DD

She/her 22. 𓃸

[liwakio]

i can't be nikki

[witchsamlizzie]

Sadie Sink - Jean Grey Icons

[dearlyhyeon]

now that everyone is done watching bnd.. i’m expecting a shit ton of arachnid sensory overload! peter parker fics immediately at my desk by tomorrow morning with a side of canon compliance…

why do men get hotter whenever they’re depressed and bruised

[puckmegirl]

UPTOWN GIRL (ft. John Logan)

blurb: a rich uptown girl with car issues keeps visiting the small garage off the highway where the owner’s super hot son works.

warnings: fem!reader, fluff, lowk ditzy!reader but not really, yummy mechanic!logan.

note: pt. 2 here

Logan heard you before he saw you.

He memorized the sound of those heels clicking against the rough pavement like a second heartbeat. After all, not many girls around this side of town wore vintage Prada pumps to an off-highway garage.

And even if they did, they most certainly did not own a BMW 6er f12 convertible.

Logan’s older brother Jeff was leaning against the workshop desk and sipping on a can of Coke when he saw you strut in. He sighed, “Here comes Lottie.”

The nickname was a running joke between the brothers. Jeff had muttered it under his breath when you first visited the shop and asked a question about diesel gas. He took one look at you and knew you were a clueless, rich girl who shouldn’t be visiting garages such as theirs.

Logan hadn’t entertained the nickname so much. He thought it was unnecessarily mean. Besides, Lottie was always a sweetheart in Princess and the Frog.

Jeff turned on his heels and disappeared into the garage’s office, leaving Logan to deal with you on his own.

Logan put down a spare part he was working on and turned around, leaning back against the counter.

You waved excitedly with a cheerful grin. “Hi, Logan!”

He smiled politely, “Hey…”

“Did you save my girl?” You asked, batting your lashes.

Logan nodded, “She’s all fixed up for you,” he said, walking over to the wall of car keys hung on hooks to retrieve yours.

You clapped your hands, “Yay!”

He chuckled whilst shaking his head. You got happy over the simplest of things. He thought it was endearing.

You walked over to your car. Nebula, as you called her. A fitting name for a sleek, black convertible with dark purple leather upholstery and shiny silver rims.

Logan came over and handed you your keys. “You wanna try her out?”

You nodded and unlocked your car before opening the driver’s side door. No beeping. Perfect.

You beamed at Logan. “You did it!”

He smiled with an easy laugh, feeling proud of his work. In reality, your car issue was a minor one; the door sensor just needed a replacement. Nothing about it required a lick of rocket science, and yet you looked at him as if he hung the stars in your galaxy.

You put your designer bag into your car and bent over to fish out your wallet. Logan stared at your body for a second before he caught himself, clearing his throat and looking away respectfully.

You stood up straight, holding your leather wallet between both hands, looking at him with a doe-eyed expression.

He scratched the back of his neck and gestured for you to follow him to the counter. The gritty sounds of his boots crunching the gravel below and the rhythmic click click click of your heels echoed through the garage.

Logan went around the counter and pulled out a receipt and wrote down the service you needed with the price. He slid the piece of paper to you but you just kept looking at his face with a smile. He blinked before realizing you didn’t care for the price. Right, he thought. Rich girls don’t worry about those things.

“Cash or card?” He asked.

You held up your metal black credit card.

Logan pursed his lips and nodded as he pulled out a card reader. You tapped your card without even glancing at the screen and clapped your hands when the machine beeped in satisfaction.

“Thank you, Logan,” you told him kindly.

He shrugged politely, “It’s no problem.”

You smiled at him. He returned it, “Do you want your recei—“

Before he could even hand you your proof of service, you were walking back to your car. He nodded to himself and stuffed the receipt into the cash register.

He watched as you exited the garage, waving at him enthusiastically as you drove by. He gave a small wave back.

+

A week later, your BMW pulled into the garage whilst Logan was working under a car.

He didn’t hear the sound of your heels this time as he had headphones in, blasting a classic rock song. He felt a shadow looming nearby so he turned and saw your heels appear. He paused and rolled out from under the car, meeting the sight of your broad smile peering down at him.

“Hi, Logan!”

“Hey…” He sounded confused. His eyebrows furrowed and he glanced around, “Didn’t you pick up your car last week?”

You nodded. “Yep. But my AC is broken now…” You pouted.

Hm, Logan thought. He sat up, “Oh, I didn’t see that when I did the diagnostic last week—“

“Must be a new issue, then. These foreign cars are all funny,” you replied, tilting your head.

He cleaned his hands with a rag before standing up. He had oil stains on his shirt and just a little smudge on his face. You thought he looked so ruggedly handsome.

“Let me take a look,” he said and you stepped out the way for him to crank open your hood and inspect the situation.

As he got to work, you leaned against your car and watched. After a moment, you asked, “How was your weekend?”

People don’t usually talk to Logan when he repairs their cars. Especially not pretty, rich girls like you.

“It was good, played hockey, worked here in the shop,” he responded casually.

You nodded along even though he couldn’t see you.

“Did you win?” You asked.

He laughed, an amused sound. “Yeah…yeah, we won.”

You clapped your hands, “Yay!”

Logan laughed again. It was cute, he thought, how you always clapped at good news.

“You like hockey?” He asked, looking over your hood to meet your eyes.

You hummed, “I only recently got into it. My family prefers watching polo, golf, or tennis.”

Rich people sports, he wanted to say. That made sense.

“Recently, huh?” He said instead, ducking his head to keep working. “Who should I thank for putting you onto hockey?” He joked.

You smiled shyly and said, “You…”

His hand paused. The parts of your car suddenly looking like alphabet soup moving in jumbled letters. He lifted his head to meet your gaze again. But before he could manage a reply, you changed the subject. “Is it broken beyond repair?” You asked, turning your attention to your car parts.

He snapped out of his daze and shook his head. “Uhh, no. No, you just need AC coolant.”

“Is that an easy fix?” You asked.

He nodded, “Yeah, the easiest.” He said.

You smiled in relief. “Thank goodness I have you fixing my car,” you told him.

He smiled at that.

He fixed your car, you chirped out a “Thank you, Logan!”, you paid without looking at the bill, and waved goodbye as you left.

“That the BMW girl again?” Logan’s dad asked as he stepped out the office.

“Yeah,” Logan replied, wiping his hands.

“Lottie back again so soon?” Jeff teased. Logan rolled his eyes at the jab.

“You overcharge her?” His dad asked.

Logan looked at him, “Why would I do that?”

His dad shrugged, “Luxurious car fee?”

Logan squinted his eyes, “We don’t do that.”

Jeff piped in, “We could. She doesn’t even check her receipts.”

Logan looked between his dad and brother, “So what? We charge her fair and square.”

His dad shared a looked with Jeff before he went back inside the office.

+

Week after week, you came by to the garage. First it was an oil change, then a rim replacement, then a loose window ribbon, then a tire with low air, and so on.

By week 7, Logan had had enough. It’s not that he didn’t like seeing you, no. Far from it. He actually enjoyed your company. He often looked forward to when you’d come by and say Hi, Logan! in that sing-song voice of yours, your joyful smile, and innocent questions.

But now he was noticing a pattern.

So when you rolled in that Thursday night like clockwork, he didn’t go up to you. He stayed by the workshop desk and watched you with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Hi, Logan!” You beamed with a gleeful wave.

But upon meeting his stern expression, your smile faltered and your hand slowly dropped back to your side. You looked around the empty garage before walking over to him in hesitant steps. The sound of your heels filled the space between the two of you. You stopped in front of him and flattened down your skirt, a nervous tic of yours that you never noticed before.

“Y/n,” he said, his tone serious. “This is the seventh time you’ve come to the garage.”

You nodded, “Nebula keeps acting up—“

“No, she doesn’t.”

You looked at your feet. No smile, no lively clapping.

His arms uncrossed and he stepped closer. He wasn’t angry. No, it wasn’t that. Logan isn’t an idiot. He knew. He knew you had a crush on him, knew the only reason you showed up time and time again was just to spend time with him. Why else would you come? He knew families like yours had their own repairmen at fancy dealerships who could fix any problem. You didn’t need to come into his family’s garage.

Yet, you did.

Logan figured it out by week 4. But truth be told, he never mentioned it because a part of him liked being around you too. He liked hearing your upbeat voice, the familiar tap of your heels, the sound of your laugh. So he stayed quiet, he fixed your tires, and refilled your car’s oil. He went along with it. Because he liked your company just as much as you liked his.

Unable to lie to him, you lifted your head and met his eyes. “I did those things to my car on purpose.” You confessed quietly.

Logan blinked. His stance eased at your admission and he looked at you with soft eyes.

“I watched a YouTube video on how to drain AC coolant,” you added. “And drove around until my tires lost some of its pressure, and—”

“Y/n,” he held your chin with his hand. “You didn’t have to do all that to see me.”

Your eyes widened as you stared at him. He smiled gently, “I…like seeing you. With or without Nebula.”

“You do?” You asked.

He nodded, “I do.”

He leaned in slowly, giving you the chance to pull away. But you stayed. His lips met yours in a gentle kiss. Not hungry or desperate, just a soft sealing; a mutual understanding—I like you and you like me.

When he pulled away, he rested his forehead against yours. You looked at him with a honeyed, dazed expression. He smiled down at you and pecked your lips once more. You weren’t a spoiled, rich girl to him. Not clueless or ditzy. You were just…you. A sweetheart with a crush on a cute guy who would do anything to see him. You were Lottie.

He glanced behind you at your car. He pulled away with a reluctant sigh, “What did you do to her this time?”

You smiled sheepishly, “I jammed my gearshift…”

He chuckled softly, both amused and fondly exasperated by you. “Okay…let me take a look.” He said, lacing his hand with yours and bringing it up to his lips to press a kiss.

omg first off campus post, i’m nervy xx

[the-darklings]

㊂ M.E.G — ENTITY DOSSIER: ENTITY ███ (UNDESIGNATED)

▓▓▓▓▓▓ CLASSIFIED // M.E.G. INTERNAL // CLEARANCE LEVEL 3 REQUIRED ▓▓▓▓▓▓ Colloquial Designation: "the Warden" Field Designation: UNK-F-██/1 Status: ACTIVE — CLASSIFICATION PENDING DOCUMENT ID: MEG-ENT-████-DOSSIER CLASSIFICATION: LEVEL 3 — RESTRICTED COMPILED BY: Dr. ██████, Entity Research Division DATE OF COMPILATION: ██/██/199█ LAST REVISION: ██/██/199█ REVISION STATUS: ONGOING — FILE UNDER REVIEW

⚠ DISTRIBUTION WARNING ⚠

This dossier describes an entity that does not conform to existing M.E.G. classification frameworks. It has been filed provisionally under the designation UNK-F-██/1 pending formal review. Personnel are advised to read the full document before making contact decisions. The reviewing analyst would also like to note, for the record, that this is the third time this year she has been asked to classify an entity that breaks every rule in the handbook. She would like a raise. Or a transfer. Whichever comes first.

1. OVERVIEW

UNK-F-██/1 is an anomalous entity first documented approximately ██ months ago following a cluster of unusual incident reports from survey teams on Levels 2 through 5. The reports described a previously uncatalogued entity intervening in predator-wanderer encounters and, in every documented case, intervening on behalf of the wanderers.

This sentence should not require emphasis, but it does.

We have no record of any entity in any classification tier exhibiting sustained protective behaviour toward humans. Isolated incidents and exceptions exist (see Entity 974's passive non-aggression policy, filed separately). But UNK-F-██/1 is not passive. UNK-F-██/1 is actively, aggressively, and consistently defending human wanderers against hostile entities. She has been observed engaging and killing Howlers, Skin-Stealers, and at least one unclassified predator-type in direct combat to protect wanderer groups.

She does this on purpose. She does this repeatedly. She does this with a level of ferocity that would be alarming if it weren't directed at things we also don't mind being dead.

2. PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION

UNK-F-██/1 maintains a humanoid female form. Apparent age, build, and identifying features have been redacted from this document at the request of Senior Research per Directive ██ (see Section 5: Origin Hypothesis). If Dr. ██████'s conversion theory is correct, physical descriptors of the humanoid form may correspond to the appearance of a real, formerly living individual. Publication of those descriptors within M.E.G. internal channels could compromise ongoing identification efforts. Relevant personnel with Level 4 clearance may request the unredacted physical profile from the Entity Research Division directly.

What can be stated: the form is notably well-constructed for an entity. Proportionally accurate. Expressively detailed. Lacking the common indicators of entity mimicry (uncanny stillness, symmetry errors, delayed micro-expression). To an untrained observer, UNK-F-██/1 would pass as human without question. Several field operatives initially logged her as a wanderer before corrections were filed.

NOTE: The quality of the human form is, in the opinion of this analyst, the single most significant data point in this dossier. Entity mimicry improves with age and practice or not at all. UNK-F-██/1 has existed for less than a year. Her form should be rudimentary at best. It is not. The form reads as though it was built from internal reference material rather than external observation. This distinction is significant and is addressed in Section 5.

True form has been partially observed on two occasions (see Incident Reports IR-████ and IR-████). Descriptions from surviving witnesses are inconsistent (standard for high-frequency entity exposure) but common elements include:

Significant spatial displacement (form is large)

High thermal output (witnesses report ambient temperature increase within a ██-meter radius)

Luminous qualities (one operative described "light that hurt but didn't burn")

Multi-limbed structure (count varies between reports: four, six, "too many")

The distinct impression of being "looked at from multiple angles simultaneously"

Witnesses were unanimously unable to hold visual contact for longer than ██ seconds. Both incidents resulted in temporary frequency-exposure symptoms (migraine, disorientation, emotional volatility) but no permanent cognitive damage.

NOTE: Both encounters occurred while UNK-F-██/1 was in active combat protecting wanderer groups. Her true form appears to manifest involuntarily under extreme duress or emotional provocation. She does not appear to deploy it willingly.

3. BEHAVIOUR PROFILE

UNK-F-██/1's behaviour is singular among documented entities and has generated more internal debate within the Entity Research Division than any subject since Entity 0 adopted the Franklin template.

3.1 Wanderer Protection

She patrols. Regularly. Across Levels 2 through 5, on routes that are consistent enough to map (see Appendix C: Patrol Route Overlay). She shadows wanderer groups, maintaining a distance of approximately ██ meters, and intercepts hostile entities before they make contact. Wanderer groups under her protection exhibit a survival rate of approximately 98%. The M.E.G. average for unassisted wanderer groups on these levels is ██%.

I'm going to write that again because I need someone in administration to read it: her protected groups survive at a rate of 98%. Ours survive at ██%. She is, statistically, more effective at keeping humans alive in the Backrooms than we are. She is doing this alone. She has been alive for less than a year.

Several rescued wanderers have provided testimony regarding direct interactions with UNK-F-██/1. Common elements across accounts:

She approaches in humanoid form. Speaks softly. Uses simple, reassuring language.

She checks for injuries. Has been observed providing basic first aid.

She guides groups toward known safe zones with apparent knowledge of exit routes.

She does not request compensation, reciprocation, or cooperation of any kind.

She leaves once the group reaches safety. Does not follow. Does not linger.

Multiple witnesses describe her as "kind." One described her as "the nicest person I met in this place." The witness was gently informed that UNK-F-██/1 is not a person.

3.2 Entity Interactions

She is hostile toward predatory entities. Aggressively so. Combat engagements documented in Appendix D indicate a willingness to engage targets significantly above her apparent power tier. She fights recklessly by entity standards, prioritising the protection of nearby humans over her own structural integrity.

She has been observed in non-hostile interaction with Entity 974 ("Mr. Kitty") on Level 974. The nature of this interaction is unclear. Field observation suggests a social relationship predating UNK-F-██/1's first documented appearance on Levels 2-5. Entity 974 has declined to comment when contacted via standard psychic-relay protocol. Entity 974 did, however, project the following statement into the mind of the operative who asked:

"She is my friend. If you bother her I will be disappointed in you. You don't want me to be disappointed in you."

3.3 Entity 0 Association

This is the section I was hoping I wouldn't have to write.

UNK-F-██/1 has been observed in proximity to Entity 0 on multiple occasions. The nature of these encounters is... contested. Body camera footage from Team ██ (Incident Report IR-████) captured what appears to be UNK-F-██/1 and Entity 0 engaged in pursuit behaviour through Level 0 corridors. Initial analysis classified this as predatory aggression (Entity 0 pursuing UNK-F-██/1 as prey).

Subsequent review has revised this classification. The pursuit behaviour is bilateral. Both entities are pursuing each other. On the footage, UNK-F-██/1 can be seen slowing her pace, glancing behind her, and in one instance laughing before accelerating again. Entity 0, for his part, is walking. With his hands in his pockets. He appears to be whistling.

Dr. ██████ has suggested the term "courtship behaviour."

I have suggested Dr. ██████ take a walk.

However. The evidence has continued to accumulate and it has become increasingly difficult to interpret it as anything else.

Entity 0 has restructured significant portions of Level 0 since UNK-F-██/1's arrival. Exit routes that previously dead-ended or looped have been straightened and connected to safe zones on adjacent levels. Two confirmed Howler dens within Level 0 have been sealed. The internal temperature of Level 0's central corridor section has risen by approximately ██ degrees, consistent with accommodation of an entity that runs warmer than the ambient environment.

He is renovating. For her. The apex predator of the Backrooms is renovating.

UNK-F-██/1 has been detected residing within Entity 0's territory for extended, continuous periods. Frequency monitoring equipment positioned at Level 0 access points has logged her presence for stretches of ██ to ██ days without exit. During these periods, the ambient frequency signature of Level 0 shifts measurably. Senior analyst Dr. ██████ described the new signature as, and I am quoting directly from her official assessment, "the whole level smells like a honeymoon suite." I do not know how a level smells like anything. I do not want to know.

More concerning: Entity 0 has adopted a permanent humanoid form. This is unprecedented. Entity 0 is the original shapeshifter. He has never, in years of documented history, maintained a single shape for longer than a few days by our estimation. He now holds what our files designate the "Franklin template" (a male humanoid form of ██ age, ██ build, with specific identifying features that are cross-referenced in a separate, sealed file) on a continuous basis. He built it. He is maintaining it. The energy expenditure required to hold a permanent human shape for an entity of his age and power is significant, and he is doing it voluntarily.

He is doing it because she likes the human form. This is the only logical interpretation. Entity 0 built a face and is wearing it permanently because the entity he is courting likes the way it looks.

Additionally, field teams have reported observing scent-marking behaviour consistent with territorial pair-bonding. Entity 0's frequency signature has been detected on UNK-F-██/1's humanoid form during two separate encounters with survey teams, and her signature has been detected on him. The cross-contamination of frequency signatures is, per Dr. ████████'s assessment, "a neon sign that says TAKEN in thirty-seven sub-vocal registers."

The Events of IR-████ (see separate file; Level 5 clearance; the footage is sealed and will remain sealed) confirmed that physical mating behaviour has occurred. The details are in the incident report for anyone with the clearance and the constitution to read them. This analyst has read them. This analyst would also like to un-read them.

What matters for the purposes of this dossier: if the courtship progresses to a full mating bond (seven-stage frequency lock, per Dr. ██████'s theoretical model), Entity 0 and UNK-F-██/1 will be permanently, irreversibly bonded at the frequency level. The combined output of two bonded apex-tier entities is beyond our current modelling capability.

4. THREAT ASSESSMENT

THREAT RATING: CONDITIONAL — PROVISIONAL

UNK-F-██/1 has exhibited zero hostile behaviour toward humans. Zero. Across ██ documented encounters and an estimated ███+ unobserved patrol interactions, not a single human casualty or injury has been attributed to this entity.

She is, to the best of our knowledge, on our side.

I am deeply uncomfortable writing this sentence. I am also unable to find evidence to contradict it.

The conditional threat rating exists for two reasons.

First: her association with Entity 0. Entity 0 remains classified as APEX-UNDEFINED with a threat rating of 9.7. If UNK-F-██/1's relationship with Entity 0 progresses to full mating-bond status (see Appendix E: Theoretical Bond Mechanics), the combined frequency output of two bonded apex-tier entities could destabilise multiple levels simultaneously.

Second (and in many ways more concerning): her growth curve. UNK-F-██/1 is not a standard entity. She did not emerge from the walls through the documented accretion process. Her power development does not follow any existing model we have. In the ██ months since her first documented appearance, her frequency output has increased by approximately ██% and shows no indication of plateauing. Standard entity growth follows a logarithmic curve that flattens within the first decade. UNK-F-██/1's curve is linear. Possibly exponential. We have insufficient data to determine which.

What this means in practical terms: we cannot predict how powerful she will become. We do not know if her growth has a ceiling. Dr. ██████ has noted, with visible unease, that if her current trajectory holds, UNK-F-██/1 could reach Entity 0's power tier within ██ years. An entity reaching apex status in under a decade is unprecedented. An entity reaching apex status from a suspected human conversion origin is beyond unprecedented.

It should be theoretically impossible.

Additionally, her power fluctuates in response to emotional stimuli in ways that standard entities do not exhibit. Emotional distress produces measurable frequency spikes that have been detected from adjacent levels. During the Howler engagement documented in IR-████, her distress-spike was powerful enough to partially restructure the corridor geometry of Level 4. She was not attempting to restructure anything. The restructuring was involuntary. A side effect of being upset.

An entity whose power output scales with emotional intensity, whose growth curve is unpredictable, and whose emotional state is directly linked to a courtship with the most powerful entity in the Backrooms... the modelling scenarios keep Dr. ██████ awake at night. They keep me awake too.

RECOMMENDED PROTOCOL: DO NOT ENGAGE. DO NOT APPROACH. DO NOT INTERFERE WITH WANDERER PROTECTION ACTIVITIES. If encountered, allow UNK-F-██/1 to complete her patrol and withdraw. Express gratitude if appropriate. Do not attempt to recruit, capture, contain, or study. Do not, under any circumstances, provoke emotional distress.

If she helps you, say thank you. Move on. Do not make it weird.

5. ORIGIN HYPOTHESIS (SPECULATIVE — LEVEL 4 CLEARANCE)

This section contains unverified speculation and is included at the request of Dr. ███████, who believes the hypothesis has sufficient evidential basis to warrant formal documentation.

UNK-F-██/1 may not be a naturally occurring entity.

The Backrooms generates entities through a documented process of slow accretion over extended periods (years to centuries). UNK-F-██/1 appeared in months. Her human form is too detailed for her age. Her behaviour toward humans is too empathetic for an entity. She eats (entities do not eat). She sleeps (entities enter stasis; they do not dream).

Dr. ███████'s hypothesis: UNK-F-██/1 is a converted entity. A human consciousness absorbed by the Backrooms and remade into entity form. The human form is built from memory, not observation. The protective instinct toward wanderers is residual human empathy surviving the conversion process. The eating. The sleeping. All residual. All human.

If this hypothesis is correct, UNK-F-██/1 is the first documented case of human-to-entity conversion in M.E.G. records.

If this hypothesis is correct, someone died in the Backrooms and the walls kept her.

A parallel research initiative (Project ██████, classified Level 4) has been opened to investigate UNK-F-██/1's potential pre-conversion identity.

The Entity Research Division is cross-referencing physical descriptors from the unredacted profile against missing persons databases, with particular focus on cases involving ██████████████ and proximity to known Backrooms entry points. The search parameters are, frankly, enormous. People go missing near threshold locations constantly. Narrowing the pool requires assumptions about time of death, geographical origin, and manner of entry that we cannot currently verify.

However, if the humanoid form is built from memory (and the evidence strongly suggests it is), then the form is her face. The face she had when she was alive. And if that face exists in a database somewhere, in a missing persons report, in a police file, in a family photograph pinned to a corkboard in a precinct that stopped looking years ago, we may be able to find out who she was.

Dr. ███████ has noted, for the record, that identifying her raises ethical questions we are not equipped to answer. If we find her name, do we tell her? Does she want to know? Does she already know? And if she was killed (the evidence from Entity 974's psychic assessment, obtained secondhand, suggests the death was violent and not accidental), does identifying her open a criminal investigation in a world that has already forgotten she existed?

These questions are above this analyst's pay grade. They might be above everyone's pay grade.

This analyst has no further comment on Section 5 at this time.

6. OPEN QUESTIONS

What triggered UNK-F-██/1's conversion, if Dr. ██████'s hypothesis is correct?

Does UNK-F-██/1 retain human memories? If so, how many? Does she know what she was?

What is the current status of the Entity 0 courtship? Has bonding progressed? (NOTE: No one wants to be assigned to investigate this. The last team that stumbled into Entity 0's nesting territory came back with footage that has been sealed and a debrief transcript that made the senior analyst leave the room.)

Entity 974 appears to have information regarding UNK-F-██/1's origin. Entity 974 has declined to share it. Entity 974 has also projected an image of a Hello Kitty sticker into the mind of every operative who has asked. The significance of this is unclear.

Can the conversion process be replicated? Should the conversion process be replicated? (Dr. ██████ has formally requested that this question be struck from the dossier. It has not been. It should be discussed.)

7. ANALYST'S NOTE

She saved twelve people last month. Twelve wanderers who would have died on Level 3 if she hadn't been there. She fought two Howlers at once and nearly died doing it and she still guided the survivors to a safe zone.

I don't know what she is. I don't know where she came from. I don't know if she's a converted human or an anomalous entity or something else entirely that doesn't fit any of the boxes we've built.

But I know she's the only entity in this place that has never hurt a human being. And I know she's protecting people we can't reach. And I know that whatever she is, whoever she was, she is doing more good in these walls than most of our field teams combined and she's doing it alone, and she's been alive for less than a year.

If she was human once, she was a good one.

Classify her however you need to. File her however the handbook demands. But if anyone in this organisation suggests containment, capture, or interference with her activities, they can take it up with me personally.

And then with Entity 0. Who will be significantly less polite about it I'd imagine.

END OF DOSSIER

ADDENDUM PENDING: Frequency analysis of potential mating-bond formation. Assigned to Dr. ██████. Dr. ██████ has requested a transfer. Transfer denied.

[Handwritten note pinned to the inside cover of the physical file, in handwriting that does not match any M.E.G. personnel:]

she's mine, but you already knew that.

leave her alone.

— 0

[Note is written on the back of a Hello Kitty sticker.]

▓▓ URGENT ADDENDUM ▓▓

ADDENDUM TO MEG-ENT-████-DOSSIER FILED: ██/██/199█ — 72 HOURS AFTER PRIMARY DOSSIER SUBMISSION CLASSIFICATION UPGRADED: LEVEL 5 — EYES ONLY FILED BY: Dr. ██████, Entity Research Division (Principal Investigator, Project ██████)

This addendum supersedes Section 5 of the primary dossier. Distribution is restricted to Senior Research and Division Heads only. If you are reading this without Level 5 clearance, close the file immediately.

we found her.

i'm breaking protocol. I know i'm breaking protocol. the handbook says addenda should follow the same structural conventions as the primary document but i'm choosing not to do that because I've been sitting at this desk for six hours staring at a missing persons file from 199█ and a police photograph of a ██-year-old woman who has been dead for ██ months. I can't write about this in clinical language. I won't. if someone wants to discipline me for tone they can find me in my office.

