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#Six Months Three Days Five Others
contracat25 · 1 year
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Alright as it is Trans Day of Visibility (Hi still not cis, still here etc.) and the final day of the extended Trans Rights Readathon I thought I would post about a few more of my favorite books by trans authors because hopefully everyone will be reading books by trans authors and about trans characters/topics all year round. Because to me this day is about supporting others in the community as much as anything else. The world is pretty on fire right now so if you can support a trans creator, artist, organization or friend today (and beyond) then do it!
So here are a bunch of shorter reads: books, graphic novels, novellas etc. I didn't really notice how many novellas I had been reading recently till making this list, but there is something about a wel- written short book that just really works for me. Also a lot of these just have really creative or lovely concepts and I am a sucker for those. Plus the characters in these are soooo good! Also a lot of these have lovely audiobooks or e-books, hence me not having a physical copy (yet). Many of these have trans characters as well, but not all of them. Though most have some form of queer rep because I don't read much that doesn't. I included muliple by some of the authors, including sequels because... I just really like them and couldn't pick just one. Most of these authors have other books that are also wonderful. And these are just a handful of examples, there are so many fabuluous books by and about people who are trans.
Six Months, Three Days, Five Others by Charlie Jane Anders
Peter Darling by Austin Chant
The Companion by EE Ottoman
The Barrow Will Send What It May by Margaret Killjoy
Taste of Marrow and River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey
Even Though I Knew the End by C. L. Polk
Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey
Nimona by Nate Stevenson
Gender Queer by Mia Kobabe
The Seep by Chana Porter
Future Feelings by Joss Lake
Pet by Akwaeke Amezi
The Deep by Rivers Solomon
The Black Tides of Heaven; The Red Threads of Fortune; The Descent of Monsters; The Ascent to Godhood by Neon Yang
Finna and Defekt by Nino Cipri Coffee Boy and Caroline's Heart by Austin Chant
ID: Slide one has a stack of 10 books on a teal background. Slides two through four have a white background and four book covers and a boarder of books in the trans flag colors.
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libraryofbaxobab · 1 year
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April 21, 2021:
These short stories kick ass. Little bits of magical realism and interesting relationship dynamics. Probably my favorite one is the romance between two clairvoyants, or maybe the one about rival housecats. 8.5/10 #WhatsKenyaReading
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kainisticinstincts · 9 months
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Let me tell you a little something. A bit of wisdom. You know those Alt-right Christian guys who act like Crusaders reclaiming the holy land from the Jews? The Mecha Tankie "Patriotic socialist" guys who say that modern russia and donald trump are left wing revolutionaries? The weird Monarchist "Christ, Aristocracy and Virtue." Guys on places like here and r/monarchism? The schizo Hyperborea pagan neo-nazi guys who talk about the great aryan spirit?
Let me let you into a little something.
They don't actually believe in anything. It's all aesthetic to them. They don't actually think about how these things tend to work out. They just want something to believe in that looks cool. Let me tell you how it goes.
Capitalism and Patriarchy grinds down upon the souls of boys and young men. The expectations of fulfilling ideal masculinity and being wealthy breaks them down. I can attest to this personally. Young men start wanting freedom and to stand out but they don't know who to blame or what to do. Instead of doing something healthy like cooking or watching mob psycho 100 and vinland saga or going to the gym they become addicted to niche ideologies and aesthetics.
They become attracted to the aesthetic of crusaders or the aesthetic of communism or the aesthetic of monarchy or the aesthetic of being schizo. It's also part of why they virtue signal about traditional masculinity and bodybuilding so much. They want to feel masculine.
I'm not blaming young men for having an identity crisis and becoming radicalized. I honestly blame the adults that feed them pseudo intellectual bullshit that sounds legit that feeds into their aesthetic. I just don't see a lot of 40 year olds who voted reagan posting groyper memes and chud wojaks while religiously watching nick fuentes or being radicalized because of bridget from guilty gear.
This applies to both minorities and white people. There's this fascist columbian latino guy on twitter who i constantly think about who RPs as a white nietszchean traditional hellenist who worships Zeus and aristocracy and hates jews and christ for being not masculine enough and there's this British Fascist guys who RPs as a japanese imperialist fascist shintoist for some reason and i think both are like this for the same reason.
