Chapter Text
⛔️🌀
Sleeping that night was difficult to say the least. All the party squawk from right outside was the only thing I could hear except for my music. I rolled over to still feel my earbuds stuffed in my ears, and god it stung. Like the entire side of my head was bruised. At least I got some sort of shut eye.
Pinching my ears in annoyance as I squabbled over to the bathrooms was the cherry on top. My head was pounding from the beams of sunlight. I held my hand to my forehead to cover my eyes, finally pressing up against the hot metal door of the showers.
“Yeesh! You look rough, girl…” Bridgette sucks through her teeth at my demeanor.
“Bite me…” I grumbled groggily, picking the crust from my eyes in the mirror. I didn’t mean it, but she was right though, I did look pretty peeved. I definitely couldn’t talk to Duncan like this. Not because I want to look pretty for him or anything like that, but because it would just give him another thing to pick at me about.
The sink streams loudly when I dipped the ruffled parts of my hair under it, just trying to brush out the knots. I’m way too lazy to take a shower right now.
From across the camp I heard an air horn go off, then Leshawna yelling about how she’s not a farmer or something.
“It’s not even breakfast yet?” Bridgette complained before walking out to see the commotion. “I think Chris wants us all outside our cabins…” she calls back to me, however I was still engulfed in my mangled appearance. At least my hair was somewhat straight. I finished wringing it out before following her close behind.
“Morning! Hope you slept well.” Chris bursts out, clearly well rested. Unlike the rest of my team who were hunched over and aching.
Heather tries to flatter him with some hollow compliments, which were entirely inappropriate.
“I hope you’re all ready, because your next challenge begins in exactly ONE minute!”
“Oh excuse me! I donno if that’s enough time to eat breakfast?” Owen looks like he’s starting to panic.
“Oh… you’ll get breakfast Owen… Right after you complete your twenty kilometer run around THE LAKE!”
“So you’re funny now?! Y’know what I think would be funny?” Duncan and Geoff hold Eva back from manhandling Chris. I see Courtney whispering something to her right as I’d had a pretty bright idea.
If I can get Eva to draw enough attention to herself then Heather would forget all about her plan to spread rumors about me and Duncan’s weird relationship.
“You have thirty seconds.” Chris teased her even more.
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Duncan’s point of view:
Chris had us all line up before we started running, counting us down when most bolted from the starting line. These idiots don’t know how long the lake is around. So if they just jogged at the start they’d save us their stamina. Looked like y/n had the same idea. Or maybe she was trying to stay back with me.
Eventually we were stuck between the runners and the walkers, just us in the middle of the grubbed woods. She glanced over at me a few times before stopping to lean down with her hands on her knees. Out of breath she looked up at me and asked, “Why’d you stop for me?”
“I donno?… why do you care that I did.” I avoided the question entirely, just watching her catch her breath before he stood up and pushed me. Bold, I gotta say.
“Uhg- what was that for.”
“You staring at me like that! It’s weird…”
“I mean shit I’d offer you some water, but if you’re just gonna push me around, acting like you didn’t want to talk to me last night then fine.” I crossed my arms rolling my eyes annoyedly
She looked around as if someone was watching us, then I spotted Heather walking our way. All of a sudden she starts yelling at me again.
“God! Didn’t I tell you to stop pestering me, you gross pervert!” She yelled that one way louder than the last. What was her deal all of a sudden?!
We both watched Heather fade off into the distance after passing us silently. “Dude, be so real right now what’s your probl-“ I immediately shut up when she slapped me across the face. What a woman…
“Is she gone now?…” she murmured to me, stepping closer. Was she trying to act different around other people or something? Like playing up a character in public?
“Did you just slap me!” I whisper shouted at her. My face was still red from contact but also because that was sexy as hell.
“No- I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oohhh… I see. So you’re not into like… degrading or something?” I knew I’d said something wrong by the twisted look on her face.
“Gross! No- I’ll tell you later. You really are a pervert.” She mumbled the last bit but I still heard her loud and clear before she started to walk away.
“Okay that’s my bad! I guess I was a bit confused… but if you really want people to think we hate each other that much I could play along.”
Y/n cocks a brow at me, she thinks for a second before testing me. “Well then how’d you do that?”
She had me pinned, I had no idea how to be mean to her now. I can’t hit a woman, never have never will. But then again if I just teased her my team would think I’m even more into her. Which I’m not!
