would hope so. It is now one of the most popular arias in history. I don’t think I’d be able to let you walk out of here without listening to it twice if that was the case. We can’t have you being uncultured.”
“Oh shut it,” Y/n shyly shoved the closest shoulder to her but it wouldn’t budge, he was as stubborn as ever to remain close, yet she tried to ignore his light teasing by refocusing on the letter. “If he used to sing this song for her, I can imagine that playing it will rile her up.”
Jimin grew stony, the humor leaving his face with the speed of storm winds. “Yes, but it might stir up commotion with Alain himself.”
“We aren’t calling for him.” Y/n corrected him with a bit of attitude he appreciated with a flat expression.
“Yes, but just playing a CD on the speaker might be too general. We’d need to make sure the intentions are there. It's not like we can just hire any old-” he cut himself off to meet her widening gaze. An idea struck through them both like an arrow whizzing by their ears, a knowing grin taking up Y/n’s features while Jimin’s brightened with disbelief. “You don’t think we could…”
“Oh yeah,” Y/n was already snapping a picture of the set list and poking in her recent texts for who she was looking for. “I definitely know a guy.”
[Y/n 👑 ]: <image>
[Y/n👑 ]: Think you can sing something like this?
[Dream Boy 😴❤️]: maybe with some practice
[Dream Boy 😴❤️]: why?
[Y/n👑 ]: :)))))))
[Dream Boy 😴❤️]: what?
[Dream Boy 😴❤️]: oh
[Dream Boy 😴❤️]: are you serious?
[Y/n👑 ]: 🫵😀 🎤
[Y/n👑 ]:👻👏 👻👏 👻👏
[Dream Boy 😴❤️]: here I was thinking I could have 1 (one) secret...
[Dream Boy 😴❤️]: i’ll give it a go after practice tonight
[Y/n👑 ]: my hero <3
[Dream Boy 😴❤️]: always for my pretty lady
[Dream Boy 😴❤️]: …..
[Dream Boy 😴❤️]: YOONGI IS ALREADY MAKING FUN OF ME. HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE YOU TOLD IN TEN SECONDS??
[Y/n👑 ]: :)
[Y/n👑 ]: Joon wants to know if you’ll sing for the greenhouse plants this spring
[Dream Boy 😴❤️]: 😐
_________________________________________
Everything was in a state of disarray leading up to the big day. The Estate looked like a fabric store and a bridal shop had a brawl on in the foyer, leaving behind scraps of tulle, flesh and flower petal blood trails throughout the halls. If anyone had a free moment to spare or a set of empty hands, the space was filled with helping plan the table settings and going over the seating chart again. The Jung’s were everywhere and nowhere all at once, running to and fro to make sure every piece of draped fabric was steamed; every tablecloth ironed; and every vendor promptly responded to.
Y/n couldn’t blame them. Weddings are already a migraine inducing event to plan for any given normal family to plan.
She couldn’t imagine the pressure they were under when there was a demonic force that just couldn’t wait to pull the trigger on their bloodline if they stepped out of line. An invisible line no one could find, even if they tried.
“Power’s out again.”
Y/n’s spoon stopped halfway to her mouth, the soup cupped in it spilling back down into the bowl in favor of glancing at Yoongi who had just spoken.
“Again?” Her mother sighed from the head of the table, appetite completely gone.
Yoongi was already pushing his chair out with a grunt and tossing a used napkin into the puddle of left over broth in his bowl. “Already on it.”
“Need a hand?” Y/n asked lightly, like the thought of being in the basement didn’t send a chill up her spine.
Yoongi stopped at the threshold to mull over her offer. “I wouldn’t mind company.”
Before she could even lower her spoon, Jimin stood from his seat abruptly, rolling down the sleeves of his button-down and following after Yoongi. “I’ll join you. It might be beneficial for us if I learned the ropes, since I’m always somewhere on the property, I can help offset the disruptions.”
Yoongi peered at him for a second too long, keeping any comments about his apparent eagerness to himself with a nod towards the foyer. “Grab a jacket. There’s a spider issue down there.” Sliding his dark gaze over to Y/n, he sighed. “No need to tag along. One extra set of hands is enough for me to babysit.”
With a scuff of their shoes and the shrug of heavy jackets, the two of them were out the door in seconds, hurrying down the gravel path to the darkened hotel with urgency.
Her attention was stolen back to the table by an exasperated huff from her mother, her forehead pressed into a palm and her breathing thin and tense. “If it keeps up like this our backup generator is going to blow.”
“We’ll figure it out. I’m sure something just needs replaced,” Mr. Jung waved his hand dismissively, though even the crinkle at the edges of his eyes when he smiled felt crooked and forced.
Plucking up a piece of bread, her mother ripped it in half and used the jagged crust to aggressively sop up some of her soup. “Are you available tomorrow to help with setting up the ballroom?”
A few moments of silence and half a dozen sets of eyes blinking expectantly in her direction had Y/n realizing her mother was speaking to her. That had become a new habit for her — not saying Y/n’s name. Something about it felt too clinical, but calling her any sort of nickname felt too personal.
Speaking at each other just seemed easier.
Making a surprised noise in the back of her throat, Y/n reached for her glass to clear it. “I just have a dat — an activity planned with Namjoon in the afternoon, but other than that I’m free.”
Mariah hummed, only half paying attention to anything said besides her compliance. Her mind was bulging at the seams with the countless tasks set before her to prepare the property for hosting an event, and her father’s workload. Y/n would be surprised if her mother were able to say anything over the next seven days that didn’t revolve around reciting the color scheme and timeline for the reception.
Finally, she spoke, dropping her bread back down into her napkin and pushing herself from the table with eyes glued to her phone. “I will be taking a trip up to New York for a couple days for your brother’s winter concert, but I trust that Hoseok can show you how things are supposed to be done.”
Two separate emotions sliced Y/n’s brain in two, each side lurching to shake its fist at different targets. One being an immense wave of guilt and grief at having not been invited to visit her brother (and shame, for she had almost forgotten about him entirely in all the mess); and the second half digging its heels in at having to spend alone time with Hoseok, who had yet to apologize for his attitude on Halloween nearly a month prior — if he could even stomach being alone in the same room as her for the two seconds it would take to shoot her a half-assed ‘sorry’.
“Fine. No worries.” Y/n remained aloof, eyes darted to where the man in question leaned his cheek on his palm and stared downward spirals into his soup he stirred in hypnotizing circles. Feeling her stare he barely looked her way around the lip of his glass of wine, nothing more than a flutter of his long lashes and a flick of brown. Sending him an overly kind smile, she drove her point home with a sink of her teeth into a chunk of meat from her stew. “Can’t wait.”
Hoseok’s eye contact was broken faster than it had started, this time boring into the deep red liquid sticking to the sides of his glass.
She wanted to splash it in his face and beg him to look at her — to talk to her like he had that autumn night in the car and hold her hand like he used to. But she didn’t. She was a grown woman who could keep herself in check. If he wanted to act childish, she didn’t have to stoop to his level.
But god, he was really starting to piss her off.
Though she couldn’t let it get in the way of her dreadfully busy week.
His sisters wedding was less than two weeks away, which meant their plan to release and purify Candida was creeping in, She had a double date with Jimin and Jungkook coming up that she still had to coordinate (Jimin wanted to do something relaxing, while Jungkook was dead set on laser tag, which meant they had to come up with something that would bring both ideals together…..somehow), she was going into town with Namjoon the following day, and she had promised Taehyung that she’d catch one of his shows at the Adelaide this coming weekend. The last thing she needed was his attitude souring what good they could carve out for themselves in the mess of it all.
That night though, she just couldn’t seem to shake him away — dreams of dancing around the golden ballroom on a sunny afternoon to whatever music he had planned, reminded her of how good it felt to be close to him. It had her taking the stairs a bit earlier than she usually would, a budding hope that she would get to see him at breakfast, sitting far away enough for the tension strung between them to lax, letting her pretend that things were normal.
“Good morning,” She murmured to the small group, Jimin’s eyes swollen half shut with sleep, and Hoseok nearly through his bowl of cereal. The former offered her a small whine that didn’t stop until she pressed a chaste kiss to his forehead.
The latter didn’t even look at her.
The chill that flushed through her muscles at such blatant disregard for her presence reminded her that there was no pretending. It lingered like a snow cloud, bringing forth the looming, low-hanging threat of ice, so cold it burned into the flesh and made the fingertips numb.
That chill never left.
Biting late November air clashed against the warm floor to ceiling windows that towered behind Y/n, frosting the surface and blurring the view of the rural foggy street like a cool toned filter. Thankfully, the owner of the little shoe box shop was on top of keeping the temperature nice and comfortable — especially when it meant Namjoon was too hot to keep his thick jacket over the band tee that definitely was a size too small. Maybe that was a deliberate choice; maybe the shirt was just collateral for how dense the muscles of his arms and torso had gotten over the last five years.
Either way, Y/n had only managed to get a few jabs in about how he was too stubborn to let the shirt go before she was eating her own words, face hot and eyes darting anywhere but the biceps that threatened to tear the rolled cuffs to shreds.
Namjoon was listening intently to the instructions being explained by the lovely shop owner: an older woman drowning in layers of eccentric flowing fabric hooked onto any joint, crevice, or curve she could fit them on, each one of her steps applauded by twinkling bells and rattling bracelets as she gave her animated directions.
All Y/n could think about was the uncomfortable mismatched wooden chairs they were stuck in, the thick smell of wet clay and earthy incense that permeated the air, and the way the cold air leaked through the cracks and snuck beneath her apron. It had such a familiar laugh when it wheezed through the minuscule openings and fluttered goosebumps up her skin, that the sound it made ached.
It wasn’t until she clapped her hands together like a pair of cymbals was Y/n brought back to the present, blinking rapidly towards Namjoon who was already loading up his turn table with a nicely sized chunk of the clay they had all been given.
Y/n leaned to the side to whisper his way. “Joon?”
“Hmm?” He hummed, wetting his hands and kicking the table on with the toe of his work boot. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing with the way his hands worked the lump into something already beginning to resemble a pot.
“Just to be sure I’m doing this right…” She played with the sleeve of a well loved crewneck, streaked with paint and baking stains. “I just...Put it on the table...right?”
Namjoon made a noise that fell somewhere between a laugh and a snort, shaking his head to himself. “Did you measure the right amount for the size you want?”
“Yes,” Y/n rolled her eyes like it was a dumb question, but quickly lurched to the side to scan the laminated page that told her just how to do that.
Namjoon hummed again, dimples fighting for their lives not to show. “Then you should know the next steps…” He trailed off for a moment, brows furrowing as he honed in his focus on stretching the sides of his medium-sized pot upwards. “That is, if you managed to pay attention.”
Y/n fluttered her lashes up at him playfully, offering him the most innocently sweet smile she could. “And if I wasn’t?”
“That would be unfortunate considering I’m almost-.” Just as the words left his mouth, the clay shape he gave way to a particularly rough press of his hand, folding in on itself with a cartoonish plopping sound.
Hand pressed to her mouth, Y/n tried her best not to get the two of them kicked out with how loud she wanted to laugh. “Y-you were saying?”
He pressed his lips together in a thin line, leaning back into his chair with a heavy sigh. “…I guess I can help you now.”
“Yay!” Y/n cheered, measuring out the clay for a pot fit for a window sill (which she had just the one in mind), and slapping it onto the table.
“Pay attention this time, maybe?” Namjoon’s smile was humored despite holding a bit of authority in his tone that he liked to add in when he was letting her know he was serious.
“Absolutely,” With a quick salute, she made sure to prove her point by angling her chair closer, looking to him with the upmost attention. “You’ve got me all to yourself.”
Namjoon lowered his head close enough to allow his low voice to stay just between the two of them as he guided her hands in gentle curves, adding pressure to her thumbs when he noticed her getting impatient or starting to give in to the pressure of perfectionism. The curled clay moved to her each and every whim, soaking up the thoughts that spilled from the frayed edges of her mind and building something sturdy with what was once weak.
With a finished project now standing tall (albeit a bit lopsided), pride swelled within her at what she had managed to create, all but shoving Namjoon away and back into his seat when he tried to hover over her shoulder while she examined an extensive list of runes and sigils alongside their scribbled meanings, all of them curated by the older woman. This was the part she wanted to do on her own.
Protection? Sure, a little extra of that couldn’t hurt right about now.
But she had an abundance of protective charms, sigils, and wards drenching the walls and corners of her room — not to mention Jungkook himself, who had been on high alert ever since a mouse was found trying to hoist its wiggling and bruised back feet up the staircase earlier that week. Something about the little circular shape with pillar-like lines that represented companionship really called to her, and she couldn’t help but start etching it into the base of the clay, letting the joy of creating a small pocket of creativity slow her breathing and ground her feet into the earth.
Each inhale was ritualistic, yet somehow an unconscious act; pulling in the energy that thrummed beneath her feet in time with the gentle sway and rustle of long, heart-shaped leaves and winding vines of the plants hung overhead. If she closed her eyes, it was almost like she could feel the earth's heartbeat beneath her feet, pulsing through the rubber soles and straight into her bloodstream.
So she did — closed her eyes and held the carving tool to sit nicked in one of the lines, resting there for a moment. Deepening the connection to the object. Letting the vines and blushing blossoms of her soul feed off the drumming beat and return its gift with the award of shade from her leaves. A haven of green that offered sanctuary from that which weighed her down or threatened her peace, eternally feeding one another with nothing but love and reciprocity.
“Which one was that?”
Namjoon’s low question brought her out of her meditative state, eyes snapping open to the shape that had sprouted from the edge of her tool. If the sigil of companionship had a sister, it would be whatever had crawled out of her knife and curled up in the softened clay to sleep. Their foundations were similar — the curved lines and sturdy pillars, but that was all they had in common, for the rest of it was interwoven with almost a wreath of lines like a set of wings sprouting from its back or sun rays coming to warm it from all directions. A halo of carefully scooped out dots and confidently scratched oval leaves.
At first, Y/n panicked, fretting that altering the sigil was a bad omen, or that she had somehow unknowingly cursed the pot or herself with some unknown magic she had no business meddling in. Was it offensive since the original design was crafted so carefully? All of those worries must’ve blossomed on her features, or her energy shift was strong enough for the instructor to peer over her shoulder with curious eyes and a cloud of hibiscus and frankincense following close behind.
“S-should I flatten it and start again?” Y/n squeaked out with wide eyes anxiously flickering back and forth between the woman and the design. “I’m sorry if it-”
“Looks like we have a natural witch in our midst,” The instructor silenced Y/n’s skittish rambling with a wink. “The universe gave you the blueprints; you were simply drawing them out.”
Swallowing down the urge to apologize again, Y/n’s shoulders scrunched towards her ears to hide behind. “Are you sure it isn’t…wrong?”
“Not at all hun.” The woman’s laugh was bright and luxurious, eaten away by years of smoke and tea that was too hot. “Nothing can go wrong if the intention was pure and the connections were strong. Trust yourself, not your fear.”
Long after the woman had floated off to help another patron with their partially collapsed pot, Y/n remained stuck staring at the shape.
“What does it mean?” Namjoon probed beside her, angling his own creation with delicacy to clean the edges of his mental clarity sigil with the flattened edge of his blade.
Y/n pursed her lips. “M’not sure. Something to do with being my friend, I guess.”
The edges of his lisp curled upwards, his fingertip swiping away any excess clay from his beautifully carved shape. “Do you have a specific plant in mind from your collection?”
A mischievous look took hold of the gleam in her eyes and sent it to his equally shameless stare. “All of my plants at home already have pots….”
Namjoon hummed. “Mine too.”
“We could propogate?”
“Wecould.” he shrugged lightly. “Or…”
They shared a look down their noses at one another.
“Plant store after this?” Y/n threw the bait first.
Namjoon cheered with visible glee leaning back in his chair to bathe in the glory of their shared brain cells. Reaching over to grab for hand, he gave it a quick, tight squeeze before letting it drop, which meant a lot considering he had let her know this morning that he wasn’t feeling much physical affection.
“This is why we are together.”
_________________________________________
The two of them returned from the store like a set of villains from a children’s cartoon, car blazing a belligerent path down the gravel to the front of the Estate with vines and leaves trailing out the back windows instead of a cape.
Jungkook dubiously eyed the new collection, giving her a dead stare as she stacked three in his arms. “You got more plants.”
“I did~” Y/n wiggled her brows at him while loading her arms with two more. “There was a sale — what was I supposed to do, not get more?”
“They were practically free!” Namjoon’s voice cracked slightly as he joined in on her defense, carting out a few extra plants of his own. “And this nursery had well taken care of, reputably sourced Venus Flytraps.”
Jungkook’s frown was soft, just a mere imperceptible slant to the side in time with the raise of his opposite brow. “You have space for these?”
“We’ll make space!” Y/n chirped while kicking the back door shut with her foot. “Would you give me a hand moving some things around?”
His expression neutralized, a hint of delight at getting to spend more time with her showed up in the softened lines of his face. “Sure.”
“Do you like pottery, Kook? Maybe we should go together sometime — the whole lot of us — could be a fun group activity. The pots I made should be ready for pick up next week, which is what I got these-” Y/n gestured with her elbow that held the new rattlesnake calathea and trailing queen marble pothos in Jungkook’s arm “-for. I got regular pots for the other new additions, and there’s soil in the trunk. It’s too cold to pot them outside but I figured we could lay down some-”
“Guess you’ll be late?” Hoseok was perched at the end of the plush blue armchair on the landing, caught between staying seated and finding the energy to stand up.
Y/n froze, the realization that somewhere in the pottery classes and the crunching floors of the plant nursery on some offbeat road she had forgotten about her promise to help him decorate for his sister’s wedding that afternoon.
And he had been waiting for her.
“Uh…” Gripping the pots in her arms tighter, she managed to shoot out a quick “I’m just putting these in my room, then I’ll be out. Don’t worry, I keep my promises.”
Hoseok twitched his nose with a nod that said he definitely had something else he wanted to say, but it seems like it just got stuck in his teeth, his tongue running over them to soothe the ache of it pressing into the exposed nerves beneath his gums. “Cool.”
After unloading her haul into her room and helping Namjoon line his in the already crowded bedroom, she dragged her feet back out to the landing and followed Hoseok’s slow tread down the steps, letting his tracks in the cold gravel lead her through the back end of the lobby, weaving through cleaning carts and the last of the remaining guests until the tiles felt smoother and wider under her boots.
The ballroom of the Hotel was twice the size of the one back at the Estate, built for parties with guest counts in the hundreds and events the size of small conventions. It followed the hotel standard color palette of polished golds and deep romantic reds, just somehow even more lavish and grandiose than the rest of the building. Not a single expense was spared in the making of this hall, from the art, the marble floors with thick golden veins that spidered across it like lightning, all the way to the hand-painted ceilings and crystal chandelier that would give the one from any Phantom of the Opera remake a run for its money. It was, after all, a room for status. A room to display the families wealth and prowess during a time when that felt important.
Y/n could still recall all the weddings, quincaeñeras, birthday parties, and family reunions the two of them had crashed in high school, sneaking in long after the drinks were poured or the crowd had thickened so everyone was too drunk or busy to notice two teenagers spinning each other around the dance floor and judging their desserts. A place of whimsy and celebration. Though now the brief glimpse of the floor-to-ceiling glass doors that led out to the terrace overlooking the hill and the glass pool room had acid bubbling in her stomach, as though the sizzling liquid could digest the appalling reality of what Hoseok had experienced outside those very windows.
“So...our job is to hang up these swags and get the table settings in place.” Kicking the side of a stack of loosely taped cardboard boxes with his shoe, he nodded to the rack of freshly steamed evergreen fabric.
Rolling up her sleeves and gritting her teeth, Y/n nodded, reaching for the first box and slicing the tape with her thumbnail. Inside was a smattering of place settings, tall elegant vases, string lights, and curled ribbons. Sparing him a glance over her shoulder, she pulled out the first vase. “Tables first, then we hang the cloth?”
Instead of answering, he simply propped the next box on an empty table and began sorting through its contents while referencing a photo on his phone as he went.
“Why don’t you set up the vases and I’ll set up the tables?” Y/n divided the tasks with his condition in mind, not knowing whether her naming it might make him defensive. “You know, divide and conquer.”
“Whatever,” Hoseok shrugged indifferently, hands moving expertly to layer the lights with pine cones.
Y/n pressed her lips into a thin line. Hoseok was supposed to be working with her, showing her the ropes and guiding her to get the task done, yet he hadn’t even shown her any reference photo or bothered to share his process. Biting back any comments on it, she leaned over his shoulder to glance at the screen, ignoring the way he stiffened and instinctively lurched away so his shoulders wouldn’t brush her torso.
Taking the berry red and pine green silk runners, she followed what she could remember from the image, draping them over the tables and littering it with glittering accents like a nest awaiting the vases Hoseok was bulldozing through at lightning speed. Right as she had straightened the last runner on the table and the silence had numbed her mind, a quick knock sounded on the door.
Glancing up to the entrance, she met the blindingly bright grin of Taehyung, his body weight leaned up against the threshold as he craned his neck in to look for her. “There you are~”
Someone might as well have dragged their nails straight across a blackboard with the way Hoseok visibly cringed, elbows up to his ears and muscles pulled taught.
“Hey,” Y/n wiped her forehead with a weathered sigh, rounding the table to greet him. “Just helping to get a few things done in here. Something you need?”
Taehyung licked his lips as he scanned the room, stopping on her face to take in her current state. “I’m taking that as an answer that you wouldn’t be interested in coming to hang out during rehearsal.”
“Not tonight,” She shook her head.
“No worries,” Tilting his head at the empty boxes and the accruing army of vases. “Need a hand with anything?”
“No,” Hoseok answered for her, nearly crushing a pine cone with his fist as he hid the battery box for the lights in the center of them.
Ignoring his input, Y/n was relieved to have the company of someone who would actually talk to her. “Actually, that’d be nice. We still have to hang all this fabric on the windows, and the last place I want to be is up on that ladder.”
“Luckily for my pretty girl, I used to do all of the party decorating at my parents' house. I know my way around a ladder.” Taehyung moved gracefully across the marble floors, dodging tables and squeezing through chairs to assess the untouched fabric and the windows in question. After a few moments of deliberation, he shrugged, reaching to set the step ladder up near the first window. “Toss me the end.”
Y/n unhooked the first cut of silk and tossed the first end up to his awaiting hands, watching as he expertly hooked it on the rod and adjusted the weight in the center to hang down in the middle.
“You really are a natural, huh?” Y/n held the base of the ladder as Taehyung finished tying up the last end, hopping back down to the ground to drag it over to the next window.
From across the room she could’ve sworn she heard a snort. Her eye twitched at the sound.
“Nah. Just good at following directions.”
Taehyung lingered for a few more windows, brightening up the space with well-placed quips and lighting her skin aflame with endless compliments, filling the silence with his laze-fair confidence and willingness to help. He even tried to invite Hoseok in on the merriment, no matter how many times Hoseok shut the offer down with short answers and sarcastic jabs hidden behind feigned obliviousness.
With almost all the windows finished save for two, an alarm on his phone blared out from his pocket and bounced off the walls. Taehyung frowned at his phone as he swiped it off, pocketing the device before lunging forward to envelope her in a surprise attack of hugs and peppered kisses on her shoulder, not letting up until a few giggles broke free.
“That’s my signal to go. Sorry I can’t stay to help you finish.” He swayed the two of them back and forth for a few seconds, enjoying the way she felt in his arms while delaying his departure. “Duty calls.”
Smacking him away playfully, she ducked out from beneath the arms that tried to chase after her. “Go ahead, pretty boy. Gotta practice so that way I’m not bored on Saturday.”
His countenance lit up like the chandelier above their heads had been flicked on. “You’re coming?”
“Of course I am. What kind of partner would I be if I didn’t come to one of your last shows of the year?”
With one last parting kiss, he scampered off towards the door with a new burst of energy, boxy smile wide and boyish as he stopped to point at Y/n. “I won’t let you down.”
“I know you won’t,” Y/n waved him off with a snort. “Now go before you get in trouble.”
“Right,” he paused, giving Hoseok a cordial nod. “See you later.”
Hoseok did the bare minimum of acknowledging his departure, eyes glued to the same vase he had been working on for the past five minutes.
When it was just the two of them again, it was like the room had grown a few degrees colder, the light barely filtered through the curtains, vanishing below the horizon.
“I can get on the ladder if you hand me the fabric,” Y/n tried to keep her voice from shaking. He had been getting along with Taehyung so much better since the summer, but now all of that congeniality was tossed out the window the minute he got back from Texas. She could handle it if he wanted to be complicated and short with her while he processed everything, but when it came to everyone else?
Yeah. That wasn’t going to fly.
Hoseok pressed himself up from the table with a barely audible huff, the feigned lighthearted gait and forced impassive expression more irritating to look at than if he would just scowl or glare at her. The rubber shoes of the ladder stuttered against the tile as she towed it to the next window.
She took the few steps up with a purpose, hands outstretched in a wordless request for the fabric.
The way he carelessly tossed it up to her almost had it slipping right through her fingers.
There needed to be a change of pace or she’d rip her own eyelids off for a reason to escape. The least he could do is talk to her.
“What else is left to do besides this? I know they hired staff to set up the lobby the day of.”
Hoseok rubbed at his eye with his index finger. “Just the food table settings and hanging up the outdoor lights along the stairs and driveway.”
Y/n secured the edge of the fabric over the holder. “Are we doing that, or is that the staffs job?”
There was a long pause. Too long to just be him thinking.
When she glanced down at him he was looking at a mindless text on his phone, some ad for a local sandwich shop. A bullshit notification from one of the stores in the outlet malls at the edge of town.
Nothing to warrant the focused thread of his brows or the slow swipe of his thumb, except as a distraction.
This time, when she tromped down the ladder and lugged it the next few feet, she was fighting wars with gods to keep from making some sort of comment.
So she climbed, stuck out her hands, and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Hoseok didn’t look up from his phone until she cleared her throat.
“Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry when he threw up the end of the dark green fabric.
It slipped right through her fingertips again. The ladder wobbled beneath her feet as she tried to catch it.
“Can you just focus?” Y/n snapped. “I don’t feel like breaking my neck today.”
Hoseok’s attitude soured in front of her eyes, the front too weak to keep up after one blow. “I said I was sorry.” He launched the end back up, yet again somehow putting too much yet too little force into it, the fabric fluttering back down to the ground pathetically.
“Yeah? Then act like it.” Skipping the part where he would just half ass the action again, she scrambled down the ladder to fist the end of it in her hand, not caring if the end was wrinkled anymore. Seething wouldn’t begin to describe how she felt climbing back up the ladder to aggressively fasten the fabric to the first hook.
Hoseok mumbled something under his breath that had her spinning on her heel so fast she almost sent her and the ladder teetering to the side. “What was that?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it. You never fucking say anything.” Y/n’s hands were shaking as they tried to finagle the drape into a nice, even swoop in the center. “But don’t worry, I’ll just brush over this one too, like it never happened, so that way you don’t get pissed off and shut me out again. I don’t mind being the bigger person.”
