Becoming A Writer Is Great Because Now You Have A Hobby That Haunts You Whenever You Don’t Have Time

Goretober [5/15]: BEATEN UP

The Memory Circuit BOK JOYEUX!!!!

I've been neglecting the actual story but I'll cry about it. Anyway, here's some art instead.

I finally made art for my own story!

This piece is from The Memory Circuit and is a glimpse into Bok's past, where the adrenaline of a mission hasn’t fully worn off just yet. It’s not his blood! He’s catching his breath before he disappears again *cackles in conspiring author*. In all seriousness though, it’s my first time illustrating a scene from The Memory Circuit, and I'm literally so proud I could holler—Bok means so much to me and I’m just GAHHHH about seeing him like this. I hope you all enjoy it!!!

⎉: @chaotic-orphan @morning-star-whump Let me know if you'd like to be added or removed from the taglist!

Masterlist | The Memory Circuit

The Memory Circuit [IV]

Good Morning, Sunshine

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⎉: @chaotic-orphan @morning-star-whump Let me know if you'd like to be added or subtracted from the taglist!

TW: police brutality, physical assault, vomiting, surveillance, systemic abuse.

Line dividers by @sister-lucifer!!!!

The door buzzes.

Hal jabs the button again, hard.

Nothing.

Then: “It’s four-fucking-thirty in the morning, Hal.”

Her voice crackles through the speaker like it’s pissed, too. He presses his forehead to the doorframe, eyes closed.

“Hey, Piggy.”

The lock clicks.

Jules stands in the doorway in a billowing shirt and one sock, hair a frizzy halo of sleep and pure, undiluted fury.

“You look like shit,” she settles venomously, stepping aside.

The flat smells like chamomile and burnt oil. There’s a threadbare orange blanket on the couch and a spider plant hanging in the corner, definitely named something like Milo. Hal sinks onto the couch, spine curling in on itself. Jules crosses her arms.

“Is this about Bok?”

Hal’s head jerks up.

She sighs, already turning for the kitchen. “I’m putting the kettle on. Start talking before it boils.”

¶¶¶¶

The kettle clicks. Hal’s in the kitchen, shoulders hunched as he pours water into sleek mugs. His hands shake.

Jules watches him from the table, unreadable.

“He’s gone,” Hal says, voice hoarse.

“I figured,” Jules replies. “The silence wasn’t exactly reassuring.”

Hal lets out a slow, ragged breath. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Lucky me,” she mutters.

Then: Knock knock knock.

Jules’ eyes snap to the door.

“Please tell me that’s not—”

“Open up, Jules,” comes Ricky’s voice, carrying that signature lilt of his.

She doesn’t move. Hal, already pale, goes corpse white.

Jules opens the door just enough to glare through. “You’ve got a lot of nerve.”

Ricky smiles coolly. “Just here to chat.”

“Go chat with a blender.”

She tries to shut the door. He plants a booted foot in the frame.

“We’ve got Joyeux,” he says. “You know what that means.”

Her jaw tightens. She steps aside, reluctantly. “You’ve got five minutes.”

Ricky walks in like it’s his flat, brushing droplets off his shoulders. Hal retreats to the sink, one hand braced on the counter like it’s the only thing holding him up.

Ricky’s eyes flick to Hal. “I assume you know Hal was keeping company with a nomadroid.”

He halts mid-pace, catching Jules’s look.

A beat.

“I’m assuming you didn’t know it was unregistered. Fully illegal. Possibly unstable.”

Hal makes a noise—half breath, half choke. Jules glares at him too.

“I know it’s complicated,” Ricky hums. “But Joyeux was dangerous. The raid was clean. We have footage. And Hawkins’ prints.”

“Shut up,” Jules says.

Ricky lifts an eyebrow.

She turns to Hal, voice quieter now. “You didn’t tell me everything.”

Hal can’t look at her.

“Did you love him?”

The air goes still.

Hal’s grip on the counter slips. He doubles over and vomits into the sink, body wracked and shaking.

Jules doesn’t flinch. Just grabs a dish towel, runs it under cold water, and presses it into his hands.

Ricky looks away; pulls out his datapad.

“We’ll be in touch,” he says lightly, and walks out.

The door shuts behind him.