“Uhh… I mean I guess I could just do what I always do. I’m mean to everyone, y'know?”
“Yeah I’ve picked that up…” she sighed heavily, staying at the same pace with me still. We walked the rest of the way in complete silence. I wouldn’t say it was uncomfortable though.
The instant we could both see the dining hall she started running and screaming in mock terror.
“AHHH OH GOD!! GET HIM AWAY FROM ME!” She ducked behind Geoff who was sweating his balls off from running the whole way there.
I felt a smirk on my face, she was mostly believable, making me seem like some kind of monster chasing her through the forest. She was definitely playing it up for some of the camera though.
“Jeez, weirdo! I was only chasing you to give you motivation.” I slipped past her, heading inside to the pungent smell of sweat and the usual linger of Chef’s
”CLEAR A TABLE STAT!” Owen shouted as he carried Noah in princess style, slamming him down on one of the tables.
“What took you so long?! We just lost the challenge!” Madam C.I.T. shouted at Herold who was clutching his chest, claiming he was having heart palpitations. Next to Owen at the other table, still pumping into Noah’s chest was Gwen ecstatic that they’d won yet another challenge.
“Woah there- hold your horses guys!” Chris stops the other team's celebrations. “That wasn’t the challenge.” I saw y/n look at me curiously from across the room.
“Who’s HUNGRY?” Chris announces as he reveals a table full of food from turkey to beans and maple syrup. God it was gorgeous… not even my parents cooked food like this for me growing up.
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y/n’s point of view:
Both teams had eaten so much we were having trouble keeping it down, yet to our surprise the marathon and the eating wasn’t the challenge at all, even if it felt like it.
“Alrightly campers, time for part two of your challenge!” The booming megaphone Chris was shouting through only worsened my headache I’d had all day.
“I thought eating was the second part?” Owen said, still chewing the last of his feast.
“What more do you want from us?!”
“Ugh- weird goth girl is right. Haven’t we been through enough.” Heather complains once again, though this time, rightfully so while she holds her bloated stomach.
“Uhh… lemme think about that. NO! IT'S TIME FOR… THE AWAKATHON!”
My mouth dropped open with half lidded eyes. Dear god we are soooo losing this one… ‘my team is a bunch of half-witted bums. The only two who stand a chance are maybe me, Eva, and Gwen. The rest of them are lights out in an hour tops!’ I started to think of who would drop first, definitely Trent or Owen.
“The what-a-thon??” Owen’s stomach starts to rumble nervously.
“Don’t worry! This is an easy one. The team with the last camper standing wins invincibility!” He boomed through the megaphone right in our faces.
“So what you’re saying is the twenty k run, and the turkey eating frenzy, were part of your evil plan to make it harder for us to stay awake?!” Gwen points out the obvious for the people in the back.
“THATS RIGHT GWEN!”
“Man he’s good…”
Leshawna agrees with Gwen, simply nodding since she’s too exhausted to say anything.
“MOVE MOVE MOVE!!” One last chant over the megaphone sends everyone headed towards the campfire, where we’ll eventually bore ourselves to sleep, others to death.
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Duncan’s point of view:
Me and y/n stayed behind the pack to finish our business from earlier during the run. The red on my cheeks had finally gone back to normal.
“You smell like cigarettes…” she murmured once we were finally in talking range.
“And you smell like gravy.” I shot back instantaneously, looking her up and down with a crooked brow.
“Yeah yeah whatever- just let me tell you what I saw last night.”
‘I wonder if this was after she told me she was going to the showers, I think I could smell her shampoo after she left. I shouldn’t think things like that though… kinda creepy.’ I nodded for her to continue on.
“Okay, so when I was taking my shower last night, Heather and Lindsay walked in and started talking about their strategy to get us off.”
My head leaned back in surprise, furrowing my unibrow together. “Why would they want us off? They think we’re dating or something?!” I whispered the last bit to be discreet, but the look on her face proved my suspicions weren’t exactly wrong.
“You can’t be serious…” chuckling under my breath, holding my palm to my face to try and make it look like I hated this more than anything.
“Dead serious.” She held back a chuckle of her own, and I gotta say it was getting to me. Once she saw me staring she straightened up quicker than ever.