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autismserenity · 4 months
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know someone who enjoys horror stories? share this one! it's true!
hahahahahahahahahaha aarrggghhhhhhhhhh 3,000,000 deaths due to COVID-19 last year. Globally. Three million. Case rates higher than 90% of the rest of the pandemic. The reason people are still worried about COVID is because it has a way of quietly fucking up your body. And the risk is cumulative.
I'm going to say that again: the risk is cumulative.
It's not just that a lot of people get bad long-term effects from it. One in seven or so? Enough that it's kind of the Russian Roulette of diseases. It's also that the more times you get it, the higher that risk becomes. Like if each time you survived Russian Roulette, the empty chamber was removed from the gun entirely. The worst part is that, psychologically, we have the absolute opposite reaction. If we survive something with no ill effects, we assume it's pretty safe. It is really, really hard to override that sense of, "Ok, well, I got it and now I probably have a lot of immunity and also it wasn't that bad." It is not a respiratory disease. Airborne, yes. Respiratory disease, no: not a cold, not a flu, not RSV.
Like measles (or maybe chickenpox?), it starts with respiratory symptoms. And then it moves to other parts of your body. It seems to target the lungs, the digestive system, the heart, and the brain the most.
It also hits the immune system really hard - a lot of people are suddenly more susceptible to completely unrelated viruses. People get brain fog, migraines, forget things they used to know.
(I really, really hate that it can cross the blood-brain barrier. NOTHING SHOULD EVER CROSS THE BLOOD-BRAIN BARRIER IT IS THERE FOR A REASON.) Anecdotal examples of this shit are horrifying. I've seen people talk about coworkers who've had COVID five or more times, and now their work... just often doesn't make sense? They send emails that say things like, "Sorry, I didn't mean Los Angeles, I meant Los Angeles."
Or they insist they've never heard of some project that they were actually in charge of a year or two before.
Or their work is just kind of falling apart, and they don't seem to be aware of it.
People talk about how they don't want to get the person in trouble, so their team just works around it. Or they describe neighbors and relatives who had COVID repeatedly, were nearly hospitalized, talked about how incredibly sick they felt at the time... and now swear they've only had it once and it wasn't bad, they barely even noticed it.
(As someone who lived with severe dissociation for most of my life, this is a genuinely terrifying idea to me. I've already spent my whole life being like, "but what if I told them that already? but what if I did do that? what if that did happen to me and I just don't remember?") One of its known effects in the brain is to increase impulsivity and risk-taking, which is real fucking convenient honestly. What a fantastic fucking mutation. So happy for it on that one. Yes, please make it seem less important to wear a mask and get vaccinated. I'm not screaming internally at all now.
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I saw a tweet from someone last year whose family hadn't had COVID yet, who were still masking in public, including school.
She said that her son was no kind of an athlete. Solidly bottom middle of the pack in gym.
And suddenly, this year, he was absolutely blowing past all the other kids who had to run the mile. He wasn't running any faster. His times weren't fantastic or anything. It's just that the rest of the kids were worse than him now. For some reason. I think about that a lot. (Like my incredibly active six-year-old getting a cold, and suddenly developing post-viral asthma that looked like pneumonia.
He went back to school the day before yesterday, after being home for a month and using preventative inhalers for almost week.
He told me that it was GREAT - except that he couldn't run as much at recess, because he immediately got really tired. Like how I went outside with him to do some yard work and felt like my body couldn't figure out how to increase breathing and heart rate.
I wasn't physically out of breath, but I felt like I was out of breath. That COVID feeling people describe, of "I'm not getting enough air." Except that I didn't have that problem when I had COVID.) Some people don't observe any long (or medium) term side effects after they have it.
But researchers have found viral reservoirs of COVID-19 in everyone they've studied who had it.
It just seems to hang out, dormant, for... well, longer than we've had an opportunity to observe it, so far.
(I definitely watched that literal horror movie. I think that's an entire genre. The alien dormant under ice in the Arctic.)
(oh hey I don't like that either!!!!!!!!!) All of which is to explain why we should still care about avoiding it, and how it manages to still cause excess deaths. Measuring excess deaths has been a standard tool in public health for a long time.
