The Ghost With The Most

Fire and Blood.

As a priestess of the Lord of Light, the dragon kings had always called to you. They'd lost their fire long ago, of course, but R'hllor had not abandoned them, and sometimes when you stared into the flames you thought you could see the shape of great wings among the twisting light, fanning small sparks brighter and brighter until they leapt high with ambition and strength. Your lord speaks, and you listen, striking out at once to attend where you can.

When you arrive at Ashford, it's a grim affair: the tourney grounds dissembled quickly, a large pyre built up where blood had watered the soil only days before. Asking around, you learn quickly of a tragic chain of events which had ended with the crown prince's untimely death. A Trial of Seven. The notion nearly makes you scoff, but you can't deny that a sudden shift in the line of succession intrigues you. Perhaps Prince Valarr would be sympathetic to your cause. Young princes often needed guidance, and none more so than those without fathers. So you make your way closer to the royal family in their grief, watching from as close as you are able as the young heir sends away great knights and grasping cousins in his grief, making himself alone. Yes, R'hllor was truly wise to bring you here. 

But as the pyre burns and you watch the flames, a new path opens before you. In the twisting shadows you glimpse a field of underripe crop, left to rot in the pale spring sun. Mealworms eat the roots, squirming blindly in the dark, their little wings not enough to escape the fat raven that feasts on them. On the horizon, there loom two titans and as the flames begin to take the dead prince's linen shroud, you make your choice which to side with. 

No one stops you when you leap onto the pyre, all just as stunned as you are to find yourself picking your way up the high rise of kindling. It hurts, the skin of your palms peeling away with each charred bough you break to get to him, but you manage it, and then you're shoving him unceremoniously to the ground, tumbling after him as you try to remember the spell to reignite his flame. 

***

When Baelor rises again, the first thing he notes is the first thing he notes is the quiet in his bones. Around him, a crowd swirls close, churning up mud he doesn't remember lying in. Their steps echo loudly, confused whispers sawing at the edge of his hearing. But below that, at his center - nothing. He hears no pulse despite the fever suddenly burning his flesh, and the merciless ringing in his ear that has bothered him ever since he took that glancing blow from Blackfyre in the tourney that earned him his moniker seemed leagues away now. 

It's frightening, almost. Makes him feel alone in his skin - which, being as it is royal skin, with all the destinies and duties etched into it - is a decidedly unfamiliar feeling. Where are his sons? Maekar? He looks around for them frantically, but all he finds is you.

You, leaning over him, haloed by the sun, an ethereal beauty who frowns down at him, concerned. You smell like burning sages, pungent herbs he recognizes for their healing and regenerative properties. You're familiar at once, though he's unsure why. Can barely even see your face for the way the light nearly swallows you whole. He reaches out, barely even registers that his hand is clean and bare, and touches your face.

"Your Grace?" You ask, voice hesitant or maybe incredulous - as if it's a shock to see him. As if you're not a very miracle come to save him -

But from what?

"Brother!"

Before he can ask your name, Baelor is yanked rather unceremoniously to his feet. For a moment, the world tilts up to meet him, but Maekar's arms are strong and sure around his wrist, and he feels delicate hands at his back as well, popping him up as he regains his footing. The prince is confused, looking down at himself, barefoot in the mud with nothing but a singed scrap of linen clinging to his form. 

"Where am I?" He asks, though that's not quite what he's missing. They're still at Ashford, he can see plainly enough, but the fiel has been transformed, the scaffolding and the fences all disassembled and thrown to the fire that rages on his left. It's huge, all-consuming, and yet Baelor doesn't register the heat on his face, nor the glare in his vision when he looks directly at it.

Strange.

"Ashford Meadow," Maekar explains. "You were -. We thought -."

"You were dead, Your Grace," you explain bluntly, and both princes turn to you. Maekar unamused, Baelor confused.

"The Lord of Light has brought you back."

R'hllor. Baelor has heard rumors of this new, red god, but only that. A new threat rising to keep the Faith of the Seven distracted with their own problems for once. Perhaps they were right to do so.

You give your name when Maekar demands it, explaining how you knew where to be in order to help. By his prickliness, Maekar hardly believes a word, but Baelor can feel the truth of it, feel the fire burning within even as his pyre dwindles without him. The Gods have a purpose for him - or at least one does - and the thought of it is just as thrilling as it is daunting. He'll need you, he knows instantly, to guide him and to spread the word. No more would House Targaryen bow to Old Town, free to live as Valyrians of old.

Firm hands grip your shoulders. You take one quick moment to crane your neck with hopes to see who it is. When you see what it is, a scream rips through your throat so hard that blood froths in your mouth. Then it pushes you into the abyss.

You jolt awake every time, a scream on the edge of your lips. The only thing you’re able to stop is the noise you make.

There isn't much in your life. You lived in the same house you grew up in — an old, neglected structure that was left to you in your grandmother's will. It sat on a massive piece of unkept land in the middle of nowhere, nearly an hour from the nearest town that you tried your hardest to never visit. You would keep your solitude until it killed you.

But despite the emptiness of your days, the nights brought a different kind of presence.

While the house was old, it seemed to come alive at night when you were alone and it was pitch black outside. It would quake under its own weight, as if it were unable to bear the knowledge of the things that happened within it. The sound of it settling was like listening to the groans of a dying beast, begging to be put out of its misery. Whenever the wind was blowing outside and caused your grandmother's collection of crosses to rattle against the wall, you would contemplate it.

The one thing — person, actually — that stopped you, was Johnny.

You had met after your hot water heater broke in the middle of winter and you spent hours calling every repairman in the state. He was recommended to you and had been there in an hour after you contacted him. Since then, he was the only one you trusted to fix the house as it slowly eroded around you.

He was handy and not bad to look at — ignoring the large scar on his left temple — but the one thing that put you at ease the most when you met was the crucifix around his neck. You hadn't been practicing for some years at that point, but the golden chain he wore still brought you some comfort.

If he hadn't been so odd. Something about a brain injury while he was serving that left him a little off kilter, but still okay enough to be a damn good repairman. You were too grateful for him to have saved you in the middle of a snowstorm to be bothered by his behavior.

Truly, you expected to never see him again and just be left with an ache between your legs and a cold, empty house. You suddenly loved living in that old house, as odd jobs popped up here and there that he was always happy to come by and work on. Johnny knew every repair came with a meal attached to the meager payment you could offer, and that was somehow enough for him. Deep down, you knew he was just as lonely and broken as you were.

You were almost giddy when your AC broke that summer and Johnny answered your call to fix it. You had half a mind to proposition yourself to him that time, but then the crosses on the wall caught the corner of your eye and you couldn't get him out of there fast enough. It didn't matter that you didn't practice anymore because you were convinced god was still watching.

Sending him out of the cool house that summer, into the sweltering heat that hung heavy in the air and clogged your lungs, felt like a form of self flagellation. The need to repent still hung heavy around him. Every inch of the house you let him near needed to be cleansed. For what reason, you weren't sure yet.

You had scrubbed the floors for days as your grandmother's acrimonious lectures wailed in your mind. The horrible memories clung to your mind until your fingernails were bloody and your hands were raw and cracked. It made no sense to you why you felt the need to cleanse the house after Johnny had left.