Hoseok visibly darkened. “Fine. You wanna know what I said?”
“I actually would, nice of you to ask.” Y/n stepped down a couple steps so she could lean on the top handle.
“I said that you don’t act like it either.”
Y/n recoiled back in offense. “Act like what?”
“Like you’re sorry.” Hoseok’s nostrils flared with each heavy inhale.
The laugh that barked out of Y/n’s lips was cynical. “Sorry for what? Trying to move on? Not hiding myself or forcing anyone else to hide for your sake?”
At his sides, his fists clenched and released multiple times, as if he could crush this moment in them, he would. He always hated confrontation. He said something so complex hidden beneath such a simple answer. A bomb wrapped in pounds of silk. “You left.”
She wanted to punch her fist right through the glass window. Was this really what he was bringing up right now?
“And we already talked about that.” Y/n groaned. “If that’s what’s been bugging you this whole time, then you could’ve just pulled me aside and said ‘hey! I want to talk about this thing again because it’s still bothering me!’ Don't ignore me for months and make me wonder what the fuck I’m doing to make you hate me so much.”
Hoseok raked his fingers through his hair, a frustrated groan of his own coming out of his mouth. “That’s not what I — ugh. I don’t hate you, that’s the problem.”
“Then what is?!”
“That if you hadn’t left, it could’ve been me! That if your weird ass fuckin’ family hadn’t done...all of that shit it could have been me that you had chosen. Maybe I could’ve gone with you, but you left. Left like our friendship and the two decades we spent together were so worthless that you were able to toss them away in minutes. I get it, we’ve talked about it, but that doesn’t make it go away. And then I just have to sit here and watch you practically make out with him of all people-”
“No,” Y/n jumped over the last few steps and landed on the ground with a thud, circling in on him. “I’m not going to pretend to know how it feels to be in your shoes, and the complex shit that comes up when you see him up on that stage. Or that I can understand the pressure you’re under with all of the shit this place has to offer. But what you aren’t going to do is get pissed off that he is okay with things you aren’t. You don’t get to blame him — or anyone for that matter — for manning the fuck up and working things out just because you can’t.”
There was a heavy silence after her words, laying over their shoulders and smoking any of the remaining oxygen out of the air with its searing honesty that she had been holding in since Texas.
Hoseok rapidly blinked back a fresh sheen of moisture. “That’s not fair.”
“You can’t just say that the truth isn’t fair because it hurts,” Y/n shot back, trying not to let the sight of the shine in his dark brown eyes get to her. “The only reason we aren’t together isn’t because I didn’t choose you or someone else got to me first. It’s because you said no. That’s no one’s fault, but it was your choice.” Unable to keep it back, a rush of tears saturated with both anger and heartbreak accumulated on her lashline, thick baubles that flew down her nose and chin as she lowered her voice. “I missed you then. I miss you now-”
“I miss me too!” Hoseok’s voice rose in pitch, the confession rebounding off the walls and back to her skull. “I miss who I was as a kid. I miss who I was before you left — before my back got worse. I don’t even know who the fuck I am anymore. I had to go through one of the biggest transitions of my life without my best friend who was supposed to be there for me! Who promised to be there for me. But you weren’t. I had to deteriorate alone, thinking about the life you were building in DC. Getting a job. Going to school. Living while I was practically dying, while your mom pushed me around like some pawn. So yeah, I get a little fuckin’ bitter thinking about how it’s all on me to bring up an issue that I feel like shouldn’t just be mine to bring up. It should be yours too. You haven’t even tried to get to know the new me, you just keep holding me up and comparing me to this version of me that doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Because you don’t let me! Each time I try you shut me out!” Y/n cried.
“Barely! You poke ‘round a bit but then get weird when I ‘act different’. Then I feel this pressure to keep putting on a performance so you don’t freak, and it’s exhausting.”
She grit her teeth so hard they ached. “Then you could have told me that. I don’t want to bring up the old issues because I’ve moved on.”
“Moved on?” Hoseok scoffed, growing even colder and more recoiled in on himself than before. “Shit, didn’t realize it wasn’t that big of a deal for you. I mean, took months of me distancing myself for you to finally bring it up.”
Y/n saw red, and still even though the color came from inside it still made her stomach twist. “Is that what this is about? Making me feel the same way you did? Leaving me hanging so you can justify your shitty behavior?” Wiping angrily at her tears, she knotted her fists into the green silk like an anchor. “Then congratulations! You did it! I hope it feels as good as you thought it would.”
She took to the ladder like her life depended on it, strangling the last end around the hook and tripping down to get away as soon as possible.
Rounding on him one last time, she stood tall in front of him. “Leaving was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. It wasn’t ponies and rainbows in DC — it was hell. For the first two years, I cried myself to sleep every night just begging for one of you to pick up the goddamn phone or show up on my doorstep. But none of you did. And while I know now that it wasn’t all your fault, it still hurt, but I’ve never made it your problem.” She thought she was finished, squeezing through the next table, but she wasn’t.
“But you know what I did do? I swallowed my pride and came running back the moment I could, even though I had been given literally zero reason to think any of you missed me. I came back knowing that I’d have to face my parents, or that all of you might shut the door in my face the moment I walked up to it, and that scared the shit out of me. But I still took that risk. Because even just the chance that I could see you and work it out was worth it. Do you know why that is?”
Hoseok was at a loss for words, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.
It didn’t matter. She’d answer for him.
“Because I love you. I loved you then, I love you now, and I’ll love every single stupid version of you that comes after. God, why can’t you just get that through your head? Why do you have to make this so complicated?”
Y/n was halfway across the now blurry ballroom when Hoseok finally managed to croak something out.
“If...If that would have been you on that balcony all those years ago, would you have kissed me?”
Skidding to a halt, she turned to give him a defeated shrug, keeping her voice low like his. She understood what was at stake if someone heard them. “Maybe, I don't know.” Biting her lip to keep in any more embarrassing sounds, she added to it. “If you would've asked me this morning, I probably would have.”
Hoseok’s adam’s apple bobbed. “Would you’ve — well I guess not anymore…” with a chuckle meant to soften his apparent defeat, he ran his hand through his hair again. “Would you’ve chosen me?”
Clenching her fists, the answer came out as naturally as breathing. “I do choose you every day. But if you can’t see that, then I don’t know what else I can say to make you believe it.”
She couldn’t bear staying anymore, slipping out of the ballroom and out the courtyard door.
In the process of trying to lick his own wounds, Hoseok had flicked open some of the ones she had sutured shut; a hollowed out feeling filling her chest cavity with empty air, killing the signs of life that kept her tethered in her own body. All she wanted to do was be in her room, sinking her fingers in dirt and pruning leaves, crawling into her bed with her blankets that still smelt like Jimin and Jungkook while reminding herself that she was home. That she wasn’t alone in a messy apartment in D.C, curled up on a dirty mattress on the floor with her stomach growling, craving a meal she couldn’t afford, in a city that didn’t have nearly enough trees to make her feel safe. Utterly alone and betrayed.
When the doors to the Estate loomed closer, she almost wished a demon would jump out of the bushes, or that Alain would race up from the basement steps to sink his claws in her ankles and drag her down into the dark abyss just so she could feel something else.
But he wasn’t.
The house was still as haunting and heavy as ever, but when she entered with dried tears staining her cheeks and a weight she couldn’t push off caving her ribs in, it almost seemed to relish in the sight of her so low. Like her misery and despondency was the finest wine it had to taste in ages.
When she sat at the dinner that was already served by the time she barreled in, she tasted every bite with starved gratitude, afraid that when she closed her eyes, she’d wake up five years prior with nothing to eat but a bag of chocolate chips and the half-empty carton of milk she had stolen from work. It was the best meal she had eaten in weeks, and she was sure to tell the staff member in the kitchens repeatedly, thanking them so much they had started to blush and Jin had to tug her out of the kitchen.
Everyone at the table must’ve sensed she was off, for none of them dared bring up the fact that her eyes were still puffy or the lone sniffle she played off as allergies.
Hoseok never made it to dinner. She figured that told them enough.
The hush of the halls lingered so thick it rang in her ears like the dial tone she had heard hundreds of times; the soundtrack to those five years on her own that had been so overplayed it skipped and stalled like an old CD. She wished she could remember the time Yoongi had picked up the phone — a memory that made him laugh so beautifully when they had reunited in the spring almost a year prior — but she couldn’t. Not a single word.
Maybe if she had, she would have come home sooner.
Y/n looked to his empty seat at the table where Yoongi should be, but was instead helping his coworkers wind warm lights around banisters and wrought iron gates. The urge to grab her coat and keep him company until her fingertips went numb from the cold and her cheeks hurt from laughing was strong, but not enough to carry her heavy limbs anywhere but her room.
After trudging up the stairs and stripping herself of her clothes, she let the shower run over her skin, cold and sharp as it dug into her muscles just like it used to be when she didn’t have enough money to warm it up. She stood there, just staring at the old bathroom walls, while her mind was far away from there.
Except this time, instead of it letting her muscles freeze until they ached, a different hand poked through the curtain to twist the faucet until it steamed, warming the blood in her veins from blue to red. That same hand coasted down her numb shoulder blades and lathered soap over her back in wide soothing circles.
Blinking the rivulets of water out of her eyes, Y/n focused them on the blurry shape to her left, her lip quivering. “I missed you.”
The gentled touch moved to block the water from pouring into her eyes. Jimin’s face came in to focus, pinched with both worry and confusion, thumb rubbing tender circles into her cheek. “I’ve been right here, my love.”
“I know,” Y/n choked back a sob with a wry smile, keeping her arms wrapped around herself. “You’ll stay tonight, right?”
Jimin took a moment to examine what she was really saying, like if he looked hard enough, he could crawl inside her brain and pick through her brain like Jungkook or Yoongi could, the arm busy scrubbing soap into her skin stalling. With the softest of smiles and the lightest of voices, he answered, resuming his ministrations. “Of course. But it won’t just be us; Kook is pacing the room like a madman. He’s concerned about why you looked so upset at dinner.”
The thought of having not just one, but two people to spend her night within a room that was warmed by the hum of life through the floor, with walls that breathed more than the neighbors who chain-smoked cigarettes on the fire escape outside her old window….
She chased away the phantom smell of smoke with that of the body wash and his residual cologne that never quite left his skin wafting over the misty steam. “That’s perfect. I was going to ask if he could join us tonight anyways.”
“Just him?”
Shaking her head to herself, her lips threatened to give way to some sort of pleasant shape. Jimin was nothing if not attentive. “The more the merrier.”
“Good,” Jimin moved to rise the suds from her skin. “If I’m remembering correctly, I saw Jin message about a game night if you wanted to join. Afterwards, you can tell me all about the plants you got today, yeah?”
With a satisfied hum, Y/n tipped her head back into the now hot water. “Sounds nice.”
Sounds like home.
_________________________________________
Saturday was colder than Y/n had expected, not even the surplus of bodies or the cranked up heat washed away the sticky chill that suctioned to her skin from the walk to the hotel.
Guests were lining up outside the Adelaide doors and snaking all the way through the lobby just to get in the room where tonight’s show would be taking place. As the days had leapt into the first week of December, the holiday season had sprung over not only the neighboring towns, but had overtaken the entire property. Thus, tonight’s show was one of the last few of the year, the usual classics intermingled with popular holiday jazz to create a mixture that even those who didn’t celebrate could enjoy. It always seemed to bring in the largest crowds, for even locals who weren’t staying on the property would come to tour the garden light shows and holiday performances with their families.
The atmosphere was nostalgic for Y/n, but she couldn’t have imagined how seeing it all lit up and stuffed with greenery would’ve struck the already tender chords of her final moments here all those years ago. It set her teeth on edge, her responses a bit too airy or rushed, her eyes always searching for somewhere to look that didn’t poke at something sore.
Being the owner’s daughter and the performer’s lover had its privileges, one being that they already had a table reserved close to the stage just for her and anyone accompanying her, skipping straight through the lines and earning the best view. While the invite had been extended to everyone else, the only one who had actually taken her up on it was Jimin, which was to be expected when Namjoon didn’t particularly care for the holiday season, and Jungkook was down for the count with a head cold, saving his strength for the upcoming week. Jin said he might try to pop in, but he was tasked with the unfortunate job of working the desk that evening, and Yoongi was busy wrestling with fresh pine boughs that would be repurposed for the Jung wedding.
She didn’t even try to poke into why Hoseok wouldn’t come. His silence was self-explanatory. All he had been doing as of late was moping around shared spaces like a kicked puppy or following after Jin anyway. She didn’t need that energy tonight.
The table was already set when she lowered herself into her seat, an array of starters lay out and exhaling steam, their places set and awaiting the food he had already probably ordered. Jimin was good with things like that, taking it upon himself to order the meal and drinks ahead of time so she wouldn’t have to wait, somehow always knowing what sounded best to her on any given day. (Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she had texted the group chat multiple times about how excited she was to try one of the new pasta dishes on the dinner menu, but that’s not the point). What was the point was the fact that there was three plates set out instead of two, and a small ceramic dish of what used to be an ice cream sundae that was now nothing but a shrinking mountain of vanilla, rainbow sprinkles, and fudge, swirling into a gray pit.
That was odd. Because she had been certain no one else was intending to join them.
And Jimin didn’t like fudge.
Unfortunately, her questions remained unanswered for now, as Jimin was not seated at the table, probably off using the bathroom or checking in on Taehyung backstage. Without trying to sound like she was too nosy, she sent him a hasty text just letting him know Jin had supervised her drop off and that she was already at the table. Her phone wasn’t even fully back in her pocket when she felt it.
Like the pluck of a harp, something deep within her abdomen twinged with the arrival of a cold breeze, disturbing her slumbering morning glory vines to raise their closed buds, curiously scouring the room for what may have woken them. A sporadic rhythm that irritated them each time they thought it safe to rest their heads again.
Minutes passed of Y/n just looking over her shoulder at the doors, taking in a couple, each with a young child on their hip, struggling through the current to a seat they probably waited far too long for; or the group of gentlemen taking up entirely too much space at the bar, not bothering to move aside for anyone passing by.
There was nothing she could see that would warrant such a reaction. But what she could see didn’t concern her as much as what she couldn’t.
A strange wet sound had her neck snapping back towards the table, kicking herself when she discovered the cherry atop the syrupy sundae had simply bounced down the ravine and plopped into the moat forming at the bottom of the dish. There wasn't much time to stew over the feeling, her attention immediately stolen by a startling waft of citrus and pine.
Eyes averted to the table she plucked at a loose thread of the wine colored cloth. “I wasn’t aware you were coming.”
The chair next to her slid out, the leather expelling a hiss of hair as Hoseok sank into it. “Guess I’m full of surprises.” He scanned her once, clearing his throat. “You look nice.”
Doing the same to him, she paused. A well fitted pair of slacks and a cashmere sweater over a crisp button up, and his finest watch. The perfect cross between well-dressed and casual. “So do you.”
Fingers moving up to play with some of the wavy strands of hair atop his head, he said nothing else, taking up the people-watching past time she had put down. She tried not to feel some satisfaction with how nervous he seemed, a faint flush dusting his cheeks, and his leg resisting an almost lightning speed bounce. It’s not that she wanted to intimidate him, but it did tell her that he felt some remorse for his behavior earlier in the week.
Whatever had been toying with her senses seemed to pull back a bit at the interruption, slinking around the perimeter of the table to observe the two. It gave her a similar feeling to being watched by a teacher during an exam, calculating and overly perceptive. Maybe this was how an animal felt under observation, stuck in a glass bowl while some scientist tapped their pen against a clipboard, a dull expression fixed on each and every choice the caged animal made with condescending criticism.
“Apologies, I had to run back to the hotel to snag something for Taehyung.” Jimin appeared out of breath and a bit disheveled, the top button of his shirt undone in favor of having more room to breathe. He wasn’t exaggerating by any means — he looked like he had literally ran. His lips pressed a light kiss to her cheek as he pulled out his chair.
“No worries.” Moving to the side to make room for him, Y/n’s bare knee unintentionally brushed against Hoseok’s thigh, his spine straightening like he was zapped, yet he made no move to move it away like he had made a habit of lately. “How’s he doing? Did he forget the band-aids for his shoes again?”
Jimin was quick to take a sip of his bubbling drink. “Alright. He was just out of Tylenol.”
She winced. “Headache again?”
“Seems to be the case most days,” With a sigh, Jimin stretched his arm over the back of her chair and reclined back into his own comfortably, regarding Hoseok over her shoulder. “I ordered you the harvest soup, is that okay?”
Hoseok made an agreeable noise in the back of his throat. “S’fine.”
The tension was thicker than the pat of butter she was smothering her roll with, both from Hoseok’s clear unease and Jimin’s aloof air that didn’t quite suit him. She couldn’t place a finger on it. Jimin wasn’t squirming in his seat, nor was sweat protruding from his hairline. His words were confident and assured, his jokes well placed and smooth; nothing about him outwardly seemed off.
Still, something remained to be said about how he seemed more adamant about keeping his arm firmly in place on her shoulders, or the way the muscle in his temple twitched whenever he clenched his jaw too tight.
Y/n had an inkling as to part of what the issue could be. Maybe he was withholding just how or why Hoseok had decided to join them for the evening, not wanting to admit to her face that he was trying to do some conflict resolution beneath their very noses. The other elephants loafing about the room were the mysterious sundae, or Taehyung’s apparent headache. Either way, she had to throw a dart and hope it stuck. And what better one to start with than the low-hanging fruit situated in front of her.
Using her butter slick knife, she pointed across the table to the sundae. “Who’s that for?”
Jimin shifted in his seat, eyes flicking to look at her out of the corner of his eye for only a brief second before hurriedly averting them to the curtain-shrouded stage.
Bingo.
“I figured Matilda might like to join us.”
Y/n contemplated his answer over the first pillowy bite of bread. The twang didn’t feel like Matilda — not unless she was feeling a bit MAD that day. “How is she today? Pretty clean?”
Jimin nodded distantly. “For the most part. I told her she could come only if she behaved around the guests today.”
“And did she?”
He pointed at the ice cream. “I believe the reward speaks for itself.”
Looking at the glossy fudge topping, Y/n fought back a frown.
Matilda had the taste of a typical five year old: anything sweet was a given-in, while literally anything else turned any given weeknight into a high-stakes hostage negotiation. But if there was one thing she remembered about her sister, it was that her and Jimin had something in common: they both hated fudge topping.
Matilda would whine whenever her parents had forgotten to add a rushed ‘No fudge on the kids sundae please!’ through the order window, all pouts and nasal cries until either someone else forfeited their dessert (usually Jungkook or Jin), or her parents begrudgingly admitted their mistake to the cashier and forked the money over for a new one. It had become such widespread knowledge that Jungkook’s dad used to joke that her father must be doing it on purpose just so he could have a second ice cream on the walk home.
Could Jimin have just forgotten? Possibly. He had known her the least amount of time out of everyone, and while close with her, she wasn’t his sister. It wasn’t his job to remember how she liked her ice cream, or what side of the car she liked to sit on so she wouldn’t get car sick.
‘Possibly’ didn’t mean ‘likely’ though. Like she said, Jimin was good at this kind of thing.
A spoon dove across Y/n’s peripheral, scooping up the fudge which had hardened into a limp dome and discarding it onto one of the empty appetizer plates before she could say anything.
When Jimin eyed Hoseok incredulously from across the table, the latter merely shrugged as though he had done the most obvious thing in the world, pushing his fork around the same few leaves of the starter salad that he had been pretending to eat since he sat down. “She doesn’t like fudge.”
Jimin ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek instead of responding, the apologetic wince Y/n’s way looking pained not by shame, but something Y/n couldn’t name. She didn’t have time to comment much on his strange behavior, nor the new disquieted buzz that had settled over the table, for the lights were starting to flicker, warning any straggling guests to take their seats.
Luckily for Jimin, her attention was diverted by the mouth-watering scent of fresh pasta and herbs, their loaded plates slid in front of them to tuck into just as the band took their first breath, the curtains drawn to welcome in a sea of sparkling brass and the lone sleek black piano.
Taehyung looked as captivating as when she had first seen him, donning another one of his hand-altered and eccentric suits that toed the line between classy and sensual, welcoming the crowd with a Christmas song almost everyone had probably heard a hundred times on the radio already. But from him, it sounded brand new.
Bouncing to the beat, Y/n had let everything else melt away for a moment, focusing intently on enjoying the performance Taehyung had worked hard to perfect and the food she had been daydreaming about all week. Though something must have been in the wine, because Hoseok seemed to be enjoying himself, engrossed in the performance with one long finger tapping along to the rhythm on the side of his glass to each song. On some occasions, when the song switched from some holiday carol to a classic, well-known jazz piece, Hoseok even let himself hum along. And if he was bothered by the obvious flirtatious winks or call-outs Taehyung made to their table, he didn’t show it.
Y/n had half the mind to kick his shin and ask him whether or not she needed to call someone on his emergency contact list, because the last time she had spoken to him he couldn’t even look at Taehyung, let alone stare at him for nearly an hour while applauding his performance. It was odd. He wasn’t even this outwardly friendly when they had come to some unspoken truce over the summer.
If this was his way of apologizing…Y/n couldn’t tell if it was working or not. She wanted him to mean it. To say it to her face and not leave it to scab with time like he usually would.
The crowd clapped with excitement as the easily recognizable beginning of ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ took off, a clear crowd favorite and renowned classic for a reason. This was one of the songs Taehyung knew like the back of his hand; the words were built into his brain like a well-worked muscle that he could flex in his sleep if he tried.
“Fill my heart with song and let me sing forever more,” Through the haze of stage lights, he locked eyes with her, stealing her breath away long enough to have her hands fumble between sending him a heart and a thumbs up, nearly cracking his professional demeanor with the slightest twitch of his lips. Then he turned to scan the crowd, cradling the microphone close to his mouth in a way that had her jealous of an inanimate object. “You are all I long for, all I worship…”
He knew this song. Everyone knew this song. Which is why it took Y/n a few seconds to realize he had stopped singing.
Taehyung was frozen. Mouth open, eyes still trained towards the back of the restaurant; still, like a photograph and not a real man standing on stage.
“Y-you are…”
The crowd stirred. The band tried to recover with sweaty, rapid glances and smoothly circling back to replay the last verse to easily pick back up where he left off. Y/n’s hands fell from a proud clap to nervously intertwine at her chest in a silent prayer that he would look her way.
The music went on without him — and he didn’t look at her.
Instead, his eyes darted from one side of the room to the other, panic-stricken and open so wide she could see the whites of his eyes swallowing the warm brown that wormed a special place in her heart. It was like he was lost, white-knuckling the microphone as beads of sweat accumulated on his temples.
A loud clang rang through the speakers, the microphone stand toppled on its side and rolling towards the edge of the stage with an ear splitting screech.
Y/n was up on her feet, stuck between two chairs and the table behind her, trying to offer him some kind of reassurance — to get to the stage, to meet him at the edge — something. Around the room, the dim lights flickered to the beat of a low rumble through the floorboards as though a crack of thunder had unleashed itself overhead.
And then he was running — stumbling off towards the back of the stage, tripping over the trumpet section and nearly toppling down the steps towards the green room.
The lights went out next, another loud rumble of thunder pulling a frightened shriek out of children and surprised shouts from the adults; a loud commotion started to pull the crowd up and into the walkways, all trying to get some sort of peek out the door towards the lobby for any kind of explanation. Cries of outrage started to grow louder as people demanded answers for the money they had spent or the time they wasted waiting in line, but Y/n was already moving too fast to hear much of it.
Quick on their feet, the woman at the piano started the intro to another popular Christmas carol, the band falling in line with a level of expertise Y/n couldn’t imagine, soothing the crowd while navigating their instruments in almost complete darkness. Their music was muted in the musty backstage hall once the door had closed behind her, and the red emergency lights didn’t seem to get the memo to turn on.
All Y/n could think about was getting to Taehyung. Alarm bells were ringing in her head, and she couldn’t be sure how many of them were a real instinctual sensation and which ones were just the first rope her conclusions had managed to jump onto and tug. Eyes were one her again, those same, cold and watchful eyes from before. Deeper they drilled into her spine, borrowing through bone and striking the nerves encased there. She could feel it in her skull, under her skin; crawling out her mouth with the taste of stomach acid and basil.
She was hyperventilating, each breath shrinking in size but growing with need. The door to the green room was close now, her hand preemptively outstretched to take the handle in its grasp and rip it off its hinges. She just needed to make sure he was okay-
A hand curled around her elbow, yanking her back towards whomever had followed. Their grip burned through her skin, soothing the cold tingling sensation that had overtaken her limbs.
“Not now Hoseok!” Hissing through her teeth, Y/n tried to pry his hands from her arm.
The fingers on her arm broke off into her fist, crumbling under the slightest of pressure and wriggling against her palm like worms, skin turning slippery and ridged to the touch. They stretched into long, thin tendrils, winding themselves around her palm hand enough to restrict blood flow. With a poorly kept scream, she tried to chuck them into where she knew the nearest wall should be, but they wound themselves somehow even tighter than before, refusing to let go.
Higher they crept, gaining inches by the second, slithering up her forearms to her shoulder with blinding speed. They hissed and clicked jaws she couldn’t see, coming closer and closer to her exposed neck.
Running was impossible — not like she could outrun something already attached to her skin — the hall a landmine of solid instrument cases and uneven floors. Even then, she tried, knocking her shin into the hard shell of a trombone case and falling forward onto her hands and knees.
Needle-like teeth skimmed her throat just as the darkness began to move, coiling round and round until it bent her windpipe. It stole her breath, trapped her pulse, and turned her limbs to ice. The only name that came to her lips was death, for there could be no other explanation for how this entity gripped her heart in its fist and clenched till it bled.
Seconds felt like hours when her lungs wouldn’t open, her chest an empty dead weight where her heart should be. The dissent of the crowd could still be heard from the room over, loud enough to drown out a scream if she had the air to make one.
It was like she was in the shadows of her dreams, floating in darkness that never ended, suspended between life and death with a frayed thread.
This was unlike any other spirit or demon she had yet to face.
This one didn’t have the mindless, untamed brutality of all the rest. No, this one was confident. Careful. Patient. It was uncharacteristically patient.
In a blink, the lights were back on and the pressure had vanished. There was nothing around her arms or her hands. There was no ghost standing before her. Nothing but the peeling wallpaper in the dingy hall and the cases she had knocked over in her path to the green room.
Still, its presence thrummed through the floorboards and snuck up the walls, surrounding her on all sides — a predator closing in on its prey. A gasp sputtered from her mouth, and then another. Her heart hammered to life within her ribs, clambering over itself to catch up for what it had missed. Shuffling backwards until she was pressed against the wall, she brought her knees to her chest, rubbing the blood back into the limbs with urgency.
She was so, so cold.
