The wheels of the private jet screeched softly against the tarmac, the engines humming their final lullaby as the aircraft settled into stillness. (Y/n) stood, slender hands tightening around the handle of her suitcase. Her gaze was distant, hollow, as if the skies she flew through were still inside her, thunderclouds brooding beneath her ribs.
She didn’t speak to the pilot.
Didn’t look back.
When the car picked her up and took her home, she moved like a ghost through the house that once held warmth. Every step she took echoed too loud against marble floors, floors they used to dance across with bare feet and drunk laughter. The photographs that hung on the wall, vacations, weddings, celebrations, glared at her like traitors.
Her fingers brushed over one frame.
It was from France.
Lando had kissed her cheek while she laughed mid-bite into a croissant. She looked happy.
She was happy.
And he destroyed it.
With quiet precision, (Y/n) began packing. Drawer by drawer. Hanger by hanger. No hesitations. No second thoughts. She folded her shirts with robotic neatness, zipped each case, unplugged chargers, collected the journals beneath the bed, the ones no one ever knew existed. Including him.
By nightfall, the house was stripped of her. No trace left behind. No scattered earrings on the dresser. No scarf looped over the coat rack. Not even the familiar scent of her lavender oil lingered in the air.
She didn’t leave a note.
She didn’t owe one.
Lando entered the house the next morning expecting silence.
He didn’t expect emptiness.
“(Y/n)?” he called out, setting his keys on the hallway table, voice tight with nerves. “I’m home…”
His words floated into the void.
No soft reply from the kitchen. No clatter of mugs. No humming from upstairs.
He moved through each room like a man possessed, bedroom, bathroom, closet, office, panic rising with every absence. Her makeup was gone. Her clothes. Her laptop. Even the pillow she always hugged was missing.
He stumbled into the living room and sank onto the couch, heartbeat drumming a war beneath his ribs.
“She left,” he whispered to himself.
She really left.
His hand trembled as he picked up his phone. He dialed her original number, then her second one.
Straight to voicemail.
He tried again. Still voicemail.
Desperation clawed at him as he switched to texting. Please. Let’s talk. Please.
The message sent. Blue.
Then green. She had already blocked him again.
Frantic, he tried her mother. “Hi, I—I need to know if (Y/n)’s with you. Please.”
Her mother’s voice was tired. “She’s not.”
“Do you know where she went?”
“She didn’t tell us.”
“Can you—can you let me know if she contacts you?”
There was a long pause.
Then, curtly, “No.”
Click.
He tried her father next. Her brothers. Her sisters. A cousin.
All the same.
No one knew where she was.
Or if they did, they weren’t going to betray her trust.
He dropped the phone to the floor with a hollow thud, then bent forward, sobbing into his hands. The sound that tore from his chest was raw, broken, the kind of grief that cracked through bone and echoed in places he didn’t know could hurt. His shoulders shook uncontrollably, each breath shuddering, each inhale a battle against the emptiness swelling inside him.
He didn’t know what hurt more, the regret of what he had done, the guilt of never stopping it, or the brutal truth that he had lost her. The only person who ever truly saw him. Not the fame. Not the wins. Not the polished smile he wore like armor. She had seen the boy beneath the helmet, the man behind the curtain. And still, she had loved him.
And he destroyed it.
With one choice. One weakness. One mistake he would never stop paying for.
Later that evening, Lando packed a small bag with trembling hands. He didn’t think, didn’t plan. He just moved. Like a man underwater, going through the motions because it was the only way to keep from drowning. A pair of jeans. A hoodie. The cologne she once liked. He threw them into a duffel and called for the jet.
He didn’t tell anyone where he was going.
Didn’t answer Zak’s calls. Ignored Andrea’s texts. Oscar had already said all he needed to.
The car that took him to the airport felt too quiet. Every streetlight they passed cast long shadows that reminded him of her. He kept his forehead pressed against the window, watching the city blur into countryside, the ache in his chest matching the hum of the tires beneath him.
When the jet finally lifted off the runway, Lando sank into the leather seat and stared out at the darkness beyond the glass. The stars were pinpricks in the sky. Silent. Cold. Indifferent. He tried to close his eyes, but all he could see was her face when she saw him with Clara. That moment. Frozen in time. A shard in his soul.
He didn’t touch the drink the stewardess offered.
Didn’t move the entire flight.
By the time they landed, the countryside was cloaked in night. Dew had already begun to form on the grass, silvering the landscape like frost. The air smelled of wet earth and memory.
The house hadn’t changed much, red-bricked and sloped-roofed, the kind of place that smelled like rosemary and childhood. He hadn’t called ahead. He didn’t know what to say.
His mother opened the door before he could knock. She didn’t gasp. She didn’t ask, “What happened?” She simply took one look at his eyes, red, swollen, sunken, and stepped aside.
“Come in.”
He collapsed into her arms like a child.
No bravado. No walls. Just the raw, aching version of himself that no one ever saw. His tears soaked her cardigan, the same one she used to wear on cold mornings when she made hot chocolate and read by the window. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t scold. She held him tightly, arms wrapped around his broken frame, as if trying to hold the pieces together.
She stroked his hair gently, the same rhythm she’d used when he scraped his knee at seven, when he lost his first karting final at twelve, when he came home defeated and too proud to say he needed comfort.
“I ruined everything,” he choked, voice hoarse, breath hitching against her shoulder.
“I know, darling,” she whispered into his curls.
“I didn’t mean to,” he said again, as if saying it enough times might make it true, or at least make it matter.
“I know.”
The hallway light flickered as footsteps echoed softly from the kitchen.
His father was already seated at the table. Arms folded. Jaw tight. He didn’t rise. He didn’t offer a hug or even a hand.
“I’m not proud of you,” Adam Norris said quietly. His voice was steady, but the disappointment ran deep.
“I raised you better than this.”
Lando stayed in his mother’s arms, shame flooding his face, chest caving in.
“I know,” he murmured.
“But I’m still your father,” Adam added after a long pause. “And I know you’re hurting more than you can admit.”
Lando nodded, unable to look him in the eye. Too ashamed. Too hollow. The weight of what he’d done, what he’d lost, pressed harder with every word.
“I never thought she’d actually leave,” Lando admitted quietly, a broken confession to the room. “I thought—she always forgave me. Always came back.”
His mother pulled away just enough to look at him. Her eyes were gentle, but resolute.
“Then maybe this time,” she said, “you pushed someone too far. And they finally chose themselves.”
He bit down a sob.
His mother guided him toward the kitchen table, toward the silence that followed truth. They sat without appetite, without speech. Just the three of them—son, mother, father—surrounded by the echoes of a home that had once felt safer, warmer. A home that now carried the silence of someone who should’ve been there.
Later, at 2 a.m., his younger sister found him sitting in the darkened kitchen, a cold mug of tea untouched before him. He didn’t look up when she entered.
“Lando,” she whispered, voice laced with hurt, “why?”
He opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
No excuse was enough.
So he simply said, “I wish I could go back.”
She sat beside him.
FORKS, WASHINGTON
The plane landed on a rain-kissed runway framed by thick woods and foggy skies. Forks was small, remote, nearly forgotten by time. Tall evergreens loomed like guardians over the winding roads. The town’s heartbeat was slow, steady, and indifferent to the chaos of the world beyond.
(Y/n) chose it because no one would look for her here.
The town welcomed her not with open arms, but with an aloof kind of peace. Nobody asked too many questions. No one stared too long. It was a place where everyone had secrets, and no one wanted to know yours.
She rented a cabin at the edge of the forest, tucked between moss-covered trees and the soft lull of a river that sang in the distance. The home had creaky floorboards, a wood-burning stove, and a wraparound porch. She’d never lived in quiet like this, but it suited her now.
She bought groceries at the tiny general store, where the cashier simply nodded.
She took long walks in the mist, camera slung around her neck, her fingers gloved and chilled. Each photograph she took held silence: a raven on a mailbox, a fog-wrapped tree, the sun cutting through the clouds like a knife.
And in the evenings, she wrote.
The world still heard her voice, just not in the way they thought.
Under her pseudonym, she submitted new articles to the major journals. The Atlantic, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, The Guardian. Her name, well, not her name, was quoted in op-eds, reposted across social media, discussed on panels she refused to attend.
She started writing her next novel, too.
A woman who vanishes after betrayal.
A man who finally understands, too late.
The words poured out of her like a flood, unforgiving, visceral, powerful.
And in Forks, she became the kind of ghost who built her own cathedral.
Meanwhile, across the ocean, Lando began to wither.
Not physically. He was still lean, still fast, still fit. The world still saw a driver at the peak of his game. But those who knew him, truly knew him, could see it in his eyes. The glint, the boyish mischief that once sparkled behind every smirk, was gone. His eyes had dimmed. Hollowed. As if some vital part of him had been scooped out and never returned.
He smiled less. He laughed only when prompted, on camera, during press conferences, for the sake of sponsors. Empty, rehearsed laughter that didn’t reach his eyes.
