#tw.violence

His clothes are pristine. Barely show a sign of your scuffle. He even wears a collar around his neck like he's a goddamned dog. The only sign that he's involved in the violence rather than a kindly passerby is blaring red and wet. Your blood on his gloves. It stains his palms and fingers in the way you'd always imagined a victim's blood might the hand of their killer.

“Are you going to cry?” His voice grates on your ears. Makes the ache of your nose worse. You think he might have broken it.

“Piss off,” your voice cracks when you speak and he laughs. He fucking laughs.

“You said yes and I did what I said I was going to.”

His eyes crinkle at the edges, but there's no light in them at all. Wine-dark and deep enough that you avert your gaze as soon as you catch his. If you don't, you might never stop looking. The rabbit-fast pace of your heart makes your nose thump with pain. Even with your eyes anywhere but on him, you can't spot an exit path.

“You told me your name and asked if I had a good reaction time!”

The bell at the Church tolls. There's no time to change. It seems like you'll be heading to prayer covered in your own blood.

“And you lied,” Lohen laughs louder. “I didn't, just so you know.”

You run toward him, to get past him and onto the main road, and he grips your shoulder painfully tight. Then he lets you go, and you speed up, feet thundering against cobblestone. You cast a hesitant look back.

The bastard is waving at you.

"I'll get you back someday," you whisper. You're not sure if it's a threat or a wish.

Two weeks later, you spot him on your way out of the Angel's Share. The moon is bright against the night sky, the stars a glittering tapestry, and Lohen leans against the bar wall like a creature out of the Abyss.

“What,” you spit. “Do you want from me.”

He tilts his head, all animalistic and curious. His eyes are wide and sharp. Remind you of the drink you've just had. Tangy grapes turned wine that went down sour. It courses through you still, making the evening pleasantly warm and hazy.

Your nose is still bruised from his punch. Droning crickets and patrolling knights and noisy drunks make the night feel far less dangerous than the quiet alley did. But something about him makes your hackles raise.

“Must I want something from you?” He asks instead of telling you anything upfront, smile as audible as it is visible. He has sharp canine teeth. You support yourself against the wall so you don't lose your balance. Drunkenness has never suited you in the way it does every other citizen of Mondstadt.

“You're staring like you do,” you answer. “And I don't know why else you'd be here, if not for a second try.”

“Hah,” his laugh is short, dry. “You know me better than most already! Am I so easy to read?”

You launch yourself at him. His grin only widens. Fucking reaction time— Barbara started panicking when you walked in, and what could you say? Oh, some knight punched me in the face because I got a little proud of myself for once? Lohen's laughter is as sickening now as it was then.

His knee finds your gut. Your nails find his cheeks. You spit bile and wine onto his clothes as you feel skin give way underneath your fingertips. A hard shove down, and the stone street is against your back, or your back is against it, and minty hair dangles in front of your face, smelling nothing like the plant. He stinks of sweat and iron.

“Screw you,” you shout into his face. Someone from the bar opens the door. Lohen drags you, you think, because the light doesn't reach your eyes.

“Stop fighting or I'll stop you myself.” The stranger says. Their voice is warm. Deep. A comfort as you lie on the cold ground, nauseous, dizzy, blood pooling where you've scratched. There is no response and the door closes.

Lohen punches you in the face again, and then he's hoisting you up by the arms, laughing still.

Freak.

“Are you sure I'm the only one who wanted that?” He sounds barely out of breath, and doesn't even flinch when you vomit all over his shoes.

Three days later, Lohen shows up at your door covered in blood. His face is still bruised, scratched like a cat was trying to kill him, but he's smiling.

You are not sure of how he knows where you live. Knights privileges, maybe. You watch as he drips all over the cobblestone and a little on your wooden floor, and you consider trying to kill him right then and there.

“Hello,” he says, raspy. “I was hunting, oh, sorry, I mean— tracking down a band of escaped Treasure Hunters.”

You swallow the bile that threatens to rise. Try not to think of how you threw yourself at him like you could have won. A murderer on your doorstep who punched you in the face twice. Barbatos must hate you specifically.

“And?”

“And I was wondering if I could teach you some tricks on how to not end up like them.”

You try to close the door and he grabs the side of it, holds it open. You push harder and it doesn't give a single damned inch.

“It'd be good for you,” he says, all chipper. You eye the hilt of a blade at his belt. You thought knights considered it immoral to fight with anything but a sword. But of course this one doesn't. Assaulting a civilian in broad daylight, and all. Even if you'd technically said yes. Even if you'd jumped at his throat later.

“You aren't giving me a choice,” you say.

“I always have a choice,” Lohen's voice, usually all light and sweet twists into something sharp, something like a blade. “You could end up like that, if you wanted.”

You close the door.

A few seconds pass. You do not hear him walk away. There are no weapons in your house, no tools to defend yourself with, only your body.

A memory strikes you, unbidden; Lohen on the ground due to nothing but surprise, the way he'd dragged you away from the light of the bar, safety just out of reach.

You open the door. His answering smile makes your blood turn to ice. It doesn't look like he expected anything else.

Four months later, you are knocking down wooden stands with as much force as you can muster. The sound as they fall hurts your ears, and you can't quite tell if the violent thumping noise is the rush of your pulse or the training sword smacking into cloth.

Lohen watches from the side with a dull expression. You don't know how long he's been standing there, aren't sure of when he arrived, but you're duly ignoring him. Training is exhausting. You're no knight. And yet…

“Stop,” he says. You don't flinch. Your grip tightens on the hilt of your sword.

He walks toward you with a casual pep, little capelet bouncing in the breeze, and a bruise still healing over his chin. There is a sword in his hand. Not his favored weapon, you've learned. The polearm or the dagger or the poison— he hasn't used a ranged weapon of his own choice in years.

“How long has it been since we practiced together, again? I swear, it's been ages since I've had a good fight!”

You roll your eyes. You put up little struggle next to knights.

“Two days,” you say.

Lohen laughs something ugly and charming. “Two days too long, clearly!”

A gloved hand comes to rest between your shoulders. There is still blood on them. He never washed it out. He never does. It could be yours, or it could be the treasure hunters’, or it could be his own. You don't know which option you favor. His hand is cool where it touches you, even through the cloth.

“Your form is off,” he says, smiling. “Do I not train you hard enough?”

You stiffen, and his hand presses harder, hard enough that you stumble and have to regain your footing by jumping a few paces.

His eyes are shadowed despite the light of the setting sun. You can't quite read him. You think you thought you could, when you met him, but now every expression slips between your fingers like powdered milk. Spoilt. Rotten.

You raise your sword to position. He grabs a training lance from the rack and puts his sword, sharp and deadly, down on the ground beside it.

Ah. He's going serious on you. For once.

The sight makes you swallow and you find that your own spit feels like swallowing a toad. Nerves bundle up. Your fingers shake. Your stomach hollows. Bastard knows how to frighten you.

He says nothing as he pounces on you, legs kicking out to sweep your feet from under you, and it is practice and luck combined that means you avoid it. A hard blow from up above makes you have to block with both hands, one on the hilt and one on the blade, wood splintering into your skin.

“Come on,” he says, his rasp somewhere between laughter and a sigh. “Are you going to risk that with a real weapon? Stupid, but brave…”

You thrust up a knee, aiming for his stomach, and find a softer spot instead. He giggles, pained, and you don't know how to feel about how satisfied the wheeze in his breath makes you feel. His clothes do little to obscure his movements. Leaning over, hand on his polearm, all blue and white… He almost looks like a true knight.

You don't let pity get you. Don't let the pained look fool you. He's smiling through his wince. Lohen is a bastard, and you raise your sword high, aiming for the soft spot between neck and shoulder blade.

He blocks it with the wooden blade of his spear, fast and hard, hard enough that your foot kicks into his thigh and makes him fumble. It might leave a bruise.

“Nice one!” Lohen laughs, and you're surprised enough by his praise that you don't see the hand that grabs your throat coming at all.

It knocks you down flat. Familiarly so. His legs around your waist, knees tight like he's restraining a wild animal. His gloved fingers squeeze around your neck, just enough to make you struggle to breathe with how hard the exertion made you pant.

“But,” he starts, tilting his head, leaning down until the wispy bangs of his hair brush your skin. “Nice isn't good enough, you gotta want it to hurt me.”

His eyes are wide. Empty. Fucking wine-dark. You never noticed it before but he has a little mole underneath one of them. Once, you heard someone say that a mole like that signifies a life of hardship and tears. You've never seen his eyes water even a little.

“Okay,” you say just to fill the silence, to distract yourself. The bruise on your nose has healed long ago, but it lingers in your mind. “Wanting that is easy enough anyway.”

Lohen's smile twists into something so sharp you think it might be satisfied.

“We'll make a fighter out of you yet.”

Five hours later, you are sitting by his side in the infirmary. The blood has mostly been cleaned off by now, removed with more patches of cloth than you'd ever seen used in your life. It colored the water in the bucket a deep red.

Lohen, for his part in things, seems awfully happy. He kicks his legs back and forth despite the flesh wound on his calf, smiling so brightly that the white of his teeth rivals the white of the bandages wrapped around his head.

They're already staining. You think he might have a concussion, but Barbara swore he didn't.

They called her over because of the severity of the wounds. You tried not to meet her gaze when she asked who did it, what happened, who else got hurt. It was you and not you. It was you and the people you fought and really, that makes it all Lohen's fault.

If you'd been stronger, neither of you would have gotten hurt. If you'd never accepted the desire to get stronger, neither of you would have been there at all.

Nausea climbs your throat at the memory of slack expressions. Empty eyes. Sinew and bone.

“You're lost in thought,” Lohen says, chipper. He waves a hand in front of your face and you push it down with a groan. “Care to share?”

“Not really,” you mumble.

Your own wounds were treated last, because they weren't as severe. Scratches and cuts on your arms, a thin injury from a blade along your back. Lohen couldn't keep his eyes off of them when you'd first helped each other walk back. He'd stepped down hard on his own bleeding leg. Not even limping.

You swallow at the memory. Try not to think about what the bastard made you do— about the blood on your hands. His. Theirs. Your own.

“Did you not like it?” He asks, and you look at him to find his face awfully empty. Familiarly empty. The thought of him dead strikes you hard, like sickening lightning, and you shake your head just to clear it.

You clench your hands in your lap. Lohen takes them into his own, thumbs the calloused skin of your palm, brushing hard enough to make the scratches sting. Turned up like this, they look awfully normal. Like nothing has changed.

“You barely even did half of the work, I was the one wiping the floor with them,” he says, sounding not-quite-enthusiastic. Not like usual. “But there's nothing wrong with enjoying yourself when you're fighting to survive.”

You watch a knight pass by the open infirmary door. Armor shining in the light of the day. Weapon sheathed at their belt.

“I think we could've done it less…” Less what? With less mortal consequences?

Lohen laughs as you trail off. He sounds like himself again. You think his expression still looks off.

“That's the kinda mindset that gets you killed, and you won't even have lived enough to make your mercy worth it!”

You can't quite disconnect from the moment, can't think of the bodies, because his thumb presses harder into your palm. The sting keeps you tethered. Keeps you awake. Makes blood bubble to the surface.

You are alive because you killed. Lohen won't let you forget it.

Six days later, you find yourself in Lohen's small apartment. It's a single room on the upper story of a house where several knights live, with a small window that lets the sunlight in, and a view of the rolling fields outside Mondstadt's walls. You can even spot Dragonspine in the distance.

He'd explained to you that the room was on a rotating schedule amongst knights in his company, that whoever lived in it was whoever was stationed in Mondstadt at the time, and that someone else had lived in it for over a year while he'd been on the expedition.

“Is that why it's so clean?” You ask, half-joking, and he laughs but doesn't answer.

When you poke around, you find knives hidden under pillows on the couch-bed. It's a miracle you don't cut yourself by accident.

“I invite you here for dinner and you make fun of an apartment that's barely even mine,” he rolls his eyes. He's dressed more casually today than you've seen him in… Forever, you think. White and blue, but no pomp, no knightly symbols. Covered from head to toe.

Every so often he looks back at you from where he stands in the tiny kitchen, hair falling into his eyes. “You know perfectly well I keep my weapons sorted.”

“And your collection,” you say instead of pointing out the polearm hanging precariously above the rickety dinner table.

He nods, gives you a look you can't read. His smile is too soft. “And my collection.”

The smell of fish and cream permeates the apartment, warm and cloying. You lean back against the bed where you sit. It's softer than you thought it would be. Somehow you'd just assumed Lohen was the kind of masochistic idiot who slept on hard mattresses to prove something to himself.

“Taste test before I serve it or I'll make you lick it up from the floor,” he calls, and you rise, flicking him across the forehead. You never know if he might make good on it.

Only mostly serious, you ask a question that gets you the reward of a wink and then a shake of the head as you step toward his side. "Did you add anything weird to it? Poison, maybe?"

You grab for the spoon but he dips a finger into the boiling mixture and raises it to your mouth.

“What,” you say, but that's too much of an opening, clearly, and he stuffs it between your lips. You bite down like you're faced with a carrot, annoyance hot in your chest, and he winces, but doesn't pull back.

Slowly, biting harder all the while, you lick the cream from his finger. It tastes buttery and sweet. You let his finger go from between your teeth and watch as blood pools, marks visible on his pale skin like bruises on fruit. He's an apple nobody but you would ever pick, you think.

“It tastes fine,” you say, looking into his dark eyes to avoid looking at the marks. “But you're a real freak, you know that, right?”

Lohen's answering smile is more real than you've seen since the fight.

“I know,” he grins. Leans too far into your space. “Want to test out just how true that is?”

Seven months later, you are crouched in the tree at Windrise. The breeze is blowing leaves up from the undergrowth, rustling every branch with such noise that it hides your labored breathing.

Beneath you, a dark blue dot shadowed against the bright blue sky, Lohen approaches with his polearm in hand. This far up he looks like a rabbit on the ground, face twitching, hunched up like a prey animal ready to start running. You swallow the excitement. This has been months in the making. Over a year.

It is your test, to see how far you've come, how much his training has pushed you, and— and you want to prove that you're not going to take a single hit and go down. You'll rip his throat out today. Eat him alive.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he shouts, sing-song and delighted, and you curl so that the leaves will hide you better.

Your grip on your blade tightens. The leather handle brushes against the scars left over from the fight all those weeks ago. You don't think about it much anymore. It happened. You lived. Lohen lived.

All things considered, there were few better outcomes to have.

He steps further toward the tree, careful and quiet and if you hadn't been up here, you never would have seen him coming. His polearm is kept up just-so, ready to strike and yet never hitting the ground and telling you of his position.

You watch him tilt his head, looking around, and you can just about picture ears on his head darting toward every sound. You crouch lower.

A step more, and the position will be perfect. You don't even dare breathe. Too great a risk.

And then he looks right up at you.

And the bastard smiles.

It is entirely on impulse that you leap from the tree, blade outstretched— iron, sharp, a real threat —toward his neck. That little collar has pissed you off since you first met him. You are going to cut it off as you cut his throat.

That's how Lohen has trained you, after all. You even have the reaction speed to lean back when he swings the polearm toward you, just barely out of reach as it swims through the air in front of your nose.

“Fuck you, I fucking had you,” you say, and he laughs, swiping a leg toward you. “Fuck you!”

You jump up to avoid it, use your sword to balance and relish the satisfying feeling of a sharp edge sinking into soft dirt. A kick toward him has him staggering back, and then he stabs the polearm toward the arm you're leaning on, and you have to raise it so fast you nearly take your own eye out with the blade.

“It was a good try,” he says, panting, and you punch him with your free hand. You think you might have broken his nose. He doesn't so much as wince, just smiles wider, using the long handle of his spear to take out a leg from under you.

Fighting with Lohen feels like dancing, now. It's a test too. It always has been. But you dodge under and over the long, hard swings of his spear, and every time he tries to get close you use your blade to drive him away.

“A good try,” he says again, ducking just under the swing of your sword, and you swear you can see that you take a few hairs off his head— and then he rises, forehead meeting your chin. You gasp, lean back, a hand where it hurts, but you spot where he's going to go next, and… “But not good enough.”

This time, when he makes for your throat with a hand hidden just underneath the shadow his spear casts on the ground, you grab his wrist and twist it around.

He falls along with you, as you push your elbow against his back, right into soft flesh. His polearm goes careening, and you hold your sword high. When he lands facedown in the grass, you're on his back, digging the blade into the ground right beside his cheek.

You pant. Lohen wheezes beneath you. You can feel the uneven breaths where you sit, both of you shaking from the fight. His hair covers much of his face, but he tilts his head, letting the sharp edge of your sword cut into his skin, and meets your gaze.

“That was great,” he says, sucking in a harsh breath. Blood from his nose runs down into his mouth. Stains his teeth. “You've learned how to take a punch, and how to dish one out..!”

The hand trapped between you and his back wriggles, and you tighten your grip. Sitting down, you can feel where your ribs will bruise, where your body will ache tomorrow. It doesn't matter, though. You won.

He runs cold, but when you tilt the blade a little closer, digging a little further into his flesh, you can see that his pale skin is warming up. Blushing red.

“You gonna get up and let me go for a second try?” Lohen asks, sounding awfully excited about the thought. “Or are you gonna take your time making me pay?”

The answer is clear as day to both of you. Sometimes he asks questions just to feel the sting of a denial.

You have several months of things to make him suffer for.

It takes only a few seconds of consideration before you lift him by the hair, bringing the sword to his throat. The blood from his nose and cheek drips onto it. By now, both the edge and the flat of the blade are red with his blood.

Carefully, without remorse, you dig it under the collar, and strip it off like you would when unleashing a trapped dog.

Lohen's giggle sounds hoarse, muted, and the way he sniffles could fool anyone else into thinking he was crying. But you can see the smile. Know it's only the blood. You don't know how far you'd have to go to get him to sob, but you think you might want to find out.

You yank him up higher, dig your fingers into the thick of his hair and clench around the roots, and feel the way he fights against your pull. Just to feel the ache, you bet. Bastard. Freak.

This close you can look him in the eyes, see the little mole under one of them, the long arcs of his lashes. The blood on his teeth.

“You don't seem too upset to have lost,” you say aimlessly, considering what you might do, what revenge you can take. You sit up further, holding down the arm on his back with your weight, and tilt the hand you're using to hold the sword so close that you're nearly taking out his eye just so you can brush the skin underneath it.

Soft. Too soft for someone like him, you think, and then he's leaning up into you and kissing you with too much teeth. The taste of his blood is metallic and you're sure you must look awfully shocked because he's laughing again, biting your lips, all coppery stench and impulse.

Lohen's tongue swipes across your teeth, and you're not sure what possesses you to do it— whatever drove you to agree to training with him in the first place, perhaps —but you lick against the inside of his cheek like you're tasting fresh kill. There is a bite wound there, biting his tongue doesn't seem like his thing, but now that you're thinking back on it…

“You fucking freak,” you spit, laughing at the red on his cheeks, laughing at the way the memory of his lust for violence mixes with the memory of him in his kitchen, cooking you a meal. “You love me!”

Then he kisses you again, sharp and hungry and painful, biting down your lips to your chin and to your neck. It hurts like you imagine being bitten by a desperate animal might. The funny part is just that he keeps leaning up into you, keeps chasing after you even when you rise.

“Don't stop there,” he half-groans and half-wheezes, out of breath. You hit him over the head and he makes a miserable, delighted noise.

It probably makes you a freak too, you're realizing, that you think this act of hurting each other is a fitting reward for the past year of dancing around each other. You don't have much time to think about it, though, because Lohen is kicking back at you to upheave you from where you sit.

It takes maneuvering and strength and a little bit of luck for you to remain sitting, but you're on the ground instead of on top of him, and his hands find your shoulders with surprising speed. He's shaking, but you think that's excitement, and his fingers squeeze so tight that it hurts.

Your knee is between his thighs where his cock is hard in his pants, your teeth are on his now-bare neck, biting into pristine skin. His fingers are calloused under the gloves he almost always wears, but here he's soft, delicate, a word you'd never use to describe Lohen otherwise.