A weight in her lap had her straightening her legs, screaming at her blurry vision to readjust to the sudden influx of light. There wasn’t a sound left in her throat for her to make as the freshly punctured body of a mouse rolled onto its side with her movement, coming to rest in a dip of fabric from her dress, mouth relaxed and open and eyes big and glassy.
She saw herself in that mouse. Its neck shredded by two long teeth having torn through its throat, eyes terrified and pitiful. A pest so easily squashed by its capture.
Without a doubt, Y/n knew she should be dead. Knew that whatever otherworldly being had just displayed its power to her could have killed her instantly.
It just didn’t want to.
The door to the hall creaked on its hinges, Hoseok shouldering in and assessing the trail of tipped over instrument cases, scouring the hall like a madman until he found her shriveled up on the floor, unable to move. He started towards her.
“Figured you were back here. C’mon, before Jimin has a-” The color drained from his face, swallowing hard down at the image of its crude little face. “Don’t tell me that’s…”
Blinking blearily, Y/n’s voice sounded far away as she looked up to him. “Please...P-please get it off me.”
Hoseok scrambled to his knees, inelegantly slipping his hand under the fabric of her dress and using it as a springboard to launch the poor mouse onto the floor, where it bounced like a dog’s used chew toy. She must have looked as beside herself as she felt, for his hand hesitantly dropped to rest on her knee in what was intended to be comforting, giving it a light squeeze. Even with their rocky current standing, she was still appreciative of his presence.
Over time, Y/n had come to learn the difference in how each of them felt when they used their unique spiritual abilities, especially as they had been cracking down on practice and the control of said abilities. Hoseok's had gone from being an unpredictable prick or clammy burn to a feverish seep, like his touch was melting past a layer of defenses and soaking up images, feelings, or vague concepts like a sponge. Just like it felt now — warmth running up from her knee to her thigh, spreading over her skin like the glow of a welcoming hearth.
It touched something sensitive and unstable, fingers carding through her leaves and vines to hook over the residual uneven tick in her heart and the stiffness of her lungs.
As quick as the feeling had started to resurface, his palm grew sweaty and sweltering, wrenching free of her skin with a shocked grunt that had the usual mask he wore to save him from having to be serious crumbling.
“What the fuck?” Hoseok laughed, but it felt like a defense mechanism more than a genuine sound. It was the only sound he could make that felt safe at the moment. He looked like he wanted to do many things — grab her into one of his shaky hugs, run down the hall to call for Jimin, or maybe even puke on his own shoes.
And she could see those options growing fainter and less defined in her minds eye the longer his touch was withdrawn.
“Did you like...die or something?”
Y/n almost had to laugh at his choice of delivery, but the genuine fear in his voice rendered her motionless. The crack in pitch was far too vulnerable for her to wave off.
“I don’t...I don’t know.” Her lip started to quiver. It felt weird to cry in front of him — that wasn’t what they usually did. Stuff like that she saved for Jimin or Jungkook. Maybe poured into a mug and shared over a snack in the greenhouse with Namjoon. Not this. Not here. Not with him.
Something in his expression shifted, be it the gravity of the situation pulling a new version of himself out of its shell, or a survival mechanism kicking in. Either way, he was ushering her to her feet with quick, frantic waves of his hand and what little physical support he could offer. “You need to get back to the house. Maybe find Kook, or look through one of those freaky books Yoongi has. Have Namjoon shake out one of his oils on your head.” His gaze fluttered down to where Y/n’s hands dug into his elbow. “...Maybe all the above.”
“No,” Y/n felt weak, shaking her head as difficult as running a marathon. “Tae...I need to find him. I need to make sure he’s okay.”
Hoseok pressed his lips into a thin line and bit his cheek. Hard. After a few moments, he spoke. “I’ll find him. Make sure he’s good. You get back to the table and find Jimin.”
A brief spike of anger resurfaced in her belly. “No! You’re just going to-”
“I promise I’ll find ‘em — pinky promise.” to emphasize his point, he extended his pinky out in front of her. “No one...No one left behind. Right?”
Trepidly, Y/n raised a trembling hand to interlock their pinkies, squeezing with all her might (which wasn’t a lot at the moment, but she liked to say it was). Looking deep into his eyes, she whispered, “I’m trusting you, Hobi. I mean it.”
“I know, Ducky.”
His heat left her side, his touch gone. Long legs slowly maneuvering through the hall toward the green room and ducking inside to scan for any sign of Taehyung, before moving further down the hall and disappearing around the corner.
She tried to listen to his advice — genuinely willed her brain to trust that he would keep up his end of the bargain.
Maybe it wasn’t her lack of trust more so than her stubbornness to see her own mission through. That, coupled with the knowing that something about this occurrence threatened Alain enough to push new boundaries; a kicked dog will always bite, as Bear liked to say.
She couldn’t let what happened to her happen to them.
The sound of her own breathing reverberated in her ears as she followed Hoseok’s invisible trail through cluttered floor, stepping where he had and leaping over where he couldn’t. It didn’t take long to find him nosing into a supply closet down the back hall and running his fingertips over the wall as he walked.
In the distance, she heard the shrill cry of an infant, and Mr. Jung’s amiable voice boom took over the microphone. “We regret to inform you that the scheduled performance has been postponed due to unforeseen circumstances. If you would like to stay for the remainder of your evening, our exceptionally talented band will still be performing…”
Y/n checked out once he started offering gift certificates at the front desk and a discounted meal, settling her attention on the shrinking distance between her and Hoseok.
Looking over his shoulder at the sound of her steps, his eyebrows rose into his hairline. “Thought you were supposed to be outta here by now?”
“Yeah, well,” Y/n peeled open the next door to where the cleaning staff carts were kept, “I don’t think I’ll be getting any rest until we find him.”
Hoseok shook himself of a chill and coasted his hands down the wall as they tiptoed deeper into the back area of the Adelaide.
“Feel him anywhere?” Y/n hugged her arms around her middle.
His lips jutted out into a slight pout as he felt through the space. “Sorta. It’s like he’s here but...I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”
“Try,” Y/n craned her neck into one of the empty practice rooms but saw no sign of life.
After a long stretch of impatient quiet, he decided on his answer. “He just feels far away. Like he’s everywhere but not.”
They approached the next practice room door, and Y/n reached for the rusted handle first, fingers barely curling around it before Hoseok snatched her wrist.
“Wait.” His palm laid flat against the door, the skin starting to turn blotchy and inflamed. For a few achingly long seconds he sat there, just feeling with his breathing labored.
“He’s in there,” Hoseok whispered down to her.
“Perfect, let’s-”
“But I don’t think he’s alone,” He was quick to stop her again. “The door — it’s a hotspot. Something else touched it recently, and it wasn’t him.”
Y/n responded, equally as hushed. “Who?”
Hoseok grimaced. “Can’t tell you even if I wanted to. I recognize some of the vibes from stuff your mom showed me, but it’s muddy. And big.”
“Alain?”
His breathing grew sharper. “Maybe.”
“Then we have to-” Y/n shoved through the door with a determination that died with the words in her throat. “Do…something…” Taking stock of the room, Y/n trailed into the space that looked nothing like what she remembered any of the practice rooms looking like. There were no wooden chairs or music stands, no filing cabinets of sheet music and the old white board they used to write dumb messages on for Mr. Jung before shows.
It was a dining room.
_________________________________________
Oak-stained wooden floors let them straight to the white farmhouse table, the chairs tied up in bright yellow cushions that matched the fully decked out table setting. The air still smelt of paint and sawdust, the walls pristine and floorboards unscuffed.
“Is this...the guest house?” Hoseok gawked at the room, hand slipping off the doorknob and falling to his side.
Now that he mentioned it, it did in fact look like the guest house — just maybe if it was decades earlier than the present day. There weren’t nearly enough antique paintings or chips in the baseboards to be the guest house she knew so well. The bumpy patch of plaster beneath the light switch where Namjoon had accidentally shoved his elbow through during one of their nights out camping.
Cautiously, Y/n stepped further into the space, the distance fuzz of a record player buzzing out old big band tunes and the bright golden streaks of sun creating the picture-perfect serene Sunday evening scene. Running her hand over the table, her fingers caught on the hand-made place mats and shiny silverware sets, rubbing the metal between her fingers just to test its density.
All of it was real.
None of the previous urgency remained, all of it whisked away with the spin of the turntable and the floating wafts of freshly baked breads and roasted meats.
Disoriented by the sudden shift, Y/n spun to face Hoseok who had gone equally as quiet, hoping to gather their bearings enough to slip back into the hallway so they could try and make sense of it all — come in with a plan. But behind him was no door, and no dingy hallway with shedding wall paper. Just the front door to the guest house, and the stained glass window that left a kaleidoscope of jagged shapes over their shoes.
Hoseok looked around with cartoonish disbelief at where the door once stood. “Uh...I don’t think we’re in fuckin’ Kansas anymore, Ducky.”
“Oh, I wasn’t expecting guests.” A rather mousy voice piped in from around the corner where the kitchen was nestled.
Like a pair of toy magnets, the two of them gravitated towards the other, hands grabbing purchase on sleeves and forearms with choked back gasps to face the intruder. A woman stood before them, thin blonde hair swept into profuse waves that landed at the edge of her chin, donning a modest silk house dress with little shape, a white apron tying it all together over top, dusted with flour and splattered faint grease stains.
The three of them blinked at one another, each waiting for the other to do something — say something. Y/n decided to break the ice. “You live here?”
Tilting her head curiously, the woman fiddled with the diamond around her ring finger. “I suppose you could say that.” Stepping forward, she held out one of her small hands and blinded them with a sweet lilt of her lips. “I am Alice — Alice Wörner.”
Hoseok offered his hand first, giving Alice a firm shake while plastering on a tight-lipped polite smile. “Jay.”
The name he offered caught Y/n off guard, and it took her a moment to realize that Alice was staring at her expectantly, beam now turned to shine on her. “And you?”
Hoseok kicked at her shin with a cough into his fist that sounded suspiciously like ‘fake name!’, zapping her back into motion. Taking the woman’s cold hand in hers, Y/n bowed her head slightly. “Amelia.”
Alice pondered the name, index finger hooking around her chin as she tested the taste of it. “Amelia? Hmmm… that’s funny, it’s so familiar. I must have had a friend named Amelia.” Brushing off the strange exchange, she inched back into the kitchen, calling out to the two over her shoulder. “Supper will be ready shortly. Please, have a seat.”
As soon as the hem of her dress disappeared into the kitchen Y/n huddled closer to Hoseok to whisper. “Was she M.A.D?”
Hoseok leaned in closer. “Didn’t feel like it. But You never know…”
“I really do mean it, please, sit. We have plenty to go around.” Alice scurried back into the room with a pitcher of lemonade, dainty hands pouring the sweet mixture into tall glasses while taking note of their obvious trepidation. “It is no trouble, I never quite grew out of the habit of cooking extra. Even with my boys all grown up and gone, a mother never really loses the instinct to cook like they’re still here. Perhaps they’ll join us tonight!”
Boys. Y/n didn’t care how ridiculous she looked staring at the woman’s back as she returned the pitcher to the fridge, the loose wires of her memory sparking enough to recall just who they were speaking to, her face finding its place amongst the photos on the family tree still tucked up in her closet. Smacking the back of Hoseok’s hand eagerly, she leaned over to hiss into his ear.
“That’s Alice!”
Hoseok looked at her dubiously. “Yeah, that’s what she said.”
“No you don’t get it — that’s Alice. Her boys?” Y/n pointed to the empty seats at the table. “I dunno about the other one, but one of them is Cl-” Smacking a hand over her own mouth like his name would miraculously summon him, she lowered her voice somehow even more. “The mimic.”
“Oh hell no,” Hoseok cursed with a muffled groan. “I do not feel like eating dinner with that creep.”
“Dinner is the least of my concerns,” Y/n rounded his side to peer into the sun room, checking for any other unexpected faces or their runaway jazz singer before returning to his side. “Are you getting anything about where we are?”
“Nope. We might as well not even be…” His joke lost its momentum, landing between their feet like a deflated balloon, his entire body going rigid.
“Not even what?” Her throat tightened at his sudden shift in demeanor.
“The last time I felt this energy was when you were-”
“Would one of you mind running upstairs to let her know food will be ready soon? I have my hands full in here.” Alice popped her head out of the kitchen, blue eyes nervously flitting from the two of them to the narrow hallway that led to the upstairs bedrooms.
“Of course,” Y/n gave her a quick salute, locking back into a hushed discussion with Hoseok. “We have to split up.”
“What? No! That’s like, the number one way dumb people die in horror movies!” Hoseok whisper-argued.
“Well, it’s our only choice! We need to find Taehyung, and we need to get out of here. Alice may seem like a peach now, but it’s only a matter of time before we find out the hard way whether it’s the sour kind or the sweet kind.” Casting a cautious glance back at the kitchen entrance, she continued. “One of us looks upstairs, one of us looks downstairs, yeah?”
“Not yeah,” Hoseok made an ‘x’ motion with his hands. “What if the floor opens up, or the second you walk through one of those doors you get canon balled into the pool? Or I walk into the coat closet and end up in the basement!”
Y/n scowled. He did have a point.
“Well then what’s your idea?”
“Please hurry dear, I don’t want her plate to be cold!”
“On it!” Y/n strained her vocal chords to sound pleasant. Then she gestured for Hoseok to speak, and fast.
“The last time I felt this energy was when you were out. Like, out-out after you tried to give Yoongi the Joker treatment. So my best guess is that we are in that time loop place.” Hoseok relayed quickly.
“If that’s the case, then why hasn’t the scene started over yet? And why can she see us? No one in that hellscape could see or hear me.”
“That’s not true. You said that one of those other guys-”
“-Ernst.” Y/n corrected him with a twitching brow.
“You said that Arnold woke up and saw you. So that means they can wake up.”
“Ernst just so happened to sneeze at the right time. But I was in there for days and only two of them acknowledged me.” Y/n could hear Alice’s shoes clicking across the kitchen tiles back towards the dining room and grabbed Hoseok’s arm, lugging him in the direction of the hallway before she could get angry with them. “And you better fucking pray we aren’t where you think we are, because the only way I got out was through you guys. And as far as we know, no one knows where we are.”
The slats of the stairs were tapered thin and abhorrently steep, forcing them closer in the cramped hall as they started a slow climb.
“As far as we know,” Hoseok repeated with irritating emphasis. “But luckily for us, we have someone who knows what we don’t know. Even when we don’t know what we don’t know, he can find a way to know.”
Y/n blinked up to him blankly, his words going in one ear and out the other. “You’re mouth is doing a whole lotta moving for a whole lotta nothing.”
“You know what I’m talking about! I’m trying not to say too much out loud...” Hoseok snipped back, sticking his neck up to check the landing of the second floor for any imminent danger.
“Strangely, I do, must be a best friend thing.” Y/n pushed past him onto the second floor, scanning the set of three doors that closed them in, and the even tighter walkway to their left that leads to the upstairs bathroom and fourth bedroom. “Now use those fingers to find Taehyung. That way, when they start looking for us, we can focus on getting the hell out of here.”
“Yeah, yeah. But stay close, we don’t want to get separated.” Hoseok shuffled onto the landing space, crouching down to tap his fingertips rhythmically on the wood. Shaking his head with his nose scrunched in displeasure, he rose back up. “Yeah. We are definitely somewhere else.”
“How can you be sure?” At this point, Y/n was just denying the truth for the sake of her own sanity. She knew what he said was true the moment it left his mouth, the all too familiar disarming charm of the air a siren’s call to just let down her guard, maybe pop back into the kitchen for a drink and a slab of that fresh bread that smelled like divine intervention if she had ever heard of it.
Hoseok shook his hand free of some of the building heat. “Because it didn’t hurt to crouch.”
Inching closer to his side, she let out a shaky breath. “Okay. Awesome. Any hits on Tae?”
He shook his head, floorboards creaking under the bend of his weight as he bent to press his ear to one of the doors.
“Are you okay up there?” A heavy sigh fell from even wearier lips. “I ask you to do one thing…”
Heels clicked up the stairs they had just come from, much faster and more persistent than theirs, crowning the top before Y/n made the executive decision to drag them down the tight hallway towards the fourth bedroom.
Backs pressed flat against the wall, breath trapped between clenched teeth, they listened to her steps meander over to the room directly across from the stairs. “I will not ask you again. To jest nie do przyjęcia! Wstawaj! Wstań!”
A throaty groan emanated from the room, followed by a set of steps plodding reluctantly out into the hall. “I’m busy! You can not comprehend the stress I am under! The lead is completely gumming the works, and it is my responsibility to fix it!”
“Yes, dear, and it is also your responsibility to listen to your mother.” Alice could already be heard starting back down the stairs. “Now. Go.”
“Fuck,” Y/n cursed under her breath. “Think we got lucky with which one of her sons is here?” Craning her neck around the corner of the hall, her eyes bulged out of her skull when she caught a glimpse of a much younger and much neater looking Clay. The floor gave her location away, Clay’s neck snapping to squint down the hall at where they jumped away from his inquisitive search. The pound of her heart tormented her eardrums, bile rising to her throat in response to the way Clay had so quickly met her gaze.
His boots scuffed down the hall in their direction.
“Notluckynotluckynotlucky-” Thinking fast, Y/n steered Hoseok by the shoulders into the attic stairwell, slipping after him and notching the door closed.
“Of course not-”
Y/n silenced Hoseok by smushing an index finger to his lips, signaling down to the shadows that extended in from the crack along the bottom of the door where the mimic hovered, searching for them.
Their chests rose and fell in tandem, practically touching with every breath with how close the stairwell forced them to be. The door opened and Y/n had to fight every instinct in her body not to scream, for Clay was standing right there, looking at her with mild disgust.
“Filthy.” He ducked his head just enough to barely be considered in the stairwell, centimeters from her own face. Then he looked past her to the top of the stairs. “Deetz! Supper is ready.”
He waited, then called up to the attic again. “Das Abendessen ist fertig!”
Clay sighed sharply through his nose, fist clenched at his sides as his patience grew visibly thinner. “Mach es schnell, Hackfresse!”
Y/n held her breath as she watched Clay step back, not interested in the two young trespassers in the slightest.
“I don’t think…” Y/n waved a hand in front of Clay, snapping her fingers three times inches from his eyes. Hoseok smacked at her skin in a silent plea to get her to stop, though Clay didn’t flinch once. “It’s fine,” Y/n tried to brush off his hand. “I don’t think he can see us.”
When Hoseok didn’t let up, she turned to check on him, only to find his mouth agape and hand pointing up the stairs behind them.
There, Candida stood merely three steps above, swaying gently as a willow in the breeze. Except she wasn’t herself — she was a vision from a horror film, a shell of a woman whose life had been carved out of her like the insides of a pumpkin used for decoration, her hull left to shrivel and mold on the steps.
Black liquid poured down her cheeks and stained her hands, smeared all over her eyelids and around her sockets without any thought put into where it stopped or started. By the sharp chemical smell of it, it was paint, misplaced streaks of it tracking across the front of her dress and forearms.
“Took you long enough,” Clay admonished with disdain.
“I was working on a piece.”
Candida’s voice was soft; fluttering moth wings, or midnight water lapping along a docked fisherman’s boat. Quiet. Articulate. Nothing like Y/n had heard her sound before.
Clay’s lips curled into an appalled snarl. “I can see that…” Taking a wary step back like she was carrying something contagious, he continued. “Get a move on. You have already taken up enough of our time, no need to be anymore of a thorn.”
Clicking her tongue against her teeth Candida said nothing, choosing to go for a more artistic approach to her response by swiping up a particularly large drop with her finger and flicking it onto his shoulder.
“Damn you!” Clay rushed to swipe it away but only made the stain bleed deeper into his shirt, the heel of his palm now smeared with the tar-like substance. Shaking with rage, he spun on his heel back towards the stairs, muttering to himself a word Y/n had only heard once or twice in her life. Once in a very old foreign film she was far too young to watch, and the second was when her older sister repeated the word at the dinner table, only to have her mouth washed out with soap by their grandmother.
“Fotze…”
Candida squeezed her eyes shut, finding the strength not to throw herself down the steps and throttle him senseless. Y/n knew that look too well.
“Clarance, czy wy tam na górze zachowujecie się grzecznie??”Alice bemused from the floor below.
With his eyes turned towards the floor Clay responded. “Tak, Mamo.”
The wood beneath Y/n’s feet shook as Candida descended, Hoseok yanking both of them out of the way just in time for the paint-drenched woman to reach their step, pausing at the bottom to look in their general direction.
Or maybe directly at them.
“Are you stuck here too?” She sighed, wiping her hands on her already soiled dress. “I can help you with that, if you’d let me.”
An earsplitting bang send the two of them crumpling to the floor, the window overlooking the backyard exploding over their heads, coating their skin and clothes like diamonds. Heat rushed in through the gaps the hole punched in the glass, melting the window pane and soaking their skin with sweat.
Fire, delirious and masterless, ate through the wood and bit through the floorboards, bending and twisting them like ropes of licorice instead of solid wood. Candida was long gone now.
Hoseok hoisted himself over to her, grasping for her elbows and hoisting her to her feet. “We have to move!”
“But Taehyung!” Y/n pulled back against his hasty escape, using her forearm to shield her eyes from the blaze while she looked into the fiery hellscape beyond the doorway it had carved out, hoping she could find any sign of his whereabouts. To her horror, she actually did find him — the sleeve of his suit jacket covering his mouth from the thickening smoke clouds in the wooden prison he was trapped in.
The hole in the wall that once overlooked grassy fields now acted as a peephole into the hotel theater, the ropes and support beams shredding and thinning under the rage of flame.
“Help me!” A small voice cried out from deep within, young and helpless.
Taehyung spun out in search of the call, treading deeper into the room and further from them.
“Shit,” Hoseok cursed, bouncing on his the balls of his feet that wanted to run, torn between bounding down the steps to the first floor and towards Taehyung. Shaking his head, he made a split second decision to launch himself through the smoldering doorway and skid to a halt on the other side. He beckoned her after him impatiently. “Come on!”
Y/n took off running with only the thought of saving Taehyung on her mind, leaping over the growing barrier and colliding with his outstretched arms. Instantly, her skin poured with sweat, the kind of heat they had trapped themselves in, nothing short of deadly.
It had Y/n pondering what would happen if they were to die in this place — would they wake up? Would they even know?
“Taehyung!” The call came from Hoseok, the name sounding foreign from his lips.
The man in question whirled around to face them, his face nearly unrecognizable, streaked with soot and eyes wide. He looked utterly disoriented, like the sound of his own name was equally frightening and liberating. “What are you — where did you come from?”
Another child’s cry from somewhere in the room took his flighty attention once more, his body reacting first before his mind could catch up. Y/n scrambled after him, narrowly missing a heaped-up curtain being used as kindling for the fire’s starved appetite and floral backdrop buckling over the fake fountain beneath it, setting the “water” in it ablaze.
“Tae! We need to get out of here!”
He couldn’t hear her, whether it be from his own focus blocking out the sound of her voice or the crackling roar around them, keeping on into the blackened tunnels of backstage. With Hoseok hot in their tail, they only stopped once Tae had found what he was looking for: a small body trapped inside a pen of cracked wood, splayed out and immobile.
“We have to help him!” Taehyung jumped a fallen support beam, coming to a stop beside the faceless body. “Quick — grab his hands!”
“Don’t!” Hoseok pushed them both away. “It’s not real! This is a waste of time. We need to get out of here!”
For a moment, Y/n thought Taehyung might lunge at him with how quickly a wave of unbridled rage had overcome his face, turning it into something hideous. Then he turned that anger upward towards the sky, pointing towards an empty catwalk. “You’ve done enough, you hear me! Enough! This has gone too far!”
Y/n’s eyes burned, her throat growing tight and scratchy. “Tae — there’s no one there-”
“He was...they were…” He looked lost, his focus broken once more upon finding the catwalk truly empty.
“Please, we have to find somewhere safe,” grabbing his cheeks, she forced him to look at her. “Please.”
That seemed to shake some sense into him, his eyes going from wild to tamed, a warm brown that really looked at her for the first time since they had found him. He trembled in her hands. “What’s happening to me?”
“We can theorize later when we aren’t in hell.” Hoseok snatched both of their wrists and pulled them out of the way of a crumbling stairwell, the three of them sprinting from the wings and across the stage that was now littered with forgotten ribbons and roses that the guests had tossed upon the performers.
Y/n sped ahead of them, leading the way through the fleeing crowd to the doors and using her body weight to shove them open, opening the dam of people rushing to escape. Hoseok was practically carrying Taehyung behind him, using his lithe frame and bony elbows to shove their way through.
They spilled out into the living room of the Estate, the temperature fluctuation knocking the breath from her lungs and drying the sweat on her skin.
Four little girls huddled in a half circle in front of a plush red armchair, their hands all outstretched in offering to an empty seat. In their tiny palms was an assortment of chocolate candies that were beginning to melt and stain their skin.
“No,” Y/n panted out, a choked sob getting stuck in her throat. “Not again.”
And then there was only one.
“What you asked for!” A little girl with black hair slicked into a neat bun offered her handful of sweets to them, her brows furrowed in concentration, as she closed in on her new targets.
“Fuck, they are gaining sentience!” Hoseok whined out through a gasp, Taehyung’s arm slung over his shoulder weighing him down.
“What you asked for!” She said again, this time with more force. “What you asked for!” She was on her tiptoes, forcing the chocolate closer to their chins. “What you asked for!”
They turned to run down the hall, but the wood gave way to softened earth and thigh-high grasses, an unrelenting early fall sun beating down on the backs of their necks. Dogs barked, their paws thumping over their tracks their feet left, noses huffing up the scent of their fear left in the cracks. Throwing their heads back into a deafening howl, they took off after them with snapping jaws and foaming lips, invigorated by the hunt of fresh prey.
“Run!” Y/n yelped, hooking Taehyung’s other arm over her shoulder and taking off as fast as their conjoined situation would let them — which wasn’t nearly fast enough. The dogs were closing in, fulfilling the duty they were trained for.
“Atta boy Chubs!” One of the hunters cheered with pride, making motions to hustle after the beasts.
Y/n spared a glance back at the four of them, two of them tossing their packs to the side to keep up. They were so close to the woods, close enough for her fingertips to brush over a crooked root and use it to pull herself up the side of the tree line.
One of the dogs jaws sunk into Taehyung’s ankle, ripping him from their shoulders and dragging him down the slope towards the men. There was now only two of them, older gentlemen with grayed hair and wrinkled faces.
“Enough with the games, son! You’re going to get yourself hurt,” The younger of the two scowled down at Taehyung’s writhing form. “I surely taught you better than that.”
The grass besides them moved and dipped as though the other half of their party were still standing there, their bodies just invisible, their existence blipped from time.
The root in her hand moved, sliding through her palm and curling down her leg. It grew tenfold in size, jaw unhinging and forked tongue spitting out a series of hisses and clicking sounds, its eyes bulbous and black, bleeding oily tears into his uncanny grin. A snake, big and black and unlike any animal Y/n had ever seen, demanded her attention, flicking its tail with something akin to a laugh. It didn’t stop growing, skin thickening and back widening, a beastly humanoid shape starting to take form.