And whenever someone mentioned (Y/n), or anything that even sounded like her name, he shut down. Like a system overloaded, his expression would blank, jaw tight, breath held. If they noticed, they didn’t push. Most had learned not to.
He trained harder than ever, punishing his body as if exhaustion could drown out guilt. Endless laps. Weight sessions past midnight. Diets stricter than before. He was always moving, always chasing, but never what he really wanted.
He refused to return to the house they once shared. That house was a mausoleum now. Every room haunted. The memory of her curled up on the couch, of her laughter echoing through the kitchen, of lavender lingering on his pillows—it gutted him. So he stayed at his family home, surrounded by familiarity, but not warmth.
He tried to find her.
He hired private investigators, all sworn to discretion. But they came back empty. No leads. No sightings.
He flew to her favorite cities—Paris, Kyoto, Florence. Places she once spoke of like lovers. He wandered through bookstores, cafes, museums, hoping for a glimpse of her face in a passing crowd. He’d stand outside galleries for hours, watching people go in and out, pretending she might walk out, brush past him, say his name again.
Nothing.
Desperation turned him to her written words.
Late at night, alone in his old room, he’d reread her old work. Her essays, her novels, her poetry, even the things she never meant to publish but once read aloud to him in bed, under low lamplight and drowsy affection.
He devoured every sentence, hoping to decode her, to understand where she went or how deeply she hurt. But every word felt like a dagger. They dripped with brilliance. With pain. With a voice he had once been allowed to love and silenced.
He followed her pseudonym’s bylines obsessively, tracking new articles across international outlets. He’d scroll through hundreds of comments, hoping for a hint. A clue. A crack in the mask.
But she had disappeared with precision.
He had never known heartbreak could last this long.
But it did.
And so, at 3 a.m., in the echo of a quiet kitchen lit only by the fridge light, he would sit, unmoving, exhausted, shattered, waiting for a redemption that might never come.
And in Forks, beneath the cedar trees, the woman he broke began to heal.
📝 Note from the Author:
Fifteen days already? Time flies when you’re bleeding your heart out in prose 😭 Thank you so much for every reblog, message, and like you’ve all left, especially my dear Alarwynnites 🥹 You’ve made this space feel like a home I didn’t know I needed.
I'm sorry I couldn’t post much today, or in the next few days either. Real life has crept in again (university said “plot twist!”), and I’ve got lectures breathing down my neck 😩 I’ll try to schedule a few things tonight for tomorrow, but no promises, okay? Hahahaha forgive me in advance 😭
Thank you for sitting in that silence with me. Thank you for feeling the ache. Goodnight for now 🕯
So Love and Deepspace is a brand new fandom that I know like nothing about, and it's positively exploding on AO3 with readerfic.
Usually "new fandom I'm not interested in is writing a genre I don't care about" isn't news, but this one's interesting because the AO3 tag is a pretty even split between English and Mandarin (with Mandarin on the slightly larger side). Typically a fandom or ship that's really taking off in Mandarin will either be practically nonexistent in English (it's popular with Mandarin speakers and hasn't broken into the English-speaking fannish circles; common of canons that aren't officially translated or subtitled in English), or will have significantly more fic in English (it's popular worldwide and there are just more English speaking fans posting to AO3 numerically). An even split is *highly* unusual, and very cool.
A more or less even split carries on down the ship list (though some ships aren't quite as close to a perfect 50/50 as others):
Xia Yizhou | Caleb/You:
2,624 - Mandarin
2,084 - English
Qin Che | Sylus/You:
1,850 - Mandarin
2,599 - English
Li Shen | Zayne/You:
1,600 - Mandarin
1,572 - English
That's also really cool. A lot of times when a fandom is popular in multiple languages, the different languages will have entirely different fandoms with trends for ships, favourite characters, themes, etc.
There are some differences, though. Mandarin fic is much more likely to be explicit, English fic has more M/M*, English is more likely to tag the game's main character or tag "reader" or "you" as a character while Mandarin seems to be letting the relationship tag signify that a work is readerfic, etc. (all this can be eyeballed from the sidebar filters on the English and Mandarin search pages for the fandom tag, scope it out yourself and tell me what's meaningful :P)
--
Since there is so much more fic on AO3 in English total, an even split means that there are proportionally far more Chinese fics in Love and Deepspace.
As of this moment, AO3 has 1,042,279 works in Mandarin. The 11,766 Mandarin Love and Deepspace fics make up 1.13% of the langauge.
Meanwhile, AO3 has 13,396,451 works in English. The 10,136 English Love and Deepspace fics make up 0.07% of the language.
There's no easy way to check how many individual authors are represented in these searches, but since we're into the quadruple digits, it probably makes sense to assume that the prolific and sparse authors are averaging each other out, and the similar fic counts means there're about the same number of people writing Love and Deepspace fic in each langauge.
--
What does this all mean, demographically and for the fandom's culture? I'm not in the fandom and I can't read Chinese, so I have no idea! I could speculate, but I'd just be throwing spaghetti at the wall.
The one thing I feel I can say as an outsider looking at the numbers is that anyone who is about to say something negative about readerfic in this fandom and make mean little assumptions about readerfic fans would do well to remember that only half the authors even write in English.
--
*that one's a surprise, on the archive as a whole Mandarin has a far higher percentage of M/M than English (75% to 45%)
[ chapter ten — 5.5k words ] [ masterlist ]
[ prev chapters: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine ]
you don't open the letter.
richie jerimovich x reader, past mikey berzatto x reader, slow burn
handcuffs, bus, metal detector, strip search. three pairs of socks, toothbrush, toothpaste. everything stolen by your cellmate as soon as you arrive, except what you’re wearing. entire jail segregated to hell. you claimed by the italians, who were expecting you. instructions are simple: stick to the bottom bunk, keep your mouth shut, and you’ll make it. this is jail, not prison.
nothing and no one can touch you when you’re like this, sunk deep inside yourself. your throat is still hoarse from shouting last night, but that’s incidental, not important. nothing is important.
you don’t want to be here, so you’re not.
you’re standing on the corner with half a pack in your jacket pocket, and he’s not there—you can’t see him right now, not even in your head—but he’s on his way. the winter sinks cold so deep into you that your forehead starts to hurt. if you stand here much longer, you’re going to get a runny nose. you’re itching for a cigarette. you don’t want to smoke without him.
a lot of people want your attention.
julie, you’ve got mail. who’s this, your man? is he trying to get you back? put a price on it, maybe you can finally get us something from commissary.
julie, the feds are not playing around. it looks like there’s charges related to human trafficking coming down the pipeline, and they’re trying to tie you to it. i’m doing my best with your defense, but if you don’t want to cooperate, i can’t guarantee—do you hear me?
julie, when she comes through, we’re gonna take her back here. if you see a guard coming, just keep your mouth shut and kick the dryer, okay?
a lot of people want your attention, but nobody gets it. you can survive this, put one foot in front of the other, only as long as you can stand partly sheltered by the angle of your apartment building, and listen to the wind rushing past. waiting and safe, as long as he never arrives.
the snitch gets carried out on a stretcher.
the lawyer leaves unsatisfied.
you don’t open the letter.
.
.
.
it’s much worse at night. but still, sometimes, you can sleep.
.
.
.
lunch here has a queasy familiarity. it feels like barracks or school. you sit at a long table and corresponding bench with the italians, wondering if all this sodium is gonna worsen your perpetual low-grade headache, squeezing peanut butter from its plastic packet directly into your mouth, not bothering with the bread.
behind you, you pick out the word doctor in somebody else’s conversation. thinking that it might have something to do with you, you turn and glance over your shoulder, just in time to catch a woman saying, too loudly, no i’m fine. you think her words sound a bit slurred. you’re fifty percent sure her name is aja.
you’re sweating, says her friend, a woman with box braids whose name you’ve never learned. she sounds exasperated. did you take something? when she gets no answer, her voice gains a note of urgency. hey. did you take something?
aja, leaning hunched forward on the table, mumbles no.
relieved, her friend says, then just eat your lunch.
i don’t...aja blinks. goes to lift one baby carrot to her mouth, looks at it, then stops. is car warning, she explains.
in the back of your brain, something stirs.
by now, you’ve been noticed by the other women at that table, and they’re staring daggers back. they’re almost all black women, just like all the women at yours are almost all white—and your stare is violating rules more important than the law.
beside you, your cellmate janine has caught on too. she smacks your arm a little harder than she needs to, annoyed that she has to reiterate a fundamental lesson. mind your business. but you can still hear aja muttering out a slow explanation of increasingly jumbled words, and that’s all you care to hear.
it’s like there was a heavy weighted blanket keeping you down and separate from life, and that’s suddenly lifted. you can see and hear. there are words floating to the surface, and next steps, and you’re on the move, standing up.