We know how many people usually die from all different causes, every year. So we can tell if, for example, deaths from heart disease have gone way up in the past three years, and look for reasons. Those are excess deaths: deaths that, four years ago, would not have happened. During the pandemic, excess death rates have been a really important tool. For all sorts of reasons. Like, sometimes people die from COVID without ever getting tested, and the official cause is listed as something else because nobody knows they had COVID. But also, people are dying from cardiovascular illness much younger now.
People are having strokes and heart attacks younger, and more often, than they did before the pandemic started. COVID causes a lot of problems. And some of those problems kill people. And some of them make it easier for other things to kill us. Lung damage from COVID leading to lungs collapsing, or to pneumonia, or to a pulmonary embolism, for example. The Economist built a machine-learning model with a 95% confidence interval that gauges excess death statistics around the world, to tell them what the true toll of the ongoing COVID pandemic has been so far.
Total excess deaths globally in 2023: Three million.
3,000,000.
Official COVID-19 deaths globally so far: Seven million. 7,000,000. Total excess deaths during COVID so far: Thirty-five point two million. 35,200,000.
Five times as many.
That's bad. I don't like that at all. I'm glad last year was less than a tenth of that. I'm not particularly confident about that continuing, though, because last year we started a period of really high COVID transmission. Case rates higher than 90% of the rest of the pandemic. Here's their data, and charts you can play with, and links to detailed information on how they did all of this:
Here's a non-paywalled link to it:
https://archive.vn/2024.01.26-012536/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates
Oh: here's a link to where you can buy comfy, effective N95 masks in all sizes:
Those ones are about a buck each after shipping - about $30 for a box of 30. They also have sample packs for a dollar, so you can try a couple of different sizes and styles.
You can wear an N95 mask for about 40 total hours before the effectiveness really drops, so that's like a dollar for a week of wear.
They're also family-owned and have cat-shaped masks and I really love them. These ones are cuter and in a much wider range of colors, prints, and styles, but they're also more expensive; they range from $1.80 to $3 for a mask. ($18-$30 for a box of ten.)
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lokis-army-77 · 8 months
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Private Viewing
Camboy!Eddie Munson x fem reader
Word Count: 6.8k
What happens when your favorite camboy is in your class? You should stop watching his content... or should you? What happens when you are eventually paired together for a project? Everything will be just fine, won't it?
Warning: 18 +. This is pure fucking filth. Spit, masturbation (m and f), use of vibrators and fleshlight, choking, multiple orgasms, squirting, oral (f reviving), fingering, voyeurism? Soft!dom Eddie, tell me if I'm missing anything.
Thank you @lesservillain for giving me this wonderful idea. 💗 and @munson-blurbs for figuring out if I should do this for Steve or Eddie and for helping give me a title💗.
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Nothing but slick sounds filled your room, the occasional deep moan calling out from your laptop speakers accompanying your own sweet cries. The guy on the screen, Ed as he called himself, or DungeonMaster as he was known on Only Fans and Twitter, was fisting his cock in his heavily ringed hand. He was putting on a show for more than ten thousand viewers but the way he stared down the camera with those dark eyes made you think he was watching you, fucking his hand to the way you were pumping your fingers in and out of your soaking wet pussy. 
You had stumbled upon his Twitter three months ago and he immediately captured your eye. The way his tattoos wrapped around his pale skin, how he wasn’t all lean muscle like the other OF guys, his tummy by no means a six-pack but he still looked strong enough to sweep you off your feet with ease. His moans were heavenly and so was the deep timber of his force as he praised you through the thirty-second video clip. It was all enough to convert you from your usual consumption of smutty books to the infamous Only Fans sight. 
Since then, his streams and videos have become the one and only thing you get off to. And like then, tonight was no exception. 
You were so close to the edge, Ed’s moans spurring you on. Your fingers move at an almost inhuman pace in and out, in and out. 
“Rub that clit for me, baby. Need you to cum.” He groaned, head resting on his shoulder as he continued you pleasure himself. 
“Fuck!” You gasp as you rub your clit with your free hand. Your rhythm is horribly off but it doesn’t matter, you are so close to cumming. So so so close. “Please,” you beg out into your empty room. You aren’t too sure why or what you are pleading for. More friction? More fingers? More words of encouragement from him? Maybe you’re asking to cum? 