“Wake up,” the creature hissed, winding around her waist until his face was inches from hers. It laughed in the face of her fright, drank in the way her arms fought against his grip with morbid delight. “For next time, I will not be so kind.”
It dove for her face, snarling with teeth poised for the kill.
_________________________________________
Y/n awoke in the dark, cheek smushed to antique wooden floorboards and knees aching. A hive of bees made their home in her arms, humming beneath her skin and numbing the nerves compressed by the awkward bend in her joints. A high-pitched buzzing from the hallway lights just beyond a closed door and the dizzying swirl of lilting holiday carols made her lower lid twitch.
With a groan, she shimmied an arm free of her own body weight, smacking it against the for a few times for good measure.
“Are you awake?”
A small scream cracked through her dry lips, eyes searching through the dark for the owner.
Through the dim light beneath the door she could make out the faint outline of Taehyung seated on an old love seat, the support slats bent with age and overuse, his body sinking low into the cushions.
“Tae…” She stretched a hand out towards him, ignoring the pins and needles that fought the movement.
“Don’t,” He huddled deeper into the couch, knees curling up off the floor. “We don’t want to go back there.”
She willed her eyes to cut through the dark. “What?”
“I was…” He audibly swallowed. “I heard you coming, I went to open the door and we just...I think I put us to sleep. I’m sorry…”
“You didn’t mean it,” Y/n managed to pull herself on her hands and knees, starting a crawl towards him. “Sometimes when we are stressed things can just leak.”
“It’s never leaked like this before.” He uttered, the darkness a welcomed protection, shielding him from reality and giving him the space to crack without observation. “My dreams usually stay mine.”
Sitting up on her knees, she fisted the fabric of her dress to hold back from wrapping her arms around him. He sounded so small, and she had no idea how to coax him out of such a state. Unlike everyone else here, she didn’t know him like the back of her hand. She wasn’t raised alongside him, hadn’t gotten to watch him through every cringe or fanatical phase of his life. They were still learning each other in more ways than one, and right now she felt helpless. And it probably wouldn’t do him any good to know that it wasn’t exactly a dream either.
“It can get worse when you’re sick.” Hoseok mumbled from somewhere in the dark. “You’ve been having those migraines, right?”
Taehyung didn’t confirm or deny it.
Hoseok’s exhale hissed through his nose unintentionally. “Could be making it worse. The harder you try to run from it, the harder it is to control.”
Y/n compartmentalized her emotions carefully, lining them up like antique vases in her head to pick up and thumb through later, her limbs beginning to shake with the sheer crash of adrenaline her body was trying to catch up with. Her grip on her control was beginning to slip now that they weren’t actively running from danger. Checking in on her friends was a good distraction. “You okay, Hoseok?”
“Mm.”
Okay, not a great distraction. He wasn’t giving her much to cling to. If she didn’t get moving and usher them out back to Jimin, she was going to crumble on the floor. It had been a while since she was genuinely shaken like this by a spirit, their advances becoming subdued or mundane.
This was a show of power, throwing them in that world and striking her down in the hall. One that almost had her debating their upcoming plan.
A few more moments were spent in the dark, the trio trying to regain their bearings to the gentle hum of carols from the Adelaide down the hall. How long had they even been out? Surely it couldn’t have been too long if Jimin hadn’t come to look for them yet, the show still doing its best to recover from the strange outburst. Speaking of that…
“What happened out there?” Y/n directed her question to the sofa. “On stage?”
“I don’t know.”
Just as she was formulating her next question, the door swung open with gusto, smacking into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. Light blinded them from the busted door frame, burning her retinas and shrinking her pupils far too fast for her to really see much of anything. A chorus of grunts and grumbles came from her companions in their equally pitiful states.
Jin looked pale as a sheet, a type of fear etched into his face she had never seen before; one she hoped never to see again, for with him such a reaction was more than a feeling. It was knowledge — an undeniable truth written out in bold letters and neon ink along the hike of his brow and slack in his jaw. There was real danger here, and they narrowly missed it.
“Jimin said you were — I asked and it said —”
Hoseok fought a weak chuckle.
Jin fumed, glaring with the passion of a hundred mothers down at him. “What’s so funny to you?”
Hoseok’s sneaker nudged the bottom of Y/n’s shoe. “I told you so.” He wiggled his eyebrows playfully, albeit the action a bit slow with evident fatigue, two fingers poking at his temple. “He knows.”
Y/n must have gone mad herself, because a short laugh broke free of her mouth, then another. And another. A flutter of her diaphragm that had her gasping for breath and clutching at her stomach, water welling up in the corner of her eyes.
Then she was crying, big ugly tears falling down her cheeks as she made sounds that couldn’t commit to being laughter or sobs. She was at a breaking point, the true implications of what had occurred in the hallway finally setting in, the situation with Taehyung gripping her stomach and twisting it about, and looking at Hoseok just sent her over the edge. His complete 180 flip from wanting nothing to do with her, to single-handedly assisting in a rescue mission like nothing was amiss the final straw to break the camel’s back, his moods swinging through her meticulously lined feelings like a wrecking ball.
So she went to someone she knew could take care of it — someone she didn’t have to spend the energy wondering whether or not they would tread lightly or stoke any existing flames. She trusted their judgment, leaned into it like a child finding safety in the familiar comfort of their blanket.
Approaching Jin, she gripped his hands that instinctively pulled her to her feet without a thought, his watchful eyes scouring their faces with both reprove and concern, like he was planning out just how he was going to clean each of them up and get them back on their feet. He didn’t back down or flinch when she burrowed into his shoulder; instead, his hand found her back and drew soothing lines down her spine, lip pulled between his teeth as he chose his next move.
“Jimin went to get back up.” He shared with quiet authority. “When they get here, I want you waiting in the green room and ready to leave. And no more planning, scheming, or arguing tonight. Everyone is getting cleaned up and going to bed.”
Hoseok whined with a dramatic toss of his head. “Jiiiiinnn, we aren’t kids-”
“Then maybe some of you should stop acting like it.” Jin gave him a pointed look. “If you think what happened tonight isn’t going to set my dad off on our trail, you’re dead wrong. We lay low, we rest. God knows you need it.” He held out his free hand, letting Hoseok use it as an anchor to guide his aching legs to a stand. Last but not least, he glazed over Taehyung, a distant look coming over his features that she couldn’t decipher. “Especially you. No pit stops.”
Keeping close to Jin kept her sane, his hand on the small of her back giving her spine the strength it needed to put on a face of strength so none of them could see how much she wanted to throw up in the nearest toilet or whisper to Jungkook the fears that she knew would have him packing the car up tonight.
That she was scared this might actually kill her.
So she didn’t dare say them. Kept them tucked away for her mind to wring dry.
Jungkook could sense something though, his eyes too sharp and his nose well-trained to follow the stench of death. She probably reeked of it; resembled it as she stared zoned out while watering her plants or curled up on Jungkook’s bed while he fired up one of his gaming consoles.
Offering her a controller, he spoke softly. “Wanna play?”
Y/n stared at the plastic controller in his hand while she contemplated her answer. He would probably pout if she said no, but she couldn’t find the strength within herself to care about pixelated farms or romancing as many villagers as possible. Not tonight. Not even if he pouted.
She shook her head, turning away from the plastic.
The left corner of his mouth turned down in a slight frown, dark eyes roaming her face. Something about her countenance must of said that it wouldn’t do any good to pry, because he simply switched the game cartridge and lifted the covers for them to bury themselves beneath.
Bright colors and whimsical towns flashed across the screen, giving her face the illusion of life as they splashed over her face. Time seemed to move slow enough here, watching him fight a boss in some medieval adventure game, his arm pulling her flush to his side to force her to relax. His body was still ruminating with the remnants of a fever, warm yet not uncomfortable.
He had told her she could take care of him, knowing that fussing over him would give her something to distract her already mushy brain. But really, who was caring for who when a shy run of his fingertips over her upper arm or curve of her hip were always perfectly timed to the rise in her blood pressure when she thought back to her experience of the evening.
It was there in the crushing comfort of his hold that she realized she didn’t have to say it out loud. They were both thinking it as red letters hovered over a black screen, his incessant tapping of buttons ceasing for a moment to breathe out his frustrations.
‘Game over!’
Y/n could see herself in the reflection of the screen, the words scrawled over her own face like an ugly scar. She tried to sink deeper into the curve of his side, tuck her chin, or hide her face under his jaw to escape it. It followed her wherever she went.
A low grumble rolled out of his chest.
He grit his teeth.
He hit ‘start over’.
The green-clad character spawned to life, wasting no time to land an arrow directly into the beast's massive dark eye. It screamed, but it didn’t die.
_________________________________________
Water dripped from the calcified joint of a pipe, splattering softly on the dirt floor and dampening the back of an unlucky house mouse, causing it to scamper off towards the safety of the wooden steps. It was in such a hurry that it barely missed getting flattened under the sole of Adelaide’s boot, struggling under the first step with its tail caught under her heel.
“Scheiße!” Adelaide hid her shout behind a breathless murmur, aiming the beam of her light to where its worm-like tail vanished beneath the steps.
A stifled laugh echoed down the steps behind her. “Something's never change, I suppose.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” She shone the beam in her brother’s face, making him grunt in irritation as he rushed to shield his vision.
Freidrich dodged her interrogative light and bumbled passed her. “You’ve never been fond of animals.”
Adelaide scoffed. “I’ll have you know I am quite fond of animals. Dogs for one. Cats are pleasant little creatures, birds…” Adelaide ticked off the animals quietly as she coasted her light up the wall, frightening a few hungry spiders into their favored cracks and casting shadows of cobwebs onto the stone walls. “...Mice can stay outside where they belong. They carry diseases, and eat through a year's worth of food in hours when they scratch their way into places they shouldn’t be, inviting all their friends in once the treasure has been discovered.”
Freidrich lowered himself down to the ground with a pinched sound in the back of his throat, his bad foot not doing him any favors. “Interesting. Sounds like you and the mice have a lot in common.”
Rolling her eyes, she resituated the light onto his back with a shiver. “Make haste. It is cold down here.”
“Don’t rush me,” He scolded under his breath, untucking the thin book from under his arm and pressing it open on the ground with three fingers. “This must be perfect. One misstep and we could turn our dear brother into some immortal god, not strip him of whatever he has darkened himself with.”
She steeled herself forward, puffing her chest full with a breath of new bravery. “What first?”
“First you will hold the light still. Second, you will stay quiet and keep watch. If this is to work as it should, he might feel it and come searching for us.”
“Hold the light,” Adelaide repeated dryly.
Freidrich paused his rummaging through his pockets, stopping to narrow his eyes at her. “Are you going to cause me any trouble tonight?”
“No,” Adelaide sighed in disappointment. “Not unless you give me a reason to, brother.”
“Then I suggest you keep the complaining to a minimum.” Turning back to the task at hand, he pulled out a few small satchels from his pockets, laying them out on the ground for him to go through. “Just do your job, and I will do mine.”
“And what exactly is your job?”
“I will be organizing the proper components and leading the banishing ritual, successfully ridding ourselves of this heinous spell he has put everyone under.” His responses were getting shorter, clipped by the tension harbored between his shoulder blades. “Just as we have discussed.
“How heroic,” Adelaide deadpanned, leaning her hip against the stairway banister.
Time passed by in the wet smack of leaking pipes and the murmur of her brother pouring over the steps to his ritual, taking out white petals, tri-colored leaves, greenery and all sorts of different pieces he had gotten his hands on since their first meeting. She watched, entranced by the methodical pummel of them as he crushed them in a bowl with his knuckles down into a paste, mesmerized by the assiduous nature her brother showed her he was capable of.
Far off in the depths of the house, Adelaide could have sworn she heard a door — perhaps a lone footstep on the floors above. Holding her breath she listened, her ears picking up nothing more than the winter winds whistling against the window panes.
Nervous but far too stubborn to show it, she angled the light back at him. “How long do you think this will take?”
Despite him being turned the other way, she could almost see the way he closed his eyes to keep hold of his patience. “I am half finished.”
“Half?” Adelaide ran her tongue over her teeth, holding back the words she wished she could say. All the ones her mother would probably die upon hearing.
“Yes. Half.” Her brother stood, reaching for his cane and wielding it like a sword. “Now begins the second half.”
With the tip pressed to the dirt floor, he drew thin lines in the soil, circling all around him like a windmill. Adding curves here or a series of straight lines there. It was intricate, yet so very delicate. Adelaide felt stuck in place, worried even the smallest shift of her boot would rattle any loose grains and send them tumbling into his creation. She did not want to be the reason his efforts failed. That would have to be the result of his own incompetence.
Then she heard it again — a floorboard giving way under timid weight, like the culprit was trying hard to avoid it, but in the process had made the sound more pronounced and drawn out.
Her nostrils flared with the quickening of her breath. “Rich-”
The door to the basement opened, and at the top of the stairs stalled Ernst, gaze sweeping over Adelaide with an almost curious grin. “What is this? Sneaking around without me, are we?” Within a few descending steps, he paused, head tilted down at where Freidrich had frozen still. “With...Freidrich?”
His solicitous glance was more than enough to make Adelaide’s mouth run dry; he didn’t even need ask her what was happening. She could feel the question burning through the air, and it smelled bitter, like the wind before a storm.
And like the storm, came the rage. Shoulders squared, fists clenched, eyes blazing. Ernst was beyond livid. He was beyond even himself.
His hand rose to strike his brother — to shove him down to the floor and paint his face a new shade with his fist.
But Adelaide moved quick, snatching his wrist and twisting it around his back, holding him hostage with a strength that had sweat pouring down her brow and her muscles shaking. She couldn’t even recognize the man thrashing in her grip.
For a reason unknown to her, it had her throat closing against her will, and her chest shuddering with agony. Freidrich, in all his whispering rambles and pompous monologues — the brother she never would have thought she could trust — was right.
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
next chapter
Main masterlist
Come chitty chat!
Wstawaj! Wstań! : “up! Get up!”
To jest nie do przyjęcia!: This is unacceptable!
Mach es schnell, Hackfresse: Make it quick, shitface
Fotze: Cunt (closet equivalent)
Czy wy tam na górze zachowujecie się grzecznie??: Are you two behaving up there????
Smoke is tired of sharing his wife with their kids, especially his greedy ass 9-month old son.
Inspiration: @urbnnoir's post, this TikTok, this request, this one, and this one. Also commentary from @margepimpson, @myheartsaysyes, @brownskincheyenne and @nika324
“Mama got her hair done!” Arianna shot up from her chair and gleefully skipped down the driveway.
Smoke leaned back in his fold-up chair. He was in the open garage of his home–their home–one hand holding a beer, the other on Elijah Jr, his 9-month old son who was bouncing up and down on his lap.
Annie pulled up in her Chrysler 300 with the windows down. He could hear the music all the way down the block, II Hands II Heaven by Beyoncé. She cut the engine and stepped out of the car like he’d been waiting for her his whole life.
It felt like he had.
His son squealed where he sat, already reaching out for his mama. Annie bent down to give Smoke a kiss and Junior latched right onto her hair as she picked him up.
Smoke loved his babies with every bone and breath in his body. He’d die for them. Burn the world down for them. But lately he was feeling…overlooked. Just when they got their five-year old to sleep in her own bedroom, here comes another baby to throw a wrench in their routine.
Junior was a second child to his core. Needy, fussy, and possessive over his mama like Annie wasn’t Smoke’s woman first. Every time he breast fed, he would look at him with droopy lids and a look in his eyes that said “these my titties now, nigga.” Smoke tried not to be jealous, he really did. But every time he found Annie passed out in the bed from tending to his kids, he died a little inside.
But tonight was different.
Annie walked out of her car, hair styled just right, looking at him like she was ready to pounce.
She was sending a message. She wanted him, and he was gonna take what belonged to him, for once and for all.
Soooo...what are we thinking? Yes? No? Let's collaborate.
Premise: An innocent milking session turns into a freaky test of willpower between our favorite twins & Mrs. Moore.
A/N: School's finally out for the summer, so guess what that means? Your favorite fairy priestess is back to deliver that fire you all know & love. Special thanks to my boo @theegoldenchild for helping me flesh this out, as well as @nahimjustfeelingit-writes & @soufcakmistress for the idea for this filth! I love y'all real bad! 💛
Warning(s): 18+ | Modern AU | Threesome | Degradation Kink | Praise Kink | Oral Sex | Breastfeeding Kink | Masturbation | Edging | Voyeurism | Elijah "Smoke" Moore x Annie Moore x Elias "Stack" Moore
Word Count: 4K
Divider by: @saradika-graphics
Sunlight spills through the open nursery windows in thick golden ribbons, warm enough to turn the dust floating through the air into glitter. The gauzy curtains sway lazily with the breeze rolling in from the Quarter, carrying the scent of rain-damp pavement, magnolia blossoms, and the faint trace of incense burning downstairs on Annie’s altar. Wind chimes clink softly somewhere on the back gallery, mixing with the distant sound of a trumpet player serenading tourists three streets over. Outside, the city buzzes with its usual mix of music, heat, and morning chaos.
But in here, the world felt gentler.
Autumn babbles happily to herself from the patchwork quilt laid across the rug, tiny gold bangles jingling around her ankles every time she kicks her feet. Her fat cheeks puff around the big toe currently shoved in her mouth, suckling as though it were the finest delicacy in all of Louisiana. Her chocolate curls were wild from sleep and haloed by the morning light, making her look less like a baby and more like a cherub the ancestors had handcrafted for Annie and Smoke’s enjoyment alone. She was perfection.
Annie leans against the doorway with sleepy eyes, her satin robe resting loosely around her shoulder as she watches her daughter. Her hand lightly caresses the small protection sigil Smoke had discreetly painted in the threshold, the blackened symbol nearly invisible against the wood unless you knew what to look for.
“Those toes providing you enough nutrients,” Annie teases softly, “or would you like some goodness fresh from the tap?”
Autumn lets out an excited squeal at the sound of her mother’s voice, nearly choking on her own laughter as she rolls onto her belly. She kicks her legs wildly behind her, determined to army crawl across the blanket despite only managing a few pitiful inches.
“Mm-hmm,” Annie laughs under her breath. “There goes that impatience. You just like your daddy.”
Autumn answers with another delighted shriek at the mention of her father, reaching for her mother with clumsy little hands.
“Calm down,” Annie giggles, pushing herself off the doorway and crossing the nursery barefoot. The old wooden floor creaks beneath her steps. “I was going to come to you.”
She scoops her into her arms, breathing in that powdery baby scent mixed with shea butter and chamomile oil. The infant immediately tucks herself against her mother’s chest with a happy little sigh. Annie pulls down one side of her night gown and settles into the rocking chair near the window, letting Autumn latch while sunlight pours over them both in warm, honey-colored waves.
Downstairs, the coffee maker gives a soft ding, followed by the familiar sound of cabinet doors opening and closing somewhere beneath the nursery floor. Annie smiles to herself. Smoke was up.
A second later, music crackles low through the house from the old speaker he refused to replace. One of Sammie’s blues records. He’d never admit it out loud, but he was his little cousin’s biggest fan and owned every album he’d ever made on cassette, CD, and vinyl.
Before long, the scent of breakfast begins creeping upstairs. First coffee, dark and rich enough to wake the dead. Then butter hitting hot cast iron. Bacon shortly after that. Annie closes her eyes for a second when the smell of sautéed bell peppers and onions finally joins the mix, followed by the unmistakable scent of seasoned shrimp cooking in garlic and Cajun spices.
Smoke was making his famous shrimp and grits.
She could already picture him downstairs moving around the kitchen, half-dressed, tattoos peeking beneath a black tank top, while he stood over the stove with the same ridiculous amount of focus he put into everything. Probably dancing a little too, if the faint sound of cabinet tapping was anything to go by. A soft laugh leaves her throat.
Annie loved it when Smoke cooked. Not because he was good at it, though Lord knew he was. It was the care behind it that always got to her. The way he plated her food like it mattered. The way he remembered she liked extra cheese in her grits and her peaches sprinkled with sugar. The way he’d slide a cup of coffee into her hands before she even realized she needed one.
She always told him she could taste the love in his food. And every single time, Smoke would roll his eyes like she was being dramatic, even though the smug grin tugging at his mouth always gave him away.
“You wanna go say hi to daddy, babygirl? I’m sure he could use some of this good loving, too.” Autumn blinks up at her with sleepy, milk-drunk eyes, one hand still gripping Annie’s robe as she finishes feeding. A soft little sigh escapes her once she’s full, cheeks warm and round as she settles against Annie’s chest.
“Yeah,” Annie murmured, kissing the top of her curls. “That’s my spoiled girl.”
The old hardwood creaked beneath Annie’s bare feet as she carried Autumn downstairs, the smell of breakfast growing stronger with every step. Annie hums along to Sammie’s record as she crosses into the kitchen, and to her surprise, there are two Moore men waiting to greet her.
“There’s unc’s baby!” Stack grins the second he spots Autumn. His whole face lights up so fast Annie nearly laughs. “Come here, Moonbeam.”
Autumn squeals at the sound of his voice, immediately reaching for him with little grabby hands.
“Traitor,” Smoke snorts.
“Don’t be mad that I’m the favorite twin,” Stack shoots back, reaching out for his niece.
“You don’t even like kids,” Smoke mutters behind his coffee mug.
“Correction: I don’t like outside kids. Moonbeam is different.”
Annie laughs under her breath as Stack carefully scoops the chunky chocolate drop from her arms like she was made of glass. Autumn immediately tucks herself against his chest with a happy hum, tiny fingers grabbing onto the gold chain around his neck.
“Aht-aht,” Stack warns gently, untangling her fist before she could yank it hard enough to choke him. “That chain cost too much money for all that.”
Autumn only blinks at him before smacking her tiny palm against his cheek.
“That’s what your ass get,” Smoke says, barking out a laugh loud enough to echo through the kitchen.
“Abusive like her damn daddy,” Stack fusses as he rubs his cheek.
“You’ll be aight.”
Autumn yawns suddenly against Stack’s shoulder, tiny mouth stretching wide before her face buries into the crook of his neck. The fight drains out of her all at once.
“Annnd she’s out,” Smoke notes, pointing the spatula towards her.
“She’s been up since before sunrise,” Annie nods softly.
Stack glances down at the chocolate cherub curled against him, his expression softening so fast it almost didn’t look like him at all.
“Y’all eat. I got her.”
“You sure?” Annie asks.
“Please,” he scoffs. “I’m Uncle Stack. My baby knows she’s in good hands like Allstate.” Smoke rolls his eyes, but doesn’t protest further.
Annie smiles as Stack disappears upstairs with Autumn resting against his shoulder, one massive hand spread protectively across her tiny back while he hums softly under his breath. A minute later, the house falls quiet again.
Sensing a chance to seize the opportunity, Smoke stalks quietly behind Annie before snatching her up, expertly pinning her back to the counter. He’d been eyeing the growing damp spot beneath the thin fabric of her night gown for the last ten minutes, and his patience had finally run dry.
“E-Elijah,” Annie breathes, though there’s no real threat behind it. “What are you doing?”
He answers by sliding the strap of her gown from her shoulder slowly, exposing warm brown skin and the fullness of her breast beneath the kitchen light. A fresh bead of milk gathers there, and the sight alone nearly drives him insane.
“Lord have mercy,” he mutters softly, more to himself than her.
Smoke leans down without another word, mouth closing around her with a quiet groan that sends electricity through Annie’s body. Her fingers tighten against the cool marble instantly while his tongue soothes and teases in slow, deliberate strokes, savoring her like something sweet he’d been craving all morning.
“Eliijahhh,” she whimpers as she squirms, attempting to free herself from his grasp.
“Be still, woman,” he fusses. “I’m tryna take care of you.” His free hand carefully glides up her thigh and finds solace in the slick between her legs. Annie’s knees buckle as his fingers expertly work that sensitive bundle of nerves while he indulges in his daughter’s life force, desperate to increase his calcium intake for the day.
“Aye, family! Baby Autumn is down for the coun—” Stack stops short in the kitchen doorway, one brow lifting slowly. “Now what the fuck y’all got going on in here?”
Annie’s knuckles whiten from how tightly she grips the counter while Smoke nurses from her with a low hum of approval, his fingers working quickly under the hem of her dress.
“Well,” Stack drawls, dragging his gaze over the scene in front of him, “I see Autumn ain’t the only one that likes her milk from the tap.”
“Mind ya business,” Smoke mutters against Annie’s skin, though the smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth ruins the threat completely. Stack only laughs, stepping farther into the kitchen.
“Hard to mind my business when my brother got his wife soundin’ like a damn late-night R&B playlist at breakfast. And in front of my shrimp and grits, no less.”
Annie lifts her head just enough to glance at him over Smoke’s shoulder, eyes heavy-lidded and amused.
“Then stop staring.”
“Nah,” Stack says easily, leaning against the island. “I’m entertained now.”
Smoke sucks his teeth while Annie fights a smile. The twins had always been dangerous together. Same crooked grin. Same wolfish confidence. But where Smoke burned low and steady, Stack carried chaos in his pockets like loose change.
“Careful, Stack,” Annie murmurs sweetly. “You keep looking at me like that, and your brother gon’ start growling.”
“He is already growling,” Stack shoots back instantly. “I heard him from the hallway.”
Smoke lifts his head just long enough to glare at him. “Get out my kitchen.”
“Make me.”
Stack watches from his spot against the island, arms folded tightly across his chest as he tries to ignore the growing tension low in his stomach every time Annie lets out another soft sound. He’d always thought she was the finest woman he’d ever seen, but watching her melt beneath Smoke’s touch nearly unraveled what little self-control he had left. The sight of her flushed and breathless had temptation crawling straight up his spine.
“Y’all nasty as hell,” he says after a beat, watching the way Annie’s eyes rolled back in her head as slick warmth slowly trails down her thigh.
“And yet you’re still watching instead of coming to do something about it,” Annie challenges.
“Don’t bite off more than you can chew, Antoinette,” Stack warns, stalking closer to her. “I’ll have you in a puddle of ya own nut before you can blink.”
“All bark and no bite,” Annie teases, caressing the back of Smoke’s head as he strokes himself through his pajama pants. And in that moment, something in Stack snapped. One of his biggest pet peeves, and secret turn-ons, was a woman who challenged his manhood. He quickly closes the short distance between the island and Annie, attaching himself to her left breast in one fluid motion. Annie almost screamed at the sensation of having both twins on her at once while Smoke’s fingers still danced in her slick.
“Oooh shiiiit,” she purrs, rolling her hips against Smoke’s rough fingers.
Though she knew it was wrong, she’d often fantasize about how it would feel to have both twins worshipping her body, and now, here she was experiencing it in 8K. Though they were identical, each brother had his own way of pleasuring her that made her feel like a goddess being worshipped. Smoke took his time, slow and steady, like he enjoyed drawing every reaction out of her piece by piece. Everything he did felt deliberate. Controlled. The gentle pull of his mouth, the lazy flick of his tongue, the slow drag of his fingers between her thighs.