every woman sitting at aja’s table is up on their feet in five seconds flat, except for aja and her friend, though the friend gives you a look that could cut glass. you can hear everyone from your table getting up behind you, too.
what’s your problem? says one of the women standing opposite.
i’m a doctor. you’re not even looking at her, but when she says, sure you are, there’s enough menace in it to stop you in your tracks. then janine has an iron grip on your arm, trying to drag you away. it’s too late. when you said you’re a doctor, you believed it, and with that the world has come into focus with perfect clarity. the rest doesn’t matter.
is she diabetic? you say.
janine hisses in your ear stupid fucking bitch fast and low and you can see a flicker of movement to your right, another woman from your side coming for you, so you wrestle free from janine and dart a few steps forward. as quick and smooth as if you’d planned it, a woman from aja’s side steps behind you, between you and your own table. she’s taller than you by about six inches. she says, yeah, she’s diabetic.
permission enough. you sit down on the other side of aja. up close, she’s sweating and wearing a concerned expression, like she’s forgotten where she left her phone. you can hear the guards shouting, getting closer. you ignore them.
don’t touch her, the friend snaps.
who’s gonna take her pulse, then? keeping a careful eye on the friend, you reach for aja’s arm. nobody stops you. aja herself looks at you with vague suspicion in her golden brown eyes, but she’s not all there enough to resist. once you get your fingers on her wrist and find her pulse, you don’t bother counting it for a full thirty seconds, that’s how fast her heartbeat is going.
at this point, the outside world has gotten too loud, too insistent, and you can feel the moment about to break.
she needs sugar now, you say to the friend. or she’ll end up in a coma.
got it, she says, and then the guards are on you. with shouts and shoves, they break up the gathering, end lunch ten minutes early. with a yank of your shirt, you’re returned to your group.
what the fuck is wrong with you, janine hisses, but you barely hear her. you’re still thinking on your patient, trying to get a look. you think you see the friend reaching for somebody else’s tray—to get a packet of strawberry jam, maybe—but you can’t be sure.
.
.
.
it makes no sense. your head throbs. if janine’s threats are even half true, you’re in for more trouble than you know how to handle, and you didn’t know how to handle your troubles before. but somehow, once you’re in the laundry room, it happens.
you realize that you like it all. the strong smell of detergent, the sun coming in golden through the high windows built too thin for jumpers, the way you have to lean forward and really push against the weight of hundreds of t-shirts in the hamper trolley. even the finicky machine quitting mid-cycle only amuses you, because you know the trick to starting it up again: thump it in the right spot a couple times, hear it rumble back to work. it’s not until one of the guards passes by you that you hear, the fuck are you smiling about? and you realize you were smiling at all. you stop at once.
the thing is: you fucking did it. at dinner, you’ll see aja sitting at that same table, eating and talking clearly. she’ll be fine. you did that. you never thought you’d get this again, but it seems not everything is over. there is still a little life in you, enough to save hers.
not everything is over, and for once you can think about the letter tucked into your bra without it burning you.
you don’t imagine it contains forgiveness—hope isn’t the same as delusion—but there could still be something in it that you would want to keep. richie could never respect your decision to leave. loyalty is what he’s cared about most, the one value he’s managed to cling onto by the skin of his teeth. but he might at least understand.
times past, he has understood you far better than you expected, and strangely enough, you’ve understood him too. he might understand you now. stranger things have happened.
you won’t read the letter, of course. but you’ll keep that possibility with you, the one thing you have left to hold.
.
.
.
hey doc, come here. look at this.
janine is calling to you from across the laundry room, beckoning you towards the back corner where the security cameras don’t quite reach. you hesitate. you’re not stupid. that’s exactly the spot they once made you stand guard, and given how publicly you ignored all orders today, you wouldn’t be surprised if it was janine’s turn to stand watch and your turn to take the beating. it’s been a while since you’ve done that. you’re probably rusty. ah, fuck it.
you leave the bin of stained shirts where it is and walk over, rounding the corner to find two women waiting for you. one you recognize immediately as an enforcer, blonde and tall and glaring ferociously at you. the other, slight and silver-haired, is the leader.
do you know why you’re here? she says. calm, even pleasant, like a schoolteacher.
i have a guess, you say.
so the leader explains. she takes her time with it, uses so many words, but the long and short of it is: you have been living an easy life. they have been taking care of you, and you’ve repaid them with nothing but trouble. angie—the massive woman leaning on the far wall, the enforcer—burned herself today in the kitchen, on purpose, badly enough that she got sent to the infirmary. sure enough, there’s a bandage around the enforcer’s left forearm. aja was supposed to also be in the infirmary, unconscious.
why angie and aja would need to be in the infirmary together, with aja unconscious, is obvious. the leader doesn’t need to explain that part.
interfering is a crime. interfering in someone else’s murder is a crime whose punishment you can’t afford.
i didn’t know, you say. on hearing your thin voice, you realize your mistake. times like these, you’re supposed to keep your mouth shut. matter of fact, almost always, you’re supposed to keep your mouth shut.
i’ve been told you have a letter on you, the leader says. let me see it.
you say nothing. she motions to the enforcer.
in your second tremendously stupid choice of the day, you fight back. you duck one punch only to get your ears rung by another, square in the left eye. after that, she deals with you easily, with the advantages of height, weight, reach, and the knowledge that this might be her one chance to get you back. she hates you and she fights like it, like she might just kill you and call it an accident. it’s all you can do to keep quiet, not yell for help.
in under a minute, she’s back to the leader with your letter in her hand, snatched from your bra. the sound of your own heavy breathing is so unsteady, it’s almost as bad as crying. your eye has already begun to swell up.
we have a problem, the leader says. if you can’t follow the most basic instructions, how can we trust you? and if we can’t trust you, what can we do?
in the silence, you realize: they have everything now.
you need to prove that we can trust you. you have no idea how you could possibly do that, and then she adds, tell me about what you did for linda.
this time, you think it through before you open your mouth.
you know what she’s asking about, of course. it’s the only thing you’ve ever done for your boss’s wife directly, and you were told to keep it secret, too. an iud for her daughter-in-law, along with a fake fertility treatment. what a woman would do to convince the people closest to her that she wants children, when she doesn’t. you know what those men are like.
i don’t know what you’re talking about, you finally say. if you have a problem with linda, go settle it with her.
the enforcer starts forward, but the leader stops her. i’ll give you the night to think about it, she says, as undisturbed as ever. but first, i want you to tell me the list of things we could do if you turn out to not be trustworthy. i need to make sure that you know.
you need to get these women away from you so badly now that it’s almost easy to talk.
you could kill me. you say that first because you doubt they’d bother with that much effort. or make my life miserable. you could keep that letter. you could talk to your boss and work it so i get stuck in here for a ten-year stretch.
and other than that?
i don’t know.
we could make it so you never work as a doctor again.
does she know?
her pale green eyes give nothing away, and the longer you stare at her, desperately trying to pierce her pitiless calm, the more you feel you’re only exposing yourself. eventually, you give up. it doesn’t matter if she knows. the carusos know. if they expose you, the best years of your life, spent in hard work and little else, they’ll be gone. the worst years of your life, spent in restless loneliness and little else, they’ll be gone too. if that bomb drops, there’s no point to any of it. a decade of your life, best and worst, all for nothing. every second of every day. everyone you pushed away.
i’m in jail, you manage to say. i don’t think i’ll get work as a doctor ever again.
i’m just the messenger, the leader says. see you tomorrow.
.
.
.
that night, you wait for janine to snore, then you bury your face in the pillow and discover that you’re wound too tight to even cry. the pillow smells like old socks. you turn over and stare up at the bunk bed above you instead.
it’s not a choice, it’s just pure dread. in this place, you have nobody else. if the italians drop you, you’ll be as easily extinguished as the slugs that little boys like to sprinkle with salt, but it’ll take much longer, however long they make your sentence. your lawyer said the feds were trying to pin human trafficking on you. maybe they’ll succeed. it’s life or hell, that’s the point. life or hell isn’t a choice.
you will tell them what they want to know. they will pass it back up the chain to old caruso, who in turn will figure out that alessandra has been fooling him all along with that combination of iud and fake fertility treatment. wronged the family, in his eyes. maybe, given the raid that came not long after, it will be considered a sign that she knew the end was coming and helped it along.
maybe she did snitch. you don’t know. does the truth matter? this man looked at his own wounded son and said, he should be dead. not helping death along was his idea of fatherhood. but he had considered it, you know. this is the man you’re going to deliver your patient to, the man who has you by the throat.
when you first learned about the hippocratic oath, you found it romantic in the only way you could bear: do no harm. not be kind or even do good, not change the world or save the day, and certainly nothing as lushly irrational as love. something possible and real. a solid foundation. first, do no harm.
alessandra might never know that you’re the one who gave her up.