“Too easy," you mumble, and he bites into his glove to drag it off, then digs a hand under your shirt. He scratches down your back with his nails like a wildcat, and you dig your knee up so that you're both wincing. He's grinding against you with no rhythm, and you're no better where you sit on his thigh, and dully you think that you're both really fucking lucky that there's a festival in Dornman Port and most people are far away from Windrise. It means that when Lohen lets out a sound somewhere between a keen and a mocking laugh at the way your hips stutter, you don't have to stuff your fingers into his mouth to keep him quiet. You think he might want you to do that, though, because he kisses your palm on your way to burying it in his hair. The palm with the scars from your fight all that time ago. The sight makes you swallow thick and bitter. "Fuckin'," you start, gasping out when he grinds his thigh harder against you. "Sappy bastard." "Can't you see how delighted," he breathes against you, cool despite the heat of the situation, the closeness of your bodies, the way his blood still runs down his face in warm rivulets. Cryo vision. "I am, that you've figured out how to be cruel?"

"Gross," you say, and he laughs hard enough that he smears the blood on his face against your skin. You're both covered in it. It's everywhere, and you both stink of iron and dirt and arousal, and you can't help but laugh along with him. His eyes are impossibly dark. Still that same color that gets stuck in your head, that lingers when you close your own.

Wine-dark.

Behind him, your sword lays in the grass, green and grey dotted with red. You kiss him this time, and fumble for the hilt, and... There, you have it. His eyes are closed, long dark lashes fluttering against his pale, bloodied skin. You bite his lip, lick the open wound, and press the blade of the sword to his throat. He laughs. The edge cuts into his skin just-so. His smile is wide and alive and joyous. "You've got it out for me," Lohen says like you've promised him the world, out of breath and hard against you, leaning further so a single movement would cut his head from his body.

It's the merciless press of your blade against his skin and the cruel, slow grind that does him in, and with your faces so close together, you can see the satisfied look on his face as he comes with a frenzied giggle.

You don't stop moving, not when the grip of his fingers and the harsh scratching makes you grit your teeth, and you shake on his thigh as if the risk of slitting his throat with one awkward movement wasn't hanging right above your heads.

"Guess you really did screw me in the end," Lohen laughs, and you roll your eyes, dropping the sword at your side. You brush your finger across his neck. The blood pools and mixes together until you can't tell which of you was the first to start bleeding.

It takes a good few minutes until either of you speak again, but you don't bother counting them.

"...Satisfied with your revenge yet?" Lohen asks, breathing hard. Grinning.

You hum. As if you were considering it. Let the silence settle in, nothing but your breathing and the breeze to occupy it. Watch his face fall from a smile to an empty frown. The hollow nothingness that settles in after the joy. It'd be a cruel fate to condemn anyone to.

But you have the choice, now. You always will.

You look him over. His white clothes, knightly as ever, are stained with blood. Discolored by grass. A blush dusts his bleeding cheeks, there's a little cut on his throat that's sure to scar. His lips are red and wounded. He looks debauched. It was your hand that did this to him. It's a nice thought.

Now, you feel your limp form being dragged, an arm draped around your shoulder in away that seems overly familiar for a kidnapper. You phase in and out of sight, seeing a white farmhouse, a bit run down and american Gothic, stood tall before you. Clearly you've been taken far from the city.

"Yoo-hoo. Hey, cmon, sleepy." As you're dropped to the floor, slumped over, you can see a few pair of shoes. A lanky form is kneeled over you, snapping their fingers like trying to get a cat's attention. "I didn't even hit you that hard, come on. Don't be a baby." The voice is awfully jovial for a kidnapper.

Managing to look up, you see a young man, no more than or nineteen or twenty, with buzzed blonde hair and a ratty tank. The sight makes you pale, Jacob Bates. A well known maniac whose been terrorizing the quarantined area with his gang of psychos. He had a hunger for anarchy and violence, killing both humans and zombies alike. He seemed to have no real allegiance or goal beyond his own desires for amusement. "Heh, big old eyes widened up, guess you recognize my face." He grins, tilting his head with a boyish amusement. "Well; it's good you can recognize faces; maybe you aren't as messed up from that pistol whip as I thought. You lost a lot of blood, but it's not like your brains were hanging the back of your head." He snickers. "Small miracles, huh?" He stands now, nudging you with the tip of his dark black combat boots. How had a simple night at work turned into this nightmare?

"Please let me go- please-" You immediately begin to beg, to plead for your life before this deranged young man. You'd seen horrific clips of him spread on the news station, the one approved only for the shutdown zone. Clips of a deranged man, robbing gas stations, blasting shots off at innocent citizens, even bagging up stray zombies and releasing them into the now rare populated areas. "They- your guys took everything I have, I promise. I handed over my phone, keys, wallet-"

"Shh- shh- shh- stop with the rambling! I'm sure my boys frisked you good, they aren't amateurs. Why they brought you back here is anyone's guess. Rudy?"

A much younger boy, thin and wide-eyed, is beckoned over. "Come on, Rudes. What was the play? Why bring crack this boring nine-to-fiver over the head and drag her back here?" The question is posed as casual as could be, but there's an underlying challenge. It's clear from the looks of this 'gang' scrappy kids and youths presumably scooped up from the already rough streets, that these kids have been groomed into a life of crime and parent-less anarchy, by their cult-like older brother figure. It's a test, proof of the cruelty and sadistic behavior he's trying to ingrain.

"I dunno." Rudy mumbles, scuffing his shoe on the floor. "Just... figured any hostage is a good hostage? We haven't snatched anybody up in a bit, and the other day you mentioned that it was getting uh- stale?" Rudy seems unsure of why he kidnapped you, but not necessarily ashamed. It's an odd sensation, kids and teens waiting around to see if their boss bites their fellow member.

Jacob just pauses, then tilts his head back in raucous laughter. "Oh shit- Rudy, your fucking face!" He loudly cackles; grinning like a jackal. "I'm fucking with you, you never need a reason to fuck with somebody. Good on you for the initiative, this is your first hostage, huh? Good on you. She's a lot bigger than you, how'd you drag her to the van? Growing boy." He slaps the boy a little too roughly on the back, making the kid flinch but smile, like a praised dog. "Wallet, hand it over. Keep the cash but show me that id. Gotta know who we have the pleasure of having over."

As Rudy pilfers through your leather billfold with nimble and practiced movements, you feel the toe of a thick black workboot nudging your cheek, forcing you turn over your head. "What to do with you? Got folks here, anyone who'd pay money to get that smoking face back?" He asks, once again far too casual for this situation.

"N-no- my family lives outside the quarantined zone, I couldn't leave before the outbreak." You weakly explain, trying to sit up a bit despite the constant ache on your head. He pushes his lips into a feigned pout, shaking his head. "Breaking my heart, don't cry, girly. You'll make me tear up." His face immediately falls, uninterested and even filled with a slight disdain as he stands from where he was kneeling by your side. "Kidding, duh. I don't care about your family shit- RUDY!" He screeches, eyes manic. "Where's that fucking id, shit- are you blind?"

"Here." Rudy quickly shoves the plastic card into his bosses hands. The surrounding folks seem on edge, but not suprised by Jacob's outburst. He's clearly prone to violent mood swings and outbursts, considering how used to it they seem. "Little fucking dweeb, get outta here. GO!" He waves off the others, and they scatter throughout the yard and farmhouse.

You remain silent, watching as he fidgets with the id, free hand playing with a shiny pistol at his side. The wanted posters had let you know gun violence was a calling card of the psycho, and he plays with the weapon as if its a toy. "Hmm, hmm, hmm. Interesting. Ooh, O negative, my second favorite blood type. " He crosses his hand over his heart in a fake swoon. "And you're sure there's no one we can ransom you to?" He asks, tossing the card he screamed for moments ago aside without a care.

"No, no one. There's no reason to keep me here. I have nothing for you!" You exclaim, putting your hands together. "Please; I won't tell anyone about your base or anything if you just let me go." You don't know how to appeal to him, to grovel or panic or cry, but you get the feeling none of those will work. He does whatever he damn well pleases, your fate is in his hands.

"Yeah, geez you've made that pretty clear. Company security pass, id, and a library card. God you're a boring shit! Rudy bagged a real winner." He grabs his pistol, twirling it once before roughly knocking the muzzle against your forehead, the 'clunk' inciting another tearing headache. "No ransom, no money, no drive. And no one coming for you. Might as well pop one in you and put you out of your misery now, since you're one useless civvy."

"No-no!" You beg, scooting away from his gun, which you now notice is covered in graphic doodles and bright stickers. One you've surely seen on tv, blasting the skull of some poor bank employee mid robbery. "It'd be easier to just let me go- you don't want to clean up the mess, I'm not worth the trouble." He just sucks his teeth in response.

"Baby, the splatter is half the fun. Besides, that's what I've got these goons for, clean up." He thumbs towards the back door where a few gang members had rushed out. "Wouldn't want an unhygienic space. We're killers, not gore fetishist. I guess you could saying cleaning brain matter-" Another rough push as he moves the gun to follow your head. "Matters!" He cackles at his own joke; before freezing. Your blood goes colder (if that's even possible), as he stares at you, pupils blown wide like a house cat zeroing in on prey.

"Laugh." He says, voice devoid of any emotions, grip on the gun firm as he lowers it. "Wha-" In your confusion, you apparently don't respond quick enough, he whips the gun across your face, a bleeding cut now running across your cheek as you sink back to the floor. "FUCKING LAUGH!" He screeches again, and you begin a deranged sort of fake laugh to appease him, barely able to suppress the hot tears which well in your eyes, before sliding down into your open cut. The sting barely registers in your state of fight or flight, as you look at Jacob.

He seems immediately appeased, withdrawing his gun and strolling over to the nearby windowsill and leaning out, looking at a beat up red pickup and some teens sprawled around it. "You got a nice voice, anyone ever tell you that?" He asks, not even looking at you. It's clear he's grown bored with you. Sucking his teeth again with a squelching noise, he turns. "Okay, I'm starved, gonna go get some shit food from some fast food place. You want nuggets?" He doesn't let you answer. "You want nuggets. Wait here, don't go anywhere, my boys will snipe you down quick, but they won't finish you off. They know I like delivering the killing blow." He grabs a pair of keys of a nearby hook, and grins.

"You got a little blood on your uh- everywhere." He snickers, before heading out the door. "Be good!"

You're left frightened, shocked, and sore as he wanders off, like a child done playing with a new toy. You manage to weakly drag yourself to a couch, the terror overcoming you as you let your tears flow. Sobs rack your body, and while you're sure his sadistic followers can hear you, at this point you don't care. Agonized, you let sleep overtake you, hoping it will all be some wretched nightmare when you awake.

The feeling of a warm, crinkle material shocks you awake, and you jolt to find a warm, greasy paper bag has been chucked at your face. "Eat up, got you a meal. You're welcome." He coos, flopping onto the couch beside you and wrapping an arm around your neck, a chicken nugget in his hands.

"Neeeeeeeeeow-" He makes airplane noises as he presses the processes meat substance to your lips. "No? Not hungry? Don't be picky." He warns, that cold, glazed look returning. You quickly eat the nugget, and his gaze melts as quickly as it froze. "Hope you don't mind, I'm keeping the toy." You notice a rubiks cube in his free hand, half dismantled and obviously owned by someone with no intention of solving it.

"Soooooooooo... been thinking. Got a proposition for you." He slaps the remaining food out of your hand. You can hardly deal with his constantly shifting wants and the whiplash of his actions. "Come on, put those legs to work, you're gonna come meet a friend of mine."

"I don't want to meet any of your friends." You mumble; earning a brow raise from him. "Was that a no? Kitty's got claws!" He giggles, gripping your shoulder harshly. "Don't do it again, kay?" He says it jovially, but the threat is present.

You quickly realize he's leading you towards a dilapidated barn, rotted and rain damaged wood. The building is barely standing. It feels like a death march, you struggle to prepare yourself to be taken out back and euthanized like a rabid mutt. However, as you approach the barn, you hear a sound that breaks you into a cold sweat.

Since the outbreak began, you've only ever seen one zombie. You'd been at the grocery store when gunfire and screams ran out, and while evacuating through the front, you'd seen a woman on the ground. She looked healthy, normal, until she whipped around to face the riot officers who stood behind her, eyes milky and jaw detached from her skull. Her face, or what was left of it, had made horrendous gurgles as the officers pumped her full of lead. She was put down quickly, but those sounds. That sight, it never left your mind.

Now, as he pries open the barn door, that same death-gurgle echoes out again, filling the rotted wood structure. Chained like a violent pittbull, a stake in the ground and a thick-linked chain around it's neck, is a zombie; clearly turned sometime ago. It's hobbled, legs intact but feet having clearly been hacked off. You can barely suppress your face as the smell hits your nose, before bending over; mouth dry as you heave up what little of your meal you'd been able to eat. "Fuck- ugh-" you continue to heave, even after there's nothing left to spew.

Jacob seems throughly amused; just cackling. "Lost your lunch? Bruiser here doesn't smell that bad..." he glances at the zombie, shrugging. "Kind of an ugly mug though."

"That's... fucking cruel- i-inhumane!" You exclaim, shaking. He just shrugs again. "Good for body disposal though. Eats like a goat, just munches on whatever you put in front of him. Pre-etty convinient."

"He was a person-" You can't even vocalize your disgust, both at what this human has become, and what he now endures as a living dead.

"He's a brain-muncher. It's not like I'm keeping some human locked up-" He cuts him self off, gasping with a dramatic 'Oh!' and looking at you. "Touché." He grabs ypu rather roughly by the back of your shirt collar, dragging you towards the jaw of the beast; stopping mere inches away from its face.

"Stop- stop!" You scream, writhing. "No- I'm sorry- don't let him eat me-"

"Eat you? He's harmless, like a pet. We keep him well fed. Come on, don't you wanna pet him?" He coos, cruelly occasionally pushing you closer to the beast who now writes, milky eyes inflamed with the scent of flesh and the heat of hunger. It lets out those gurgles. Those awful sounds. You let out an agonizing scream, and the creature only screeches in response. Having had his fill of amusement, he drops you.

"Okay, playtimes over. See? Not a pretty sight out here, is it?" He tuts, shaking his head as he kneels down again, booping your nose. "So, here's the sitch. I've been thinking it over, and I don't know whether or not I feel like keeping you, or watching you get eaten. Both are pretty. Fucking. Funny."

You shiver.

"So, either you stay in here, and when you feel ready to leave this world, just crawl on over to Bruiser here as show him that pretty neck-" he motions to the creature. "Or just uh- I don't know, agree to be my fiance."

You freeze, so confused you are momentarily snapped out of your fear. "What? Fiance?" You can barely get out the words.

"Yeah. Between girlfriend and wife? Never seen the bachelor?"

"W-why? I don't know you, you don't know me- you pistol-whipped me." You cry.

"Love is complicated, all good couples have spats." He grabs your face between to hands, squishing your cheeks. "I don't know, I like being amused, stimulated. And between you and me, the younger ones aren't exactly intelligent company." He motions to a pair of younger gangmembers, who are wrestling over what looks like a baseball bat. "Little dumbasses. Plus, we got a free bed," he leans in. "One of em' got a little mouthy, so he got to share a room with bruiser here. I'm sure you can imagine how that went."

The idea of him feeding anyone, much less some kid to his monster makes you sick.

"Anyways, I need stimulation. A fellow fully formed mind. I don't want a girlfriend, feels to flighty. And friend? Talk about under-selling it, this is a long term thing." He explains. "Even a maniac needs soooooooome constistency." He continues rambling. "But its like, I also don't feel like hunting down a priest whose not gonna snitch to some pig, you know? So, fiance. Future wifey. But not straight to wife. Sounds classy." He suddenly threads his fingers in your hair, fisting it and once again moving towards the zombie.

Before he can speak, you scream. "Yes- yes- okay! I'll be your fiance, don't hurt me!" You cry. He drops your hair and body like a sack of potatoes, and your chest hits the musty earth.

"Woooooo!" He screams; howling like a dog as he swings open the barn door. "Get out the good beers, your big brothers getting hitched!" There's a few jovial but confused shouts. It clear these poor folks are so used to his erratic behavior, the idea of him engaging himself to a captive of only a few hours seems par for the course. He yanks you up and begins to drag you to the house just as he dragged you out, this time with his lips on your cheek, before licking a wet stripe up your cheek. "Damn, forget that brain-munching idiot, I might eat you up myself, hot stuff. Tasty." He walks up to a post beside the doorframe, freezing as he puts a hand up.

"Woah, brainwave!" He chirps, snapping his fingers. "Hey, idiots. Switchblade, come on, I know one of you has one." A random, scruffy girl hands him a knife, and he nods. "Thanks kid," when she shuffles off, he chuckles. "I didn't even know we had girls in this gang, who the fuck was that?" He jokes, flicking it open and running the tip of the blade against the door frame.

"Come on, make your mark on this little home. Carve our initials. Mine and yours baby." He coos; like its some grand gesture. He gives you the knife, and in a moment, your flight becomes fight. You jab to towards him, but he grabs your wrist. "Hey, none of that!" He cackles gripping your wrist so hard you drop the knife. His grip is bruising, it feels like the bones might shatter.

"Sorry, I'm sorry- I'm sorry-" You blurt, confidence and rage melting away as he gives you that cold; jackal grin.

"S' okay, a little fights cute." He uses the tip of his boot to kick the knife up into the air with a practiced skill, grabbing it up with his free hand. He leans in, lips centimeters from your ear as his breath makes you shiver. "Alright, lemme rephrase," His voice turns cold again. "Carve those pretty letters into our new forever home, or I carve them into your fucking thigh." He spits. "Either way; they get written. Choose wisely, cause I'm showing a hell of a lot of restraint. There is a choice I think is a whole. Lot. Hotter." He kisses the shell of your ear as he takes your hand, folding the knife into it again and closing your fingers around it gently.

With a shaky fist, you barely scrape your initials, followed by '+ JB forever' into the painted white wood. You're zoned out, barely conscious of what you write as henlets out another wild hoot and holler, the delinquents around you whooping in response.

Your siblings stopped letting you leave the house after that. The warm sun, the scent of fresh bread in the marketplace, the laughter of the townsfolk—it all became distant, mere memories behind locked doors. You were forced to watch the world from behind wooden shutters, longing for the life you had barely begun to taste.

Years passed before they finally deemed it safe enough for you to step outside again. And when you did, you threw yourself into rebuilding.

With what little savings you had, you opened a food stall in the marketplace, selling treats that made both children and adults smile. Your business thrived. Customers returned with praises, telling you how much they enjoyed your cooking. It gave you a sense of purpose, a taste of the independence you had long craved.

Then, one night, your stall was stolen

Not just stolen—destroyed. Burned to ashes near the town's tavern.

No one saw anything. No one heard anything. No one even smelled the smoke.

The loss devastated you, snuffing out the fragile hope you had so desperately clung to. When you fell deeper into despair, your mother was the one who lifted you back up. She taught you the skills she had learned from years of working in the palace—how to clean, how to serve, how to navigate the world of nobility without drawing attention to yourself. You listened. You learned. And when she deemed you ready, you followed in her footsteps.

You had thought you were stepping toward a new beginning.

Instead, you walked straight into a gilded cage.

A warm calloused hand rubs slow circles over your bare stomach. Your body is sore, ruined, yet the touch is deceptively gentle—reverent even.

Callixto.

The King.

The man who had stolen you, body and soul, and refused to let go.

His breath is hot against your neck as he presses his lips there, inhaling you like a man intoxicated. He traces his fingers up your stomach, over your ribs, cupping your breast with possessive ease. You squeeze your eyes shut, bile rising in your throat as last night's memories resurface—the way he held you down, the way he filled you over and over until you were too weak to fight him.

“You're perfect,” he murmurs, rolling his hips against your back. “You'll be a wonderful mother to our children. The mother of my heirs… My queen.”

No.

Your breath shudders as you push weakly at his arm, but you might as well be trying to move stone. Your body betrays you—limp exhausted, drained of all strength.

How long has it been?