Project ██████ returned a match.

the unredacted physical profile of UNK-F-██/1's humanoid form was cross-referenced against missing persons databases in a ████-mile radius of all confirmed and suspected Backrooms threshold locations. the search returned over █████ potential matches. we narrowed by timeframe, physical descriptors, and circumstances of disappearance.

one case fit.

her name is ██████████████████████. she was ██ years old. she was reported missing on ██/██/199█ by ██████████████. she was never found. her case went cold within ██ months.

here is what we know.

she was in a relationship with a man named ███████████████ at the time of her disappearance. the relationship began approximately ██ months after the disappearance, and presumed death, of her previous partner, a man named Robert "Bobby" Franklin, who was last seen at San Jose, California under circumstances that remain unsolved. Franklin was reported missing by family in 199█ and was never found. no body. no evidence of foul play. he simply ceased to exist.

a note on Franklin's status: M.E.G. has not located Bobby Franklin within the Backrooms. this does not mean he is dead. time within the Backrooms is non-linear. a man who entered in 199█ could be wandering a level that runs six months behind the current date, or six years ahead, or in a temporal pocket that hasn't synced with the primary timeline in decades. he could be on a level we haven't mapped. he could be in the deep levels where our survey teams don't reach. the Backrooms are functionally infinite. we have mapped less than ██% of the estimated total structure.

the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. not here.

what we do know is that the search for both Franklin and ███████████████ has not been abandoned in the real world. Franklin's twin brother, Brendan Bennett Franklin, has maintained an active missing persons campaign for years. he has contacted law enforcement in ███ jurisdictions. he has hired private investigators. he has, per our monitoring of threshold-adjacent civilian activity, come disturbingly close to identifying Backrooms entry points on at least two separate occasions.

the man is relentless, methodical, and operating with a grief that shows no signs of diminishing.

he is also searching for █████████████████. Franklin and █████████████████ shared a childhood friend, Terrence Wilson, who has been coordinating with Brendan Franklin on both cases. Wilson was the one who first connected the two disappearances, noting the geographical and temporal overlap. the civilian investigation is, frankly, closer to the truth than it has any right to be. neither Franklin nor Wilson has any knowledge of the Backrooms. they are operating on instinct and grief and the stubborn refusal to accept that people they loved simply vanished.

if Bobby Franklin is alive in the Backrooms, the implications for the Entity 0 courtship are significant and are addressed below.

she was grieving. she was vulnerable. by all accounts the new relationship was initially positive. friends and family described the new partner as "kind" and "patient" and "exactly what she needed."

the new partner is now the primary suspect in a string of ███ disappearances spanning ██ years across ██ counties.

██ of those victims have been recovered. the recovery sites share common characteristics: isolated locations, minimal forensic evidence, signs of prolonged captivity and extensive physical trauma prior to death. the coroner's reports (which I wish I hadn't read and can never unread) describe injuries consistent with sustained, repeated violence over periods of days to weeks. these were not quick deaths. these were inflicted by a person who took his time.

the remaining victims, including ████████████████, have never been found. no bodies. no forensic trace. no evidence of disposal through any conventional means.

our analysis, cross-referenced with Backrooms threshold mapping data, indicates that at least ██ of the unrecovered disposal sites correspond to confirmed or suspected threshold entry points.

he was using the Backrooms as a dumping ground. bringing them to the threshold and pushing them through and letting the walls do the rest. no body. no evidence. no crime scene. the perfect disposal method for a predator who had learned that the cracks in the world go somewhere and the somewhere doesn't give things back.

except once. once, it did.

she was alive when he left her.

the threshold data, the conversion timeline, Dr. ██████'s biological modelling: all of it points to the same conclusion. she was not dead when she entered the Backrooms. she was dying. based on the pattern established by the recovered victims (the ones whose bodies we found, the ones whose injuries we catalogued, the ones whose final hours can be reconstructed from forensic evidence I will be seeing in my sleep for the rest of my career), she had been held for an extended period. she had been hurt. badly and repeatedly. by a man who was patient about it.

and then he brought her to the threshold and left her in the dark. alone. dying. bleeding on the carpet in a place that has no sun and no exit.

she was still alive when the walls found her.

and the walls did something they have never done before.

in every other documented case, humans who enter the Backrooms injured and alone, die. this is a statistical certainty so robust it might as well be a law of physics here. the backrooms do not heal. they don't nurture.

the backrooms are an environment of attrition that strips living things down to nothing over time. that is what they do. that is all they have ever done.

except for her.

the walls found a dying woman in the dark and instead of letting her die they absorbed her. took the fading signal of a human consciousness and wrapped it in entity-matter and rebuilt it from the inside out. kept her face (the human form built from her own reflection, her own body, the body she died in, reconstructed with a fidelity that shouldn't be possible). kept her empathy. kept her instinct to protect. kept the her of her when they could have let it dissolve into the noise the way every other human signal has dissolved.

why?

this is not a rhetorical question. I am asking because I genuinely dont know and it's keeping me awake. the backrooms have existed for as long as we've been able to measure time, and in all that time they have produced entities that hunt and kill and consume. howlers. skin-stealers. smilers. things built for predation.

these walls make predators. that's what they do.

and then they found a woman dying and they made a protector.

they made something that fights predators instead of being one. something that shields the fragile things instead of eating them. something that carries the unmistakable, stubbornly human conviction that no one should die alone in the dark. because she did, and the walls couldn't strip that from her.

they rewrote her biology. gave her power that entities ten times her age would envy. gave her teeth and claws and a true form that can crack corridor walls. and then they left her humanity intact. her compassion. her grief. her capacity for love (see: Entity 0 association; see also: the written reports detailing how she looks at wanderer children).

the backrooms are not kind. the backrooms have never been kind. but they looked at this woman and they chose to keep her and they couldn't (or wouldn't) strip the kindness out.

I don't know what that means. I don't know if it means the walls have a will. I don't know if it means the backrooms are capable of mercy. I don't know if it was chance or design or some glitch in the substrate of a place that shouldn't exist.

and now the thing I've been circling around for the last two hours.

bobby franklin.

her previous partner. the one who disappeared. the one she was mourning when the killer found her. bobby franklin, santa clara, california. vanished without a trace.

vanished in a way that is, upon review, entirely consistent with a backrooms threshold event.

we don't have confirmation. we may never have confirmation. but the circumstances of franklin's disappearance match the profile of an involuntary threshold crossing: sudden, total, no forensic evidence to speak of, no body, no real explanation.

if bobby franklin fell into the backrooms, the backrooms would have absorbed his signal, his physical data. his face. his voice. his biological template. the walls remember everything that passes through them. every wanderer, every victim, every screaming terrified human that ever stumbled through a crack in the world. the walls keep them. filed away in the frequency substrate like prints in wet concrete.

entity 0 built a human face. a male humanoid form. sandy hair. blue eyes. a specific jaw, a specific nose, a specific grin. he built it from scratch and he has been wearing it permanently.

for UNK-F-██/1. for the entity he was courting. the entity whose human form is built from the memory of a woman who was in love with a man named bobby franklin.

the face entity 0 is wearing is bobby franklin's face.

I need to be very careful about what I am and am not claiming. I am not claiming entity 0 did this consciously. I am not claiming he accessed franklin's file in the frequency substrate and thought "ah yes, this is the face she loved, I will use it."

neither entity 0 nor UNK-F-██/1 appears to be aware of the connection. she has never called him by franklin's name. he has never referenced franklin or indicated knowledge of her pre-conversion history beyond what she's shared voluntarily.

but.

entity 0 is the backrooms, or close enough. the first thing the walls ever produced (by our belief). the oldest signal in the substrate. if any entity has passive access to the walls' stored data, it's him. and when he reached into the frequency archive and pulled out the best face he could find, the face most likely to attract this specific entity, the face she would be drawn to without understanding why, the face that would feel safe and familiar and right to a woman who lost the love of her life and was remade into something that can't quite remember his name...

he pulled out bobby franklin.

maybe he knew. maybe the walls whispered it. maybe the substrate nudged him toward a template that would resonate with her residual human memory. maybe it was pure coincidence, a random selection from a vast archive, and the face just happens to belong to the man she grieved so deeply the grief survived her death.

I don't believe in coincidence. not in the backrooms, and not with entity 0.

the implications of this are staggering and I'm not going to pretend I know what to do with them. if entity 0 is wearing the face of her (possibly, unconfirmed) dead boyfriend (even unknowingly), then everything about their courtship takes on a different valence.

her instinctive attraction to him. her willingness to stay. the way she traces his borrowed features with a tenderness that looks, in field footage, less like a new lover memorising a new face, and more like a grieving woman touching the face of someone she thought she'd lost forever but forgot.

does she know? does some fragment of the human memory recognise the jaw, the eyes, the crook of the grin? is she drawn to entity 0 because of what he is, or because he's wearing the only face she ever loved?

does he know? does the oldest thing in the backrooms understand that the mask he built is a former lover's face? that the reason it works, the reason she softens when she sees it, the reason she presses her face into his copied throat and breathes, is because the throat smells like something older than entity-hood? something human? something named Bobby?

I don't have answers. I have a missing persons report and a police photograph and a man with sandy hair and blue eyes and a grin that matches, feature for feature, the face the oldest entity in the backrooms constructed to court a woman who died loving him.

the backrooms remember, and somewhere in the space of that vast unknown, bobby franklin's face lives on. borrowed. worn. loved again by the woman who lost him, in a place that was never supposed to give anything back.

the moral question is obvious.

do we tell her?

do we find her and hand her a missing persons report with her own face on it and say: this is who you were. this is what happened to you. this is the name of the man who killed you. his name is ████████████████ and he is still free and there are ██ other families who will never find their daughters because he found a crack in the wall and learned to use it for his evil.

she doesn't remember all of it. we know this from the fragmented data Entity 974 provided (indirectly, reluctantly, with a psychic addendum that translates roughly to: if you use this information to hurt her I will make you regret your existence). she has pieces. impressions. the emotional residue of a violent death without the full narrative. enough to make her build a security blanket out of a human shape and refuse to take it off. not enough to give her the name of the man who put her here.

do we give her that name?

dr. ██████████ says no. emphatically no. "she has rebuilt herself. she has found purpose. she has found a mate. she is doing more good in these walls than the thing that was done to her. giving her the name doesn't heal the wound. it reopens it and hands her a target she can never reach because the target is in the real world and she is here."

dr. ██████ says yes. "she has a right to know. she has a right to her own history. and the families of the other victims have a right to closure and if she can provide information about the threshold locations, if she remembers anything about how she entered, we might be able to find the remaining bodies. we might be able to catch him."

I say I don't know. I say this is above my clearance and my competence, and even my emotional capacity.

I say that I have been staring at her photograph for six hours and she's smiling in it. she's smiling and she's young and she has her whole life in front of her and the man standing next to her in the photograph (Bobby, the one who disappeared, the one she was mourning when the killer found her) has his arm around her shoulder and they look so happy and neither of them knows what's coming.

I say that she is out there right now, saving people, and the last time someone tried to save her, nobody came.

the decision on disclosure is being escalated to the Director. pending that decision, UNK-F-██/1's identity remains classified Level 5. no field personnel are to be informed. no contact is to be made regarding her pre-conversion history. no changes to the non-engagement protocol.

she is not a case file. she is not a research subject anymore.

she is a woman who died horribly and came back with teeth, and she's using them to protect the people nobody else can reach.

whatever we decide, we owe her better than what she got.

[final note, found inserted into the physical addendum approximately ██ hours after filing. the paper is unmarked M.E.G. stock taken from the supply room. the handwriting matches the previous note pinned to the dossier cover. the pen strokes are deep enough to tear through the paper in places. the note was found inside a sealed filing cabinet in a locked room near a threshold point. there is no record of entry.]

give me his name.

give me the threshold he used to enter my domain.

I cannot cross into your world, but he crossed into mine.

give me the entry point and let me do what the backrooms do best.

you have 72 hours. after that, I stop asking politely, and you will learn very quickly that my patience with her is not my patience with you.

— 0

[NOTE FROM FILING CLERK: the ambient temperature of the records room dropped by fourteen degrees upon discovery of this note and did not return to normal since. the filing cabinet in which the note was found has not opened correctly since. the lock mechanism appears to have been fused shut from the inside. request for replacement furniture has been submitted.]

[amourjane]

i miss u y/n stark and ur purple wanda maximoff powers

[celestialwyvern]

SOFT SPOT - Aerion Targaryen

SUMMARY - Having met as children and reuniting once you've grown into a woman, Aerion's previous suspicion of you grows into the softest spot imaginable.

CONTAINS - pure fluff, reader is extremely kind, aerion is only kind to reader, classic sunshine x grumpy

A/N - i personally couldn't stop giggling while writing the "pastry" scene. Ughh i need him

The blazing sun over Summerhall was unforgiving, but it did nothing to melt the sour disposition of Prince Aerion.

At barely ten name days old, the boy was already terror embodied. He sat on a smooth rock by the edge of the river, a fishing rod held tight in his small, tense hands.

His eyes glared at the water as if he could command the fish to bite by sheer noble decree.

“They won’t bite if you keep scowling at them,” a bright voice chimed from behind him.

Aerion stiffened, his jaw tightening. He turned his head sharply, expecting a person sent by his father to drag him back to his lessons.

Instead, he saw you.

You were the daughter of Maekar’s most trusted ally, having arrived only an hour ago.

While the adults spoke of their business, you had wandered out into the sun, your heavy skirts already trailing in the damp grass.

You looked entirely out of place among the solemn guards, a little burst of warmth against the grey stones of summerhall.

“Go away,” Aerion snapped, turning back to the water, “You’ll frighten them.”

“You’re the one frightening them,” you retorted easily, completely unbothered by the venom in his tone.

You marched right up to his rock, your slippers squelching in the mud, and plopped down beside him without asking. “My father says that fishes can sense when someone is angry. They don’t like the energy.”

“Your father is a fool, and so are you,” he hissed, expecting you to cry or perhaps run back to the castle.

But you didn’t seem bothered as you tilted your head, watching the bobber dance on the ripples. “You’re doing it wrong anyway. The bait is too high.”

Aerion opened his mouth to deliver a cutting remark—something about how a dragon did not take lessons from a silly girl—but before the words could leave his lips, your smaller, warmer hands brushed against his.

You reached out, bypassing his defensive posture, and gently adjusted his grip on the handle, lowering the tip of the rod so the bait sank properly into the water.

The prince froze. No one touched him without permission. No one dared.

Yet, as the silence stretched between you, the bobber suddenly dipped aggressively. A heavy tug yanked the line down, nearly pulling the rod from his hands.

“See!” you gasped, your face lighting up with a blinding grin. “Pull, Aerion! Pull!”

Forgetting his pride, Aerion yanked the rod back with all his boyhood strength. A massive trout broke the surface, thrashing wildly and splashing mud and lakewater directly across his pristine tunic, and right into your face.

Aerion braced himself for the screaming. Noble girls and boys always screamed when they got dirty.

But then a bright laughter echoed across the banks. “Look at the size of it! We caught it!”

Aerion looked from the wiggling fish to your mud splattered face. His lips twitched, fighting a smile before he forced his features back into a proud mask.

“I caught it,” he corrected, though his voice lacked any real bite. “You merely watched.”

“We caught it,” you insisted, bending down to take a closer look at the trout.

Your father’s visit ended shortly after, and the brief, strange kinship evaporated into memory as the years pulled you both down separate paths.

Years slipped by like water through fingers, and when you finally returned to court as a young woman, the boy by the lake had become a man feared by the entire realm.

Aerion was breathtakingly beautiful, and notoriously cruel. He walked through court with a sharp tongue and a sharper temper, but that did not faze you.

From afar, Aerion watched you navigate the treacherous nature of court. You were a vision of light, offering warm smiles to the guards, listening patiently to the older women, and showing unfaltering kindness to everyone you crossed.

To him, it was grating. All noble ladies were trained to be sweet, performing acts of grace to secure a good match or win the favour of higher lords.

He waited for you to finally lose your cool.

But the day never came. No, the reality of your kindness crashed directly into him one afternoon near the small council chamber.

You were walking down the corridor with a butterfly that had landed on your arm when the doors of the chamber burst open.

A flurry of lords tumbled out into the hall, fleeing in terror. Among them was the master of coin, frantically wiping dark ink from his doublet with his bleeding hands, his face pale as death.

“Seven hells,” one of the other lords whispered hoarsely, scurrying past you. “The prince has lost his mind entirely!”

You stopped, watching the chaotic retreat. Instead of turning back like any sensible person would, you set the butterfly on a nearby branch and stepped through the heavy doors.

An iron candelabra laid overturned on the floor, dark wax spilling across the polished wood, and an inkwell had been shattered against the wall.

Aerion stood by the high window, his back to you. His shoulders were incredibly tense, and his chest was rising and falling with heavy, angry breaths.

“I thought I made it clear,” Aerion growled without turning, “The next soul to disturb me will lose their tongue.”

“Then it is a good thing I am capable of writing. I do not need my tongue.” you responded lightly, closing the heavy door behind you.

Aerion went still. He turned slowly, his stormy eyes dark with lingering rage. When his gaze landed on you, he let out a harsh, bitter scoff.

“Come to play the saint for me too?” he sneered, maintaining his distance. “Save your sweet smiles for the lords in the hall. I have no patience for your endless charity.”

You took a few measured steps into the room, keeping a respectful distance yourself.

“I don't think they don’t understand how stressful it can be,” you said softly, ignoring his cruel words. “they whisper and push, expecting you to sit quietly while they try to manage your family’s rights. It makes sense that you’d lose your patience when they refuse to listen.”

He stared at you from across the room, his mind struggling to process what he was hearing. He had expected an admonishment, or at the very least, fear.

“They are parasites,” Aerion muttered, his posture unlocking just a fraction. “They look at me as if I am mad because I refuse to let them dictate my bloodline’s terms.”

“I can see that,” you replied gently, giving a small smile. “They may be stressed as well, but no one should have to bend to their whim.”

The room went silent before you spoke again.

“Whenever the court gets too loud for me, I find that walking around the gardens helps. The fresh air is always calming.. maybe it would help you too. It’s quiet out there.”

The fire in his eyes flickered, clearly caught off guard by the suggestion. He stared at your face, the lines of his memory remembering the specific curve of your smile.

A breathless laugh escaped him.

“The gardens?” Aerion repeated, his voice dropping the edge it possessed just moments ago.

He took a step forward, assessing your form. “You haven’t changed at all, have you? Years ago at Summerhall, you told me the fish wouldn’t bite because of my ‘anger.’ Now you’re trying to herd me into the bushes to calm down.”

Your eyes widened slightly in surprise, a soft laugh bubbling up. “You remember that?”

“I remember a girl pushing my hands around and getting me covered in mud,” he murmured.

He then let out a soft click of his tongue, turning to look at the doorway. “Fine. We will walk the gardens. But only because your previous method somehow worked.”

“Of course,” you smiled.

As the weeks progressed, a unique friendship blossomed between you.

Aerion still remained difficult as ever to the rest of the world, but your presence seemed to simmer that down.

The shift did not go unnoticed by the ladies of the court, leading to an afternoon that they wouldn’t stop gossiping about for days.

You were walking through the outer courtyard with a small retinue of noble ladies, the daughters of prominent lords from the Reach. They were talking endlessly, giggling as they spoke of whatever irrelevant topics crossed their minds.

“You must be careful, my dear,” one of the ladies said, leaning in closer to you. “Prince Aerion may be amused by your novelty but once he grows bored of playing with his new toy, you will be left with nothing but yourself.”

“He is a prince of the blood,” another lady chimed in, her voice tight. “They take what pleases them for a moment and cast it aside. Do not mistake a tyrant’s passing curiosity for actual regard.”

“Aerion simply values sincerity,” you replied, offering an unbothered smile. “There is no game being played.”

“You are far too gullible–” the former lady was cut when Aerion walked out from the room beside.

The ladies instantly adjusted their posture, immediately dropping to curtsies as he approached, each of them desperately hoping to catch the prince’s favour despite their previous warnings to you.

Aerion ignored them, his eyes locking firmly onto you.

Without a word of greeting, and completely disregarding decorum, he walked into the center of the group and stepped right into your space, his frame towering over you.

“You’re late,” his voice was low—meant strictly for you, though it carried across the hall.

“Late for what, my Prince?” you asked, tilting your head up to meet his gaze with your beaming expression.

“I am going to the cliffs, and you are coming with me,” he stated flatly.

Behind you, a collective intake of breath echoed from the ladies. Here he was, actively seeking you out, his attention consuming you and utterly shattering their spiteful claims that you were just a passing game.

You looked back at the girls, giving one last smile before parting from them. “Very well, my Prince, if you insist.”

“I do,” Aerion tilted his head, turning on his heel to fall into step right beside you, his side brushing against yours as he guided you out of the yard.

That would not be the first or last time the court would witness the two of you separating from the rest of the world.

During one evening, after failing in your search for Aerion through the whole castle, you found him alone in the secluded parts of the library.

He was sitting alone, staring dead at a massive volume of ancient Valyrian history.

“I am not in the mood for company,” he hissed out, “leave.”

Your eyebrows furrowed in worry before approaching and setting down a small plate of pastries on the corner of the table. You pulled out the empty chair beside him and sat down despite his request.

Reaching over the plate, you picked up a small pastry and held it right in front of his face, completely disregarding his brooding glare.

“Eat,” you insisted gently as Aerion still refused to acknowledge you. “You always go for these specific ones. I know you like them.”

His fingers that had been gripping the edge of the book twitched, and he finally turned his head to look at you.

The weight on his shoulders gradually disappeared as he looked at the pastry, then up at your fond expression.

Aerion didn’t move to take it from your hand. Keeping his intense gaze locked firmly onto yours, he leaned slightly forward.

Then, totally unprompted, he took a bite right out of the pastry while it was still held between your fingers.

A tiny giggle slipped past your lips, a bright warmth blooming all the way to the tips of your ears at the sheer intimacy of it.

You tried to bite your lip to hide your surprise, but your shoulders shook with quiet amusement as you looked into his smug face.

Aerion chewed slowly, the corners of his lips twitching at your giddy reaction.

“You are ridiculous,” he murmured as he swallowed.

“Maybe,” you agreed, your heart fluttering as you set the remaining half down onto the plate. “But it worked. You feel better already, don’t you?”

Aerion stared at you for a moment, drinking in your presence. He did feel better—the tight, suffocating knot in his chest had already unraveled. But it was certainly not because of the pastry.

Slowly, he hesitantly reached out across the small space between your chairs. With one deliberate movement, he dragged your chair until it hit his.

Then, his hand moved to flip over on the table with his palm facing up, his fingers sprawling open in a silent, stubborn invitation.

You, on the other hand, did not hesitate. You slid your hand into his palm, your fingers easily weaving through his.

Aerion squeezed your hand, his rings pressing firmly against your skin, though his touch was surprisingly careful.

However, the true demonstration of expanse that you two had built played out before the entire court during a grand feast, where Aerion’s attempt to maintain his reputation crumbled.

The feast was deafeningly loud.

You were seated next to Aerion by Prince Maekar.

Aerion had spent the first half of the feast interacting with other lords while you conversed with other ladies.

He was glaring at a group of lesser lords when he noticed your sudden silence. Just then, some of the lords he had been talking to earlier called out to him and he tried to force his eyes back on them.

Aerion was aware that you two were the topic of conversation as of late. He couldn’t let the people of court think he had gone soft. At least that was what his pride told him.

But the sight of your fragile form pulled at him like a physical anchor, shattering his resolve. His demeanor instantly changed.

He turned fully in his seat toward you, his cold stare evaporating.

“You’re pale,” Aerion murmured, voice stripped away of anything harsh. “What is it?”

“Just… a headache, Aerion,” you whispered softly, giving him a tired smile. “The noise is particularly loud tonight.”

Aerion didn’t waste a second as he gently used his hand to cradle the back of your head.

His fingers began combing through the loose parts of your hair, his thumb tracing circles down your temple to ease the pressure.

The chatter around the surrounding tables died down, dozens of eyes tracking his movements, yet no one dared to disrupt. They watched as Aerion paid no mind to everything else the moment you showed discomfort.

You leaned into his touch, a smile returning to your face. “Aerion… everyone is watching.”

Aerion let out a defeated sigh as he grinned. “Let them stare,” he concluded, his fingers tucking in a strand of hair behind your ear. “You’ve broken me anyway.”

Shifting his broad shoulders, he blocked the rest of the room from view, shielding you from prying eyes.

“You are tired,” he paused, “if anyone breathes a word about that, I will have their heads.”

“You can’t murder the entire court,” you teased, lifting your head up for a moment.

A faint smile broke across his face. “Watch me,” he repeated, guiding your head to rest on his shoulder. “Now hold still and let me fix it.”

[kittydealer]

u/Sonnylevrai

[watchtowerindistress]

not my girlfriend (garrett graham x best friend!reader)

Summary: What's up with Garrett? Ever since the start of the party he hasn't brought any girl back to his room. Naturally, the boys observe him like an alien imposter. Except Tucker, who knows the reason why their friend isn't interested in hooking up. (Hint: someone is hiding in Garrett's room who he claims is NOT his girlfriend)

Pairing: Garrett Graham x best friend f!reader

Warnings: hurt/comfort, language, reader's ex is kinda an asshole, reader has self-esteem issues because the ex said hurtful stuff, mentions of sex, reader is the ambitious study geek (am i projecting?), mentions of alcohol, slight jealousy (from Garrett, but he's not aware)

Word count: 5.3k

Author’s note: Finding a fitting Garrett gif wasn't an easy feat 😅 I have no idea about hockey, so forgive me if I have no idea about the terms. I have only seen the show and read the books with Garrett and Dean's story, so I'm deeply sorry if I'm not getting Logan and Tucker right. The pics above are only there for vibes, no faceclaim set, don't worry! I was unsure posting since I've been outlining and drafting this for a few weeks. So, I don't know if I'll have inspiration to write the next parts in my head.

Please remember reblogs/comments mean love and support 💜

I don't use AI. Fuck AI. I don't give permission for any of my works to be incorporated in AI.

Something was definitely off.

Dean and Logan weren’t sure whether to cry at the debacle or film it for psychology majors to study. Instead, they did the next best thing. A red solo cup hovered over Dean’s lips while Logan held a bottle of beer. It felt like watching a car wreck happening and yet they couldn’t help but keep on watching in fascination, feeling curious at what was about to unfold.

“And here we have the captain of this team in his natural habitat, like a duck in water, playing with his opponent. Despite his expertise, there’s something off about his intentions tonight,” Dean narrated.

The party was at full swing at the hockey house. Everything should be perfect. Garrett hadn’t yet changed the music playlist, Tucker prepared the perfect snacks, everyone was having fun. Well, judging from Garrett’s slightly off attitude, not everyone.

A girl was chatting up Garrett on the couch, who in return merely smiled with a nod before his gaze would surreptitiously wander to the staircase again. It made them suspicious. Garrett’s body was relaxed, with his arm slung over the couch, but he wasn’t actively doing anything.

Logan played into Dean’s commentary. “I couldn’t agree more, Di Laurentis. The adversary leans forward, hoping he’ll take the bait, but Graham remains civil and uncaring, evading yet another aggressive maneuver in the evening. What do we think of this play?” He turned his head towards him, awaiting his review.

“Very bold, very bold.”

Garrett slowly stood up from the couch, sending her a tight-lipped smile. And another girl was turned down for the evening.

Both let out groans of disappointment. Dean continued, “And now he’s extracting himself from the situation, doing something totally unheard of. Logan, I can’t believe what we’re seeing.”

Tucker shook his head behind them. A delicious smell of Quesadillas emanated from the oven he just opened. “You guys are idiots.”

Mischief was dancing in Dean’s eyes. “Lo and behold, a team colleague sees method to the madness. Maybe we can get an interview from the very much esteemed Forward after the break. John Tucker, talk us through the process.” Logan didn’t waste a second when he copied Dean’s stance, holding the bottle around Tucker’s chin.

Tucker eyed the two of them, taking his time in barely tilting his head to speak into the makeshift microphones. “Maybe tonight’s not about a game.”

At the hint that there was more to it, Logan lowered the drink. Stepping forward, he asked with a lowered voice, “Wait, do you actually know something?”

Dean crossed the kitchen island and slung his arm over Tucker’s shoulder. “Buddy, have we told you yet how much we love and appreciate you?”

Tucker pursed his lips in thought. “Hmmm, not today.” Ignoring their antics, he decided to get back to the food when he sidestepped Dean’s embrace and put the dish on a cooling rack.