that’s your patient, you remember a veteran surgeon saying to another resident. you can’t exactly remember what made him say it, some disrespect, but the viciousness of his voice left an impression on you. the unspoken seemed obvious. they’re the patient, you’re the doctor. they let you cut them wide open and put your hands inside them, so you better be prepared to show some fucking respect. surgeons always have a reputation for ego, so maybe it had nothing to do with treating the patient well, maybe it was a pure ego thing. but it felt, and still feels, like a personal claim. you violate your own patient and you might as well be a leafless tree, an unloving father.
you think over the leader’s words, trying to find yourself some loophole. relive each word as best you can while sniffing back snot because you have no tissues. but all you find is that the letter is gone now too, and with that, you tighten your jaw and refuse to let yourself start crying, because this time if you lose it, you’ll be lost.
the laundry room sunlight feels like it fell on your face years ago. that hope is gone. richie would not understand you abandoning your patient, and you wouldn’t want him to. you don’t even want him living in the same country as this fucking place.
why didn’t you open that letter when you had the chance? if it’s not understanding, it’s probably rage, and you want that. you would willingly read in excruciating detail just how fucked up it is that you caused his best friend’s death and then wormed your way so deep into his life that you could see him up close fighting the grief like a fish against the hook. you’d take that. if he tells you to go fuck yourself, fair enough. as long as it’s his words. that letter is the last of him, and you want it.
that letter is the last of him because once you give up alessandra, there’s no coming back. once you give up alessandra, you’re not just a legal liability, not just a burden, but a genuine honest to god piece of shit twice over. you were a piece of shit already, but this?
you only realize you had hope now that you’re losing it. you only know you want to be a doctor once your license is on the line; you only know you were going to go back to him now that the door is receding many more years into the distance. there’s some life left in you, yeah. that’s not a good thing.
.
.
.
when you get up out of bed the next morning to meet your fate, your left eye has swollen up so badly you can barely see out of it. you face the morning, the sudden harsh overheads turning on, with half vision and a desperate, helpless longing to be numb. the numbness doesn’t return, though the leader does.
she sits next to you at breakfast. there’s no enforcer this time. apparently you’re not enough of a threat.
well? she says.
you should’ve cried last night; maybe then you wouldn’t feel such an intense urge to cry now. stupid. you say nothing. you want to pick at the lumps of rubbery scrambled egg on your tray, but you only stare at them.
this is your chance. she doesn’t say it like a threat. she says it like a friend. you sure you have nothing to tell me?
it’s happening, you can feel it happening, but you can barely process. she thinks your silence is a no. she thinks she’s being denied. and you know you need to tell her what she wants to hear, but the guilt of it is so heavy that your mouth stays closed. you’re terrified of her. of yourself. you know what will happen once you crack and open your mouth and let your patient down: your life will be over. and you have no idea of exactly what will happen if you don’t open your mouth, but your imagination can fill in those blanks a thousand different ways.
you’re just fucking scared in all directions, and what it amounts to is this: you keep your mouth shut.
after what feels like hours, the leader speaks.
okay, she says. i’ll pass it on.
she gets up from the table. around you, women are eating and joking and squabbling as usual. it doesn’t feel like you made a decision. it doesn’t feel like the end of anything. it just feels like you’re waiting for the next punch to land.
.
.
.
days go by and you’re still tensed, waiting for that punch. nothing seems to change, but it’s cold comfort. and there’s no comfort in the moral victory, either—discovering that you have a single principle left doesn’t make you feel any better when all your energy goes into keeping your guard up. every dull hour, every dull meal could be taken away from you at any moment. the afternoon light in the laundry room is still beautiful. somebody should try to hurt you, and soon. if they don’t, you’re just going to lose it.
and then there she is. the enforcer, sitting on your bed, when you come back from the laundry room smelling of bleach from the white shirts. the burn on her arm is still bandaged. in full light, she looks even bigger. dirty blonde hair swept back in a ponytail, grey eyes hateful.
when she takes out that blue envelope, your chest tightens. you can tell that she enjoys the look on her face, but it doesn’t last long. it’s strange. she tosses the letter with a dismissive gesture, and it lands on the floor between you.
congratulations. she still hates you, that much is clear—but she’s no longer enjoying herself, and that’s vital. that’s a good sign.
yeah? you say.
jack says you pass.
she shoves past you hard on her way out. it’s all you can do not to snatch up the letter from the ground, to try and look as though you have some kind of control.
.
.
.
> dear julie,
> i don’t know if you remember me, but you dated my best friend mikey a while ago. when i found out you got arrested, i talked to tina about it. she said you helped him till the day he died, and you’re the one who got us narcan.
> that sounds about right to me. i heard negative things about you once, but i never believed them. some things only come around once in a while, like a leap year. (which doesn’t have 365 days, it has 366.) one of those rare things is a friend who’s there when you need them. you have to recognize them when you see them. i think i recognize you now.
> this is just me saying that we haven’t forgotten you. tina says hi, and i’ll come visit, if you’ve got the time to spare. i’m guessing you’re pretty bored in there, and i can honk my horn and take a pie to the face as well as the next guy.
> yours,
> richie
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.
.
yeah, that’s him.
you know it’s him on the first reread, because you can see all the tightness falling away as he writes, from the cramped propriety and false casualness in the first sentences to the dear clown stupidity of the last. you know it’s him on the second reread, because he’s lying in his own way, trying to fit in with what you wanted, pretending he’s just the friend of your ex, not admitting to knowing you. you’re crying. you’ve waited a long time to cry. that’s incidental.
it’s only on the fifth reread that you snag on the part about the leap year. it’s the weirdest part, the parentheses. long after you have the letter half-memorized and tucked away in your bra, after dinner and lights out, you’re thinking on it. you fall asleep to the question and wake up the next morning with the answer.
i’d bet my life that there was a sig p365 in his hand when they found him.
some things only come around once in a while, like a leap year. (which doesn’t have 365 days, it has 366.)
what if it wasn’t you?
no, you’ve been inside for less than two months and you’re already detaching from reality. that’s probably what’s happening here. but you can practically feel the warmth coming off the page, and that’s all that matters.
your nose is practically fountaining snot, and without kleenex, you just wipe it on your sleeve and read the letter again.
it’s only hours later that you stop obsessing over the letter for long enough to truly realize what has happened. you’re going to be okay.
.
.
.
the days pass quiet now. your swelled eye heals up slowly, until one morning you have full vision again. just as before, all you do is sleep, eat, work, and keep to yourself. nothing has changed.
nothing has changed on the surface.
.
.
.
you think about alessandra all the time, because of course you do.
just because old caruso couldn’t get you to flip on her doesn’t mean she’s safe, and yet you think about her the way you think about aja, the way you think about a gap-toothed surgery patient from way back in your residency sometimes. the thing that made you text your bosses begging for news about the carbon monoxide poisoning patients. that’s still in you.
you know you can’t actually save anyone in a way that lasts—any and all work can be undone in an car-crash instant, and sometimes is—but still. one of your patients has to make it, or else what’s the point?
eventually you stop seeing aja around, but you don’t hear any talk about her getting killed, so you figure: that’s the one. that’s the one you got to save. it makes no sense, you know, but you have this feeling that if you get to save anyone, you only get to save one. so you try to prepare for the news that alessandra is gone.
but when the news comes of a death in that family, it’s not the one you expected.
you stare at your lawyer, shocked. wait, so old caruso is dead?
suicide, she says matter of factly. hung himself in his cell.
the fuck? so do we think that… you trail off, mindful of the cameras, even if they’re technically supposed to be turned off for lawyer consultations. you believe he’s dead, but you don’t believe for a second that he actually killed himself.
your lawyer shrugs. who knows. all that matters is that apparently there’s an informer of some sort that’s turned over a bunch of shit—cellphone records, emails—and they’re willing to give an affidavit that you were threatened. there’s a couple pretty graphic and specific examples. for example, allegedly, after the first surgery you performed in the easystop basement, the oldest of caruso’s sons put his hand in the semi-coagulated blood and—
he’s dead now, you feel obligated to say. it’s whatever. you remember it well, though you wish you didn’t.
she’s admirably noncommittal, your lawyer. it would be nice if it wasn’t so annoying. which one is dead now?
most of them, i guess. the father’s dead, the oldest son is dead, and the youngest son will probably never be the same despite your best efforts. considering those numbers, it’s nothing short of a miracle that jack, the middle son, has apparently decided to spare you. you kept your mouth shut on behalf of his wife, but right now there’s such a tangle of complications and so few actual facts available to you that you can’t begin to guess what’s truly happening behind the scenes. you can only be grateful that you haven’t been hurt worse.
your lawyer is considering you with shrewd eyes. after a second, she says, if i can get you a plea deal, will you take it?
i can’t testify, you say automatically.
i know. i think i can get a deal without testimony included.
wait, really?
she gives you a look, as if to say, catch up, dummy.
how many years? you say.
months, possibly. we’ll see.
you hardly know what to say to that. cool, you say, feebly.