Days? Weeks?

You can't tell. The chamber windows are tinted, making it impossible to see the sun or the moon. And Callixto… Callixto never leaves your side for long. He lingers, watching you, touching you, whispering sweet, poisonous words into your ear.

The chambermaid is no help, either.

She either glares at you with thinly veiled disdain or ignores you completely, doing only what is required of her. You don't know why she hates you, but it doesn't matter. She's your warden all the same.

There's no one here for you. No mother, no siblings. No bustling marketplace or warm, flickering hearth waiting for you at home.

There's only this prison.

And him.

“Your Majesty,” the chambermaid's voice cuts through the heavy silence. “Lord Soleil awaits you at the gates.”

Callixto tenses, as if irritated by the reminder that the outside world still exists beyond these walls. His fingers dig into your hip as he thrusts forward once more, a sharp, punishing movement that sends a fresh wave of nausea rolling through you.

He finishes deep inside you, groaning against your skin. For a moment, he stays there, reveling in the feeling. Then, with agonizing care, he pulls out—only to press his fingers back inside, pushing his seed deeper.

A shiver wracks your body.

“I suppose I've stolen enough time for myself,” he murmurs, brushing damp hair away from your face.

You force yourself not to flinch.

Callixto cups your chin, tilting your face towards his. His golden eyes burn with something twisted, something sickeningly sweet. Then, he kisses you. A deep, lingering kiss that suffocates you more than any chain ever could.

“Stay here and be good,” he orders, his lips still brushing yours. “Let the chambermaid take care of you until I return.”

As if you have a choice.

As if you ever had a choice.

And when the doors finally close behind him, your body sags into the mattress, silent tears slipping down your cheeks. 

Not just for yourself.

But for the family you may never see again.

For the freedom that may never return.

And for the life that is no longer your own.

The towering walls of the chateau couldn't keep the rumors from reaching you. They were the only thing that kept you sane while you waited for him to return.

You heard whispers about a grand ball the Prime Minister held a few nights ago. It should've been a night of celebration, but instead, it ended in scandal. His wife, a noble woman and the daughter of a count, was caught in bed with a mere footman—nothing more than a commoner.

Lord Soleil, the Prime Minister, himself had walked in on them. The punishment was swift.

The footman was cast out with nothing, and the Prime Minister cut all ties with his wife and her family, erasing them from his life as if they had never existed.

A cruel fate. 

And yet you wondered…

Was it any crueler than yours?

“Perhaps this is why Lord Soleil was so determined to keep His Majesty away from the chateau—away from me. Not just to protect the royal bloodline, but to stop him from making the same mistake his wife did.” You sighed, your breath barely disturbing the still air.

“I can't even blame him. If I were in his position, I wouldn't want a common-born woman anywhere near the throne either. And yet, here I am—trapped in these gilded walls, reduced to nothing more than a vessel, waiting for the day my body finally serves its purpose.”

You leaned against the cool stone wall near the tinted windows, listening to the little birds outside as they carried rumors flitting between the flower beds. Their chatter was a fleeting distraction, a fragile moment of stolen peace—until it was shattered by the sound of heavy boots echoing through the halls.

The doors flew open, and there he stood. The King. Furious.

He called out your name—sharp, urgent, unrelenting—his voice slicing through the chateau hollow corridors like a blade. You didn't move. You barely even breathed. Instead, you pressed yourself against the cold stone wall, your fingers curling into your dress as his footsteps thundered across the marble floors.

He ran upstairs, frantic, taking the steps two at a time. He hadn't even noticed you standing near the windows, so close yet unseen. But you knew it wouldn't last. He always found you in the end.

Outside, the world had fallen eerily silent. The chattering birds had already fled the vicinity, as if sensing the storm brewing within these walls—taking their half-spun whispers with them. The rumor of the king's impending nuptials to a high-ranking noble still lingered in the air, unspoken yet suffocating.

And soon, he would come back down. And this time, he would see you.

Your name tore from his lips again—a furious, desperate plea. Before you could react, his hands found you, his grip ironclad around your arms.

“Where have you been?” His voice was raw, unsteady. His fingers dug in. “Didn't you hear me calling for you?”

“Y-Your Majesty…”

He shook his head. “No—my name.”

Bloodshot, unfocused eyes bore into you. Something was wrong. His gaze sent a slow, creeping dread up your spine.

“Say it.”

“C-Callixto…”

A slow nod. Then, his arms crushed you against him. “You're mine,” he murmured against your hair, his breath searing against your skin. “Forever mine. And I will be forever yours.”

The walls seemed to shrink around you.

“Callixto… Your Majesty… I can't breathe—” you rasped, struggling against his suffocating embrace. 

He didn't let go.

“Please…”

A beat of silence. Then, at last, he loosened his grip—but only slightly.

“Apologies, my queen,” he murmured, lifting your trembling hand to his lips.

Your pulse pounded in your ears. You had to calm him. You had to survive this.

You recalled your mother's old ways—how she soothed your father's anger, how she tamed your brothers’ tempers. Slowly, carefully, you reached for his cheek, brushing your fingers against his skin.

“Tell me your worries…”

“The royal court has been trying to push this woman onto me for as long as I can remember—something about securing the heir to the throne’s bloodline. The nerve of those fools,” he muttered, absently running his fingers through your hair as you lay atop him.

“If I wanted to, I could trace your family's lineage—alter it if necessary— and keep them out of our way.”

Listening to his monologue as you drift in and out of consciousness feels more exhausting than it should. You know you should try to persuade him to accept the will of his people, to yield to their demands—but deep down, you wonder if it would be easier if someone else had his full attention instead. If only he'd let you go.

“Perhaps we should secure an heir to the throne first… then we can look into your lineage…” he whispered, thrusting into you once more. His seed spilled from you as his movements grew more intense with every passing second.

Since then, it had become his ritual to fill you to the brim, keeping you in place—stuffed, trembling, and utterly his— until he was satisfied. Only then would he leave to rule his kingdom, but never without ensuring you remained exactly as he left you, his claim unmistakable. He controlled everything—the meals you ate, the tonics you drank—all carefully chosen to prepare your body for the sole purpose of carrying his heir.

You were his, and soon, you would bear proof of it.

It didn't take long for the signs to show.

The nausea. The exhaustion. The unbearable weight in your lower belly that told you something had taken root inside you.

And yet, luck has not abandoned you entirely.

Your chambermaid—a woman whose disdain for you was only rivaled by her loyalty to the royal court—had noticed. She must have. But instead of betraying your condition, she pressed a cold cloth to your forehead and muttered, “A commoner’s flu. Nothing more.”

A lie. A calculated one.

The King believed her.

But belief was fragile in a mind like his. It splintered easily.

His golden eyes flicked between the chambermaid and the royal physician, narrowed and gleaming, hungry for an answer that neither of them dared to give.

“Her color is pale,” Callixto murmured, pacing your chambers. His fingers twitched—fidgeting, trembling, curling into claws before stretching straight again. “She barely eats, barely moves. And yet you say it is nothing?”

The physician bowed his head. “It is a seasonal illness, Your Majesty. A touch of fever, some exhaustion—nothing that cannot be cured with rest.”

Callixto laughed—a dry, humorless sound. His nails dug into his palms, leaving little crescent moons of pain.

“Rest,” he echoed. His voice was a whisper of rage, of something darker crawling beneath his skin. “You think I have not noticed? She wilts before my very eyes, and you tell me to wait?”

The chambermaid stepped forward then, expression schooled into reluctant sympathy. “Your Majesty, she is weak. He kind does not fare well in the colder months. It is not surprising.”

Callixto stilled. His breathing slowed, deliberate, controlled—but his eyes never left her face.

“Weak?” The word came soft, almost thoughtful. “Is that what you believed?”

The chambermaid hesitated.

Something in the air shifted.

A warning.

Callixto's lips twitched—not in a smile, no. In something sharper. Something that showed his teeth.

“Fine,” he murmured. “If she must rest, then she will do so under your watchful eye. I want no one else near her.”

“As you wish, Your Majesty.”

But as the King turned away, the chambermaid gaze flicked down—her fingers twitching at the pouch hidden beneath her apron. The weight of the promised coin.

The chateau felt emptier than ever one evening. The halls echoed with the distant clatter of preparations from the palace—the banquet, the foreign dignitaries, the noble guests.

A distraction.

And when the chambermaid entered your chambers, her usual sneer was absent. Instead, she carried a bundle of clothing.

“You need to leave tonight.”

Your stomach twisted. “Why?”

“Because I tire of wiping your sweat.” She threw the bundle onto your bed. “Because I want you gone.”

You swallowed hard. “And that's all?”

The chambermaid exhaled sharply. Something in her posture—something tired and worn—hinted at an answer she would never give.

“The palace gates will be open for the banquet. No one will be watching the chateau. Take the back corridors, follow the outer gardens. You are not important enough to be noticed.”

“What do you gain from this?”

A smirk tugged at her lips. “What I was promised.”

You should've asked by whom. But you didn't.

The scream shattered the night.

“WHERE IS SHE?”

The chambermaid barely had time to compose herself before the doors to your chambers slammed open, cracking wood against stone.

Callixto stood in the doorway, his chest rising and falling with each uneven breath. His pupils had swallowed the gold of his irises, leaving only thin rings of amber around black pits. His fingers curled at his sides, nails digging into his own skin, but he did not seem to notice the blood welling beneath them.

His gaze snapped to the bed. Empty.

Something inside him snapped with it.

“Where is she?” he repeated, stepping forward, his voice no longer a demand but a plea.

The chambermaid bowed, but her voice was steady. “Resting, Your Majesty. The fever worsened—”

“Liar.”

The word cut through the room like a blade. The chambermaid flinched.

Callixto's hands trembled. “She would not leave her bed unless someone forced her to,” he whispered. His tongue darted out, wetting his dry lips. “Unless someone… took her from me.”

He turned, suddenly—too suddenly—and grabbed the chambermaid’s wrist.

“You would not betray me, would you?”

The chambermaid swallowed.

“Of course not, Your Majesty.”

His grip tightened. Bones creaked.

“No, of course not,” he echoed, smiling now—serpentine, sharp. His head tilted. “Because if you had…” he leaned closer, his breath warm against her ear. “I would tear this palace apart. Brick by brick. And when I found her—oh, when I found her—”

He released her.

“Find her,” he murmured. “Or I will find you instead.”

The chambermaid bowed, stepping backward toward the door. “As you command.”

But she didn't turn fast enough to see his lips curl into something… inhuman.

He turned back to the empty bed, trailing a hand over the sheets as if he could still feel you there. His fingers ghosted over where your head had once rested, then curled into the pillow, dragging it close. He inhaled—deeply, desperately—like a starving man before a feast.

His eyes fluttered shut.

“Oh, my love,” he whispered to no one. “You can run, but you cannot hide.”

The night air was crip—freezing against your cheeks, but blissfully free.

You ran. Through the outer gardens, past the dim lanterns, past the drunken guards too enamored with wine and revelry to notice a shadow slipping past them.

You ran until the scent of the palace faded into the trees. 

Home. You had to go home.

But when you reached the village outskirts, you stopped.

Guards. Stationed outside your family's home.

You shrank into the shadows, heart hammering against your ribs. From where you hid, you could see the single candle in the window—dim, unmoving.

Not flickering.

Not alive.

A silent warning: Do not return.

Tears burned your eyes, but you forced yourself to turn away.

Not toward another village. Not toward a stranger's mercy.

But deeper into the forest.

Through the twisting paths only you knew, past the moss-covered stones and the brook where you once dipped your toes in summer. Past the memories. Past the ghosts.

And there, hidden beneath the tangle of overgrown branches, the shack still stood.

You and your siblings built it once—when you were small, when the world was gentler. A childish hideaway, pieced together from stolen nails and planks too weathered to be missed. A place of whispered secrets and stolen sweets, of giggling beneath a roof that bare kept the rain out.

It was nothing.

But it was enough.

You pushed the warped door open and stepped inside, the scent of damp wood wrapping around you like an old embrace. The cold bit at your skin, but you knew how to survive here. You always had.

With shaking hands, you pressed your back against the wall and slid to the floor.

Outside, the trees whispered.

Somewhere beyond them, the King was hunting.

But you would not be an easy prey.

Not here. Not yet.

—

tbc.

noirscript © 2025

All rights reserved.

—

“Just a few little bites, m’kay? Then maybe, just ~maybe~ I’ll let you go.”

“H-how many?” 

He’s surprised you can still speak. 

“Hmmmm,” his voice rumbles in the thick confines of his throat as he ponders. Carmine irises flicker over the shape of you. “This looks good.” Sukuna taps his bloody fingertip to the underside of your breast, pressing into the gooey fat. “This too.” He traces a sharp fingernail across the juncture of your neck and shoulder, eyes sparking when you swallow. “And I already got started down here.”

Sukuna digs a claw back into your sore thigh, using the barest hint of his strength to rip into your tender muscle. 

Your scream makes a satisfied shiver run down all of his limbs, both cocks throbbing. They twitch together, hot and angry, red tips leaking down his shafts.

Licking his lips, he admires the sugary shine of your subcutaneous tissue, peeled back to reveal bloody insides of your flesh. Just a little rip, a stringy bit of meat that’s too easy to fully tear off and slide between his teeth. 

Sukuna swallows and the taste of you makes him want to cum.

“Mhmmmm, fuck, what did you do to get so flavorful, hm? Or have you always been so sweet?” 

He watches you whimper and wiggle, nipples hard and puffy. 

“You like this?” The grin that curls around the tattoos on his cheeks is sickening. “What a fucking delightful little human. I’ve never gotten lucky enough to find one of the sluts.”

He tests his theory under the safety net of knowing that pain makes you numb. Releasing your wrists, he revels in how you simply let the weight of freedom fall into his mattress. You aren’t going anywhere.

Your poor little pussy is creaming, squishy and wet and begging. He likes the way it smells—tangy, thick honey. It almost overpowers the iron scent of dripping blood. 

“‘Suppose you need some attention. Don’t want you passing out before I’m done.”

You gratify him with a high-pitched moan as he swirls two fingers against your cunt, knuckles sticky in your slick. Easy, it’s far, far too easy for him to slip his digits into you. Normally there’s resistance, like human pussies are trying to push him out, yet you’re sucking him in.

“What should I eat next? Pick for me.”

All the emotions that filter over your face are foreign to him. He’s not sure what you’re thinking, but can smell some sick mixture of pain and pleasure rippling over your skin as you weakly buck your hips. His fingers sink deeper into your cunt, claws tickling against soft spots that make you mewl. 

“C’mon,” he tsks, “don’t make me wait.”

Your little gulp is so cute, “My c-cunt…”

“Oh, don’t get greedy. Dessert comes last. Try again.”

You’re almost shy as you drag one of your hands from above your head, trailing down to cup one of your breasts and squeeze. “Here?”

“My, my, those tits do look delicious.” 

He shoves a third finger into your weeping hole as he latches his teeth to the fat of your breast. 

He sucks, tastes your sweat, licks at the salt. As the first bite hits his taste buds, blood trickling down the corners of his lips, his eyes go wide in astonishment. He wasn’t expecting such a burst of flavor, like jellied candy popping in his mouth.

Your shrieks are just fodder, background noise, as he hums in delight and sucks at the viscid lining of your skin.

Fuck. With the next bite he wants to be inside you, feel the tremors of your wrecked body around his dicks. 

The wound bleeds down your stomach as he pulls away, swallowing and licking along his sharp teeth to gather the remnants. 

“Aren’t you just such a treat?” 

Sukuna swats your cheek, quick with his nails angled like a cat so he can scratch at your skin. Your head lolls to the sheets, panting, damaged tits heaving as you try to find sanity. It’s too late for that. He’s going to break your body and mind, binge in your honeyed sorrow. 

“Wakey, wakey, little human. You won’t want to miss what comes next.”

Your brows pinch as he draws his messy fingers from your cunt, only to wrap a hand around each of his cocks so he can pop both heads into your holes. 

That wakes you up. 

“C-can’t, n-not both.” 

“Oh please, you’re all soft and squishy. Girls are made to be fucked.”

The swell of your belly as he pushes in makes him even hungrier. Your ass strangles his cock, the rim wet with the drippings of your slick. He hates that he has to be careful. A too strong push could split you on his dicks, and he’s having far too much fun to be devouring your guts just yet. 

But he’s not gentle. All four hands latch onto you—legs held so wide it’s nearly obscene, the other two sinking into your rib cage and smearing in blood so he can pull you down until you’re impaled. 

The squeeze of you is divine. 

The heavy mass of his cocks stretches your walls thin. He can feel the outline of both his dicks as he starts to thrust, mushroom heads catching on one another before bullying in deep.

It’s no surprise that you’re crying—humans always cry, sob, beg. It is perplexing and oh so satisfying, however, that you’re blubbering because you feel good amidst all your pain and suffering. Your hips are rolling back to meet his thrusts, pussy convulsing every time his pelvis grinds into your clit. 

Your bleeding and broken body is devouring him just like he swallowed your flesh. Your gooey pussy is sucking around him, dragging along his shaft like lips gobbling him whole. 

The hiss he releases is sinful, like a snake coiling as his tattooed thighs presses you deeper into the crimson mess he’s created. He likes the way the ichor stains your skin. He takes a bloodied hand and curls it around your thigh, fingers long enough to overlap and color your flesh like a brand. He could crunch your bones beneath his palms, break you into pieces if he wanted.

“Do you want me to, ah fuck—” he loses his train of thought when the sound of his voice makes your ass clench, ribbed walls wedging around his second cock. “Never fucking mind giving you the option. I’m keeping you. Alive. Want your body warm every time I fuck it.”

The look in your eyes is so hopeful and darling that it almost makes him feel something. 

Sukuna pummels into your gaping holes and leans over your body to sink his teeth into your neck. He bites hard, hard enough to make you weep and wail and to remind him that you’re only here to be devoured.

He rips tender flesh and digests it, drinking down more of your blood as you start to coo from the stinging pain and numbing ecstasy of having him ravage your sensitive little pussy and ass. You get so tight around him in your anguish, all fucked out and eaten like you’re nothing but a willing piece of meat. 

His wanton tongue laves over your marred skin, sliding through blood and sinew. Humans always were his favorite. Only now he can’t remember what any of them tasted like before you.

Your cunt is slobbering, creaming, and he’s pretty sure he hears your weak little heart stop beating for a split moment before you cum. 

“God what a good fucking slut,” he purrs, eyes rolling back in his head as he feels both of your channels compress around his lengths as you break. “Let’s make you do that again.”

You’re so overstimulated from the bliss of his cocks thrusting in, out, in, deeper, faster that all the suffering he inflicted is null. You cum again because it’s so easy to make you, one of his hands pinching your swollen clit until you squirt all over his toned stomach and your belly bulges from the shape of his inflating cock.

“Ohh I like that. More. Give me more.”

Two hands keep your kicking legs pinned to the bed as another torments your clit and the last is gathering your slick. He runs his fingers over the grooves of his abs and up to his pecs, finally flicking his fingertips into his mouth to eat your cum like sauce. 

His cocks swell at the flavor of you, tart and salty like some kind of rich delicacy. 

Sukuna continues to stuff you full, over and over again, pressing in until it seems like you’ll pop. His balls are bruising against your body with every brutal thrust. You’re babbling and messy, coated in slick and blood and tears and spit. It’s almost disgusting, yet he has to admit you’re just so damn pretty and warm that he thinks it’s cute. Like a pet. 

He rubs at your engorged clit until you’re squirting and screaming again, babbling about how it’s too much. Only it’s not enough, not for him. He’s close to the edge and knows just how to get himself off. 

Sucking at a clawed fingertip, Sukuna eyes a soft patch of skin below your bouncing, intact tit. The other is still seeping, his fresh bite etched into the globe.

“One last thing,” he smirks, crazed and nearly fucked out, “gotta let everyone know these slutty holes belong to me.”

The sharp tip of his nail digs into your meat, slicing the characters of his name as if he was signing a gory, whorish picture. His smile nearly splits his skull at the sight, all bloody and gross and his.