“So lemme get this straight… If we bully each other to pulps then you think they’ll abandon ship and leave us be?”
“Hopefully, yeah…” She seemed pretty sure of herself, yet I could see the slight bits of hesitation on her face. It kinda seemed like it was embarrassing for her to say out loud. The idea of us even potentially, maybe, somehow being a “thing”.
“Well then…” I followed her orders, sticking out my foot, tripping her over at the ankles. She fell face first into the ground. Powdering her face with dirt and tiny pebbles when she rolled over, peering up at me menacingly. Giving her the double bird with a shit eating grin while I walked away. Some of her teammates came to help her up, but she didn’t need it, she just needed to play the victim.
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y/n’s point of view:
Two and a half hours had already flown by thanks to Gwen and Martin, they paired well together in philosophical conversation like the one we’d been having.
“So Pantheism is basically the idea that everything and everyone is conscious and is their own individual god, but if god is everyone and everything that cancels it out, y’know what I mean?” Martin’s monotonous carefree demeanor almost made me forget he reeked of weed. Almost.
“Mostly… but I’m more of an Antitheist” Gwen added right as Martin started to nod off in the middle of conversation. He really was a piece of work. Still love him to death though.
I could hear Chris in the background speaking to the cameras in the same voice the narrator of a nature documentary would. “We are now twelve hours in with all twenty one campers still wide awake. And by this time they’re well overdue for a bathroom break. That I will be so gracious to offer.” Chef came over the mega phone after Chris’ monologue was finished. “IF YOU GOTTA TAKE A LEAK, TAKE IT NOW!! TEN MINUTES ON THE CLOCK!”
Gwen and Martin stood up immediately, Gwen looked like she was almost waddling in desperation. “Thank you god! I thought I’d have to go in the woods.” Kind of ironic…
I didn’t have to go as bad as anyone else did, planning to stay back. I sat posted on my stump until Duncan looked like he was going to walk up to me. He leaned down a tad bit to slip something in my hand while nobody was looking.
I looked back at him but he was already on his way to the bathrooms. Inside my hand was small, orange, ovular pill. ‘The fuck?! He can’t be serious. Does he think I’m just gonna take this, no questions asked?!’ I wasn’t angry but I was damn sure confused as hell.
I quickly stuffed it back in my pocket so that the cameras wouldn’t see. About five minutes later just about everyone was done using the bathroom except Duncan. Rifling through my roots a bit nervous I walked into the bathrooms to see Duncan hunched over one of the urinals with his hand up against the wall. “The fuck is this!?” I help up the pill, marching up behind him with a nasty look on my face. He looked over his shoulders, eyes hollowed to hell with dark circles that could make a baby wail. Kinda terrifying to say the least.
“Adderall.” He mumbled groggily with a slight grunt in his voice while he zipped his shorts up.
“Oh alright.” I shrugged, dryswallowing the orange tablet.
“Wow… you trust me that much?” He scoffed amusedly.
“No- I… I don’t trust you nor do I like you. At all, not even an inkling.” I shoved my hands in my pockets to hide that I’d started fidgeting with my fingers.
“If you didn’t you wouldn’t have to say it. Seems like you do. I mean you don’t even know why I went to juvie…”
The stall door creaks at the hinges when Martin peaks out nosely. His lengthy ginger curls tied back into a messy ponytail, strands falling loose around his face. “Woah dude… that’s pretty heavy-“
I almost gasped as Duncan held him up against one of the stall dividers, both hands gripping his knitted cardigan at the shoulders. “You’re not gonna tell a tell a fuckin’ soul about this. You hear me Cheech!?”
“Uh huh! Y-yeah for sure! I swear on everything I love I won’t- I promise- I promise, just please let me go man!!”
“Duncan, what’s wrong with you?” I shoved him off of Martin, letting him drop back on both feet. He didn’t waste a second, scrambling away hastily out the door. He’d probably pissed a second time by the looks of it.
I looked back at Duncan who was practically sizing me up not even a foot away. “You stupid or somethin’?! I had to make sure he’d keep a secret.” He grumbled, obviously trying not to raise his voice at me. “He’s my friend! He can keep a secret.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know jack, y/n. You’re just another obstacle that everyone else here has to get through for that 100k. And what you told me yesterday, about making it half way is a load of shit! You seriously think if someone puts up a front, pretending to be your friend, that suddenly makes them honest? You’re an ignorant fuckin’ loser-“ Duncan chokes just as I’d let him finish, knuckling him right in the throat.