you’ve kept your mouth shut, so they’re taking it easy on you, that’s the bottom line. it feels like a copout to escape the worst punishments on the basis that you were coerced, even if that’s true, because you feel like you probably deserve worse. but fuck, you’ll take mercy from anywhere right now, right and wrong and dignity be damned.
i’ll let you know. your lawyer gets up to go, but just as you’re about to call for the guard, she stops short. oh, one last thing. your landlady finally agreed that you don’t need to pay her rent for the past two months.
lovely.
she threw out all of your belongings that the cops didn’t take.
can’t say i’m surprised. it still hurts, but it’s a hurt dwarfed by the immense relief of an imminent plea deal. i’d sue, but we both know my retainer’s gonna run out too soon for that.
she did forward your mail to me, though.
my mail? what is it, a dollar fifty off a personal pan pizza?
one postcard from your mom and her boyfriend and his family. one interview request for a doctoral residency program in indiana.
you don’t know which of those is weirder. the residency applications you mostly did in a period of loneliness and boredom. they were an exercise in desperation daydreaming, not meant to touch real life, and you never even imagined a person reading the papers you submitted. getting a response, a good response, is as strange as a character stepping off a page. and your mom having a boyfriend is no surprise, but a boyfriend with a family? the world’s ended, yeah, but is the world ending?
can you forward those to me? you say.
they’re already in the mail. you should get them within the next two weeks.
when your lawyer leaves, you’re still sitting there. the guard has to call your name twice before you get up.
what a fucking week.
.
.
.
if you’re gonna get out in months, then…
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.
.
you earn seventy-two cents per day working in the laundry. the first time you go to the commissary, you buy a stamp, an envelope, and a blank card. then you smuggle detergent out of the laundry room so you can bribe janine into letting you borrow her pen.
you have richie’s letter memorized, but you read it again anyway. then you stare at the blank white space of the card.
what is there to say? well, fucking everything, but there isn’t much you can say with the inevitable prison guard reading it all too. that cuts you off from saying most things, and then dignity wants you to shut up about the rest. sorry i thought my life was over and tore you to pieces about it. turns out my life isn’t over, can we be friends again?
thing is, if you write him a letter, he’ll write back, even if it’s to tell you to fuck off. and honestly at this point, you’d give up a lot more than dignity for that. so here fucking goes.
> dear richie,
> thank you for writing. i’m not good company right now and i can’t really write letters, but maybe we can get coffee sometime when i’m out?
> yours,
> julie
the yours gives you away, but you have so little else to offer. and besides, he started it.
it’s disciplined. that’s what you’re trying to tell yourself. it’s disciplined and concise and it gets across exactly as much as he needs to know and jesus fucking christ that short note looks absolutely pitiful in the comparatively vast white space of the card.
so you make an addition.
> p.s. tear the bottom off for eva.
as best as you can, you draw the horses from memory. arched necks, white and dark patches on their coats, as close to the style of the girl who loved horses as you can. and then one girl with a superhero’s mask and a cape, holding up an apple so the tallest horse can eat it. you don’t draw well, but you don’t have the pen long enough to try a do-over. there’s a small chance you’ll make her smile, and that’s all you want.
lick envelope, peel stamp, and send.
[ next chapter pending ] [ masterlist ]
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a huge thank you to all readers.
taglist: @garbinge, @narcolini, @drabbles-mc, @beingalive1, @eternallyvenus, @cerial-junkie, @jackierose902109, @shinebright2000, @scorpiolystoned, @fancyvoidtragedy, @justficsandstuff, @fromirkwood, @gills-lounge, @lostfleurs, @spicydonut25— if anyone wants to be added to or removed from the taglist, let me know!
So I was reading Phantom of the Opera and some of Erik's descriptions made me think so much of Gil! I remembered how amazing your Hades and Persephone fic was, and I was hoping you could do something with the Phantom too? Thanks so much!!!!
Hello, Anon! I absolutely adored Erik in the book, and now that I read your ask, I can easily see the similarities, too~ I grew up on a weird blend of the book, musical, and both the 2004 and Lon Chaney films; I tried to honor that blend in this a bit, but a majority was pulled from memories of the book. I hope you enjoy, and thank you for your patience~
The theatre was filled to bursting, the audience awed, riveted, mesmerized, your voice weaving an enchantment over hundreds of unsuspecting admirers.
He was proud of you.
Your voice reached him even in the highest and most of isolated rafters, a platform forgotten- abandoned- by the stagehands stationed several stories below. Your voice was full, carrying all of the strength and conviction and passion as the character you were playing.
Gone was the timid spirit he had stumbled upon all those years ago, broken and shattered from loss, left with only the protections of a then-aloof guardian and a firm, dispassionate teacher.
He was drawn to you from that first day, a twist of compassion, of understanding; in spite of your upbringing and (even then) impressive talent, you were still an outsider, your peers and the other students keeping their distance, leery of your background, and some envious even then.
Yes, the companionship and camaraderie would come in time, but in those first few months, he saw the same loneliness and sadness in you he'd once carried so heavily himself, and his heart ached to comfort you.
The first time he spoke to you was purely accidental, a slip of a whisper he prayed you would dismiss as a ghost, or mere imagination. He had grown too comfortable in answering you when you were alone, his voice always near silent as you spoke to your mother, your father, and sometimes the angels themselves.
It was the latter with which you had caught him, crying out with a broken heart after discovering another student had sabotaged your satin slippers, intent on seeing your failure, your embarrassment, and (as likely was the case with that particular little shrew) your dismissal from the school.
But you persevered, successfully completed your performance, never once showing your distress until you were away from the others. It was only then, hidden away in a forgotten practice room that you showed your anger, your sadness, your hopelessness. The mask had fallen, and he was once again struck by the beauty of the fractured soul he admired so deeply.
"Please," you whispered, and it broke his heart to hear it, "I feel so alone."
It ached, being unable to comfort you, seeing your progress and healing of the past few months tested so needlessly. He ached for you; he was angry for you.
"You are not alone."
It was a fleeting, foolish slip, his temper and his longing both getting the better of him. Your sudden silence choked his own breath, his entire body freezing in terror.
For a moment, for an eternity, there was naught but silence.
He didn't dare move, fearful of how even the slightest shift of fabric could give him away, could startle you, could-
"I was half-afraid I had gone mad, speaking with shadows and expecting them to finally reply."
You were... teasing him, only a little, though at the time he was still petrified that you would demand he reveal himself. You had moved closer to the false panel, studying it closely, seeking out any faults that might give away its secrets. For a moment, your eyes were perfectly level with his own, and he feared you could hear his heart racing in his chest.
But soon enough you had drawn away, crestfallen. "Perhaps I have gone mad," you murmured, sighing in defeat. "Perhaps the rumors are true, and you are nothing but a ghost."
Memories of his time spent serving in the court of a distant empire flickered to memory, a rueful sound resembling laughter slipped past his defenses. "Of the many things they may wish and claim me to be, dead is not yet among them."
Your focus once more returned to the panel, and he instinctively took a step back. "Please-" he began, quickly cutting himself off.
Where others would have pressed forward, you paused, then took several steps away from the wall, granting him his distance, a warm sense of appreciation, and another he couldn't name at the time, sparkling to the surface at the warm breath of relieved laughter you released soon after. "You- You're really there."
That moment, one he could still so clearly remember as the peripeteia, the decided, unexpected change to a familiar script, one which would set the trajectory of both of your lives for the next ten years. It would lead to many late nights spent in practice, in conversation, in debates about the literary characters you loved so dearly. "I am always here."
Your aria had drawn to a close, the spell broken by the deafening roar of the audience's applause, and Gilbert was pulled from his memories, unable to conceal his smile.
Brava, Schatz. Bravissima.
He stood to his full height and began to make his way towards the nearby ladder.
For your role, another scene yet remained- a joyful reunion between your character and the valiant hero following the defeat of the jealous villain, a happy end to a romance so riddled with tragedy.
Gilbert needn't see the ending; it was a tale as old as time.
His footsteps were silent and certain, following a path he could traverse in his sleep; he had already paced it many times in his dreams.
Of all the false doors he had constructed in his opera house, there was one he had yet to pass through, one which now loomed before him. The room beyond was bathed in the ethereal golden glow of candlelight, a world outside of the darkness, fueling even more of the torment already plaguing his mind.
He was haunted by his doubts, by his need to... His need to properly introduce himself.
You had risen so high, could fly even higher, could rise above anything the fools in this theatre could ever hope to imagine. With your voice, your grace, your elegance, and your perspicacity, he had no doubts you could soar to a realm where only angels once dare tread. Perhaps it was wrong to want to burden you, to-
Movement on the other side of the glass brought his thoughts once more to a standstill. You were laughing, carefree, glowing with happiness and a brilliant light which followed everyone through the corridors after a triumphant performance. His heart fluttered to see you so beautifully framed, a living portrait he yearned to touch.
He frowned at the thought.
These feelings...