“~K-Kunaaa…” hearing his broken name out of your stupid little slut mouth is the last straw, some primal instinct to claim his prize overwhelming his senses and making him explode. 

Cum bursts from your seams all while bloating in your belly, your ass, pearly white strings glistening against all your fluids. He feels relieved as he releases into you, hot balls pulsing as he feeds his seed into your gummy depths. 

You’re so full of his cum that another orgasm crests over you, making you tremble and quake and scream. He relishes your final squeezes, letting your cunt and ass suction around his cocks until he’s milked dry. 

“I fucking love whores.” Just because he can, he pushes his hand into your bulging belly, laughing as cum gushes from where your pussy is cinched around his shaft. You whimper, twisting against the hands holding your thighs open. 

“No no no,” he wags a finger at you, “I still haven’t had dessert.”

the alcoholism to finding god pipeline was not exactly uncommon. it's happened a million times before and it happened to him. Leon S Kennedy. the same Leon who has open tabs in every alcohol serving place across the globe. in a way, it makes him feel whole. a semblance of a calm and picket fence like life that he'd dream up back before the whole thing in raccoon. and whatever he got dragged into after.

shit, he tried everything really. sleeping around with anyone who looks for a good face value fuck (he wasn't really the most silver tongued...at least when it came to words). getting hitched to some girl who sorta resembled a trauma bonded situationship he never fully got over.

hell he even had a kid! a whole daughter for fucks' sake. but nothing fucking worked. nothing at all. until he lost himself in the bottle. god that worked like a charm. the routine of sharp burns down his throat, the haze that took all the edge off, and the part where he forgets. brain and liver going through simultaneous cirrhosis.

but much like the shit that was his life, it's gotta flush out somehow. blocking out these...thoughts and memories made the anger stretch and taut the way a rubber band would. stretching and stretching each time his wife picked a fight about him missing appointments, missing milestones in his daughter's life, and just being missing most of the goddamn time. and then in a particularly escalated screaming match, he had slapped her.

the sharp sting in his palm feeling like a pail of ice had been poured down the back of his dso assigned t-shirt, fresh after a mission. the guilt made his own hazy unfocused eyes water and the sight of his young daughter by the door just standing there, watching with fat droplets of tears running down her cheeks, increased it tenfold.

so he stopped. went cold turkey and stopped even looking at those bottles. hell, he even threw away his favourite hip flask. and then he enrolled in a religious alcohol group therapy. not by choice. some pal of his told him that the group helped. he wasn't the biggest fan of god and his works. he's seen em all, really and they were anything but fluffy pink unicorns shitting rainbows out of their asses. it was...hell. not that he believed in that either.

but something about being around people again. the feeling of togetherness without anybody knowing the weight of the blood and lives he dredged around with him in every step. no judgement, no pity, nothing. he remembered his first day, stepping into church after last having stared into the cold pale stone eyes of christ just hanging in front of everyone and getting a nightmare when he was 10. he had thought to himself, has it really been 20 years?

he took a seat on one of the chairs in the circle. it was the cushioned kind. the ones that made the aches from one too many falls lighten just a little. he flicked his hair out of his eyes. a habit from making sure dust and whatever weird gunk didn't blind him on missions. he was too early. he felt a prickle of self consciousness. he looked too eager and damn it if it's not the most sissy thing to do.

and then the people started streaming in, all bright smiles with light in their eyes — he had to be in the wrong fucking meeting. he was supposed to attend alcoholics' recovery not some supposedly enlightening bible study group. but against the discomfort that began to settle in the lower pits of his stomach, he stayed.

fast forward to now and it has been 10 years. who knew Leon S Kennedy had it in him to attend church alcoholics' recovery and Sunday masses and even prayed on a regular basis now? it sure as hell wasn't him. sure nightmares still kept him up and the urge to just down a whole bottle and complete the process of cirrhosis to give a merciful death to his liver never weakened, but he was a better man now. the church says good men have to be righteous. avoid sin. ask god to forgive and have mercy on their souls. in due time, things would ease up. now Leon knew these words were just words of empty hope. none of it was true. he used to repeat that with conviction in his heart.

until he didn't.

maybe it was the way the leader spoke with unwavering conviction or the way it was more of a sermon instead of an anonymous confession or the words that all seemed to blur into a comforting haze of light after a while. he felt lighter. life had meaning again he'd begin to say, a smile on his lips as he chugged the rest of the cooler water that everyone was given a cup off. each time he goes to the church, all of his desires began to melt away. he was at peace. so much so that he began going to church as soon as he was off missions, sharing cups of cooler water with his peers and the leader who seemed to know just what to say to soothe the troubles in his mind. he never wanted to leave. and sometimes, be didn't.

except, his stupid ex-wife started calling again. saying how he was starting to be late on child support. that she couldn't manage to fund you all on her own with her current earnings. that college was becoming too expensive and that the least he could do was house you for abit to make up for lost time and so that you wouldn't be too lonely at home. at least until she sorted things out with her company and the 6 month long overseas exchange that would guarantee her salary increment.

god gives his most arduous trials to his best of men. Leon just mumbled out a quick sure and ended it. her babbling was going to make him late for church. he had to hand the suitcase full of cash to the leader as a sincere donation so that he can stay for all of their sermons and eventual programme to become one of the higher ranking members.

truth be told, for a second there, he damn near forgot he even had a daughter. church had become his entire life. his purpose. his...people. blood ties weren't enough to keep him going. only church was enough. he ignored the multiple other texts from work asking him where he was. they could find someone else to deal with humanity's work. he was a man of god now, blessed with the opportunity to spread the word of truth. to be back as they were in the olden days. where everything was perfect. where everybody had roles and purposes.

so he gritted his teeth and bared a grimace like smile when you came.

"hey kid. long time no see, huh?"

he says, hands in the pocket of his worn denim jeans. you were practically a stranger. more height than he remembered. when you met his gaze with those really really blank ones, he felt himself a little unnerved. it brought up an image of you crying when he first slapped his ex-wife. how long has it really been? well doesn't really matter. you were no longer a little girl anyway.

it was a long pause. a very awkward one. he shifted a little from one foot to the other as your eyes studied him. it has been a long time. his hair was a little longer, face a little scruffier, but that was your old man alright. the very same eyes you sometimes have nightmares about. the gunmetal blue, cold and filled with a bottomless rage. and you were...taller. softer in places and your hair's...different. he found himself feeling like he was looking at a stranger, unaware that both of you were frowning just like the other.

you were one of many regrets he had. but after church and his enlightenment, his only regret was not being able to put you in church school. maybe then you wouldn't be standing around as soon as you arrive and actually get to doing something around his house. women's roles were in the house. caretakers. while he went out to spread god's word. he stepped aside to let you walk inside, not missing the way your reaction to a dusty seemingly long unused house was a mere flicker of disdain that flitted as soon as it appeared.

"you can take the guest room. settle everything down and get ready. we're going to church."

he says, adjusting the cuffs of his button up as he sat on the couch. he tapped his loafered foot impatienly against the tiles, eyes constantly glancing at the time. 20 minutes passed and he was growing restless. his hair was beginning to fall all wrong from the amount of times he's ran his fingers through them. what was taking you so fucking long anyway? did you not understand the importance of church? how dare you a pathetic girl make god wait? make the leader wait on his important sincere donation? you were gonna regret it when he finally stands up and — the door of the guest room creaked open.

"i'm not going to church, dad. i'm still tired from the trip."

he found his jaw twitching at your brazen nature. walking around as if making the leader wait wasn't going to backfire in his face. but god says patience is virtue so he won't give you shit for it. he was a merciful man after all.

"you better not be saying that just to skip out on church, young lady."

he says with restrained annoyance, jaw tightening as he grabbed his briefcase and headed out. you don't remember dad being religious. but then again, you barely knew the man. most of your childhood was buried under lock and key in the back of your mind. but being around him made you uneasy. even more so now. but this was a temporary arrangement. maybe you should see to doing something more relaxing like giving yourself a breather since it was the summer holidays. maybe just rot away in this room until it was time to leave again.

he came home from church late into the night. gunmetal blue eyes hardening as he watched you eat late night cereal at the kitchen table. you looked up mid chew, meeting his gaze. he tched and walk away. you swore he mumbled something like lazy under his breath. your appetite began to fizzle. what was this man's deal anyway?

he was barely home and honestly the only complaint you had was the lack of any food around. so you decided to take matters into your own hand and headed out to get some. like a good responsible grown adult would. and when you got home he was sitting at the table, eyes narrowed as he scanned you up and down.

"where were you?"

it sounded so accusatory. as if he already had a preconceived notion of where you went. maybe it really didn't help that you went to the store in your usual ripped jeans and tanktop.

"i went to the store, dad. helping you restock the-"

he scoffed, leaning back in his chair and flicking his hair out of his eyes as he crossed his arms.

"dressed like that? like a slut? is this how your mom raised you?"

your grip on the grocery paperbag nearly loosened entirely. you found yourself staring at him with parted lips. a slut? seriously?

"i really should have taken custody of you and put you in church school. that way you wouldn't have grown up to be such a whore."

his words were dripping with venom as his eyes hardened even more.

"from now on until the day you leave, you're not allowed to leave this house. and you will pull your weight by performing your role as a grown woman."

you felt your skin prickle at his words. the way he said it. it all sounded so brazenly prejudiced...like he was reciting it straight off a conservative cultish script embedded in his mind. now you knew he was no saint. an ex alcoholic, an absent father, and the occasional wife beating on special occasions. but a misogynistic bastard? now that...that was something too new.

"you can't just lock me up like- like some hostage! i'm gonna be here for half a year!"

the speed at which he stood up with his hands raised just shy of your cheek made you sputter to a stop, flinching instantly. your eyes held a fear he recognised from that very night he had backhanded your mom. in hindsight, that woman deserved it. she forgot her place when talking to her husband. him. the breadwinner who worked tirelessly day after day to play his role as man of the house. the least she could have done after that was offer him a drink for being such a stupid useless bitch.

"stop backtalking me you ungrateful-"

you swore you heard his teeth crack from how hard he was clenching his teeth. his eyes were hollow and filled with such an intense rage that it made you cower away. oh he knew what a sheltered girl you were how your mom was a doting parent who cared about your wellbeing. so much so that she made you stay with him instead of living in a house all by yourself. no wonder you turned out this way. spoiled, ungrateful, and unreligious. a woman with no piety is no woman at all. that's what the leader had said.

and that was one week ago. you had been holed up in the house, the dim lighting and his constant disappearances to either work or the church was beginning to eat at your brain. him being at home wasn't much better. you had to cook for him, clean for him, iron his church clothes, and shine his shoes. in return all he did was criticise you. the food too salty, the shoes not shiny enough, the house still dusty, everything was never right.

you were beginning to see yourself from outside your body, throwing yourself into one task after another. his constant bullying was eroding your mind. and the fact that you weren't allowed to open the curtains, or watch tv in the living room, or had anybody to talk to really didn't help. and then you landed upon a gold mine. the lower left cupboard in his toilet that stored untouched bottles of liquour. just sitting and waiting. a trap of temptation he had been keeping in his house for god knew what.

as you sat on the toilet just holding the cold bottle, staring at it. you found yourself feeling an eerie sense of connection with your distant almost estranged father. you wondered how many nights he spent all by himself seated in the exact same way you were. just looking at the cold bottle of liquid sin in his hands.

you did what he stopped. broke that last barrier of restraint and spiralled down the way he just climbed up from. you uncorked the bottle and tipped it back, letting the liquid slosh down your throat and dribble down your chin. it burned. it burned so bad. you coughed and sputtered, eyes growing teary. it tasted like an internal chemical burn. a bitter tang that stung the insides of your throat. but the haze that settled over your mind after. the lightness that seemed to anchor your soul back into your body even for just a minute. you were instantly hooked.

like father, like daughter.

it was no wonder that old sod was hooked to this thing. it was liquid gold! i mean for the small price of a bad headache and the worst case of dry mouth the next day, you could just...melt into nothing. the world spins and you're in the middle just watching as everything blurs together into one meaningless nothing.

before you knew it, a week had passed with you passing out evrryday to make time go by quicker. the whiskey bottle was down to it's last dredges and you were laying on the cool tiled floors of the toilet again. shivering from the contrast of it against your liquor warmed skin. your eyes fluttered close and open and close and —

the loud sound of the front door slamming shut had you jolted to a sitting position. you'd recognise the dull thuds of his footsteps anywhere. except they were louder and way angrier than you had ever heard it. and then you stood on swaying legs, taking a look at yourself in the mirror. glassy red eyes, jaw slack with a little bit of drool and hair flat on the side where you had laid on the ground. your heart was beating so fast you could almost feel it on your tongue as panic washed over you. shit. shit.

you splashed cold water onto your face, rubbing it firmly to bring back a sense of sobriety. you swished the water aggressively in your mouth, narrowly avoiding choking on it. your drunken mind too panicked to realise that the smell of it was too deeply marinated in every crevice of your teeth and tongue.

your hands trembled as you plopped to the ground unceremoniously, grasping at the bottle to cap it and hide it back in the cupboard. your shaky fingers loosened and the cap was sent flying near the tub. fuck. he was going to hit you. you just knew it. just like he did mom. and like he does in your nightmares that leave you in cold sweat. please god, if you're real. please please please let him go to bed and never find out — clang

the clatter of the rhick glass bottle tipping over onto the ceramic tiles sent shockwaves of deafening echoes that made your ears ring in your tunnel visioned panic. you heard his footsteps freeze before they stormed towards where you were. you felt your breath hitch as you hurriedly pressed the bottle against your back and leaned against the side of the tub. as if it would just dissolve into your skin and never be found. the doorknob rattled as he pounded on the door.

"what the hell are you doing in there, kid?"

then as you stayed quiet like a rabbit frozen in fear, it became more insistent. more agitated.

"answer me or i'll break this damned door!"

you finally found your voice in a small squeak that escaped your throat.

"j-just a stomach ache dad! i-i'll be out in a bit i promise!"

the banging stopped and it was so silent you could hear your heartbeat reverberate against the smooth white of the tub behind you. it was bullshit and if drunk you could smell it, so could your retired military agent dad.

"you lying bitch. do you think i'm stupid?"

you could practically hear the snarl in his voice and after a beat, hr said something. something that you should have listened to. something that to this day you wondered if it would have changed anything has you heeded his words.

"open this fucking door now or you're gonna regret it."

he yelled. and then it was quiet. so quiet. and then he kicked the door so loud you heard the hinges creak.

"oh you're going to be fucking sorry, kid."

he said in an eerily calm voice and then his footsteps faded as he yelled a loud 'fuck'. followed by the clatter of something being kicked to the ground. you pinched yourself. so hard you felt the sting shoot down your spine. this had to be a nightmare. you had to wake up. you had to get out.

before your panic and alcohol scrambled brain could figure out the next course of action the footsteps returned and in a blink of an eye the door was sent splintering to the floor, revealing a man with crazed bloodshot eyes and a heaving chest beneath his sweat stained button up. his sharp features that brought you praise for winning genetically was now shadowed by his overgrown hair. he held a bag of clinking bottles in one hand. bottles of...liquor.

one look at you and he knew. he could recognise that dazed look anywhere even beneath the thickest layers of fear. and that smell. the sharp sweet and sour of an impending drymouth after drinking alot. for a moment the humid silence in the bathroom was filled with nothing but heavy breaths. father and daughter looking at each other. two mirrors reflecting the very demons they feared.

"you disgust me."

his low raspy voice was pointed as he stepped closer, larger hands yanking your hair just shy of smacking the back against the edge of the tub. sounding like he was talking to the him that was trapped like a wet dog. one that was clinging onto the bottle like a solace teddy a child would have in their bed.

"you think you can lie to me? and commit this disgusting sin without me ever finding out, huh?!"

he grabbed one of the bottles from the plastic bag, unscrewing the lid with the same hand.

"now drink. drink as much. as. you. fucking. want."

he says through gritted teeth, squeezing your jaw open as he poured the liquid down your throat. your yelp turned into spluttering gasps as the liquid went everywhere. some even up your nose and stinging at your eyes. your fingers desperately push at him. wherever you could land on but he stood firm. years of training and muscle despite the recent years of slack and armed with a rage so deep held him rock steady.

one whole entire bottle. your vision began to fuzz as you choked and cough. your head was spinning, barely registering anything at all besides the blue of his eyes that seemed to float before you.

"da...ddy...cough...m'sorry...m'so sorry..."

you sputtered pathetically between coughs as your throat tried to scramble back to normalcy. and for a moment he saw the same you. the reason behind his journey to seek god. his heart clenched as you blinked up at him with red teary eyes and snot dribbling down to your upper lip.

and then he sees you. the current you. the one that had costed him his place in church. next to the leader. next to god's best man.

his mind replayed the events from earlier today. how the sermon moved him as always. talks of how women were made for men and how everyone has their place in front of god. how addiction was sin. how god forgives. and then again on how women are nurturing creatures with big hearts and that they should realise their place is at home. especially not with a bottle because it was way worse to be an alcoholic mother than to be a deadbeat alcoholic father.

the old Leon would have thought this to be crazy. that the words were nothing more than prejudiced nonsense lumped together and stamped with a label of 'from god.' but the Leon now? the one who craves the cooler water gatherings and a feeling of belonging and to do nothing more than pour his entire wages as means of baring his soul and sincerity before the leader, he was nodding almost feverishly. because if god said so. if the leader, said so. it has to be true. truer than anything and everything that has ever been true.

if it weren't, his ex-wife wouldn't have left. his life wouldn't have been so dark and awful and devoid of the enlightening he had now. his legs bounced almost impatiently as he thought about the cooler water and standing next to the leader. how the leader always knew what to say to make everything better. how cool and refreshing the water was. the slight bitter tang to it that seemed to haunt his every waking moment.

he had rushed to the leader's side as soon as everything was over, holding his briefcase full of donation cash with a smile equivalent of a dog with its tongue our. waiting to be petted for a job well done.

"ah, brother kennedy. this must be this month's donation to the cause."

the leader spoke. his beady eyes turning into slits as he grinned with his perfect white teeth. he was a broad man with thinning hair and a shorter stature than Leon. but his presence, it made it so clear why god had chosen him to lead. Leon's fingers tightened on the handle of the suitcase. waiting for the leader's blessing words and for the briefcase to be taken. freeing him from worldly sin and cleansing his soul with the money given. but his hopes were kept afloat in the oddly tense air.

"i heard from the churchgoers that your daughter is back in town. is that true?"

his words sent a chill down his spine. well, not really the words but rather how...it was said. as if he had done something wrong and the leader was baiting him into a confession. Leon swallowed his nerves.

"yes, leader. she's staying over for a while. is there something wrong?"

please say no. please say no. please —

"why have we not seen our new sister here?"

the leader asks in a way that sounded annoyed. impatient. Leon blinked.

"she's been taking care of the house."

she's not religious. she wouldn't get what we have here. too stupid and corrupted by modern day ideations to grasp true enlightenment. the leader smiles. a smile that felt hollow.

"our brothers and sisters here have seen her in clothing that was...inappropriate for brethren of the church."

Leon missed the way the leader's eyes glinted as he spoke. as if he knew more than he let on. and wanted more than he let on. the leader shifted where he stood, adjusting the crotch of his slacks.

"bring her here, will you? i'm sure spreading god's grace is in your best interest unless...of course...you don't think so. and that you want to return to the dark life you lead and turn that disgusting glass bottle into your place of belief?"

Leon felt his heart sink to his bowels. maybe even fall straight out of his ass onto the cold church floor from the way he froze. one of the other churchgoers was about to hand Leon a cup of the cooler water when the leader stopped him by simply holding up his stubby hand.

"no need, brother. brother Kennedy here will not be joining us for our social gathering."

the churchgoer bowed and scurried off like a rat caught in the daytime. Leon felt his heart pound in his chest. a sense of hurt and isolation that ate and prickled at his skin. he had fucked up. big time. and the leader was angry. god help him.

"i'll bring her over as soon as i can, leader. please...you don't have to do this-"

the leader's smile vanished and he stepped closer.