It’s like he had heard you through the screen as he moaned out, “That’s a good girl. Just like that. Doing so well for me. You gonna cum baby? Yeah? Me too. Want me to count for you?” He nods his head lazily. “I knew you would baby. Okay. Five.”
You want to cry.
“Four.” 
The strings tugging inside you are becoming taut.
“Three.”
You feel like you’re going to explode. He’s counting too slowly.
“Two.”
The tears are flowing now.
“One.”
You let out a strangled scream.
“Cum baby. Do it, now.”
Your walls clench around your fingers and your legs snap shut, trapping your fingers. Every muscle in your body is shuddering as those strings snap and your release comes out in a stream, wetting your hand and the bed. Your hearing has gone, there’s a ringing in your ears but you can faintly hear Ed cumming as well. 
With watery vision and slow movements, you turn to face your laptop screen just in time to see his tattoo-covered chest painted with milky white ropes of cum. 
When the ringing subsides you hear him say more clearly, “Thata girl. Always make me cum so much.” He takes a towel and wipes off his chest and stomach before adjusting the camera view to the shoulders up. “Get you some rest baby, I’ll see you on Thursday.” 
And then the live is over. 
Slowly, sluggishly, you remove your hands from between your legs and begin the now regular clean-up routine before going to bed. 
Three days later, Thursday rolls around, and thus begins the fall semester of your junior year of college. It’s a groggy morning, everyone is tired and very unenthusiastic about having an 8 a.m. advanced music composition class. 
You had struggled to get out of bed at six this morning just to get one of the dorm showers first before they were all taken up. Luckily two of the five were open and you were able to get to class a whole twenty minutes early, even having time to grab coffee at the on-campus Starbucks on the way.
The music building was old and the tables you and your fellow students sat at were even older. It all added to the sleepy ambiance. Your eyes drooped and you yawned every time someone else did, the black coffee you had chugged not doing anything for you. 
You’re only awoken when your professor, a stout old man with a very severe receding hairline, slams open the door to the classroom a little too hard and it hits the brick wall, creating a loud, startling bang. 
He apologizes before making his introduction.  He then gets out a clipboard with a sheet attached and hands it off to a girl in the front row, instructing everyone to fill in their name and school email for his role sheet.
It’s only once you’ve finished and passed the clipboard on, that you notice the guy two seats down from you looks vaguely familiar. You can’t quite put a finger on it and it bugs you. 
His hair is pulled back into a messy bun and his clothes make him look like the alternative guy of your dreams back in high school. He’s got rings on almost every finger and an aura that just screams confidence. 
It begins to become a problem, your inability to place this guy's face. You’ve only taken a handful of notes the entire first hour and thirty minutes into this two-hour class. Your eyes are constantly staring at him no matter how hard you try to make yourself pay attention. 
Then, he raises his hand to answer one of your professor's questions. That’s when it clicks. Your pen falls from your grasp and your mouth forms an O. 
“Oh my fucking god. No. It can’t be.” You think to yourself but just to be sure you take out your phone, turn the brightness and volume down, and hide it under the table. You open Twitter as fast as you can and you don’t even have to look for his user, he’s the first post on the screen. 
Ed @ DungeonMaster86 was boldly displayed above a picture of the guy sitting next to you with his massive dick in his hand. 
It’s a wonder you weren’t caught with how you practically choked on thin air and began furiously looking from your phone to the guy and then back to your phone. 
Your stomach drops. You can’t keep watching his videos, can you? That wouldn’t be right. That would be weird, watching the porn your classmate makes. 
When class is finally called to an end you pack up as quickly as you can and bolt out the door to your next class, hoping that by getting away from Ed, you'd be able to concentrate. Out of sight, out of mind.
That statement turns out to be false when he is in your next class and when you spot him in the student commons talking with another guy. It's like once you made the connection of who he was, he was everywhere.
Arriving back at your dorm, you throw your backpack on your desk, snatch your laptop out of it, and struggle to jump up onto your bed. Never had you been so thankful for the single dorm than this moment as your curser hovered over the bookmarked Only Fans page at the top of your screen. No roommate meant no one would see the moral dilemma you were currently losing with yourself. 
‘You know him, it’s wrong to keep watching his videos.”
‘What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him though. The only way he would know you are watching is if you tell him, you aren’t going to tell him, are you?’