He had cared for you when you first arrived, a deep friendship slowly growing, even as he never allowed you to glance upon him. Slowly, then almost in an erupting whirlwind, those feelings had adapted, deepened, solidified. He was left hoping, wishing...
You were an Angel, in the most benevolent, compassionate of ways, but even an Angel would surely shun a Devil's Child.
For that was what his eyes and his appearance had always been: that of a devil. And surely-
Another figure was entering the room, and you were quick to abandon the comfort of your velvet settee, rushing to embrace-
No.
You were laughing, falling into conversation with an ease that only came-
You were familiar with this... this boy.
Perhaps even intimate, his traitorous thoughts interfered, the herald to the invasive darkness which followed.
It was a cold, bitter thing, rising from the depths, twisting and corrupting his every breath.
He had been careless, allowing you your freedom, allowing you to slip away to the gilded sanctuary of your guardian's maison de ville.
This boy dared to presume he could even look upon you, let alone embrace you, speak with you so candidly, even addressing you by your given name-
Gilbert felt his rage, his envy, grow stronger, even as that bedamned Raoul finally departed for the evening, leaving your bright smile in his wake.
You often called Gilbert your "Angel of Music," a bringer of light to your once dreary and dark days. You used it affectionately, a term of endearment for one you saw as a companion, a compatriot in curiosity.
But much like his namesake, Gilbert was Fallen, cursed, a creature of shadows and Night.
It took so little to pull him back into the Darkness, and now, with the sting of envy plaguing his every thought, Avarice and Doubt whispering in his ear, his ambitions had changed.
You were his.
He would ensure no one else could dare claim you, would have the slightest chance at your heart.
With skill honed from years of practice, Gilbert silently slid open the trap door, his voice carrying over to you in a tone he himself barely recognized. "Insolent boy. The impertinence of him, sharing in our triumph."
You startled at his voice, turning to him instinctively, your eyes widening in disbelief, before you graced him with your brightest smile yet.
Your joy glittered with more radiance than any star in the heavens, but its glimmer eclipsed your awareness, obscuring the darkness in the figure stealing ever closer.
"Hello, Engel."
Thanks for reading!
Special shout-out to @the-scribe-and-her-scribbles for unwittingly inspiring me today to finally sit down and write. She's an amazing writer, and if you haven't checked it out already, I highly recommend her ongoing series It Will Come Back.
Carrillo x gn!reader, 1.1k
for @narcosfandomdiscord's july smut alphabet: upper hand
He has a key to your apartment, but he’s not used it in a while. Too exhausted, maybe. You flatter yourself that you’re an easy person to be with, all messy hair and eggs in the morning if he stays that long, domesticity a la carte, but he does make an effort when he shows up. Usually he brings something. It used to be flowers as a rule, but nowadays the gifts are more varied, as if in concession to your less romantic and more homey bent: a half dozen oranges, a used book, a bag of coffee.
Things are hard on him, you know. This week you heard Adán giving him away on one of the tapes, and though that hunt isn’t over (Adán is still walking around the place, laboring under the merciful delusion that Carrillo escaped the trap by way of a car breakdown) its predestined funeral is already weighing on him.
You’ve cocooned yourself as best as you can, tried not to get emotionally involved with anyone at work—anyone else, that is—but there is trickle down. There’s been a little too much time gone past. There’s a cold bed, there’s a bag of coffee nearly running out, there’s—
You miss him. Put it plain. You miss him, you do.
Not being much of a talker, nor willing to make him an offer that’d be too painfully refused, you give yourself a bit of cover and the upper hand. You approach him when almost the entire office is long gone home.
It’s a sea of darkness illuminated by the occasional little island of lamplight coming from a desk: Urrutia, just leaving; Peña, leaning back in his chair; Carrillo, framed by the window to his office.
You knock gently before you let yourself in and lock the door after you. You make eye contact with Peña through the open blinds, then close them. Carrillo is looking up at you from the desk, pen still in hand, keeping his questions to himself with rare patience.
You need a haircut and a shave, you don’t say. The two of you talk of nothing but work here, and he never touches you, and that is the way of it. That’s his rules. That can continue.
As you walk towards him, he stands up. Not wary, but collected, ready for anything. His lips part like he’s got something to say, and you can’t have that. Whatever it is, you don’t think you want to hear it. He’s before you now, and in the split second before the first syllable can slide out of his mouth, you slip your hand between his shirt and his trousers, grip the canvas hard, and tug towards you a little.
The trick is not to try and read his eyes. They’re near black and bottomless. Then there’s the rest of his face, stubble, scattering of scabs at his temple, shadows that cling to his jaw like they love him: just let the raw beauty cut into you, just stand there and take it as the warmth of him bleeds through his shirt and into your knuckles. Hold that gaze.
“I always obey orders,” you say. The door might be locked, but he’s got a way out. All it’d take is a word.
“I wouldn’t let you in here if you didn’t,” he says.
He’s letting you. It sends an warm rush of relief through you, viscerally good and viscerally alarming at once; you’d given yourself the excuse of being at work to cover for him if he turned you away, and yet it turns out that excuse was too flimsy. If he’d said no, it would have mattered a great deal.
But he didn’t say no, so you press your other hand flat against his stomach and feel the slight tensing and then relaxing under your fingers as reward. You smile a little at that, and he doesn’t smile, but his face gentles, looking at you. The warmth of your palm a promise. I’ll take care of you.
You look down and unbutton his trousers, reach inside his briefs, and kneel.
The floor is hard and cold against your knees, he’s soft and salt in your mouth, and then there it is—the slight shake in his long slow exhale. You grip his thigh through the canvas, fingertips digging in a little, and take your time with your work.
You’ve never talked about it, but you know you’re the only one who gets to do this, and that’s the pull of it. That, and the power, the way his breathing goes heavier. Lungs don’t lie. When you look up, it’s hard to tell in this light, but you could swear his eyes are closed. You take him down as deep as you can, welcome the burn in your throat. You’ll choke if it means you can make him stutter. Fair trade.
When he comes, he has to put one hand on his desk to steady himself. He’s breathing like he’s run a race, still trying to stay quiet even though he can’t. With no towel to hand and an endless will to watch him shiver, you lick him clean. His hand on his desk is a fist, and you can see the tendons tensed in his inner wrist too.
Once he’s clean, you sit back on your heels and wait for him to open his eyes. He does so slowly, looks down at you through a haze, heavy-lidded and as full of intent as though he hasn’t already come. You wipe your mouth with the back of your hand.
When you stand, you stand close enough to feel his body heat, invading his personal space. He’s no longer panting, but he’s still breathing a little faster than usual. You tuck him back in, zip and button up his pants, and stay where you are. If you won’t touch him, he still won’t touch you; it’s delicious and excruciating at once. He smells like sweat and cigarettes, fucking rank. You eye the hollow of his throat just above the neckline of his shirt, golden like all of him is golden in this light. You consider just begging.
After a second, he takes his hand off his desk.
You lean in. there’s a spot just behind the corner of his jaw, and you press a lingering kiss there, deliberately; it’s the only place you’re touching him, until it isn’t. He turns his head towards you, and then you’re cheek to cheek, his stubble scraping your skin. You’ve had his cock in your mouth, and yet it’s that that makes you blush, somehow. When you pull back, you’re not sure if you want him to see it.
You walk away. Your own footsteps seem unnaturally loud. As you unlock the door, you say, “Come see me when it’s over.”
“As you command,” he says, and that makes you smile a crooked little smile, despite it all: that’s your line.
The door unlocks. I love you. No, you don’t say it, and you don’t say goodbye either. You walk. You’re already gone.
Summary: Scar returns to Hermitcraft after a personal best in MCC only to discover you've picked up on a particular nickname he's given himself.
A/N: This was going to be a short one-shot to make a few dumb innuendos and a High School Musical reference and then it grew like Scar’s chest monster. I’m very tempted to write a chapter two/second installment if anyone desires because Scar’s voice recording in Pearl’s new video has rendered me weak.
Stepping through the portal that connects Hermitcraft to the wider universe, Scar braces himself against the smooth obsidian, grateful for the cool stone beneath his palm. After a day of taxing situations, both physical and mental, quiet was what Scar craved. Minecraft Championships was something he looked forward to monthly, and he was happy and honored to be included, but he can’t deny the toll it puts upon his mind and body. This was his best MCC performance thus far, and he grins thinking of his 26th individual placement – his highest score yet. While the other participating Hermits returned to the server ages ago, Scar decided to stick around, needing to desperately burn off some pent-up energy by chatting with new friends. HBomb and Pete were such fun guys, and he socialized so little outside of Hermitcraft; it would be a waste to let those friendships fall to the wayside because of something as trivial as exhaustion.
Of course, as he takes his first shaky steps toward his home, he questions his decision-making ability. Who thought allowing him to make decisions was a good idea anyway?