Maybe you hated the raw need that he stirred within you. After being alone for so long, it was no surprise that a stranger could pull out such heady feelings from you.

Maybe you feared that he could see the filth that stained the bones of the house and hoped cleaning hide the decay and death that hung around. Or maybe you feared that he'd see it and never come back, and leave you all alone again.

Or maybe, just maybe, there was something wicked in him that made everything else tainted and filthy.

Every repair after Johnny was like wearing a wrong size shoe. You had to get used to the fact that no one had the same attention to detail as he did, no one had the correct parts — you dealt with so much bullshit about 'needing to special order' some random item to fix things that felt like they broke too often.

And none of the people you hired left you feeling as comfortable as Johnny did. It was like he had managed to carve out a hole for himself deep in the pit you called a heart.

But you were a creature of solitude. Best to cut the cord before you choked yourself with it.

Best to jump before being pushed.

Life had been hard since the tunnel. There was nothing but a serene void that Johnny could drift through, unbothered and unharmed. He felt peace for the first time in so long.

Then he awoke under the harsh fluorescent lights of a hospital room and incessant beeping of a heart monitor with tubes shoved in every hole in his body. The doctors said it was a miracle, Johnny thought it was some kind of divine suffering sent by God to punish him for all the wrong he'd ever done.

The recovery process was slow and crushed what little dignity he had left. Learning to walk and talk again was one thing, but not being able to get to the bathroom on his own was another.

He moved home for a time, but it was too much. The pitying looks he got from his sisters when they visited, his little nieces and nephews avoiding him like he a was a rabid dog, and having to listen to his mother whispering to her friends — not that he could actually hear was she said, not that he even needed to — was almost worse than the recovery.

It was Nik who got him a job in the states and Price who helped set him up in that quiet little town. He thought that was what he wanted — to get away.

It turned out that solitude wasn't much better than being stuck around his family. In solitude, they were all he could think about. His sisters and their husbands and their children, his mother and father and the children they had left that weren't left fucked over by a bullet to the skull. They didn't have to be condescendingly asked by his sisters if they remembered to take their meds or brush their fucking teeth.

The phantom pain persisted, his tinnitus got worse, and his sciatica made winters fucking unbearable. There were too many nights spent staring at the ceiling, and dreaming of the tunnel or the hospital room, and waking up gasping for air like the gun had just fired or the tube had just been ripped out again. Drinking could only snuff out the memories so much.

At his best, Johnny could power through a couple of jobs here and there. At his worst, he'd pass out on the floor and dream of the running through the tunnel on a loop, being shot over and over while Ghost screamed his name.

He'd tried to call Simon a few times but his comrade always seemed too busy or too guilty to talk for long.

After the last brief conversation Johnny had with his former friend, he began on a slow descent. Every minor inconvenience felt like another push, every major setback became a nail in his coffin. Burnt microwave dinners turned into fits of rage, and later, hours spent sobbing alone while clutching an bottle.

Everything just felt so tedious those days. His hair had grown out and a thick beard that he didn't have the energy to shave covered the lower half of his face. On the nights he wasn't piss drunk, Johnny was praying. He knew God had saved him from that bullet for a reason, but no amount of bleeding over a rosary and kneeling until it felt his knees might break would bring him any absolution.

Winter was heavy. The long nights did little to improve his condition and the cold seemed to make his tinnitus even worse. He reached lowest point after finishing off his Christmas gift from Price. It was mid-January and he swore it had been dark outside for a week. There seemed to be no end in sight, as if the snow and ice had sunk their claws into the land and refused to let up. Nothing seemed to ever let up.

It was only around eight when Johnny answered that phone call. He had been ready to tell the person to fuck off so he could finish what Makarov started in that tunnel. Then he heard your voice and the tinnitus stopped and the wind seemed to die down. His world became a single point — a beautiful angel telling him her hot water heater had broken.

He arrived an hour later, bundled up against the biting chill and pounding on your front door. The wood nearly splintered under his fist as the rot had been covered up by multiple layers of paint. Depending on how the repair went, he decided he'd make a new for you as well.

When you had opened the door for him, he decided you truly were an angel. The way you flitted about after you showed him downstairs, thanking him up and down, bringing him coffee, and nervously offering your couch to him for the night. It was only the first date, in his mind. It wouldn't be proper to spend the night without getting to know you first.

You paid him far less than he normally charged, but he knew he'd be back. After all, your washing machine was going to break soon.

His tinnitus returned after he left that night, but stopped again when you called him three days later. It continued like that, until he realized it was God telling him he was right where he need to be. God had finally delivered him — you were his gift after all the hell he had gone through. You had to be. The crosses on your walls told him so. They told him his prayers were answered, that you were his angel and salvation.

Repairs turned into shared smiles, turned into meals, turned moments of pure heaven. Spring came with flowers, summer came with lemonade on your porch and fixing your AC without a shirt on. He would ease you in, he told himself. But not fast enough, he found.

Johnny wasn't mad when you stopped calling him around that summer. He understood that you were just confused, a poor little lamb trapped in the darkness. You just needed to go through true hardship, just like he had, to let him guide you back to light.

Your bi-weekly trips to the farmer's market were quickly coming to an end with the rapidly cooling autumn air. You found it to be much more pleasant than the grocery tore and knew you would mourn it come November. The vendors that came from out of town offered far more kindness than those you had grown up around and saw you as a blot on their little town.

As you walked, you took a mental stock of everything you'd need before the weather really turned. The first snow meant you'd be bound to your house until May, April if you were lucky. The last thing you wanted was to make the ten mile trip in the snow for something that could be stocked up on now.

Firewood, check. Preserves, check. Tallow—

A gasp shot from your lips as you, fixated on your mental list of work to do and groceries to get, walked right into someone that felt all to similar to a brick wall. Like a deer in headlights, you just had to stare at the ground and hope the person ignored being run into instead of acknowledging you. It was just your lucky that Johnny smiled right back at you.

The hug he pulled you into made you wince from the force of it, like you were being hugged by a bear while something dangerously close to desire burned between your legs. It felt good to be close to him—

It was filthy.

"Aw, I've missed you, bonnie! Let me carry this for you. Have you eaten today yet?" He took the bags from your hands and was walking to his truck before you could stop him. If he noticed how flustered you were, he pretended not to notice. "Come on, I'll buy you lunch."

You sputtered futile protests and excuses as he herded you into the car. The door slammed shut with the child lock on.

"Those groceries need to be refrigerated!" you spat when he got into the driver's side. "They can't just sit back there and— and I have things to do at the house—"

Johnny smiled at you as he turned the truck on, as if your protests were just a joke you weren't in on. "I'll help you at the house, bonnie. Let's get some lunch first, yeah?"

He took you to the only diner in town, the one you had once begged your grandfather to take you for your birthday dinner. The air left a bitter taste in your mouth now. The waitress barely even looked your way but seemed to be good friends with Johnny.

"The usual?" she asked, grinning just a little too much.

"You know it, hen," he smiled back. "And whatever my girl wants."

"I'm not hungry." The words came out so bitter and far more strained than intended. "Johnny—"

"The club for her," he said to the waitress.