"you will bring her tomorrow."

he declared with a finality in his voice. Leon nodded fervently, desperate for his approval. for his forgiveness. the leader turned away and began to walk off. he paused and turned to face Leon with a barely stifled smirk.

"oh and kennedy? don't bother coming if she's not with you."

don't bother coming...fuck. fuck. what was that supposed to mean? after everything he's done for the church? all the money he's given? all the times he helped stand in front of the leader's door to guard it and make sure the incident of a church sister running out crying wold for help and rejecting the leader's blessing ever happened again. all of it was for nothing. his blood ran cold. even colder at the thought of never socialising with the others again. never tasting that bitter tang of the cooler water that always seemed to make his nightmares go away when he slept.

he was distraught.

he came home slamming the front door behind him. he ran his fingers through his hair, flicking it out of his eyes as he panted. cold swsat began to soak through the front and back of his shirt as the reality of it began to sink in. no more god. no more church. no more leader. no more cooler water. oh no. no no no. this cannot be happening. not when he had been doing so good.

he marched straight to his room without another word, shoes and coat flung haphazardly for you to clean up after. his throat felt dry and for the first time in a while, the urge to drink was no longer a lingering temptation at the back of his mind. his whole brain was set off like an alarm bell telling him to just give in. get a bottle and drink himself stupid. and then he heard it. the familiar clang of a glass bottle against the toilet floor. one he had heard years back when he was drinking himself to death in the very same place after a mission went sideways. and then he remembered you. and everything fell into place.

you bitch. you were drinking, weren't you?

and now he stared into the face of his key to the church. the key to his redemption and acceptance back by the leader. a face so pathetic and sticky with tears and drying cheap alcohol. god he was so made he wanted to just bash your fucking head into the side of the tub. stupid fucking bitch. stupid like your mother. how dare you sit here like a bum, drinking and sinning while he was out there fighting to be enlightened? to be a man of god? he found his fingers curling around the column of your throat, hissing as your nails dug into the skin of his scarred hands as you tried to breathe. the stench of liquour and your existence covered everything in a red haze.

you are out of control. a wild thing that needs to be disciplined before you could join as brethren of the church. and who else better to discipline you than your own enlightened churchgoing father?

"you shouldn't be apologising to me. you should be apologising to god. start praying or i'll make you regret each drop of that damned thing you so stupidly poured down your fucking throat."

he spat, hauling you up and bending you over the side of the tub. the cold hard edge dug into the flesh of your stomach, making the nausea worse. and prayed you did, hands clasped together with your voice trembling and barely coherent. slurring out prayers for for forgiveness. your tears and drool dripped and splattered in unsynchronised rhythms into the inner surface of the tub, your auditory field tunneled so much to the point of missing the metal clink of a buckle being undone.

"i'm sorry god. please i'm so sorry. i swear i'll never drink again. i- ack-!"

your voice splintered into a choked gasp as a sharp sting hit the curve of your ass. you unclasped your hands instinctively trying to defend your sore skin when your hair was yanked back firmly.

"did i say you could stop?"

he whispered, breath hot against your ears. you hurriedly scrambled to keep praying, jolting each time the leather hit. you could barely breathe. breaths coming in short gasps as the pain and dizziness and crying began to overwhelm you. your vision began to darken around the edges.

and then it stopped. not your prayers but the beatings. your heart was pounding so hard you thought you were going to die. hiccupping and gasping for breath as you tried to pray through it all. your desperate and hoarse voice mixed with his panting were the only sounds in that bathroom. the silence made you tremble even more, clasping your hands tighter as you prayed feverishly like a woman possessed.

Leon stared at you. his drunk beat up daughter who's skin was beginning to welt. he was panting, calloused fingers raised to trace the ones visible and gliding over the ones beneath your clothes. the power of beating you into submission. cleansing you of sin. it was...a high. one comparable to drinking or feeling that cooler water slide down his throat and left his brain at peace. as if he was walking on clouds. your curves wiggled and swayed as you prayed desperately. begging for salvation. begging for god to save you from the monster he had become.

but god had enlightened him. and that gave him every right to fix you. make you ready for the leader to bless. his jaw ticked and his finger trembled. a withdrawal of some kind. this was what being away from church did to him. he needed to be called brother kennedy again. needed the approval from the leader. he needed whatever was in that cooler water.

he needed...you.

so he finds himself lifting you, bending you in half as your body clipped the side of the tub's edge. he bunched up the hem of your dress. an old one your mom had given you. one that she had worn before. your marred skin was soft beneath his touch, you whimpered and squirmed. you really did take after your mother. maybe you could be a fillial daughter and play the role of wife too. it's the least you could do to atone for everything you've done.

the rough fabric of his slacks against your bare ass, stung. you could feel the stiffness of his cock as he rubbed it awkwardly against your panties. your legs were split like a foal learning to walk for the first time.

"do you feel that, kid? feel what sin does to an enlightened man like your dad?"

you were too tired to care. too focused on taking your next breath without feeling like a million nerves were combusting beneath your skin. he held you down, edge of the tub digging much deeper, you could've sworn it made your ribcage creak.

"promise...i won't tell anyone...please dad...just stop..."

you slurred weakly (or at least you thought you did because all Leon heard was a bunch of groans and the word dad) eyelashes fluttering as your face smushed into the cold tub floor. bent in half as you were trying to breathe was the worst experience you ever had. you tried to push yourself up. to push against him and stumble free. but even as your knuckles whitened with effort, he was too strong. his palms pressed your head into the ceramic as his other tugged at his slacks. all you did was keep pressing the tub's edge harder against

"don't worry. i'll make sure you're ready for church, hm? perfect vessel to receive the leader's blessings. you'll learn to thank me."

he muttered under his breath as he struggled to shimmy down his boxers.

"huh would you look at that? you pissed yourself, kid."

the tub's edge had been pressing against your womb from the way he was holding you down with his sweat soaked front on your back, squishing it so firmly you were sure it would go concave. the numbing cold and firmness made your pussy drip. it was pressing on everything tender. your liquour filled bladder had surrendered to fear in your fevered repenting, a pool of warm acrid smelling liquid seeping into the soles of your feet. he laughed humourlessly at his deadpan, pressing his fingers into your sopping wet hole.

he tugged your soaked panties down, stroking the soft of your bruised cheeks before kneading them. fingers squeezing and pushing at the welts. the painful numbness made you groan. he began spreading it, spitting on his fingers before he harshly prodded at your slick hole.

"well makes this easier for the both of us, hm?"

he gave his cock a few strokes, eyebrows knitted as he rubbed the underside against the ridge of your ass. the warmth and slickness of your piss was making his head spin, soft schlick schlick sounds filling the humid bathroom. your head was beginning to hurt from being pushed down into the tub, hair pricking at your eyes. you let out more groans and whimpers. sounding even more urgent despite battling your consciousness.

"you lost the fight against the devil's evil temptations. but dad'll fix this. if he can fix his life, he can fix this. make you pure again so god will love you- mmf-"

he groaned as his leaky tip began to push into you. you barely put up a fight, just crying against the pool of your own tears that had gathered beneath your cheeks. he was going to fix you. fix this. fix everything like he had fixed his life up to this point. he gritted his teeth as he sank in deeper, the cool of your sweat glistened back against the buttoned front of his shirt. the plastic buttons dug into your skin, tugging it as he pushed in deeper. you had never felt so full and numbed at the same time.

he yanked your head up, licking the tears from your cheeks as he plowed into your piss slick hole. the wet thwapping noises seemed to make everything in your brain go blank. your body was sore, broken, and sensitive.

he grunted against your ear, stubble reddening your skin. he was breathing shakily as he buried himself deep. his dirty little girl needed his guidance. his help. his...blessing. it made his cock twitch at the thought of purifying the source of lust within you. your bare womb. filling it up to keep you from sinning again. fulfilling your purpose as a woman placed on earth by god. making you a sweet docile mommy wwith nurturing tendencies. just like god intended.

"you feel that, kid? your womb is begging to be filled. beging to fulfill god's written purpose for you."

he says as he yanked your head up with one hand while the other splsyed across your lower tummy. pushing you back onto his twitching dick in a relentless rhythm. you let out a pained grunt, hands scrambling to hold onto something for balance as he began to thrust faster.

his balls slapped against your sore ass with each thrust and all you could remember was slipping into a deep dark haze. your ears rung and everything around you faded. Leon tried tapping your face as your head hung limply from the hair clenched in his fingers but to no avail. he licked a stripe down the side of your neck and buried his teeth between your neck and shoulder as he came with a loud groan. his warm cum shot deep into you, swirling with your piss as he held you against his cock. he let go once he was done, watching as you fell to the ground and splashing up the piss from the puddle as you landed.

well...repenting was a messy business but now you were perfect. his perfect, church ready daughter. he ran his fingers through his hair to push back the strands stuck to his forehead from his sweat as a grin tugged at his lips. the front of his shirt was soaked in both your sweat and his heart was racing in his chest. you were ready.

—

"and leader, meet my daughter. she looks forward to receivinh your blessing. i made sure to prepare her myself."

his arm around your waist a tinge too tight, eyes eager for approval of a job well done. he searched the leader's beady eyes, watching as he studied you like fresh meat. the leader shifted his pants a little and licked his lips before acknowledging Leon again. barely.

"welcome back, brother kennedy."

the leader says, eyes glinting. Leon felt a wave of relief hit him full force, fingers trembling as he took the cup of cooler water from one of the brothers and chugged it down like a man parched in the desert seeing an oasis for the first time.

in his car, his phone dinged with a notification. one from the ame friend who recommended the alcoholic group therapy from all those years ago. a frantic jumble of words followed by a clipping of a document with the leader's face on it.

There is nothing of that on your face today, yet he seems satisfied with your efforts, that small spark of amusement that you’ve come to chase dancing in his eyes. It’s the only thing saving you from another night as his footstool or, even worse, from having to serve alcohol to his crew. Simply keeping your throat relaxed, spilling some tears and fighting the urge to puke all over his sandals is a million times better than kicks or sleeping on the floor. Even if it means having to endure one of his other quirks - the eternal monologues. He likes to hear himself talk. As if on cue, Arlong sighs and leans back when you gag up another wad of saliva around his cock, taking one hand from your head to scratch his neck leisurely. 

“Smart woman”, he says and sounds utterly pleased with himself. You try to steel yourself for another round of escalating insults. “You saw how much better we are than you and immediately knew to submit.” Ah, his favorite topic. He never fucks you without mentioning how inferior you are to him, never fucks you without talking himself into a frenzy about it. His asinine ramblings are just as much a part of defiling you as is treating you like a flesh toy and they leave you with hot ears and teary eyes every time. He knows how to twist his words just enough to make them hurt, no matter how often he re-uses his insults, recycles his phrases - they just find a way to worm themselves into your brain. “I wish all humans were as perceptive as you, really.”

You don’t acknowledge him as you focus on softening your throat and catching breaths where you can. If you lose your pace now, get slower or don’t take him as deep, that terrifying hand is sure to remind you, even if he appears to be preoccupied with his talking. It’s all an act. A part of the same old dance and song. 

“Such an obedient little whore”, he sighs above you, then he chuckles to himself. “Well, not so little, hm?”

You’re too focused on breathing to let that comment bother you - his crew is worse, groping and whistling at you whenever they catch a glimpse of you, beckoning you over, daring you to sit on their laps until your ass spills over. You’ve long since lost your name, being called their little cow instead.

“But that’s alright, that’s why I like you. Don’t break so easily, do you?” Giant hands clasp the sides of your head until you feel like your temples are about to pop. Maybe your brains will simply burst out like the flesh of an overly ripe watermelon one of these days and it will all be over. Who knows with this tyrant; who knows if you’ll even see tomorrow? It’s such a bleak thought, but this is your existence now. Had been your fate ever since you came up short for the ridiculous taxes Arlong ordered from your people - in a way, you should be grateful that he didn’t shoot you in front of your village and most importantly, your poor, old father. Better this and a waning sliver of hope than a headstone, you figure. “Hold still, sow”, he breathes out, just the tiniest bit labored. Good, you think, entirely numb and obey. It means he’s close and you’ll probably be done for the day in a matter of minutes. Maybe you’ll even be allowed a shower later. 

It’s not necessarily easier when he moves instead of you - because he doesn’t just fuck your face, he brutalizes it. It might be just a bit less exhausting for the muscles of your neck and shoulders, but the way he crams himself as deep as possible while setting a pace faster you could ever bop your head has you counting every second, clinging onto consciousness with wide eyes and snot bubbling out of your nose. The sounds are obscene. Between the gurgling and glugging of your throat and the sharp slapping of his balls as they hit your chin with a heft you’ll feel for the rest of the night, you feel more like an animal than ever. He never holds back, no matter how many times he insists that you’re considerably weaker than him, how delicate you are despite your softness. You are simply cattle to him, something he owns and does with as he pleases. And you better take it.

“You think your father would still love you if he knew? Old man is probably sitting at home, twiddling his thumbs while I fuck his precious daughter’s mouth and defile her cow tits”, he rasps out eyes boring into yours. Arlong always gets the nastiest when he’s chasing his orgasm and mentioning your father is just as vile as it gets. You gag around him but don’t look away, not even as the picture of your dad doing just that springs into your head.“Or maybe he realizes that this is for the best? That this is the place you belong?”

Arlong tips his head back and delivers a particularly brutal thrust to your face. Your hand flies up to at least give yourself the illusion of purchase but it gets shaken off his rapidly moving thigh. The only thing that isn’t being rattled is your skull, still framed by his hands.

“Underneath me, used by me, like the despicable sow you are. Maybe I’ll fuck some little bastards into you one day. You like the thought of that, do you? You live to serve, don’t you?” 

He wheezes that last sentence out, the thought clearly arousing to him. It’s one of his favorites - claiming every last part of you, your womb included. And with the way he keeps fucking you almost every day, it won’t be too long until it becomes reality. “I should fill you up so full you can barely walk and then parade you into town. Show peepaw his grandkids. Maybe I’ll let them play with him when they’re old enough. See if he survives.”

It’s too much. The sheer force, the lack of air, the fluids running out of every orifice, but worst of all, the way he keeps talking about your father. The face you make must be ugly and desperate because he simply laughs, full-bellied and nasty. It’s all he needs to take him over the edge. Arlong crushes your nose against his coarse pubes, against his stomach as he groans. Not even a second passes and his cock is moving in your throat, filling you with loads of hot, terribly slimy cum. It feels as though he’s directly in your stomach, even though that is entirely impossible. It takes everything in you not to struggle away from the iron grip on your head, even as your esophagus starts to jolt and as another wave of tears spills over. He basks in the moment above you, jaw slack and eyes closed for once - only when you can’t help the ugly sobs that are building up between the bouts gagging, he finally pulls out. A disgusting mix of saliva, mucus and semen follows in an amount that can only be described as ungodly. Arlong laughs at the way you retch it all out, a little breathless, but still not done with you. In the very last act of domination, he uses his softening cock to spread the abysmal-smelling fluids all over your face and hair as you can only cry, entirely without shame. He loves that, too.

And it’s the only time you’ll ever hear him utter something akin to tender. “Good girl.”

Really, Arlong can be almost sweet behind closed doors. Almost.

Two hundred and seventy six. It’s been two hundred and seventy six days since the world completely went to shit. You don’t really count the initial outbreak. The initial outbreak was relatively contained once people found out about it. You quarantined. You stayed inside. All it really took were a handful of idiots. Someone selfish. Someone who panicked and ran instead of facing the world honorably, and that was it. It only took days to lose almost every semblance of a normal life and a week to lose everything else. 

The light of your fire is dim, embers burning low as you sit in a foldable chair beside it. The chair is from a friend, someone you’re not with anymore and who went somewhere you couldn’t follow, and you've got a metal spatula in your hand. You're not sure why you grabbed it when you fled, but panic does weird things to the mind. You absentmindedly wonder why you’ve brought it along with you all this time. There’s no logical reason for you to tote the thing around. A friend had told you how strange it was that you thought to toss it into your bag and continue carrying it. This, along with a few other oddities, are all you managed to take from your house when the world fell to ruin. Everything else are things scavenged along the way or from people you'd met, joined, and lost. 

Maybe it’s because the spatula is somewhat normal, like somehow when you cook the game on your makeshift tin over your shitty fire, you can pretend you’re in your kitchen. A smash burger sounds good right now, with grilled onions on a brioche bun like the ones from the place by your apartment. 

The night is near silent and trees creak and crack like the hulls of great ships under heavy pressure, but the birds don't sing and nothing in the crowded wood you're taking shelter in makes a sound. Well, except for you and the gentle crackle of your fire. 

It’s easy to miss the noise that used to irritate you when the world goes quiet. You used to hate the sounds and lights of passing trucks when they’d cross on the street below your apartment window. Now, you’d do anything for the familiar comfort. The world is so dark and quiet, like it’s holding its breath and waiting for this to be over. The silence is almost too much, so loud that it hurts your ears. You huddle closer to the fire, craving its quiet sound. Focusing on it lessens the anxiety of the other noises. The ones you don’t want to hear. 

Your head is on a swivel. It has been for months. Ever since the outbreak, ever since the dead rose and began consuming and infecting the living, you've kept watch. A paranoid, never ending cycle that you suppose—if left on your own—will burn itself out. You swallow thick and return your attention to the fire, watching the tree line just in front of you for any hint of movement or monsters. 

A branch cracks just behind you. A swift sound, followed by rapid footsteps. You stand, quickly turning your head, only to see a figure a few feet away from you. They move quickly and the dancing light of the fire obscures their features from view. Their eyes, most importantly. You can always tell if someone is dead or alive based on their eyes and the sounds that their joints make. In this light, should this stranger have that milky white film over them, you wouldn't be able to tell. 

You make a small noise, something between a whimper and a shout, as the person comes to a stop in front of you and holds a flashlight directly into your face. You squint, panic in your veins as your eyes adjust as best they can to the sudden assault. It takes you a moment to realize that there is a gun pointed directly at your forehead. The living. This person is alive. You're not sure yet if encountering one of the dead would have been worse. 

"Shut up and drop your weapon," he says in a hurried voice. It's aggressive and threatening. It comes from deep in his chest, like somehow fear has gripped and mutilated it into something violent. 

You raise your shaky hands to your head quickly at the order, screwing your eyes shut in the beam of the flashlight. 

"It's not a weapon!" you shout, voice cracking. "It's a spatula. It's a spatula." 

The words are rushed and heavy, fear seizing your chest as you look down the barrel of the gun. The flashlight turns off, sending you back into the dark. Your eyes fight to adjust, catching the firelight that glints off of the barrel, and you begin to makeout the man’s features. He's big, blonde under the grime, you think. A man, not the best thing to encounter alone at night in times like these. 

You see him hesitate for a moment, eyes darting between you and the silver kitchen item in your hand. You drop it quickly, hoping to appeal to his humanity. 

"Do you have a weapon on you?" he questions, voice a little less urgent. 

You shake your head in response and then shakily look beside the chair, choking out the word “ground”. There's a knife there and a pistol with no bullets. You're a poor shot and you had run out of ammo the previous week. He glances at it, the gun still raised at you, and sidesteps to grab the two items. When he does, he cautiously lowers the weapon and you start to lower your trembling hands. 

Then, as if struck by some realization, the man stomps towards the fire and you jump as he does.

"The fuck are you doing lighting a fire this late?" he says angrily, opening the clip of your pistol. "And with no fucking bullets. Those things may be dead, but they can still fuckin' see. That's a good way to get yourself killed." 

He stomps out the fire as he talks, urgently stamping out what's left of the low-burning logs. 

"I didn't think there were many in the area," you justify, furrowing your eyebrows as you step away from him. 

"And that's a risk you want to take?" he says indignantly. You wonder briefly what business he has worrying about you. 

"What do you want?" you snap, "My food? Weapons? Life? What is it?" 

The man scoffs, "Jesus, none of that. I don’t want your shit." 

You narrow your eyes and take a step back. One thing this world has done is remove trust from every chance encounter, and that was already hard enough when the place was sane. 