Stack was the complete opposite. He kissed her like he was starving and touched her like restraint had never once crossed his mind. Every impatient movement, every rough little sound he made against her skin sent another rush of heat straight through Annie’s body until she could barely think past the sensation of both brothers surrounding her at once.
“W-Wait,” she says as she feels that familiar bloom in the pit of her stomach. “I don’t want to cum yet, I want to play a game.”
Smoke ignores her initially, glaring daggers at Stack when he notices Annie’s moans growing louder because of him. The two carry on their silent bickering until Annie grips them both by their curls, lifting their heads to meet her gaze. The pair groan in frustration at the loss of contact.
“I said I want to play a game,” Annie repeats, watching them both with lidded eyes.
“A game?” Smoke echoes.
“What kind of game?” Stack presses.
“A game of willpower, between the two of you,” she coos, wrapping a hand around each of their third legs. Their dicks felt heavy in her hands as she mentally noted the similarities between them. They were both 9 ½ inches, with Smoke curving to the right and Stack curving to the left. Her pussy throbs as she imagines how it would feel to have one twin fucking her throat while the other fucks her into oblivion.
“I’m going to stroke you both. Whoever cums first has to watch the other one fuck me.” They both stare at her blankly, blinded by the way her soft hands work them both with steady precision. Smoke weakens almost instantly, and it takes a moment for him to register the proposition.
“You must be out yo mind,” he growls through clenched teeth, eyes darting between his wife and his twin. But Annie ignores him and keeps stroking, her mouth secretly watering as both of their tips begin leaking precum. Stack remains quiet, except for the few small moans that escape his lips as Annie’s thumb swipes over the sensitive head of his dick. When he finally regains his voice, it’s to taunt his grumpy dopplegänger.
“What’s the matter, ‘Lijah? Scared you gone have to watch me bend your wife over?” he teases.
“It’ll be a cold day in hell,” Smoke barks back, already positioning himself back at Annie’s dripping right nipple. Her right hand strokes him with calculated motions, drawing curses from his lips like prayers.
“Gahdamn woman,” he moans, thrusting into her palm like he would her pussy.
“It’s just a friendly competition, ‘Lijah,” she mewls. “You can share me this one time.”
Smoke ignores his wife’s statement, opting to continue pumping his fingers in her slopping wet hole. He wasn’t in the mood to share his lover with his menace of a brother. All he wanted was to indulge in a little breastmilk and enjoy an early morning fuck. Part of him wanted to appease Annie and see where this little competition would lead, but the other side of him, the possessive, unstable side, wasn’t fully convinced.
One second, his fingers were deep in her core, thrusting in and out. The next, he was curling them to hit that sweet spot that made her toes curl.
“I don’t like sharin’,” he grumbles.
“L-Lijah…”
He uses her moans as fuel to continue working his tongue and fingers until her orgasm rips through her before she has time to process it.
“Fuuuuuck!” she screams, before reeling her voice back in, afraid of waking Autumn.
Stack doesn’t falter. He uses his tongue to guide Annie through her orgasm and work her up for another one. Annie rewards him with a firm squeeze of his shaft.
“Damn Elias,” she purrs softly. “You might be the little brother, but that dick is full-grown.” Stack groans deeply against her chest as she uses his precum to stroke him faster. As much as he loves bringing a woman to her knees and turning her into his personal free-use doll, Stack’s ultimate kink is praise. He loves being told how good a job he’s doing or how well he’s pleasing his woman.
Annie’s praises, coupled with the way her soft hands alternated between slow, deliberate strokes of his dick to fast, precise ones, had turned Stack into a leaking, moaning mess around her nipple. Shivers shoot down his spine as he tries his best to match the rhythm of her strokes with the flicks of his tongue. His orgasm was building fast.
“You’re being such a good boy for me, Elias,” Annie purrs. “I might let you fuck me just for that.”
Stack shoots Smoke a devilish grin as he suckles a mouthful of breastmilk. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Smoke. In one swift motion, he lifts Annie onto the island, spreading her legs as wide as they can go.
“Say that shit again and I’ll edge you every night for the next week,” Smoke warns, positioning his face right in front of her dripping center. Annie bites her lip as she looks down to meet her husband’s gaze, shivering slightly at the menacing look in his eyes.
“You still wanna try that Eiffel Tower shit you showed me the other night?” he asks, lazily licking up her thigh before placing a gentle kiss on her pussy. The sensation pulls a desperate whimper from Annie’s lips.
“Eiffel Tower? Oh you nasty nasty, Mrs. Moore,” Stack smirks, pressing a trail of kisses from her nipple, down her stomach, and right on top of her mound. “I like it.”
Annie squirms in anticipation as the twins take their places, Stack at her head and Smoke between her legs. Her mouth waters as she comes face to shaft with Stack’s dick, the weight of him resting warm against her lips while that cocky grin slowly spreads across his face.
“Say ahh, pretty girl,” he purrs, amused at how quickly she complies.
He carefully eases himself into her awaiting mouth, knees buckling as she expertly wraps her tongue around his thick tip. A soft curse slips from his throat almost instantly, one hand bracing against the counter while the other disappears into her curls.
“Fuck,” he breathes, head tipping back for a second before his eyes lock onto her again. “There she go.”
Annie looks up at him through heavy lashes, taking her time like she knows exactly what she’s doing to him. Every slow movement of her mouth pulls another strained sound from deep in his chest, his confidence cracking little by little beneath the heat of her attention.
“Shiiiit woman,” he growls through clenched teeth as he watches his dick disappear down Annie’s throat before reappearing again, completely covered in thick ropes of saliva. He rolls her nipples between his fingers, as she sucks him like her favorite popsicle on a warm, summer day.
Smoke watches the exchange from his place between her legs with dark, possessive eyes, his hand sliding along her waist while Stack struggles to keep himself together above her. Without warning, he plunges deep into her sex, pulling a strangled moan from her throat. Annie squirts unintentionally on impact, but Smoke keeps on fucking. Annie gasps softly as Smoke buries himself against her neck with a low sound that barely sounds human anymore. The friendly competition between brothers had become possessive.
Smoke had always worshipped Annie openly. Anybody with eyes could see that. The soft kisses against her forehead when she was tired. The way he fixed her coffee exactly how she liked it every morning without asking. The way his hand automatically found the small of her back whenever they walked through a crowded room.
But moments like this pulled something rougher out of him. Something territorial. He was more than willing to give Annie anything under the sun. Jewelry, time, devotion. Hell, blood if she wanted it.
But her pussy? That was his and his alone. And judging by the dark look in his eyes, Smoke intended to remind everybody in the room of that fact.
“Now what was all that shit you was talking about Elias fucking my pussy?” he mutters against her skin, voice rough enough to send heat rushing through her chest. Annie could barely form words, let alone answer him. Her thoughts had melted into scattered fragments somewhere between Stack teasing her nipples and the overwhelming sensation of Smoke filling her to the hilt.
Stack fists her curls, driving himself deeper down her throat as the coils in the pit of his stomach began to unravel.
“Anniiiieeeeee,” he moans as she wraps her hand around the base of his dick, using both her mouth and hand simultaneously to encourage his release. She pulls him out of her mouth just as cum flies out in thick ropes, covering her supple breasts in his unborns.
“Shiit!” he rasps, planting both hands beside her head as he struggles to catch his breath. Annie takes in the sight with pride before shifting her attention to her husband. She readjusts, locking her thick thighs around Smoke’s waist, winding her hips to match his thrusts.
“Cum in your pussy, Papa,” she purrs, reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck. “It’s yours. Claim it.”
And with that, the little resolve Smoke had left diminished. The feeling hit him hard and sudden, ripping through his body with enough force to leave his knees weak beneath him. A broken sound tore from his chest as he buried his face against Annie’s neck, teeth sinking lightly into her skin while he tried to ride out the overwhelming rush of it. She shivers at the feeling of his mouth against her neck, immediately threading her fingers into his curls while trying to steady her own breathing. Smoke was gone now. This was Elijah again.
“Damn,” Stack laughs softly under his breath, shaking his head while Smoke stays buried against Annie’s throat. “Boy sound like he just saw God.”
Smoke blindly flips him off, keeping his position on Annie’s chest. She laughs, breathless and warm despite the exhaustion settling into her limbs.
“Y’all are ridiculous.”
“And yet, you love us,” Stack retorts, tugging his sweats back on. He pulls his shirt over his head just as a sharp cry crackles through the baby monitor sitting forgotten near the fruit bowl.
All three of them freeze before another cry follows, loud and offended.
“Oh, she up,” Annie sighs instantly, already trying to sit up, despite Smoke’s large body still pinning her to the island. He groans dramatically.
“Swear that child got the worst timing I ever seen,” he fusses as he reluctantly sits up.
“She your child,” Stack reminds him, making his way towards the stairs as Autumn’s angry little cries echo through the speaker. “Y’all stay cuddled up. Uncle Stack can take it from here.”
“Still tryna solidify your spot as her favorite twin,” Annie accuses.
“Because I am her favorite,” he yells back confidently before disappearing up the stairs. A few seconds later, the crying softens upstairs, replaced by the faint sound of Stack’s voice talking nonsense to calm her down. Smoke watches Annie with tired eyes and a crooked smile.
Chapter warnings: SMUT. Explicit content 18+. Switch! Taehyung x Switch! reader. Dirty talk. Dick slapping. Spitting (like once lol). Makeshift leash play if you squint. Oral f! rec. Oral m! rec. Face sitting. 69. unprotected sex. Multiple orgasms. (skip to the first break if you don't like smut) I supernatural elements. Blood. animal death. Gore. Arachnophobia. religious themes.
A/N: The next chapter is literally already in progress. It was supposed to be a part of this one but in typical pech fashion, it got too long and needed to be separated. So if we are lucky, next chapter in the next week or two, as well as the final chapter of anything you can do.
P.S I know the halloween costume poll won a different thing surface level, but I got DMs, and anon asks for more of a different one....so that one won. huehuehuehuehue.
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
Taehyung tasted better in person than in her dream. Maybe it was all the sweet-talking he seemed so good at that made diving deeper each time he tried to pull away so irresistible. He kissed a lot like he danced—confident, sensual, and compelling. An alluring siren with hidden teeth; a mystery wrapped in velvet and heat that couldn’t decide whether or not it wanted to submit or devour.
Hands found her waist, fisted into her shirt and traveled up beneath it to run over the soft skin along her back, the hotel room silent save for the sound of her gasp when he sank his teeth into her lower lip, pulling it into his mouth to soothe the sting.
Y/n grappled for his suit jacket, shucking it off his shoulders until it dangled down by his wrists, not even caring to check the state of it before she was walking him back towards the bed. “Off,” She rasped with a tug to his collar, finally parting from him for a gasp of breath.
“Not yet,” Cupping her jaw to meld their mouths together again, he instantly ran his tongue along the underside of hers, coaxing her forward until one of her thighs pressed into the mattress by his waist. Guiding her without words to climb up where he wanted her.
She would’ve have melted back into him if it wasn’t for the unbearable throb between her legs, and the hard press of him into her thigh. Wrenching free, she shook her head. “No—I’ve waited long enough. Off.”
He grabbed her chin and angled it down to his, half lidded eyes narrowing onto hers, teetering between condescending and completely enamored. “Make me.”
Her gaze dropped down to the tie still knotted neatly around his neck, fist curling around the silk and twisting it around her wrist like a vice, using it as leverage to pull him with her off the bed. Taehyung fell to his knees, expensive dress pants scuffing on the carpet, and hands holding onto her hips for support.
“Take. Them. Off.” She articulated.
He bit his lip, gaze locked to hers as his hands dropped to the button of his pants, metal on metal cutting through the quiet as he fumbled for his belt. When he went to start undoing the leather, she squeezed the silk tighter in her fist.
“Not yours." Y/n shook her head. "Mine.”
His eyebrows shot into his hairline, pleasantly surprised by her demand and not afraid to show it. He must've thought she'd take longer to break.
He was wrong.
Y/n's patience was wearing thin, and in her opinion, he was far too comfortable messing with her. Another swift tug to the tie had his face falling forward to rest on her stomach with a groan, hot breath warming her skin through her clothes.
A breathy chuckle tumbled out from his lips, and he situated his chin to rest on her stomach so he could flutter his lashes up to her. “As you wish.”
Teeth pinched the waistband of her shorts, pulling them down achingly slow, pausing at her knees to place a series of kisses to her inner thigh. Nudging them with his nose so they fell to the floor, he made good use of the exposed skin by gliding his tongue up to the curve of her hip, circling it along the hem of her underwear and drinking in the quickening of her breath.
“F-faster,” Y/n yanked back on the makeshift leash, his neck snapped up to expose the column of his throat to her.
A glint took over his features that spelled more trouble than the intentions written into her skin with his spit.
“Wait-”
Before she could stop him, the cotton fabric was in his mouth, torn at the seam and falling to the floor next to the shorts. He stood on his knees so he was level with her glistening heat, licking his lips at the sight.
“Look at you baby—so wet and pretty for me. Bet you taste so sweet…” Another kiss to her thigh, this time hard enough to send a shock wave up her spine. “You gonna let me taste it? Be my pretty girl and let me have it?”
The tie almost slipped from her grip, her pulse hammering in two spots at once. A nod was all she could muster if she didn’t want to embarrass herself with desperation.
“That’s my girl,” Taehyung hoisted himself to his feet, using her hold on the tie to lead her with him, to where he now reclined onto the mattress. “C’mere.”
Y/n found herself crawling up the bed, legs straddling both sides of his hips and feeling just a tad uncertain. He noticed the shift immediately, squeezing her sides in quiet reassurance. “It’s okay, baby. Take a deep breath.” The pads of his fingers rubbed soothing circles where they once sank into the skin, using his grip to pull himself lower on the pillows so she was straddling his chest instead.
Open-mouth kisses painted the skin of her inner thighs shiny, moving closer and closer to her aching center which now smeared wet stains onto his collar, dripping down onto his neck until it started to glisten. She was panting now, twitching in her seat pathetically with impatience rather than uncertainty.
He blinked up at her, coy and teasing. “Can I?”
“Please,” Y/n whispered, thighs contracting around the sides of his head.
Taehyung cocked his head to the side, dragging one of his index fingers through her slick, taking it away the moment she started to shudder. “What was that?”
A whimper broke through her lips, face hot and a bit ashamed of how quickly she was coming undone for him. “I said please.”
“That’s my pretty girl.”
He shimmied lower until his face disappeared beneath her, and she braced her hands on the antique wooden headboard as anticipation ate away at her composure—thighs shaking from where they hovered, hands sweaty, breathing labored, and pussy dripping into his open mouth.
A cool gust of air plumed over her clit, delicate and teasing, raising goosebumps onto her skin when he did it a second time.
Then his hot tongue ran from her fluttering hole to circle her clit, lapping at the mess he had already made like he was apologizing for it with each sweet glide of the muscle. His grip on her thighs held her in place each time she tried to jerk away, bringing her down onto the tip so he could stretch the entrance open, trailing around the rim before plunging deeper.
Y/n couldn’t help but move, hips dragging her clit over his nose, stuttering from the inescapable pleasure with eyes screwed shut. The silence was shattered with the welt squelch of his tongue and the rising pitch and volume of her whines, muscles quivering in tandem with the filthy, low moans rattling up through her from deep within his chest. Pleasure burned hot and wild in her abdomen, searing from deep in her core and flooding upwards into her chest, making breathing nearly impossible.
“Tae, I’m gonna—I can’t-” Her fingernails scratched lines into the wood, the bed frame creaking below.
He responding with a deep and guttural groan, shoving her down so he could suck her clit between his lips, flicking it back and forth with rapid swipes of the tip of his tongue.
“F-fuck Tae-” She was gone in seconds, grinding uncontrollably on his mouth and chin until she was near collapse, and his face glistened like moonstone.
As if sensing her fatigue, he guided her down back to his stomach where she could rest, giving her a good look at his completely wrecked face.
His bangs were damp and stuck to his forehead, face soaked and shining back up to her in the lamplight, his grin drunk on both her essence and his own pride. “Doing okay, princess?”
With both hands planted on his shoulders, she surged forward to capture his mouth with hers again, fingers trailing down to find his damp tie once more, pulling him up to meet her halfway as an answer.
He pulled back from her mouth and forced her to remain in place with his palm held flat on her collar as a warning to listen. “Turn around.”
Y/n, while a bit confused, obeyed to his command, now sitting backwards on his chest, the view giving her the perfect view of the way his slacks grew taut. Similar to before, he lifted her hips up to hover above him, body inched down so his face aligned with her clit.
“Just one more time baby—one more time for me like this.” Taehyung’s teeth grazed her lower lips. “Show me just how good you are at taking what you fucking want.”
He was on her again, lips leaving slow kisses and tongue running smooth stripes over the overworked bundle of nerves. A cry pierced the room, one she didn’t recognize as her own until Taehyung smacked her ass in a second warning.
“We have neighbors here. Gotta keep it down.”
If she didn’t find something to tether herself she was going to fly right of the edge faster than she wanted to, attention searching for a distraction that lingered just a few inches past where her hands sought support on his stomach.
Sliding them down his waist, Y/n teased the sliver of exposed skin along his stomach where his shirt had come untucked, unfurling the rest of his belt and pulling at the waistband of his pants, letting it snap back down against his skin until he made the prettiest of sighs. That spurred her on, guiding the zipper down so tediously she could hear each metal ridge clinking against the zipper.
Next were his boxers, pushing them down in a manner as unhurried as the rock of her body on his tongue, savoring the small twitch of his hips and shudder of his diaphragm between her thighs.
His cock sprang free at the first chance of freedom, standing tall and achingly hard, her core clenching at the sight of it.
He told her to take what she wanted, right?
To test the waters, she ghosted her finger over the length of it, stopping just at the tip before coasting back down to run over the exposed skin of his stomach. He pressed his face closer to her center with a grunt, lapping hungrily like it would make her give him more, desperate and breathy sounds leaking from his mouth.
She tipped her head back with a sigh, grinding down in a languid dance, feeling the movement of his tongue in her soul, taking away the last of her inhibitions. Mind overtaken by the haze. The scent of herself on her lips. The growing burn in her stomach. Breathing deeply into each rock of her hips until she lost herself somewhere in the hotel room to never be found again.
His ministrations slowed just enough to keep her from her high, but not slow enough to keep the muscles in her stomach from contracting uncontrollably, toying with her pleasure while he caught his breath with a mocking grin she could feel against her skin.
In retaliation, she reached down and struck the side of his dick, just hard enough for the sting to carry the message she wanted to convey. More.
A moan resonated deep inside of her, mouth moving with reckless abandon over her as though each suck on her clit would pull more from her wandering hands.
“The closer you get me, the more I’ll touch. Got it?” Y/n spoke down to him breathlessly, pinching his thigh to illicit the reaction she wanted from him.
Taehyung nodded with a gasp, chin sliding against her at just the right angle that it made her own breath stutter.
With palms splayed on his abdomen, she lowered herself down to mimic his signature moves, blowing a stream of air on the tip before building up a wad of spit into her mouth, letting it fall off her tongue and glide down the sides of his length. Y/n’s kisses had barely any pressure, peppered over the head and over his pubic bone; the illusion of safety built up in the softness of her touch. She shattered it without warning, flattening her tongue up the side to circle the top, holding the tip between her lips and hollowing her cheeks
He bucked into her mouth with a strangled moan, earning himself another strike to the shaft.
“Keep yourself together or I-I’ll st—fuck…” her entire body shuddered against her will, falling onto his torso so he had to crane his neck to keep mouthing her clit, two fingers stretching her entrance wide open. Taehyung pumped them hard and fast against that spongy spot near the front, relentless in his eagerness to be rewarded.
Y/n wrapped her lips around the tip again, sucking it into her mouth with just as much fervor, a deep and guttural groan rattling down to the base as her second orgasm built fast. Her fists fought for any kind of purchase on the comforter below them, thighs spreading and twitching wider against her will to suck him in deeper, tongue lolling sloppy circles around him until she couldn’t take it anymore.
Her release came with an overwhelming cry of ecstasy, painting his face iridescent and splattering down his cheeks. Taehyung didn’t wait for her to recover, rolling her onto her side to kneel between her legs, hands pinned above her head and breathing labored.
“Can I please? Please baby can I fuck you?”
“Please,” Y/n sighed up to him.
Gripping the outside of her thighs, he hoisted her up his lap and burrowed his cock deep between her walls, a broken cry splitting him in two.
With each thrust of his hips, her body lifted off the bed, legs supported by his forearms to draw her onto him in time with each snap of his hips. Sweat dripped down his temple, trickling down onto the dress shirt he still had yet to take off.
With a displeased grunt, Y/n clumsily undid the buttons, tugging the fabric down his arms to expose his skin to her starved gaze. Hers followed shortly after, tossed to land sideways on the lamp, teetering it to the side in a way that had them both sharing a brief laugh that was swallowed by desperate open-mouthed kisses.
He was close; hips jerking senselessly in search of his release, skin slapping against her inner thighs, bed creaking in a way that made any hope they had at being unnoticed futile.
Taehyung fell forward into her shoulder with a shameless moan of her name, catching his breath with elbows caging her in.
Time slowed with his softened thrusts.
Everything felt hot, sticky, and weak. The sideways lamp with her old t-shirt still hanging on by the thread of the sleeve was a perfect example of how she felt: glowing, and absolutely wrecked.
Seconds passed by like clouds, shared sweet kisses inbetween quivering exhales soothing her racing heart and cooling her warm skin.
Taehyung smoothed a hand along her cheek, thumb rubbing along her bottom lip. “How’s my princess feeling?”
Y/n giggled under his heart-warming gaze. “Amazing.”
He pecked her lips again. “Good.” He sat back on his heels, slipping out of her carefully to shuck off the rest of his pants and toss them on the floor, hand offered out to help her into a seated position. “Let’s get you cleaned up and tucked in to bed, hmm?”
The two were far too tired to take a full-fledged shower, opting for soapy wash cloths and warm water with a shared pinky promise to shower in the morning. Because right now they had no reason to rush; no reason to be anywhere but in the moment, snuggled up under the covers with legs that trembled each time Y/n tried to bend.
Taehyung pulled back the comforter with a dramatic flourish, gesturing to it like a game show host. “After you~”
“Always a gentleman,” Y/n teased, leaping straight under the covers with nothing but her t-shirt and a dream of at least eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.
With the lamp now righted on the stand, Taehyung stretched his long arms over to pinch the light off, enveloping them in a comforting darkness that whispered well wishes of a good night’s rest. The quiet held them close; soft puffs of his deep exhales cascading down her neck, fiddling with their intertwined fingers to the rhythm of a song she could almost recognize.
Taehyung pressed impossibly closer, voice small in the dark. “Y/n?”
“Hmm?” It felt like a crime to speak much louder than the hum of the air-conditioning unit.
A long pause settled between them.
“Are you...hungry by chance?”
She thought for a moment, eyes gazing off towards the door with pursed lips.
“I could eat.”
"Thank fuck," He breathed out in relief, pulling up his phone to see what would even be open at this ungodly hour.
They fell asleep with finger tips still coated in a thin layer of grease the cheap brown napkins just couldn’t seem to wipe off, his arms wrapped snug around her middle, and the light still glinting off the red plastic to-go bag.
_________________________________________
Metal cut deep into her palm, her grip tight enough around an ink pen to thin the skin over bruised knuckles. Her dark eyes fixed on the man before her—his overcoat fitted just right over broad shoulders and buttons polished to perfection. Self-assured and reserved, his words powerful not in volume, but in the precision in which he wove his intelligence through simple sentences. A picture-perfect example of a respectable man.
A brother is what some would refer to him as. She preferred to refer to him as a thorn pushing through the soft stems of the roses he hated so much.
Ernst had always been the most...understanding with her than the rest of her family. He would egg on her otherwise problematic behavior and applaud her performance of defiance whenever she decided to take the lead of her own life.
Now Adelaide only saw his understanding as a threat. A scheme to further alienate her from them as different. A method of knocking down her chances at ownership and putting himself in the lead.
Despicable.
Unforgiving.
Deceitful.
Each word crossed and underlined on the back of yellowed journal paper, her breakfast ground to mush between her teeth.
She could barely even look at him.
There was of course, another party planned for the evening; gouache displays of opulence that made her stomach sick. Fine imported wines, ladies from towns over barreling in by the train full, businessmen in suits that smelt of cigar smoke and sweat tripping over one another to shake Ernst’s hand.
To kiss the ground he walked on like he earned that right.
There was a shift at the other end of the table. A scuff of a wooden chair leg and a subtle cough into a closed fist. Begrudgingly, she wrenched her glower from Ernst and over to her other brother—Freidrich. He nodded to her over his coffee, short and swift.
It told her two things: one, that the children were awaiting her arrival in the study to begin their morning lesson. Two, that he had information to share with her. Information regarding that dastardly brother to her left and what he was hiding from them.
Her journal entry would have to wait until later. For now, she would have to skirt off to her duties and wait for the perfect moment to meet.
Adelaide would not call herself a hag or a wicked child-hating spinster like some people would insist, but she would not say they were her favorite company either. Spending her days with five young children all under the age of seven was not her ideal pastime, especially when some of them were too young to stand on their own and crawled around drooling in bubbling puddles on the floor as she read through the ABC’s from a worn school book Annelise had once used. There were no discussions to be had yet. No intellectual opportunities to watch their minds expand—well, save for her one young niece, who took strongly after herself (much to her grandmother’s chagrin).
Still, she loved them, a strong feeling of duty tied to caring for them with gentle hands no one else seemed to provide. It made the guilt a prominent consequence of her short temper and weathered patience, and her unstoppable wish to be anywhere but there with them from morning until evening.
Adelaide’s only breath of relief came in the evenings, when she could either walk the grounds with only her own company to concern herself with, or lock herself away in her room on the second floor and read to her heart's content.
Then when everyone else had crept to bed, she would cross the hall with feather-light steps all the way down to the dining room where Freidrich would be sitting in a chair by himself, chin tucked onto the back of his hand as he gazed dreamily out the window; always watching. Always observing the drip of the night sky over snowy treetops, recording each creak of a floorboard or whine of a door throughout the house and pocketing them for later.
Wrapping her nightdress around herself, she kept her voice a whisper. “What have you found, Rich?”
Turning to grace her with a twinkling smile, he gestured for her to sit, inching his chair closer to the table. “Our answer, if we are lucky.”
“Where?” Adelaide could barely contain her excitement, falling into the chair unceremoniously and dragging the legs across the floor loud enough to make him cringe.
“I can’t take all the credit I suppose, I owe it to one of his colleagues at the party yesterday evening. I overheard them talking of this.” From the pocket of his coat, he unveiled a thin book with thick pages, the edges spotted with ink residue and other questionable substances. Perhaps candle wax or black paint.