You tried not to notice the scowl on the woman's face when she snatched your menus away. Once the waitress was gone, Johnny began going into how he spent his autumn, the odd jobs and even odder people he encountered. The scowl on your face brought great amusement to him, obviously, but he refused to let you get a word in. He finally stopped talking when the food came out.

"Did you need something, Johnny?" you asked.

He nodded between bites, eating like a heathen per usual. "I wanted to see you! My calls stopped going through, so I thought I needed check on my favorite girl."

"I'm not your favorite girl—"

You flinched when he shoved the plate closer to you. Nothing would come of protesting. He was far more headstrong and patient than you ever had been, so you ate the damn sandwich.

"You are my favorite girl," Johnny assured, patting your hand. "Now hurry up and eat. I've been itching to fix your front porch."

Guilt tore through your nerves. He was still so kind and so eager to make your life easier. It was almost like he wanted to be a part of your life—

The thought was quickly pushed aside. You were a creature of solitude and you didn't enjoy the idea of having to scrub your porch clean in the autumn chill once he was gone. It made your head spin but there was no way around it. His desire to be near you and the mausoleum of your home was a mystery.

"Johnny—"

His hand gripped yours, now squeezing in a way you wanted so desperately to be reassuring. The teasing look in his gaze gave way into sincerity and you caved.

"Eat your lunch, hen. We can take care of it all later."

It was hard to pinpoint what he meant by that. But his words, the way he spoke so kindly and sincerely warmed you to your core. It was so rare that you were met with the compassion these days that it was nearly impossible to resist his pull. The abyss was yawning open. You were about to fall.

Johnny insisted on driving you home, at which point you were growing too tired to put up any more of a fight and the idea of riding your bike the ten miles back seemed almost impossible. He loaded it into the bed of the truck and even strapped it down to avoid hearing you fuss about it. But the worries about the bike quickly faded as exhaustion suddenly settled into your bones. With how quiet the the was ride, save for the soft fuzz of the radio, you soon found yourself drifting back and forth fighting sleep.

"Take a rest, hen," he said softly, turning the radio down. "I'll wake you up when we get there."

"Sorry," you mumbled. "I don't…don't know why I'm so tired."

The feeling of his large hand squeezing your thigh seemed to push you further into a sense of calm. "You're alright."

His words faded into nothing as your eyes finally drooped shut and the abyss closed in. Like a shimmering of bells through the mist, fading.

You were so soft in sleep, no longer spitting protests and fussing over every little thing. It made Johnny's heart warm and his cock twitch. Even better was that you hadn't even noticed the crushed up pill he had poured into your sandwich during your escape to the bathroom. He was just happy that you were eating.

In time, he knew you would come back around to him.

Johnny put you on the bed upon arriving back at your house. He put the groceries away the way he knew you liked and took a survey of the house. Of course, it was still falling apart. The crown molding was falling off in chunks and there was a leak in the living room ceiling from the lead-lined pipes you refused to let him touch — money was always such a sore topic for you, as if he'd ever charge you for his services. No, you would never pay for them again. Maybe not in money, that is.

After his walk-through, Johnny returned to your bedroom and began undressing. You slept so peacefully, so softly.

He climbed over you, tugging down your stockings and panties, then moaning at the sight of your bush.

"Oh, bonnie," he whispered. "You know me so well."

It was a shame that you weren't awake but he knew you'd be fussing and shrieking like a banshee at the immodesty of sex before marriage. Poor hen. He made up for it by saying the Lord's Prayer between every punch of his cock into your cervix.

Even in sleep, you made such sweet sounds. Your breathy sighs and little whimpers just made Johnny shudder harder. He could feel the heat from your body as he pressed further in, until finally, it was too much.

"A-amen," he whimpered out, pumping a hot load of cum deep inside you. He let himself collapse on top of you, nuzzling into your neck as slept. "You'll get used to it, bonnie. When we have our own paradise here, you'll see."

He laid there a while after cleaning you up and straightening out your clothes, until it seemed like you were finally coming back. Such a pretty thing when you weren't dragging yourself down. But soon, he knew, soon you'd be reborn. You'd healed the world for him, and he would do the same for you.

"Sleep well, bonnie?" Johnny asked, patting your head.

"Huh?" You looked up at him with bleary eyes, still asleep for all intents and purposes. "What…what time is it?"

He looked down at his watch. "Just about ten."

"Ten? I've been asleep for eight hours?!"

So fussy again. It took all Johnny's effort not to roll his eyes at how worked up you were able to get yourself. He honestly thought a good fuck would have worked that out of you.

"You were tired, hen— and before you get upset, I put the groceries away and fixed the leak in the ceiling downstairs."

The anger flickered behind your eyes, though pacified now at his offerings. He was getting there again, back to where you two had been so easy with each other. It still perplexed him to think that he had all but worshiped you, only to be tossed out so abruptly. This time, he wouldn't make the mistake of leaving you to your own devices. You needed him to guide you, to show you back to the light.

Autumn hung heavy with winter attempting to break through. With it came another bout of horrible luck, as the furnace the day of the first frost. You awoke, trembling with your breath coming out in visible huffs. In your fearful exhaustion, the only number you thought to call was Johnny's. He answered on the second ring and was at the house in record time.

"I was already out," he explained, walking with you to the basement. "Just your luck, right?"

You smiled, dry and forced. "Right. Do you want breakfast or…"

"Aw, you're too kind, hen." He was already on his knees examining the furnace. For a moment, you thought he might leave it at that. "Bacon and eggs would be great."

Great.

It was a conscious effort not stomp the stairs. It grated on you, his flippant attitude and forcefulness in your life. Nothing seemed to matter to him, as if there was no seriousness, no care at all. Everything was just so easy for him. No strife or worries. Where it was once met with joy, was now met with frustration. How you ever enjoyed his company was vexing.

Yet you cooked for him. The only bright side now was the heat from the oven and stove. You finished up and went to the bathroom to fix yourself up. By the time you returned, Johnny was done working and had already made up your plates.

"Looks great, bonnie."

For the first time, in all the time you've known him, Johnny ate in silence. He still scarfed down his food like an animal, but wasn't filling the air with his noise.

"Anything else I can fix, bonnie?"

Your head, you realized, felt so heavy. It was an effort to pull it up to meet his eye.

"No," you mumbled. "No…sorry. I'm so tired."

You woke up at dusk.

The washing machine broke a week later and the dryer the day after. Both times, Johnny was the only one to answer your call. Both times, you cooked him meals and woke up hours later. You would be dazed, stumbling around until your head cleared. You tried to call the doctor, but he recommended you to a specialist without even seeing you in person. The specialist made you an appointment for March, apparently not too worried for the fact you were losing hours of your days.

Your mind tried to blame Johnny, but it was impossible to blame him when it happened without his presence. You would wake abruptly at odd hours of the night, unsure if it was midnight or only 8pm. The clocks seemed to all show different times.

The days grew longer still until you swore there were days when the sun never came up. Darkness spread, closing in like a vice around the world. Sleep came too easy and waking up was like clawing from a grave. But what scared you wasn't the time you had begun to lose — it was the things you saw behind you eyes.