"Not all people who camp out in the woods are good," he says. "But I sure as shit didn't expect to find someone like you alone lighting a damn fire. Stupid." 

"There were others," you say indignantly, like somehow that makes it better. "Force of habit, I guess." 

The man pauses for a moment as understanding passes between the two of you. It's a relatable feeling. Everyone has lost someone now. 

"Got a name?" he asks. 

You hesitate in giving it to him and the pause causes him to roll his eyes. “You want me to call you Idiot-with-no-bullets instead?” 

You give him your name and the man nods as if he likes the sound of it, turning it over in his head before inhaling. 

"I'm Katsuki," he furrows his eyebrows. "You're alone?" 

You nod, swallowing down the grief that pushes at your throat. 

"Wasn't always," you respond, "but yeah. Now, I am." 

He nods his understanding. 

"Come with me." 

"Where?" you say instinctively, a defensive edge to your voice. Katsuki looks at you as if you’re stupid, or maybe it's pity, like you're a wounded animal. Probably both. 

"Where the fuck do you think?" he retorts. "We've got a camp a little ways from here. I saw your fire from the watch post we have stationed." 

You look at him like he's a little crazy for even thinking to bring you. Kindness, especially the selfless type, is so rare now and you find it difficult to believe that he’s willing to take you there at no cost. 

He scoffs and rolls his head over his shoulder. "Look, we've got men and women," then he pauses. "Used to have children. We're not gonna hurt you. World's gone to shit, do you really wanna keep at it alone?" 

He's probably right. You've been alone for weeks now, exhausted for longer, and though your common sense tells you not to go off with a strange man in this kind of world, the promise of rest is far too tempting. You nod and glance back to your camp. A measly collection of supplies haphazardly put together. You suppose that it doesn’t look so promising. 

"We'll come back for it when it's light," he says. "I don't know about you, but I'd rather not spend longer in these dark ass woods than I have to." 

"Okay," you say. The presence of another person both sets you on edge and makes you feel the press of fatigue even more. A gun's barrel on your nose followed by the promise of safety and you're going with him? You must be stupider than a horror movie protagonist. "Do you take in a lot of strays?" 

Katsuki looks over his shoulder and you think you see him smile a little at the phrase. 

"If that's what you want to call it," he says begrudgingly. Then, with a softer tone of voice, barely noticeable with the quiet whisper you both have been speaking at. "I'm sure the others won't mind one more."

You nod a little and follow him through the wood, stepping over obstacles. Your eyes have adjusted to the dark, but you feel unsteady on your feet. Everything you’ve ever learned about this world tells you that maybe you shouldn’t go with him. What if they’re dangerous? It’s easy to lie about women and children, about a community that doesn’t exist. Or worse, it’s easy to fool yourself that where you are is good, but you don’t know yet if he’s the type to delude himself. He doesn’t seem it. 

The two of you walk for what feels like forever, even if it is only a little over half a mile. Your feet have been aching for days and every step you take feels like a blade into the heel. Katsuki seems steady, his gun secured at his hip and a large knife in his dominant hand. He doesn’t have the flashlight out, but he seems sure-footed and takes every step in stride, as if he’s too heavy to be swayed by any missed step. 

As you move, you can barely make out his back in the white tank top he wears. You use it as a landmark, following the glowing white as it catches the light from the moon. Like chasing a ghost through the trees. 

Then, the wood eases up. The trees grow sparse and the suffocating humidity of the forest eases into a more breathable, open-air breeze. Katsuki steps out into a clearing. It’s relatively small, for how large the world is, but it’s some of the most open space you’ve seen in a while. The feeling of stepping out into the tall grass, where you’re both visible to any wandering thing, sends a rush of fear through you. 

By the edge of the clearing, there’s a small house with a short steeple. It almost looks like a Christian church, but you get the sense that it’s likely a barn. That must be the watchtower and you wonder just how good the view of the forest is from up there if Katsuki managed to see the light of your fire. How many other people had seen your fires over the weeks and not made it out to confront you? How close had you come before to safety or annihilation? 

"Hey!" a girl's voice calls. "He's back!" 

In the near distance, you can see a large and dimly lit house. It looks a little worn down, but soft and hardly noticeable light emanates from it in a way that makes it seem inviting.You can’t make out its exact silhouette and night blurs just how broken-down it is, but you can tell that people live there in the same way you can tell when someone has just left a room. 

Someone runs across the field to you both. It looks like a man and a woman, maybe around Katsuki's age. They move quickly through the tall grass and for a moment, the urgency that they move with frightens you. You worry that your presence will ignite some protective sort of panic. You linger back, letting Katsuki grow a little farther from you as they call out to him. 

“Yeah, yeah," he half-shouts, no longer seeming to care about keeping quiet. Guess that's what happens when there's a group. "I found the fire I mentioned." 

The two come to a stop in front of him, resting their hands on their hips as they catch the breath they lost. 

"We started to get a little worried," says the girl. She's pretty, with big eyes and curly hair that looks like it probably used to be dyed. "You've been gone for a while." 

"Well, I'm back," he says. 

"And you brought a friend," the other man says, sounding shocked. His tone is noticeably kind. The boisterous type of kind and when he smiles, you can see that he has sharp canines. His hair is straight, sticking out in different directions, and tinged with red in this light.

"More like an acquaintance," Katsuki says. “I found them in the woods with a fire and an empty clip. Felt like their blood would be on my hands if I didn’t bring them back.” The red-haired man gives him a telling look and Katsuki scoffs in response and turns to the girl. "Get them settled, Mina, will you?" The girl called Mina nods and Katsuki takes off toward the house without another word. 

"You're lucky," she says, pausing when you flinch as she steps closer. "You're gettin' the last solo room in the place. Kirishima, is it set up?" 

Kirishima shrugs his shoulders. "You'd have to ask Izuku. He'd know all about that, but I can go check." 

Mina shakes her head and turns her attention to you, giving you a quick once over with her eyebrows pulled together.

"You must be tired.” 

When you nod, she gives you an empathetic smile and motions for you to come with her. "We'll fix that. You hungry?" 

"What do you think?" you manage, saliva pooling in your mouth. "Do you have food?" 

"Plenty," she smiles. "not quite enough for leftovers just yet though, don’t tell anyone." 

You smile awkwardly. Who on earth would you tell? 

"Sounds like a good deal," you say. 

You follow Mina up to the house. Around it, there are a few parked cars. They look like they could pull out at any moment, and through the dust covered windows, you can just make out supplies in the back seats as you pass. In the distance, you can see the fuzzy silhouette of the barn you’d assumed was a watchtower in the dark of the field and you figure that maybe it used to be a place to keep livestock. 

Mina doesn't say much to you as you pass through the field, and when you walk into the door, the first thing you notice is a large group of people seated at a dining table. They all look up at you when you enter and it's with a bit of shock that you register their faces as healthy. Well, healthier. These people live well. Something stirs in your chest, both anxiety and excitement at the thought of possibly having found somewhere safe. They blink at you for a moment, exchanging looks that all end up landing on Katsuki. 

"This is the group. Well, most of us," Mina says pleasantly and with a light huff. "That's Izuku, Denki, Ochako, Sero, and you already know the handsome guy on the end there. Kiri's probably checking to see if the room is half decent.." They all greet you with a glad murmur. "Group, this is..." 

She looks at you expectantly. When you tell them your name, you can't help but look at Katsuki who already knows it. He raises his eyebrows unconsciously and turns his attention to the glass in front of him. 

There’s an awkward pause as you stand in the doorway, suddenly conscious of just how dirty you must look. Remnants of an older world, you suppose. No one really worries about things like that anymore.

“Uhm…” you search for something to say, but your people skills seem to have left you. 

“You’re okay,” Mina says lightly. “Plenty of time to get to know you when you’ve rested and had something to eat.” 

Mina sits you down at a chair that she pulls in from the other room. It doesn't match the other ones in the dining room, but you suppose no one is really thinking of the decor in their house anymore. It's only now that you realize the house has electricity.

"You have power?" you say incredulously, looking at the center light in the dining room on its low setting. 

"Mhm," Mina hums as she sits down next to you and spoons a helping of vegetables onto your plate. "It's got a generator. We got lucky finding this place. I don't think many of us would be alive if we hadn't." 

Those listening in the group nod their affirmation. 

"It draws from well water too," she adds. "With the right care, the place practically runs on its own. Hard work but what isn't nowadays?" 

“Like you do any of the heavy lifting," Sero scoffs across from her.

"That's not fair," Katsuki adds with a slick smirk, "you know damn well none of our vegetables would be so well socialized if she didn't use them like a damn diary all day." 

The group laughs a little and Mina rolls her eyes and sits back in the chair. You avoid looking at anyone, shoveling the food into your mouth. You’re salivating an almost embarrassing amount, struggling to eat at a normal pace. There’s something about food cooked inside, about the way food tastes when you can smell it wafting in from the kitchen. 

"Don't worry," she turns to you, as if you’re at all concerned with the implication that she doesn’t do much work, "they know we’d hardly have vegetables at all if it weren't my job to tend them. I used to garden quite a bit before all of this." 

Sero tosses her a sideways glance and you get the sense that maybe it isn’t just her doing it. 

"Mina does a lot of the garden stuff," Ochako pitches in, her voice hesitant. "We all sort of just do what we can." 

You can’t really keep up with the conversation and instead just blink at her for a moment before turning back to your food. Maybe that’s rude, but you don’t have the energy to consider it. There’s food in front of you. Food that doesn’t taste like it’s been poorly slaughtered or rotting in a cabinet for months. 

The group at the table with you shifts back into what you feel is their normal conversation and you watch them through your peripheral. You can’t relax yet, maybe you never will. Always on watch with your guard up. 

They pass the dishes around the table, plates going from hand to hand over mismatched sets of silverware. The action feels strange to you. Your chest squeezes at the thought. Just a few weeks ago, you’d done this around a fire with the people you loved. You’d passed a too-hot-to-touch pot around a circle of friends, laughing quietly at the little moments of joy you could find. It feels far away now and jealousy rouses beside hope as you sit. 

“So, where did you come from?” Izuku at the end of the table asks. 

It takes you a moment to realize that he’s talking to you and there’s an edge to his voice that has everyone at the table sitting up with curiosity. You stare at him for a moment, exhausted and defeated and unable to muster the words. 

“Leave them be,” Katsuki says, looking up from his plate. “They just got here. They’re probably freaked out.” 

The table goes a little quiet, a hush falling over it. You look around as glances are exchanged before Mina stands up quickly and quietly claps her hands together. 

“I think,” she says with an awkward laugh, “it may be time for bed.” 

Mina turns to you. “I’ll show you where you can sleep.” 

You nod, standing up and turning to the group with furrowed eyebrows. You want to thank them, to tell them that you’re grateful for the meal and their kindness, but the words don’t come. Instead, you meet Katsuki’s gaze, grateful for the intervention, but suspicious at such forthcoming kindness. He scoffs a little and turns away. 

—

“It’s just up here,” Mina says as she guides you through the house.

You pass rooms with their doors ajar. They are lived in, with unmade beds and glasses of clean water on nightstands. It’s like something out of a life gone by, with a few less amenities. You can imagine a family moving through this house. Girls in school uniforms calling through the halls about a stolen hair clip. Now, you picture these people doing that. Living and not just surviving.

“The bathroom is across the hall,” she says. “You can take a shower if you want. I’ll leave a towel and some clothes in there just in case.”  

You nod. 

“No worries if you don’t,” Mina adds in a whisper. “When I first met everyone, I didn’t undress to bathe for days so… take your time. We won’t be offended.” 

She shuts the door behind her when she leaves and you stumble back onto the bed, shocked by just how soft it feels after spending weeks on the floor. It’s not much, but it’s nicer than anything you’ve experienced in the last nine months, and there's a working shower. You haven’t had a shower since everything fell apart and the layer of grime on your skin is so thick that you can feel it. You haven’t felt safe enough to properly wash since you’d lost the rest of your group, only stopping to rinse your body in streams you pass if the thought occurred to you. The idea of running water and a shower is near euphoric. 

You probably shouldn’t. It may not be wise to shower tonight. You still don’t know these people or what they’re capable of, but the temptation of being clean is too great and as soon as you hear Mina close the bathroom door and walk away, you hurry across the hall on the balls of your feet. 

The bathroom looks old and the sink is white porcelain, eggshell now with a lack of care. The shower has a bathtub in it and though it’s cloudy, there’s a mirror over the sink where you catch the first clear glimpse you’ve had of yourself in weeks. 

You don’t know who you’re looking at. The person in the mirror is nearly unrecognizable. Their eyes are wide and frightened, wild like an animal’s, and their face is covered in a layer of grime that looks like it can never be washed out. Their hair is unruly, sticking out in some areas and matted down with blood in others. This is a person you’ve never seen or met before. Someone you would have avoided only a year ago if you’d ever encountered them. 

You reach up to touch your face, running your hand over the dried blood that has made a home on the underside of your jaw. How long has it been there? Have you always looked so unwell? So sick in mind and body? The promise of a shower grows unbearably pleasant. 

The knob squeaks when you turn it, screeching as the pipes hum and clang to life. Water spits out in a few bursts before raining down from the faucet and hitting the back of the tub in a steady thrum. It sounds a little bit like music to you, constant and heavy, and it gives the impression of normalcy as you begin undressing. 

The fabric of your clothes sticks to your skin, peeling from your body in an unbearable and disgusting way. You don’t look at your body in the mirror. In fact, you avoid it entirely. Not recognizing your face was enough, but your body—a part of yourself you never really recognized—would drive you over the edge. 

Then, you pull the shower curtain back and stick your hand under the water, stepping into it fully with a deep sigh. The water is lukewarm. They probably turned off the heater to conserve power and allow the main generator to function for longer. That’s fine. Beggars can’t be choosers and everyone is a beggar nowadays. Besides, it’s warm enough outside that the water isn’t too cold as it is. In the winter, you probably wouldn’t be able to shower and the pipes might freeze entirely until the following spring. 

There’s a normalcy that you settle into as you wash your body. You return to muscle memory, running your hands over your skin and scrubbing the grime out. It’s simultaneously like the first shower of your life and as if you’ve been doing it every day. You return to a state of pleasant, familiar humanity as you wash away dirt that has built up for weeks. You feel as it pours off of you, see it run down your body onto the porcelain of the tub and swirl down the drain. It’s dirt and dried blood that has been caked onto your skin. You worry that even after washing, it will leave a permanent mark. 

The person in the mirror when you get out of the shower is in stark contrast to the person who went into it. They’re someone that you recognize. You could almost convince yourself that nothing ever changed. Your water-soaked skin is so familiar to you, that you could be getting out of the shower and dressing to go to work. If it weren’t for the look in your eyes, you could have fooled yourself. Something undefinable has changed in you, something that you will carry with you forever. You glance at yourself in the foggy mirror and think that there is no going back. 

The house is quiet when you dry yourself and open the bathroom door. You step across the hall on the balls of your feet, careful not to make any noise, and when you push the bedroom door open, you do a visual sweep to make sure that it’s safe out of habit. 

Your body is exhausted. You are so thoroughly tired that you think you could collapse at any moment, but when you sit down on the bed in your fresh clothes, you find yourself restless. This place is new to you and you’re unsure if the safe feeling is your mind playing desperate tricks on you or the real thing. The lamp by your bed is on, casting a yellow glow across the bedsheets and the dark wood furniture. Come to think of it, you didn’t get a good look at the house when you came in and the thought starts to bother you as you stare at the closed door to the hallway. 

Someone could be behind it. They could be waiting for you to lay down, to sleep, before doing something awful. You almost feel guilty for thinking this way about them. They’ve fed you, given you a shower, given you fresh clothes. Luxuries you weren’t sure even existed anymore, yet you’re sitting here doubting them, wishing you had your pistol or knife.

The bedroom door creaks as you open it. You wince, nervous that you’ve disturbed the quiet peace of the house and that everything will come crashing down as quickly as it seemed to come together. The hallway is dark, save for some light coming from under two doors at the end of the hall. One of them turns out as you creep past it to the stairs, and you hear the distinct sound of box springs squeaking as someone crawls into bed. You let go of the breath you’d been holding, straightening up as you relax into the late-night environment. 

The house looks old even from the inside. It gives the impression of having once been dirty and in near disrepair. There are dust stains and dull spots that no amount of scrubbing could get out. You can almost picture how this place may have looked when they found it and it’s entirely possible that it had been abandoned before the actual outbreak. Someone run out of their home for lack of money. What a trivial thing now. 

The stairs are sturdy, probably held together so well by the foundation of the house, and they’re made of dark wood. They’re steep too, the kind that a baby or old person might trip over, and you hold the railing to calm the shaking of your legs as you slowly feel your way down. You can see the light on in the kitchen from around the corner, spreading out onto the floor of the old fashioned drawing room. Dishes clink in the kitchen, like someone is washing them, and you jump a little at the noise as you creep around the corner. 

Kirishima is standing at the sink with his back to you, whispering something to someone beside him. The expanse of his back is broad, moving every time he goes to run his hand over the dish in front of him. Then, he turns to look at you and you see Mina pop her head around the corner. 

“Oh,” Kiri says, “did you need something?” 

You shake your head. “Not really, I just couldn’t sleep.” 

Kiri nods sympathetically as if he knows the feeling. “Well, you look like you feel a little better at least.” 

You pad over to where he’s doing the dishes and Mina offers you a soft smile and a knowing look. It all seems so normal. Doing the dishes, whispering quietly as they do. Something about it screams a kind of humanity you haven’t experienced in a long while, even with your last group. 

“Are you sure we can’t get you something?” Mina says, furrowing her brows. 

“Why are you all being so nice to me?” You ask. “You don’t know the first thing about me.” 

“Is there some reason why we shouldn’t be nice to you?” Kiri says over his shoulder. 

“No,” you shake your head. “I just think it’s reckless, that’s all. I could have been anyone.” 

Kirishima and Mina exchange a look. They glance at each other, like they’re debating on saying something, and then Kiri turns and rests his palms on the back of the sink. He looks at Mina. 

“We don’t usually decide to do this so quickly,” she admits. “We’re friendly, but nobody’s that friendly anymore.” 

Kiri nods his agreement and you listen quietly, trying to determine if they plan to toss you back out into the woods in the morning. 

“But, Katsuki doesn’t usually bring people in,” she continues. 

“He’s a little more closed off than the rest of us,” Kirishima adds. “He’s a good guy, just takes a while to warm up, is all.” 

“Mhm,” Mina says. 

“What does that have to do with me?” you ask. “This is nice and all, but I’m sure you get why I’m wary.” 

“He’s a good judge of character,” Kiri adds earnestly. “He doesn’t bring people in often, but when he does, he’s usually right.” 

You nod, not quite understanding. Sure, you don’t plan to do anything terrible. In fact, you’re content to accept their kindness and stay, if they’d let you. Anything is better than being alone, but their blind trust in one man’s judgment of character makes you uneasy. 

“He was alone for a really long time,” Mina adds. “A lot of us were. I got lucky meeting Kirishima early on, but Katsuki’s luck was a little less fortuitous.” 

“So you all just… happened upon each other by chance?” You ask. 

“Yeah, pretty much,” Mina says. “It was me and Kiri for a long time. Just the two of us. We’d found Izuku and Katsuki together a while later, but they didn’t seem to like each other all that much. We still haven’t really figured that out, especially because they’re so close now. Ochako and Sero ended up cornered together by accident. We found them just before we found this place, and Denki just sort of showed up here one day and promised to fix the generator in exchange for safety. That was months ago. We’ve been like this since.”

“So you’re all strays,” you say and Mina laughs a little and looks at Kiri. 

“Sure,” she says. “We’re all strays. There were others too. Shoji. Jirou. She was Denki’s girlfriend.” 

“I’m sorry,” you say with a frown. It feels pointless to apologize for the dead, if you get caught up in it, you’d be apologizing forever. 

“Don’t be,” Kiri adds. “But best not to bring her up. It was pretty recent and Denki’s only just started to get over it.” 

You swallow thick and nod a little. 

“Anyway,” Mina says, “we can’t really explain it. We just trust him. We trust Katsuki. That’s all.” 

