[Can’t Opt Out]

They flew through the grass, stained blood-red over its already purplish tones. It would have been easier, were they in their own world. The night would have covered them there, but in this perpetual world of light, they had been forced to improvise—to grind out a collection of magics to aid them in their quest.

And what a quest it was.

Not that Emilia was particularly happy to have ended up here, on this stupid, ill thought out quest. Instead, her mind shifted through options for how she could get out of here: how she could stop this group from leaving a trail of bodies in their wake. Honestly, none of the options were great, and for the moment, she was stuck here.

It wasn’t like she could leave her friend behind, anyways, assuming she could find him—assuming his mind was still intact.

⸂Shh!⸃ hissed the man in the lead, everyone who had chosen to follow this suicidal path tugging to a halt. The woman who had been altering their movement cringed, one hand wrapping over her already overextended core while the other pressed over her mouth to cover a scream of anguish.

They’d already been caught once—been forced to kill someone who was practically a child because they’d been unlucky enough to have spotted them. It was sad, but expected. There would be collateral damage today, there was no way around it. All they could hope for was to keep it limited, to hope that the people they left alive wouldn’t come seeking vengeance for those who died.

They probably would, but even if their group escaped with every life intact, half of them would be gone by the time those who lived could possibly gather the experience needed to take them on. Emilia and the other visitors would be gone, evaporated out of this world and back into their own. The locals—the vigilantes who had chosen death and freedom over the oppression that both the Risen Guard and the Enclave were bringing down upon them—would be dead, if not on this mission, then in the ones that would follow.

As much as Emilia hoped that some of them would make it out of this nightmare and into the new world they hoped to create, she knew they had all accepted their all but inevitable fate already.

⸂Let’s go,⸃ the man said, eyes flashing black as magic swept over them and the aether sucked them into itself.

✮ ✮ ✮ One Week Earlier ✮ ✮ ✮

“Emilia~”

Something blew against Emilia’s neck, and she batted it away, grumbling with sleepiness.

“Emilia~”

Something blew against her again, and this time, when she raised a sleepy hand, it collided with skin and bone.

“Oof.” Something—someone—fell down beside her, the bed bouncing comically for how lightly she had tapped them. “Ah~ how cruel, to be so violently assaulted by someone I had such a good night with.”

Emilia peeked open an eye to glare at V. He smiled, unrepentantly back at her, head propped up on one hand.

“Morning, beautiful,” he said, smile widening even as nervousness entered his eyes. He looked like he wanted to lean in and kiss her, but wasn’t sure if he was allowed, after their night of sex and showering and more sex.

Emilia didn’t blame him—it was relatively rare that she spent the night with one-night stands. Generally, she fucked and split. It was helpful for avoiding awkward moments like this, even if sometimes she wished she could wake up like this: soft and safe next to a gorgeous, naked man.

“Good morning,” she replied, fingers lazily dragging up his bare chest as she turned towards him. Despite the shower, he was sweaty again—probably due to the post-shower sex. Given the whole abandoned city thing, she didn’t see much of an issue with showering again… or just repeating last night in general.

She shifted, arms stretching over her head as she yawned, and V made a noise that sounded suspiciously like cooing as she tucked herself into him. Technically, she and Elijah had guidelines about how close they could get to anyone they hooked up with. Cuddling, sleeping in the same bed, having too many repeats—those definitely crossed those guidelines, or got close to crossing them, anyways.

“Don’t catch feelings for the people you fuck”—that was the official rule. Don’t fuck up our relationship falling for someone else. Don’t risk what we have for good dick or pussy.

Emilia should care about messing up her relationship, but she really didn’t. Realistically, she should exit the raid and break up with the man. They’d both be happier for it. Maybe she’d meet up with V in real life and something would spark between their real bodies—although, that would entail her having to keep the man clean, which had been… an experience. It hadn’t exactly been a bad experience, but it had also been rather exhausting.

The man was exhausting. Usually, she was the one wearing out her partners. Olivier had complained about it more than once, both when they’d been hooking up and long after. Fortunately, he’d never seemed to mind taking care of her—seemed to enjoy it, actually, as far as she could tell, even if it still wore on him.

She was work. V was work. Work and work didn’t go well—not without someone more responsible to manage them, anyways.