Flickers in your peripheral vision, shapes moving too quickly in the dark. It was those times that you found no comfort in your self imposed isolation. Johnny only seemed to answer when you were sobbing for him to come check on your house, to make sure no one was hiding in the spaces you were too frightened to check. On more than one occasion, he found you waiting outside in the cold, dressed in nothing but your nightgown and slippers.

He'd walk through your house while you sat in the warmth of his truck, trembling. When he returned, you'd cry into his arms.

"I'm not crazy, Johnny. You have to believe me."

You would feel his lips against the crown of your head, his nose inhaling your scent. "I know you aren't, bonnie. You're just lost."

It was impossible to tell what he meant by lost, but you couldn't help but trust his judgment.

Johnny would carry you back to bed with promises to stay until morning. As you curled up beneath the sheets, he'd sit close by and pray into his cross.

It was unsustainable, you decided one afternoon. It felt like the house was falling apart, and with winter on your doorstep, it was time for drastic measures. So you decided to stop sleeping.

You brewed coffee at all hours to stave off the ache that began to settle in your bones, the radio was turned on at all times with the music roaring in your ears over the sound of your work.

After 17 hours awake, you realized your phone had stopped working. Not to worry — Johnny would check on you soon.

20 hours passed.

Finally, a full day. The sun was setting and you found yourself settled into a hot bath, convinced your sleep schedule was going to return to normal. Your eyelids were beginning to droop when you saw it. A dark figure moved past the bathroom door. Then the radio turned on in the bedroom.

It felt as though your body had turned to ice. Terror gripped your very core, yet you knew this was your chance. The figures that haunted you would not take your life.

Slowly, you climbed from the tub to begin the journey to your bedroom. The music grew louder with each step, reaching its crescendo when you pushed open the door. It raked through the radio on your nightstand, croaking out through broken static:

"Behold the Lord is coming, He's coming for His Bride…He bids the church be ready and in Him to abide—"

Your grandmother's rosary sat on the bed as you frantically tried to shut the radio off. In your state of mania and panic, it ended up being smashed through the window. For the second time that night, your body turned to ice. The winds howled.

Winter had come.

Your second day awake was spent boarding up the window and turning on every light in the house out of refusal to be caught in the dark. It didn't stop the figure from dancing in your vision, nor the whispers that seemed to come from nowhere. Out of fear, more than anything, you put on the rosary. Fear kept it around your neck.

Idle hands are the Devil's workshop.

You jolted awake with a startled cry at your grandmother's voice. Whipping your head around, you that you were alone. Worse still, was that even in death, she was right.

Sleep hadn't been your intention, but it overtook you for a moment while trying to change a lightbulb. Sitting down on the couch proved to be a mistake. But it was just a moment—

Vile girl.

You leapt to your feet. It was no longer just grandmother. Other voices mingled in — grandfather, the old priest, people from town. All came together in your torment, their voices overlapping in a horrific roar. Only when you grabbed the rosary did the voices quiet.

Praying was now necessary. Whispers to the angels between chores, as you now knew they had obviously been the figures you'd seen. Soft words to God, begging forgiveness for your wretched ways, for straying from him. When the voices returned. You knew it was Him talking to you.

The terror resigned to absolution. You knew now that God had been sending you signs all along. All that was left was to call Johnny…Johnny. How long had it been since he'd last come by? A day? No. It had to have been at least four, maybe even a week. That didn't matter anymore, you would just call him—

But the phone had died. No matter! You'd walk into town and call him from there.

The moment you opened the door, you were meant with nothing but a wall of white. When you shut the door, the power went out.

Time, once frayed, ceased to exist. You found yourself on your knees in your bedroom, praying to the rosary for what could have been hours. Maybe days. Maybe it had all been a dream — but it wasn't. You prayed. You knew you did, as the temperature began to steadily drop as the sky darkened outside.

The morning would soon come, you told yourself. The sun would rise again and you would make your town to call Johnny. For now, you got ready for bed in the glow of your candles. It took until your stomach growled did you realize how long it had been since your last meal. But food meant braving the darkness.

With a not-so-confident breath and nothing but a candle to light the way, you prepared to go downstairs. The light did little to cut through the thick darkness of the abyss that had become your home, but you had few options left. The cold was weighing in as heavy as the dark now.

You took another breath in an attempt to calm your frazzled nerves. The edges of the world were already fraying, the seams splitting apart. Still, it shouldn't have frightened you as much as it did. Then you felt it — something brushing over your neck. You took one quick moment to crane your neck with hopes to see who it is. It was just like your dreams.

A figure stood at the top of the stairs, shrouded by the same shadows that not even the moonlight could reach. Your eyes went wide with a terror that filled you to the core. A scream ripped through your throat so hard that blood froths in your mouth. In your panic, you lost your footing and fell backwards down the stairs, into the darkness of your home.

Time was nonlinear. You were caught once again in the horrible space between waking and dreaming. Only now, there was a dull pain throughout your body that refused to relent. You might have been making noise, or perhaps trying to move but there was no way to tell if it was real or not. It's not like anyone was there to hear the pained, pathetic noises you were making.

Feeling returned to the rest of your body slowly. It took everything in you to open your eyes. Even then, there was so little to see. Less time passed than it had seemed. Night still hung deep and heavy. Perhaps it would always be like that. Perhaps it had always been like that. Everything felt so vivid one moment, then hazy the next. Like the world was rolling over you in waves.

With slow, measured movements, you pushed your aching body to standing. You stumbled against the wall almost immediately. Everything was spinning and something was wrong with your ankle that made pain shoot up your leg with every step — something was wrong with your head too. A warm, thick liquid was trickling down your temple, dripping onto your once pristine white nightgown.

Blood.

Right. Blood. Not ichor. Blood. You were bleeding because you fell. You fell because someone pushed you. No. That couldn't be right. That was just a dream. That was what grandpa always said.

"Hello?!" you called into the darkness. It was like you couldn't stop the words from coming out.

There was no response anyways, just the howling of the wind outside. But it was getting louder and so much closer — you swore it was. Even the cold was pressing further in. It was as if the outside was trying to break in.

Limping over to the window, you pressed your face against the frozen glass to see out into the void. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The land had never been more desolate than it was now in your time of need. Still, you focused out, staring into the darkness until you swore there was—

A hoarse, startled cry escaped your lips as the window cracked. You leapt back, your heart slamming from the adrenaline. But there had been something out there in the trees. Rushing back to the window, you stared out once more at the desolation.

But you knew the truth. Something was out in the darkness.

The sound of the grandfather clock striking midnight startled you once more. The days without sleep were getting to you and isolation weighed heavier than you cared to admit. But no, you knew the truth. There was something out there. If only you had Johnny—

You pinched yourself at the thought. He would not help you! He had been sent to tempt you!

Wicked girl.

"Who said that?!" you cried out, your head whipping around in the darkness. "Who are you?! PLEASE! Who are you?!"

Wicked girl.

Evil girl.

Corrupted girl.

Wind howled outside, it rang in your ears but wasn't loud enough to drown out the voices of angels filling your head. They shuddered through your body like the cold that was seeping through the pores of the house. The temperature was dropping rapidly still.