Greedily she snatched the book before it could hit the tabletop, scanning the title with furrowed brows. ‘The art of Divination, Necromancy, and other Practices of the Dark Arts’. Spinning it over in her hand to run her index finger down the spine, she mumbled “There is no way this is what he has turned to, Mother would be-”
“Mother would fall right in line with anything he said if he was using the right charm or cursed incantation from this book. Who knows how long he has been poisoning her mind—our minds with the devil's magic.” Her brother cut her off abruptly. “Luckily for us, I have already read through it, and have found the exact counter to put an end to his wretched reign before it can begin.”
A swirl of her gut told her this book held secrets she didn’t want to know, the wax rubbing off on her fingers and sticking to the ridges of her skin like a warning. Yet those warnings held truth—she knew it to be so by the rush of intuition that had come to shake her by the shoulders—and against her better judgment, she spoke. “What is this...counter?”
Freidrich sighed, falling back into his chair with a newfound look of exhaustion. “It is not so much of a counter as it is a ritual.”
“A ritual?” The word felt foreign on her tongue. It crawled out of her throat like a rodent and sank its talons into her cheeks and lips, making them shiver both with anticipation at the prospect of doing something that her mother would never approve of and raw fear.
“Yes, a ritual,” Freidrich confirmed, drumming his fingers along the wood of the table in a short pattern. “It is dangerous and unholy in the most sinful of ways. Which is why I need your assistance in gathering the materials, but I refuse to let you engage with it.” Adelaide was already firing up a biting response to berate his patronizing attempt to single her out, to which he silenced by a rush of reassurance. “God only knows what punishment may await me for dabbling in such wicked affairs, but I feel as though the reasoning outweighs the action. You, however, mother would never forgive. Her condemnation would be strong enough to curse you for many lifetimes to come. It is only sensible that I shall be the one to conduct the ritual while you support from the sides, free to run at a moment's notice if things get out of hand.”
The room shifted, the scene washed away like the smear of a hand through wet paint.
“Out of hand.” Adelaide’s voice cut through the darkness, repeating the phrase in a mumbled prayer.
“Out of hand.”
Flashes of Ernst’s buttoned jacket came back. The golden pearls that held it closed, threatening to burst as he stretched his arms out towards Adelaide, frozen still. A photo of rage. A moment in time captured by memory.
“Out of hand.”
Y/n looked down at her hands, which were soaked in her least favorite color–red. The worst shades of it congealed in her palms and caked under her nails. It gushed through the gaps of her fingers and pooled down her front, Adelaide’s haunting whisper nothing more than a backing track to the color that covered her skin. Skin that wasn’t hers.
Lifting her eyes from her hands, she found the room—her room—utterly wrecked. There were carpets, thick and matted with the crimson liquid that splattered over walls and dripped off a feathered mattress; an outline of a small body still stained the white sheets.
“Out of hand.” Adelaide’s voice spat out form her own mouth down to the color-drained face of Alain at her feet. And for a second in the midst of Adelaide’s rage, Y/n had control.
Y/n bolted across the floor, bursting into the bathroom and bracing both hands on the mirror to greet the unfamiliar face of a well-known woman. Against her will, the body she inhabited shook, heaving a quiet sob through a crumpled mouth that hung open with a silent scream.
She cried for only a few minutes, bending down to grip onto the sink for support. Then, through a breathless whisper, Adelaide spoke to no one but herself. Or maybe she knew Y/n was there, in her head, watching. Living. Witnessing.
“It is out of hand again.” Another shuddering breath acted like a stopper placed between her teeth, her cries ceasing. Looking to herself once more in the mirror, she grit her teeth hard enough to feel the ache in the base of her jaw. “I must fix it. Alone.”
She whirled from the mirror and back into the room, breathing ragged and chin held high as her eyes found the lone figure still huddled against the wall below the window, frail arms circled around the body of another that still wept red tears down onto the floor.
Candida lifted her tear-stained cheeks up to face her, the blood splattered over her lips dried and peeling. Her head shook as though she was lost in a dream, slow and disbelieving.
“I didn’t do it. You must believe me, Tantchen,” Candida cradled the child closer to her arms, the hilt of the knife digging into the small back with the blade pointing outwards, angled towards the fallen body of the man she once called her husband. “He-He was-”
“Don’t speak, child.” Adelaide hushed her instantly, crouching down with arms outstretched to take the child from her. “We must get you out of this house. You are not well.”
“No,” Candida let out a harrowing wail, head tipping back to rest against the wall as she clutched the body of her daughter closer, like she could hide her in her own body if she squeezed her tight enough. “I don’t want to go! Don’t take her from me please—please don’t take her from me...”
From near the door, the corpse of Alain twitched, his throat releasing a horrid gurgling sound that bordered on a growl. The muscles of his body spasmed beneath chilling skin, his eyes so dark the pupils had vanished into a sea of black, lips shaking and shuddering like he was about to speak.
Candida arched further into the wall for comfort, shielding her daughter with her arms and hers knees which she curled towards her chest, knife at the ready. “He is coming! He is coming back to take me with him!”
“That is impossible,” Adelaide hurried to soothe her. “This is just what the body does when death comes for us.” After a few moments, Alain’s body stilled once more, hollow as an empty shotgun shell. “She needs to go, Candida. I will take good care of her, I promise you.” Her hand hovered over Candida’s, urging her to let go.
Candida’s eyes flared with madness, teeth barred like an animal and hands digging into the soft flesh. “No! The only person she is safe with is me! You don’t understand–HE did this! Promise me you will prove my innocence so she can stay with me. Please, Tanchen, you must promise me.”
Adelaide’s mouth tasted bitter, the metallic smell that permeated the room now layering over her tongue. It tasted like betrayal and blood. Lies were never as sweet as they pretended to be. “I will do my best.”
If she did not lie, he would hear her. He always did.
The floorboards creaked. A door whined as a hand pushed it open. A gasp fell from dry lips. Adelaide couldn’t bear to look up. The pain of facing him too much to carry when the weight of the world was already being transferred into her arms.
“What happened here?” Ernst asked, voice hoarse.
The room tilted, but this time it was not a result of stress on her already fried brain—this time it was actually tilting, like one of those fun house rides at carnivals.
Y/n’s limbs were feeling more of her own as she scrambled to grab onto the walls to keep from tripping over the ceiling and crashing through her bedroom window into the nothingness that awaited her outside. The people that were once beside her burst to dust, their remains falling through the air like snow—now nothing more than a memory lost in time. The only one that still slopped around the room was Alain, lips black as coal and eyes beginning to bulge like two massive bubbles from his sockets.
Alain’s body rolled with the spinning room, slinking like a ragdoll over furniture and light fixtures, slumping over the bed frame and crashing into the nightstand, closing in on her without even trying. Y/n dropped down onto the wall near her bathroom and crawled up the next one in a rush to create distance, but still his body followed with a sickening wet squelch. She was giving her all, and he was giving nothing. Yet he was still winning.
Thump.
He collided with the bathroom door.
Thump.
His torso dislodged a painting from the wall, sending it sliding down to the ceiling that Y/n was trying to get her feet onto. She was so close, the soles of her feet scuffing seam of the wall, only one more second and she would have enough grip to make a break for the door.
Thump.
A heavyweight knocked her off kilter, sending her sprawling down the angled ceiling that was now her floor, the entire room inverted and still rotating onward without showing any sign of stopping. Alain’s corpse pinned her down, trapping her in one spot, the growing tilt threatening to send them both sliding towards her window that would surely break under the weight of both of them.
Alain smelt of rot and ruin, his entire body soft like dough and spongy like moss. It gurgled and simmered, his skin and bones beginning to stretch and crack into a new beastly shape she knew all too well. Y/n tried to worm her way free, but couldn’t loosen more than an inch of space between them. His jaw snapped in her ear, the mandible falling from his skull only to be caught by the melted skin of his face, creating that nightmarish cavern of a mouth that plagued her nightmares more times than she could count.
His voice was like glass raking across her eardrums, chilling and whistling like the winds of a tornado. “You can not get rid of me. I will be here until the world itself dies, and even after that–I will remain. I can not escape what I’ve done, and neither will you.”
The incline tilted higher, and gravity began its merciless tug on the both of them. Y/n kicked her feet to try and find a foothold in the ceiling, but it was no use—the two of them began to slide slowly down towards the murky black that awaited them outside the window. No matter how hard she struck her palms down to create friction, she could not stop the inevitable.
The room gave one last final jerk, and the battle with gravity was lost. The two of them tumbled down the slope and burst through the glass that sprayed into the vast nothingness like rain.
The dark moved and slithered as though alive, but it had no pulse and breathed no sigh of relief when she finally fell into its arms. Still, it grasped her, tendrils of black curling around her like a fist and squeezing tight, cracking ribs and splitting her pelvis in two.
It drank her pulse with greedy lips, siphoning it out and letting it seep into its own bloodstream, taking all the life from it for itself. A new rhythm was born in the darkness, keeping time to the beat of the heart that used to belong to her. The sound reverberated through the dark. Taunting her. Parading its stolen victory.
Then it let go.
Plunged in darkness, Y/n screamed, the house growing further and further away as she fell through nothing. There was no end. There was no beginning. There was only the dreadful singing voice of the beast strengthened by her stolen livelihood, and Adelaide’s distant whisper.
“Things are getting out of hand again.”
Y/n’s fall was cut short by dense water, her bones shattering on impact, her body sinking beneath waves so thick they spilled down her throat like sludge.
Adelaide spoke again, the water rippling from the volume of her voice.
“God help us all.”
_________________________________________
Y/n was wrenched free from the water’s icy grip by a firm grip on her shoulders, gasping for breath that struggled to come. The bathroom was pitch black, save for the subdued reddish glow that emanated from beneath the hotel room door, barely highlighting the ridges of Taehyung’s face above her.
“Y/n? Are you with me?" He shook her once more. "What are you doing in here?”
For a moment, her instincts told her to fight him off—to throw his hands off her shoulders and make a run for it. The darkness of the room played with her mind and melded reality and dream into one inextricable mess.
Then her mind blanked. Her mouth dry as a desert despite having just been submerged in the overflowing bathtub. “I...I was…” She scanned his face, finding comfort in the familiar set of eyes and sleep-tousled hair, her breath slowly starting to find rhythm. “I had a bad dream.”
Taehyung swiped at the rivulets of water on her cheeks, brows furrowed in concern. “Our kind of bad?”
Y/n nodded weakly, the heart pounding inside her rib cage cementing that she was, in fact, awake. And alive. It was then that she really started to take in just how dark the room was—too dark to just be a result of the late hour and drawn curtains. Trailing back to the red light that beamed out from under the door, her breath hitched.
“Is the power out?”
Shifting to follow her line of sight, Taehyung licked his lips, speaking slowly. “Seems like it. I’m sure it’s just the system malfunctioning or something. It did this the other day when it was windy. You want to head back to bed?”
The offer was tempting. She had barely gotten any real sleep, for what little she had was plagued by dreams that made her heart race for a variety of different reasons, testing out the limits of her emotional capabilities for one evening. But the darkness gouged holes into her resolve and burrowed under her skin like a parasite, nibbling away at her sanity bit by bit.
To have a dream like that was already anxiety-inducing, for those were never just dreams. But to have a dream like that (even if she couldn't remember much of how it started), and then have the power simultaneously call it quits was suspicious to say the least. And there was the issue that they were in a hotel room, unguarded and unwarded on the property. Alone. And no one else knew where they were.
Fuck, this could be bad. The only hope they had was that Jungkook would be able to sniff them out in minutes.
Eyes wide and breath quickening, she grabbed Taehyung by the forearms. “Where’s my phone?”
The two of the scrambled off the tile back into the blackness of the room, letting the wispy red rays guide them to the pile of pants to shuck on while they looked for the sleek device that she hadn’t even bothered to check in hours. The last time she had seen it was her chucking it out of the way to…
Right!
Y/n lunged for the bed, bouncing on the surface while her hand snaked down between the headboard and the mattress, fumbling around until her fingertips brushed the screen. Swiping it open, she sent out a brief message to the group chat letting everyone know where they were, not expecting much of a response since the time read half past five in the morning.
If she had Taehyung with her, hopefully things would be fine. They had made it here by themselves after all. Granted, that was before the power had gone out and the hallways resembled more of an apocalypse film…
“We should get back to the house. I don’t trust whatever this is.” Y/n gestured to the light below the door. “Not after the dream I just had. Coincidences don’t exist here anymore.”
Taehyung seemed to take pause for a moment, eyes nervously darting to the base of the door. “Right.”
Pulling on her shorts she stopped to address the man before her that had yet to move. “What’s up? Need help finding your pants?”
“No I...I know where those are.” That seemed to jerk him into motion, diving down to swipe the slacks off the floor and stuffing his feet into them.
Her phone buzzed, stealing her attention from where he was struggling with the zipper of his pants and down to her screen.
[Zoltar 🔮]:I’m headed that way. Duty calls.
[Zoltar 🔮]: Meet me in the lobby.
“Yoongi is on his way. Says to meet him in the lobby,” Y/n relayed to Taehyung swiftly, stilling again when he seemed frozen in front of the mirror above the set of drawers the room offered. He didn’t seem to notice she had spoken yet, gaze clouded as he inspected his face, two fingers rubbing circles into the apples of his cheeks.
Coming up beside him she rested a hand on his shoulder. “Hey—we should get moving.”
Shaking himself from the mirror, he nodded, rushing off towards his shoes and slipping them on.
Y/n brushed it off as him not being much of a morning person, his entire mood at the mercy of how much or how little sleep he had gotten, or how much time had passed since he had risen. He was a man of few words when those words were drowned out by constant yawns and bleary blinks.
There was no barrier to the vibrant red emergency lights once she had flung the door open, bathing them with its scathing glow until everything was that awful color. Their skin a different shade, the whites of their eyes a faded pink, the red carpets and accents on the walls all melting her surroundings into a sea of burgundy so deep she could dive into it. Drown in it as she led the two of them down.
Taehyung’s hot palm found hers, rough and just beginning to sweat, giving her hand a supportive squeeze as their steps echoed down the fire escape stairs. If she listened too hard, she could almost make out an extra set; shoes ringing out against the stone with a sound that sounded much more expensive and sharp.
The color followed them, hiding along metal stair rails and bouncing off cream walls. Everywhere she turned, she could see it. Feel it squishing between her fingers and coating her arms.
The tension she hadn’t realized she’d been crushing between gritted teeth and hunched shoulders relaxed marginally at the sight of Yoongi—hair still messy from having been woken up, workman’s jumpsuit barely buttoned over his white t-shirt—speaking with the night attendant who waved wildly about the room.
Surprisingly, Taehyung’s hand also loosened and a breath of relief slipped through parted lips, the first sound she had heard him make since they had left the hotel room.
They were close enough to hear the low rumble of their urgent whispers, Yoongi’s deep and reassuring. I got it covered. Don’t worry about it. I’ll handle it. All of those were wielded like a shield each time the poor attendant started to get riled up again and hurl more of their anxieties his way. He might as well have been saying those things to her the way they smoothed over the crease in her brow and gave her the strength to squeeze Taehyung’s hand.
Yoongi found them quickly, keen eyes narrowing in on them—or what she thought was them until she heard the clack of dress shoes on tile cease. He didn’t shift his attention down to her face for a few painfully loud beats of her heart in her ears.
“Out on a midnight adventure?” Dark eyes slid from the empty lobby over her shoulder to hone in on hers.
“You could say that…” Y/n shuddered beneath his gaze, feeling uncharacteristically shy. “Taehyung and I were just…” Nudging him with her elbow, she went to look to him for guidance, but the words died in her throat.
His face was sickly pale, the red light making him look even more unwell, highlighting the growing perspiration that beaded on his temples and tracked down his cheek.
“Pretty boy doesn’t look too hot,” Yoongi remarked, jerking his chin in Taehyung’s direction. “Anything happen in the stair well?”
“No,” Y/n swallowed thickly. “Tae, hun, you good? What’s going on with you?”
“I don’t know,” He shook his head aimlessly. “Woke up with a pounding headache I can’t shake. I think I just need to sleep it off…”
Yoongi scanned his face carefully. “You look like you’re going to spew. Need us to walk you back home?”
“No. Don’t know if I’ll make it there...I just...I’m going to…” Taehyung started to pace off towards the Adelaide, hands running through his quickly dampening hair. “I need to sit down. I’m going to sit in the green room for a bit. Maybe sleep it off in there.”
Before he could get too far Y/n yanked him back by the wrist, leaning up to plant a kiss to his sweaty cheek and laying a palm over his forehead, hissing at the heat that radiated into her palm. “Text us if you need anything. You have meds in there?”
“Yeah. Keep stuff there just in case.” Taehyung ghosted his fingers over the ridge of her cheek and tapped her nose weakly. “Stay safe...pretty girl.”
She could only watch him stumble a few yards before both her and Yoongi were sharing a look and throwing an arm over each their shoulders, all but carrying him to the plush red sofa in the green room and helping him curl up on the embroidered cushions to nurse his headache.
“Will he be safe in there?” Y/n fretted to Yoongi the moment the door was closed, keeping her voice low so as to not disturb Taehyung through the door.
Yoongi’s gaze swept the perimeter of the abandoned Adelaide, wetting his lips before letting his tongue prod over the corner of his mouth. “Should be.”
With that, he was already weaving through stacked chairs back towards the lobby, fishing a small flashlight from his pocket and clicking it on with his thumb. “Come on. Looks like you get to go on a little field trip this morning.”
Hovering between the tables for a moment, she drank in how eerie the normally vibrant and animated the restaurant was when it wasn’t bursting at the seams with patrons and dancers. The walls stiff and dull, their spines ramrod straight and at attention, tense just like the muscles beneath her skin; liminal instead of lively. Each corner of the room overtaken by black, shadowy voids, barely fended off by the few emergency lights dotted along the ceiling.
In the corner, so still and quiet Y/n almost missed her, sat a figure with their legs crossed, their sparkly tights refracting like a hoard of rubies in the dark. In her dainty fingers, she pinched the thin stem of a glass, raising it to her lips before stopping just at her chin, brown eyes boring into Y/n’s. Opening her mouth to speak to Bea—the ghostly woman she hadn’t seen in months— she was silenced when the spirit extended a long finger up to her lips, then pointed at the door towards the green room, staring daggers that pinned her tongue down with a sharp warning.
Be quiet.
“What are you looking at?” Yoongi shone the flashlight over into the corner, the woman dispersing into the beam almost instantly.
“Nothing. Just a straggler.” Y/n shook herself of the interaction, the whispering volume now instinctual, as though if she spoke any louder Bea might return to aim her dainty glass at her skull.
Yoongi hummed, the sound caught somewhere between indifferent and almost disapproving, letting the beam from his flashlight drown out the sickening red for a few extra seconds than necessary. Turning on his heel, he was holding the door open for her with the tip of his boot, urging her pace to quicken on its own accord.
“Hurry up, slowpoke. Everyone is relying on me to save the day, and I’d like to do it before the grouch on the fourth floor can’t turn his TV on. God forbid his six am hunting program be interrupted...” It left his mouth like a joke, but it didn’t land like one. The syllables stretched too taut, eyes too watchful and narrowed deep into corners he never moved to illuminate.
Head kept down, she traced his steps as they sank into the red carpet, taking care not to trip as it switched to the golden tiles. Counting the squares kept her mind from wandering too far into frightful territory, though even they had lost their luster, their gold now washed out to a blunted orange. The hair standing straight along the back of her neck and winding up her forearms told her to stay alert, but of what, she couldn’t place just yet. Something lurked in the dark, slunk along baseboards, and breathed down her neck when she least expected it; never engaging, never speaking. Wearing a face of obscurity and a coat of intimidation.
That’s all this probably was. Intimidation.
She just had to remind herself not to let it win. If they acted like nothing was wrong, they would be safe. Pretending everything was normal would keep it normal.
Yoongi led them down the lobby steps, completely bypassing the front desk in favor of veering towards the same stone stairs she had walked in her dreams, his boots landing heavy and smudging the fresh polish. The memory of her dream gave her enough of a distraction to avoid the darkening atmosphere as they trudged deeper into the belly of the hotel, their path cut out with each slice of light Yoongi wielded. It made Taehyung cross her mind again, and the strange interaction with Bea.
“How can you be sure?” Y/n’s voice cracked. “That he’s going to be okay up there, I mean.”
Yoongi sighed through his nose, steps muted as he reached the bottom. The carpet was much older than in Taehyung’s mind; the brass on the ticket box faded, and the curtains hung behind the glass a completely different color—a lace trim instead of hemmed.
“Don’t be offended when I say this—but the further away he is from you, the better off he is. That seems to be how they like to play anyway.”
“None taken...” Y/n returned absentmindedly, peeking through the porthole windows into the amphitheater. Red lined the walkways, barely offering more than a few glinting crescents along the curved backs of the same seats she had been situated in within her dream.
Except these ones looked...different. Their handles were still ornate, but bronzed and darkened with age, the ends where most people's palms touched shinier than the rest. The seat rests rounded instead of square, and their cushions embellished with wispy golden patterns that sprawl out like weeds poking their heads through the red fabric.
The biggest difference was the stage itself. While she hadn’t noticed it much in her dream ( though why would she when last time she had been down in this room was over five years ago, and even then it was always too crowded and dim to really look), it wasn’t as deep, nor as wide as it had been while they had watched the ballet performance. It was as though the left side of the stage had been shaved off a few feet and carefully angled inwards by tricks of the light and meticulously placed curtains to blend in.
“First time here?” Yoongi quipped sarcastically over her shoulder, attacking the side of her face with bright light playfully.
Y/n didn’t react immediately, stuck squinting through the dark at differences and scouring for more—like the hotel had become some sort of spot the difference challenge that she was intent on winning. Shrugging honestly, she licked her lips and reluctantly tore herself from the door. “Maybe.”
Yoongi raised an eyebrow at her unexpected answer, coasting his judgment down to the obvious wet stain around her shoulders and her still damp skin that water still traveled down in thick drops. Wetting his lips again, this time faster so he could have the time to chew on the tip of it before formulating some kind of response. With one last cursory glance around the empty hall, he turned on his heel without a word, leading them further left down the hall to a set of metal double doors with a ‘staff only’ sign nailed to it, punching in the code methodically.
The lock clunked open and he ushered her in first—or what could be considered first when he was practically up her ass, following so close behind that she could see the tip of his work boots between her own steps.
He shone his flashlight down the dingy concrete tube of a tunnel angled downwards around a set of stairs, shining over the splintered wooden paneling left to rot in piles along the walkway and highlighting the cobwebs that guarded the basement. Their long, spindly arms outstretched to block any intruders, spread so their intricately woven bellies blocked even the light from getting very far.
There were no emergency lights here, just damp air thick enough to breathe, and silence loud enough to crowd close to her eardrums and flutter with her pulse. The sound of their shoes scuffing against concrete steps as startling as a crack of thunder.
“Watch your step. People just throw shit back here.” Yoongi’s chest brushed her back as he stepped around her, ducking beneath the first cobweb and side-stepping the next. As if proving his point, he kicked a chunk of broken glass out of their path with the steel toe of his boot.
Grimacing, Y/n imitated his movements, feeling more like they were role-playing secret agents than doing anything of importance. Except rather than a maze of lasers orchestrated by some evil mastermind in an excessively tall leather chair, what kept them from their prize were flimsy, sticky nets manned by gravid eight-legged spiders, their legs clicking along strips of silk as they watched the intruders pass.
They passed a handful of doors with no label or number; storage closets and old set designs she presumed. Things lost to the passage of time or purposefully shoved in dark corners to be forgotten about. Y/n’s mind wandered to her previous evening, her brain trying to remember any specifics of the performance she had witnessed in her dream, a small voice in her head weighing whether or not those very sets were folded up or lined away behind one of those very doors.
That wouldn’t make much sense, she reminded herself, narrowly missing a particularly translucent web before her. Taehyung had alluded to the show being one he witnessed as a child, a partially forgotten memory melding with his current reality. That would probably explain the differences she was noting in her surroundings—nothing more than the brain meshing two different theaters into one for the sake of congruence.
“What are we looking for back here anyway?” Y/n broke the silence with a whisper that still felt too loud to her own ears.
“This shithole houses the main breaker,” Yoongi rumbled beneath his breath, smacking the side of the flashlight that was starting to die out. “And luckily for me, since I live here, I’m the first on their list to call when shit hits the fan in the middle of the night. Plus,” he continued, pulling a set of keys from his pocket and jamming them into a thin door at the end of the hall, “I think it could probably use a good look by somebody who actually knows what to look for.”
A trill ran up Y/n’s spine at his words, and as if on cue, a well-fed spider inched down one of the webs to her right, leaving less space than she would have liked between them. Its eyes were large enough to gleam, big enough to see in the dark without a magnifying glass, and uncannily human. It stopped with almost intentional grace, like each lift of a leg or blink of her many eyes was planned and strategic, resting on the edge of her web as though warning Y/n that at any moment she could leap off her bed of silk and sink her teeth into her flesh.
Y/n had to remind herself that it was just a spider and not a conniving monster from the depths just itching to suck the souls out of unsuspecting victims. Even then, she still couldn’t shake the tickling sensation of their eyes on the back of her neck as she scurried after Yoongi into the breaker room. Her dream and lack of sleep had to be mixing her brain into a paranoid slush. For looking at shadows and glancing over her shoulder at disembodied creaks in a haunted hotel was one thing, but accusing spiders and webs of having any real skin in the game against demons was a bit excessive.
A smell of mildew and something sickeningly sweet greeted her as soon as she entered, wrinkling her nose in disgust. The only downside to historical buildings was the smell of old that was hard to shake, especially in places like old creepy basements that no one had any interest in spending the extra time cleaning. She tried to ignore the debris beneath her shoes, settling for shuffling across the floor so she could kick it away without rolling an ankle.
“Hold this for me.” Before Y/n had any time to recollect her bearings, the flickering flashlight was shoved into her hands and angled at a rectangular metal panel on the wall, much wider than the one at home. Yoongi moved quickly, fingers skimming along thick plastic switches and inspecting wires. She tried to keep up, her hand trembling against her will as her nervous system ran like a hamster on a wonky metal wheel, her brain stuck on replaying images of arachnids hiding on the back of her t-shirt or crawling up her calves.
Yoongi offered a lovely distraction, not only because she was watching his fingers move over the panel with a competence that made her knees weak—but that he was able to remain calm and unaffected when she was sure they had both come to the same conclusion about the situation at hand. Shoulders relaxed, breathing a measured whistle from his nose, and gaze unerringly focused on the task at hand. His equanimity lathering over her unease and soothing the rush of her thoughts to a slow trickle.
“Is this your first time holding a flashlight?” Yoongi poked at her obvious shaking, wrapping his hand around hers and angling it up. “Keep it still or I’ll have to fire you.”