“And you look so handsome,” Logan added, vaguely waving his drink at him. “There’s a certain glow about you.”

“Totally.” Dean nodded.

Tucker offered a sage nod. “I’m aware.” He paused, “But it’s nice to be appreciated.”

Hearing Garrett’s voice yanked them out of their attempt to extract information out of their roommate when he entered the kitchen area. “What’s happening over here?”

Logan leaned his hip against the counter. “We could ask you the same thing.”

“What?” Garrett’s focus was more on fetching two water bottles from the fridge than to notice their detective investigations into his behavior. “What are you talking about?”

“Dude, what’s up with your game tonight?” Dean exclaimed, yet he couldn’t help chuckling at witnessing it.

“My game?”

Logan gestured to the living room in disbelief. “You would’ve brought someone upstairs, like three times already.”

Garrett grimaced at the image that evoked. “I’m not a sex fiend. Unlike…” He left the sentiment in the air while eyeing Dean, knowing his friend had way more sex in a single day, also because Dean was always doing it out in the open for the rest of the house to know.

Dean clutched his chest, offering a radiant smile.“Aww, and I wear this badge with pride.” He heaved a pitiful sigh.“It’s not easy being me.”

Garrett curiously leaned over Tucker’s shoulder.“Is it-”

“Done? Yes.” Tucker confirmed, putting a small batch on a plate.

“Thanks, man. Later, dudes!” Armed with the snack, he moved away from the group without looking back, taking two steps at a time up the staircase.

“What the fuck?” Dean waved his hands in the air, confused by his attitude like they were invisible already, still not understanding what was going on.

“(Y/N)’s upstairs,” Tucker explained, without any further ado. Sounds of understanding echoed around him. “She showed up during prep.”

As soon as Garrett opened his bedroom door, he eyed you through the small opening. He offered a small smile as a greeting, not wanting to spook you. “I’ve come bearing reinforcements.”

You were laying over the covers of his bed, only feeling slightly bad at Garrett’s night turning out differently than he expected. “I’m sorry for taking you away from your sexual exploits. I could’ve just as easily hidden in the room of one of the boys.”

“Don’t even finish that thought. There’s a sleepover tradition for a reason. You need me? I drop everything, sexual exploits included.”

First, he offered you the promised food before joining you on the bed. A soft smile tugged at Garrett’s lips when he fluffed the bunch of pillows behind him, remembering the time when you made fun of them for being super fluffy. With his body relaxing, all the air finally exhaled from his lungs.

“You poor thing.” You sent him a playful smirk once you imagined Garrett having to endure a night without sex. Absentmindedly, you laid your head on his shoulder and took a bite from the cheesy-chicken goodness called Tucker’s cooking to ease and maybe fill your stomach after the absolute ordeal of your day.

Garrett rolled his eyes while chuckling. “I think I’ll survive.”

The warm cheese melting in your mouth was a welcome distraction. With your mouth half-full, you hummed with absolute joy and couldn’t control yourself from taking another bite. “Oh my God, this is so good.”

There was a soft expression taking over his face when you held your food inches from his lips, wanting to share it with him. No longer surprised by your strange antics, he merely lifted his chin without averting his unblinking stare. “Really good,” he grunted in agreement, while nodding.

“Why do you always spoil me with Tucker’s home-cooked meals?” You almost didn’t expect him to answer when you continued digging into the little snack.

“Because you deserve it.” Garrett had uttered it with such a quiet voice that you wondered if you heard him right and not your mind playing tricks on you.

The mere affirmation made your stomach feel really fluttery with a nervous energy. Sometimes when Garrett said stuff like that, it felt unbearable to look at him. Not knowing whether you wanted to know the truth, if he said it just because he was such a great friend … or something else. Just like now, you did the next best thing and rested your head on his chest.

“Oh, you are such a sweetheart.”

“Don’t tell anyone,” Garrett grumbled.

His heart was thumping erratically before it became normal again after a few seconds. There was something truly soothing about him stroking your hair before his fingers rubbed up and down your back. Garrett softly whispered against your forehead. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then we talk about anything else. Or nothing at all. I could tell you about Logan putting his foot in his mouth around some psychology major. Or Dean being absolutely adorable training the Hurricanes. And Tuck-”

You interrupted him, “-is perfect.”

All too aware of your partiality for his friend, Garrett sighed, “Tuck’s perfect. I know.”

Once you felt safely in this bubble, with Garrett talking about the most mundane stuff about your common friends, you felt your body relax against his chest.

Even if you were still nervous how he would react. Well, better to just rip it off like a band-aid.

“He said, he was tired of me being a frigid bitch.”

Garrett’s body language told you more than words ever could. His hand hovered over your shoulder, frozen. Garrett sat up at the revelation. You didn’t need to be close to his chest to hear the growl emanating deeply from his chest when he opened his mouth. “What?” Inhaling deeply for a few moments, his voice sounded a bit more normal but it was still strained. “What was his name again? Dick?”

You didn’t know why you bothered anymore, but you still corrected him, without enthusiasm. “Nick.”

Garrett muttered under his breath. “Same thing.” He returned to his previous position when he leaned back again, willing to hear you out.

“I’m just tired of explaining myself to a guy. When I literally have other things on my mind than to constantly be glued at a guy’s side. I’m swamped with projects, studying for midterms while trying to balance it all by hanging out with friends.” You shook your head. “Maybe I was an idiot for thinking I could have a relationship as a cherry on top.”

You felt him lean closer when he replied with a hoarse voice, “It’s not idiotic.” To prove how serious he was, you felt his fingers carefully touch your knuckles. Craving that small bit of solace, you revealed your open palm until you let Garrett’s fingers lace through yours.

Like two puzzle pieces fitting together.

The food long forgotten, you disentangled from him and laid next to him. “Is it fucked up that my mind is more devastated by his last words than the end of a relationship? We weren’t even together that long.” At the inkling of the first teardrops sneaking in like the traitors they were, you grimaced, feeling taken aback. With your knuckles drying your cheeks, you felt so strange that incredulous chuckles left you. “I don’t even know why I’m crying.”

You felt Garrett’s unyielding stare on the side of your face. “Listen to me, he did that to hurt you. Dick’s not worth your tears.”

“Nick.”

God, why did you keep doing this? This is really the hill you want to die on?

He shrugged. “Still a dick. Fuck him for wanting even more of your attention. Especially if he can see how stressed you are. That’s no relationship. That’s just a damn push-and-pull. He can’t just dictate that you spend less time with your friends.” Garrett raked his fingers through his already tousled hair, appearing nervous all of a sudden. “You guys did break up, right? Your text only said code sleepover.”

“Don’t worry. When someone thinks they can change my mind into having sex and just turns into a misogynistic pig, I don’t go for a break.”

“Good to know. I can have a few choice words with the preppy asshole if we cross paths.”

You snickered. Leave it to Garrett to being unwavering in calling your ex a preppy asshole, even while you were still dating. You snuggled up to the warmth of his side. “No, better not. I don’t want him to think I’m consumed by him. But if you do see him, wouldn’t you mind sending him one of your trademark Garrett Graham death stares?”

Garrett nodded once, not needing any more incentive. “Got ya. I’m gonna treat him like my fiercest hockey nemesis.”

The rest of the boys were not so secretly watching Garrett and you from the kitchen window while you were snuggling up under a blanket by the fire pit outside. The party was coming to an end and there were a few stragglers eating leftover food in the living room area. It was left unsaid how you were wearing a familiar green hoodie which was usually seen on their captain’s torso.

“What’s the latest update?” Dean asked.

With a sympathetic tone, Tucker admitted, “Break-up.” Remembering the almost blank expression on your face when you revealed the tidbit upon your arrival.

Dean groaned. “Fucking jerk. He’s a business major, right?” He crossed his arms. “Think we’re allowed to give him a noogie?”

“Maybe ask Garrett what he wants to do,” Logan replied, trying to be sensible. You were one of them and they hated that you had to go through this. If one of them got hurt, they all got hurt. Even if they wanted to kick Garrett’s butt for not getting off his damn butt.

“Sounds like a plan.” Dean agreed.

Garrett had his arm slung over your shoulder, with your face nestled into his neck, keeping you close. While his hand stroked down your arm, his lips briefly met your forehead in a blink and you miss it moment.

Before they could react on any level - Dean was on the brink of holding his breath to release a dramatic gasp - Garrett turned his head before his eyes zeroed in on them. Like he was conjured by the uttering of his name.

In an almost knee-jerk reaction, Dean and Logan ducked their hands until they were literally on their knees hiding under the window sill. Unlike Tucker, who was too focused on putting away some stuff from the counter when he saw Garrett flipping them the bird, frozen in place.

A wide-eyed Dean nervously switched his gaze between Logan and Tucker. “Do you think he saw us?”

Tucker waved a hand at Garrett, almost compelled, like he couldn’t control the movement. “I think he did.”

“Everything alright?” you asked, sensing Garrett’s focus shifting. You lifted your head from his chest and noticed him ruffling his fingers through his hair.

He cleared his throat, putting on a small smile. “All good. For what it’s worth, your ex is an asshole. Never did deserve you.”

“You know what I just realized? I just don’t know how to be other than this person. And how I’d need to sacrifice one thing to achieve everything else.”

“You don’t need to sacrifice anything. You love to study. You know when to de-stress with friends and where your limits are. I don’t really know why you want a boyfriend, but that’s just me.”

“Of course you do,” you retorted dryly. It was known all across campus how Garrett was not the type to even date. Sometimes you envied his constitution for just going for it, needing only that physical release. As much as you were an analytical person, it still made you anxious that you were still a smidge of a romantic and that the mere intimacy in a purely sexual relationship would trick your brain into believing you were harboring feelings. Damn oxytocin.

Garrett smiled charmingly, bringing you back. “As I was saying … Because you never really needed those guys. And they know it. You’re way too independent for them and they hate that.”

You exhaled heavily, kinda hating him for being right. Barely turning your head to see his reaction, in case he didn’t want to believe you. “Maybe it’s time I stop dating. You know, go for the Garrett way - just have tons of sex and only think of myself. No conditions.”

He tilted his head, deep in thought. That was before he turned back to his confident self. “I’m not sure if you’re trying to insult me. Because objectively it sounds awesome.” His gaze turned pensive. “But only if this is truly what you want.”

You sat up, already missing Garrett’s warmth when you let go of him. “What I want is some good sex.” Your hand caressed your neck, imagining someone touching you who knew what they were doing. “Unfortunately, there are only boys here who have no idea what they’re doing. Sometimes I just want that fulfilling climax.” You threw your head back, moaning quietly. It’s been too long since you had a good orgasm unless it was done by your own fingers. Great, now you were getting horny.

That embarrassed feeling only lasted for a few moments when warmth grew in your cheeks. “And usually every single one gets all pissy when I dare to say I’m not in the mood. What I want is to think of my needs first.”

Hopefully, you didn’t share too much. Typically, Garrett didn’t mind when you talked openly about your sexual needs. Sometimes it just felt really freeing to talk to another sex-positive guy. You wouldn’t have thought after getting to know Sabrina as your roommate that you’d be here now. Having someone like her in your corner certainly did wonders to just outright voicing your wants and frustrations without shame.

Garrett cleared his throat. And coughed for good measure. He did seem a bit awkward the more you talked. He swallowed after taking a sip from his drink. “Maybe you just haven’t found the right one. No hard feelings, but you get a lot of duds.”

Truer words have never been spoken. The mere thought made you stare into the distance. “I am a dud magnet.”

Garrett rubbed the back of his neck, eyeing you warily. “Then,” he paused before muttering the rest in one breath, “let me help you get laid.”

“What?”

“That’s not-” He closed his eyes with a grimace. Giving off the impression that he just blurted out the first thing on his mind before his mouth could stop him. Garrett chuckled. “Let me be your wingman. The moment you want to have sex again, let me know and I’ll double-check all the potential guys you’re into. No more duds for you.”

“Maybe my mind is either in a break-up funk or this one beer is getting to my head. For some reason I think that idea doesn’t sound bad. Or maybe it’s because all after-midnight ideas sound fascinating.”

“See?” Garrett raised his eyebrows, having another sip.

“And how would you ascertain which ones are studs and which ones the duds?” You pointed your finger guns at him, mumbling ‘pew pew’ under your breath.

He groaned from deep within his chest. He closed his eyes, throwing his head back. “Oh my God. I’m going to mentally write down ‘must tolerate (Y/N)’s corny jokes’. It’s called instinct. With most guys you can just tell if they’re good in bed or have the patience to take care of the clit.”

“Oh wow, someone’s very sure of themselves.”

Confidence was emanating from him in waves when he smirked. “Hell yeah, I guess I’m just good at stuff.”

“Prove it.”

His frown was the first hint to the uneasy feeling taking shape. “… Okay.”

“Take Dean for example.”

Garrett made a mournful sound. “I don’t want to think about my friends having sex.”

“So, if you’re not divulging your clit instinct, I’m gonna assume that skill is very selective. Therefore, I can’t fully trust your expertise,” you retorted, mockingly tilting your head in speculation.

Garrett narrowed his eyes. “That’s evil.”

“I guess that’s why we’re such good friends.”

With an exhaling breath, Garrett succumbed to his fate. “Fine, my instinct tells me Dean … loves the clit. Absolutely perverted, nay, unhinged for it.”

You giggled, liking where this was going and leaned the side of your face against your hand. “Tucker?”

Garrett huffed a breath, needing a moment. “Might not know as much but is definitely willing to learn.” He beat you to it when he continued with a pensive air, “Logan … somehow has the hair for it.”

You nodded. “He does.”

“Could be into it. Or at least might be into how much the girl’s into it.” Garrett inhaled deeply. “And yours truly-” He tipped his head back, like he was a drama major about to deliver a monologue.

“Here we go,” you muttered under your breath.

“Absolutely adores the clit. Best friends with the clit. Would marry her if he could.” Garrett nodded playfully, clutching his chest. If you would describe the sound he just made, the words ‘sighing blissfully’ would come to mind. “We’re in a very committed relationship.”

“And she’s very lucky to have you,” you said, shaking your head with a smile before leaning your head against his chest.

The first sensation you felt was warmth. All-encompassing heat at your back as you were lying in bed. Early morning light calmly dancing through the room to rouse its inhabitants to start a new day. In between the precipice of awake and slumber, your body still felt sluggish and wanted to stay where it was. Snuggled into Garrett’s broad frame.

As the thought of Garrett hit you, you couldn’t help wondering if the vague memory tickling your brain was a true recollection of last night or just a very imaginative dream. The hazy memory of Garrett saying “Not a word” and hearing the boys collectively retort “Didn’t say a thing!” when you were half asleep. After you couldn’t remember walking back upstairs and judging by the non-hallucinated words, it made you wonder what happened after you closed your eyes by the fire.

The sheets rustled behind you as you felt Garrett’s arm stir around your stomach.

“G’ morning,” you mumbled all gravelly. You kept your eyes still closed to remain in that relaxed headspace.

“Morning.”

Using his half asleep mentality to your advantage, you spoke up. “Did you carry me all the way upstairs?”

His warm breath ghosted over the back of your neck. “You can’t prove that, counselor.”

You lightly jabbed him into the abdomen. “Don’t call me that.” And instantly hated him (and specifically his muscles) that he barely even reacted, and thus making him the perfect specimen. “Analyst, not counselor. You’re such a smartass in the morning.”

A dramatic gasp left his mouth. “You’re so violent.” The uncontrollable chuckles proved the opposite before he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “I’ll take that as a compliment. I’m sorry. And here I was always priding myself on sharing the bed with a budding lawyer.”

You snorted. “Then you can share the bed with Dean.”

Garrett grunted, needing a few seconds to recover. “The cuddling could get very crowded in there. Unlike here.” For good measure, his hand tightened around your stomach.

You chuckled, shaking your head, remembering Dean’s tendency for female company. “What a charmer.”

“You want to stay for some coffee?”

“I need to borrow some books from the library at the other end of the campus,” you grumbled.

Garrett sought your warmth again when he mumbled into your shoulder. “I can drive you.”

“Don’t you have training?”

Chuckling, he wriggled your body after hearing your list of reluctant excuses. “Will you stop finding reasons not to hang out and take it easy? Maybe say ‘Oh Garrett, I can’t stand to be apart from you’ to make up for my hurt feelings?”

Snorting with laughter, you refused to cave to the typical Garrett flattery. He already had enough of that. “I’m not a Victorian woman or a member of your fan club.”

With a wry sense of humor, he tsk-ed. “Not with that attitude.” Garrett was already looking at you when you shifted your body until you were facing him. His voice lowered into a whisper, like he was sharing a secret with you. “How are you feeling this morning?” For good measure he stroked a few hairs out of your face.

“Better.” You shrugged. “It’s a new day. I think our clit conversation last night lifted me right up.”

His eyes lit up at the memory. “Good. Any time you need a pick-me-up, just let me know and I’ll pull out the female genitalia talk.”

You nodded jokingly. “Cool, dude.” Garrett reciprocated instantly when he saw you lifting your palm and high-fived you.

“Cool. Let’s get you that coffee.”

At a certain point there were only a handful of people in your life you felt comfortable around to appreciate the silence with. Garrett was one of those people. The two of you were sitting at a table while just enjoying the calm of the morning. Tucker was quietly helping himself to some coffee in the corner. Almost like your thought process summoned a karmic balance, Garrett’s remaining roommates came barging in.

“Would you look at that?” Dean squinted his eyes, like he was staring into the sun, before facing Logan next to him. “Are my eyes deceiving me? Did Garrett finally bring you out to society or was he afraid we’d steal you away from him?”

“Almost didn’t recognize you without G’s hoodie,” he mumbled under his breath, but low enough for you to understand.

Garrett kept his hands around the mug and put on a crooked grin. “Funny.” But not before glaring at him.

“Don’t worry, Dean. You’re still my second,” you paused and mentally debated your ranking, even if it was just for fun, “or third best friend.”

Touching his chest, Dean took a seat by the kitchen counter. “Aww, I made the list.”

“We’re picking up (Y/N) along the way before we get to practice.” Garrett phrased it in a mere statement. He patiently stared at his friends until they’d submit, like he was daring them to.

After hearing echoes of “Cool” and “Sounds fun”, you frowned at Garrett’s attitude. “Did I miss something?” You turned your head, confusedly eyeing his friends to guess the truth from their body language.

“Nope.” This answer was more definitive.

Okay, now you were officially suspicious.

“It’s not my birthday, right?”

“It’s not you.” Logan assured you.

Dean smirked. “G just gets testy when he doesn’t get laid.”

Tucker didn’t play their game when he covered his face, shaking his head, sending you a sympathetic smile.

“Okay, be weird then. I’m calling shotgun. I’ll be picking the music if no one stops me.” You brought your mug to the sink, only hearing rustles and harsh whispers behind you when you grabbed your bag from the living room.

“-can’t believe-” Garrett hissed, followed by Logan’s words.

“Dude, you’re the one being weird.”

When you turned around, you saw Dean open the door with an exuberant energy before you could analyze their conversation. He waved with his arm and leaned against the door structure, with his broad frame hiding whatever Garrett and Logan were doing in the background.

Dean smirked. “Puberty hits some people differently, you know what I mean?”

You merely rolled your eyes at their antics and whatever they were keeping from you. Quick steps rushed behind you as soon as you moved outside. You barely had time to react when an arm slung around your shoulder. With nimble fingers Garrett took your bag to carry it for you.

You narrowed your eyes while glancing at the side of his face. “I’m not even gonna ask.”

The relief was visible on his expression when Garrett sighed. “Good.” To complete the actions of a kind guy he opened the car door for you at the front.

It took you less than a few seconds to appreciate Garrett’s offer to get a ride. This way you could lean back, let the music of the radio station wash over you while Dean leaned forward until his head was inches from your headrest, letting his fingers drum against the sides of your seat.

Dean was being his jovial and carefree self and talking about your upcoming internships for the political science class you were taking.

Logan mirrored Dean next to him when he leaned forward until his gaze caught the side of Garrett’s face. “Don’t you ever wonder sometimes what would have happened if those two had met the first time?”

Dean sighed dreamily. “Talk about a dream team.”

Garrett smiled. “More like dangerous.”

You turned your head, patting Dean’s cheek, mere inches from your face. If possible, his smile grew even more. “Don’t worry, I’d never want to fight Beau on taking his spot.”

With a faraway look, Dean voiced, “That’d be kinda hot. Two of my friends fighting for my affection.”

You chuckled. “I can’t believe these guys are letting you leave the house. You’re a literal menace to society.”

Dean gasped. “How dare you? I’m a delightful member of society.”

“She’s right.” Tucker spoke up. Nodding along with Logan. “Absolutely unhinged.”

“Illustrious,” Dean corrected.

Garrett added, “Infamous.”

“Don’t listen to them.” Dean leaned his chin on your shoulder. “We both know you secretly love me.”

“I’m still waiting for the day when you finally elope with me.” You sighed dramatically. “But, alas, I couldn’t stand to look at you. You’re just too pretty for me.” You sighed, imitating a fainting woman, with the back of your hand shielding your forehead.

Garrett rolled his eyes, chuckling. “There’s no elopement happening.”

Dean drew in a breath. “So, we are star-crossed lovers. I can’t believe you’re keeping us apart already.” Seeing Garrett’s glance in the rear-view mirror, he sat back with a small smirk.

“I doubt it would have mattered anyway. Since I met the two of you in the same week.”

Garrett chuckled into his closed hand. “I still can’t believe you didn’t even know the guy before you decided to heckle him.”

It felt so surreal that you still remembered your first encounter with him during orientation week. Even after all this time. It was still clear as day, being in that crowd of freshmen, with Garrett standing a few rows behind you.

“Hey, positive heckling. I could tell he was nervous.”

“What did you call out during his comedy act again? That he looked handsome?”

You sighed in mock defeat, even if the memory always lit you up from the inside and your very rare impulse for heckling. Or to inspire someone you’ve never met. “‘You’re fucking awesome, man!’ I still can’t believe I did that.”

“I just loved that you did. Just had a feeling that I really needed to get to know this girl.” His hand dropped on your thigh in comfort.

Him putting it into perspective like that was a reassuring sensation that if you hadn’t done that, you wouldn’t have met Garrett and found a friend for life. Or who knew? Maybe you’d have met him over time through Dean.

“Did you really needed to spill your drink on me to catch my attention though?”

“Wait, that’s what happened? Someone left an impression, huh?” By instinct, Logan reached forward to clasp Garrett’s seat.

“I was – Just shut up, man.” His laughter sounded flustered when he was reminded of the little mishap upon meeting.

“He was very adorable,” you assured him and the boys when you stroked his shoulder.

Garrett mockingly hummed along. “Oh, would you look at that? Guess we’re here already.”

The car slowed down until you stopped near the steps of the library building. His brows rose. “No more mortifying stories to tell in front of my friends.”

You loosened the seat belt. “There are always more where they came from. Don’t worry, boys.”

“Can’t wait,” Tucker replied, all easy-going.

Garrett sighed, glaring at his so-called friends sitting in the backseat. He was too focused on them and working on maintaining his remaining dignity when Dean jumped out to open your door before he can.

Dean bowed. “My lady.”

Logan snickered at seeing Garrett narrow his eyes while mouthing “What the fuck?” and throwing his hands in the air.

Taking his offered hand, you stepped outside while looking back over your shoulder at Garrett. “You do have gentleman friends, Garrett.”

He feigned a smirk. “Clearly.”

“And before I forget…” You leaned against the lowered car window, letting an old-timey voice break forth. “Oh Garrett, how I can’t stand to be apart from you.”

Garrett chuckled. Rolling his eyes, he called after you as you walked away. “Don’t play with my feelings like that.”

Still, he tried to ignore it when he heard Logan mutter under his breath, “Not my girlfriend, my ass.”

Tagging: @mellowstatesmanhandsempath @ravenmoore14 @blackmagicwoman

[peterparkerwashere]

How I feel after waking up to read smut at the butt crack of dawn

[iydiamartinx]

THE SPACE BETWEEN US

Pairing: Paul Lahote x Vampire! Reader

divider by: @cafekitsune & @strangergraphics word count: 7.6k synopsis: Paul Lahote was born to hate vampires. Unfortunately for him, the universe had other plans. a/n: I have finally wrote something after over a month! A little different from my usual fandoms but I've been feeling nostalgic lately.

You always found the steady drizzle of the Pacific Northwest to be comforting. But after three centuries of wandering the earth as a nomad, a quiet exhaustion had settled deep into your cold bones. Lately, life had become entirely lacklustre. Staring out at the monotonous, heavy grey skies and the permanently drenched terrain, the magic of the endless forest had faded. Everything mostly just felt damp and dreary.

As a nomadic vampire, you didn't belong to a coven. You preferred the absolute freedom of the open road, answering to no one but yourself, though you shared the strict "vegetarian" lifestyle of your "cousins," the Cullens and the Denalis. Because you chose to abstain from human blood, you occasionally dropped by the rainy town of Forks to hunt the abundant wildlife and exchange pleasantries with Carlisle and Esme, who always welcomed you with open arms.

But even a welcome guest had to respect the rules. Because of the ancient treaty established between the Cullens and the local shape-shifters, you knew the exact layout of the boundary lines down to the millimetre. You stayed strictly on the Cullen side of the Hoh River whenever you came to visit, and you never tried to push your luck. You had lived for three hundred years by being smart, and poking a pack of giant wolves was never on your itinerary.

Until this particular grey afternoon.

You had been tracking a particularly meaty mountain lion for miles, the thrill of the chase briefly cutting through your dark, existential boredom. The large cat was fast, and the adrenaline of the hunt sent you tearing through the brush, matching its speed stride for stride. But your excitement had made you careless. The chase pushed you entirely too close to the treaty line, and just as you braced your legs to spring and make the kill, the mountain lion panicked. It bolted straight across the invisible border line, disappearing into the forbidden Quileute territory.

You skidded to a sudden halt right at the edge of the tree line, the damp earth groaning under the sudden force of your boots. Your bright topaz eyes, glowing with the hunger of a vegetarian vampire who hadn't fed in days, tracked your escaped meal as it vanished completely into the dense, foggy thicket of the reservation.

You let out a long, irritated sigh, crossing your arms tightly over your chest. As hungry as you were, you weren't about to instigate a problem over a snack. Carlisle would be disappointed, and honestly, you just didn't want to deal with the headache of fighting off a pack of wolves.

But just as you turned on your heel, preparing to leap back into the mossy canopy and find another trail, the heavy air shifted.

The wind blew from the west, and a sudden, overwhelming scent hit you like a physical blow. It was thick, intoxicating blend of woodsmoke, crushed cedar, and the distinct, muskiness of a wet dog. It was a smell so strong, it was nearly overwhelming, making your long dead heart give a strange, phantom twitch.

Before your brain could even fully process the frantic, heavy snapping of thick branches, the underbrush exploded.

A massive, silver-grey wolf burst from the thicket, its colossal paws tearing up the damp earth as it skidded to a violent halt just feet away from you, right at the precipice of the treaty line. The beast was easily the size of a horse, its powerful muscles bunching beneath a thick coat of silver fur. Its dark lips were pulled back in a vicious, terrifying snarl, exposing a row of razor-sharp, dagger-like teeth. A lethal, vibrating growl rumbled deep within its chest, a sound so low and resonant that it caused the small pebbles by your boots to tremble against the dirt.

You didn't flinch or stumble back, like most would when faced with such a creature. You were a three-hundred-year-old vampire; fear wasn't really a concept that existed in your emotional vocabulary anymore. Instead of fleeing, you merely tilted your head to the side, your bright topaz eyes sweeping over the creature with genuine, unbothered fascination.

So, the shape-shifter legends Carlisle mentioned are actually real, you thought to yourself, a spark of true interest finally breaking through the dull boredom that had plagued you for years.