Johnny had promised to fix the insulation and the furnace. He had cut all of the wood for you when you met last winter and you hadn't thought to light a fire when the storm hit. It came out of nowhere, like something from the Inferno.

Your head shot up as a figure passed across the field.

A demon.

Oh…you knew finally. This was it. The apocalypse, your final judgment. The rapture had finally come to pass and the angels were judging you for your sins. The wind picked up again and you realized the truth for the first time — it was the trumpets sounding for the end times.

"Oh god!" you sobbed, stumbling through the halls. The tears that fell froze to your cheeks, your breath coming in visible huffs before your eyes, like ghosts. "Please, god, I am good! Please, take me into your kingdom!"

A horrible sound tore from your throat as the house began to shake under the cold and the wind and the wrath of god. Then the door burst open, breaking the dead bolt, the wind howling into your home and exposing you to the creatures outside and the snow that began to blow inside. Something stood in your doorway, tall and ragged. painted only by the moonlight.

No, not moonlight. A halo. And so suddenly, you knew him. You had always known. An angel come to take you to heaven. But if that were the case, why did he instill such fear within you.

"I've been so good!" you wailed. "Please—"

The crosses on the walls began rattling so hard that they began to fall — the ceramic, porcelain, and glass shattering upon the hardwood floors as you collapsed into the corner and screamed alongside the trumpets of the rapture.

Johnny found you on the floor, curled up like a wounded animal and whispering prayers beneath your breath, in between sobs. He sat with you a while, until your body finally gave into the sleep you had been denying yourself. While you slept, he cleaned up the mess and hung up a new St. Andrew's Cross in place of one that had fallen onto the floor. It looked perfect to him.

Time was so odd these days. It was spent praying, cooking, cleaning, and, when you were in the mood, fucking. The first time he tried to initiate sex, you balked, only for him to remind you that God had married you both by making you two His new Adam and Eve. Johnny even let you wear your grandmother's wedding dress the first time.

There was so little left to do and to do worry about, but to have Johnny alongside you in this odd paradise made it so much better.

He spent his days tending to various repairs around the house, drawing, and occasionally taking long drives into what you believed was nothingness. You had no desire to leave your little sanctuary, especially not in the frigid winter that clung to the land. It refused to let up and you knew it never would. Johnny seemed to think life would continue like normal, coming and going with what used to be the normal seasons. He called it a simulacrum He had made as a sort of paradise. It would all come back eventually.

"He made it for us, bonnie," Johnny whispered to you one night. "This is our paradise. We deserve this."

He grew up on a farm. Has seen things most men would consider improper, but it's the sight of those thighs shifting in the sunlight, half-hidden beneath the book, that breaks him. Makes him feel like a voyeur for the first time in his whole life. Like a man starved. Aching.

He wants his hands on those thighs more than anything he's wanted in his whole life. Wants to squeeze the meat of them until she's whimpering, begging him to stop—

Run his claws down the length, splitting pretty skin so he can finally leave a mark. Bite down on the insides that she keeps rubbing together. Make her feel it each time she squeezes her thighs together—a permanent imprint of his teeth. A claim that anyone who has the privilege of peeling her knees apart will see.

(and he'll have the privilege of tearing them apart so they'll never get to see it again—)

He doesn't know her name, but that doesn't really even matter because he knows, in his bones, that he wants the taste of her on his tongue for as long as he's alive. Wants her beneath him, clawing at his back until the ugly, twisted scars there are overwrought with her own claim, her struggle to get away—

(wants her buried in a shallow grave beside him, those fingers that keep shaping out looping little figureeights forever knotting tight around the ribcage that tried to swallow her whole—)

It would be a lie to say he's never wanted anything in his life before when he's spent most of it up until now hungry. Starved. But he's never felt compelled enough to have. Never sated the ache in belly because it always seemed so pointless when it would just start grumbling again in a few hours time; but as she rubs those thighs together, he realises that he's just never wanted something badly enough to take it. To have. To sate the ache, soothe the beast.

And it's just instinctual, really, when he wanders up to the open window, nose in the air, scenting the musk of her perfume that clots into the stench of sun-scorched earth and gasoline. Hands clenched tight by his sides, joints tense and ready to spring open and snap shut. To grab, and hold as he drags her into the bushes across the street and disappears into the canyons below, her ensnared in his grasp: a gazelle in the jowls of tiger. Conquered and caught.

She'll get used to him with time. Grow accustomed to the only taste, the smell, she'll ever know again. Ache for it, too, maybe; when he's gone hunting for food with the key to the chains he'll have to lock around her ankles tucked in his back pocket, yearning for his touch and shaking until he comes home. Pries her open, stuffs her full—

(—so full, she'll always feel empty when he isn't inside her. incomplete. unmade on the sheets he'll steal from the motel down the road where holidaymakers stay when they come to gawk over the canyon rim, shifting those pretty, scarred up thighs together like she is now, begging for something to fill the ache he left behind—)

She looks up quicker than he'd expected she would, catching him as he's only five steps away from her and the forever he's building in the back of his head. The look in her eye is flat, but not surprised. Like she was waiting for him the whole time—

"Hello," she says, low and sweet; a voice full of honey as her eyes widen and her lips curve into a small smile. And it would be, should be, but he can taste the sour poison buried in the sugar. Something that sets his teeth on edge. Stops him dead in his tracks. "You look lost. Can I help you, honey?"

Honey.

Nothing about him would make a woman call him honey. Would have them fluttering their lashes at him like she is, lips curved into an artless smile; eyes lidded. Heavy with desire as they rake up and down his body, from the dusty workboots they shipped him home in before the war ended, to the overalls that don't quite fit anymore because he's no longer that eighteen year old farmboy he was when he turned them in for a green uniform. Everything about him is borrowed. Handed down. Stolen, too, because no one is interested in hiring someone like him when the war has been over for months now, and corporate America is ready to move on from the mayhem and misery, and reclaim some sense of normalcy before the haunted, angry faces of men torn from an era that left them behind can leave a permanent scar—

like what the shrapnel did to his face.

The war he was thrown into far too young left him a scarred, mangled mess of a man; a patchwork calamity some sympathetic doctor had the misfortune of putting back together in a humid, disease-ridden tent. Left him twisted and ugly; spare parts that should have been used on someone else, someone better, but we're instead sewn to the empty shell they called a body, held together with fishing wire and rusting staples.

He's all jagged, craggy tissue; missing pieces and healed over pockmarks because there was no flesh left to spare in a graft—one that wouldn't have done much to fix the damage anyway.

He knows she can see his canine through the jagged split of his upper lip where molten metal dripped down from beneath his eye, leaving a path of gnarled scar tissue in glossy, pale pink, a hideous burr, before it burned clean through his mouth, turning it into a cave. The nose that was broken more times than he can remember now sitting in a crooked angle that no doctor is willing to even try and fix. A gash across his brow. A chunk of skin taken out along his jaw, the wound, the indent, so deep, some people swear they can see bone through the thin slip of skin.

Honey, he knows, is the last thing that usually comes to mind when people see him, and it's this misstep—her sticking to the script even when he must make her skin crawl—that picks apart the artlessness of her lure, laying bare the artifice of her carnal design in broad daylight.

She's a trap.

A lure.