She rolled her eyes at that. “Oh yeah? And who else are you going to drag into this bug infested basement to hold a dead flashlight for you?”
“Hoseok did a pretty good job at it before you came home.” Yoongi shrugged, though he had yet to remove his hand from the spot over hers.
Taking note of this, she felt a smirk growing on her face. “I’d probably believe you more if you weren’t practically holding my hand right now.”
Though it was dark and the light was barely doing anything at this point, she would bet money that his ears were pink. “Don’t flatter yourself sweetheart, I’m just making sure you don’t drop it. I’ve seen chihuahuas steadier than you.”
“You keep telling yourself that, hot shot.”
Neither of them made any move to shake the other’s touch off—if anything, Yoongi settled his grip to sit more comfortably over hers, and she let him. It truly did steady her, not just physically but internally as well, grounding her anxieties in the present instead of the unknown that might be hiding behind corners or lurking in the dark. If there was anything there, they would handle it.
Only when the muscles in her hands and arms stopped quivering beneath the skin did he let his hand drop down to dig into his pocket for one of his tools, so nonchalantly that it could have just been a coincidence and not kindness. Though if his work ethic was anything to go by, she was certain nothing with him was ever just a coincidence.
Yoongi muttered out a string of barely audible curses and fell to a crouch, trailing a finger along a set of colored wires in the back and twisting them into the light.
“What is it?” Y/n tapped the side of the light to shine where he was looking.
He frowned, bringing his face closer to the wires. “Looks like Dad’s got a few calls to make.” Beckoning her closer with a nod, he carefully brought the wire into her field of vision, highlighting the shallow teeth marks along the rubber coating. “Rats.”
“Jesus,” Y/n lurched back, hugging her arms in closer to her ribs to make herself smaller in the space, now hyper aware of how little the flashlight really illuminated. “Are we even going to be able to turn it on?”
A low grumble left his chest. “Thankfully, yes. Luckily for us, they haven’t punctured deep enough for any emergency replacements, so it’s probably unrelated to the power outage. But I wouldn’t beat around the bush.” Dropping it back into place, he tried to locate any more evidence of teeth along the other side.
Footsteps padded over head; soft-soled shoes and the drag of a cleaning cart. It had her jumping out of her skin, heart dropping right through her ass with a gasp, flashlight almost clattering to the floor.
“Steady,” Yoongi’s hand shot out again, this time to grip at her waist with a cursory, reassuring glance. “Morning cleaning crew.”
“I k-knew that,” Y/n swallowed around her pulse and wrapped both hands around the handle, squeezing the metal rhythmically to bring herself back down from the conclusions she had jumped to.
He hummed unconvinced, his thumb doing one firm glide over the curve of her waist before retracting his touch entirely. A thought then crossed her mind as she tried to scan their surroundings for any signs of paranormal activity, thinking back to Taehyung up in the green room and Yoongi’s confidence that he would be safe up there by himself.
“...the further away he is from you the better off he is.”
“What about you?” Y/n asked before she could clarify where her question was even coming from.
“What about me?” Yoongi raised a brow at her, clearly taken aback by her sudden question.
“You said Taehyung would be safe if I wasn’t with him. So what does that mean for you?”
Yoongi blinked a few times as he processed her words, the edge of his lips twitching upwards marginally as he faced the breaker board again. “Guess it means I like taking stupid risks.”
Her face was overtaken with heat, her feet unable to stop themselves from shifting her weight back and forth. After a bit more of poking around the wall of buttons and wires she probably should recognize if she was going to run this place as an adult, she cleared her throat. “What’s the issue down here anyway?
“Well, the entire circuit is tripped. Something might have triggered it upstairs, but more than likely it was something down here. These puppies can withstand hundreds of hotel rooms, restaurants, show productions, and weddings simultaneously. I can’t think of something on the property that would have caused this. It rained last night, so I’m placing bets that maybe a little moisture got in the basement and tripped the GFCI. This place floods a bit from time to time—old buildings may look cute, but they are bitches to seal.” He grunted as he palmed along the concrete wall below the panel until he found what he wanted, a small outlet-looking thing near where the wall met the floor that he ran the pads of his fingers over.
“Huh.” He rubbed his index finger and thumb together pensively.
“What?”
“It’s dry.”
Yoongi sat there for a moment, elbows resting on his knees and lower lip pulled up between his teeth. Then he stood to his full height, wrenching open a squeaky metal flap to reveal the manual off switch, exhaling sharply through his nose when they found it already tilted towards ‘off’. Fingers poised above it to turn it on, he froze, bringing them back in front of his face to run them together as he had done near the floor.
Tilting his head to regard her pointedly over his shoulder—or rather her shirt—he uttered one single word. “Wet.”
A few beats of silenced passed between them.
“Did you shower this morning?”
Y/n gulped. “No.”
“Before bed?” He kept his voice unsuspecting, but she knew him well enough to recognize the slight strain along his vocal cords.
“Not really.”
Tearing his eyes from hers with a new sense of urgency, he shucked a small rag from one of his pockets and ran it over the switch to collect any moisture. “Cool. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” With that, he flipped the breaker, and the power lurched back on with a whirring sound. Tugging on the string above, the single light bulb overhead flickered to life and left nothing in the room to mystery. “There’s a switch for the hall light over there if you want to...Holy shit...”
Y/n didn’t need psychic powers to know what he was feeling, for she could hear her own horror mirrored in the way his breathing stopped and the tightness with which his grip encircled her wrist.
Blotches of rusted brown and faded black stained the concrete floors; the walls were moving with the flow of dozens of spiders, ranging from the size of her palm to the nail on her pinky finger. However, that wasn’t what had her stomach bubbling up with the remnants of her dinner into the back of her throat.
Littered over the floor like the worst kind of confetti were small, swollen-bellied mice, punctured and leaking dried ichor from crater-like holes in their skin; frayed and fried as though struck with small bolts of lightening. The source of the hovering smell was staring them in the eyes with bulging black irises and gaping buck-toothed mouths, some of them even starting to melt into the floor as they decomposed.
All the ‘debris’ she had nudged aside, all the uneven ‘stones’ she had shuffled past were the corpses of rodents, one of them flattened into a pancake of fur and sticky fluids by Yoongi’s boot by the door.
“Don’t say anything. Don’t touch anything. Turn around and walk the way we came and pretend nothing is off.” Yoongi was heavy breathing in her ear now, huddled close to coach her forwards and out the door. “If you step on anything, don’t look down.”
“Yoongi-”
“Don’t. Walk. Calmly.”
Y/n tried to do as he said, letting the weight of his boots on the floor behind her remind her that he was still there as she moved stiffly through the hall back towards the stairs. A thousand eyes glittered like stars above her, watching their retreat—breathing down her neck like they were just waiting for a reason to pounce. Her eyes lifted upwards towards the ceiling, barely catching the moving black mass of legs before a pinch to the back of her elbow had her twisting her neck back to meet Yoongi’s admonishing glare, a bead of sweat tracking down his temple. “Keep your eyes down. I’ll tell you if there’s something you need to worry about.”
“Keep your head bowed,” an unexpected sting bloomed across the back of Adelaide’s neck, a welt in the shape of her mother’s fingers already starting to bubble.
She grit her teeth. “I am.”
Sitting on the pew to her left, she felt her brother’s shoulder brush hers, his roguish voice falling into her ear. “Just close your eyes and think of the lake.”
Adelaide snuck a quick glance at her mother over her shoulder before daring to humor Ernst’s suggestion. “What?”
“You like walking by the lake, do you not?” Ernst kept his head angled down so his mother wouldn’t be able to see that his eyes were open from her spot on the bench behind them.
“Yes, but what on earth does that have to-”
“You must look like you are at peace when you pray under her watch. Think of something you love—meditate on it. Picture it as though it were here before us now. And when she asks, tell her you are communing with him.”
The threat of her mother’s stare still burned along the back of her skull, and as much as she was wary of trusting anything Ernst said to her, she would feel much better if her mother would stop pinching whatever tender spot she could slip her fingers into.
So she thought of the hotel. Of the grand supper that awaited them on their arrival home, the table already strewn with decorative table cloths to celebrate the holiday season, and the mouth watering smell of roasted bird that filled the entire house. The children that she had grown to love, bouncing and screeching with excitement from room to room about their Christmas gift they were allowed to open after dinner.
Her mind must have been influenced by her brother’s suggestion, for the midnight blue waves of the lake lapped at the shores of her brain and pulled her closer on its current, serene and wielding a beauty incomparable to anything made by man. Graceful arms of the willow tree near the embankment full and green, a vision of summer, leaning down to wrap Adelaide in her loving arms just like Annelise used to. Sometimes, when the wind would blow just so, she could still hear her voice reading to her beneath that very tree where her body now lay beneath the earth, holding the newborn she hadn’t gotten to meet.
She let the mirage of the two of them sitting beneath the tree play behind her eyelids, the baby bouncing in her arm while the other hand pressed the spine of a book open onto her thigh, Adelaide lying back on the soft, spongy grass beside them.
Her mother must have been pleased with the air that had over taken her, for she let out a satisfied hum as she stood to take her turn floating to the front of the candle-lined aisle, accepting the communion she was offered with an overly wide grin and one of the twins perched on her hip to show off her little green dress to the rest of the church.
“See?” Ernst tapped her elbow with his own. “When it comes to mother, it is nothing more than a game of pretend.”
Adelaide scoffed. “I am not daft, Ernst. I have tried this a hundred times with little success. I suspect it has less to do with pretending and more to do with you being the one to guide me.”
“That is not true,” he defended, “I have seen your other attempts, and this one was by far one of your best.”
“She will still find a way to convince herself that I have wronged both her and the lord by the time the first pudding is served, it is her truth that I am constantly wrong,” Adelaide hissed back, becoming acutely aware of how Freidrich was shifting his legs on her other side, reminding her of just what the brother she was conversing with was capable of. “I suggest you get back to whatever it is you busy your brain with, lest you get me in trouble for distracting you.”
“She doesn’t care about distractions or truth.” Ernst whispered back. “It is all about image. Whether or not you believe her teachings and the way in which she wants you to act is your truth, it just has to look it is. Maybe you should give that a try.”
“Give what a try?”
Ernst shrugged. “Looking the part.”
It was their rows turn to stand, and to prove just how wrong her brother was, she stood. Played the part. Took the eucharist and let the dry bland flavor take her far from the chapel. Held the candle in her hand as she sang out the first few lines of Stille Nacht. Smoothed the hair of her nephews and cradled her niece to her side when their eyelids started to droop.
She even took it a step further, staring up at one of the stained glass renditions of Mary and smoothing her hair out to almost resemble hers, untying the more masculine style in which she always wore and twisting it into a long braid as the prayers continued on. It was all quite ridiculous really; her mother could see right through the facade, read how much she hated it in the coiled muscles of her shoulder and the tight press of her lips.
Though instead of pinching her skin, she looked...pleased. Not proud—oh god, never proud. Content with a slight upturn of her nose, the subtle shift in her eyes absolutely glowing at the show of conformity.
Adelaide hated it. Her mother loved it.
But it kept her skin from being pinched, and her holiday dessert from being spoiled.
At the end of the night when she met with Freidrich at the dining room table, in between precariously lining presents beneath a tall fir tree, and reading the lines of cursed incantations and discussing where to gather the ingredients listed on flame singed pages, he tossed her a thin smile.
“You did well today,” He complimented lightly—the two of them acutely aware that this was the first time either of them could recollect him doing such a thing.
Taken aback by his praise, Adelaide paused her search through a book of herbs and flowers. “Are you well?”
Freidrich laughed. “Indeed I am. Perhaps it is the spirit of Christmas eve that has given me a change of heart.” Reaching a hand out, he glided the back of his hand over the way in which she still had her hair styled. “This suits you. It is quite womanly.”
Adelaide couldn’t help but recoil a bit, though internally she couldn’t help the little girl inside of her that rejoiced at someone in her family praising her instead of cutting her down. “Do not get too attached. Your compliments do nothing to convince me to keep it, considering they usually come with some sort of ulterior motive.”
Freidrich’s smile faltered, if only slightly. “Is it not Ernst that convinced you to cut it all those years ago? Is it not he who taught you how to tie it back like his colleagues? Perhaps you should be asking yourself whether or not you genuinely want to be rid of his clear manipulation intended to keep mother’s eye on you instead of him. Today was another attempt at doing so, and yet you prevailed. You outshone him, and he knows it. It is no doubt why he was so tense at dinner.” Throughout his spiel, he remained calm, though his passion was beginning to seep through the cracks. “This is what you look like at your best, and that is a threat. He wanted you to fail; I want you to win. Remember that.”
Adelaide tried to save face as guilt and shame whittled deep into her resolve, his words hitting a sensitive spot on her pride. “I...I suppose you are right. I’m afraid I still find myself stuck in our old childhood ways.”
“There has been no harm done,” Her brother’s smile regained its warmth. “Old habits take the longest to die. But if you want my true opinion…” An air of seriousness took over him. “I think this new version of you is quite powerful. If we can keep Mother’s attention off of you, it will be easier to turn her wrath to its rightful place. I think your compliance could be our secret weapon.”
Adelaide’s mouth fell into a crooked frown. She was a smart woman, and it would be foolish to deny the truth his words held. If she played the part, she could earn enough of her mother’s trust to hopefully get her on their side and away from Ernst’s pull.
“I will think about this.” She conceded after a long pause.
“Wonderful.”
The next morning when Adelaide rose to wake the children, she woke ten minutes earlier than usual, hair done in a thick braid and door propped open for her mother to see how well she kneeled beside her bed.
She prayed to the lake.
Her mother smiled.
It mattered not what she was praying to—just that she looked like she meant it.
_________________________________________
Y/n found another mouse in the kitchen that following week; bloated with pus and gore and rotting into the tile like it had been there for months and not hours. She would have stepped on it while blindly padding in for breakfast had it not been for Jungkook yanking her out of the way.
Her mom nearly fainted when she had to report the spread of the ‘rodent issue’ to the home. Having already spent her mornings since the power outage on a three-way call with Mr. Kim and Mr. Min about the potential infestation in the hotel, hashing out costs and funneling money into an exterminator who only shrugged upon doing his inspection.
“Can’t explain it ma’am. I see stains. I see the webs. I don’t see any holes or nests—not even a single whisker! Nothing that would usually indicate an infestation. I’ll leave a couple traps out and put out some poison, but I can’t do much else if there ain’t nothing to catch.”
Not to mention the number of people they had to send down into the basement these days to flip the breaker. Power outages were becoming a weekly if not biweekly occurrence, giving their autumn guests an unintentionally Halloween-themed stay. The parents talked of replacing the panel entirely, spending a pretty penny updating and already updating the electrical system to prevent it from happening again. They had a wedding to host after all, and only a month and a half to get everything squared away. The last thing they needed was the power shutting off in the middle of the bride’s first dance.
But no one was saying the quiet part out loud—the truth that everyone was writing on sticky notes or whispering over shared take-out in the historical society during “book club”.
Replacing the panel would do nothing to stop this. The only thing that would stop it would be the group of people that looked the least threatening at the moment: scattered over the porch of the estate, surrounded by slouching pumpkins with haunting grins and silly grimaces while wearing the most ridiculous hats these ghosts had probably ever seen (seriously, getting Yoongi to put his on was like a hostage negotiation situation). Halloween decorations that have been around since the 80’s were staked into the lawn, highlighted by the growing collection of lights and glowing ghosts hanging from tree boughs and porch rungs. If there was one thing they refused to let the stress take away from them, it was a celebration.
The hotel was lit up like the haunted mansion, the doors propped open to welcome local guests and tourists alike to their annual Halloween party, this one big enough to put the local renaissance faire to shame. It was still the anniversary year after all, and her parents would be damned if they didn’t put on a show of competency and glory for all to see.
All of the faces hidden behind rubber or handmade masks probably couldn’t suspect anything was off behind the cheesy Halloween beats blasting across the grounds. The lights could flicker off, the generator could cough to a halt, or the skeletons they fought so hard to keep locked away in closets could tumble out, and they would all clap their hands like it was part of the show.
“Trick or treat!”
Y/n tore her eyes away from the pumpkin head actors welcoming guests through the gates and down to the kid dressed as a train conductor grinning up at her, pillow case held open as wide as their grin.
“Ooo love the outfit!” Taking a fistful of sweets from the large candy bowl on her lap, she added them to her glittering hoard.
The little girl beamed. “Thanks!” She then dragged her eyes down Y/n’s green leafy dress and elegant hat, her confusion growing more shameless by the second. “What are you supposed to be?”
“A Pokemon,” Y/n giggled, setting the bowl aside to pluck two hand-sewn pompoms made to resemble overgrown rosebuds. “Her name is Roselia.” Waving her arms around mystically, she succeeded in tugging a small laugh from the girl.
“Oooohh. My brother likes that stuff.” Her wide eyes followed the glittering roses carefully. “You have to catch them, right?”
“Right.” A mischievous glint took over Y/n’s eye. “And I’ll tell you what—if you want to give it a go, I know just the one you can catch.”
The girl tilted her head. “Really?”
“Yup.” Reaching into her pocket, Y/n shucked out a small pokeball replica, using it to point across the lawn to where a few of her friends loitered by the path towards the hotel. “You see the guy in the pink dinosaur-looking onesie? Big seashell hat?”
“...Yeah?”
“Throw this at him, and if you hit him, he’ll give you a prize.” Y/n lowered her voice to a whisper. “I heard through the grapevine that he has king-size candy bars in that cooler.”
Her eyes lit up brighter than the twinkling orange lights on the porch rails, and she snatched the ball faster than Y/n could blink, skipping off to her mom to drag her closer to her victim.
It took everything in Y/n not to laugh at Yoongi’s unsuspecting back, and that massive hat Taehyung had hand-made for him, standing at nearly a foot tall to resemble a swirling white seashell. At first he had been intrigued by the whole ‘Pokemon’ group costume, but then Jimin had sent a screenshot of the psychic Pokemon SlowKing as only a joke with the message “Yoongi, maybe?”, and he was done for.
A few weeks and a mangled pink dinosaur onesie later, he was stuck pouting by the fence talking to a rather amicable Hoseok, the latter in a simple Pikachu onesie he had ordered online and hadn’t been bothered to spruce up.
The little girl had moxie, walking straight up to Yoongi like she was going to ask him a question, only to whip out the little plastic ball and absolutely pummel his stomach without mercy. Any hope she had of silencing her laughter was ruined the second Yoongi let out a startled shout, the ball falling lamely to the grass while the child bounced around in excitement about the candy bars she knew he had.
Once she was skipping along down to the greenhouse with a massive Kit Kat in hand, Yoongi whipped around to glare at her so fast his ‘crown’ almost fell off. Y/n avoided his gaze innocently, passing out a few more handfuls to a group of power rangers while he stomped across the lawn to lean on the porch railing, staring down his nose at her with a scowl.
“Stop giving children permission to assault me.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” She snickered, resting her arm over the mouth of the bowl.
Yoongi pursed his lips. “First the hat and now this. I’m going to file workers comp in the morning, and it’s going to come out of your paycheck.”
“I think your hat looks great.”
“Of course you do. Because yours looks all cute and pretty, and mine looks like a white piece of shit.”
Y/n fluttered her lashes up at him. “You think I’m cute and pretty?”
Yoongi deadpanned, reaching down to flick her forehead. “No.”
“Bzzzt!” Hoseok appeared from nowhere, pinching Yoongi’s elbow through the felt onesie.
Yoongi hissed out a curse, rubbing the sore spot. “Fuckin’ hell—did you rub your socks on the carpet before you came out?”
“Nope. Just got that magic touch.” Hoseok wiggled his eyebrows, displaying his palm that showed a small magicians shock buzzer.
Yoongi rolled his eyes. “Of course you do….”
“Your fault. Had to come defend my friend here from your psychic powers.”
“I thought you two weren’t talking enough to scheme….” Yoongi muttered beneath his breath bitterly.
“Hey, we talk!” Y/n rushed to cover the flicker of surprise that came across Hoseok’s face at the blunt observation. “For your information, we made a truce. Ya know, since grass types-” Y/n gestured to herself, then Hoseok “and electric types can’t hurt one another, we made a deal to keep the other safe from psychic types like you. Get with the program, slowpoke.”
Yoongi recoiled at the nickname, tossing the red and white scarf around his neck defiantly. “It’s Slowking to you.”
“Whoa, thought you hated this costume, huh?” Hoseok poked at the hat on Yoongi’s head.
“Doesn’t mean I’ll stand for disrespect. I’m royalty.”
“A royal ass.”
“Hey! No fighting on my watch!” Jin sauntered through the front door, carefully situating the red baseball cap on his head.
Yoongi’s jaw fell open with a soft scoff. “Well shit, I didn’t know being a trainer was an option.”
“It wasn’t, for you.” Jin enunciated with sweet sarcasm. “But I’m the eldest, so I called first dibs.”
“Yeah, didn’t you know that’s why I chose Pikachu, cause I’m his favorite. Right, Jin?” Hoseok threw an arm over Jin’s shoulders.
Jin awkwardly pat between the pikachu ears on Hoseok’s head. “Right….”
Hoseok’s lips jutted into an exaggerated pout at the lack of enthusiasm, pushing off of Jin to sit on the edge of the porch where he could maintain his usual three-foot distance from Y/n without it coming across as intentional. Before Yoongi could bite down another scathing warning regarding the precariously placed buzzer on Hoseok’s palm, another group of children approached the porch with bags held wide, earning him a stiff elbow to the ribs.
“Keep it PG,” Jin bit through a tight lipped smile, freeing Y/n from the over-sized cauldron of candy to shovel mounds out to the gleeful kids.
Yoongi pouted, a soft frown that made his lips stick out just enough to make her brain short-circuit, the thoughts of kissing it right off his mouth uncontrollable. Especially when the striped scarf and comically large hat made him look all the more endearing.
“This is censorship at its finest…” He mumbled to himself.
“Woaaahhhh are you Slowking?” A boy no older than ten gaped up at Yoongi, holding his cowboy hat in place as he tilted his head back to take in the costume in all its glory.
Yoongi visibly perked up, unknowingly striking the Pokémon’s signature pose with his chest puffed and hands clasped behind his back. “Uh...Yeah.”
“Siiiiiccckkkk,” The child nodded approvingly, scrambling off down the path towards the greenhouse. “Happy Halloween, sir!”
There was a long pause as everyone shared a look behind Yoongi’s back at the glaringly obvious pride etched into the small smile and rosy cheeks.
“Still hate the costume?” Hoseok snickered.
Yoongi’s tone took on one much more pleased than before—dare she say cocky. “Shut up. This is royalty you’re talking to.”
“Oh lord, here he goes.” Y/n rolled her eyes so hard she saw her own thoughts spelled out on her sockets.
“The only place I’m going is to hand out these king-size candy bars—since I’m clearly the favorite here.” Yoongi popped his scarf and straightened out his hat, sauntering back over to a pile of hay bales where the cooler was hidden and pulling out a fistful of chocolate bars for the kids that were already starting to flock to his post.
“Rumors spread fast…” Hoseok clicked his tongue thoughtfully at the growing line near Yoongi.
Y/n laughed lightly, smiling brightly at a toddler dressed as a honey pot as she handed them their candy. “Of course they have. Kids know where the good shit is…” Then she winced. “...And I may or may not have given a dozen or so children pokeballs to throw at him with the promise of candy.”
That got Hoseok laughing. “Oh he’s not gonna be happy about that….” His laughter died with a choking sound with the front door opening once more, leaving room for Jungkook and Taehyung to spill out onto the patio.
“Where are you two headed?” Jin asked with furrowed brows, nearly getting the breath knocked out of him by Jungkook’s broad shoulders, squeezing down what little space remained.
“They are playing Halloween movies down at the theater,” Taehyung graced them with one of his signature dazzling grins, stopping just beside Y/n. “Jungkook and I wanted to steal some popcorn from the industrial machines Ms. Wörner rented before the kids took it all.”
“Oooo grab me some?” Y/n stood to press a chaste kiss to Jungkook’s cheek, carefully avoiding the horns that curled down from the crown of his head to his cheekbones.
Jungkook nodded stiffly, rubbing his fingertips along the tips of his felt dog ears to hide his blush.
Before she knew it, Taehyung had curled an arm around her waist and whirled her around to collide with his chest, the two of them stumbling into one another like some lovesick couple from a romance film. “Whatever the pretty lady wants, she gets.”
The feathery material on Taehyung’s sleeves tickled the skin on her cheeks as he reached up to bop the tip of her nose affectionately, matching the rest of his flamboyantly majestic red and black suit that he had spend far too many late nights sewing while she supervised on his bed. He captured the dramatic foliage and theatrical nature of his chosen creature well—down to the hand shined dress shoes he polished up that morning.
The air crackled with tension, rippling through the nostalgic atmosphere and reddening foliage like lightning coming down on the group, the change in atmosphere palpable enough for her to choke on. From the corner of her eye, she could see Hoseok’s jovial facade crumble to dust, crushed beneath the toe of his dirt-scuffed Converse and the twist of his lip. Smoke curled from his ears and billowed out from his nostrils with each heavy breath.
“What are you even supposed to be? Some kind of toucan?” Hoseok’s joke was laced with the acrid smoke everyone pretended not to notice.
Taehyung dodged the clear disdain and gave him one of his friendliest boxy smiles. “Oricorio. It’s a pokemon that dances—found it on the pokedex website while looking for Kook’s.”
Hoseok swallowed down a much less pleasant remark with one hardened glare from Jin. “Nice.”
Jungkook shifted from one foot to the other, pressing a comforting hand to the small of Y/n’s back as he shooed Taehyung further down the road. “We should move. The movie started ten minutes ago.” His eyes were brown and soft as he flicked them down to Y/n’s face, a nonverbal check-in that both asked if she was okay, and reminded her that she would be if he had anything to do with it. “We’ll bring you back something—text me if you need anything else.”
“Thanks,” Y/n breathed through the tightness in her chest at Hoseok’s abrupt shift in attitude.
The grass crunched beneath their feet until it turned to scuffed gravel scattering beneath their heels, and Y/n wished that Hoseok’s sour mood would leave with them. Those dreams were crushed almost instantly.
“Jungkook’s choice was perfect for him,” Jin observed quietly in an attempt to disperse it. “Houndoom is the perfect dichotomy between cute and intimidating.”
Hoseok bit his tongue, crossing his arms over his chest so the neon fabric rumpled much like the frown on his face. “At least his was recognizable…”
Jin inhaled painfully slow, chest expanding and stalling at the top of his breath while he found his patience, lax expression traded for something stern that she only ever saw him wear when he was about to scold one of them. Peering down into the bowl in his hand, he spoke with a mindful precision that left little room for argument. “Candy is getting low. Why don’t you let Jimin know we need a refill? He was organizing the boxes in the kitchen when I came down.”
Hoseok kicked off the porch with a huff. “Sure thing.”