You knew, conceptually, that beneath the wild, predatory exterior of the animal laid a human man. But looking at the wolf before you, you couldn't deny that he was truly majestic, a perfect specimen of raw nature and power. As your awe-struck, curious gaze lifted to meet his, you watched a sudden, inexplicable shift overtake the beast.

The wolf froze instantly, locking up as if he had been turned to solid stone.

The low, menacing growl died abruptly in his throat, cutting off into a sudden silence. The fierce, dark eyes dilated so completely that the irises nearly swallowed the whites. The massive beast stumbled backward a step, his front legs buckling slightly beneath his weight as if he had just taken a physical, crushing blow directly to the center of his chest. He stared at you, his chest heaving with shallow, ragged breaths. Even trapped in a wolf's form, he was particularly expressive, and you watched in utter fascination as the blinding, lethal hostility completely melted away, replaced by a look of profound, paralyzed shock.

You raised a single, perfect eyebrow, entirely unaware of the ancient, cosmic magic taking place right in front of you. You had no idea that the universe had just snapped its fingers, or that this boy’s entire world had just re-centered itself around the very breath in your lungs. You just thought he looked incredibly confused.

"Did I break a rule just by looking across the river, puppy?" you asked, breaking the heavy silence. Your voice came out as a smooth, melodic, if not slightly taunting purr, that rang clearly through the damp forest air.

The sound of your voice seemed to snap the wolf out of his trance instantly. A violent, chaotic shudder ripped through his massive frame from head to tail, his fur bristling in a sudden panic. He gave you one final, deeply conflicted glare before he whirled around with a desperate burst of speed, tearing back into the deep woods and vanishing into the fog as quickly as he had arrived.

You stood alone at the riverbank for a moment, listening to the distant, frantic thudding of his heavy paws fading into the distance.

"Well," you muttered softly to yourself, a slow, entertained smirk finally tugging at the corners of your cold lips as you looked back toward the empty tree line. "That was interesting."

The moment Paul’s paws hit the damp earth in a frantic, desperate sprint, his mind exploded.

He was running blind, tearing through the thick underbrush of the Quileute forest, his powerful chest heaving as he tried to put as much distance as humanly possible between himself and the treaty line. Between himself and you.

But he couldn't run from his own head. The second his focus cracked, the pack telepathy slammed back into his consciousness, loud and overwhelming and too chaotic for Sam and Jared to make of.

“Paul?! What the hell is going on? Paul, answer me!” Jared’s voice echoed in his mind, sharp with sudden panic.

Paul didn't answer. He couldn't. His thoughts were a chaotic, swirling vortex of images he couldn't control, and because of the pack bond, Sam and Jared were seeing every single one of them.

Through Paul’s eyes, they saw the flash of flawless skin. They saw the curtain of hair catching the dim forest light, the impossibly graceful tilt of a head, and worst of all, the striking, brilliant glow of topaz eyes.

“Is that... a leech?!” Jared shouted mentally, his thoughts recoiling in disgust. “Paul, did a bloodsucker cross the line? Did you fight—?”

“No!” Paul roared back in his mind, a deafening, mental snarl that made Jared wince within the bond.

“Then why does your head feel like it’s imploding? Let me see, Paul,” Sam commanded, pushing past Paul’s chaotic mental walls.

Sam didn't just see the memory; he felt the echo of what had happened to Paul the exact millisecond his eyes had locked onto the vampire. The sudden shift of Paul's universe. The way the gravity of the earth had suddenly detached from the center of the world and re-anchored itself entirely to a beautiful, cold monster standing across the river.

The telepathic link went dead silent.

“Oh shit,” Jared breathed, his voice dropping into a shocked, hushed whisper. “Oh, man. No way. Paul…”

“It’s not happening!” Paul screamed internally, his paws digging viciously into the mud as he pushed himself to run faster, trying to outrun the literal laws of physics. “It’s a mistake! She’s a parasite! She’s dead! I don't—I don't feel anything!”

But he was lying, and the pack knew it. They could feel the terrifying, absolute devotion that had just taken root in Paul's soul. They could hear the echo of her voice ringing in his head like a beautiful chime, “Did I break a rule just by looking across the river, puppy?” and they could feel the agonizing, furious heat of Paul’s humiliation and desire.

“Paul, calm down. Come to the clearing by the old mill,” Sam ordered, his mental voice surprisingly gentle now, filled with a heavy sympathy that only made Paul angrier. “We need to talk about this.”

“Get out of my head!” Paul snarled mentally, severing his conscious thoughts from them as best as he could, locking himself behind a wall of pure, unadulterated rage. He didn't go to the mill. Instead, he tore toward a secluded, deeply wooded ravine near his house where he knew he’d be alone. His silver-grey form was a blur of frantic motion until he finally collapsed into a dense thicket of ferns, his massive body trembling violently.

A choked, human sound forced its way out of the wolf’s throat. With a horrific, echoing crack of shifting bones, Paul forced himself to change back—a feat that nearly surprised him considering how volatile his emotions currently were. His body convulsed, muscles snapping and reshaping, fur retreating into skin until he was lying face-down in the wet dirt, entirely human, gasping for air as if he had been drowning.

He dragged himself up against the trunk of a massive cedar tree, still shivering—not from the cold, but from the raw, terrifying power of the imprint. He reached into a hollow in the tree roots, pulling out a pair of beaten-up denim shorts he kept cached there, shaking as he pulled them on.

His skin was burning hot, a fever pitching through his blood. He buried his face in his hands, his fingers gripping his short, dark hair so tightly his scalp ached.

He could still smell you. Even miles away, the scent of the forest seemed completely devoid of meaning compared to the memory of her. He could still see her perfect, mocking smile, could still hear that slightly taunting purr that had completely dismantled his entire existence in a matter of seconds.

"Damn it," Paul choked out into the empty forest, his voice shaking with a mix of fury and absolute helplessness. He slammed his fist into the dirt, leaving a deep crater. "Damn it, no."

He was a protector of his tribe. He was meant to hunt the cold ones, to rip them to shreds and burn the pieces. He was Paul Lahote, the pack's muscle, the one who hated them most.

And now, by some sick, cosmic joke, his soul belonged to a leech.

Two days later, you found yourself lounging on a thick, mossy branch near the treaty line, idly tossing a pinecone up and down in your pale hand. Ever since you had encountered the massive silver wolf, you had been dying to see him again. The lingering curiosity had been humming beneath your skin for forty-eight hours, until finally, the temptation was simply too much to resist.

You had only been waiting for about ten minutes when the sharp sound of approaching footsteps reached your ears. They were human steps, not the heavy, padded thuds of a four-legged beast, but the scent cutting through the rain was unmistakably the same—that scorching, intoxicating blend of woodsmoke, cedar and wet dog.

A few moments later, a tall, powerfully muscular boy stormed through the trees. He was wearing nothing but a pair of torn denim shorts despite the chilly Pacific Northwest rain, his bronze skin radiating a visible steam, due to his abnormally high internal temperature. His chest was heaving with erratic breaths, and his jaw was clenched so tight you could literally hear the bone grinding from twenty yards away.

Your head tilted much like it had the first time you saw him, but this time, you were studying his human form. He was remarkably handsome—not like vampires, who possessed a flawless, frozen perfection, but in a way that was entirely wild and rugged.

He stopped dead at the edge of the treaty line, glaring up at you in your tree with dark eyes full of fire.

"You," he spat, his voice dropping an octave into a gravelly, dangerous threat. "Leech."

The corners of your lips twitched into the ghost of a smirk, instantly amused by his explosive temper. "You must be the dramatic puppy from Tuesday," you said, your voice a smooth, melodic purr that drifted down from the canopy. "Are we jumping straight to pet names, or shall we make a proper introduction?"

He looked like he wanted to rip your head off right then and there, but beneath the mask of his fury, there was a bizarre, frantic desperation bleeding into his eyes that completely contradicted his aggressive posture.

"You need to leave," he commanded, his voice shaking with a strange, ragged intensity. "Leave Forks, leave Washington. Get out."

You leaned forward and leapt down from the branch, dropping through the damp air with absolute weightlessness. You landed soundlessly on your feet just inches away from him, separated only by the invisible boundary of the treaty line. Cocking your head, you met his blazing stare with an unbothered, glittering gaze.

"Why?" you asked, your tone light and conversational. "As far as I can see, I'm breaking no laws. I haven't hunted on your side, and Carlisle says I'm perfectly within my rights to be here."

"I don't care what Carlisle says!" he growled, the words tearing out of his throat.

A sudden tremor ran through his broad shoulders, and you felt the temperature in the small clearing instantly spike. The air around him grew incredibly hot, heavy with the suffocating warmth of a furnace as his body vibrated on the verge of a physical shift.

"You're a monster," he hissed, his chest heaving as he fought a losing battle against his own skin. "A parasite. You shouldn't exist, and you damn sure shouldn't be... shouldn't be doing this to me!"

Your brows furrowed slightly as you tried to piece together exactly what you could have done to him. Yet, absolutely nothing came to the forefront of your mind. He was the one who had hunted you down, after all. But naturally, seeing how easily he was unraveling, you decided to push his buttons.

“Well, that’s a little rude," you murmured, adjusting your stance and letting your lips form a perfect, exaggerated pout. "And here I thought this modern age was all about acceptance and inclusivity. Where are the manners, puppy?"

"Shut up!" he barked, the sound echoing like a gunshot through the quiet woods. His hands curled into tight, white-knuckled fists at his sides.

A dangerous, rhythmic ripple passed directly under his skin—the telltale sign of a shape-shifter on the precipice of exploding into a giant beast. The sheer heat radiating off him was making the damp mist around his bare chest evaporate into wisps of steam.

"Don't tempt me, leech," he threatened, his jaw locking so hard a muscle jumped in his cheek. "I'll tear you to pieces, treaty or no treaty."

"I'd love to see you try," you dared softly, stepping a fraction of an inch closer to the invisible boundary line.

You flashed him a dazzling, flawless vampire smile, your perfect teeth glinting like polished porcelain in the dim, grey light of the forest canopy. You let your eyes trail slowly down his trembling, muscular frame before bringing your gaze back up to lock with his burning stare.

"I haven’t had a good tussle in a while," you purred, a wicked, teasing spark igniting in your topaz eyes. "And you know, they say hate sex is particularly appealing after a brawl. I’d be more than interested to try it if you are. Being mortal, biological enemies would certainly make it an interesting night to remember, don't you think?"

Paul choked on his own breath, the dark bronze of his skin rapidly darkening into a furious, deep crimson at your shameless offer but unlike him you were centuries old, shame was also another thing no longer in your emotional vocabulary.

"You—you fucking psycho," Paul stammered, his gravelly voice cracking under the sheer weight of his humiliation. He stared at you, his eyes wide and completely unhinged by your shameless teasing. "You think this is a joke?"

"Oh, come now," you laughed, the sound a bright, chiming cadence that mocked the heavy gloom of the forest. You shifted your weight, leaning hip-first against a massive, moss-covered boulder right at the water's edge, entirely comfortable in your own skin. "Don't tell me a big, bad wolf is afraid of a little experimentation. I'm just offering a creative solution to all that pent-up aggression you're carrying around. If you’re gonna hate me, we might as well make it fun with some benefits.”

"Get bent," he spat, though his eyes involuntarily flicked down to your lips before snapping back up to your eyes with a look of pure self-loathing. He took a sharp step backward, away from the tempting, intoxicating scent of your proximity. "I'd rather eat glass, leech. Keep your disgusting, cold mouth away from me."

"Your loss, puppy," you chirped, giving him a little wave of your fingers. "But if you change your mind, you know exactly where to find me. Clearly."

Paul let out a final, furious yell of pure frustration, turned on his heel, and stormed back into the dense foliage. He kicked a rotting fir log so hard the damp wood exploded into a shower of splinters and moss, his heavy, angry stomps echoing through the valley until he finally phased somewhere deep in the reservation.

You leaned your back against a cedar tree, a breathless, musical laugh escaping your chest. He was a puzzle, an explosive, dangerously hot puzzle, and for the first time in three centuries, you found yourself entirely cured of your boredom.

Oh, yes. Poking the wolf was going to be an exceptional way to pass the time.

Over the next three weeks, your little routine escalated into what could be considered an art form.

You quickly learned that Paul Lahote—the name belonging to your delightfully angry wolf—possessed the shortest fuse of anyone you had ever encountered in your three hundred years of existence, with the singular, spine-chilling exception of Caius Volturi himself. But unlike the ancient, genocidal Italian ruler, Paul’s wrath was loud, expressive, and incredibly fun to provoke. You made it your personal mission to light that fuse as often as humanly possible, finding a wicked thrill in watching how quickly his composure could disintegrate under the weight of a single, well-placed taunt.

As the days blurred together, you weren't the only ones attending these strange, borderline theatrical standoffs. The other wolves—the stoic, deeply burdened Alpha, Sam Uley, and the taller, lankier one you’d come to know as Jared—started showing up in the brush occasionally. They never crossed the line, and they never spoke a single word to you, keeping their distance. Instead, they would stand just inside the Quileute tree line, watching Paul's explosive, vein-popping tantrums with expressions of deep, utterly exhausted sympathy. They looked at Paul the exact way a tired parent looks at a toddler having a meltdown in the middle of a crowded grocery store. More than once, as Paul's body would begin to violently blur on the precipice of an involuntary phase, Sam would step forward, placing a heavy, grounding hand on Paul's shaking shoulder. You could practically feel the invisible weight of the Alpha's command cutting through the air, forcing the younger boy to forcibly calm his racing blood before he caused a catastrophic, treaty-breaking international incident.

And then, of course, there was Paul himself.

Despite his endless growling for you to leave, his colourful vocabulary, and his daily, incredibly detailed promises to rip you to shreds and burn the pieces, he never missed a single day. Not once. You started testing him, purposely showing up ten or fifteen minutes late to your usual spot on the riverbank just to see what would happen. Without fail, every single time you delayed, you would find him already there, pacing the muddy bank of the opposite side like a caged wolf. His dark, wild eyes would be scanning the high mossy canopy with a frantic, almost desperate urgency, his chest heaving as if he were physically suffocating.

But the exact millisecond your feet touched the branch, the very moment his eyes locked onto yours, the change was staggering. The borderline manic panic tightly gripping his chest would visibly ease, his shoulders dropping a fraction of an inch as a heavy wave of relief washed over his features. A beat later, he would remember himself, instantly settling back into his usual, comfortable mask of defensive rage and snap an insult across the water to cover up his slip.

You weren't stupid. You were an old, highly perceptive predator who had survived three centuries by reading the hidden motives of both humans and monsters alike. You knew with absolute certainty that whatever was truly happening between the two of you, it wasn't just simple, straightforward hatred. There was a tether. A thick, invisible cord pulled completely taut across the rushing waters of the Hoh River, binding your cold, unmoving, timeless existence directly to his scorching, vibrant, and fiercely chaotic life force. You weren’t entirely sure of the exact terminology or the ancient magic behind it, but you knew with a supernatural certainty that it had everything to do with the nature of the wolf beneath his skin.

You probably could’ve asked Carlisle for some clarity, but Edward was currently throwing a massive fit because some human girl in town happened to be his bloodsinger. The whole ordeal was causing an absurd amount of tension throughout the entire Cullen house, so you had been giving them a wide berth while they sorted out their dramatic coven issues.

"You know, for someone who hates me, you sure spend a lot of time staring at my mouth," you teased one evening, sitting gracefully on a moss-covered boulder right at the edge of the river.

Paul, who had been pacing like a caged animal on the opposite bank, froze dead in his tracks. In the dimming twilight, you watched the dark bronze of his face flush a deep, dark red. "I'm watching your fangs, monster," he snapped, his voice rough and defensive. "Making sure you don't try anything."

"Mhm. Sure," you murmured, a playful hum vibrating in your throat. "But there's just one little problem with that, puppy. We don’t actually have fangs. As someone who hunts vampires, shouldn’t that be a fairly crucial detail for you to know?"

You teased him ruthlessly, shifting your weight to slide down from the boulder and move even closer toward the invisible boundary line. Your eyes locked onto the rhythmic trembling of his broad shoulders. "You're shivering, Paul. And definitely not from the cold."

"I don't get cold," he growled, though his chest gave a heavy heave as his breathing suddenly became shallow and restricted.

You tilted your head, looking at him properly this time. Really looking at him. Beneath the layers of explosive anger, the harsh, venomous words, and the desperate masculine bravado, you could see the sheer, crushing exhaustion etched into every line of his face.

The relentless desire to poke the wolf suddenly evaporated, completely replaced by a strange, foreign pang of genuine concern deep inside your cold, unbeating heart.

“Are you alright?” you asked softly.

Paul blinked, completely caught off guard by your sudden, drastic change in tone. The venom vanished from his eyes for a split second, and he looked down at the rushing water separating the two of you, his rigid shoulders sagging just a fraction before he caught himself. His jaw tensed immediately. “I’m fine.”

“I’m over three hundred years old, darling. I’m filled with life experiences," you scoffed playfully, trying to ease the heavy, suffocating tension that had settled over him. "I’m practically offering you free therapy right now."

Paul let out a sharp, bitter breath that wasn't quite a laugh, but it lacked his usual venom. He didn't look back up at you, keeping his eyes firmly glued to the swirling eddies of the river.

"I don't think you have a license for that," he muttered, his voice barely carrying over the sound of the water.

You watched him silently, your supernatural vision effortlessly picking up the subtle, persistent tremor in his hands and the way the muscles in his neck were strained to the point of snapping. The teasing, lighthearted facade you usually wore around him began to feel inappropriate, slipping away to reveal the ancient, deeply observant creature beneath. You stepped right up to the very edge of the riverbank, the damp earth shifting slightly under your weight, your perfect posture loosening into something genuinely receptive.

"No license, but I have an infinite amount of time on my hands," you said softly, your voice cutting through the damp forest air like a soothing melody. "Come on, Lahote. What's eating you? Besides me, obviously."

Paul's jaw worked. For a tense second, you thought he was going to turn on his heel, shatter another log, and storm away into the fog like he usually did when his emotions overwhelmed him.

"I don't need therapy from a leech," he grumbled, though the insult felt half-hearted, lacking any real sting. It was an instinctual shield, a habit he was clinging to because he didn't know what else to do.

"Suit yourself," you said, crossing your arms and leaning your hip against a sturdy birch tree. "But 'fine' doesn't usually involve looking like you haven't slept since the turn of the century."

He lifted his head, his dark eyes burning into yours with a sudden intensity that made your playful banter die instantly on your tongue. The defensive anger was still there, but it was incredibly thin, cracking open right before your eyes to reveal the staggering weight he was carrying underneath.

The truth was, Paul’s life was a chaotic storm, and he was completely drowning in it.

When the shape-shifter gene had finally activated in his blood a few months ago, it had felt like an explosion. Out of the three shifters currently running the forests of La Push, Paul had supposedly taken to the wolf the easiest. Where Sam and Jared had deeply struggled with having to abruptly cut off and ignore the people in their lives to keep the tribal secret, Paul didn’t have that struggle. Phasing into a massive, silver-grey beast felt almost natural to him because he had spent his entire life carrying a baseline of nuclear-level rage. To Sam and Jared, he appeared to effortlessly embrace the unbridled, primal power of the spirit-warrior.

But the reality was a living nightmare. He was a teenage boy who had been abruptly stripped of his normalcy, forced into a supernatural pack bond that offered absolutely zero privacy. Every dark thought, every flash of insecurity, and every bitter memory of his failures was broadcast directly into the minds of his pack mates whenever they were in wolf form.

In truth, inheriting a sacred tribal legacy didn't magically erase the wreckage of his human life. It only magnified it.

His home life was its own quiet, miserable war zone. His father was a deeply bitter, abusive drunk—a man who spent his days drowning his own failures in cheap whiskey and his nights taking his frustrations out on whatever, or whoever, was within arm's reach. Before Paul phased, he had spent years taking those hits, absorbing the venom and building up a dark reservoir of hatred that threatened to swallow him whole. Now that he was a protector, now that he possessed the supernatural strength to tear a car in half with his bare hands, the dynamic at home had become a precarious tightrope. Every time his father stumbled home, slurring and swinging, Paul had to physically lock his entire body down. He would grip the edges of the kitchen counter until the wood threatened to snap beneath his fingers, utterly terrified that if he lost his temper for even a fraction of a second, he would accidentally murder his own father.

Because of that suffocating terror, he barely spent any time at home anymore. He practically lived on the run from his own house, taking refuge at Sam and Emily's place just to have a safe haven. On the nights when the shame and embarrassment of overstaying his welcome grew too heavy, he wouldn't even stay in a house at all; he would sleep out in the dirt and the damp woods as a wolf, letting the wild weather numb him.

He was entirely, utterly exhausted. He was so tired of the total lack of privacy between him and the pack, so tired of the lingering trauma of his childhood, and deeply weary of carrying the thankless burden of protecting a tribe that ultimately viewed him and the other boys as nothing but delinquent, good-for-nothings. He was a walking powder keg, and his hair-trigger temper felt like a bomb ticking away in his chest, waiting for the spark that would blow his entire world to pieces.

And then, to make a total mockery of his entire existence... there was you.

Paul ran a rough hand over his face, pushing his damp, dark hair away from his forehead. He looked at you—at your perfect face, the gentle curve of your mouth, and the bright gold of your eyes. He stared at how you seemed to stand so peacefully across the river, utterly unaffected by the biting rain, the freezing cold, or the crushing misery of the modern world. You were a creature of frozen grace, a timeless masterpiece carving a quiet space into his chaotic nightmare.

He hated how much he needed to be near you. He loathed the primal desperation that gripped his throat every single hour he spent away from this riverbank. But more than anything, he hated the terrifying truth that the endless, agonizing thoughts in his head—the fury at his father, the pack's telepathic intrusion, the burden of the tribal legacy— completely stopped the moment he was right here, standing across a river from a creature he had been born to kill. Your presence was an oasis of escape in his loud, violent world.

"You don't get it," he muttered, his jaw tightening so hard the bone beneath his bronze skin looked sharp enough to cut. He looked down at his own trembling hands, watching them clench and unclench into tight fists as if he were trying to physically hold his sanity together.

"I'm supposed to hate you," he whispered, his voice cracking violently under the staggering weight of the confession. He didn't look up, his gaze glued to his hands. "I try so hard to hate you. I can't sleep. I can't think. Every time I close my eyes, my head is full of your voice, your face, your stupid, mocking smile. I’m supposed to want to rip you to pieces. I’m supposed to want to kill you. Instead, I’m spending every single second of my day fighting my own body, making sure I don't cross this goddamn river just to be near you. It's making me lose my mind."

You stared at him, your ancient mind rapidly recontextualizing every single interaction you’d had over the last three weeks. The pacing, the panic when you were late, the heavy, sympathetic looks from Sam and Jared. You knew there was some kind of bond, but you didn’t realize how hard it had been on him. You didn’t know it was an all consuming need that his biology had forced upon him, and he was tearing himself apart trying to fight it.

A heavy, suffocating silence descended on the riverbank, save for the wild, rushing water churning over the jagged rocks below. For the first time in three hundred years of wandering the earth, through every empire you had seen fall and every coven you had seen break, you felt completely, utterly speechless. The wit that usually defined you, the clever, taunting armour you wore to keep the lacklustre world at bay, dissolved into nothingness.

"Paul..." you started, your voice barely louder than a whisper, stripped entirely of its usual taunting edge.

"Don't," he choked out, his fists clenching tight at his sides. He looked at you one last time, a look of profound defeat and agonizing longing warring on his rugged features, before he turned sharply and vanished back into the shadows of the Quileute woods.

You stood entirely frozen, staring at the empty tree line as the first heavy droplets of a gathering storm began to fall through the canopy, the cold rain washing over you as the echo of his confession rang in your ears.

"Paul..." you started, your voice barely louder than a whisper, carrying a soft, aching weight you hadn't felt in centuries.

"Don't," he choked out, his fists clenching so tight that his entire body began to tremble with that dangerous, pre-shifting heat. He lifted his head and looked at you one last time—a look of profound defeat, raw exposure, and agonizing, heartbreaking longing warring on his rugged features—before he turned sharply on his heel. With a desperate burst of speed, he vanished back into the deep, unforgiving shadows of the Quileute woods.

You stood entirely frozen, your immortal body locking into the stillness of stone as you stared at the empty tree line. The silence of the forest rushed back to fill the void he left behind, and the first heavy, freezing droplets of a gathering storm began to pierce through the high canopy, splashing unnoticed against your cold skin.

The turning point came on a night when the storm was loud enough to drown out the very sound of the forest. Thunder clapped in deafening, rolling waves, and the rain fell in thick sheets, blurring the world into a chaotic haze of grey and green. You were hunting a few miles out, tracking a deer, when the air suddenly carried something that made your entire body lock up—blood. Intoxicating, heavy, human blood, followed instantly by the sweet scent of a rogue vampire having moved through the area.

Your predatory instincts flared, but it wasn't hunger that seized you despite how tempting the human blood smelled. It was a cold, paralyzing jolt of panic. As you tore through the woods, tracking the fast-moving scent trail, you realized with growing horror that the vampire had already went straight across the Hoh River. The nomad had most likely attacked the hiker directly onto Quileute land.

And your very first, consuming thought went to Paul.

You crossed the river without a second thought, your feet barely skimming the rushing water as you launched yourself deep into the forbidden territory, driven by a desperate, frantic need to ensure he was safe.

By the time you burst into the hidden clearing, the brutal reality of the hunt was already unfolding. The human hiker was gone, likely fled or worse, but the clearing was a battleground. A massive, silver-grey wolf was locked in a horrific, snarling grapple with the red-eyed nomad. They were a blur of teeth and claws, tearing up the mud, but the rogue had gained the upper hand, pinning the giant wolf beneath his weight. In his pale, stone-like hand, the nomad gripped a heavy, jagged rock, raising it high and aiming it straight for the wolf's eye with lethal force.

A primal, deafening screech tore from your throat. You didn't think. You just launched your body across the clearing, tackling the rogue vampire off of Paul a split second before the rock could descend. The blinding velocity of your collision threw the nomad violently through the air, sending him crashing into a massive, ancient cedar tree with a force that cracked the thick trunk right down the middle.

Before the nomad could even hit the ground, you dropped into a low, lethal crouch directly in front of Paul. Your clothes were soaked, your posture was entirely feral, and your topaz eyes seemed to shine in the darkness as you shielded the silver wolf with your own body.

"Don't touch him," you hissed, the words vibrating with a venomous, unyielding threat that rang clearer than the storm.

The nomad scrambled to his feet, rubbing his chest where you had struck him. He straightened up to his full height, his dark crimson eyes darting from your protective stance to the panting, bleeding wolf behind you. A look of profound, sickening disgust contorted his pale features.

“You’re defending a mutt from your own kind?” he spat, his voice laced with utter disbelief.

Behind you, Paul let out a low, ragged rumble. He was struggling to push himself up, his heavy paws slipping in the slick, blood-stained grass. You could feel the intense, furnace-like heat radiating from his massive body, practically baking the skin of your back. Even injured, his instinct was to push past you, to put himself between the danger and his imprint. But you didn't give him an inch. You stood like a wall of solid marble, unyielding and fierce.

The rogue nomad narrowed his red eyes, assessing the situation. He looked at the cracked cedar tree, then at your lethal posture, and finally at the massive silver-grey beast snarling behind you. He was fast, but he wasn't stupid. He was outnumbered, outmatched, and facing a vampire who looked entirely ready to tear him limb from limb.

“Disgusting parasite,” the nomad hissed, backing up a step into the shadows of the ferns. “You’re a disgrace to our kind.”

With a sudden, fluid movement, the rogue whirled around and launched himself high into the canopy, vanishing into the blinding sheets of rain as he fled, tearing away from the reservation.

You pulled your phone out of your pocket, your cold fingers moving with supernatural speed to send a quick text to Jasper. You gave him a brief heads-up on the runner's description and where he seemed to be headed, knowing with absolute certainty that the Cullens would handle the rest. They wouldn’t want dangerous rogues hunting anywhere near their territory and drawing unnecessary human attention.