Something shiny and sweet dangling deep in the ugly abyss. Gleaming so bright, it's easy to overlook the curved hook poking out underneath.

"Are you okay, honey?" Her head tilts, lips pulling into a pretty little pout, and he's struck by how good she is when he feels the burn of it in his guts. The urge to unravel himself in front of her, lay himself bare for her to gawk at brims, and it takes everything inside of him to swallow it down. To not give in.

To what, he isn't sure—

Not until the bell chimes, and he suddenly understands her game when the door of the shop opens, and he strolls out.

He's tall. Not as tall as Simon, granted—but still big. Brawny. Broad shouldered, thickened up around the waist and thighs. Bearish despite the expensive linen and gold. The simple brown trousers and starch white button-up likely costs more than anything Simon owns, but he thinks that's supposed to be the point.

Through the glare of the bright sun sitting in the passenger seat of a sleek car, a picture begins to take shape. A businessman on holiday with his pretty, younger wife. The image of American luxury—something that is meant to fill him with greed. With anger. With want. Wanting the car and the pretty thing inside of it is natural, isn't it? Jealousy. Desire. That's what this is. That's what they're selling.

Envy and awe.

On the surface, anyway.

"Oh, right," she chirps, slipping out of the passenger seat as the haunting notes of the song follow her out (if i didn't tell her, if i didn't tell her, i could leave today—), and in the spill of daylight, she's even prettier. A plump, preening little bird grinning wide and bright at him. Begging come take a bite. "My husband said he was looking for someone to help him on our ranch. Do you happen to be looking for work? If you don't have any family around here, we have a room available, too—"

When Simon looks back at the man, he catches a dangerous edge in the cerulean eyes that assess him silently from the driver's side—a hiccup in the facade, he's sure; silence in place of a razor sharp speech about a ranch he can't run on his own while his pretty little lure chirps in the front seat, prying apart his life story so sweetly in this feigned song of concern. 

The pieces fall together pretty quickly after that because if there's one thing Simon knows more than hunger, it's a predator. A killer.

Danger.

His gaze drifts back to the pair of birds dangling beneath the rearview mirror, and he snorts. Shrikes. He should have known—

But the thing is, he can see this ruse working for a lot of people. Ensnared by the designer watch on the husband's wrist and the big, pretty gem on the lovely wife's finger. The sweet way she speaks to him—honey, won't you come help us? We'll pay you, of course—could put anyone at ease, lulling them into a false sense of security, and maybe even the bite of opportunism. They paint themselves as easy targets—a dumb, rich couple who can't see the plan forming in the back of the strangers head: go with them. Rob them blind. Maybe even fuck the wife, too. And then leave them for dead.

The landscape aids in this plan, too. The Grand Canyon is only a few hours away. The perfect place for someone to go missing and never be found.

He can see them taking a bite. Climbing into the car—

Only to be met with the flat, dead eyes of a predator. Hunters. The wife sings a sweet song as her husband aims a gun at their heads and tells them to behave. 

Or that’s how it should go. 

But he knows by the way she keeps glancing back at her husband that he's not following the script. That this isn't part of the plan. That this pretty little bird has bitten off more than she, than they, can chew.

The man—John Price, he grunts after some prompting from his pretty songbird—just watches Simon silently for another moment, eyes too sharp, too knowing; assessing in a calculative, deadly way that a lesser man (and maybe even just a whole man) might flinch at, shudder under the weight of, and try to run away before he hums, cocking his head to the side, and all at once the weight in his gaze changes. Shifts. Like a predator sighting something across the field—

Shedding skin.

There's a flicker of intrigue. A disturbance rippling across the stagnant pond, shaking the cool, flat blue of the abyss, and Simon has to imagine that this, this, is the last thing all of the men who stood in this same spot as he is now, half-dazed by the sweet song of the siren in the passenger seat, saw before the bear dressed in beguiling tweed—a man on his way to a country club, who has never known hunger a day in his life—sunk his teeth into their jugular.

(that pretty bird still chirping away in the front seat—oh, honey, c'mon on now, you're gettin' blood all over the seats, baby—before she turned that razor sharp beak on them, sinking it deep into their soft, exposed belly—)

But the bubbling gleam in John’s eye is that of a different sort of hunger—something different from killing, from fucking. 

"Sure, sweetheart," he says, lips twitching under the thick moustache, curving up into a too-big, too-tight Duchenne smile. And all at once, the game changes. Shifts when you let out a happy little laugh—

Simon knows he isn’t another spoil to be impaled on a spike anymore, but a pawn to be used against a spoiled little bird who is too blinded by the thrill of the hunt to see the way John’s lips twist in displeasure—pretty bird, in trouble for biting off more than they, than she, can chew. 

"Whaddya say, mm? Interested?"

The hunter becoming the hunted, the punished, is really nothing new, but he’s willing to bet that this is the first time you’ve ever been at the mercy of a man who wasn’t your husband. 

Left to fend for yourself as John leans back in a chair, and watches the man you wanted so badly to become your prey, a shared soil impaled on a spike, forcing your pretty, bitten bloody thighs apart until they’re split wide around his hips, shoving his cock into your sore, messy cunt over and over again as you plead for mercy, for help—

(sorry, John, sorry—please—!)

Grasping fingers only inches away from the knife John tossed on the bed when Simon dragged you back inside, downstairs, kicking and screaming because this wasn’t the way the game was supposed to go.

And he keeps you there, perched always within reach of the knife, but never enough to be able to close your fingers around the hilt as he takes his spoils in the soft give of your body. The sticky, slick slide of your wounded thighs squirming around his hips, leaving smears of blood on his skin. A trophy he'll keep for as long as he can because there really is nothing sweeter than the way you beg him for mercy, to please, please, take his cock out because it hurts, and it won't fit, it doesn't, and—

Easily the sweetest song he's ever heard as he acclimates himself to this new dynamic, this shifting, evolving game John is playing a game where he pretends to teach his wife a lesson in proper victim profiling with the thick split of a stranger's cock battering her poor, sore cunt, and tosses out his own lure for Simon to bite down on:

“Come on, sweetheart. You wanted to play, mm? So why aren’t you playin’?”

because the thing is, John has always been more of a pack animal, preferring to hunt in a group, as a unit sharing the spoils, a than a solidary predator.

safety in numbers, Simon supposes, and as he stares down into your tear-filled eyes, and those pretty lips that, only hours ago, were blissfully popping bubble gum now caught in a whimper as he does what he wanted ever since he saw you and stuffs you full, he can't help wondering if you ever knew you were never the hunter, but always the prize.

the pretty bird that drew in hungry monsters like him—

No. Instead he sits in the ranch beater that rumbles even though it’s only idling. The sparse gravel drive, or what’s left of it anyways, gives way to a wide, flat plain. Dead grass catches the dying afternoon’s breeze and for the umpteenth time in two days he’s questioning why he’s doing this.

Well no, he knows why he’s doing this. Even knocking on the door of his thirties, his father still towers and still Gator shrinks. Takes it on the chin and tucks tail.

Your car is empty beside his truck and he thinks about slashing your tires and leaving, maybe breaking a window for good luck. He wonders who’d get the call at dispatch and if they’d even pretend to help you or leave you out here for the night. Would an Uber even come all the way out here?