Jules exhales—long, slow, furious.

Hal leans against the wall, towel clutched in his hands, face pale.

“You loved him,” she says again, not asking this time.

And Hal, eyes puffy, just nods.

¶¶¶¶

Earlier.

They blow the door in.

No warning, no pause. Just the shockwave and splinters, smoke curling into the hallway like fingers.

Bok’s head snaps up from the mattress on the floor. He doesn’t move fast enough.

They’re already inside.

Three soldiers. Black gear, black masks, silent. Their eyes glint faintly like glass behind the visors. A flick of motion, and the room is theirs.

Bok reaches for the blade on the counter. Cheap boxcutter. Pathetic. He grabs it anyway.

The first soldier closes in.

Bok swings.

Steel kisses flesh—a shallow cut across a gloved arm. The soldier barely reacts.

Bok bolts.

One grabs his shirt, misses. Another’s faster. A baton slams into Bok’s spine. His knees buckle. He drops, scrambles, still crawling, still fighting—

Another hit—his side caves in around it. Something cracks. He sucks in air.

He twists, knife in hand, jabs upward.

The blade rakes a thigh—deep. The man swears. Stumbles. Bok surges forward.

It doesn’t matter.

A boot catches his shoulder. Slams him sideways into the wall. His skull hits plaster, leaves a dent. He falls.

They’re on him.

He thrashes—kicks, claws, spits black.

Someone grabs his hair, yanks him up. His neck strains. He stabs back—nothing.

A baton hammers down.

His hand breaks. Knife drops. Gone.

They don’t stop.

Two hold him down. One crushes a knee with the baton—crack. Bok jerks, bites his own tongue. Ink floods his mouth.

“Still fighting?” one mutters. Disgusted.

Second knee. 

Crack. 

He goes limp, twitching. Ribs heave. Eyes wide. Still conscious.

One more hit to the jaw. His head snaps sideways. Something dislocates.

They drag him.

By the arms. His head falls back, eyes dull, breath fogging through slightly parted lips. His bare heels scrape against the floor. Sweat clings his hair to his forehead, dripping down his face. The rest of his body hangs limp, trailing behind them like a trainwreck.

“Secure,” one says.

Another checks a watch. “Thirty seconds over. Let’s move.”

They vanish into the hallway.

The door hangs from one hinge. The room still smells like smoke and metal and blood. 

And they’re gone.

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The Memory Circuit

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The air is thick with the cool breath of night. The light—sharp, blinding—flickers, then fades, swallowed by the dark. Wetness has seeped into their hair and scalp; rough cement bites into their back.

A voice.

A hand pulling them up. Another hand, setting them on their feet. Brushing debris off their sodden green garb; inquisitive tones.

“What’s your name?” they ask.

Joyeux—

Bok... Joyeux.

But their throat hurts and the words don’t spit, and they want to lie down again.

Hal Hawkins hesitates before he reaches out, pressing a hand to their shoulder.

They flinch.

“Hey, easy,” Hal murmurs. “You with me?”

A pause. The sharp scent of damp concrete. The hum of something electric, distant.

Bok blinks, sluggish. “I don’t know.”

Hal exhales sharply through his nose, rubs a hand over his jaw. “That’s not great, is it?”

¶¶¶¶

Bok and Hal live together. It is a small flat, crammed with too many books, too many wires, things with blinking lights whose purpose Hal won’t explain.

Mornings, Hal hands Bok a cup of tea, frowns when Bok wraps both hands around it and doesn't flinch. The steam curls against Bok’s face, but he only tilts his head, watches it rise, unreadable.

Bok scalds himself pouring out boiling water for pasta. Someone shouts. He glances down at his blistering skin, pressing a fingertip against the raw patch with a curious gleam in his eye.

Hal grabs his wrist, voice sharp. “Hey. What the hell?”

Bok doesn’t answer.

¶¶¶¶

Bok tries his hardest to get into religion.

“I think fear was the first thing I ever learned,” he tells Hal, flipping through pages of an old, cracked Bible. “Fear and shame. I abandoned God but kept my shackles.”

Hal hums from where he sits on the floor, working on a delicate network of luminescent capillaries. “Sounds exhausting.”

Bok considers this, then shrugs.