Silence descended on the woods, save for the heavy, laboured panting of the giant wolf behind you.

You turned around slowly, your vampire grace suddenly feeling incredibly clumsy. Paul was already shifting back, the gruesome, rapid sound of cracking bones echoing in the quiet night. He quickly pulled a pair of shorts from a hidden cache in a hollow tree and stepped into them.

You waited for him to yell at you. Your cold muscles tensed as you stood your ground, bracing for the inevitable explosion. You had broken the treaty. You had crossed the river. By all rights and laws of his tribe, he could try to kill you right now.

Instead, Paul walked right up to you. The anger that usually defined him was completely gone, replaced by a fierce, burning intensity. He stopped inches from you, his body heat radiating off him like a furnace, pushing away the damp chill of the night.

"You crossed the line," he whispered.

"He was going to take your eye out, Paul," you said defensively, crossing your arms over your chest as your chin tilted up to meet his gaze. "I couldn't just stand across the river and watch."

You looked at him, truly looked at him, and for the first time in three centuries, you felt a lump form in your throat. You swallowed hard, a purely human reflex that you hadn't needed in a regular conversation for a very long time, and shifted your gaze away from his. You couldn't bear the raw, bleeding exposure in his eyes. There was something about this shape-shifter, something about the searing warmth of his presence and the terrifying depth of his devotion, that made you feel human again. It was a feeling you had thought lost to time, a dangerous, beautiful spark breaking through the timeless numbness of your nomadic life.

“I broke your law," you murmured quietly, the words feeling heavy and hollow on your tongue. "If you want me to leave Forks and never come back… I will.”

It was all he’d been yelling at you to do since the exact moment you two had met. For three weeks, he had growled, demanded, and threatened you to disappear, and you were finally offering him exactly what he wanted on a silver platter. You figured that maybe with you gone, he might finally get some peace of mind.

The silence that followed your offer was deafening, stretching out between you even as the thunder rumbled overhead and the heavy rain continued to batter the ancient canopy. You kept your eyes trained on the muddy ground, watching the steam rise off his bare feet where they sank into the earth. You were bracing for the relief you expected to feel from him, the agreement that he wanted you gone.

But the relief never came. Instead, the air between you grew impossibly hotter, thick with a sudden, sharp spike of panic that was so potent you could practically taste it.

Paul felt his chest gave a sharp, violent heave, a ragged breath tearing out of his throat as if your words had physically struck him.

Instead, what you expected never came, he reached out. His large hand was trembling slightly, as he slowly, hesitatingly, rested his warm, calloused palm directly against your cold, wet cheek.

You gasped, a phantom shudder ripping through your unmoving veins. Your eyes snapped back up to his, wide and startled. His skin felt like liquid fire against your ice, a contrast so sharp, it nearly felt as if you were being burned, but it didn't hurt. In fact, it made you feel undeniably, beautifully alive. For three hundred years, you had walked the earth feeling nothing but the same boring cycle of a world that couldn't touch you. But right now, under the pressure of his hand, your entire universe shrank down to the singular point of his warmth.

“No. I’ve been an asshole to you," Paul muttered, his voice cracking as he forced the words past the tight knot in his throat. His dark eyes searched yours with an open, bleeding sincerity that laid him entirely bare. His thumb moved slowly, gently tracing the smooth, porcelain line of your cheekbone, wiping away the cold raindrops. "Every single day since I met you, I've done nothing but scream at you. I called you a monster. I called you a leech. And you just crossed the treaty line and risked your life to save mine."

Looking up at him now—completely exposed, completely stripped of the defensive, hot-headed bravado he used to shield himself from the wreckage of his life—the familiar, playful spark finally flickered back into your topaz eyes. You couldn't help it. The wit was your defence mechanism, your own way of handling the terrifying weight of what seemed to be blooming between you two.

"I told you before, Lahote," you whispered, your voice a soft, melodic purr that leaned into his warm touch just a fraction of an inch. "I like poking the wolf. I can't exactly let a rogue nomad break my favourite toy."

A breathless, genuine laugh broke from Paul's lips—the first real, untainted sound of amusement you had ever heard from him. It made his eyes crinkle at the corners, the harsh, severe lines of his face softening into something so breathtakingly handsome it made your dead heart ache.

"You are infuriating, you know that?" he murmured, the corners of his mouth lifting into a small, wry smile as he leaned his head down, resting his forehead gently against yours. Ice met fire in the middle of the dark, rain-slicked forest, and for the first time, there was no war.

"I've been told I have a certain charm," you replied softly, your pale, slender hands tentatively rising to rest against his bare, broad chest. Beneath your palms, you could feel the frantic, heavy thumping of his heart, a rapid, fiercely alive rhythm that seemed to echo in the empty space of your own chest.

"Yeah," Paul sighed, closing his eyes as he finally let go of the anger, the guilt, and the fear that had been tearing him apart for weeks. He wrapped his strong, trembling arms securely around your waist, pulling your cold body flush against his furnace-warm chest and you couldn’t help but relax into him. He held you like you were the only solid thing left in a world that was constantly shifting beneath his feet. "Maybe you do."

The storm raged on around you, the thunder shaking the earth and the rain washing the blood from the clearing, but as you stood there in the forbidden territory, wrapped in the arms of the boy who had been born to kill you, the dull grey of the world finally began to fade away.

[violetrainbow412-blog]

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 ⋆⭒˚.⋆

Peter Parker x telepath!reader

wc: 6k

summary: after erasing herself from his memories to save him, she spends years silently yearning for his love, unaware that fate would also ensure Peter was forgotten by the rest of the world. But no spell can break a bond that always finds its way back.

masterlist

Most of the time, Professor Xavier underestimated the true power of a pair of headphones. Maximoff had given them to you a few months ago, right after seeing you on the verge of a breakdown and hearing your confession: how unbearable it was to get used to the incessant tide of other people's minds, the torture of listening to everyone, all the time.

“They help me when I don't want to think about anything,” he told you at the time, shrugging with that effortless lightness so typical of him.

Peter was older, a mutant who had been adapting to the institute's rhythm for much longer, so you decided to take his word for it. From then on, the headphones became indispensable; a tool you couldn't go anywhere without.

Charles's teachings helped, of course. They taught you to adjust your mind as if turning the knob of an old radio, isolating frequencies and tuning into white noise. But there were days when fatigue soaked into your bones and you didn't have the strength to be your own filter. You just wanted the murmur of humanity to turn off.

The Professor never stopped you from crossing the mansion's gates. After all, Westchester wasn't a prison and you weren't a captive; you were free to leave whenever you desired. That was why, upon communicating your wish to travel to the city, you only received an understanding look and a serene nod.

The truth was that not even you knew what you were looking for in Manhattan. Perhaps you harbored the childish hope that the rattling of the train would gift you a few minutes of sleep. You had been dragging heavy insomnia for weeks. At first, when your powers awakened, the nights were a nightmare of invisible screams drilling into your ears in the dark. But this time was different.

This time, the interference had an implicit name. A voice.

You couldn't stop listening to his thoughts: they were a tangle of crushing responsibilities, recent losses, and a pain so deep it bordered on devotion. Among the millions of minds fluctuating through the metropolis, his possessed a unique frequency that found its way to you, piercing through your defenses without asking for permission. It wasn't the loudest mind nor the most imposing. It simply... claimed you.

As the days went by, you stopped perceiving it as background noise. There was a painful familiarity in its echo. You felt like you had known him all your life, even if you had never seen his face. It was an inexplicable telepathic connection, an invisible thread completely escaping Charles's manuals and theories about the human mind.

Sometimes, with your forehead pressed against the pillow, you wondered if he felt that same pull on the other side of nothingness. If he sensed that, on his darkest nights, there was an unknown mind keeping him company in the silence. That doubt floated in the air until exhaustion overcame you, leaving you with the eternal question about who that stranger was inhabiting your sleepless nights.

You liked the city. It didn't have the peace of Westchester, but it possessed a brutal honesty. You thought about dropping by to see your parents, but dismissed the idea immediately. You didn't want to face their forced smiles nor the contained panic in their eyes every time you made a sudden movement. Your presence was an uncomfortable reminder of imperfection. It was better to leave them in peace; after all, they had your sister. She wasn't a mutant. She was the future they could boast about without whispering.

At the mansion, life was relatively peaceful. You got along well with most, though the relationship with the other telepaths was distant. They knew the history of your past breakdown and treated you like glass about to shatter, fearing a flaw in your mind would trigger a domino effect. Curiously, you found more comfort in the older ones: Maximoff's hyperactivity, Logan's protective cynicism, or the quiet conversations with Beast.

And then there was the Professor. Charles frequently sought you out after classes ended to evaluate your progress. There was no fear in his gaze... in fact, there was nothing. His mind was the only place in the universe where absolute silence reigned. Trying to peek into Xavier's thoughts was like trying to crack a safe using a cooked noodle: an absurd thing.

Inside your backpack traveled an object of personal cult: a worn copy of The Secret Garden. Even though it was a children's read, the story of that hidden, healing corner brought you an almost physical comfort. You understood all too well the imperious need to find a refuge where no one could reach you.

The book's origin was a haze. Maybe you had bought it for a couple of dollars at a street market, or perhaps it belonged to your family before everything broke. The pages wore that yellowish tone that nostalgics sigh for, and the corners of the cover were so worn that any bibliophile would have suffered seeing it. For you, however, it was irreplaceable.

On the first page, written in slightly faded ink but elegant calligraphy, you read a dedication:

For whenever you need a quiet place

— P.P

None of your relatives or acquaintances matched those initials. You always assumed the book had belonged to a stranger who forgot to claim his love note before selling it. After all, the world was full of lost memories.

You adjusted your back against the train seat and buried your nose in the pages, letting the smell of old paper dry your thoughts while your eyes scanned lines you knew by heart. Outside, the landscape transformed. The greenness of tall trees and gravel paths gradually gave way to the brutal architecture of civilization: small brick neighborhoods, clotheslines crisscrossing between windows, rusted rails, and graffiti shouting names on concrete walls.

Bit by bit, Manhattan's skyscrapers emerged on the horizon like glass giants claiming the sky. The train crossed the last metallic bridges and ventured into the guts of a city that never slept.

Stepping off, you began walking without a clear destination. The city was the antithesis of the isolation you usually sought: a hotbed of fragmented thoughts, financial anxieties, and absurd hurries clashing with one another. However, there was something liberating in that chaos. Among millions of voices screaming at the same time, your own cracks went unnoticed. Nobody looked at you. Nobody feared you.

To cross the streets you didn't need to look at the traffic lights; a light mental pulse was enough to switch the lights at your convenience, opening a path for yourself in a manufactured bubble of calm. Playing in your ears was the playlist Maximoff had built for you on Spotify. Although the concept of streaming seemed like an unnecessary modernity to him, he had taken the trouble to compile hours of classic and alternative rock.

You walked for hours until your steps came to a dead halt before the facade of a building.

Your old high school.

There was no logical reason to have ended up there, but the red brick walls triggered a pang in your stomach. You stood on the sidewalk, watching students pour out in flocks amid laughter, shoves, and innocence; that kind of carefreeness that only exists before reality crushes you.

You wondered what it would feel like to be one of them. What your life would have been like if your mutation had never awakened. If your only battles had been physics grades, prom, or deciding which college to apply to, instead of learning to contain an ability that threatened to destroy you from within.

You would have been an normal girl. Ordinary.

The word felt bitter in your mouth. Distant. Like a suit that belonged to someone else.

You searched your memory for a face, a name, anything to justify the nostalgia tightening your chest, but only found blanks. You vaguely remembered belonging to the debate club and the science club, but the faces of your classmates were unrecognizable. Time had taken care of that.

You thought about crossing the entrance, but immediately lost heart. It made no sense. A stranger lurking in the hallways would only draw suspicious looks.

You turned around and let your feet carry you aimlessly. It was then that intuition returned, this time with a magnetic clarity. It wasn't an external thought or a telepathic intrusion; it was a pull in the center of your chest, as if an invisible thread tied to your ribs were being tugged from somewhere in the city.

You boarded a city bus without looking at the route sign. The need to move forward flattened any doubt. You watched through the window as blocks of buildings succeeded one another, trying to convince yourself that it was just a neurotic impulse, a side effect of fatigue. But the pull didn't yield.

You got off a few stops later and started walking by inertia, turning corners almost instinctively, as if navigating a map engraved in your genes.

Until the thread slacked.

In front of you stood a small, humble café, almost invisible among the grandiosity of the main avenues. You remained on the sidewalk contemplating the reflection in the glass, overcome by the mathematical certainty that this was exactly where you needed to arrive.

In your headphones, the final chords of MGMT were playing. Oracular Spectacular was an album that seemed to evoke memories of a life you weren't sure you had lived, a mixture of psychedelia and melancholy that fit the moment perfectly.

Pushing the door open, the chime of a bell announced your entrance. The place was practically empty, an oasis of silence you were deeply grateful for. You took a deep breath, gathering the courage needed to slide the headphones down to your neck and prepare for the inevitable impact of mental noise.

“Hi, what can I get for you?”

Behind the counter, a girl with dark skin offered you a warm smile. Her nametag read Michelle, though your mind had already caught her name a second prior. However, when trying to go deeper, you bumped into a subtle wall; her mind was complex, dense, hard to decipher at first glance. Some people were just that unreadable.

You ordered a latte out of obligation. You hated coffee—caffeine usually triggered unbearable migraines—but needing to buy something was the price to pay to stay there.

That was when you noticed the boy on the other side of the counter: Ned Leeds, Michelle's friend. Ned's mind, unlike hers, was an open book. Both shared a vibe of contained nervousness, a low tension floating between them. It felt like something... work-related? No, academic.

“I'll bring it to your table in a moment.”

You nodded mechanically and settled at a small table next to the window. On the opposite wall, a turned-on television silently broadcast amateur video footage: Spider-Man swinging between skyscrapers. You remembered the events of last year, the cracks in the sky, and the multiversal threat everyone talked about. You also remembered Charles's blunt response when you asked why you all hadn't intervened: “It's not our fight.”

You looked at the screen with bitterness. And even if you had wanted to help... what on earth could you have done against the collapse of the universe?

You wondered if at any point the world would be ready for mutants. It was an open secret: the beloved figure Charles had lost years ago, a mutant so unstable he had been the worst calling card to society. Many of the mansion's residents had seen him on television as children; a few others knew him personally. You could only rely on rumors.

You stared at the street through the café's glass for a long while, wondering where all those people were heading, even though you knew the answer beforehand. You saw a girl walking hurriedly down the sidewalk, struggling to adjust the strap of a heavy bag slung over her shoulder. You wanted to believe in a gentle story: you imagined inside were a bunch of purchases she could finally, after a long time, afford. A birthday gift for someone special, some expensive creams, or maybe those shoes she had liked so much in some display window.

You entered her mind a second later.

Reality was much grayer. There were no gifts or new shoes. In the bag she only carried a change of clothes and the medical studies of her grandmother, whom she was going to nurse at the hospital during the night shift after working all day. In her head there was no excitement, but an accumulated fatigue of weeks, the worry of not knowing how to pay for the month's medications, and the faint hope that the old woman would recognize her for at least a couple of minutes before falling asleep.

You gently looked away, with a pang of bitterness in your chest.

Why was reality so sad? Was any of those passersby actually having a good day?

You moved your eyes across the sidewalk, almost desperately searching for a flash of light amid the tide of tired faces. And then you saw it. A little boy, no older than five, hopping along next to his mother. He held a green plastic dinosaur in his hands, and brushing his mind for an instant, you found no sorrow. Only a gigantic happiness because his mother had bought him the toy he had been waiting weeks for. In his universe, in that precise second, nothing bad existed.

You smiled to yourself and exhaled a breath you didn't even know you were holding. Somehow, that tiny thought comforted you; it was like a crack of sunlight amid a cloudy sky. Reality could be heavy, yes, but at least it wasn't entirely lost.

You heard the chime at the entrance, and your body responded before your mind did, turning you around to observe the newly arrived customer. A slender boy, with brown hair somewhat messy from the street wind and a sweet, incredibly expressive gaze, but with a distinct shadow of fatigue under his eyes. He wore a worn jacket that was a bit too big for him and had his hands buried in his pockets. He had that kind of noble, empathetic face that instantly conveys trust.

However, what left you dumbfounded was the fact that you heard absolutely nothing.

Not a single thought. Not the slightest murmur. His mind was in complete, inexplicable silence. It wasn't Professor Xavier's impenetrable and calculated barrier; it was something different, an absolute void, yet strangely warm. After spending the day submerged in the city's chaotic bustle, encountering such calm in a stranger left you breathless.

He didn't notice your presence; instead, his eyes were fixed on the waitress carrying your coffee.

“Enjoy,” she exclaimed kindly.

He didn't take his eyes off her, and you didn't take your eyes off him.

You stammered a thanks to the girl, and she returned to her position behind the counter. He, seeing her return, lowered his gaze and hurried to take a seat at one of the tables.

From your spot, you couldn't help but observe him. There was something subtle yet clear in his posture: the way his eyes sought the girl at the counter, the contained hesitation in his gestures... It was obvious he had gone to that café just to see her.

Upon reaching the counter, Michelle and Ned began chatting in a casual tone. After a few moments of fluid conversation, she leaned against the bar, looked at the boy waiting at the table, and asked what he was ordering.

He looked up and answered.

It was barely a short phrase, a simple response, but the timbre of his voice pierced the café's space with an overwhelming clarity.

Your heart took a violent leap. You froze in your seat, paralyzed mid-movement, while an icy shiver ran down your spine. That cadence, the exact intonation, the soft and worn nuance... You didn't need to read his thoughts to know. His spoken voice was enough.

It was the same voice that had been sneaking into your hardest nights for weeks. The lonely mind that found yours in the dark was just a few steps away from you.

That was why you had gone there. To find him.

Once again, you tried to venture into his mind. You launched your telepathy searching for that crack through which you used to hear him, but it was like running into an impenetrable wall; his mind remained in absolute silence. However, at the exact instant you brushed against his barrier, the boy flinched in his chair and went stiff all of a sudden, as if an electric shock had run up the back of his neck.

He turned his head instinctively until his eyes met yours head-on. He held your gaze for an eternal second, charged with a strange, alert tension. He hadn't just blocked you effortlessly; impossibly, that boy seemed to have felt that you were trying to enter his head.

He blinked several times as if trying to discard the idea, sure it had only been an illusion. He focused on a menu hanging above the counter despite having already placed his order, projecting a contained tension that made him look out of place. Worried, perhaps.

You looked toward the window, though now the stories of the passersby lacked meaning. You closed your eyes for an instant, searching in the silence for an answer to the enigma a few feet away, but found nothing.

Determined to end the uncertainty once and for all, you snapped them open and stood up, ready to cross the small space separating you from him. The unexpected part was that the stranger had the exact same idea. Before you could react, the two of you collided head-on. The impact made you lose your balance, and you fell backward onto the floor, letting out a stifled murmur of surprise.

He apologized immediately, visibly embarrassed. Then he crouched to your height and quickly extended his hand to help you up. Confused, you accepted his help, and at the exact instant his fingers closed around your hand, an electric shock coursed through your veins.

A memory flashed into your mind.

The afternoon sun hit your face fully when you heard his voice calling you. You had decided to go to the park to rest, silently celebrating that you had finally survived finals week. You lay on the fresh grass, letting the early summer heat envelope you.

“Do you think I'll do badly in English?” he asked, breaking the silence while looking at the treetops.

“A little, yeah. But not enough to get an F,” you replied honestly, turning toward him.

“Thank goodness. May would kill me.”

“You've never failed a subject, not since we were in kindergarten.”

“No,” he admitted, glancing at you. “That's why I know she'd kill me.”

You let out a genuine laugh, contemplating the comical face he made whenever a truth disguised as a joke escaped him. There was a lightness to those days that now felt like a distant dream.

“If I get bad grades, my parents will probably blame you,” you teased.

“And why's that?” he asked, feigning outrage.

“They'll say you're a distraction.”

At that moment, a white butterfly fluttered between the two of you and lightly brushed your cheek before flying away. He smiled tenderly and reached out, brushing with his fingertips the exact spot where the insect's wings had tickled you.

“That's not true,” he murmured, leaving his hand suspended near your face.

“It kind of is,” you confessed, shrugging as you felt warmth rise to your cheeks. “You spend all day in my thoughts. But they don't have to find out about that.”

Blush instantly stained his cheeks. He tried to hide it by looking down and breaking into a clumsy smile, but it was in vain. You were fascinated watching him get nervous. It was as if he couldn't fully process that you loved him with that blind, boundless intensity that only exists in first love.

“I could help you study for retakes,” he offered, clearing his throat.

“Yeah, sure. Because you're a nerd and all that.”

“No,” he corrected softly, searching your eyes. “Because you're my girlfriend. And I want you to get good grades so we can go to college together.”

“Please! Are you already thinking about college?” you laughed, covering your face with your hands. “We're barely starting high school.”

“Yeah, but it doesn't hurt to plan, right?”

“You worry too much about the future.”

“And you don't?”

“I don't care what the future holds,” you said simply, intertwining your fingers with his as the afternoon wind tousled his hair. “I only care about enjoying the present. About being here. With you.”

The warmth of the hand you were holding grew hazy with the memory of that day. Suddenly, a new scene rushed in headlong.

The whole school knew. It was the only topic of conversation in the hallways: they knew that because of you, that boy was in the hospital. During your constant trips to the principal's office, you had managed to overhear that his parents wanted to sue you, though at your age you weren't sure if that was legally possible.

You just wanted to scream at them that you couldn't help it. That you never wanted to hurt him in the first place.

Now everything hurt, but not in your body; the pain was entrenched in your head. You were sitting outside the principal's office for the hundredth time that week. You had missed almost every class, and when you tried to show up at the debate club meeting, they simply slammed the door in your face.

You wondered how much longer you could endure in this limbo. By that point, your expulsion was practically a done deal.

And then there was the torment of the minds around you. You didn't know how to silence them; they entered your head unfiltered, all the time, drilling into your ears until becoming unbearable noise.

Why on earth was this happening to you?

“Hey,” you suddenly heard.

You didn't know if the murmur came from inside your head or from the hallway, until looking up brought you back to reality: he was standing in front of you.

“There you are,” he said softly.

“Hi,” you whispered, looking at him with guilt. “What are you doing here? There's a club meeting today.”

“Yeah, but I didn't really feel like going,” he replied, shrugging.

Lie. He was fascinated by the debate club. But the worry of finding you had been stronger.

He took a seat beside you. You immediately avoided his gaze, unable to meet his eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” you lied, tightening your hands on your lap. “They just summoned me again. You know... because of everything that's happened lately.”

“Yeah...” he sighed, resting his elbows on his knees.

Even though he kept quiet, you didn't need him to speak to know exactly what was crossing his mind. His mental pulse was a tide of fatigue, deep sadness, and a touch of pity. He felt afraid, yes, but not toward you or what you could do—rather, for what the world was going to do to you.

An interminable few seconds passed in which the noise of the school threatened to crush you again, until he seemed to gather enough courage to organize his thoughts.

“It wasn't your fault,” he blurted out, searching your eyes. “You know that, right?”

“The guy is in the hospital,” you replied with a broken voice, feeling tears fill your eyes. “I don't even know what I did or how I did it. It just... happened. People are right to be afraid of me.”

“They don't understand anything,” he insisted, turning his body toward you. “I know you. I know who you are. This is an accident, not something you wanted. I... I don't understand how you did it. But you're not crazy, and you're not bad either.”

“I feel like I'm going crazy,” you confessed in a thread of a voice, bringing your hands to your temples as the din of other minds began drilling into you from within again. “There are too many voices. I can't turn them off. It's killing me.”

He didn't hesitate for another second. He moved closer and wrapped his arms around you, enveloping you in a firm, warm hug that seemed to freeze time.

You pressed your face against his shoulder, clinging to his jacket as if it were the only anchor amid the storm. Suddenly, the chaos in your head seemed to dim. The contact of his arms didn't silence the voices of the world, but the certainty of his affection turned everything else into a distant noise, an insignificant echo.

“I'm not leaving you alone in this,” he whispered in your ear, squeezing you a little tighter against him. “We're going to figure it out. I promise you.”

You had closed your eyes for an instant, and when you opened them, the setting had changed completely.

He was watching you from the edge of your bed, with a mix of resignation and worry in his gaze.

“A boarding school?” he asked in a low voice.

“Yeah... It's like a school for gifted youngsters or something like that,” you murmured without looking up, focused on folding clothes and packing them into suitcases.

Every now and then, he stretched out to hand you an item of clothing left on the bed, trying to keep himself useful so as not to break down.

“And for how long will it be?”

“I don't know. A few months, I guess... Until things cool down around here.”

In the end, the hospital boy's parents hadn't filed the lawsuit, but they had taken it upon themselves to spread the rumor to every corner of the high school. The stares, the harassment, and the social pressure ultimately proved you right: expulsion had been inevitable. Your parents, overwhelmed by the situation and not knowing how to handle what was happening to you, had found that special place as a last resort to rid themselves of a problem beyond their control.

“Yeah, well... makes sense,” he commented, though the lack of conviction in his voice was glaring.

His mind was sending clear signals: he was holding something back. And you knew perfectly well what it was.

“Hey, I'll come back to visit you every now and then, okay?” you said, trying to inject some enthusiasm into the room. “And if I talk to the principal... maybe he'll even let me invite you over for a weekend.”

You dropped what you were doing and sat beside him.

“If you want to go, of course.”

“Of course I want to,” he answered immediately. He was completely sincere. “It's just that... Westchester is pretty far.”

“It's not that big of a deal,” you tried to encourage him, though you knew his real concern wasn't the distance, but the fare money.

You sought his hand on the mattress, intertwining your fingers while looking at him with a silent plea reflected in your eyes.

“We can video call every night. Text each other all the time... You'll see I won't feel that far.”

He smiled that sweet way he did when he really wanted to believe things would turn out fine, and nodded silently.

“Yeah, you're right. It'll work.”

You leaned toward him and stole a soft kiss from his lips. It was a brief gesture, but loaded with all the fear, love, and uncertainty you both shared.

“It'll only be a few months to see how they teach over there. And then I'll come back. I promise.”

A final series of memories surfaced. Though when your mind shifted to them, you immediately felt a tightness in your chest.

It hadn't been just a few months. The semester was consuming its final days, and you were still trapped in Westchester.

You weren't going to lie to yourself: you were starting to get used to the place. To the bucolic peace of the mansion, the warmth of your new peers, and the institute's teaching. It was an idyllic refuge. Professor Xavier had personally taken care of manipulating the threads of collective memory at your old school; he didn't erase the incident, but he wiped your face from everyone's memories. To the school board, it had just been an unfortunate physical altercation between two students whose names were better off forgotten. Your name was clean, but your soul remained chained to Queens.

To him.

You had sworn to write to him daily, to keep the flame alive against all odds. But at first, messages flowed like an overflowing river; later, reality turned into a dam. Classes demanded an almost superhuman level of concentration if you wanted to control the chaotic mass of your powers. Guilt devoured your chest with every hour that passed without replying to him.

When you finally managed to scrape a free weekend to return to the city, reuniting with him was a dagger to the heart.

Even without wanting to, you heard the bitter tide of his thoughts. Weeks ago, he had begged you to go to the high school dance with him, excited like a child, but Charles forbade you from going so as not to expose yourself.

“It's okay, I understand,” he had told you at the time, swallowing his disappointment.

But telepathy didn't allow you to deceive yourself. It wasn't just the missed party. It was the cruel taunts in the school hallways when he said he had a girlfriend, an invisible girl whom no one ever saw. It was the contempt of his classmates, the pity condensed in the teachers' gazes, the silenced disappointment of a boy who had to defend the existence of a love that seemed like a ghost.