“What’s so funny?” the other visitor mumbled into her hair, one of his hands running idly over her back.

“I was thinking about us teaming up on a friend of mine. In bed, I mean. He recently told me he’s into women and men.” She nodded into V’s chest, telling him about her and Olivier’s random hookup in the alleyway, although she didn’t mention him by name. Her ex-lawyer didn’t need it getting around that he was fucking people in semi-public locations.

“Kinky,” V laughed, pulling back to look down at her. “Just a random guy?”

“Something like that…” she mumbled, fingers dragging lower, lower, lower—

V’s hand caught hers, just before they could reach their destination. “I hope you’re not teasing,” he whispered, thumb rubbing lightly over her palm. His hips pressed into her, hardness rubbing against her thigh.

“Never~” she whispered back, pressing up into a kiss.

✮ ✮ ✮

“Food?” V asked as Emilia entered the kitchen.

“But of course,” she replied, trying to not feel too domestic as she rolled her too big clothes up and took a seat at the table, watching the other visitor shuffle about the kitchen, getting them food.

Sex and showers and sleeping beside each other before having a morning fuck? It was nice, but also felt so… normal. Generally, she and Elijah didn’t spend the night together. Their schedules often didn’t mesh, and she really, really liked having her own bed. Sleeping beside someone often kept her nightmares at bay, but it wasn’t a guarantee, and she’d woken sweating and panting beside her boyfriend more than a few times over the last year. It sucked—she liked morning snuggles and soft morning sex—but she had never really liked waking up next to someone while panicking.

Not unless it was someone she trusted with her entire soul. Rafe, Olivier, a few other people. They were good at handling those moments, knowing exactly how to support her and not make things worse. Pria was pretty good at it too, oddly. Maybe it was due to her empathy, although Pria had never explicitly said so. It was a large part of why they had remained roommates for as long as they had, though, regardless of the reason.

That, and the whole friendship thing. Not to mention the lower cost of rent.

“What’s wrong?” V asked as he slid a plate of food in front of her.

It was filled with the food she had enjoyed the night before, as well as a few other options, and despite her better judgment, she reached for one of the new items first. “Eh… I was thinking about how little I trust my boyfriend.” It wasn’t that Elijah was untrustworthy, he was just… unobservant and awkward when it came to emotional things. For all that she’d woken up next to him from nightmares at least a half dozen, he’d never seemed to notice. If he had, he’d never said anything, even when she was tired and bleary-eyed the next day.

“Seriously, why are you dating this guy?” the other visitor asked, sliding into the seat next to her, his foot bumping her own. He stuffed a piece of food into his mouth, red liquid immediately dripping onto his sorta-borrowed, sorta-stolen clothes. Despite her eyes following its descent down his chin and shirt, the man didn’t seem to notice.

“Cause it used to be fun, and I’m a baby who won’t break up with him.” Emilia frowned, V frowned back at her. Apparently, whatever Payton was doing with her knots now had made her overly truthful? Wasn’t that fun. “Uh… I…”

“Didn’t mean to say that?” V guessed, confusion evident in his expression.

“Uh… no.” If V had been someone she didn’t think she knew, she probably would have told him the truth, an explanation about her knots scratching at her throat. As much as he knew she was in an illegal knotting clinic, that could be for a number of things, including just access to the raid. To actually tell him how fucked up her knots were? How much the war had affected her?

No, thanks.

“But yeah,” she said, trying to turn the conversation back to the awkwardness of her crumbling relationship, because even that was better than talking about her knot situation. “I guess I just hoped he’d break up with me. I don’t know if he will, though, is the thing.” He’d certainly seemed adamant the night before—the real-world night before—that he wasn’t going to break up with her.

“I mean, why would someone break up with you? They’d have to be fucking stupid—stupid and deranged! You’re just about the perfect girl,” V laughed, stuffing a piece of food in his mouth before his eyes shot wide.

They blinked at each other, having a silent conversation about how it was odd that they’d both suddenly found themselves being so honest. As much as the prospect of getting answers from the man was intriguing, she would get them eventually—as long as they did meet up in the real world—and she’d rather not reveal something too important herself.

Plus, weird and potentially dangerous truth magic!