“SCREW YOU, JACKASS!” I couldn’t care to keep it quiet anymore, he was seriously setting something off inside me, I wanted to hurt him over and over until he was black, blue, and bleeding from the mouth. That’s dirty fucking mouth, god he’s so disgusting. Repulsive even.
“Hit me again! C’mon, like you really mean it.” He motioned for me to come closer, daring me to do something about it. “You know you won’t, you know you can’t commit to it!” And again, kicking him straight between the legs so hard he almost whimpered, kneeling over in pain. “UHG! What the fuck…” he whispered, suddenly out of breath when he looked up at me. From this angle he looked so helpless, it's like he was just begging for me to hurt him again, or maybe the adderall was kicking in now.
I got down to his level, pushing him down onto the grimy bathroom tile. “You’re a bitch of a man! An ugly fucking mutt-!” I punched him again in his right eye, the jewelry in his eyebrow leaving indents on my knuckles. “I hate that smug look on your face, and I hate your supid haircut. You’re so perverse, and lowly. How could I ever like you?!” I brought both my fits down onto his lungs making him gasp out loudly, wheezing from my weight on top of him. By this point I was straddling him on the floor, but he just let it happen, arms at his side, not fighting back one bit.
“You’re-“ he starts to sound like he’s hacking up a lung before he finally finishes. “You’re a cruel woman. You’re perfect…” I was rendered speechless. The hell was I supposed to say to that? I’d just given him a black eye and he called me “perfect”?! Un-fuckin-believable!
All I could muster up was a scoff as I stomped away, kicking the door open when the light hit me like a freight train. ‘Jesus, is this what adderall does?’ I felt like my mind was moving a million miles a second, walking back to the campfire was excruciating, time was almost warping from twenty seconds to five minutes. I figured that if I was doing something like talking to Gwen. But she was off with Trent trying to get some in while she was still on the island. Martin was already asleep by the looks of it.
It felt like an eternity, staring at the grass in a mixture of shame and confusion. I was too zoned out to hear everyone who was still awake whispering about how Duncan looked like he got beaten. My mind was more focused on why we liked it so much, and how I’d make things up.
I kneeled over on the ground, lying back on the grass so I could just give up on the challenge and forget. I regretted all of it, thinking I could be friends with him, thinking we could even be more at times. Very, very few times.
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Duncan’s point of view:
It hurt like a bitch. My nuts and my face, they stung like hell. But if I could I’d relive that moment again and again. She really is the most gorgeous woman ever when she’s pissed. I know I can win her over.
Geoff came over to where I was posted up to check on me, “yo dude… what happened in there?” Geoff whispered, sitting on the stump across from me. “Slipped and fell, I’m just outta it…” I mumbled a half assed excuse looking off to the side. ‘Is the bruise really that bad.’ I lifted a hand to touch the progressing bruise. My eye pounded at the contact.
I watched y/n fall asleep just until the twenty four hour mark when another one of Chris’ announcements stirred her awake before she walked off back to the cabin.
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y/n’s point of view:
It’d been days already, and I wish I was joking. I walked the campgrounds in my free time looking over to where Duncan was, still wide awake, except this time Heather was finally gone. ‘Thank god I can go talk to him now!’
I rushed into my bathroom and took the ziplock back my toothbrush was in, filling it up with ice from Heather’s fancy, expensive ice maker. She didn’t let anyone use it unless they were in her alliance. Like I cared!
Duncan looked like death incarnate, the least I could do was apologize and ice his bruise.
“Hey…” I murmured embarrassedly once I’d made it to the campfire, sitting down on the stump across from him.
“What? You wanna apologize? You don’t gotta. I’m fine.”
“Fine then maybe I won’t.” I scoffed rolling my eyes in annoyance. “Just c’mere…” I waved him closer, my voice dropping softer as I held up the ice to his face. “I’m not gonna take back what I said, because you asked for it, literally.”
“…Thanks…” Duncan mumbled, followed by a few moments of silence, and accidentally catching the others gaze.
“So… uh… what’s your favorite color?” I was met with a mocking laugh.
“Pfft-! Seriously?…” Another beat of silence passes. “Peircing Silver. What’s yours?”