You couldn't hold his hand in the street, or invite him out for ice cream, or be a living presence in his everyday life.

Those invisible wounds accumulated until they became an unsustainable mountain. And though he never uttered a single reproach—though he swallowed his tears so as not to make you feel guilty—you felt how he was bleeding out from within. He felt deeply lonely, desperately clinging to the sporadic visits of the ghost of the girl who was once his world.

One night, while the moon bathed the roof in silver, the question pierced you like broken glass:

Did he deserve a half-life? Did he deserve to love a shadow?

No. Good heavens, no. He deserved the full light.

“You seem strange,” he said.

The two of you were sitting on the fire escape outside his window, with the cold night air sneaking through your clothes.

“Are you okay?”

“I am,” you murmured, clinging to the iron bars with white knuckles so your voice wouldn't shatter. “Hey... can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Do you really think us... is meant to work?”

“Of course it is,” he answered immediately, searching your eyes with a blind faith that broke your soul. “We've made it this far, haven't we?”

But the words didn't matter. Your mind drowned in the tide of his true answer: a desperate inner plea not to lose you, crushed by the overwhelming fear that you were already leaving.

“Why do you ask that?” he added, his voice trembling slightly.

“Because I'm not the girl you deserve.”

“Are you breaking up with me?” He turned abruptly.

His hands had already moved to your shoulders, holding you with the same gentleness he had for so many years.

“I... I love you. I don't give a damn about the distance! I don't care what happened with your powers or any of this. I mean it. I love you.”

“And I love you,” you sobbed, feeling tears held back for months threatening to choke you. “I love you in a way you can't imagine. But...”

“No. There is no 'but'. Don't do this to me. Please.”

His hand gripped yours, the desperation palpable in the touch. The silence was dense, heavy, drowned out by the distant noise of city traffic. But the sentence was already passed in the deepest part of your being. Because you loved him too much to destroy him.

Even though you both changed the subject, the tension remained. Shortly after, you went back into the room. He lay on the bottom bunk, defeated, his chest heaving with silent panic. You leaned over him, stopping mere inches from his face, wrapped in the dim light.

“You know I would never hurt you, right?” you whispered, caressing his cheek with infinite tenderness.

“I know,” he replied in a thread of a voice.

“And you know I'm going to love you no matter what happens, right?”

“I know.”

He surged forward and kissed you. It was a desperate, almost voracious kiss, a trench against destiny. He held you by the waist and the nape of your neck with a strength bordering on agony, pressing you against his chest as if sensing you were turning into water slipping through his fingers.

Tears spilled uncontrollably from your eyes, wetting both your cheeks. He started upon feeling you cry and lowered his hands, alarmed, but you didn't give him time to speak. You kissed him again. You kissed him until breath escaped your lungs, mixing the bitter taste of your tears with the warm breath escaping his lips. It was the kiss of a lifetime condensed into a few seconds.

Trembling, you brought your fingers to your temple. A stifled, heart-wrenching sob escaped your chest.

Would you be capable? Was your love so boundless, so destructive, as to commit this cruel mercy?

Yes. Because loving him meant saving him from yourself.

With a silent scream that tore your mind apart from the inside, you deployed your telepathy and ventured into his memory.

You began erasing yourself.

You gradually dissolved the stolen kisses, the laughs in the debate club, and the college promises, but also the childhood afternoons in his living room, the scraped knees, and an entire life growing up together. You erased every conversation, every glance, and every shared heartbeat, transforming a colossal love into a hazy fog, into a mere nameless void.

You exterminated over a decade of memories piece by piece, watching the light in his eyes grow dull as the connections severed in his brain.

Your own mind wailed at the sacrilege of erasing the only pure thing you had left in the world.

Feeling the weight of his body relax under the telepathic sedation, you laid his head on the pillow with infinite sweetness. His eyes, now serene and empty of you, closed slowly.

You leaned down one last time, brushing your lips against his cool forehead.

“Goodbye, Peter.”

Peter. That was his name.

“A-Are you really okay? Did you get hurt?”

You were already on your feet. You hadn't realized tears were streaming down uncontrollably until you ran your fingers across your cheeks. Your hands were trembling.

An excruciating doubt seized you inevitably: what had made you forget him? How could such a piece of your soul disappear from your life?

“Do you need me to call someone?”

You hadn't articulated a single word since he helped you up. Your absolute silence only fueled the confusion and concern growing in his eyes with every passing second.

He was so different. He looked older, mature, undeniably handsome... but there was no doubt: it was him. It was your Peter.

From his perspective, you must have looked completely terrified. Your fixed stare and ragged breathing made you look as though you were seeing a dead man brought back to life.

“No,” you managed to reply.

Stumbling, you backed away from him. You grabbed your belongings immediately and walked to the counter, leaving a bill that doubled the value of what you had ordered.

Then you walked out. Without looking back.

Let me know if you want to be tagged in part two! ♡

[mooncleaver]

He's Kind of Cute.

ღ summary: Your (not so) quiet crush on Sanji through Nami’s eyes

ღ pairing: Sanji x fem!reader

ღ warnings: Disgusting(ly bad) flirting :D not an established relationship but they act like a couple anyway! reader with long-ish hairr, she's chalant af

Nami finds out about your crush on Sanji during girls night. 

You don’t know what was better, when no one knew about this thing you had for him, or having your best friend aware, which meant that you finally had someone else to rave on about Sanji and everything that he is. 

She calls you “lame”, but the truth is that you are helpless. 

You’re seated on a twirly chair in front of the vanity, right foot up on the cushioned surface to better polish your toes. They’re a vivid coral, matching the ones on your fingers. Nami’s lying upside down on her cot across from you, hands behind her head and feet up against the wall like it’s nobody’s business. She's finished her toes already, all coated in a beautiful teal that compliments her hair.

Everything is perfect tonight. As perfect as being bountied pirates on a ship can get. The flower scented candles around the girls’ cabin run warm, making sweetness blossom around the room. Your beds are made perfectly, pillows fluffed up just the way you like it. You and Nami move with an unspoken understanding, of unwinding and finally taking time to yourselves after a day full of adventure. 

The sound of the sea has been quietly lulling the two of you into peace, though you have to delay your sleep for an extra hour of chatting away your complaints.

Girls night always welcomes honesty—when you and Nami can talk about everything the boys would never understand. And she’s being real truthful alright, hand enthusiastically waving around like a maestro to her own words. 

And of course, the current topic of conversation was the blonde, women-loving cook in your crew. 

Nami can be blunt, to say the least. It’s what you appreciate most about her, although you wish she’d soften her words up just a little bit. 

Or maybe try to see him the way you do.

“He’s a lot.”

She’s talking about typical Sanji behavior. The incessant flirting, the hovering and his I-live-to-serve-women attitude, which she’s convinced is some type of overcompensation. 

You definitely don’t think it’s annoying. If anything, you think it’s really sweet that he tries his hardest to impress Nami. 

Matter of fact, you love it when he tries to impress the girls on this ship. Fortunately for you, the only two available ones include an independent, no-bullshit navigator who doesn’t easily fall for his smooth-talking. Now that just leaves him to focus more of his affection onto you, and you absolutely love being the center of his attention.

You bite your lips, trying to hold back your laughter. “I mean, he’s intense for sure.”

She rolls her eyes at your attempts to soften her complaints, and she truly can’t find it in her to understand why you would defend the cook. “Annoying.”

“I think it’s kind of cute.”

A beat of silence. 

And then Nami literally whips her head to face you so fast you’d think you were a treasure made of a trillion berries.

The sight she’s greeted with is one she will never forget. And not in a pleasant way, because you look positively, 100%, absolutely sure about the words you just uttered out of your mouth.

You’re hugging both your legs up to your chest, lips still bitten in a silent restraint. You’re actually melting into yourself, lost somewhere in the clouds as you swing yourself right and left in your chair. 

Where do you even begin? 

From memorizing your likes and dislikes,—and not just about food—attending to your needs, whether you voice them or not, and genuinely wanting to know you for who you are. Sanji somehow manages to embrace who you were, who you are now and who you hope to become in the future, all in the same breath. 

He is never quiet with the way he loves. God forbid he doesn’t worry about others for even one day. He’s dramatic, over-the-top, theatrical. All the synonyms of spectacular you can find in the dictionary. But also grounded, selfless, and so genuine that it makes your teeth ache and your heart clench erratically. 

Sanji treats you with a kind of gentleness that makes you think you’re the most precious diamond in the Blue Sea. You are. To him. He never ceases to convince you of so. 

So it’s an absolute no-brainer that you think he is the one for you. If not the only man ever. And, the fact that you aren’t alone in this fortifies your belief. You and Sanji have your own thing. A quiet game that only you seem to understand the rules of. A kind of connection that isn’t defined by or bound to labels; one that grew from quiet glances and secret smiles. The others may not notice—for now. They’d probably brush it off as you being kind to Sanji and finding genuine friendship in him. 

But you like it that way, and you really, really like him. You don’t need to say it out loud, because you’re sure he knows you do. You’re content with what you have because you can feel it that he reciprocates. 

You are his just as much as he is yours. 

“Say that again.” Nami pumps out the sentence like she can’t believe her own ears. She’s fully upright now, propping her upper body with her hands. She leans towards you as if it’ll make her hear better. 

“I think..” you mimic her pose and lean your chest forward, palms resting on both knees as if preparing to tell her a secret, “—that he’s kind of cute.”

It’s he, now. Not it, anymore. 

God, you are hopeless. And crazy. 

“You’re kidding.” The navigator hits you with the most deadpan stare you’ve ever seen her muster in her life.

Nami tries to look back at all your past interactions with Sanji. From the first time you joined the crew to the most recent ones. Then it all clicks for her—like a puzzle piece to answer a question she’s never bothered to ask. 

It starts with the way you get quiet when Sanji’s around, a secret smile and an undeniable warmth seldom missing from your face. Gosh, you’re so shy when he talks to you sometimes. It’s crazy that it didn’t register to her because you’re typically always so sure of yourself. Then it’s how you never, ever brush off his attempts at flattery. How your sweet compliments always seemed to be drowned out by Luffy’s shouts and Zoro’s arguing. She looks back at the way you naturally gravitate towards him. It didn't matter if you were on the ship, jumping from island-to-island, in the middle of a fight or simply lounging around with the rest of the crew, you always found your way right beside him. 

Huh. 

It was all in her face the entire time. Loud and apologetic. She feels silly at the fact that she’s never thought to even look because she couldn’t fathom that any woman could genuinely put up with him. And you never denied anything either—not when there wasn’t anything to deny in the first place. 

Her words set you off like a pirate looking for the one piece. 

“Nami don’t you ever dream of a guy who’ll sweep you off your feet?”

You’re breathless, absolutely lost in your own daydreams as you twirl around your chair with a force that could blow the Going Merry across the Grand Line. There are stars in your eyes, genuinely. Your hands shoot up in a rainbow above your head, and your body melts further into the seat. 

Something’s definitely gotten into you.

“And Sanji’s that guy for you?!” She exclaims. You watch her go through all the 7 stages of grief in the span of 3 seconds. 

You laugh at her silliness, and then you’re back to swooning again.

It was as if she’d unlocked your inner beast. A lovesick, crazy girl who was spouting her dreams of romance and everything that was butterflies and rainbows. A woman who was absolutely mooning over Sanji.

From then on the navigator makes it her mission to uncover where this crush of yours came from. She can try asking the rest of the crew, but she’s 98% sure the boys are oblivious to this, or simply aren’t as perturbed as she is. (Because how has no one questioned this before?!)

Starting wasn’t hard. At all. Turns out you and Sanji are shameless. It just takes the right time for someone to pay attention and see how deep the connection runs between the two of you. 

It happens bright and early a few days later. Nami—by instinct or intuition—woke up to an empty cabin. Your bed looked freshly mussed, like you couldn’t be bothered to tidy it up before getting up. She looked through the small window, greeted by the sight of the barely peeking sun in the darkness of the horizon. Way too early for anyone to be up. Except for Sanji, who she knows is already prepping for breakfast in the galley. And conveniently, you seem to be missing in action as well. It doesn't take much to put two and two together. 

She catches you right as you are entering the kitchen.

Of course, Sanji is already busying himself on the counter, chopping an array of fresh fruits into—what Nami can’t see—hearts.

“Mon trésor.” 

It barely takes a second for you to enter before Sanji is calling out to you, gaze immediately snapping towards your figure. He doesn’t need his sight to know that it’s you. He can’t admit that it’s because he’s memorized the weight of your steps on the ship, and the sweet scent of your perfumed clothes. 

A lit cigarette hangs off from his lips, though he quickly puts it away when you make your way to the dining table. 

You rub your eyes tiredly, hand then moving down to hug yourself closer in an attempt to chase some warmth. “Hi, Sanji.”

He’s melting at the sight of you. 

This might just be his favorite part of the morning, second only to when you start talking to him. You’re in your pajamas still, shirt hanging loosely over your bare shoulders. Absolutely radiant, and so domestic. You can barely open your eyes in the morning sun, and the way you carry yourself feels heavier, but more honest. Relaxed. A good sign that you slept well. 

Sanji doesn’t fight off the small flush that makes itself known across his face.

“Do you know that every time you say my name an angel gains its wings?”

You grin at the early morning flattery while you settle down on your seat. You could look like the messiest thing on the ship and Sanji will find a way to compliment you regardless. “Heaven must love me,”

“Heaven would be a fool not to love you, darling.” It doesn’t take even a beat for him to answer, and the cook puts down his knife to come closer. He makes a point to lean his face down to yours to greet you with an open teeth grin. 

And that genuinely brings a giggle out of you, leaving Nami mildly disgusted. 

When he's finally seen your smile, he returns back to the stove, slathering butter over the surface of a pan. The familiar rich aroma and the oddly calming sizzling sound makes you soften into yourself. You slouch onto the countertop, folding your elbows into each other and laying your chin on top. “I take it that this is a good morning for you?”

“Everyday better when I see your beautiful face.” He curls his lips into a smile, sneaking a quick glance at you before winking. 

Thank goodness he goes back to focusing on the pan because you are already throwing your face away to the sea, pursing your lips in a barely restrained smile before burying yourself into the crook of your arms, releasing a hidden breath. 

Sanji, that sly man, takes a quick peek from his shoulders. Seeing you, confident you, turn into a flustered puddle from his words makes him puff up so quickly. He wears his pride so boldly on his chest. No one could tell him anything for the rest of the day, and it was insufferable. 

Unbeknownst to you, he’s already started on your breakfast. He knows that you’re an early riser, and that you will almost always seek him out first thing in the morning. So everyday he sets out your breakfast ingredients and preps as much as he can. He doesn’t start cooking them before he sees your face, because he only wants the most warm and freshly cooked meal for you.

You notice it though, the way he always serves you first, no matter the time and place. Dinner? A plate of the finest meat for you first (Luffy hates it.) Going over logs with Nami? All the snacks you like are immediately placed in front of you, and a drink to compliment it following behind. He always thinks about your needs first, and if that isn’t love then you don’t know what to believe. 

Just as you are in the middle of your daydreaming, Sanji interrupts with the sound of cutlery against porcelain. He’s plating up your mouth-watering breakfast, made to absolute perfection. 

“For you madam, golden brown honey toast with freshly whipped cream on top,” he dishes out the plate in front of you, and the aroma itself sends you straight to heaven. “—extra fruit, just the way you like it.”

You didn’t think it was possible to fall deeper in love with him, but you’re proven wrong once you see the fruits that decorate your toast, all of them heart shaped. Both hand-cut and perfectly uniform using the cutter he specifically bought to use for your meals. 

You gasp in exaggeration, though deep inside you’re aching about how sweet he is to remember your preferences. “You spoil me,”

“Only the best for my favorite Strawhat.” He answers, pouring you a glass of freshly brewed coffee. 

You’re in the middle of cutting your toast in half when you look up at him, teasing by saying, “Don’t let the captain hear you say that.”

Sanji exclaims back to you in all his confidence, turning away as he places the pot on the counter. “Bah! One sirloin steak and he’ll forgive me like it never happened.”

Your giggle is like the brightest melody in his ears, and the words that follow it could bring him back from the dead. “Thank you, my chef~”

“You know my heart can’t take it,” He playfully sighs out your name, clutching his chest. Sanji stands across the table now, resting his chin on his hand against the counter top. Just happy to watch you.

“Delicious!” You continue to shoot honeyed words at him, not just as a means for him to keep sweet-talking you, but also because you think Sanji deserves all the love and goodness of this world. 

“Sing me your praises, my angel of music,”

Nami can almost see him propel himself to the sky with giddiness. 

“So perfectly crunchy,”

“—and I’m yours forever.” He takes your hand in his from across the aisle, pressing a chaste kiss to your knuckles as he looks up at you. 

Nami felt chills sweeping up her spine. 

You guys were so cheesy. But sort of.. cute. That was something she couldn’t deny. She’s never seen Sanji this genuine, and when someone actually reciprocates, it makes him look less like a fool. 

And the way you were bouncing back and forth on each other was like a sick game of ping-pong she couldn’t look away from.

She couldn’t figure out for the life of her why you two aren’t together already. It’s perfectly clear that you both feel the same way, and aren’t afraid to act upon it. A small part of her wants to meddle, and she’s halfway into a plan that’ll somehow get either of you to confess to each other, but then she abruptly stops.

Eh, you guys will sort that out yourselves. Eventually. You look like you’re exactly where you want to be. So, Nami shrugs and beelines into the kitchen, hoping to get a fresh plate of breakfast seeing that he’s already started with yours. 

The next time Nami catches a moment between the two of you wasn’t intentional. Right, because she wouldn’t be caught dead seeking the conversations you and Sanji had after that traumatizing event. 

It was late at night. For once a quiet one between all the chaos that seemed to follow the Strawhat Pirates. Luffy was snoring away somewhere with a full belly, Ussop tinkering away in his cabin, and Zoro likely in the crow’s nest. Nami decided to look for fresh air, feeling a little bit holed up inside her room. Between the gentle rocking of the sea and the soft melody of the waves, it was the perfect atmosphere to spend watching the horizon. 

She didn’t mean to overhear your conversation, but the door was open and a ship doesn’t exactly leave much room for privacy. She tried to leave the two of you alone at first, but found herself leaning against the galley wall to listen in in the end. 

When she takes a peek through the door, she finds you seated still and pretty on the stool close to him, cross-legged in your pajamas. Like a sous chef who wasn’t really a sous chef but boosted the cook all the same—if not a million times more. 

When you first got to the galley, you paid mind to his laser-focused expression. You didn't want to break his flow, so you stuck yourself against the counter at a distance. You were content with the picture of him from afar, but Sanji had absolutely none of it. He began your conversation of the night while silently dragging a stool and placing it right next to him by the stove. Safely away from getting blasted by the heat, but close enough to where he could feel you around him and talk to you without feeling a million miles away. 

He’s got on one of your top favorite get-ups: a classic blue striped dress-shirt unbuttoned just the right amount and his pink Doskoi Panda apron tied around the back. Sleeves deliciously rolled up to his elbows for a bonus. Though Nami isn’t attracted to him the way you are, she isn’t blind. She has to admit that the image of his forearms are a sight for sore eyes. Sanji can be quite charming at times, mostly when he keeps the talking to a minimum and does what he does best. 

You’re not even hiding it at this point, gaze tracking every languid move of his hands like you were hypnotized. 

It’s not hard for you to admire him when he’s deep in his element. You find yourself going quiet, not because you don’t want to talk to him, but because it’s mesmerizing to see the way he commands the kitchen like his own battleship.

There’s a small smile on your lips as you take in the passion he carries, and on your lap you fidget with the shiny silver ring on your thumb. It’s his ring—your favorite one that's shaped like a skull—that he gave to you for “safekeeping”, even though Sanji never ever takes them off. Even when he’s cooking. It’s incredibly intimate; a symbol of his trust for you.

He’s just finished cooking a dish of his own creation. A classic menu made of meat, but a little more experimental with the seasoning. You can only describe it as heaven in a plate, sweet and savory at the same time, with a hint of something that you can't fully describe with words. Yet, you enjoy it for all that it is, and the delectable fragrance isn't something to complain about, either. It’s almost shocking that Luffy hasn’t come running down the kitchen from the smell alone. Sanji isn’t technically done with the recipe, seeing as he’s trying to perfect the ingredients being used. He has his worn-out notepad by the counter, filled with endless scribbles and notes of improvement. The cook will come back to it once you’ve given your own comments on the taste.

Once finished turning down the heat, he takes a clean spoon out of the cabinet and offers you a small portion fresh out of the pan, where the dish was still simmering in the heat. 

You feel honored that you are Sanji’s unofficial taste-tester. The first time you came across the cook experimenting with new creations was a complete coincidence. That particular night you’d been restless in bed, stomach aching for a bite of food. You ended up pattering into the galley to get maybe a few crackers, a slice of bread or cheese or something that’d temporarily distract you. But you didn’t expect to feast on a five star meal once Sanji found out you were hungry. You? His precious princess starving? Not on this ship. 

What began as compliments to the chef turned into fully fledged reviews of each flavor profile, and eventually became something more intimate. A space for honesty just for you and Sanji. 

You like to think that’s where you found the real Sanji. The kind heart beyond the ladies man, the truths behind his endless honeyed words. 

You sought him out like a moth to a flame, and every night Sanji welcomed you with open arms. 

Most of the times you were there to actually be his taste-tester, which is just his excuse of having a private late dinner with you. But, other times he’s prepping meals for the next day and you’re simply there to keep him company. Either way, you’ll never skip out on an opportunity to spend time alone with Sanji.

Funnily enough, more than once you’ve caught Luffy sneaking in and rummaging through the pantry, already halfway stuffing his face with something that makes Sanji tick before he notices that the two of you are occupying the room. It’s a bit adorable that he doesn’t make a fuss about it. He never questions anything beyond “Hey… are you sneaking for snacks too?!” and then an “Okay!” followed by his high pitched laughter after Sanji kicks him out for offering you the stolen goods from his sticky hands. 

You take notice that he never lets Luffy get a bite of his cooking. Sure, if the captain asks, Sanji will make him something, but not from the same pan. A different dish all together. You think that maybe it’s because he isn’t open to someone tasting something he considers isn’t “perfect” yet, but another part of you just believes that it’s because he only trusts you to give him the honest truth. 

Still, you find it hard to believe he’d ever need one, considering everything that he makes turns out flawless. 

“More seasoning?” The cook watches as you chew on the meat slowly.

You shake your head in disagreement. “No, this is perfect, Sanji.”

“Not too sweet for you?” 

Nami sees you visibly recoil at his questions, body moving as if he was spouting blasphemy. 

He’s got his back turned to you while he rinses his hands over the sink, so he can’t see the flabbergasted frown on your face.

“This is quite possibly the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life.” You make an emphasis on the word “best”, sticking the wooden spoon back at him to signal that you wanted more.

“You flatter me, angel.” He grins, pulling the dish towel from his shoulders to wipe his hand. Then he goes straight to follow your command exactly and dips right back into the pan, scooping up a portion before blowing it softly to cool it down. 

You’re practically vibrating in your seat, legs bouncing and arms holding up the weight of your body as you lean towards him. 

“Nope. I’m just sayin’ the truth!” The words come with a pause as you’re swallowing your last bite, and the brightness comes right back up your face while you praise Sanji.

By the All Blue, he just wants to scoop you up and squeeze you in his arms for all eternity. You can be so shy around him, but also incredibly animated when expressing yourself. 

Once Sanji deems it the perfect condition for you, he motions the spoon to your mouth.

It’s a stupidly sweet gesture, and also his way of stopping you from eating the whole thing. You can just take the spoon from him and feed yourself, but you’d be lying if you said you didn’t like being pampered by Sanji. You’re not ashamed to admit that it makes you feel very special. If you truly weaponized your voice and asked him for the whole pan, he’d give it to you without a single doubt. But, it’d be a shame if he didn’t wait until he could properly serve it with some rice so you could have your very late dinner “date”.

He holds the spoon out for a beat longer to look down at the way your lips wrap around the surface, turning away only when you finish munching happily at the taste. After all, your satisfaction is his number one priority. Nami can’t see your face from where she’s at, but she can absolutely make out Sanji’s, and the way he’s staring is sensual, borderline debauched. It makes the navigator feel like she’s intruding on a private moment.

You are none the wiser to this, Sanji needs to get it together, and Nami’s very close to throwing up in front of the galley. 

Your eyes are closed as you hum contentedly once the flavors settle nicely in your stomach, and it’s then when you start to feel the weight of his stare. 

You’re only chin level on this short stool, so you have to look up to meet his eyes.

He's quiet and awfully still, taking you all in and leaving no part of you starving for his attention. There's an evident tension swimming around the kitchen, and it makes you acutely aware of just how close you are to him. Inches away. The position is a tad intimate, to say the least.

“What? Is there sauce on my face?” 

You know there isn’t anything on your face except for pure happiness, though you’re a tiny bit flustered by his attention. 

“Sorry, darling,” He's not sorry at all. He leans in to wipe the non-existent sauce, and for a second you think he’s going to deny his obvious admiration of you but then he pivots into something that is so Sanji it makes your brain melt. 

“Your beauty demands to be seen. I can’t deny you that.” He traces the back of his finger over your cheek before tucking a stray hair behind your ear. 

Time and time again, Sanji is able to surpass your every expectation. You continue to feel the weight of his stare, now much different than before because he looks at you with deep, unabashed, reverence. Not hidden, and not in halves. A softness he reserves only for you.

You’re speechless for a moment, but then he cups your face into his palms and it feels like everything just melts away. 

Now Nami understands. Why you adore him so much. Why you don’t need to scream it out to the world that you love him (although you would love to). The two of you aren’t “together” officially not because you don’t want to, or are too shy to say it out loud. But because you enjoy every part of who he is. The chasing, the teasing, the thrill; it’s everything in him that makes you feel alive. You don’t need words for him to understand that you love him, just as he doesn’t. 

Nami watches the way you look up at him, positively beaming. The silence is broken away when you start giggling to yourself, and it only makes Sanji move closer to you, his forehead bumping gently against yours as he sports an identical grin on his face.

She shakes her head, both astonished and happy to see you flourishing in his presence, before walking away with an affectionate eye-roll.

Yeah. You two are the lamest.

Mon trésor: My treasure

Aaah I couldn’t really decide which sanji to base this fic off of. I ended up doing a bit of both 🍽️

masterlist @ pls don't repost or feed my works into ai thaaank you

[hottest0takufgirl]

me at my big girl job reading fanfiction on incognito mode

[sarafangirlart]

Athena is NOT Odysseus’s conscience or a manifestation of his guilt, she’s literally this:

[sethsclearwater]

how i imagine paul and his imprint lmao

[the-kr8tor]

Lost

Pairing: Bobby Franklin x fem! Reader

Word count: 12.1k

Synopsis: Two encounters. One has you both running away, the other giving you hope.

Tags: No use of Y/N, no specific physical description of the reader except for clothing, reader has nicknames, CW blood and injury, CW food mentions, CW unsolicited touching (not from Bobby), CW dark themes. Eventual Bobby romance, slow burn, Part 3 of my Bobby series. Set during the movie (spoilers)

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Bobby Franklin Masterlist

Part 2 <<< Part 3 >>> Part 4

The sounds of wood thumping on metal rings through the tight corridors. You’ve named this place the boiler room, the whole place is covered in metal and steel, some are made out of copper that is slowly turning teal around the edges. It’s dank and smells like petrichor, like it’s about to rain inside. There’s a reason why you haven’t explored this place as much as the yellow wallpaper rooms— it’s hot here, not like a comforting warm summer heat that’s slightly muggy, a weather for the beach, or maybe for sailing out in the open seas, no, this place is searing hot, it’s humid, the type of heat that you could see make waves in the air around you.