‘No…’ 
‘Then it’s okay, it’ll just add an extra element of taboo to his streams. Plus, he’d miss you in the chat.’
You sigh as the devil on your shoulder wins out once again, talking you into something you know you shouldn’t be. But hey, it feels good to be bad. 
Steadily, you click on his bookmarked profile and the first thing to pop up is the live stream that is currently in session. And against your better judgment, you enter the stream.
He’s only just started, people are slowly filtering in. Ed is sitting on the edge of his bed, shirt off, and a singular, ringed hand teasing himself through his black jeans. 
You breathe a sigh as he looks into the camera, eyes half-lidded, luring you in. It does the job, because in an instant your fingers are typing out a message in chat. 
Princess23: hi Ed
His eyes flicker as he reads his messages, smiling as he replies to you. "Hi, Princess. How's my girl been?"
There's a bubble of excitement at the fact that he recognizes your username, even if you've been a regular in the chat for months.
Princess23: stressful… you've been distracting me.
The reply to his question is truer than he realizes. 
"Aww, princess, is that so? You've been thinking of me?" He leans back on his free elbow, still groping himself with the other hand.
Princess23: yes. been thinking about your cock, how much I want it in my mouth. 
It's one of the less bold comments you make but it makes you blush all the same, especially now.
"Yeah? You want me to fuck that pretty little mouth? Of yours?"
Princess23: yes please
"Mmm." He hums, fingers now fumbling with the button and zipper of his jeans. 
You set your laptop to the side and start to situate yourself. Slowly taking your clothes off one by one. 
Ed replies to a few more comments before announcing that it's time to start.
He leaves the screen for just a moment before coming back with something in his hand. Smirking at the camera he shows it. A flashlight in the shape of a mouth.
"This one’s for you, Princess. Since you need my dick so bad," Ed explains. He sets it on his bed before making a show of taking his jeans and boxers off. 
As you watch, your hands roam your body. Fingers pinching and pulling at your sensitive nipples before trailing down. The light touch over your ribs makes you giggle. Then you rub and scratch at the inside of your thighs. 
Ed's moans are now coming through your speakers, you tilt your head to watch.
"Spit on my cock baby, get it nice and wet for me." He commands before spitting in his own hand and rubbing it on his thick length. 
"Your mouth looks so pretty like this, waiting, drooling for me. Need me to fill it so bad don't you, baby?" 
"Yes." You answer him breathlessly, fingers teasing around your mound. 
You watch and he sits back down on his bed, thighs spread, a hand cupping his balls and the other grabbing the fleshlight. He lets out a long, drawn-out moan when he inserts his cock into the fake mouth. 
"Fuck baby, your mouth feels so perfect." 
You can't help but whine. Allowing your fingers to finally circle your clit. 
The both of you go one like this for a bit. Him fucking the fleshlight and you massaging your clit. But then you need more, more than your hand can give you. So you reach to your bedside table, stretching at an uncomfortable angle to open the drawer and pull out the purple mini wand you kept there.
The vibrations start slow and constant as you press the toy to your clit. It pulls soft, quiet noises from you as you watch your computer screen. Your mind is blank, filled only with the pretty sounds Ed is making, the way his body looks, and the pleasure between your legs.
There are no thoughts. You follow his lead. When his hand speeds up, you kick up the vibrations, when he slows down, you turn the vibrator back to the first level. 
It's a rollercoaster, almost, taking your pleasure for a ride. The stream isn't even done yet when you feel that tight pull in your abdomen. The toy works you up fast. 
So you stop. Taking the toy away and changing positions. On your hands and knees, you hug a pillow to your chest and prop the toy up under you, keeping it standing as you push your clit down onto it. It's not even on and it's making your hips buck in sensitivity.
You turn it back on and immediately feel the slick seeping from your cunt and running down the toy. 
"Oh fuck," you cry.  Your eyes locked on the screen where Ed has also changed positions. 
He's got his own toy lying on the bed and he's laying over it. The way his leg and glute muscles contract as he thrusts into the toy has you memorized. 
He chants, "Baby, baby, baby." Over and over. What you would give to have him chanting your name instead. Like a prearranged falling from his lips, praising you, worshiping you.
The need for him grows and so does the tightness in your core. 