Y/n could feel the heat of his presence disappear into the house with him, leaving her cold and shivering on the porch while the little moaning ghosts mocked her sorrow, lips pursed down at the blades of drying grass while she did her best not to let her anger get the better of her. She had known that she and Taehyung might trigger him to pull away more than he already was, but the last thing she had suspected was for him to get so...volatile.
“Cold?” Jin’s voice tipped upwards with the question he already knew the answer to.
Y/n swallowed thickly, grabbing the bowl from him and hugging it close as she slumped back down on the step. “A little.”
Jin lowered himself down beside her with a sigh, stretching his long legs down the front steps and craning his neck to comb through what was left in the bowl. “Do you want me to grab you a jacket?”
“No, it’ll ruin my costume.”
Jin speared her with an unamused sideways glance but didn’t push it, using a finger to poke through the sweets for what he wanted: a pack of gummy life savers. Pinching it open, he pried a few out and offered her one. “Gummy for your thoughts?”
Shaking her head at his antics, she tossed it into her mouth and let her teeth nibble at the texture longer than necessary. Another ring was held up to her in her peripheral vision, with an annoyingly high-pitched voice accompanying it.
“I’m here to save you from that frown!” Jin pressed the ring to her lips and held it there, making little noises like the ring was fighting for its life against her frown. She tried to force deeper just to spite him.
“Alright jeez...”A smile won the war, her mouth parting just enough for the tip of her tongue to swipe the candy in. Jin’s eyes narrowed in on the quick glimpse of her tongue, his finger still hovering by her chin as a curious look came over him.
Y/n’s face warmed under his scrutiny. “What? Do I have chocolate on my face or something?”
Y/n cleared her throat to disperse the strange energy between them, moving quickly to greet the incoming gaggle of kids. When she shivered a second time, not too long after they meandered off to Yoongi, Jin readily slipped his arm beneath hers and tugged her closer, huddled together to stave off the autumn chill and the bitter taste Hoseok’s absence left her with.
He never moved his arm, keeping it snug around hers even when they dug through the topped off bowl to shower the kids in as much candy as they could fit in their fist; an anchor that burrowed deep inside her soul and set up camp there, tending to a fire she hadn’t even noticed was dying.
“Look! A pretty flower~” One of the little girls pointed up at Y/n, lips stretched to show a few missing teeth.
“Oh my goodness, I don’t think I could compare to you! A real life princess!”
The little girl preened beneath the praise, twirling the skirts of her princess dress before raising her gaze to Jin. “Who are you supposed to be?”
Y/n answered for him. “He’s the one who takes care of all us monsters.”
“Like a zookeeper?”
Jin stifled a laugh. “Yeah, like a zookeeper.”
Y/n cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted in Yoongi’s direction. “Your majesty! There’s a princess on the property that needs a royal treat!”
Yoongi cast them a sideways glance, annoyance melting away to reveal the tiniest of smiles as the little girl hopped over to him, cracking his aloof demeanor with one look at her toothy grin. Y/n’s eyes probably looked like little pounding hearts as she watched him crouch down to let her pick which sweet she wanted, even going as far as to let run her little hand over his hat.
A content sigh fell from her lips, and she tilted her head to rest on Jin’s shoulder, hugging his arm closer to her middle. “I love nights like these—where we can all just be. I can’t wait for it to be like this forever.”
Jin’s cheek squished against the top of her head, voice muted and serene. “Me too.”
_________________________________________
A red and white striped paper bag stood half torn and blotted with butter stains on the center table in Jimin’s office, the bottom covered with a hoard of unpopped kernels and what few pieces Y/n hadn’t managed to wiggle her fingers in for yet.
Somewhere along the trek from the estate to the historical society, she found herself wrapped up in Jimin’s white and orange cape that was once supposed to represent the long flowing tail of goldean, now getting a second use as a makeshift blanket. She sat nestled into Jungkook’s side with it thrown over his thighs, recounting to him all of the costumes she had seen traipse by and which ones were her favorites, slyly tossing in a remark about what their future children should wear on their first Halloween just to see him blush.
Taehyung had her legs pulled onto his lap, rubbing circles into her calves with an arm thrown over the back of her chair she was barely sitting in. Unusually quiet and masterfully composed, a strange air brewed in the occasional shifts in his seat or the way he let his eyes fall closed for extended periods in between blinks. He almost looked like he was asleep, the muscles of his face relaxed and smooth. The only indication that anything was amiss was the slight twitch of his lower eyelid, which would have gone largely unnoticed if she hadn’t taken a liking to shamelessly ogling him now that she felt she was allowed to.
Nudging his stomach with her foot she whispered to him. “Headache?”
Lashes fluttered against soft velvety skin, warm brown eyes meeting hers with a deep hum. “That obvious?” He chuckled, hand resting on her shin to rest on her knee. “Just haven’t been sleeping well lately. There were a lot of flashing lights at the hotel that probably made it worse. I’ll be okay.”
“We’ll try not to dilly dally tonight then,” Y/n placed her hand over his, giving it a comforting squeeze, the contact still never failing to send a trill up her spine. “Make sure you can get some sleep.”
A finger trailed over her sage green tights towards her lower thigh. “Is there any chance you might be free to keep me some company?”
“Sleep doesn’t need company,” She playfully shook his hand from her leg.
Taehyung made a show of thinking, a smirk curling up the edge of his lips. “I think it does.” His palm moved to sit on top of her knee again, but the moment it landed, he flinched, blinking rapidly for a few seconds while he caught his bearings after a particularly gnarly throb behind his eyes. A humbled groan left his lips. “Maybe just to hang out…”
Y/n had half the mind to text Yoongi to grab some extra strength pain killers on his way over, or flag down Jimin from across the table. They were still waiting for Yoongi (and Hoseok who had practically tripped over his own feet to tag along) to return from the hotel before they started debriefing, and letting Taehyung suffer in silence didn’t sit right.
The power had gone out. Again.
Thankfully, it had waited for the festivities to end and most of the guests to disperse back to their rooms or their homes in town before it decided to scare the wits out of the poor cleanup crew. But it was still inconvenient in terms of timing, and just who had to go remedy the situation.
Y/n shuddered thinking about the last time they were in the basement, the phantom smell of death still easy to recall.
“Jimin, love?”
Jimin immediately perked up at the sound of her voice.
“Do you have any pain meds or something here? Tae has a headache.”
Looking between the two of them, Jimin nodded once. “I do. In my desk, left-hand side, bottom drawer.”
“I got it,” Before he could stand to grab it for them, Taehyung was already on his feet, moving in a blur to the other end of the room to rummage through said drawer. “Jeez dude, how many bottles of diet soda does a man need in here? Next to the medicine, too?”
Jimin’s lips jutted out in a defensive pout. “It’s my medicine. For emergencies.”
Taehyung bit back a laugh. “Medicine, huh? Guess I’ll have to give it a go.”
“Wait! Don’t take the cosmic one! That’s my last one and they don’t sell it anymore!” Jimin was crowding his side in a second, wrestling a purple and magenta bottle out of his hands while trying to get him to take a plain old bottle instead.
Their sportive bickering droned out into background noise, her attention refocusing in on the face in front of her.
Jin looked distant.
While he was still sat across the table from them, head tilted just enough to signal to Jimin that he had been listening to the update on his search for the missing soldiers but hadn’t quite noticed his absence yet. Sound funneling in his ears and dying before they really made any sort of sense. His eyes were far off, cheek pulled in for him to chew his internal worries away on without voicing them to the group. Something about tonight’s meeting was getting beneath his skin. Questions she could almost see flying by behind his eyes, earning answers that were less than pleasing.
If Y/n looked closely into the soft wrinkle between his brow and the stiff square of his shoulders—she would come to the conclusion that he was frightened of something.
She couldn’t help but find her eyes trailing back to him each time they tried to meander elsewhere. Like his intuition was strong enough to crawl across the very table between them and tunnel down into her stomach, simmering with unease and a dash of restlessness for spice. A part of her longed to run her fingers over the tension on his face and soothe it with a comforting touch, let it wind into her own shoulders so she could take the pressure off of his.
He deserved it. Deserved to be taken care of like he had done for them long before she had even been able to spell her own name. Like he had done for her countless times before.
On par with his innate ability to just know when she was thinking of him, his glassy dazed eyes found hers, lingering over where her smile softened at the edges and her fingertips traced the tattoos on Jungkook’s forearm that draped over her chest and held her with a quiet protectiveness.
Jin looked back at her mouth again. She could tell by the way his eyes drew the shape of her contentment from one end to the other, stopping short of moving anywhere else.
A groan of wood against metal drew their attention to the intruder: Namjoon looking tired as ever, the eccentric brown striped suit and spherical green tree limbs doing little to counter the dark circles under his eyes and the low sag of his shoulders.
“How’d trick or treat go in the greenhouse?” Y/n spoke up first, giving him a quick once-over.
“Fine,” Namjoon sighed, rubbing a hand down his face and slumping into the nearest chair.
“You look exhausted,” Jungkook observed bluntly, the end of his sentence just barely trailing off with a tinge of worry.
Namjoon grunted. “You can thank the mice for that.”
“Mice? In the greenhouse?” A bottle of freshly cracked soda nearly slipped from Jimin's fingertips.
“Unfortunately.”
“How can they get in there if it’s warded?” Y/n tried to hide the shakiness of her voice, images of finding the cursed creatures scuttling beneath her bathroom sink or along the baseboards of her bedroom already conjured up by her mind. At first whiff of her fear, Jungkook gave her shoulder one firm squeeze, subconsciously tugging her closer, and she rested her chin on his forearm like he alone could keep the rats and mice at bay with one harsh glare.
Namjoon lifted one shoulder in a half shrug, cheeks sucked in while he debated on answering. “I don’t know.”
The door pushed open again, Yoongi ducking in with Hoseok hot on his tail, the two of them equally flushed and out of breath.
“Fuck these fucking rats!” The eldest of the duo hissed between his teeth, slamming the door closed behind them.
Namjoon jumped in his seat to look at him. “You too?”
Yoongi froze, hat leaning sideways off his head. “What do you mean me too?”
“They’re spreading again,” Y/n sunk deeper into Jungkook’s hold. “Joon saw them in the greenhouse. Their crossing wards Yoongs.”
“Happy Halloween to us,” Hoseok muttered, eyes honing in on the bottles of soda Taehyung and Jimin were carting back to their seats. “Can I have one?”
Jimin ruffled where he stood, the sweet smile coating his sugary lips the exact opposite to his heavily laid sarcasm. “Sure. Who else wants to steal from my secret stash tonight?”
“Not so secret if we all know where it is, fishy?” Hoseok pinched at Jimin’s arm through the white suit jacket, the younger man leaping out of his skin at the contact.
“What was that for?!”
“Electric beats water,” Hoseok’s snicker lacked its usual liveliness, weighed down by fatigue and the tension in his posture that hadn’t loosened since trick or treating.
“Not me,” Yoongi dropped a recycled grocery bag on the table. “I brought my own goods to the meeting.”
Like two children themselves, Jungkook and Y/n immediately reached for it, pawing through the leftover Halloween candy with sparkling eyes. “Oooo! The fancy peanut butter cups!” Y/n marveled, lifting the package from the bag and tearing it open with her teeth. To her horror, Jungkook’s hand swooped in like a bird of prey, pilfering the first one from the set and stuffing it in his mouth before she could protest.
“Boyfriend tax,” He barely managed to get out around the thick sweet.
“Boyfriend tax my ass,” Y/n cradled the last one safely to her chest with a whine. She wrenched the bag closer to stake claim over any other particular goodies. “Those are so hard to find and hella expensive. How dare you take that from me!”
Hoseok forgot about his one-sided grudge long enough to snort around his next sip. “Gone for five years and suddenly you forget how extra your parents go for Halloween. You can buy more silly duck.”
“Hey! Those were a rough five years, okay?” The pitch in which her voice reached surpassed her normal defensiveness, for what he said unknowingly struck a nerve. A nerve that twanged like a guitar string, the sounds of memories she’d rather forget reverberating through her skull.
Taehyung went rigid in his seat next to her, hand gripping the plastic bottle tight enough to crackle, reminding her to focus on the task at hand. The man standing at the head of the table seemed to get the same idea.
“We need to plan our next move—for real this time. No more bullshitting.” Yoongi wrenched the hat off his head and steeled his expression, a determined glint settling in his dark eyes. “We can’t sit around while they press our buttons.”
“What’s your plan?”
It was Jin who spoke this time after a silent enspection, a thinly veiled accusation hidden behind an innocent question. He was testing out waters without sharing just what he expected to find lurking beneath.
“We need to get Candida out of that mirror and neutralize her. The only problem is, we need to do it somewhere Alain isn’t so he won’t interfere. That means the house is off limits.” Yoongi leaned his weight onto the table while he sorted through his thoughts out loud. “We need somewhere that we can pull on some of her heartstrings or piss her off without risking her lovely, murderous husband showing up to the party uninvited.”
“How do you expect to safely do that?” Namjoon bristled. “All we know is that she lived in the house and had a few hobbies. Not much to go off of here.”
Y/n bit her lip. She wished more than anything that she could remember the details of the strange dreams she’d been having—but it was nearly impossible to pick out much more than a few blurry figures, Alain’s wretched singing, and the feeling of falling through the abyss until gravity pulled on her heart with such fervor she felt it might stop. It felt important, but the group was mostly against digging around them too much in fear that it would open some kind of link between the spirits trying to mess with her mind and herself.
She couldn’t blame them. Not after what had happened with Candida before.
Hoseok leaned back against his chair, looking down at his lap like his leg wasn’t shaking fast enough to charge a light bulb. “The theater might be a neutral spot.” He sniffed, scratching at the back of his neck. “When I would do sessions with your mom, I’d see her there often. And...you know…” He trailed off.
“As true as that may be, getting that room empty without risking the safety of any guest staying on the property is going to be a near impossible feat. I don’t trust that there won’t be some kind of retaliation—even if Alain isn’t present—and the guests and staff on the floors above would be put in the line of fire.” Jimin reasoned.
A light bulb went off in Y/n’s mind, bright and burning with the audacity to even suggest something so dangerous. “Well, there is one way to make sure it’s empty…”
Her eyes met Jin’s, and immediately he recoiled.
“No,” His head shook adamantly. “Absolutely not. This is exactly what I was worried about.”
Hoseok looked cautiously between the two of them. “Care to share with the class?”
Y/n cleared her throat, averting her eyes. “The hotel is booked the weekend of your sister’s wedding in December. It’s the only time the Adelaide, the theater, and the hotel will be closed for an entire day.”
Namjoon choked on his own spit. “You can’t be serious, Y/n.”
“It was just a thought! It’s not like I was saying we had to. But honestly, when else are we going to get that place locked down?”
“She has a point,” Yoongi interjected. “And Mr. Kim would probably never even think to ask if we were going to do something that day. It’d be so risky he would assume that it was off limits.”
“Let me get this straight,” Hoseok shook his head like that would help him think. “You want to summon the woman who tried to kill me on the night of my sister’s wedding, when her husband hates my family because he was convinced my great-granddad was having an affair with his wife? Totally sound idea and not wack at all.”
Jimin rubbed a finger along his bottom lip. “Not to play devil’s advocate here, but if Jungkook was able to neutralize Ani in less than ten minutes, we could be in and out of the theater in an hour or less. If we were to time it right—say, an hour or two into reception when most of the attendees have frequented the open bar—no one would even know we were gone. The wedding is in the ballroom on the opposite side of the hotel, which would put a decent distance between them and us…”
“You’re actually considering this?” Namjoon looked beside himself, astounded that anyone was taking Y/n’s suggestion further than an immediate ‘no’.
Jimin’s lips wobbled into a wry smile. “I guess I am. Consider me selfish, but I would rather miss an hour of drunken dancing than miss the chance to make one of the biggest steps we’ve ever made. If we are thinking optimistically, we could end this by the new year if we go through with this and move efficiently.”
A silence came over the room, the kind that simmered visibly in the air like the heat rising from a summer scalded pavement. The group was at a standstill, divided between the absolute madness that would be them conjuring Candida during such an important event, and not wanting to push off the inevitable.
Yoongi sighed through his nose, eyes piercing into each one of them at the table with sharp precision. “Sacrifices have to be made. There is no possible way to make any real progress wading through this bullshit without stirring trouble and ruffling feathers. That’s the point: there will never be a magical, perfect moment. There’s only conforming and letting them win, or throwing a punch with all we’ve got.” He wet his lips out of habit, taking a moment to steady his voice that had started to crack. “If I have to be the bad guy again, then so be it. But I’m not letting this chance pass us by. Not when Alain is playing us like a fiddle with these rats and the light shows. He’s mocking us. It’s a power play and I’m not going to stand around and wait for the next act.”
Namjoon looked down at the table with a look of utter defeat, the foundation of his defiance cracking beneath the pressure. He looked to Jin with a heavy sigh. “What’s the verdict?”
“It’s complicated.”
“How so?” Jimin probed gently.
Jin nibbled at his lower lip. “I need you guys to be more specific when you ask questions. If you’re too vague, it can muddy the waters.”
“Will someone get hurt?” Jungkook spoke much quieter than everyone else, a sturdy branch pulling them from the pits of a brewing disagreement.
Jin leaned his elbows on the table while he sorted through the answers.
“Yes.”
Namjoon swore under his breath, Jungkook’s expression pinched into clear disapproval, and Hoseok crossed his arms over his chest with a smile too cold to be real. “Nope. I’m out.”
A chorus of voices layered over one another in high-pitched questions, deep defenses, and frantic refusals; all of which were silenced by a commanding wave of Yoongi’s hand as though he was a maestro putting an end to a disjointed symphony.
“All he said was that someone could get hurt, not die.” Yoongi enunciated his words purposefully. “That could mean anything from a minor bruise to who knows what. Nothing he says is ever set in stone. If we act smart, we can prevent serious damage.”
“Yes, but someone is at risk. A game of Russian roulette doesn’t sound very smart.”
“Then we remove the guessing part of it.” Y/n sat up abruptly, Jungkook’s arm slipping down to circle her waist. “Let me be bait. They only go after you guys when I’m not available, so let's make me so goddamn available that they won’t be able to resist coming for me.”
She might as well have said she was going to drive a motorcycle off the tip of Mount Everest while naked and blindfolded, for the reactions were the same. Constant eruptions of absolute disgust and vitriol.
“I said act smart, not idiotic.” Yoongi pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers.
Jin looked sickly pale, an attempt at an argument sputtering out in nonsensical syllables.
“Am I the only sane one here?” Namjoon started to laugh, rising to pace around the room while he tugged at the short strands of his hair. “It’s like you all are trying to give me a heart attack…”
“Just listen to me!” Y/n groaned before Jungkook could tug at her sleeve defiantly again, standing to her full height. “I said bait, not helpless damsel in distress. Poke the bear, but have a dozen bear traps loaded and ready to go. It’s only fair that if we are asking Hoseok to risk something, that I do too. Especially if it means keeping everyone in that wedding and all of you safer.”
“Y/n—one wrong move, one misstep and we could be dealing with something a lot worse than a missed reception. What if Candida decides to jump back into your head and scramble it around again the second she gets loose?” Yoongi argued.
“Then you get her out like you did before.” Y/n shrugged like they were arguing over making a wrong turn on the way to the grocery store, not her life.
“You can’t be serious-”
“Wait,” Jin cut off Namjoon’s next crude interruption. “That feels...better. Not great, but better.”
Yoongi sighed, looking up to the ceiling as though praying to the sky for strength. “ ‘better’, we can work with.”
“Then it's settled then,” Y/n stood her ground. “We plan a time during the wedding while the hotel is empty to cleanse Candida in the theater, and meet back up in time for the last dance. Whoever doesn’t feel safe or comfortable doing it can sit this one out. Otherwise, we start planning a way that feels best, now.”
“All in favor of joining Operation Wedding, raise your hand.” Yoongi lifted his hand into the air first, scanning the rest of the room. Jimin followed suit, Taehyung and Jungkook begrudgingly falling in line after.
Hoseok blew air from his cheeks with a nervous sideways twitch of his head. “I dunno. I need time to think.”
Namjoon looked shredded from stress, hands thrown up in the air with a billowing sigh. “I guess. I’m not going to let you guys go in there alone. God knows you all will be knocking on my door for some kind of exotic plant within the hour if I don’t.”
Jin leaned forward so his elbows rested on the table. “Let’s outline some sort of plan. I’m here to bounce ideas off of as needed.”
Yoongi led the discussion, taking the reins with the kind of authority that everyone easily respected. Even when Hoseok was still avoiding half the group while pretending he wasn’t, and Taehyung looked like he had an itch he just couldn’t reach, he held down the fort like his life depended on it. Suggestions flew from all directions, either caught or smacked down by Jin’s unwavering intuition, and the candy stash dwindled down to nothing but a pile of wrappers and unfavorable flavors not even Jungkook and his interesting tastes could stomach.
It was well past midnight by the time they ambled along the dark winding road back up to the Estate, talking of the book they all had tucked under their arms to make it seem like they were revisiting already hashed discussion points from ‘book club’. They probably looked like a group of children returning home from an abundant Halloween trek, flashlights bouncing on the damp pavement and cutting harsh orange streaks on brown leaves, costumes in various states of disarray, and the corners of their mouths stained with chocolate or sour candy dust.
Red taillights glowed against the ghostly blue twinge of evening, parked with the engine taking long drags of fuel and breathing out puffs of silver smoke that hovered like mist. Her mother rounded the front, hand stuck on the handle and eyes wide as she watched the group approach, clearly having not expected them to still be out so late.
In Y/n’s mind, there was a moment where she couldn’t tell if she was in the present or the past, the blinding light on her mother's face blocking out some of the age and the worry. It really was like they were returning home to her after a long, riveting night of years past.
She could still see it, how quickly they would have run to leap into her arms or bounce around her legs to chatter incessantly about their sweet hoard, fighting to get lifted up on her hip or pulled in for a hug that felt so warm against their chilled skin.
She had always smelt like hot apple cider and cinnamon back then, as that was the drink she preferred to nurse in a big steaming mug while she waited for them on the porch. Of course she shared, letting Y/n steal sips while her sister asked for a picture.
Her mother must have been thinking the same thing, eyes darting between each of them like she never wanted to look away but knew she must.
“W-what are you still doing out?” She asked quietly, skin stretched thin over her knuckles where she grasped the door handle.
“Late night,” Y/n’s lips stretched into a thin line that could almost be a smile. For some reason, the back of her throat burned as the faint scent of mulled apples carried over on the wind, and she hated it. “Book club is going well. We are almost finished.”
There was a pause, her mother’s breath leaving her nostrils in visible plumes with each rapid exhale. Then she angled her body forward to rest her hip against the door, her entire body weight pressed to the steel. “You should hurry back. It’s cold out tonight.”
Something about the way she said it didn’t settle well.
“Headed there now,” Y/n answered slowly, squinting at her mother’s taut expression. “Everything going okay with wedding planning?”
Before she could say much else, her arm was yanked back with enough force to make her yelp, coming face to face with Jungkook’s back. The car rocked forward like it was chasing after her, her mother bracing against the side with gritted teeth.
“Home. Now.” Mariah spat, hands splayed on the glass of the door.
The beam from a flashlight shone directly into the dark window, the others taking care to leave distance between them and the vehicle that stopped shaking the moment the light penetrated the glass.
Jimin aimed the light directly onto her father’s glistening face, teeth barred and saliva dripping from the edges of his mouth in foamy ribbons, smearing on the glass he had his forehead pressed to.
His eyes bulged from the sockets, gleaming gold and narrowed to slits; an animal stalking unsuspecting prey, salivating at the chance to sink its teeth into their flesh. Slapped on his forehead was a padded bandage, the cotton mottled with rust and black. He bucked forward against the glass again, bumping into the glass in an attempt to open the door her mother held closed, muffled growls and shouts seeping through into the night.
“Mr. Wörner,” Jimin addressed him courteously, light never straying from him and a guiding hand on Y/n’s lower back, pressing her forward to follow after Jungkook in the direction of the front gate.
None of them had it in them not to look—necks angled so they could gawk at what he had become.
Taehyung had the hardest time processing his transformation, standing lifelessly in front of the door with so much shock that face registered as blank. They stared at one another. Eyes locked, breathing similarly ragged, and caught up in each other’s presence.
Her father looked at him like he was an exhibit, held tilted and gaze boring into his face. Taehyung looked at him like a mirage. A hallucination one couldn’t decipher as real or fake.
Anselm’s mouth moved once. Then twice. Speaking words none of them could hear.
Jin moved quick, grabbing the younger man by the shoulders and pushing him up the hill and away from the sight.
Last to move was Jimin, keeping the light on the monster in the car so everyone else could get ahead, lingering a moment too long to be accidental. A quiet stand off.
His left hand came up to scratch at the phantom burn on his ribs on its own accord; the scar healed over and faded into a silvery line.
Her father laughed, shoulders shaking and body slumping into the door as though Jimin had said something funny, grin a sickening twist.
“Jimin,” Y/n called back to him, limbs numb and shaky.
At the sound of her voice, he began to walk backwards towards the gate, being sure to keep the light on the car at all times in case he managed to break through the glass and bound after them. It wasn’t until he was at her side that he faced forward, a new shade of pale and clouded with emotions hand slipped over her shoulder blades to keep her moving. A gentle yet stern reminder of the urgency to keep moving.
With his touch she could hear it—a voice, sweet and smoky; taunting and sharp, harping over the fluttering of bats and rustling of trees.
“Jimin? Are you listening, Jimin?”
A thick, wet breath rattled through the air with no real source.
“I know you can hear me.”
The voice sounded familiar. Too familiar.
“I thought I had taught you better than to leave someone behind?”
Y/n’s head swiveled around in all directions, trying to see if anyone else could hear what she was to no avail.
“If you keep refusing to listen, I will make you listen. Over and out.”
Their eyes met, and Y/n shuddered with the sound of her mother’s car humming past the gate. Jimin forced his expression into something that tried to appear pleasant. It didn’t work.
“Bear,” Y/n breathlessly confirmed.
Jimin shushed her softly, pulling her closer with his hand hooked around her waist, the epitome of placidity and steadiness in the face of danger. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to share that with you. He does that often—it’s nothing to be frightened of, yeah?” The kiss he pressed into her temple lingered, suspended longer to preserve the moment of peace just a moment longer.
He uncapped his drink, tipping his head back to pour some of it into his mouth, letting the bubbles pop on his tongue. Then he took a second, this time draining the bottle dry like a glass of whiskey after a hard day.
The bottle stayed by their bedside table, or tossed onto a growing pile in the recycling bin. Everywhere she turned, it became more noticeable, the syrupy sweet taste harboring behind kisses or relaxed nights on the sofa.
It made her wonder just how often Bear spoke to him, and how deeply it struck him.
Hopefully, if their plans worked in their favor, he wouldn’t have to deal with it much longer, this much she reminded herself of as she watched Yoongi dispose of yet another mouse from beneath the dining room table at breakfast.
kianamaiart
kaledo-art
theartofmadeline
tangentwithtanner