Beside you, Bobby struggles to breathe through the hot air, just like you are as you’re still in your bomber jacket, refusing to take it off. The two of you wait for the pirate to move on, for the sound of thumping to fade from your ears as you hear its body scrape against the steel pipes. It’s too large for this place as it shambles around awkwardly.

The chase has you and Bobby winded, even more now that the heat isn’t helping you take in air. You’re drenched in sweat, the beads of sweat drips down from your chin down to your pants as it leaves little dark droplets on the fabric. Bobby is faring better than you, still sweaty and breathing heavily but not as bad as you when you feel like you’re being cooked from the inside out.

“Just take off your fucking jacket.” He whispers, too close to you when the curling pipes hinders him from moving away from you as you both hide inside a small crevice in the wall. “I won’t judge you if you have shitty tattoos.”

“Shut up before it hears you.” You shush him, swallowing nothing when the inside of your mouth is drier than a desert.

“You’re going to die of heatstroke.” You turn to him, glaring at Bobby as he glares right back. “I’m not a fucking idiot, I know shit too.” He takes a deep inhale of the hot air, regretting it when he almost chokes from the heat. “Just take off the jacket, you’ll feel better.”

“I’m fine.” Wiping away the sweat dribbling on your forehead, you strain your ears to try to hear the entity walking around. You don’t hear anything other than the leaking pipes and Bobby’s breathing. “I think it’s gone.”

“Thank fuck.” He shimmies out, passing by you as he stretches his legs from the prolonged crouched position. “Come on, let’s get out of the devil’s armpit.” Holding out his hand to you, you reluctantly take it as you feel your shirt cling to your skin from how drenched in sweat it is. “Before you faint again.”

“It happened one time and you’ll never let me live it down.” You start to walk through the hallways lined with pipes, you suddenly miss the yellow wallpaper instead of this creepy boiler room that makes you claustrophobic.

When the previous corridors felt like an abandoned office space, this one is more industrial, more metal and steel than wallpaper and carpet. There is an occasional hiss from the pipes, letting out warm air, and there are manholes on the floor, randomly dotted around, some look like it’s two in one, melted together like it’s in the middle of mitosis. You’d take the sailboat room more than this place.

“This place looks like it’s out of a Nightmare on Elm Street.” Bobby helps you search for the hasty marks you left when you two were being chased by the pirate. “I’m gonna ask now because it’s fucking eating at me but, did that fucking thing look like Clark to you?”

“Yep.” You pop the letter ‘p’ in your mouth as you struggle to look through the waves of heat ahead. “And don’t ask me why because I don’t know either.”

“Do you think it steals faces?” Bobby’s crop top sticks to his torso and you avoid your gaze from staying too long on him.

“I don’t know, Bobby.” You lumber towards a corner, your hand touching the hot wall trying to look for the mark you left with your marker. “Why are you so talkative?”

Bobby shrugs, keeps walking behind you as he uses his shirt to fan himself. “It helps to distract myself.”

You make the mistake of looking behind you as you see him completely drenched in sweat, his white crop top clinging to his torso like second skin, leaving almost nothing to the imagination. His lean stomach is in full show, heat singes your cheek and it’s not from the heat. Averting your eyes, you continue to walk forward, searching for the same door you two came out of. “It’s annoying me and the thing might hear you—”

Fumbling, stumbling on your own two feet when the heat makes your vision foggy, you hold onto a pipe for balance. Your palm is immediately seared as you scream in pain, taking your hand away. “Fuck!” You hold onto your wrist, keeling over, and crouched down onto the hard ground.

“Shit, let me see.” Bobby crouches down in front of you, gently taking your wrist in his hand. When you don’t budge, he clicks his teeth and calls you by your name. You didn’t even know if he remembered your name. “C’mon, hero, let me see.”

“Hero?” You ask through clenched teeth and tears in your eyes as he examines your reddened hand. “Really?”

“Yeah, you saved my ass, so you’re a hero. And you did that hero jump.” His eyes narrows at your palm, wincing for your sake. “Fuck, I don’t know much about burns but this looks gnarly. You’re gonna need ice for this.”

“Ice isn’t actually good for burns.” You let out a shuddered breath as the pain radiates from your palm down to your wrist, a slithering burn inching downwards to your elbows. “Running tepid water is.”

Bobby starts to unzip your bag, taking out one of the bottles of water for you, to which you instantly stop him with a shake of your head.

“I didn’t know that, but we don’t have either of them, so. Can we just use this instead?”

“N–no,” gritting your teeth, you make the mistake of glancing at your hand, seeing your flesh burn, bubbling up in angry reddened skin. “We need to conserve it for drinking. I—” you take a deep yet wobbly breath. “—I can handle this.” You’ve felt a lot of pain in your life but the burning sensation makes your stomach turn and the back of your eyes burn.

“You’re fucking stubborn.” Bobby stands up, knees creaking as he tries to help you up with his hands cupped around your elbows. “I have an idea.”

“You’re getting ideas now?” Brow raised, you try to focus on his face when your vision is starting to wobble like your legs. The combined heat and the throbbing pain in your hand has turned your body into jello.

“Yeah, you’re not the only one who’s allowed to have them.” He rolls his eyes, a hand reaching into his pocket for something before his palm comes up empty. “You said there’s a pool here? We can use the water for your hand.”

“That’s actually not a bad idea. But I don’t know how to get there from here.” You don’t mean to lean against him but you do as the pain takes hold of you. He lets you use him to steady yourself. He smells the same, just more sweat than cologne, and the scent of weed has almost faded away from his crop top. You try to keep your mind off the pain and heat, to try to recreate the comforting hum of the walls that doesn’t reach this searing place.

“You sound condescending.”

“I’m not,” swallowing down the bile in your throat, you take a deep inhale. “That’s just how I sound when I’m in blinding pain.”

“How about taking some of the pain meds—” you’re shaking your head at his idea as your eyes glance narrowedly at him. “It’ll help. You need it.”

“We need to ration—”

“Well, you fucking need it now, hero.” Bobby stops walking abruptly, feeling you tremble against him has him moving to open your backpack, taking out the little orange pills and handing it to you with a bottle of water. “Don’t be a hardass.” He gestures with his eyes, encouraging you to take it. “I took one before so you take one, equality.”

“Didn’t peg you for an activist.” He’s insisting, and you won’t get a move on if he refuses to walk. So you take a pill, pop it in your mouth and gulp down a mouthful of water.

“I get that a lot.” Bobby simply shrugs, putting the supplies back inside the backpack with a resounding zip before gently yanking down the straps from your arms. “Let me take the load off of you.”

You relent, letting him take the backpack as you watch him sling it over his shoulders. “Thanks…” mumbling, you hear something move, something’s hitting the pipes as the sound reverberates through the tight corridors.

You both simultaneously look back with fear in your eyes. “What was that?”

It’s an incessant tip tapping, almost like morse code, you don’t know much about it to know what they’re saying if it is.

Your feet move backwards, away from the sound as you instinctively grab hold of Bobby’s arm. “Were you a boy scout?”

“No,” he keeps his eyes on the empty corridor as the sound grows nearer. “Why?”

“Does that sound like morse code to you?”

“I don’t fucking know.” He hisses, walking backwards with you as a shadow, one with four legs, and a very large head slithers on the walls. “We should run.”

You’re already bolting away, tugging him away as he runs alongside you. The stench of rusted metal hits your nose, as numerous pipes whizz past the two of you.

You’re going deeper and deeper inside the boiler room. You shouldn’t be, you should be going back to the yellow walls, the familiar ones instead of running deeper through the copper scented hallways.

Your rushed footsteps alert the being as the tapping hastens, following right after you through the winding corridors.

The heat makes it hard to find your breath as you struggle to run this time. Your bomber jacket clings to you, drenched from your own sweat as your hand slips from Bobby’s arm from his clammy skin.

“Here!” Bobby grabs you by the scruff of your neck, yanking you away from a dead end and towards a room with rusted pipes lined around the brown walls. There’s a familiar sight right in the middle of the room, half embedded in the walls as the door swings creakily in the stale air. “C’mon!”

Bobby shoves you inside the industrial sized washing machine, before climbing in with you and shutting the door closed with a resounding clack of metal.

Heaving, you feel the stitch blooming on your side as your wide eyes stare at the yellowed glass panel of the washing machine door.

“What the fuck is that?” Bobby whispers, voice laced with fear as you both watch the creature stalk towards you.

This isn’t like the pirate with its eerie face borrowed from Clark, nor a docile one like your old man at the helm. No, this one is different, like it was meant to be a dog, a copy of it if the dog went through the shredder and blasted with radiation. This thing, is just as wrong as everything else in this place.

It snarls with an opened maw, rows of sharp canines combined with human teeth is in full show. It bites at the air, as if that’s the way it smells when you can’t see a nose where it’s supposed to be. The fur is mangled, dark and rusted just like the walls around it. It’s a moving shadow with four pointed ears, six legs with paws the size of your hand. The three tails, two longer, and one shorter, all seemingly from different dog breeds, stand on its end. It barks like a dog that doesn’t know how to. A mere echo of it, like it’s being played through a broken speaker that ends up spitting out a garbled mess of sounds.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, one more show up, this one is leaner, eyes more hungry and yellow than the first. It has three eyes, all wrong, all looking directly at you and Bobby.

You just now noticed that he’s still holding onto the back of your jacket, fingers bunching up the fabric in his tight hold in an attempt to calm himself.

One word glares brightly in your mind, ‘run.’ Run like you always have in your life. Instead of hiding and cowering in place while you wait for the hounds to get you and tear you to pieces. But there’s nowhere to run when you feel for the end of the washing machine, half expecting a door when you only find warm steel.

“Bobby, what—!” You both yell when the angrier one leaps up to smash its head against the glass.

The window doesn’t budge nor crack at the sheer force. The creature shakes its head, staggered by what it did.

“They can’t get in.” Your companion chuckles, a rising laugh that fades away the moment one of the hounds bashes its head against the glass again.

This time it leaves a crack in the glass and a smattering of black ooze.

You feel for your hammer, readying it in your hold. Bobby turns to you, locking eyes with you as his fear is palpable within the small confines of the washing machine.

You two reach an understanding. You and Bobby might die right here.

Another strike at the glass, another crack. Then another and another. Each hitting you right at your chest.

The glass looks like a mess of cracks and blackened blood as you both could barely see the hounds waiting on the other side.

You fix your hold onto the hammer and wait for another strike that doesn’t come.

A minute passes, a long agonizing minute of staring at a dirty window.

Then another minute, two, three, nothing happens.

You both look at each other, and you slowly inch your way closer to the window, crawling over Bobby’s legs as you peek through the side of the glass where it’s clearer. There, sitting right on the floor, hind legs spread out, are the two hounds sitting on both sides, as if guarding you both whilst their yellow eyes never stray too far from the washing machine. They don’t move a muscle or feel the need to breathe, they’re as steady and uncanny like your grandfather as he stared into space at the helm atop the half sunk boat.

“What do you see?” Bobby whispers beside your ear, raising gooseflesh on your skin despite the heat as his breath flutters your lashes.

“They’re not moving, just…just standing guard.”

Bobby tilts his head up, trying to find a spot on the glass that he could see through. His brows knit together, lips pursed tightly. “What the fuck are they doing?”

“Waiting for us to come out.” Your back hits the metal with a groan, and you stretch your aching legs, too long for the machine as the heels of your feet rise up to the other side of the wall. “I guess they got tired.”

It’s getting hard to breathe in this heat, especially when you’re starting to feel claustrophobic inside. You ball your uninjured fist, opening and closing it to attempt to calm your nerves. If only you had the song of the walls to press your ear onto.

“So we’re just fucking stuck here?” Groaning, he kicks at the wall with a resounding metallic thump. “Dying in a washing machine, how fucking funny.” His blue eyes flick over to you as you look like you’re dying from the heat, panting and sweating. “Shit, you need water.” Bobby takes the backpack off, unzipping it and taking a water bottle for you. “Drink, and don’t give me the rationing bullshit.”

“Has anyone told you—” you shut your eyes for a moment as sweat trickles down your face. “That you have a very unique way of showing how you care?” Uncapping the cap, or trying to at least with your injured palm, Bobby clicks his tongue and opens the bottle for you.

“No, shut up we need to conserve our air.” Watching you take gulps of water eases the tension in between his shoulders for a bit.

Your rising laughter bounces off the metal walls as Bobby looks at you with a raised brow. “Sorry,” wiping your sweat with your sleeve, you continue to chuckle to yourself. “This is actually a bit funny because I’ve had a recurring dream of getting locked in a washing machine.” You take a generous swig, letting the sweet after taste of the almond water coat your tongue. It helps a little bit.

“Okay, Nostradamus.” Swallowing his spit, you notice and hand him the water back. “And yes, I know who the dude is.”

“The dude.” You chortle. “You know a lot of things, Bobby.” Patting his knee, your head reclines back, thumping against the wall whilst he drinks. He takes it as sarcasm. “Never judge a book by its cover I guess.”

“Your hand needs to be bandaged.”

“I’ll do it later.” What’s the point when you’re gonna suffocate in here?

“No, it’ll get infected.” He rummages through the supplies and brings out a gauze and medical tape. Bobby still holds out hope. “Can you tell me how to treat it?”

“I don’t have burn cream…” Your chest lines with warmth and around your heart from the gesture. “Just put the gauze on my palm then wrap it as loose as possible with the tape. Keeping it clean is the only thing we can do.”

Bobby nods, moving closer, legs cageing you in as you sit between them. You give him your hand, the reddened flesh peeling whilst he’s slow and clumsy with his movements. Your skin pulsates with warmth and pain, like a bleeding heart.

Your eyes flick over to him, through the haze of heat, you really look at Bobby. At his chiseled jaw, broad shoulders, sandy blonde hair and pretty blue eyes that always seem to really look into your own. If you squint, he really does look like the guy you talked to for two hours straight whilst he waited for his laundry to finish. Maybe that’s why you’re helping Bobby, a redo of your fumbling.

He’s handsome. You just now realize that he’s good looking, the type of face that would have people giving him a second look on the street, or a face you see up on a billboard. He wears the crop top well, like he just shrugged it on in the morning without an afterthought, without sparing an effort on how he presents himself when his whole face and how he carries himself is enough to draw eyes on him. But he’s not like the frat boys you remember back in college, he doesn’t talk like he owns the ground you’re walking on, unlike them in their snooty letterman jackets and tuition paid for by mommy and daddy, Bobby actually talks to you and even listens. He makes conversations, notices things when you think he’s not paying attention. He’s kind enough to remember your name when no one even bothered to try. Even Janet just calls you kid when she forgot it months ago even though she has your resume on file.

He’s far kinder than you thought he would be. All that crisp angles and handsome features made you think he wasn’t when in truth his kindness was wrapped in his sharp angles and intense stares that is always keenly aware of the details around him.

You wonder why he even went with you in the first place when his ankle got better when he seems to be capable enough on his own. Never judge a book by its cover, but the verdict is still out when you’re both stuck here slowly running out of air.

“Why are you still with me, Bobby?” Your words tumble out of your tongue as your lungs struggle to take in air. “You could’ve gone on your own way to find Kat without me. Seriously, why are you helping a stranger?”

“Because you helped a stranger, idiot.” He says matter-of-factly, jaw tightening at the mention of Kat. Finishing dressing your wound, his adam’s apple bops up and down, admiring his handiwork before tossing the supplies back inside the bag. “I’m not a complete fucking asshole to leave you all alone here when you didn’t leave me. I should be the one asking you that question. You already saved me once and you don’t need to again. I’m no one to you and so is Kat.”

You wet your lips, smiling faintly at him, testing your hand as you open and shut it slowly. It still hurts but at least it’s contained. “You look like someone I knew.” Your words hang in between you as he blinks at your words. “And I’m not a total asshole to leave you wandering around here by yourself. There’s strength in numbers you know.”

You two are quite similar in that matter. You both don’t want to be alone in this place.

“I know that’s not all.” Somehow, Bobby could see right through your eyes and into your very soul.

You wince, looking at how his knee knocks against your own. “Because…because it looked like you needed someone and Kat…Kat was nice to me.”

Bobby glances away, looking at the hounds outside briefly before nodding at your words with a tensed jaw. “It’ll be better when we find Kat.” Everything will be better when they reunite.

It’s an arrow to your chest, your own lie striking you where it hurts. You’ve never been really good at lying or hiding it, but for his sake, you have to bite your tongue until you taste copper. “Yeah.”

“Y’know, I wanted to fucking throw shit at you when you left Kat and Clark in the laundry room.” Bobby turns to you and gazes into your eyes as you glance at the space between his brows instead of locking eyes with him. “I thought you could’ve just taken them with us. That you could’ve, I don’t fucking know…save them.” Shaking his head, Bobby wets his lips. “Then you left me and my thoughts all alone, and shit, I think–I think I would’ve done the same. Probably bolted out of there myself if no one was in my reach.”

“Still,” you sniff, struggling to breathe as you wipe the sweat hastily from your eyes when it stings. “I wish I could have saved them both.”

“Yeah,” he holds his breath for a moment before letting it go and handing you the half empty water bottle. “I don’t know what kind of adrenaline you have but I want some of that too, you could lift a fucking fridge when you’re panicking. Hell, you lifted me off my fucking feet like I weighed nothing.”

You smile after taking big gulps of water. “It’s a subconscious thing, people who are…more cautious tend to be better in situations like that.” Or that’s how your doctor put it when you survived drifting in the water for days.

“Like when a walking horror show tries to rip you apart?”

You manage a scoff akin to a weak laugh. “Yeah, I guess.”

Silence hangs in the air between you, his knees knocks against your own, the space too small for two people as he sits, or more like folded himself adjacent to you. In the cramped space and the dappled fluorescent lights filtering through the cracks of the window, his sharp features look softer.

“We’re gonna die here aren’t we?” Bobby says under his breath, too afraid to say it out loud.

“I hope not.” Hope, hope could be blinding that leads you to disappointment. But sometimes, it’s a driving force to keep you moving forward, even when it’s too dark to see, hope will be the guiding light. You hope for his sake when he has people waiting for him on the other side. You don’t care if you die inside this place, but it’ll crush you if he dies, because you failed to bring him home, you failed to save a life again.

You already failed with Kat and Clark, you don’t want Bobby to end up like them. Or like your grandfather still waiting for you at the bottom of the sea.

“Fuck me.” Bobby rubs his face harshly, leaving his cheeks flush with red. When he opens his eyes, concern mar his face. “You don’t look too good, hero.” He scooches closer, taking the bottle from your weak grip to pour some of it out on his palm and splashes it on your face. “Hey, stay with me.” He says your name gently, coaxing you to keep your eyes open with a pat to your cheek. His palm is warm, silken, with the pads of his fingertips calloused, blazing against your clammy skin.

You want to live for him.

Something moves. A warp in the walls, a metallic groaning of metal sliding against steel. Like nails on a chalkboard that grinds your teeth together.

Bobby hears it too, “what was that?” You know it was real this time, not like the humming in the walls.

“I don’t know…” Head craning towards the far wall, at the other end of the machine, you don’t see rusted metal anymore, just darkness, pitch black, a void that stares back.

“Do you have a flashlight?”

“No, it ran out of battery on day six.”

Bobby fishes out a lighter from his pocket. He flicks his thumb, letting sparks fly as a flame blows out from the lighter. “Stay here.”

He crawls over you then towards the darkness.

“Bobby, wait—”

When he’s supposed to hit the wall, he continues to move inside. “It’s a way out.”

“What the fuck.” You follow him, crawling on all fours as your knees hit the metal.

It’s so dark inside that you could only see the small flame in front of you. Your arms wobble from your weight, and when the flame flickers away, Bobby curses under his breath.

“Hold on.” With a hand rummaging in your jean pocket, you take out your phone whilst Bobby tries to light the flame again. You press the on button, waiting for your phone to come alive, wishing that the screen turns on.

“What are you doing?” You could only hear his voice and feel his warmth on your side.

“Turning the light on—” the screen flashes and you immediately swipe to open the flashlight. You two blink at the sudden light.

“What the fuck is that thing?” Wincing, Bobby has one eye open, adjusting to the light, trying to get a look at what’s in your hand.

“My phone, duh, c’mon.” Patting his shoulder, you crawl by him when you’re now the one leading.

“That’s a weird looking phone, man.”

More crawling, more metal squeaking underneath you, and with your palm fully bleeding as it leaves bloody handprints on the floor, you finally get out of the washing machine.

You almost fall down if not for Bobby’s hand on your ankle stopping you from falling from the hole. Hopping off, shutting your phone off again and shoving it in your pocket before helping Bobby out, you feel heavier, woozy from the heat and pain. You slouch, folding against yourself when you feel like crumpling on the floor.

It looks like you two crawled out of a metal pipe. It doesn’t make sense one bit.

“Jesus, your hand.” Bobby puts the backpack on, and gingerly takes your wrist with a wince and a grimace. “Fucking gnarly.”

“I’m fine.”

“It doesn’t look fine.” His eyes rake around the bloodied gauze. “You need fucking…something. A doctor, you need a fucking doctor.”

“Bobby, I’m fine—”

You heard him before you saw him. A shuffling of feet on the metal floors, tentative, wary.

There, standing in the corridor, looking worse for wear, sweaty all over with a relieved look in his eyes is Clark.

“Bobby?”

Your companion turns to the voice, following your shaky gaze, landing right at the man, who dragged you on the damp carpet.

“Jesus, Clark.” Bobby puts his arm instinctively in front of you, taking a step forward, apprehensive, unsure of his decision. “Where did you come from?”

“The pipes, f—fuck, you have no idea how relieved I am to see someone—”

“Stay the fuck back.” Despite your injured hand, you grasp the hammer in your bloody grip, shaking, pointing it right at him. “Bobby, don’t trust him.”

“Where’s Kat?” Bobby stays beside you, yet his attention is on Clark. “Is she with you?” Hope is laced within his wavering tone.

“I–I don’t know, we got separated.” His hands wring in front of him. He looks normal, better than the last you saw him. Clark doesn’t look as starved, he does look exasperated like you and Bobby, but his eyes are just as frantic and panicked as yours, not steady and calm like before. He looked like the Clark you met, the one that tied Bobby’s rope too tightly around his waist. Not the Clark that hauled you around and tried to give you to the being. “I’m sorry, I tried.”

There it is, tried. The same word he uttered to you in the room with Kat’s severed hand, sounding too calm, looking too calm for someone that’s starving.

Something’s amiss.

You’re missing something. He shouldn’t look like this, he shouldn’t sound like this, if the Clark that tried to take you was real, then who the fuck is the one standing before you?

If it’s the heat that’s messing with your mind, then it’s affecting Bobby too when he also sees this Clark, nervous Clark, terrified Clark.

“What the fuck do you mean you tried?” Bobby hisses, fists balled at his side. “What happened to Kat? What did you do to her?”

“What? I–” Clark’s eyes find yours, and you falter, heat clinging to your skin, drying you out even more as you feel woozy. “I wouldn’t hurt her! Why would I do that?”

“I don’t fucking know, man.” Bobby scoffs, shaking his head as his tone rolls out sarcastically. “The same reason you did this to her.” He gestures at your neck, scratches reddened at the edges, pulsing with a dull ache. Clark looks confused. “Did you feed Kat to that–that thing like you tried with her?” Voice cracking, his words breaking in the middle. “Where the fuck is she, Clark?”

“I didn’t fucking do anything!” His hands land on his chest, eyes wild, swallowing thickly. “I didn’t do that to her!” Clark now points to you, hands shaking. “Please, I just need some water, we’ll get out together.”

Bobby snatches the hammer from your hand, staining his own palm with your own ichor. “Where the fuck is Kat?” He repeats, heavier this time, more threatening.

“I don’t know, okay!” Sweat dribbles off his clammy face, hands trembling around him. “I heard her through the walls, I really did try to help her but I couldn’t see her but—but she could see me. I don’t know what happened to her, Bobby, and I didn’t do anything to her.” He sounds desperate, heaving, almost keeling over himself. “Please, let’s just get out together.”

“Bobby, we need to go.” You take him by the arm, walking backwards as Clark starts to walk closer to you both. “Bobby, we can’t stay here. We can’t trust him.”

“Just tell me where she is, man.” Bobby breaks, lips wobbling, hand trembling around the hammer. He suddenly brings it to the wall, smacking a pipe as it leaves a dent on the metal. You and Clark wince at his action.

“I don’t know, Bobby. I’m sorry.” Clark holds out his hands in front of him in surrender. He seems genuine, but he also sounded genuine the last time you saw him.

From behind Clark, you hear the shuffling of fabric. A quiet rustle, too silent to be heard by the two men. Your heart rate immediately picks up.

“Bobby,” you whisper, clutching onto his arm, tugging him away, getting more exhausted by the second as you inhale and exhale out hot air. You feel your brain getting cooked inside your skull. “Bobby, it’s here.”

“Is she even alive?”

His trembling words strike right at you when you have the answer to his heartbreaking question.

“I don’t know…” Clark shakes his head, eyes averting from Bobby’s tensed form. “Why are you so scared of me? I didn’t do anything! I’m just me!”

You catch a glimpse of a pair of reddened eyes just around the corner of a wall, it stares at you, watching, observing. Waiting for you to break. “Bobby, on the wall, left side.” Voice trembling, head falling to his bicep, too hot to hold yourself up, you watch Bobby reluctantly take his eyes off of Clark, expression contorting into pure horror when he sees it.

He takes you by the hand, twisting around and running away with you in tow.

Clark screams, followed by his rushed footsteps, trying to keep pace with you and Bobby.

You don’t have the energy to sprint, more so to even lift your feet up. You’re so tired, too hot, your muscles strain under your clammy skin as you heave.

Bobby leads the escape, shoes scraping against the metal as he hides a wince. A pipe bursts near his face, and he shrieks at the sudden puff of warmth on his cheek. But he continues on, holding you up.

Because you would’ve done the same for him, you already had.

He turns a corner, blindly running in the heat soaked boiler room. Turning his head behind him, he doesn’t see Clark following anymore, but he does hear the rustling, the fabric scraping against itself, running, following.

Saliva covers your mouth, coating it as bile rises from your esophagus. Your legs turn wobbly under you. Bobby throws his arm around your shoulder, helping you run alongside with him when he could’ve just left you in the corridor to fend for yourself. He’s not giving up on you so you don’t give up for his sake. Your feet drags along the metal floors, trying to keep pace with his long strides. Your head dips down to your chin, unable to keep it up as you see the floor rush under you, the rusted floors, teal copper spread across it and the occasional manhole covers.

Vision blurring, you want water, you need water, to dive in it, to swim in its depths and stay underneath the currents.

You’re dying of thirst. Heatstroke, you’re gonna die of heatstroke after everything you went through. It’s comedic.

“Stay awake!” Bobby jostles you in his arms, you’re dead weight. “Fuck, c’mon!” He steps onto a manhole cover, and you both suddenly fall inside.

You gasp, flying mid air, twenty feet, fifteen, twelve, watching the hole you fell in get smaller and smaller, a mere dot in your vision.

Wind rushes around you, stale air that smells like chlorine.

You feel Bobby’s hand try to grasp at you mid air, but you feel so light weight, so light, free, like you’re flying, soaring, and you close your eyes, hearing him scream your name as you both plunge into the cold depths.

—

“Hey, princess.” You look up and see him, your grandfather, smiling down at you. Or you think he’s smiling when the sun behind him blinds you, covering his features. “You’re cooking here, you should get under the shade.”

His voice sounds far, muffled, like it’s playing on an old cassette tape that’s been played a hundred times before. Weathered, the movement of time marring the edges of the tape.

“I put sunscreen on.” You mutter, eyes squinting up at him as the popsicle in your hand melts, staining your hands raspberry red. “I miss you.”

He chuckles, that familiar laugh right from his belly that you’ve always told him was too loud and garners too much attention. You shouldn’t have told him that because he doesn’t let his laugh out like that anymore.