“Hm,” you hum, understanding that to a degree. 

You trusted the people in your group. If they believed in someone, you were willing to as well, so you suppose you can understand a little where they’re coming from. 

“What are you talking about,” Katsuki rounds the corner, walking into the kitchen and putting his water bottle under the sink. 

“Nothing really,” Mina says. 

Katsuki furrows his eyebrows and then looks at you. He gives you a once over, taking in your new clothing before scoffing lightly. 

“Don’t you look cozy,” he says. “You get settled?” 

“When can I go get my stuff?” You ask. 

“Someone’s eager,” he says through lightly gritted teeth. “Didn’t I tell ya we could go in the morning? Besides, what’s there really to miss in that lot of junk?” 

“Katsuki!” Mina quietly chides. 

“I have things I care about there,” you say. “Things I’m not ready to lose.” 

Katsuki blinks at you for a second before swearing under his breath. “We’ll leave when you get up in the morning.” 

“You don’t have to come with me,” you say, frowning a bit at his sour attitude. 

“Like hell,” he scoffs. “What if the dead are waiting back there for you?” 

“I made it this far on my own,” you respond. 

Katsuki nods for a second. “I’m going. Come find me in the morning.” 

He walks off and around the corner. You hear him go up the stairs, followed by the distinct click of a bedroom door shutting. 

“Don’t pay too much attention to that,” Mina says. “It’s past his bedtime.” 

“You’ll get used to him,” Kiri adds. 

“Right,” you say, swallowing down your frustration in favor of trying to be appreciative of the help. You sway on your feet a little and then steady yourself. “I’m going to go to sleep. Thank you for the meal and the bed.” 

Mina and Kiri nod, but you don’t stick around to hear a response. Fatigue creeps up on you. It ambushes your senses and you go from feeling dream-like to delusional in a matter of moments. You make your way up the stairs, your body feeling heavy as lead, and wobble your way into the bedroom they’re letting you stay in. 

When your head hits the pillow, you’re out. The world around you fades to dark and just before you sleep, you swear that you can hear the sounds of cars passing on the highway. A busy night, Saturday maybe, and people go about their daily lives outside of the window the way that they always have. They live, never the wiser to just how quickly things fall apart and how little it takes for our humanity to leave us. 

— 

Mornings in this place are boisterous. The sun coming through the lone window in your room wakes you up and you can hear the calls of busy people getting to work outside. There are voices from the porch out front that your window looks over and though you can’t see them, you get the sense that they’re having a pleasant conversation. 

As you rouse, you come to the realization of just how exhausted you’d really been. They probably saved your life by bringing you to this place, feeding you, and offering you a bed. In hindsight, it’s easy to see just how little you had left in you. You get the sense now that you’d been running on an empty tank for days, slowly coming to an inglorious, gruesome, sputtering stop. 

Things seem a little clearer, like the sunlight is somehow less bleak than it had been the days previous and you feel a little bit like you have a new lease on life. There are no big emotions, no swells of hope or humanity just yet, and you dread the moment you are rested enough to let grief consume you. Right now, you can’t feel it, but there is a fear in you that as you get to know these people who live relatively beautifully in an ugly world, it will weigh you down so much that you’ll never be able to outrun it. 

You wonder if they’ll let you stay. They very well may not, even with the way they were talking last night. Strangers are more dangerous than they’ve ever been and if they ask you whether or not you’ve killed someone, you refuse to lie to them. Sitting up on the bed, you mull over the very real possibility that you could be back out there on your own again in a matter of days and you don’t even have that many good acts under your belt to plead your case. You’re just a person and you’ve done what you needed to in order to survive. Now, you’re not sure if that’s enough. 

You swallow thick, wandering over to the mirror on the dresser. It’s fogged, though less than the bathroom mirror, and you can make out your features a little better than you could last night. You feel a bit more sane, though you still don’t recognize the frightful and distrustful look in your eyes. Like a wounded animal. Inside your head, you acknowledge that you are completely different from the person you were two hundred and seventy seven days ago. 

The voices grow louder as you climb down the stairs, more secure on your feet than you felt last night. You can hear them talking about the generator, as well as a name you don’t recognize. 

“He should be back by now,” a woman says. “Shoto’s never gone longer than a day or two, max.” 

“We shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” another woman says with a worried bite in her voice. Mina, maybe? “We’re only a few hours into the day. He probably got holed up somewhere.” 

“Someone needs to go look for him,” a man says.

“And what? Risk getting yourself killed?” the first woman says. “No, it doesn’t make sense. We need you here.” 

“You’d rather we leave him to die on his own?” 

“No one’s fuckin’ dying.” 

You recognize Katsuki’s voice. 

“He’s perfectly capable of going on a gasoline run,” he continues. “He’s done it before.” 

“I should have gone with him,” says the same woman. 

“On that leg? You wouldn’t have made it halfway to town, let alone there and back,” his voice raises a little. “Don’t be stupid. He’ll be back.” 

You clear your throat and step around the corner. The group turns to face you quickly at the sound, their eyes wide for a moment before relaxing. You can’t sneak up on anyone nowadays. 

“Sorry,” you say, “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. Is everything okay?” 

It’s not your business, but you ask anyway, wondering for yourself about the safety of Shoto. 

“Fine,” Izuku says, shaking his head. You recognize him to be the one who'd vouched for going after their friend. Katsuki takes a step away from the broad man as he says this. “Nothing for you to worry about. Did you rest?” 

Izuku smiles gently at you, his chest inflating a little at the question. The movement broadens his shoulders and you realize that he stands almost a head taller than Katsuki. You look briefly between the two of them before nodding. 

“I did,” you say. “Thank you.” 

“Nothing wrong with a little hospitality now and then,” he smiles and you can’t help but furrow your eyebrows at the distinct hesitance in his voice. 

“I don’t think we’ve met,” the woman standing across from Izuku says. “I’m Momo. Sorry I wasn’t there to meet you last night. I’ve been a little under the weather.” 

You introduce yourself to her and glance down at her leg. Her ankle is swollen and wrapped in a bandage. Her sneaker laces are untied at the top to make room for the swelling and you can see that she’s guarding that side of her leg. 

“Is it…?” you grimace, taking an instinctive step away from her. You almost feel bad for it, but sometimes good people make bad decisions when loved ones get bit. 

“No,” she says quickly, “no, it isn’t. Caught an edge in an old chain link fence on the property a couple days back.” 

Momo smiles slightly at you as if to reassure you. She’s really beautiful, with thick dark hair pulled back into a somewhat messy ponytail. Her eyes are bright, like she’s engaged in lively conversation, and you find yourself feeling a little sad for her. She’ll need medicine soon, if they can get it. Infections set in easily these days and you get the sense that even she knows that she may not have long without it. Maybe that’s something else their friend Shoto set out to find. 

“I assume you’ll be wanting to go get your supplies?” Katsuki says, cutting the conversation short. Maybe he could sense the sour turn of thoughts. 

“Ready when you are,” you respond with a nod. 

Katsuki glances at Izuku, who gives him a slightly disapproving look. 

“Someone get them something to eat,” Katsuki says. “...I’ll get my shit ready.” 

“Fig jam…” Mina mumbles as she motions for you to follow her to the kitchen. 

You oblige her, not exactly jumping to turn down a meal. She walks you into the kitchen and opens up a cabinet, where she pulls out a jar filled with a dark and seed filled paste. It’s a jam, sealed in a jar that looks older than what’s inside of it. The seal breaks open with a pleasant pop. 

“This stuff is so good,” she says to you over her shoulder, pulling out a package of crackers that have likely gone stale. “You won’t believe it.” 

She spreads the jam on a few crackers and sets it in front of you on a plate, pushing it across the counter towards you. 

“It’s fig jam,” she says with a smile. “Homemade.” 

You look down at the plate, your mouth watering at the prospect of something sweet like this. It’s been so long since you've had fresh jam. It could be as long as 10 years. You don’t think you’ve had it since you were a kid, when jam came easily and you preferred the processed brands at the supermarket to the ones your mom used to make sometimes. 

You raise the cracker to your mouth and stuff it in with little grace. The sweetness spreads across your tongue as soon as you bite into the stale cracker. It fizzes and pops almost, the sugar melting across your tongue as the seeds crack softly between your teeth. The smile that hits your face is completely involuntary and though you know that nine months ago, this jam wouldn’t have been much, today it is something extraordinary. 

Mina nods a kind of girlish agreement, like the way people used to when they had their friend try something at their favorite restaurant. 

“We got here in the fall. I want to say late October or early November?” she offers. “We were starving and there wasn’t enough food to feed all of us. By that time there were like… nine of us.” 

You listen as you eat your crackers. 

“This place was in such an awful state,” she laughs. “I mean, really terrible. But, it was big and there was a fig tree in the back. A little thing, probably only a few years old and it had fruit on it. We ate so many of them that if the world were normal, we’d have sworn off of them forever. When we realized that the house actually had some old food in it,” she interrupts herself “-nothing good, canned stuff mostly- we decided to jar up the rest of the figs so that they didn’t rot.” 

She smiles at you like it’s a pleasant memory, but you can only think about how hungry they must have been. Your stomach growls as you eat. 

“I know it doesn’t sound like much,” she says, “but for some reason it’s a really nice memory. Honestly, we’re lucky we didn’t die.” 

Mina laughs a little. 

“I mean,” she continues, “we didn’t even clear the area before we started pulling at the figs and throwing them into our mouths.” 

You tilt your head at her and furrow your eyebrows with a small smile. 

“You’re really forthcoming with information.” 

“You just seem a little hesitant, is all,” she answers. 

“Can you blame me?” 

Mina shrugs her shoulders but doesn’t really offer an answer. You assume it’s because she can’t, because Mina has the same doubts everyone carries with them in this world. All of the what ifs people would think about before they slept have become more prevalent than anyone would have ever liked. 

“The jam is good,” you say, trying to be friendly in the same way she is. “Even if it is months old.” 

“Things keep well in jars,” Mina defends softly, smiling a little as she gets another out of you. 

This place feels like a little slice of paradise. A blessing from whoever lived here before and kept a garden stocked with vegetables. From someone who lived in an old house with stables and well-water, who kept canned food past its expiration date. It feels almost too good to be true, like these people live in a bubble bound to pop. 

“You ready?” Katsuki thuds into the kitchen with an empty backpack slung over his shoulder. 

You turn, startled by his sudden appearance and nod as you quickly finish chewing the last cracker. Katsuki furrows his eyebrows as he watches the way you scarf it down. 

When you stand from the table, Katsuki turns on his heel to make for the front door and you follow with a light step. Mina says something about staying safe, but you don’t respond, glancing once over your shoulder at the girl. 

It’s strange, the world has made you wishy-washy and uncommitted. You never used to be like that, never so distrusting as to second guess someone’s kindness the moment your back is turned to them, and you’re certainly not the type to be friendly one moment and closed off the next. Now though, you find that doubt creeps in easily through cracks and any foundation that didn’t exist before, seems to be swallowed before you can finish building it. 

Katsuki leads you back across the small clearing you’d come through the night before. It looks different in the day, almost romantic, and it lacks any of the ominous feeling it had the previous evening. He steps over mounds in the dirt from moles and gophers that have made lawns their new home and you try to mimic his steps, sinking occasionally into a particularly soft patch of dirt. Every now and then, Katsuki glances behind him to check that you’re still there and you offer him a forced smile that he never returns.

You catch up to him when you hit the trees, sticking close at his side like something will come and take you away if you’re not. It’s unintentional, but you don’t have a weapon on you. Your knife is back at your makeshift camp, along with the unloaded pistol and your trusty spatula. 

“How do you know where we’re going?” You ask in a whisper. 

Katsuki tosses a look at you over his shoulder. “I’m good with directions.” 

His tone is clipped, like he’s pissed about something, and your expression sours at it. Sure, you get it but it irritates you to some small degree. You hadn’t asked him to come along. In fact, you’d have been fine getting back here to collect your stuff on your own. You’d have asked for a knife and set out without a second thought, if only because being alone in the woods with some guy was less preferable than doing it by yourself. Of course, some guy also probably saved your life, but you’re not quite ready to relinquish your trust completely. 

“Thanks for coming,” you decide. A peace offering. 

Katsuki doesn’t answer and you furrow your brows a little bit. You wonder if he’s always been like this or if the end of the world brought on the loss of his manners. 

Then, he stops, taking you by the arm and pulling you down beside a bush. You gasp and he puts his hand over your mouth to silence you. There’s the urge to bite him, to catch the fleshy bit connecting his thumb and pointer finger between your teeth and bite down till he bleeds, but you stop when you catch what he’s looking at. 

Two of the living dead crouch by a tree, clicking their tongues as they eat something just out of sight. You furrow your eyebrows, eyes widening at the horror of it. For some reason, seeing them always brings about a round of momentary shock. You’ve yet to let go of the hounding thought that they used to be people and sometimes have to reorient yourself to the world you’re in now. 

You catch Katsuki’s eye behind you, his calloused hand still clasped over your mouth, and nod your head. It’s a silent communication that you’ve seen what he has and he removes his palm from your face to grab a knife tucked into his belt, passing it to you quickly. 

The two infected haven’t noticed the two of you yet, but they will soon, if only by the smell of your flesh which has yet to rot. You hear Katsuki let out a breath, as if to calm his heart, and do the same. There’s time to look at them like this and you’re struck by how human you can pretend they are in your head. Well, you suppose they were human once, now they’re a disease using someone’s skin as a mask. 

Infected people aren’t quick, that’s one thing to be grateful for. Back when the outbreak first started, the CDC had released information on what to look out for in those who might have contracted the virus. The first was obviously a bite wound from another infected person, but you can tell from other symptoms. Early symptoms are average. Body aches, fever, lethargy, and delirium. All things you might see with a nasty flu. Then, infection of the wound site, twitching, foggy eyes—like low-grade cataracts—that develop within a matter of hours or days, severe disorientation, aversion to food, insomnia, with the final symptom being a coma that no one ever wakes up as themselves from. 

These are the symptoms that people are conscious for. The ones they feel. The sickness that people tried to nurse others back from. There is no coming back though, not alive at the very least. The virus attacks the nerves throughout the brain and body, that’s what causes the twitching and convulsions. It’s what ultimately kills us, and it's what they think causes the bodies to come back. 

Most infected will crack when they move. It’s the cartilage breaking down as the bones grind together and crack as they’re weakened from the marrow out. They twitch like rabid animals, unable to keep masterful control of their bodies because they are run like puppets from the brain stem. You don’t know if they think. If somehow the people they used to be are still in there, unable to stop themselves from consuming and spreading the virus to others. All you really know is that they twitch and click, functions of the brain that still remain. Tiny impulses sent through the synapses. You imagine it to be like the way you twitch when you sleep, an arm here or a leg there, the way someone might call out with their voice to a room with no one in it. 

Maybe the infected think they’re dreaming. A nightmare that they never wake up from, like those of us who have to put them down. You could see it as a mercy from that perspective. You have an easier time rationalizing putting a knife in someone’s skull if you convince yourself that they’re silently begging for it. 

Katsuki shifts his weight and looks at you. He mouths the words no guns and you nod, briefly wondering where the fuck he thinks you could have gotten a gun from. 

Then, you kick off and run with Katsuki towards the infected. They don’t really have time to begin moving towards you both. You’re faster than them, but you hear the crack of their legs as they stand from their crouched positions, pulled in at the idea of their next meal.

Katsuki takes the farther one, sinking the knife into the soft spot of its temple with relative ease. You switch yourself off and take the one closest only a few moments later, sending your blade through the top of its skull. That happens to you when you have to do this. You turn yourself off for a bit, just so that you don’t have to remember the way it feels to hit the soft part of someone’s brain. You didn’t used to do that, only starting when you realized that there’s no going through this world anymore without it. 

Katsuki wipes the blood on his pants. It’s brown, no longer oxygenated, and the area around you begins to reek. You notice, but for some reason the smell of decomposition doesn’t register in your brain and you continue on behind him. 

There are a few beats of silence, save for twigs breaking under your feet, before Katsuki speaks up. 

“You okay?” It’s barely above a whisper and you wouldn’t have caught it were you not listening for the distinctive crack of human bones. 

“Yeah,” you say, continuing forward. 

The campsite rounds into view and in this light, with your full night’s sleep under your belt, you can see just how pitiful it looks. A tent that you’d hastily put up before nightfall, the remains of your stamped out fire, the folding chair which has since been knocked over, and your weapons on the floor covered by a few leaves disturbed by the wind. 

You snatch them up and move to grab your backpack out of the tent. The inside is shitty too and your torn sleeping bag hadn’t even been rolled out yet. You pick up the bag, returning to the folding chair as Katsuki begins to take down the tent. The polyester and nylon blend zips together as he makes quick work of folding it. Then, he kicks some dry brush over the remains of the fire, like he’s covering your tracks. 

“The next person that comes through here might not be alone,” he says plainly. “And they may have more bullets than you did.” 

“Right,” you respond. Your voice sounds a little far off and you settle your backpack on your shoulder in one quick motion. 

“Got everything?” 

You nod, following him as he heads out in the direction you both came from. The two of you pass the bodies of the infected you’d killed. The smell has permeated the air, lingering like how it does in cities, only less pungent. Their fogged eyes stare blankly at nothing, expressions plain and unreadable. You pass and try not to think much about it. 

Katsuki is a few feet ahead of you and he doesn’t glance back to make sure you’re following. You could leave now and never get attached to these people. You could head off in another direction and never have to think twice about it. No more worrying about who you could lose, about who’s next to become one of the sick masses. Just you by yourself. Then, when you finally kick the can, someone else can put you down the way you did to those strangers. 

Is there really a point to it anymore? To community or living in general. No one is as they once were. Does that make it fantasy to live in their beautiful bubble? Could you even find it in yourself to pretend again, to make nice and play house in that place? They saved your life, sure. They fed you, clothed you, bathed you, but for what point? Tomorrow, you could end up back in the woods, lighting fires with twigs you found in the brush, paranoid that someone would find you or the fire would spread. 

You watch Katsuki’s back as he moves, shoulders shifting with each step. His shirt is stained, white turned eggshell from the wear and tear of time. It seems so off to you that he looks relatively clean, like he lives well. 

Fear strikes you as you realize that your rambling thoughts have merit. Anything you fear now has become real and loss is so tangible to you that you can squeeze it in your hand. They could turn you out. Tomorrow night you could begin the starve and step all over again, moving from place to place, talking to yourself, filling your hours with paranoid thoughts like these that plague you when you’re alone. Is that worse than loss? If you’re alone long enough, you’d probably forget what you’re missing. Losing anyone else could make the wound fresh. For now, the hunger wins out. 

Katsuki jogs ahead of you to get to the house. Momo is on the porch waving him in and he hurries up the steps and bursts through the front door. As you approach, you can hear voices, some of which are relieved, others hurried. When you enter the room, you find a man standing there whom you’ve never seen before, Shoto maybe. 

“A plus one,” the man looks up, tilting his head at you in an odd way. 

“Katsuki’s,” Kiri says with a low smirk. 

Shoto’s eyes widen as he peers at his friend, clutching what looks like an injured shoulder. Katsuki just huffs his irritation. 

“Well, that’s rare,” Shoto says. 

“What’s rare?” Katsuki spits. “They were in the woods with a fire. What was I supposed to do? Let ‘em die?” 

“Maybe,” Shoto says, a light smile creeping onto his features. Then, he turns to you. “What’s your name?” 

You give it to him and he nods his head, tilting it at you again. 

“How long are you staying?”

You’re not sure how to answer that question. In fact, no one is, and it feels like more of a test than it does a genuine inquiry. Kiri and Mina exchange a glance and Katsuki tosses a somewhat dirty look towards Shoto. Ochako gives Shoto a knowing glance and Sero and Denki shift uncomfortably on their feet. Then, Momo clears her throat, spurring Izuku to say something. 

“Shoto,” he says. “You’re probably hungry, you should eat something and lay down. Ochako? Could you take a look at his shoulder?” 