Reaching your hand down you turn the speed up. Your hips buck into the toy and you bury your face in the pillow. You're close.
He’s not far behind. Peering up from your pillow you can see his thrusts are sputtering. Sporadic as he draws close to his end. 
“God dammit, baby. Gonna cum in this perfect mouth of yours. Fuck. Can you swallow it like the good pet you are? Hum? The good pet I know you can be?”
“Yes.” You turn up the vibrator. “Fuck, wanna swallow all of you. Please.” 
The vibrations are becoming too much but you keep the toy pressed into you, hips shaking at the feeling of being overstimulated. 
Without warning, you cum with a guttural cry into your pillow. Body spasming, muscles twitching. You can still hear Ed moaning and the sloppy sounds of his cock fucking the fleshlight. 
With barely any energy you reach down between your heavy body and the bed and turn your toy off. You don’t even bother with your computer, too exhausted and fucked out to exit the stream. You fall asleep to the sounds of your new classmate's self-pleasure. 
It’s October now. The semester is halfway over and you’ve still been watching Ed, or Eddie. You learned his actual name in class when your professor called role on him by name the second week. 
Today you are being assigned a partner for the final project. You have your fingers crossed that Eddie won’t be chosen as your partner but as your professor calls out pairs, it seems luck is against you. 
You freeze when your name is called and directly after so is Eddie’s. You groan internally. How the hell are you supposed to do this? You already have trouble concentrating when he sits two seats away, what’s going to happen when he actually interacts with you?
There isn’t much time to think about that as he abruptly moves from his seat to the one directly next to you. 
“Hi.” He says, eyes bright and expectant. “I’m Eddie.” He holds out his hand for you to shake but you just stare at him. He looks at you curiously before waving his hand in front of your face. “Hello? Cat got your tongue?”
You snap out of your stupor and accept his hand, shaking it as you introduce yourself. “Sorry. I was a bit out of it.” You say, trying to play it off as you just staring off into space. 
“No problem.” He smiles. “Uh, do you want to exchange numbers so we can figure out when we can work on this together?” 
“Oh, yeah. Here,” You open your phone and push it to him with the messages app open. “You can text yourself.” 
He does just that, even going as far as putting in his contact name as Eddie with the skull and crossbones emoji beside it. 
“Great. I’ll text you when I’m free. I have work on Mondays and Thursdays, sometimes on Saturdays, but other than that I’m usually free.”
You nearly choke when you realize he’s given you his streaming schedule. “I- uh. Okay. Just text me when you can.”
"Sure thing sweetheart." He grins at you before standing, grabbing his things, and heading out of class along with the rest of the students. 
You sit there for a minute, thinking. God, what are you getting yourself into?
You both have finally come up with meeting times that work for both of you. Tuesday and Wednesday after seven. Giving you time to get to the school library after the closing shift at your on-campus job. 
It’s been two weeks of working together on this project and it’s been easier than you had originally thought to concentrate on the task at hand and keep your dirty thoughts at bay. 
Right now, you are both sitting in one of the private study rooms looking at Eddie’s computer as he explains why this particular cord progression would fit with the emotions you are trying to convey in your composition. 
You sigh, “Eddie, as much as I love that sound, I really don’t think it fits with the overall composition of the song. It isn’t as emotionally charged as I’d like it to be.”
“Well show me something similar to what you’re wanting.” He rakes his hand through his hair. It’s been a long night for each of you. It seems that every new section of the song you are creating for the project gives you a new challenge to work through together. 
You pull out your phone and Eddie leans over to watch as you begin to type. There is a particular song you are thinking of that has the weight and emotion you are trying to convey with your own music and as you type the first letter of the song, O, the first suggestion that pops up is onlyfans/DungeonMaster. 
Mortified, you slam your phone down on the table. Eddie looks at you with an eyebrow raised. 
“What was that?” He asks.
“What was what?” You answer. 
“Why did you slam your phone down?”
“Oh, I just forgot the title of the song.”
“Right…” He scratches under his chin and then stretches back in his chair. “Why don’t we call it quits for tonight? It’s getting late and we aren’t going to agree on anything if we’re both tired.”
A yawn suddenly comes up out of nowhere and you then realize how tired you actually are. “That sounds good to me.” You agree with Eddie and begin packing up your things. You don’t want to be with him longer than you need to be right now, even if he seemingly didn’t notice his OF user pop up on your phone screen. 