It isn’t long before Scar stumbles to the entrance of his tree, taking a moment to wave hello to the ravager looming within the foliage down the path. A bath is what he craves, and he uses his remaining energy to barrel through his home, straight to the bathing area he’d set up, hidden from prying eyes. Not like anyone has actively pried on him, but a man can never be too careful on any server containing Zedaph and his spyglass.
Allowing the water to rush over him, Scar lolls his head back, thoughts drifting to the day now behind him. He had done his best and was pleased with the results of his practice. And, to be honest, he was even more pleased with everyone else’s praise of his newfound improvement. The tips you’d suggested to him had paid off tenfold, and Scar can only hope he is on an upward trajectory from here on out.
The recollection of practice slowly fades, leaving only thoughts of the one thing he had spent all day attempting to avoid focusing on; you. You had yet to get your invitation to MCC, but everyone knew it was only a matter of time now. Your skill speaks for itself, and if it weren’t for the already long waiting list, your name would have made it onto a team based on skill alone. Skills, Scar hates to say, he finds overwhelmingly attractive. He isn’t quite sure why watching you hit crits on mobs is so mesmerizing, but it is. He should probably unpack that one day, but today is not the day for introspection.
Pulling himself out of the bath before his thoughts take a turn, he dries off, heading to his bedroom to dress. Jellie lies across the middle of his bed - her bed, really - stretched in a way that seems physically impossible for a cat to take up so much room.
“Why, hello Jellie! How’s my girl doing? Did you miss me?” He asks, deft fingers scratching at her head as she pushes into his palm. Scar revels in the consistent purr she emits, immediately overwhelmed by a sense of comfort.
Tossing on some more casual attire, Scar shakes his head a few times, deciding to forgo drying his hair and allowing it to air dry. Jellie has abandoned him, jumping from his bed to a windowsill, enraptured by something beyond Scar’s field of vision. Scar’s not entirely sure what to do with himself now. Most of the Hermits will be preparing for their evenings, and he’s far too drained to begin working on a project. Perhaps a bit of fresh air will clear his mind.
Scar heads outside, resting in the cool shade granted to him by his build. Though it’s nearing dinner time and the traces of dusk are filtering in, the heat hangs heavy in the air. It’s not so much stifling as it is irritating; a sign that summer is finally on its way out but continues to clutch desperately to the world. He can vaguely hear Mumbo and Grian yelling not too far away and, for a moment, contemplates joining in their fun but shakes off the urge. He finds himself enjoying the white noise of the area, already maxed out after the roar of MCC. Leaning back into the stone adorning his home’s entrance, he takes a moment to close his eyes and savor the soft breeze, the shouts of his friends fading into the distance. He specifically built the door to his base this way, tucked downhill just enough where he can be outside but not necessarily be seen. Calm in the eye of the storm, a place of comfort, a home where-
“So, do I need to start calling you Sand Daddy now?”
Scar’s head jerks forward, lifting away from the entrance toward the source of your voice, eyes crinkling as he squints into the setting sun to make out your silhouette. He finally spots you a few feet away, back pressed into the wooden trunk of the acacia tree shrouding the area in patches of light and shadow. Scar’s exhaustion fades into the back of his mind as his eyes take you in, unable to tell if you’re there or if the effects of the day have simply caught up to him.
“Hello?” Scar asks, voice shaky.
“You did well.”
Ah. So that is you. Gathering himself quickly, Scar fires back.
“I’m sorry. Care to repeat that?” Scar is fully aware you can hear the smirk in his voice, and he’s banking on your annoyance to continue this conversation.
“Are you asking because you couldn’t understand or just to hear me praise you again?”
Scar doesn’t miss a beat.
“Does it matter?”
“Absolutely. I’m much more willing to clarify than compliment; you know that.”
“So you were impressed!” Scar exclaims. Crossing his arms over his chest, Scar shifts his weight to the right, allowing his shoulder to fall to the wall. Under the lanterns adorning his walkway, Scar looks mischievous, shrouded in shadow.
Scar sighs overdramatically, knowing it will humor you.
“And to think, here I was, thinking you would come and tell me I’m a parkour god, the true H0tGuY, the king of Rocket Spleef. Instead, I get a ‘you did well.’ How demoralizing after that amazin’ MCC practice we did.”
The quiet of Scar’s base allows him to hear you giggle, which is his goal in any situation.
“I assure you, I planned to come over here to shower you with praise regardless of the outcome, but then I watched MCC and heard everyone calling you Sand Daddy. I can’t beat that nickname; why even try?” You ask with a chuckle, descending the pathway to saunter directly into Scar’s eye line.
“Hey, I earned that one!”
You laugh as you raise your hands in defense, shifting onto your heels.
“I’m not arguing! Though you did kind of call yourself that, but I’ll let it slide. The practice absolutely helped. You guys killed it out there.” You admit, allowing your hands to drop to your sides as you look up to meet Scar’s eyes.
The soft breeze returns, tickling lightly on your skin yet heavy enough to blow a few errant hairs directly into Scar’s eyes. He attempts to flick them away with a snap of his head but fails, only bringing more into his line of sight. He huffs, shifting his gaze to the stray hair as if glaring at it will force it to behave. It’s wonderfully endearing, and the tips of his slightly pointed ears rush red with embarrassment.
“Do you really think I did well?” Scar says, eyes still trained on his own hair.
“I suppose you didn’t do too bad,” you offer with an exaggerated shrug, so he understands you’re teasing. Scar’s lip quirks just enough for you to know he picked up on it, but he stays silent. Clearly, he needs more convincing. You drop all pretense and speak in your normal voice, devoid of teasing.
“You did amazingly well. I was screaming my head off the entire event. We all were, to be fair, but I think I might have burst poor Stress’s eardrums during Rocket Spleef. Even the events you did so-so on were a vast improvement from your last MCC. People were talking about how they underestimated you. So yeah, I guess you did do well. You may even convince me to say I’m proud of you, but I’m not tired enough to let that one slip yet,” You joke, winking at him.
Even in the orange-hued light given off by the lanterns, Scar knows you can see the blush on his face. He’s not going to try and hide it; there's no point in covering for what he already suspects you know. Scar’s enamored with you, and any crumb of attention you’re willing to throw his way will have him on cloud nine for the next week. That little speech was enough to satiate him for the rest of the year. Face burning, Scar meets your eyes and is shaken by the soft gaze you’re returning to him. Gone is your trademark smirk, the glint of trouble that’s always simmering just beneath the surface. Here he sees you laid bare, and he can’t deny how happy he is that you spoke honestly.
“Thank you,” he manages to verbalize, “that means a lot.”
You scoff lightly. “Just speaking the truth. You shouldn’t be so surprised. You’re pretty impressive on an average day already.” You reply, voice with just a tinge more edge than before. “I mean that last round of Rocket Spleef; I didn’t realize you were such a show-off!”
It’s Scar’s turn to laugh now as he thinks back to that moment. His team was cheering for him, egging him on to show these kids how it’s done. He may be good with a bow, but anyone who wants to hit ultra peak velocity shots, as he calls them, needs to know how to dodge and weave with the best of them. Everyone in MCC is talented, but it was nice to show some of the PVPers they should try picking up an elytra once in a while.
“What can I say? Top Gun isn’t going to remake itself! Figured it was worth giving everyone a bit of a show.”
“Oh, you gave everyone a show, that’s for sure, H0tGuY,” you joke, taking a step closer to Scar. “It was nice seeing you confident out there. You looked good.” Your smirk remains, but there’s a new glint in your eyes. One Scar has seen in fleeting moments, but as you hold his gaze, the look burns through his very core.
“Did I now?” Scar asks, eyebrow quirked. Unsure he is reading this situation correctly, Scar attempts to stay on solid ground, but your compliments go straight to his head.
“Mmhm. How often do I have to say it before you believe it?”
“Roughly ten thousand more times. By then, we might get over the worst of it.”
“Hmm. Better get started. I’ll need a dictionary to satiate you, I think.” You joke, looking up at Scar through your lashes.
“I’ll order you one of those word of the day calendars for the holidays. Maybe you can use that for some inspiration!”
Laughing, you’re fully aware that Scar would do something exactly like that just to follow through on the joke.
“Wow, compliments and a challenge all rolled into one; you know me too well. All of my favorite things.”
“Two down, how many to go?”
“Oh c’mon, Scar, I’m sure you can figure that out for yourself, don’t you think?”
There’s a tension permeating the air, similar to when a thunderstorm is on the way, but nary a raindrop has fallen. A storm that has been building since this conversation started. Neither wishes to drop their gaze, but you look away first, eyes trailing down Scar’s face and over his body. Your eyes flick back up, a soft smile again playing on your lips. The space between you is respectable, close enough, but nothing improper, at least not yet. You lean forward just a tad, enough where you can make out the scent of Scar’s body wash but not crash into his chest.
“As a heads up, get some good rest tonight. I think Keralis will be waking us all up unfathomably early.” You say with a grin.
“Keralis? Why would he be gathering us all so early?” Scar asks, already counting back the hours from morning to determine what constitutes a good night’s sleep.