“I’m right here, sweetheart. What’s there to miss?”

There’s a seagull flying above him, the sky is blue, the clouds don’t move. And your eyes follow the bird, attention taken away, watching it fly until it hits a wall made to look like the horizon. It falls, leaving a smattering of blood amongst the blue.

It squawks loudly, an ear piercing cry of pain as it lands harshly on the ocean painted floor.

When you turn to look at him again, his face is mere inches away from your own.

Your breath shudders, gazing into those wrong eyes in the wrong face. He looks like someone who just moved as you press the camera’s button and the lens captures his blurred features that melt together.

“What’s there to miss?” He asks, garbled, the words stuck in his esophagus, choking on his own broken tone.

You wake up with a start, eyes opening to tiled ceilings and walls. It’s startlingly bright inside, a bright blue that encompasses around you, a deep contrast from the rusted boiler room. You take a deep breath, heaving, a palm to your chest as you smell the acrid chemical chlorine permeating the air around you as it tickles your nose.

The first thing you notice is how drenched you are, your clothes cling to your skin uncomfortably, soaked as droplets of water drip from your bare arms. You don’t have your jacket. Your arms are bare, the scars lined around your flesh. Old, but still there.

Gasping, you cross your arms around you, eyes panicked, frantic as you feel the familiar numbness climb from your legs to your chest, suffocating you.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, you’re okay!” Bobby appears from behind, arms hovering around you as his eyes rake around your panicked face. “It’s okay, just breathe, we’re safe here.”

“Where’s—” you struggle to find your words when your lungs don’t work. “Where’s my jacket?”

Blinking, he looks at you like you’re a fish out of water. “I took it off you, I’m sorry, I had to, you were cooking in it.”

“P–please, just— just give it back to me.” Tears sting your eyes as you fold your legs against you, trying to press further into your chest as if you’re absorbing your legs into yourself.

“What? It’s wet—”

“Bobby, please!” Your nails dig into your forearms, leaving crescent shapes on your slick skin.

“Okay, okay!” He rushes away from the pool lounge chair where you have found yourself. There’s some rustling behind you, and your first instinct was to run. “Here, I’m sorry, I was hanging it over a chair to dry it out.”

“Give it to me.” You don’t extend your arms as your hand opens and closes. He passes it to you, turning away when your shirt clings to your front, it’s white and shows him too much of everything. Once you’ve put on your jacket, you hug yourself, collapsing onto the pool lounge chair that squeaks under you. “Thank you.” You wheeze out, a hand around your throat as you take deep inhales and exhales.

“Yeah, you’re welcome.” Bobby walks away, clearing his throat, scratching the back of his flushed neck as his wet hair clings to his nape and temples. His torso is bare, showing off a lean body, probably drying his shirt just like what he was doing to your jacket before you woke up. “You thirsty?” He asks after a beat of awkward silence.

Smacking your dry lips together, you feel your strength return as you sit up. You’re still wobbly, trembling slightly, and your head still has that dull throbbing ache as you rest your forehead against your folded knees. “Please.”

A second later there’s a bottle of almond water nudging your thigh. “This one’s yours. I found a couple more here.”

Where is here exactly?

You lift your head, eyes roaming around the new environment you both fell in. The walls are covered in white symmetrical square tiles, all lined perfectly, the grout in between is black, and it reminds you of a comic with the tiles lined in thick black lines. From the pillars down to the floor, it’s covered in the same tiles. Right in the middle of the expansive room is an Olympic sized pool, rectangular in shape, with various pool toys floating on the blue water. It would look normal if not for the random colourful slides sticking out of the walls and some on the ceiling that has a drop that would have your stomach churning.

As you gaze at the ceiling, you see the manhole cover above, now closed, the other side showing you the underside of the rusted metal.

“It’s not going to drink itself, y’know.” He shakes the bottle, looking down at you with a faint smile as the fluorescent lights shine behind his head, a halo of light lined around him. You blink owlishly at him, and his face contorts into deep worry as he squats beside you. “Shit, did you hit your head?” A hand cups the side of your face gingerly, like he’s afraid you’ll break in front of him from his touch alone. “Was it dilated pupils or pin point that says someone has a concussion?” He says more to himself, mumbling, looking into your eyes.

“Neither, the pupils should be equal in size, not one bigger than the other.” You answer, voice hoarse as you look into the blue depths of his eyes. You could drown in them. “I’m okay, Bobby, just shocked, where are we?”

“Oh, thank fuck.” His hand falls atop the lounge chair, head lolling down to his clavicle with a relieved sigh. “I thought the impact broke your head.”

“Did we fall?”

“Yeah,” he sniffs, a hand raking through his drenched tresses. “From that manhole.” Pointing up, you both look up, twenty feet from below, you squint from the harsh white lights. The manhole cover remains on the ceiling, a brown dot amidst the stark white tiles. “I don’t know how though, I stopped trying to figure out how things work here ever since we got out of the washing machine. But thankfully we fell into the water and we didn’t turn into a pancake.”

You crane your neck down, looking at him as he still gazes at the ceiling. His lean neck is stretched out, a sharp jawline that moves at the hinges when he purses his mouth. “You swam us out of there? On your own?”

Your gaze stretches from both ends of the deep pool, wondering how he managed to get you out and himself without drowning. You’re impressed by his feat. And he knows it from your tone alone.

The water is so clear that you could see the bottom, but it’s deceptive, you know it’s far deeper than it seems. This place is bigger than any of the rooms so far, it’s as big as a football field, probably twice as big when the pool stretches so far. There are three doors in this place, one adjacent to you, painted in deep emerald green with three odd doorknobs on it. Then the other two are on the far right end of the wall, both having signs on it. Then there’s the wrong door right in the middle of the far wall. It’s small, like a doggy door, painted in blood red. Something tells you that you shouldn’t go there. You guess the two doors beside each other are the bathrooms or shower rooms from the looks of it like in public pools, but you can’t tell what the signs says from where you sit.

His eyes crinkles in the corners, smiling gently, a nice reprieve from the fearful look on his face that you’ve gotten used to. “Not to brag but, I was on the varsity swim team during sophomore year.”

“Just sophomore year?” You can’t help it when the corner of your lip tugs up.

“I flunked chemistry.” Bobby winces, chuckling at himself. “And they had to kick me out because my grades weren’t as good.”

“I should be the one calling you hero now. And chemistry sucks anyway.”

His eyes softens from your words. “Please drink, I’m tired from wetting your lips with your own jacket. It was like I was feeding a baby bird.”

“That’s not embarrassing at all.” Shaking your head, you hide your smile as you gulp down the sweetened almond water. You let it coat your insides with that odd saccharine taste.

“Trust me, it was more embarrassing for me than for you.”

“At least you didn’t use your own shirt.” You wipe your mouth with your sleeve.

“Yeah, or you’d be drinking remnants of my sweat.” Bobby gives your shoulder a pat before rising, knees creaking as he stretches. “I’m preparing dinner.” Those are the words you thought you’ll never hear again.

“What?”

“I found a bunch of food in this place, just under the sink in the bathroom. It’s like someone left their stash here. I’m sorting through it, just rest, you were really out of it.”

“You think someone else was here?” You call out over your shoulder, watching the clear undisturbed water.

“Probably, I don’t know which one is scarier, us being alone here or someone else was here, wandering around just like us.” There’s a clang of metal behind you, and you twist around, ignoring the pang of pain radiating from your feet up to your knees. Your palm still aches, but more tolerable rather than the blinding pain. Bobby is trying to break open a can of peaches with your hammer. “Shitty fucking thing.”

“Use the other side of the hammer. Stab at the corners.” You simply say, body folding against yourself as you still feel the heaviness weigh you down. “Fuck…”

“You good?” He pauses from his hammering, looking at you as you wince, a hand grasping your forehead. “I told you to rest, lay back down, hero.”

“Did Clark…did he follow us?” You hug the back of your legs, half lidded eyes staring at him.

Bobby shakes his head, turning the hammer and stabs at the corner of the can just like you instructed. “You were right, something was up with him. He was hiding something, I could tell.”

You’re hiding something from him. “Yeah,” twisting around, you lay back down on the lounge chair when you feel the heaviness in your chest weigh you down. “You okay, Bobby?”

“Yeah, just starving.”

“Back in the sailboat room,” you hear him hum in reply, telling you that he’s listening. “Who do you think left the food and water?” The metal scraping against metal pauses. When he doesn’t reply, you call out to him. “Bobby?”

“I don’t know.” You could hear the confusion in his tone. “Why didn’t we ask that? It was left right there on our doorstep. It was clearly for us.”

“We have a mysterious benefactor.” Your eyes close, embracing yourself as your muscles relax to the sound of Bobby’s ministrations and the scent of chlorine. It should bother you more, but it doesn’t.

Your wet clothes should make you uncomfortable at how it sticks to your skin, but it does the opposite, it comforts you, reminding you of the days where you would swim for hours and let the air dry you as you doze off on the deck.

“I wonder who it is. It can’t be Clark or that thing.” Bobby is only met by silence. Worry slithers up his chest as he leans back until he could see you on the lounge chair, sleeping soundly, curled around yourself and more importantly, still breathing. He lets out a sigh, before trying to open the can quieter this time around.

—

Bobby floats aimlessly in the water as it laps around his face, eyes closed, breathing steady when he has stripped himself bare except for his boxer shorts. He’s unashamed, while you avert your eyes as you dig through the can of peaches.

There’s only silence around the pool room, save for the gentle scraping of your finger against the side of the crinkling metal can and the gentle lapping of water, it’s stifling. You miss the quiet comforting song of the walls, that slight tremble within the wallpaper that is warm to the touch. Bobby helps, his presence is a good alternative to the hum, but how long will that stay when you’re withdrawing important information from him? Something that might break him and ruin his peace.

He looks softer as he floats on the water, his arms are spread around him, legs floating as he lets out a breath. The lights illuminate him, the chain around his neck catching the light, making him look ethereal, almost akin to a renaissance oil painting. One that bears tragedy underneath all the brush strokes and pretty colours.

“I think I’m going insane. The tiles are starting to melt together in my eyes.” His voice cuts through the silence, echoing as his eyes open, head craning to look at you slouched on the lounge chair. “You look like a camel.”

“Thanks?” You slouch some more as he snorts out a chuckle. “Sounds something like an insane person would say.”

“Slouching is not good for your back.” Bobby stops his floating and swims over to the edge of the pool, arms over the tiles as he rests his chin above his arm. His blue eyes sparkles, head tilted as he gazes at you like he’s trying to read your mind. “Do you think someone created this place?”

“I don’t think so.” You lick your lips, grimacing slightly at the taste the peaches left. “No one’s smart enough or this crazy to invent something like this place.”

Bobby sucks in his teeth, legs floating behind him as he watches the water lap at the edge of the pool. “Back in the laundry room where we…fell.” You hum, eyes staring at the floating peaches inside the can. “I saw my own shirt on the pile of laundry. It was fucked up, it was dumped there like some kind of trophy.” He waits for your reply, and yet when he glances at you, you’re just staring at your dinner. “Earth to hero? Am I annoying you?”

You flash him a smile. “No, just thinking.”

“Penny for your thoughts?”

“You don’t have a single penny.”

“Not right now, but I have money in the real world, y’know.” He flutters his lips at you, blowing an annoyed raspberry as he pushes himself away from the edge of the pool and floating again on his back.

“This is the real world, Bobby.” You don’t mean to sound calloused or bitter, it’s just the truth.

“And they both suck.” His wrist flicks at the water, splashing some water upwards as if it’ll reach the manhole cover on the ceiling. “Do you know how to swim?”

“Yeah.” The slice of peach doesn’t go down your throat easily and you have to take a swig of water.

“Oh yeah, you lived near water.”

More silence, a tension brought back by your dry replies.

“There’s more food in the backpack if you’re still hungry.” He says, prodding at you with his gaze. You hum in reply, and he purses his lips.

Bobby sighs, swims over to the edge of the pool again and looks at you over his arms. “You know that I won’t judge you, right?” His words cut through you when his gaze flickers towards your covered arms. “We’ve all got shit we don’t want to talk about. And that’s okay, I understand you, I won’t ask you about it or judge you for what you did. I’m just glad you stuck around, hero.”

You instinctively hug yourself, the taste of the tart peaches makes you gag. You never liked peaches. “Where’s the bathroom?”

Bobby’s face falls, your name falling on his lips quietly, swallowing thickly as he looks away from you, perhaps guilty for bringing it up, or maybe pity. “Far wall, the signs are fucked so choose whatever.”

You vault from your seat, placing the half eaten can of peaches down on the lounge chair with a clang before walking carefully on the damp tiles. You could feel his eyes follow you, and you could finally breathe the moment you reach the bathroom door.

He’s right, the signs are weird. The usual female and male signs are wonky and turned upside down, it looks like it melted under some heat and you could barely tell what it originally was. You don’t pick which one to go into when you shove your way inside.

The bathroom is dimly lit compared to the bright pool room outside. It’s clean, filled with stalls and sinks, some have showers just like you surmised. And it looks normal, like a public bathroom at a dying mall or an airport bathroom during a red eye flight when there’s no line. For a moment there you thought that you got out, that you’re back in reality instead of being stuck here with a stranger that has saved your life twice now. But when the smell of mold hits you, and you catch sight of a painted sun with a face on the mirror, you know you’re still here, where the air is still, and the monsters in your mind have come alive and are out to get you.

You take deep breaths, grounding yourself, counting how many things you can touch in the place, how many things you can hear, what things you can taste, and all the things you can see. You come up with less and less as you grip onto the sink, opening the squeaky faucet as it splutters out cold water.

Yanking off the jacket, the fabric is still damp to the touch when you toss it haphazardly onto the counter as it clangs loudly, bouncing off the walls. You don’t look at yourself for a while, maybe the feeling will go away if you don’t look.

Taking out your phone from your pocket, you try to turn it on, to find comfort through the pictures, but just as you suspected, it doesn’t turn on. You should toss it against the glass and break it into pieces, but it’s the only thing you brought from home that reminds you that there is still something for you when you get back. Even if it’s just a gravestone, or an empty apartment, or a dead end job. So you shove the phone back in your pocket, maybe if you get out of here you can get it repaired and see the old pictures again.

Unwrapping the bandage Bobby wrapped around your palm, you place your injured hand underneath the water, letting it drench your hand with a wince. Biting your lip, you whimper, eyes glazing over with tears let out by the pain in your hand and in your chest. You unstick your gaze from your reddened flesh, reluctantly staring at yourself in the mirror, you look worse for wear, tired even though you’ve slept long enough and ate enough to keep you going. You still refuse to look at your arms.

You must keep going for his sake, you have to bite through the pain and live on, even when it hurts. Even when he has seen why it hurts.

Head tilted down, you listen to the rushing water hit the porcelain, watching the water collect on your palm as it overflows and hits the sink with a splash. You let your breathing even out when you’re starting to feel the bone aching numbness spread through your limbs. You’re antsy, and you feel your throat close up, static poking right at your fingertips.

Your mind rushes a thousand miles per hour, you just can’t help it. From thoughts about Clark to Kat, to Bobby and the exit, you didn’t hear the sound of the cubicle door opening right behind you.

You feel cold arms wrap around your middle, featherlight at first that you thought you were imagining it, that you’re so touch starved that you were day dreaming about a gentle embrace. But when the pair of arms wrap tighter around your torso and arms, you jostle awake.

Your heart stops when you look at the mirror, there, situated right behind you is a man.

He’s awfully familiar, but unfamiliar at the same time. His face peeks behind your head, and it’s wrong, like the ink on a picture that has faded out. Like Janet down here, just like the memory of your grandfather that stays still at the helm. It’s just like them, it’s not alive.

And it’s wearing the exact same shirt as you.

“Fuck!” You stagger away from the sink, trying to wiggle out of its hold. “No, let go!” Your elbow meets its stomach, but it continues to hold onto you for dear life, not even feeling your striking blow.

The sounds of your shoes squeak across the floor, and you feel it grasp onto you tighter, fingers interlocking on your front, digging you further against its chest like it’s trying to absorb you within itself.

You struggle, kicking around, managing to shuffle to the wall as you push it against it harshly, knocking it against the tiles, trying to make it let go. All it does is make it sink its head against the crook of your neck.

It doesn’t breathe, it doesn’t blink, it doesn’t speak, it just presses itself against you, embracing you like it knows you, trying to take your warmth.

“No!” You shriek, tears blurring your vision as its arms hold onto you so tightly that it’s getting harder to breathe. You have no choice as you claw at its arms and face. “Bobby!” Your nails hit something soft, digging into something akin to a foam than flesh.

Your guttural screams echo around the walls.

“Bobby!” You hear something crack, a bone, maybe yours as your breath leaves your lungs with a dry cough. It holds onto you like velcro, and your legs weaken from the lack of air. It turns you around, pressing you against the wall and further into the tiles. Something in the walls shift, you could hear it hum, you could feel it move. The coldness parts against your cheek as it absorbs you, one by one, cell by cell. “Bobby!” Your screams turn dull with every press against your chest. “Bobby—”

There’s a loud thwack from behind, and the arms let you go.

You keel over, taking deep breaths as you push yourself out of the walls. Crawling backwards and away from it, fingers grasping at your neck, desperately dragging air into your lungs. You see Bobby wield your hammer, standing tall, drenched, striking right at the entity.

“Motherfucker!” He brings it down with a force so harsh that it breaks its face, cleaving it open. “Fuck off!” He strikes again and again until it staggers backwards into a stall.

It’s hand tries to reach for you as if asking for your help, pleading for your help.

Bobby stalks over it, anger rolling off of him from his posture alone as the muscles on his back tense with every rise and fall of the hammer.

The cubicle door swings close behind the two similar looking men, and you could only hear the sound of the hammer meeting whatever it’s made of. Not flesh and bone, something else, something you can’t tell.

You flinch with every smash, metal hitting it in decreasing intervals when Bobby’s ragged breathing echoes around the bathroom.

Your eyes glance at the wall, and you see the tiles close in time before it returns to normal. Or what normal is around here.

The door swings open, and Bobby wipes the sweat off his face with his arm, standing over what remains of the thing that took the form of a man you met and talked to once.

Its face is smashed in, leg twitching, fingers opening and closing. There are stuff around it that bears a resemblance to its cut open face. It looks like foam, like what’s inside a mattress instead of blood and bone.

Bobby heaves, crouches down in front of you, the hammer clangs against the tiles as it falls from his grasp before his hands take hold of your face gingerly, making you look away from the carnage. “Are you okay?”

Your lips wobble, but you keep a brave façade. “Yeah, it— it came out of nowhere.” The lack of air made your voice hoarse, cut at the edges, almost broken.

“I swear that I checked this whole place and there was no one else here.” He sounds guilty, face contorted into a mix of guilt and ebbing fury, the edges of his eyes are reddened, crimson amidst blue. “Did it…did it hurt you?”

Shaking your head, you feel an ache between your ribs that you decide to ignore. “No, it just—it was pushing me into the wall.”

“Fuck, I’m so sorry.”

You don’t know why you did it, maybe it was his genuine bone aching worried expression or maybe it was because he saved you again, either way, you break, opening your arms and pulling him against you for an embrace, as if he was the one in need of comfort. Maybe you shouldn’t when you could still feel the entity’s arms around you, so unfamiliar, so cold. But Bobby is so warm, so familiar, and he lets you, you haven’t held onto someone in so long that your body has forgotten how real warmth feels like. Not from the walls, or whatever nonsensical thing you could fill your days with in the real world. This is humanly real that it sends your mind into a state of calm, a quiet that you’ve only felt through the song of the walls.

Bobby holds you gently, taking you in his arms in a softer and kinder way as his palms rest on your back gingerly. His hand shivers slightly from the adrenaline or from the unfamiliar affection from you.

“I’m not going to break.” You mutter near his ear, watching the thing twitch on the bathroom floor. Bobby squeezes you, letting out a relieved sigh. He holds onto you for a moment, his knuckle gliding along the length of your back, the other cupping the back of your head, waiting for you to pull away first. Once you finally gather your breath and your trembling seizes, you pull away. “Thank you.”

“I heard you call for me and I thought—” his lips purses together, a palm patting your cheek. There is an unsteady tremor from his touch that isn’t as well hidden as he hoped. “nothing, I’m glad you’re okay.” Eyes flicking down your torso, his brows knit together.

“What?” You look down at yourself, expecting blood, or for him to be staring at your arms.

“It was wearing the same shirt as you…” Bobby’s blue eyes meet yours, confusion swimming in them. His mouth forms a question, until.

“Hello?” A voice calls from somewhere. Echoed, like speaking through an old speaker.

“What the fuck?” Bobby instinctively shields you, a hand grasping at your bicep as you both frantically look around the source. “Who the fuck?”

“Holy shit, you guys are real.” Relief is palpable in the stranger’s tone.

“This place is fucked, let’s go.” Bobby helps you up, cautiously walking away.

“Wait, no, please! I’m human! I’m stuck here just like you guys!”

“Can you see us?” You ask tentatively, holding onto Bobby’s elbow to stop his frantic movement. Looking around, you see nothing out of the ordinary, except for the being on the floor. “Where are you?”

Bobby side eyes you, asking what you’re doing through his expression. You reassure him with a squeeze of his arm.

“In some fucked up looking house.” He sounds ragged, exhausted. “I could see you but you can’t see me, right?”

“Yeah.” You could see the cogs in his mind turn as you both recall what Clark told you two in the boiler room. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Peter.” He takes a deep breath that you could hear everywhere around you. “Peter Tench. I… I worked here, still work here.” He laughs bitterly. “I’m a researcher.”

“I fucking knew it!” Bobby seethes, still shielding you from the unseen Peter. “The fucking government made this shit.”

“No, no, we’re not the government, we’re far from it.” He sounds increasingly tired with each word he lets out. “Listen, I don’t have much time, it’s out there.”

“What is, Peter? Maybe we can help you.” Bobby turns to you with a befuddled expression.

“We don’t know this fucking guy, don’t be a hero, hero.”

“I didn’t know you either and yet I saved you. And you didn’t know me but you still saved me.” Your words has him clamping his mouth shut. His jaw clenches before he turns away, and yet he doesn’t leave your side.

“No, he’s right.” Peter shudders a breath, “you shouldn’t trust me but I do know a way out of this place.”

“Tell us.” Bobby demands, standing steadfastly, adrenaline still rushing through him. His eyes are narrowed to slits, fury still rising from his skin like steam.

“There are CB radios scattered around this place, there’s one in every outpost. it’s our…” he pauses, trying to gather his breath. “Our way of communicating with the outside world. If you could find it you can contact my people. I only ask for you to tell them that I’m alive and to come get me. It would be impossible for us to meet up so don’t waste your energy in trying to find me yourself. They know this place better than you ever will.”

“That’s not ominous at all.” Mumbling to himself, Bobby licks at his lips. “And who exactly are these people of yours.”

“You’ll find out.”

“Cryptic motherfucker.”

“Peter, I’ve come across one of those radios and I tried it but no one answered.” You add, taking a step forward and away from Bobby as he watches the side of your face.

“Fuck, it was probably the wrong frequency. Things here like technology don’t work as well for some reason.” He laughs, an ugly laugh that sounds half humourless and half pained. He almost sounds insane, hopeless. With a wobbly breath, he tells you the frequency, just three digits, saying it twice for you and Bobby to memorize it. “Did you get it?”

“Yeah,” your eyes rake around the walls, trying to figure out how he could see you but you can’t see him. Clark said the same thing. Nothing makes sense here, and Bobby’s right, you should stop trying to understand it. “Do you know where any of these radios are?”

“They’re mostly in level zero with the yellow wallpaper.” Your breath hitches at the mere mention. “Your best bet is to just wander around and hope for the best, me giving you direction to a directionless place is a waste of breath.”

“Or you could try giving us a landmark, fucking anything, man.” Frustration rolls off Bobby’s shoulders as you feel his adrenaline fading away.

“Chairs, a ton of wheels from a boat, and I remember a banner that says ‘everything must go,’ once you see those you’re near one.”

“Well, that’s fucking helpful.” Bobby scoffs, walking towards the fallen hammer and picking it up together with your discarded jacket on the counter. “Any other helpful tips, mister scientist?”

“Yeah, don’t get lost.” Peter chortles, a sound from the back of his throat that you feel your skin rising from his laugh. “I have to go, I could hear it shuffling outside.”

“Peter, wait!” There’s a sound of rushed footsteps on the other side, retreating away as you and Bobby are now left alone in the bathroom. “What the fuck just happened?” Turning towards Bobby, he looks at you with furrowed brows, frowning right at you. You feel self conscious as you cross your arms over your chest. “Bobby, I—”

“Are you really okay?” It’s not pity in those pretty blue eyes of his, it’s remorse, it’s guilt marring at his face, it’s empathy that cinches at his heart whilst he holds the jacket close to his chest, your scent clinging on the rustling fabric. “Hero…what happened—”

“I’m fine, thank you but I’m fine.” You would break in front of him, to cry in his arms or hold onto him again but you don’t give yourself that when you’ve been lying to him with an excuse of saving him from the hurt. Stepping towards him, his concern grows, he doesn’t seem to be so convinced. Why is he so worried about you? “I’m okay, worrying won’t get us anywhere.”

“Am I not allowed to worry about you?” Bobby’s eyes flicks towards the entity’s feet as it peeks through the stall, still twitching, still trying to get up. “That’s what people do, hero, they worry about other people. That thing could’ve killed you, and I—” shaking his head, he turns his head away and the fluorescent lights shine right on his glimmering eyes. He’s still soaking wet from his swim, he must’ve rushed here when you called him. “You said that we’re a team. I really don’t want to lose my only teammate, or lose you to insanity like that Peter guy.”

You swallow his words and tuck it in your heart, keeping it there, not knowing how to respond. “You don’t believe him?”

He scoffs at your reaction, biting his lower lip as he shakes his head. “Let’s just get out of here. You are the most frustrating woman I’ve ever met, and I’ve met a lot.”

“I’m sorry that I’m emotionally constipated.” You meant it as a joke, but he doesn’t find it as funny as you.

Bobby licks at his teeth, head falling down on his clavicle with a chortle akin to a scoff. “You said it, not me.” Taking a deep breath, he hands you your jacket back. “You didn’t finish your peaches.”

“I hate peaches.” You awkwardly shove the jacket on.

“See? That— you should’ve said so.” He shrugs, frustration right on his movements. “Don’t shut me out, man. You don’t have to tell me everything but at least tell me *some of the shit. Like how you don’t like peaches or that you’re dying from the heat or about the radio thing, you didn’t tell me that.”

“I didn’t even know it still works. Bobby, I’m sorry, but I’m really trying, I…” clutching at the hem of the jacket, you shut your eyes for a moment before looking at him, not between his brows or the wall beside him, but right into those blue eyes that remind you of the ocean you once sailed on. “I’ve just been alone for so long that I have no idea how to… I’m sorry.”

Bobby’s shoulders ease, a hand raking through his wet hair as he bites the inside of his cheek. “No, don’t be sorry.” The heel of his palm kneads at the space between his brows. “I keep prying you with questions when you know as much about this place as I do. Kat tells me that I could be an annoying ass sometimes.” Pausing, he lets out a sigh, looking at the wall behind you for a moment before meeting with your eyes. “I—I just want you to look after yourself for a change.”

Shaking your head, you reach for his hand, you shouldn’t, but something in you told you to, that you should show him that you understand, that you care. “You’ve been nothing but pleasant so far, Bobby.”

The corner of his lips ticks up into a sad smile. His fingers squeeze you weakly. “Kat would be happy to hear that. Just— just don’t forget that you have to survive too, you need to take care of yourself, not just me. I’m not a kid, don’t sacrifice your comfort for me.” He takes a pause, fingers flexing on his side. “I need you to fight for this. Like you already did before.”

“Okay.” You feign a smile that doesn’t quite reach your eyes. “Let’s go find that radio.”