“Listen,” You take a step forward and match his dumb machismo, “come out there with me and I’ll even forget about your search history. I’ll keep it all to myself.”

“…what?”

“How many throat fucking videos can one guy actually watch? I mean, thank christ because I thought it was gonna be all stepmom porn.”

His neck is hot and he thinks he might actually reach out and do something stupid. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Fuckin’ make me, champ.”

The walk up to the sagging house is long and oddly quiet, the normal bird coverage at dusk seemingly startled off by the two of you tromping through the overgrown weeds. Way off in the distance he can hear the last of the geese making their escape from the coming cold and just for a moment he watches the little black specks move across the horizon.

Up ahead there’s a flash just on the edge of his vision and he spots you on the front porch waving a weak flashlight in his direction.

“So you did show.”

“Well you’re blackmailing me so I didn’t really have a choice.” He stops at the foot of the stairs, hand resting on his utility belt. Your gaze drags over his vest and he shifts under your scrutiny.

“Was the whole getup necessary?”

“You said you wanted it to look legit!”

“Don’t get uppity!”

“I’m not! You’re being—do you want to fucking go in there or not?” He huffs up the steps and pushes past you into the house, the splintering front door banging into the wall from the force of his palm. He expects to get a hit of dry rot, maybe moth balls and cedar but it just smells like the cool air outside let in from all the broken windows. Something whistles soft with the shift in the wind and it makes the back of his neck feel tight. “You comin’ in or what?” He asks over his shoulder, anxiety creeping into his throat.

“Well don’t tear it down first and I might.” You slide past him with your head on a swivel, deftly avoiding his gaze.

He watches you head for the fireplace stuffed full of detritus. Your flashlight is dim in the fast fading light but you zip it around the bare walls and littered floor. Pieces of the broken windows glitter and discarded aluminum shines, both remnants of past intrusions.

“I don’t want to be out here after dark.” He follows a few paces behind you, staring out the window frames at nothing.

“Why?” At the fireplace you nudge a pile of dry twigs with your boot before kneeling down to gingerly pull at them to get a look at the hearth. “You scared?”

He won’t even give you a real answer, just a scoff before he heads into the hallway. Your laugh follows him down the peeling walls and into the kitchen where he kicks at a hanging cabinet door.

“Oh come on Gator, it’s been empty for years.”

“Yeah, because people died in here.”

“In like, the 80’s.”

“They still died here.” His voice sounds too loud in the evening quiet, enough of a sudden shift that it makes him look around the bare room as if something had come in and sucked out the atmosphere. Your scuffling from the front room has stilled and he thinks maybe it was that, a small sign of life in the abandonment of this home. Only he doesn’t hear you now, not at all, just a blank spot in his awareness. He’s halfway to wandering back out to see what’s happened when you do finally move.

Your foot steps sound heavy in the hollow of this place. A dragging thunk that draws up behind him and stops in the doorway. “A lot of people die in their homes.” You’ve got something clutched in your fist but more importantly there’s the look on your face when he turns.

Hungry is what he thinks. Wide eyes stare into his and he realizes that he’s never seen this look before. Never seen someone starving.

That’s it. Starving.

He swallows nothing, dry throat clicking. An itch at the back of his neck makes him think about reaching for his gun but he doesn’t move. He thinks about a retort for you but words turn into vapor while the thoughts drip out of the back of his head. It all happens at once, this coalescing failure to react, something that he only notices once it’s too late and the shadows start creeping around the corners and into his vision.

You keep staring through him, right into the center of that pulling dark.

Repetitive thuds and a repetitive ache. A thin sliver of peeling paint on a worn step that swims into view before eyes close again. Aching repetition to lull him back.

It’s night.

Outside of the empty window frame the black is inky and dotted with stars. Much different than the shadows from earlier.

Earlier.

It startles him to realize he’s suddenly come to. No gentle awakening. No groggy start. Just awake and alert and unable to move.

“What the fuck?” He asks a perceived empty room, his voice thick. He tries to do something, tries to get his feet under him but they barely move. Below his vision there’s something heavy on his chest, a feeling of lips moving and a wet sound lewd in this place. If he wasn’t in a full panic he might think this was a dream about one of the girls at the Trap.

His whole body feels static, like it fell asleep without him, his skin humming. His limbs shift in an attempt to push off whatever is on him but he only rocks slightly before your head lifts into view.

“Wh—“

Something drips off of your chin back down to his chest. It shines in the dim light from your discarded flashlight. A breeze moves through and shifts your hair and there’s a scream stuck in his throat, wedged just under that spot on his chest.

“Gator.”

He gets an elbow to cooperate enough to pull himself back an inch or two but you’re still there, hovering over him with dark red running down your neck. It stains your teeth and lips.

He whimpers when he can’t get anymore traction and you scoot forward to look him straight on.

“What the fuck…” Uselessly he asks again.

“You know what the fuck.”

His blood turns to spittle on your smiling lips and he does scream then, hoarse and already fading. He screams until his voice catches and it turns into a cough that rattles the wound on his chest. You remain unmoved, still braced above him and caging him in like he could run away.

“Are you fucking eating me?”

A short chuckle pushes a splatter of blood over your lip. “Kind of.” Your eyes pierce through him as they scan, surveying his weakened state as a non threat now. Sitting back on your calves he can see the front of your shirt pasted to your body and he wonders how he’s still alive.

“You know, I really thought I’d have to fuck you first to get you to play along. Like genuinely? None of you even questioned me. Thought I’d have a harder time getting in good with y’all. New person in a small town, no background, no family.” Your tone is conversational like you aren’t covered in blood. “Just had to throw around a handful of shitty remarks and you all just welcomed me into the flock. Let me come to the parties. Like what kind of cops are you?” You laugh, your smile a mockingly warm thing in the dark. “You Jesus people are fucking blind.” You clap suddenly and it makes him jump. “But y’all are fun sometimes. Especially you.” Another pointed look that feels like it’s searing through him to see all his insides. “I didn’t think I’d find anything interesting out here, just a bunch of yokels, but then you slunk out of your daddy’s house.” You move too fast, pulling him up like he weighs nothing, the collar of his shirt stretched out in your fist as you hold him close. “The world’s most loosing dog.”

Any anger he can muster only glows like a dying ember in the deep pit of his stomach. The metal tang of his blood floods his nose and he wants to throw up or scream again. The moment stretches in silence, with you staring through him until something shifts, a softer droop to your eyes. Cold hands slide up around his neck and briefly he thinks you’ll choke him. He feels your nails scrape along his scalp and a shiver rocks him, tightening the muscles in his chest and making him grunt in pain at the wound pulling.

“Gator.” You lay him back down gently, straddling his chest and cradling his head and that look grows softer and he grows stiller; blood loss and something you’re doing to him like you did downstairs.

“I know all those hopes and dreams now, all those quiet wishes.” Nails scratch at his scalp and if he could move he’d recoil at your sticky hand running over and over through his hair. He can’t wrap his mind around what’s happened tonight but he’s dying, that much he can guess.

Limbs go cold, go numb, go dead weight and still you hold him to you. Unblinking blown out pupils stare right into him, find the fading heat of life that shrinks further into his body.