“Sure,” the girl says softly, giving a closed mouth smile to Shoto as she takes him by the arm. 

She glances at you as she passes, almost like she’s too embarrassed to look at you fully in the face. You suppose this is what happens when people are forced to think about whether or not they will potentially leave someone else to die. It’s like the trolley cart question and though in this case there is always the possibility of a better outcome, it’s not likely in this world. 

“Just until I’m rested,” you add with a small tilt of your head. “A few days.” 

Shoto looks at you over his shoulder and gives you a small smile. It’s funny, you can see kindness there. His actions aren’t kind, but you can feel that he has kindness in him, though his rudeness stems from something different than Katsuki’s, you think. Like he’s strange in some way. 

“I’ll start on dinner,” Sero says. “Kiri, give me a hand.” 

The group disperses and you head upstairs without speaking to anyone else. A few days to rest and then cut the first people you’ve spoken to in weeks loose. What sort of idiot gives up something like this to avoid a little awkwardness? Not that you necessarily had your mind made up. You wonder briefly if you’ve just sealed your own tomb. 

—

After dinner, you go upstairs to sleep after eating as much as they would offer you. Your stomach has ceased its constant growling and the shakiness that comes with hunger has receded almost entirely into the background. The bed is soft, with a slight dent in it from whoever slept in here before. The thought unsettles you that they’re probably dead now, but you try to push it from your mind as you steel yourself for what comes within the next few days. 

You had volunteered yourself to leave. To what? Save yourself the embarrassment of pleading? Did you even want to plead? Why are you regretting not asking to stay? These people don’t know you, what trust can you have built with them in only a few days? Your skin crawls at the expanse of possibilities in front of you after so many weeks without any. 

You think that if you let yourself walk away, you’ll probably die. You’re out of bullets and don’t know where to find any food except by luck. You can try to catch prey, but prey hides whenever infected are around, and they’re everywhere nowadays. It’s spring, water wouldn’t be a problem, but running water has its clear comforts. Then, there’s the possibility of loss. You’d come to care for these people if you stayed, you know it. 

You furrow your eyebrows and look at the ceiling. There’s really no choice to be made. You’ll let them make it for you, even if you don’t know them. It’s their house and you won’t walk in uninvited or try to take it. You’re not about to become a monster just because the world is full of them now.

The darkness grows and your eyes drift to the dim light wandering in under the crack of the door. Hushed voices whisper in the living room, you can hear them. It’s a heated discussion, lively, but deliberately quiet. It’s been hours since everyone went to bed, yet you get the impression that many people are chiming in. You’re too nosey to leave it be. 

You open the bedroom door silently, turning the cool knob with a wince as it clicks out of place. When you peer into the hallway, every upstairs bedroom door is open with the room empty. The light is coming from down stairs and around the corner, and you can see shadows move as you inch closer to the source. 

You pause at the top of the stairs, knowing that they creak, and crouch by the bannister to listen. You’re out of sight. The only way they’d know you’re listening is if you made a sound, but you won’t. You’re good at being quiet. 

“We don’t even know them,” someone says in a rushed whisper. “We don’t know what they’ve done before.” 

“Everyone’s done things they’re not proud of now, Shoto,” a woman adds. It’s Mina. She’s spoken enough to you that you recognize her voice. 

“I agree with Shoto,” says another woman, her voice higher pitched. She sounds guilty and her voice is tight as she speaks “We have no clue who they are. They could be dangerous.” 

“You mean like me, Ochako?” A man adds. “I could have been dangerous.” 

The group grows quiet for a moment. 

“No,” Momo says. You recognize the cadence of her voice. “Shoto might be right, Denki. It’s been nearly six months since you got here and the world has changed a lot. We don’t- we can’t know for sure.”

“Can we really know anything for sure?” Another man adds, Kiri.

“What about you guys?” Shoto says, presumably to the rest of the group. 

“I don’t know.”

“I’m hesitant, but I don’t know either.”  

“Jesus,” another man with a baritone voice, harsher than the rest. That’s Katsuki, the first voice you’d heard of the group. “You guys make me a little sick.” 

“That’s not fair,” Ochako says. 

“No,” he interrupts. “It is fair. You guys want to… what? Send them back out there to die?” 

“It’s not like that,” Shoto says.  

“It is like that,” he says, raising his voice and then lowering it back to a whisper. “You didn’t see them when they got here, Shoto. They- they didn’t look… shit. The rest of you, you saw them. You really want to send them back out there to fuckin’ waste away? I don’t know about you all, but I won’t do that to a person.” 

There’s a pregnant pause.

“Katsuki’s right,” Izuku says with a bit of conviction, like he’s finally made up his mind. “Sending someone out there alone is a death sentence. How does doing that make us any better than the people we’re trying to protect ourselves from?” 

“What if there are more of them?” Ochako says quietly. “What if they’re not alone?” 

“Trust me,” Katsuki says, “They were alone.” 

“But what if they’re not?” She insists at a whisper, a bit of shame creeping into her voice. “What if people come for us?” 

“See?” Shoto says gently. “There are so many what-ifs.” 

“That works the other way too,” Mina adds. 

You don’t listen to hear the rest of their conversation. They’re going to run themselves in circles debating about you. They’ll go around and around and land on whichever argument ends with the most votes. They’ll convince each other of one thing and it will happen totally out of your control. 

The bedroom door shuts with a low click that makes you wince again. You think about the people who went to bat for you and the people who didn’t. You don’t blame those who opposed. You’d have probably reacted similarly if your old group were still alive and you understand very clearly why they do it. One person’s stupid reaction can be catastrophic and they don’t know enough about you to be certain that you’re not one of those stupid people. It’s how the world went to shit in the first place and though nine months ago you’d have surely condemned someone for making the same decision, you know that fear has warped humanity beyond comprehension. You didn’t get it until you lived it. 

Still, Katsuki’s humanity feels intact somehow, more so than yours at least. His response is something you probably never would have said under the same conditions and you can’t help but feel some sort of fondness bloom in you for him. Call it connection, gratefulness for his willingness to stick his neck out for you, a trauma response. You still feel it. Mina and Kiri had said that Katsuki was a good judge of character and that’s why they were willing to back him. You wonder briefly if maybe Katsuki sees something in you that you don’t recognize in yourself anymore, or maybe something you don’t expect other people to recognize. What is it that he wants so badly to protect? 

Someone stomps down the hallway, heavy boots against the old creaky floors. You hear the steps recede down the hallway, maybe a door or two down, before it shuts quickly. The sound makes you wince and you listen as the house grows quiet and then hums quietly with the sound of others coming upstairs a few moments later. Someone pads to the end of the hall, pushing the door open. 

You hear a woman’s voice, so muffled that you can’t make out what she’s saying. Then, you hear the sound of a man’s affirmation before the bedroom door shuts and the visitor moves back down the hall to a separate bedroom. Information passing through the house. 

Someone is moving around in a room below you and you figure that there are probably bedrooms downstairs as well. From the outside, you’d never guess that the place could house ten people. Inside though, the bedrooms are small. That’s probably why so many can fit. You’d guess that the place used to have multiple generations living in it, or maybe even rented out rooms to people for a few months. It sort of has a boarding house feel to it, like many people have come and gone even before people stopped staying in one place. 

That’s a good thing to call it, the boarding house. It certainly has that sort of feel to it, many of its spaces undeniably communal. 

You turn over in the bed, facing the bedroom door. The lights have gone out completely now and the house is quiet save for the occasional creak or thud from someone preparing to sleep. It’s been a long while since the sounds of living have been so prevalent near you. You’re eased by the sounds of the house settling, a familiar reminder of what living used to be. Your group had been on the road long before you lost them and the comforts of an interior are almost overwhelmingly nostalgic. You’re better rested to notice it now and shutting your eyes, you savor the feeling. 

—

“Need some help?” You say. 

Denki turns around, grease smeared across his nose where he likely wiped it with his dirty hands. He’s holding a wrench in a glove so tattered that it hardly counts as a glove anymore. He looks startled, amber eyes widening before he uses his forearm to brush stray hairs out of his face. The rest of it is pulled up into a messy ponytail, revealing the moist back of his neck. 

“Oh, sure,” he says, a bit surprised. “Do you know how generators work?” 

He crouches back over the machine and you step up behind him. 

The machine is rusted near the bottom and between the exposed winding pipes. Its paint has chipped away, leaving the weather-damaged metal open for you to see. On the side, a fan-like piece spins slowly in circles and the machine whirs and sputters softly as it… generates power, probably. 

“Not quite, but an extra pair of hands is always helpful,” you say softly, passing him a tool he’d been reaching for. “Did it break?” 

“No,” Denki says, “but it’s probably on its last legs. The thing’s almost as old as we are, probably older, so it’s good to tune it up a bunch.” 

You hum your agreement, tilting your head as you stand and watch him work. 

You’re not necessarily comfortable with Denki, but he feels like a safe person for some reason. Maybe it’s because he’s got a sort of ditzy, non-threatening vibe to him. You can almost distinctly picture him tripping over his own feet and something about that makes you feel considerably safer than someone who wouldn’t. That and he was the first person you’ve come across this morning who you don’t think distrusts you too badly. 

“Are you dodging something?” Denki smirks up at you from his crouch. 

“Who on earth would I be dodging?” you snort a bit defensively. 

“Shoto,” he says with a light smile. “He put you in a tight spot the other day.” 

“Yeah, well,” you say, glancing over your shoulder. “It wasn’t anything he didn’t have a right to ask.” 

“Right, but it sure was rude, huh?” 

Denki laughs to himself a little and you’re surprised by how easygoing he is. You subconsciously begin to categorize him with Mina and Kiri. The dichotomy of this group baffles you a bit, but you can certainly see all nine of them as a collective. Tightly knit and well acquainted with the habits of others. 

“Oh!” He exclaims, “I have something you can do for me.” 

You tilt your head. 

“There’s a bucket over there,” he says, pointing absentmindedly to a shitty plastic bucket against the side of the house. “We use the water from the creek as coolant. It’s not factory grade, but it does the trick. You wanna go fill it up and bring it back for when I’m done tuning this thing up?” 

You furrow your eyebrows, not sure where the creek he’s talking about is. 

“The creek is just over there,” he points behind the house to the edge of the treeline. “I know you can’t see it from here, but if you walk in a straight line, you’ll hit it. Katsuki should be down there too, so you can use him as a landmark.” 

When you don’t immediately answer, Denki whines a little. 

“I mean,” he says, “I’d go myself, but-” 

“I’ll do it,” you laugh a little and Denki seems surprised that you do. 

“Really?” 

“Yeah,” you shrug. “I’d like to pull some weight at least while I’m here. Plus, I offered.” 

Denki mumbles his pleasure and you walk to the bucket without another word and set off in the direction Denki pointed. You’re much more willing to go out to the treeline now that you have a knife back at your side. 

The walk to the trees is longer than it looks, like how sometimes the horizon looks like something you could reach out and climb up onto. The walk stretches with each step you take and you become a little more understanding of why Denki didn’t want to do it himself. But the walk is actually pleasant, the warmth of mid May collecting evenly on your skin as the humidity grows more intense with the sun. 

You wonder what Katsuki would be doing by the creek. Maybe he’s fishing, or crouched over himself sharpening an arsenal of knives that you think he might keep in a roll attached to his belt sometimes. You’re not sure why, but Katsuki sort of has that expression to him. He’s handsome, but the scowl projects something hostile that makes him seem unapproachable. 

As you cross through the middle of the clearing, you could almost imagine that this is a normal day. Humidity collects on your skin, making you sweat a little as you dodge gopher holes and soft spots of dirt. It almost feels like summer camp, if it weren’t for the looming idea that you’re contributing to something you may not be a part of. Denki’s attitude though, has you hoping for a more favorable outcome, if you want to call it that. 

You’re only a few steps into the line of trees when the earth dips into a sand-lined ravine. The trees leave room for the sun to beat down on warmed rocks, making the area seem brighter with their subtle reflection of the light. The noise of the creek drowns out the sound of your footsteps and you shuffle toward where the earth flattens just before the water starts. A little ways to your right, you can see Katsuki sitting on a rock in the sun, his hands dipped into a large bucket. You narrow your eyes as he pulls what looks like a cloth out of the water, rubbing the fabric together before dipping it in the cool water of the creek.

As you approach, you realize what it is that he’s doing. It’s laundry. On the other side of him, you can see a bin of what look like dirty clothes and water-soaked clean ones. Talk about misjudged character. 

“Katsuki,” you say as you approach him, the bucket still empty in your hand.

He squints up at you, shifting his face so that it's in your shadow. 

“You’re still here,” he says plainly, returning to his task. 

“Clearly,” you respond, watching as he runs his fingers over the next piece of clothing in the bucket. 

“Why are you down here? Did Denki pawn the generator water onto you?” He says, like he’s somewhat frustrated. “He does that shit to anyone he can.” 

You shrug your shoulders and continue to stare at him. 

“Are you just gonna stand there?” He huffs out. 

“You’re doing laundry.” 

“Yeah?” he furrows his eyebrows and looks at you. “So?” 

“Nothing,” you say. “I just didn’t expect that.” 

“Yeah well,” he stops for a moment like he’s struggling to find the words. “It needed to be done. Figured I might as well.” 

“How progressive of you,” you joke with a straight face. 

He looks at you out of the corner of his eyes and sighs, not justifying your comment with a response. You find yourself smiling a little bit. 

“If you’re going to linger, sit down and do it,” he says. “You’re creeping me out.” 

You oblige him and sit down on a rock next to him, far enough that you’re not touching, but near enough to hear him if you speak in a low voice. For some reason, you feel a sort of kinship with Katsuki. You’d thought longer than you’d like to admit about his willingness to vouch for you and find that you want to live up to his expectation of your goodness, even if it’s not what you believe yourself to be anymore. Maybe it’s because you’ve slept well the past few nights and feel more like yourself, but there’s a certain casualness to conversing with him that you enjoy. He’s not looking at what you could be, but rather what you’re showing him that you are. His lack of doubt in that is something you find relatively attractive. 

You watch his arms out of the corner of your eye in between gazing at the treeline and the sky. Your field of vision catches on them, his sleeves cut short to expose his biceps, a bit muddied near the elbows where the mud has begun to stick. 

Katsuki doesn’t seem all that bothered by your presence, but now and then you’ll catch the sideways glance he gives you, almost like he’s trying to figure out exactly why you’re lingering. 

“How long have you been with them?” You ask, more as a way to fill the silence. 

Katsuki’s hands pause as he thinks about answering, then, they continue their steady pace. 

“A decent amount of time,” he says. “I met Izuku first, probably in November just before Mina and Kiri. The rest came later.” 

You furrow your eyebrows. 

“No offense,” you start, “but you don’t really seem like the group type.” 

“And you don’t seem like the type who’d be alone,” he retorts, like your statement was stupid. 

You press your lips into a tight line, not really knowing how to respond. 

“Sorry,” he says, shaking his head a little. 

“Were you?” 

“What? Was I sorry?” He furrows his eyebrows at you. 

“No,” you shake your head. “Were you alone? Before Izuku.” 

He goes silent. You’ll take that as a yes, but you regret asking a little. It had just slipped out. If someone were to ask you something like that, you’d probably react the same way. That’s just as well, you don’t really need to know him like that anyway. 

You wonder briefly if anyone does. He seems closed off, but Mina and Kiri spoke about him a few days prior like they knew him well. Well enough at least to allude to a history you’ll likely never be privy to. Then there’s Momo, who whispers little things to him that he answers in kind. Curiosity gets the better of you, if only to tease. 

“Do you have a girlfriend?” you ask and Katsuki’s response is to rest his elbows on his knees and let out a dry laugh. 

He turns his head and looks at you from the side. “And what the fuck are you asking me that for?” 

“Just curious,” you say. “Is it Momo?” 

“Momo?” He makes a sour face at you. “Yeah, right.” 

“She’s pretty,” you say. 

“Sure is,” he responds dryly. “If you’re into the mom type.” 

“What? You’re not into moms?” You grin a little and Katsuki furrows his eyebrows at you. 

“So you do have a personality,” he scoffs a little. 

There’s a pause. You haven’t felt this in a while. The feeling of bonding with someone new, compatibility on the human level that feels nearly instant. 

“I’m kinda serious though,” you say, tilting your head down to catch his eye. “Do you?” 

You’re leaning a little closer to him now.

“You seen any nice restaurants to take a person out to these days?” he questions, clearly a little frustrated with you in the way someone gets when they’re a bit amused. 

“You don’t have to take someone out to a restaurant to fuck them, you know?” You laugh a little. 

Katsuki’s lips part and he swallows like his mouth has gone dry. 

“Yeah, well,” he starts, looking away from you. “I’m a romantic. Sue me.” 

He’s just full of surprises, isn’t he? You find that you’re captivated by this feeling, this humanity, that exists in him. It’s something alive between you both, something left behind from the old world, and you crave it the same way you crave food. 

Katsuki continues scrubbing the clothes, rubbing the fabric together and then dunking it in the bucket before plunging it into the freshwater creek. You’re not sure why you do it, but the next time he looks at you, you kiss him. 

It’s not as if you like him, but it’s something to feel. Some remnant of the butterflies you used to feel on dates and the kiss makes you feel like you could be close to human again. You pull away almost as soon as you put his lips to yours and you can tell that the expression on your face is one of surprise.

Katsuki blinks for a second, looking at you with his brows knitted together. The expression doesn’t leave him as he places a wet hand on the side of your face to kiss you again. It’s an anxious kiss, confused and slow but—like someone riding a bike for the first time in years—it quickly becomes something familiar. Muscle memory that you both let yourselves sink into. 

You can feel his expression as he kisses you, something between confusion and desire, like his own actions are perplexing. You feel the same way, hesitant, but reaching in the dark for the promise of some sort of normalcy. You want to feel like a person again. You haven’t felt it in so long and you push yourself against him as the ache swells in you. 

The two of you continue like this for a moment, Katsuki’s fingers pressing lightly into the skin of your neck. You moan softly as his tongue slips into your mouth, taking a sharp inhale at the sensation of skin on skin. The sound of the creek drowns out the clicking of your mouths, but you can feel the way he hums into your mouth. They’re little sounds, involuntary ones driven by the nervous, desirous feelings inside of you both. 

Then, Katsuki pulls away, swallowing thick as he takes his bottom lip between his teeth for a moment. You appreciate the way they look. They’re swollen, anxious to continue and keep forgetting where you really are. He drops his hand from your face with a sigh and almost seems like he comes back to himself. You do the same, moving back into an upright position. 

“Denki will want that water soon,” he clears his throat and motions to the empty bucket by your feet. 

“Oh,” you say, laughing a little. “Right.” 

You stand, dusting off the back of your pants and dunking the bucket into the water. It sloshes, the liquid hitting the back of the plastic with a satisfying elastic sound. You begin to walk away without another word, heading down the way you came to climb up the gentler part of the slope. 

“Hey,” Katsuki calls softly. “You should stay. We talked it over last night. You can if you want to.” 

The last part, he says facing the wash, his hands moving as if he hadn’t said anything at all. You don’t respond, knowing that the obvious answer is already yes. 

Dread settles in your stomach. It’s an icky, swirling feeling that threatens to make you double over. You climb up the bank, the water in the bucket sloshing as you move through the trees and enter the clearing. The feeling doesn’t dissipate, growing as you leave the cover of the trees. You probably wouldn’t have kissed him if he’d asked you that earlier. 

The boarding house comes into view and you can see Denki sitting beside the generator, conversing with who appears to be Shoto. They turn and Denki waves you down, Shoto turning away and starting around for the front of the house. 

Denki jogs to meet you, taking the bucket from your hand. You flex your fingers as the weight is removed, wincing a little at how stiff they feel. 

“Jeez, what took you so long?” Denki laughs and with your new information, you understand his willingness to be friendly with you a little better. 

“I asked Katsuki for his life story,” you respond dryly, following him back to the generator. 

Denki looks over his shoulder and laughs at you. “Did he tell you?” 

You pause for a moment, watching as Denki unscrews something and pours the water in. 

“Nope,” you say. “Not a thing.”