V pushed himself softly back from the table, expression growing serious as he let a series of searching energy wisps shudder out of him. His eyes flicked in the direction one of the wisps had gone. “Someone is there,” his expression seemed to say.

“I dunno~” Emilia sighed, leaning forward and scuffing her chair back. “I’m really not that great. Plus, people are always weird about dating irregulars. Half of them are weirdly fetishistic,” she told V, although she was certain he already knew. They simply needed the conversation to keep flowing, so their spy didn’t realize they were onto him.

“And your boyfriend isn’t?” V asked, sounding genuinely curious. He flicked one of Emilia’s {Blood Needles} over in his hand, stepping into the hallway, Emilia remaining in her seat, but turned, in case she had to bolt after him.

Seriously, the way they so easily fell into step with one another was something else.

“Nah~” she sighed, telling him in broad strokes how she and Elijah had met, before accidentally falling into telling him some of the more salacious stories of her hookups—or wannabe hookups—sexualizing her. Well, at least if she was talking about the asshole who had tried to convince her to be a free use slut for him and his frat bros, she wasn’t liable to tell V anything she didn’t want him to know.

“The worst—and funniest—thing,” Emilia was telling him when the aether in the direction he had gone ruptured, “is they tried to pay me, but it was practically nothing. Even just standing around doing nothing in a raid would net you a bigger paydrop. Those guys really thought I was brainless.”

She stared at the doorway, waiting for V to return, her energy friends—which she had been cycling after him since he left, making sure he didn’t need help—assuring her he was fine and on his way back. Her fingers moved idly over the table, nails tapping out the rhythm of a song she couldn’t quite place.

“So, what did you do to them?” V asked as he reappeared, tossing an unconscious looking man onto the floor. He held out a hand and Emilia obediently handed over her {Blood Vial} and nodding as she explained that she’d used a skill that had left them wandering around naked. She didn’t know what had happened to them after that, although chances were SecOps had picked them up.

V’s mouth pulled into an amused smile as he began manipulating the {Blood Vial}. They’d spent a portion of the evening before, between dinner and Emilia coercing V into showering, discussing what they knew about the world and their various weapons. V indeed only had one weapon, although he had agreed that he should probably attempt to make one from his own blood sometime soon. Emilia had also offered up her own blood, but the man had seemed rather put out by that.

He had, however, agreed to continue borrowing Emilia’s growing collection. Now, he effortlessly pulled blood from the {Blood Vial}, shifting it into a haphazard looking rope. They both frowned at it, and he tried again and again. It took several more tries before it looked like a proper rope, the material glistening like it was wet as he tied it around their voyeur’s wrists.

“Doesn’t seem to be a local,” Emilia noted, looking the man over and noting his pale blue hair. “Or, he’s the child of a former visitor.” Zach had had green eyes, after all. Not that natural blue hair was common, outside of one particular Free Colony.

V plopped back down beside her, giving her a confused look. “What makes you think this place allows heroic children?”

“Wait, there’s an actual name for them?”

“You didn’t know?”

“I don’t play raids, so how would I?”

V shrugged, telling her that she just seemed the type to know random information like that. That was both somewhat accurate—she loved random factoids—and extremely inaccurate—she really didn’t like raids, and only knew what she did from accidentally hearing it on the news, supplemental information forced on her by her Censor, and the ramblings of her friends.

She’d brought it up, but she also didn’t want to out Zach, who almost certainly didn’t advertise who his father was. “I can’t—”

The other visitor pressed a finger to her lips. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, somehow knowing she was about to tell him she couldn’t explain why she thought this world allowed visitors to spawn children.

“More likely, he’s a visitor,” she said, lips moving over his finger. She wanted to suck it into her mouth, before the man inevitably covered himself in grime again. It was just a matter of time.

V hummed in agreement, finger dragging over her lips and chin. For a moment, she thought he would tip her head up and kiss her, but he had been looking at her that way since the night before—like he wanted to do too intimate things to her so much it hurt. He still had yet to follow through in taking the first step, however—something was holding him back. Unless she made the first move, nothing more than sweet touches would occur between them.

The hand fell away from her, and V looked back to the man. “I guess… we should just go back to breakfast?”

“I guess,” Emilia agreed, the two of them shifting around so they could eat, arms brushing against each other, while they watched their captive and ate Zach’s admittedly quite delicious food.