“Did you ever find your mom?”

His ragged breathing catches.

“Gator…” a long finger traces light around his eye, pushing stray hairs away. “Honey, did you ever look?” You lean even closer, hot breath right in his ear. “Was she in that pit?”

He can see the trough in all its iterations, all the times he glanced out there at it, full of stagnate spring rain and covered in ice.

You swim back into his line of sight and he has to focus on your lips asking him again if he looked. The corner of your mouth ticks up in a grin, small and mocking because you know the answer. The red shining on your face tells him for certain that all his deepest secrets have been bled out finally, washed over your tongue and into some other deep well of death.

“Did you ever ask Roy?”

He shakes his head weakly. The silence that follows is poignant, your dead stare heavy and Gator feels like this might be the last few heartbeats he has left.

“Do you want to?”

The question hits him deep in a place he hasn’t looked at in years. It’s rose colored and soft edged and as he watches your hand move slowly towards your chest, he tastes something sour on the back of his tongue.

“We can ask him together.” A long thumb nail drags against your skin and catches, a bead of blood smearing with your movement. The small cut turns deep when you press in and a steady flow of red begins to drip. “You don’t want to die without knowing.”

A surge of energy sparks and he rocks his head side to side now, a sob bursting out of him finally. “No no no, please no I don’t!” It makes him sick to hear the pleading, can only imagine how his father would react but right now he can’t contain it, can’t help the tears that flow freely or the way the sob stutters in his paralyzed chest. “I don’t know what happened I don’t-I don’t—“ Gator sputters and rambles, his head pounding as he gasps hard, trying to find his last words but there you are again entirely too close, taking up his fading vision and filling his nose with the smell of blood.

“Shhh.” You hush and he obeys, one last gasp pulled before he stares silently, chest heaving raggedly. “I can fix it.” Your fingers run through the thin line of your own blood before you push them past his lips. “Let me fix you.”

A wet gag at the taste of coppered salt.

Dying makes everything richer.

Colors burst bright in dark.

Sound spikes around him.

And the blood coats his mouth like his first stolen sip of his father’s good whiskey.

It’s like his memories are laid out on sheets of acetate, flipped over one by one on an overhead projector. He’s seeing his life but every so often something else slips through. Something not his.

The invisible hand that tosses his childhood away also shuffles in a foreign field with an unknown house. Faces he’s never seen blend with his sister’s. A laugh he’s only recently familiar with.

He’s drawn to the soft tendril of your blood flowing over the dried down mess of his own. Somewhere he finds the strength to propel himself towards you, up into your chest. He doesn’t shiver in disgust when your fingers trail wetly from his mouth, in fact he misses the taste so much he doesn’t think twice about running his tongue through the mess.

Metal and salt is all he tastes. Your hand cradling the back of his head the only anchor point in this room that falls away from him. His thoughts shift from jumbled memories to the here and now, forgetting all of his panic from moments ago. Your blood in his mouth tastes like a bitten cheek and it tastes like communion. A Sunday morning never filled him with such fullness the way this does, a simple act of drinking like a parched man.

Starving, actually.

He gets it suddenly, that look from earlier. He’s never known hunger like this before, something that claws at his insides like a live animal caught on a scent. You laugh like you can read his mind, the vibrations deep under his lips on your chest and it drives him closer, arm hooked behind your neck to keep you against him. He thinks about returning the favor and drinking you dry, making a mess out of your blood all over the dry wooden floors.

Would you drink from him again? Would it be a gory, vicious circle in this abandoned home? Cycling till daylight and then-

“It doesn’t matter.” You answer his unasked question, looking down at him through heavy lidded eyes. “Different kind of story.” You pull his head back smoothly like he isn’t struggling to stay attached, mouth hung open in strained need. “It’ll only hurt for a moment, nothing more.”

He doesn’t know what you’re talking about and he couldn’t care less as he watches your blood flow, wasted down the front of your shirt. He pulls against your grip on his hair but he doesn’t budge, his legs kicking aimlessly and getting no traction. He wants to spit and curse but something makes him pause, a deep pinch that grows into a yawning ache everywhere.

His joints stiffen, his vision goes dim and his insides catch fire. That blood he so greedily lapped up cuts a line of flames through the middle of him and he wants it out. You don’t waver as you watch him thrash and scream again, his nails digging at his clothes and his skin like he could climb out of himself if he tries hard enough. He wants to kill you and he wants your help as the pain crescendos to fine point behind his eyes and then—

“Just a moment, like I said.” Your lips, still red with him, curve into a soft smile. It isn’t the sneaking smirk he’s grown used to the past few months or even the hungry show of teeth you bared at him this evening.

Silence weighs heavy on his ears like nothing he’s ever experienced. He can feel every groove of the wood flooring through the thick fabric of his pants. Outside something digs softly in the slowly freezing earth and he realizes that he can hear it like it was in the wall next to him.

babe I dunno what new ingredients you've been cooking with recently (like in addition to your already excellent recipes) but there's something new here. in your words. They've gotten even richer? really loved how you described the wide nothingness of where he sits and then the 'his father still towers and still Gator shrinks. Takes it on the chin and tucks tail.' 👌👌👌

I couldn't find a good gif for this but please imagine I'm shaking and hitting your arm grinning because this made me stop reading to laugh really hard

when everything goes so still, sucked out the atmosphere. the sense of foreboding really starting to grow. you built this up so well. and when he's getting sucked into that pulling dark. the control, power we have over his mind. Predator luring prey. It isn't isn't as obvious what's happen, he barely knows what's hit him before hes lost. so fucking good.

(you have an amazing grasp on Gator, it shows throughout this fic but idk it struck me even more at the line about when he wakes up to the lewd noises of feeding and thinks this could be a dream about a girl from the Trap if he wasn't panicking. Cmon. Small detail but really liked it.)

when we ask about the pit GOOOODIEHD8E. WHY DID IT LIKE CREEP ME OUT AND ALSO KIND OF TRAGIC HIS RESPONSE reaching into his lowest parts

that all his deepest secrets have been bled out finally, washed over tongue and into some other deep well of death

jfc whatever allure, thrall we have over Gator is coming through the screen to capture me. Fuck.

no words accept my amazement in gifs because this passage was sparking up lighting everything like what the fuck meg??? (affectionately) (in awe) (kd9ehdowbcofbf)

listen you need to let me breathe before giving me feeding him blood from our chest. reminiscent of dracula (and nosferatu) but the roles are reversed, or well, who holds the power is?? You know what I mean hopefully. I LOVE IT. it's intoxicating and horny and disturbing and romantic and and and I SAY AGAIN DUDE WHAT THE FUCK.

ughuehe8dhdiehdu I'm gonna bite through my desk rn

That surge of energy he gets, when he starts sobbing, breaks down, begs, knows he's nearing an end. yet still thinks about how his father would react but he just can't help it. nonsensical. SUPERB. Gator is yours. You capture and show the insecurity and complexity of him. i want to give Gator to you specifically and not let anyone else write for him. sorry everyone else (not really)

and then this???? Blood shimmering, finding focus for the first time in his life. Finding god in all the places he was told not to look.