¶¶¶¶

He slices himself on accident. The cut isn’t deep, but the reaction is instant. Someone yelps. Bok lifts his hand, turning it this way and that, watching thick black liquid bead and streak down his wrist. Someone rushes to grab a napkin.

“Your pen exploded,” they say, pressing the paper against his palm. Bok says nothing.

¶¶¶¶

Curled together, their bodies tangled in the dim glow of the ceiling light, Bok traces slow, deliberate patterns against the nape of Hal’s neck. The warmth of his breath ghosts over skin, his voice slipping soft into the space between them.

“I am one tiny part of this vast universe,” he murmurs, “offered the chance to comprehend myself ever so briefly, and to fall in love with what I see.”

Hal stills. The hum of the city filters in through the open window—distant, electric, alive. Bok feels the shift in Hal’s breathing before he hears his voice.

“Poetic.” A pause. “Did you read that somewhere?”

Bok tilts his head, considers. “No.”

Hal says nothing. The light buzzes overhead, flickering once.

¶¶¶¶

Bok finally suspects something is wrong.

“Two years ago,” Hal says, a little softly. “Here, in Rome. You were wearing emerald green.”

Bok gazes into his mirror, loose strands spilling past his eyes, at a reflection both carnal and utterly alien. 

He hadn't known how long he'd been in Rome, or how he'd gotten there.

¶¶¶¶

Their flat is raided. Bok locks Hal and himself in the bathroom. The door rattles on its hinges, a fist pounding against it. The sound of gunfire, of things splintering.

Hal is bleeding out on the tiled floor. Bok is deliberating.

“Joyeux,” Hal breathes, voice rasping.

Bok freezes. The name feels like a bullet to the skull.

¶¶¶¶

There is no time. He drops through the window, eight stories up. The pain is muted as he crashes onto the pavement below, vision swimming, systems struggling to recalibrate. He is left to peer up at a sky that sprinkles softly back down on him.

For a moment, Bok just lies there, feeling the rain sink into his clothes, feeling the static fuzz at the edges of his mind. The pavement is cold against his cheek. Somewhere above, inside the flat, Hal is dying.

Someone's shouting. Boots slamming against wet concrete. A distant siren wailing through the city streets.

A tremor runs through Bok’s fingers. His limbs feel leaden, sluggish, but his body is still trying to move, to repair itself.

He presses a hand to the ground, tries to push himself upright. A jolt of something sharp lances through his spine, but he doesn’t stop. He can’t. He was programmed to survive, after all.

Survival...

The word echoes in his head, cold and hollow. Hadn’t Hal said something, once, about survival? About living versus being alive?

Bok doesn’t remember.

All he knows is that Hal’s voice is already slipping from his memory, like ink bleeding into water. His fingers clench against the pavement.

The light overhead flickers. A streetlamp, swaying in the wind. For a split second, Bok swears he hears Hal’s voice—low, exasperated, fond.

Joyeux.

Then, the moment is gone.

Bok drags himself to his feet. His systems are stabilising. The rain is coming down harder now, washing the black streaks from his hands.

Somewhere in the city, he knows, there are answers.

He takes a step forward. Then another.

And then he starts to run.

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The Memory Circuit MASTERLIST

⎉: @chaotic-orphan @morning-star-whump Let me know if you'd like to be added or subtracted from the taglist!

The Memory Circuit [I] TW:

The Customer Is Always Wrong [II] TW: sex work, intoxication, dissociation, emotional numbness, implied exploitation.

Get In Line, Mister! [III] TW: physical assault, attempted sexual assault, substance use, internalised trauma, psychological breakdown, imprisonment, coercion, manipulation, surveillance, systemic abuse.

Good Morning, Sunshine [IV] TW: police brutality, physical assault, vomiting, surveillance, systemic abuse.

Bite Down [V] TW: graphic depictions of physical and psychological torture, child abuse, grooming, sexual violence involving minors, institutional exploitation, non-consensual medical/technological procedures, trauma flashbacks, violence, captivity, dissociation, systemic abuse.

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ART!!!!

honestly shout out to the dead dove: do not eat creators, the darkfic authors, the people who can unflinchingly stare into their darkest desires and curiosities and give them life enough to share with other people. It's absolutely so much harder than it looks to pull off

kudos to writers with dialogue-heavy works, I got mad respect for y'all. love using dialogue as a tool, but my default settings are non-verbal (dialogue) and non-stop yapping (description).