“Bye Eddie.” You wave to him on your way out the door.
Faintly you hear him call out to you, giving a goodbye of his own. "See ya, sweetheart."
… 
After your little slip, you began avoiding Eddie. At least in person, you still tuned into his streams. You bailed on the next three meetups you had planned, helping only through voice notes and text. Eddie said he understood when you said your boss was forcing you to stay late to deep clean. 
It was Thursday now and when you saw him in class he barely looked your way and you wondered if he had seen what you hoped he had not. 
You tried stopping him once your lecture was over, feeling an anxiousness creeping into your mind. Your conscience had been telling you to come clean. To explain your perversion. Let him know you watched him, that you paid to enjoy seeing him fuck into a toy or his hand. 
You called out his name and reached for his arm. "Eddie."
He turns to you. "Hum?"
You take a deep breath to ground yourself. "I wanted to say sorry for not being able to come help with the project."
"It's okay, you said you had work." He replies, unbothered. 
"No, Eddie, I didn't get held back at work. That was a lie."
He doesn't look all too surprised. 
"I've kinda been avoiding you because- well, because of what I think you might have seen on my phone that day."
Eddie stops you there. "Can this wait until later? I've really got some errands to run before work."
"Oh, uh, yeah. Sorry to keep you Ed." You had meant it as a nickname but as it came pushing past your lips it was too late to take it back. You had never heard anyone call him that outside of his onlyfans. 
You watched as his eyes widened at the name and a spark went off behind them. "I'll see you later sweetheart." The smirk he gives you isn't the usual playful one you'd seen him throw before. No, this was sinister, like he knew.
Your heart fell into your stomach as you watched him walk away, leaving you alone.
Tonight as you logged into the stream, it wasn’t to get off. It was to see if he'd show any signs of knowing you might be lurking about among the thousands of viewers.
When the video loads, Eddie is sitting in his desk chair. He's talking to the chat like he always does. There's something different in the atmosphere around him, mischief if you've placed it correctly. 
He keeps replying to comments until the clock reaches 6:10. It's time for the show to begin. 
"Tonight I have a very special treat for you guys." Eddie starts as he reaches over just off camera to his desk. "I've got the wand out." 
The chat erupts. Eddie doesn't bring his vibrator out often, but when he does, you know it's going to be a good show for every party involved. 
"I would also like to say hello to a special quest in the stream tonight." Eddie’s smirk gets bigger and your heart pounds in your chest. "Hi, sweetheart. Hope you enjoy yourself." 
You feel like you've been shot. There's a ringing in your ears and your breathing has stopped. 
He knows. Fuck. He definitely knows. You've never heard him say that pet name on camera. It's always babe or baby when he refers to the collective whole watching the stream. Eddie has only ever used that name with you.
Eddie starts up the vibrator, tracing it over his covered cock. He hums at the feeling, loud and long. 
You clench your thighs together. You tell yourself you should stop watching but you can't bring yourself to. 
'He knows." You argue with yourself.
'But he wants you to watch. Why else would he say his pet name for you? Why else would he say he hopes you enjoy yourself? He knows and he likes it.'
The devil on your shoulder makes sense again and you curse it. 
So, you watch. Intently, you watch. Your eyes never leave the screen. 
Eddie whimpers once he has his cock out of his pants. The tip is a deep purple/red color, showing how worked up he's gotten already.
He lets his head fall back, resting on his chair as he moves the vibrator down to his balls. He presses it into himself before dragging it up his shaft and to the head. 
You feel a wetness seeping into the cotton of your panties and as his legs widen, yours press together more. 
"Oh fuck. Oh fuck, sweetheart." Eddie moans, mouth open slack and eyes squeezed shut. 
You can't believe he's saying your pet name and making those noises. You wonder what he's thinking about. How you'd look sucking on his cock? Maybe what it would be like to be pounding into you, watching your cunt suck him in and clench around him. 
Eddie grits his teeth when he turns the speed up. One hand is holding the vibrator just at the frenulum while the other is cupping and squeezing his balls. 
Your thoughts are running wild and your hips have started to rock in search of some kind of friction.
He moves his hand from his balls and begins to tug on his shaft. Deep guttural moans fill the air, and the sound of them turns you on even more. 
