Terrorforming || Yandere!Harem X F!Reader

Boys Will Be Bugs

Just like that, you were a ticking time bomb. When would the edibles hit you? Nobody knew! It could be half an hour to two hours. And no one had a watch.

You sat by the fire, already nervous and sweating, watching the others laugh and drink and talk about things.

"Relax," one of the boys told you. He was in a similar position as you. He sat a bit away from the others with his knees tucked under his chin, curled in on himself. "No one has ever died from a marijuana overdose."

"So you're saying I'm going to be the first?!"

"No, I'm saying it's impossible."

"How do you know?!"

"I looked it up one time. Back when I had my phone," he responded, calm and unoffended in the face of your demands. "I miss Google."

You felt kind of bad for borderline shrieking at him. "I'm sorry. Can we start over?" You turned towards him and held out one of your hands. "Hi! I'm Y/N. Who are you?"

He looked at your hand for so long you could practically see the wheels in his head slowly turn. Then he carefully unfolded himself, like a delicate piece of origami, and reached out to take your proffered hand. "Gabriel."

His shifting allowed you to see him in a new light, literally. What you thought was just a shadow thrown across his face turned out to be a bruise. He was sporting a black eye.

He held your hand as if it was made of glass. He shook it once but didn't immediately let go, allowing his touch to linger. You left it there, luxuriating in the cool dampness of his skin. It was like being held by a frog. A frog prince, you corrected yourself, in order to be kinder to your new friend.

"Do you want to go on a walk?" He suddenly blurted out. Words spilled out of him like water out of a broken bottle. "All this smoke is triggering my allergies." Excuses obviously weren't his area of expertise, but you would take what you could get. You just wanted to be gone before that bottle of rubbing alcohol was passed your way again.

The two of you stood, hand in hand, and walked a little ways away from the makeshift campsite.

Determined to keep things from getting awkward right away, you asked, "How's camp treating you so far?" "Because I've been traumatized," went unsaid because it was bad taste to bring up trauma with strangers.

Gabriel hummed before saying, "It's fine if you like mud wrestling, SportsTM, and hard labor."

"Wow, really?" The only sport-adjacent activity that campers at Camp Bethel were allowed was swimming. If it wasn't for the camp being lakeside, even that wouldn't be permitted.

Once you two were out of earshot, he elaborated, "Yeah, it's surprisingly homoerotic for how homophobic everyone is."

You giggled so hard that it ended with a snort. No surprise there, though. You confided in him in turn, "If I hear one more sermon about biblical femininity and God's unique design for women, I'm going to go crazy. Do they give you all the God talks too?"

"It's less about Jesus and more about how the Bible supports toxic masculinity. It's brutal, Y/N... Two boys kept sitting out of sports to just talk. And --out of the blue one day-- the camp counselors forced them to fight one another! When they wouldn't hit each other hard enough, the counselors would step in 'to show them how it's done.'"

"Oh my God," you said softly. That made Confessional look like time-out. "And the camp director allowed that?"

"Pastor Jim just laughed it off. 'Boys will be boys!'" Beneath his jovial impression of his camp director, his voice was thick and wet. If you looked at his face just right under the moonlight, you could see tear stains on his cheeks and his lower lip wobbling.

"I'm so sorry, Gabriel."

He roughly rubbed his face with the sleeve of his dress shirt. "Why are you apologizing? It's not your fault. It's kind of the opposite of your fault, really. Thanks for listening... Being able to talk about it with someone empathetic really made me feel better. I feel like I'm going crazy just bearing witness to this shit."

You couldn't help but agree with him there. Having witnessed awful things happen to your new friends and then having everyone --including Nurse Thorne-- just pretend like nothing ever happened... You felt like you were on the cusp of insanity as well.

It was a shame you didn't feel like sharing. Maybe it would make you feel better... But Gabriel was a good boy. You didn't want to burden him. And maybe Camp Bethel wasn't so bad after all. Sure, there was abuse, but it wasn't so much physical as mental.

With all that being said, you turned around and slowly but surely made your way back to the bonfire.

There were far fewer people than there were when you left. All the other boys and Jezebel were missing. It was just your cabinmates and camp counselor sitting around the fire.

Well, Louise was sitting, looking nervous. Elizabeth was standing by, her relaxed posture the only indication she was drunk as a skunk. Chaeyoung was pouring out a circle of salt around the firepit for some reason... Maybe pertaining to the ritual?

"Where's Jezebel? And Gabriel's friends?" Out of the corner of your eye, you saw him make a face, like he'd rather not be associated with the boys he came with. But he came with them here, so they must be acquaintances at the very least!

Elizabeth's upper lip curled up like a wolf's before her expression went purposefully blank again. "Jezebel wasn't feeling well, so she headed back to the cabin early. The boys similarly decided to go back to camp," she said.

Gabriel looked suddenly anxious. "Don't girls travel in packs? Shouldn't one of you have gone with her?" He had a point. Elizabeth herself told you on the first day of camp, "Always remember the Buddy System."

"We're not far from Camp Bethel. She'll be fine," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand, the one that wasn't still cradling the bottle of booze. "You should leave now if you want to catch up with your boys!"

He couldn't argue with that. Still, he gave your hand one last squeeze before letting go. "Bye, Y/N. I hope we meet again under better circumstances." Then he disappeared into the forest like a ghost.

"It's ritual time, bitches!" Chaeyoung yelled as soon as he was out of sight.