“Well, you didn’t hear it from me, but apparently, he wanted to celebrate how good y’all did today. Breakfast buffet at the Bamboo lounge. You know how Keralis loves to throw a soiree.”
“…Wasn’t she in High School Musical?’
“A soiree Scar, not Sharpay. A party. He’s throwing a party in the morning,” You reply, desperately attempting to hide your laughter and failing miserably.
“Ah. Well, that does make more sense. Though, oddly enough, if anyone were a friend of someone in that movie, I’d place a bet on Keralis.”
“I…I honestly can’t argue with you there.”
A peaceful silence falls as you exchange smiles. Scar shifts, crossing his arms again, and you can’t fight the urge to ogle the way his slender fingers lay across his bicep. Scar’s always been an attractive man, but you can’t deny he is far more toned than you noticed. The unexpected muscle paired with the soft, comfortable-looking tee and sweatpants combination he’s wearing sends your brain into overdrive. You’d helped him film Hotguy: The Siege, yet this was the most attractive he’s ever looked. Between the dressed-down outfit and the messy, fluffy hair Scar is currently rocking, the moment suggests domesticity. It’s cozy, one could say. Life is nice like this; warm and safe amidst the trees and dimmed lights of Scar’s base.
“Are you going to be there?”
Scar’s voice breaks you from your domestic daydreaming.
“Hm?”
“At the sharpay. Will you be honoring us with your presence?”
“While I usually loathe the BDubs early morning approach to life, I would never miss a Keralis breakfast. Keralis breakfast means one thing –“
“XB’s cooking,” you say simultaneously.
A smile creeps onto your face at the synergy you share.
“Plus, you’ll put on a good show.”
It’s Scar’s turn to look puzzled by your words.
“Good show?”
“Of course. I’m planning on a mimosa in one hand, XB’s French Toast in another, and watching you turn bright red every time a Hermit compliments you on your 26th placement, Sand Daddy.”
“Oh my god.”
“You’re doing it now!” You exclaim, throwing a finger into Scar’s flushed face. “A teeny bit of praise, and you get all blushy and shy. It’s fantastic. You go from Top Gun to Weird Science in a minute flat.”
“I’m so glad my suffering amuses you.” Scar’s deadpan delivery directly rivals the mirth in his eyes.
“Incredibly so.” You say with a wink. “But you deserve all the praise tomorrow, so be prepared for people to lay it on thick, Mister Rocket Spleef Rush Top 5 Finisher.”
Scar feels his face burning at your comments.
“So you did watch closely, huh?”
“Couldn’t let my H0TGuY down now, could I?” You ask, immediately wincing as your voice cracks.
“So I’m your H0TGuY now?” Scar says quickly, arms falling to his sides. “Works for me.”
You giggle, prepared to fire back with another witty comment when you catch Scar’s gaze. He’s giving you a look far too serious to be contested with banter. His eyes are scrutinizing you, and you feel nervous under their surveillance. It’s hard to maintain eye contact, especially as Scar tilts his head back for a moment to stretch his neck, jawline on display. You can feel his stare as your eyes trace the long line of his neck down to the scoop neck of his shirt, memorizing the pattern of every scar littering the area. His hair flops back down into his eyes as he realigns himself before you, clearly smirking as if he’s finally figured you out.
“You never answered my question, by the way,” you squeak, your voice breathier than intended.
Scar’s smirk grows as he tips his head to one side.
“Hm? And which question was that, troublemaker?”
“Do I need to start calling you Sand Daddy now?’ You ask, feigning bashfulness for a moment. “Or are you more into just part of that nickname” You trail off, eyes slowly dragging up Scar’s frame as you step into his personal space. When you finally meet his eyes, you’re only inches apart, and you find yourself swooning over the way Scar’s face scrunches in confusion, his teeth jutting out to bite at his bottom lip.
“Why would I want you to call me sand?”
God, you love this idiot.
Throwing all caution to the wind, you lean in, resting your forehead on Scar’s chest. Just as you imagined, his shirt is equally soft and thin. Thin enough, in fact, that despite the cool breeze, you can perceive his body heat radiating against you. Scar’s hands lift to rest lightly at your waist, unsure. Heart pumping, you turn your head to the side, lounging calmly against him as you speak.
“Not that one, Scar.”
“Well then, what do you…Oh.”
“Oh?”
“OH.”
Scar’s voice is breathless, and you swear you faintly pick up on his heart racing beneath your ear. A moment passes before his arms move, one delicately moving around your low back, the other raising to tilt your chin back.
“I can’t say I’d be opposed to that, but I’ve never tried it before.” Scar mutters. His voice drops a few octaves, and the inside of your brain feels like Joe’s pinball machine as his deep timbre bounces around. “But you know I’m always willing to practice.”
Scar looks at you for a moment, and you tilt your head toward him in a nod. Closing your eyes, Scar’s breath flits over your lashes as you wait for his lips to touch yours.
“SCAR, PLEASE INFORM GRIAN THAT NO, WARDENS ARE NOT GIFTS.”
“I’M JUST SAYING THEY COULD BE MUMBO!! YOU NEED TO EXPAND YOUR MIND!”
“WELL, YOU NEED A SERIOUS…”
You and Scar jump at the sound of voices coming up the walkway, separating as quickly as possible. You’re both noticeably flushed, practically panting from the anticipation of moments ago. Scar’s shirt is slightly crumpled from where your head rested, and you’re sure your ears are as red as Grian’s sweater. Sneaking a peek, Mambo and Grian stand a few feet away, staring wide-eyed in your direction.
“Grian, I feel as though we’ve interrupted a moment.”
“Was that a moment?
“I would distinctly consider that a moment.”
“What kind of moment? Good moment? Bad moment?”
“Please stop talking.” Scar says, sighing, both palms pressed into his eyes. “Please, for the love of Jellie, stop talking.”
“Right. Well. Uh. I suppose we can discuss Wardens tomorrow, Scar. Let’s go!”
Grian’s rocket sets off before the words leave his mouth, soaring through Scar’s tree.
“Yes, well. Uh. Terrible sorry, friends. I’ll just be going.” Mumbo stutters, face quickly reddening. He fires his rocket to follow Grian’s exit, knocking into several branches before you’re sure he’s gone.
“I want to murder them.” Scar admits. “I love them dearly, but I also want to murder them.”
You can’t help but chuckle. “I think that’s how the entire server feels about them most of the time.”
Scar snorts and the two of you fall back into silence.
“Kinda killed the moment there.” Scar confesses. “Sorry about, y’know. Them.”
“It’s to be expected. Never a dull moment around here.” You respond with a smile and a shrug.
“Never thought I’d say this, but I think I’m ready for a few more dull moments around here.”
“Yeah? What a coincidence; I was just thinking the same thing.”
Scar looks up at the sky, a light smile pulling at his lips.
“Breakfasts are really dull, don’t you think? Honestly, whose favorite part of the day is breakfast?”
“Notoriously boring. Only a true demon would love waking up early for breakfast.”
“I completely agree.” Scar looks over to you, the sparkle returning to his eyes.
“So, I’ll meet you at your base in the morning? You have to wake up early to get the first batch of mimosas after all. Can’t have you oversleeping and getting a bad seat to the show.”
“I’ll set three alarms just in case.” You beam back at Scar, head filled with fewer nerves and more anticipation.
“Would you like me to walk you home?” Scar asks, but you wave him off.
“No, it’s fine; it’s a short walk. You had a busy day. You should get some rest.” Straightening yourself out, you return to standing in Scar’s personal space.
“Besides, you’ll need your energy tomorrow.”
“True. Breakfast will take a lot out of me, I’m sure,” Scar jokes.
“Mhmm.” You murmur, hands reaching for Scar’s own.
“Plus, we have a practice session scheduled for tomorrow. It seems we have some new things to try out.”
Scar’s eyes widen at your words, mouth opening and closing a few times before squeaking a response.
“Yes. Yes, of course. Practice makes perfect and all that.” Scar’s response is fewer words and more stream-of-consciousness rambling, but you find it adorable all the same.
“Goodnight, Sand Daddy.” Scar’s face is a mixture of amusement and adoration, your favorite. Popping up on your tiptoes, you quickly press a kiss to the corner of Scar’s mouth before dropping back down.
“Goodnight.” Scar whispers.
Turning to make your exit, you pause at the edge of Scar’s walkway to take one last look. Peeking out from behind your original Acacia tree spot, you’re secluded enough to be out of Scar’s eyesight. As Scar turns to reenter his home, he pumps his arm a few times in happiness, attempting what looks to be a little dance of joy. Rolling your eyes, you turn and head home, and for the first time in your life, you can’t wait to wake up early.
"You had seen into the very heart of Owen Harper, and it had burned. It had torn through you with the same devastating force as the bullet which had ripped though him not-so-long ago, leaving a gaping wound in your chest which was likely to never fully heal."