A villain that’s very protective of their hero

A tear ran down their temple when the hero woke up.

"I..." Their throat tightened. It hurt. All of it hurt. As they realised they were covered in dust, their eyes teared up even more, washing the dirt off their face in clear slim lines. They couldn't see much, but there were little rays of sunshine pushing through the concrete above and to their sides, revealing the villain on top of them.

The hero had to swallow, clear their mind. The villain stared at nothing in particular, not even the hero under them. They looked like they were concentrating, but the hero knew that look too well: the villain was in surging pain.

Their washed-out eyes were wide open and there was blood sticking onto their hair. The hero couldn't tell for how long they had been unconscious, but the villain seemed to have been awake the entire time.

Apparently, not even a building collapsing on top of them could destroy them.

The hero stared at them, stared at that face shape, those shoulders, those eyes. Was that it? Were they ultimately going to die together? Right here?

The hero didn't have any energy left in them to lift a finger, at least of all chunks of concrete. Their muscles burnt and they were sure several bones of theirs were broken. They continued to observe their enemy. Their enemy who had saved them. Without them, everything left of the hero would be mushed-up heroism and a torn cape. How was it even possible that the both of them were alive?

"How are you holding up?" the hero whispered. They were sure they had mere minutes before the villain's arms would give out. Mere minutes before the villain would collapse just like the building.

At first, the villain didn't answer. Their arms were shaking. They took in a deep breath.

"My kidneys are definitely done for," they said eventually. Their voice was raspy, their breathing quick. "And my leg is broken. You think some of your friends will come to our rescue?"

"If we can hold on for like ten more minutes, maybe. That's a big if, though." The villain nodded or maybe the hero imagined it, after all their view was extremely limited. "Why'd you do that? You could have saved yourself."

The villain finally looked at them and the hero's chest hurt more than before.

"...how could I not?" they asked.

"No, please, don't do that-"

"You're my everything. I do all of it because of you. I show up to see you, I mess up to see you, I fight to see you."

"Please," the hero begged. They couldn't bear a confession now. They couldn't watch the villain die because of them. "Please don't say that. Please tell me you hate me and it was a mistake or instinct."

"You know that's not true." The villain's blood ran down their side and dribbled onto the hero. They moaned softly. "You know that's not true, not even a little bit."

The villain let out a sharp breath and the hero could tell they were breaking down slowly. Growing weaker while the concrete grew heavier.

Tears gathered in the hero's eyes anew.

"I can't do this," the hero said. "You can't leave me, please. I am so scared. I am so-"

They choked on the words. There wasn't much space for either of them, but the hero managed to push their arm up and although some of their fingers were certainly broken, they touched the villain's cheek.

"Are you getting claustrophobic?" the villain asked gently. Their arms were trembling and more and more blood was running down their sides. The hero knew the villain could barely hold it together and they didn't seem to realise that the hero was rather getting thanatophobic. Even now, the villain remembered that the hero was a little uncomfortable in tight spaces, but the lack of space was their last problem right now. "Don't worry. I am here."

And there it was.

Blood coming out of the villain's mouth.

"I am here, please don't cry," the villain said. "I am right here."

The hero tried to hold back their sobs, but it made everything a little harder.

"I am so tired," the villain whispered. They closed their eyes for a second. "Please, can I lay down? Just for a minute or two. My back hurts so much."

"Yes, come here," the hero answered. Their bottom lip quivered.

But they were more than ready to share the weight the villain had protected them from.

The origin of "chef" as an English word to mean "one who cooks" comes from the French term chef de cuisine, a title still used in restaurants to this day to denote a cook in a managerial role. What makes this an interesting bit of etymology is that while in English, "chef" is only ever used in the context of cooking and restaurants, in French chef just means "chief", "head" or "leader" and there are many common titles in French that include this word. A Head of State is the Chef d'Etat, a musical conductor is the chef d'orchestre, a business owner is the chef d'entreprise, and so on and so forth. So with this in mind, one could make the argument that as a gender neutral term denoting authority, "chef" could potentially have utility in BDSM as a