It's not long before Eddie is bucking his cock into his hand. You can see his muscles straining in his legs as he does. 
"Fuck fuck fuck- ah fuck sweetheart, you've got me so close. Fuck." His voice is pinched. You can see the exhaustion in the furrow of his eyebrows as he pressed the vibrator over his tip, the change in placement making his hips shudder. “God, I’m gonna cum. The thought of you is gonna make me cum, sweetheart.” 
Hearing his breathy, deep, timber of a voice say that the thought of you was going to do him in had you thinking you might just cum too. No touching required, just Eddie and his beautiful noises. 
In a matter of seconds, Eddie is choking on his words as his balls go taut. He lets out a drawn-out grunt and ropes of cum begin to spurt out over his chest, covering him like a painting. He doesn’t even bother to clean himself up before he looks into the camera and says good night, chuckling when he mentions your particular pet name again. Then, the screen goes dark. 
Fridays are slow in the used bookshop you work at. Especially after 4:30. No one had been inside in maybe an hour? Your boss left early, leaving you alone to close down at 6. For the past fifteen minutes, you’ve been putting misplaced books back where they belong, sweeping, and tidying up anything else you see. 
Because of the usual slowness, you have your headphones on. The music isn’t loud but it does drown out the sound of the bell chiming as someone enters the building. You are unaware of the person creeping up behind you until you are suddenly turned around and corralled against the bookshelf. 
You let out an alarmed screech only for your mouth to be covered by a big, warm hand. Your headphones fall to the floor beside you as they are accidentally knocked off your head. You hear his voice then, whispering in your ear. 
“Hi, Sweetheart.” 
“Eddie-” You heave, relieved it wasn’t someone coming to kill you in cold blood.
“Did you enjoy my show last night?” He leans back, caressing a strand of hair away from your face. 
You shake your head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” You deny. Even after you had told yourself you would come clean to him, granted that was before you knew he knew your secret. 
“You don’t know, do you? I think you do why else would my account have popped up on your search suggestions the other day?” 
Keeping your mouth shut, you refuse to answer. 
Eddie takes your chin between his fingers and moves your face to the side as he leans into you. His lips tickle the shell of your ear as he speaks again. “So… Which one of my subs are you? Hum?”
Your mouth opens but nothing comes out. 
Eddie tuts. “Don’t get all shy on me. Tell me. Now.” His tone is dominating. It’s one thing to hear it over a computer speaker, it's another when you hear it in person. His presence alone had your knees knocking. 
“I-I,” You can't help but stutter. “It’s Princess23.” You shamefully tell him your user, eyes looking anywhere but his.
He sucks in a breath. “Oh, Princess. That was you?”
He forces you to look at him and you nod your head. 
You hate that he’s making you look him in the eye, but you can see what’s swirling around deep within them. Desire, lust, dominance, but nothing mean. Nothing hurtful. 
As you watch him, you catch the minute changes in his expression. His jaw clenches and his eyes darken, a hunger taking over as he stares you down. 
“I can give you a private show if you want, baby.” He leans back in. “Right here,” He nipps at your ear lobe. “Right now.” 
“Eddie, we can’t… We’re at my work.” 
He looks around you, head swiveling to peer down both ends of the aisle. “It’s fine Sweetheart, no one’s here but us, right?”
“Yes, but-”
He cuts you off with a finger over your lips. 
“Then let me show you why the real thing is so much better than what you’ve seen online.” He doesn’t give you time to think before his lips are on yours. 
They are soft, almost pillow-like as they mold against yours. His tongue slithers its way into your mouth, tasting you, he moans when he does. 
To you, he tastes like menthol cigarettes and black coffee with the faintest hint of weed. It’s intoxicating, and addicting. You’ve only had one taste and now you won't be able to function without him.  
His hand cups your cheek and pulls you closer. Your arms wrap around his neck, fingers tugging at his hair. His body keeps you pinned to the shelves and he spreads your legs by inserting one of his own between them.
With him being so much taller than you, it only takes you barely bending your knees for you to make contact with his thigh. You are thankful when he doesn’t stop you from humping his leg. The friction of you rubbing yourself against him has the seam of your pants pressing against your clit. It’s a wonderful pressure that leaves your mind blank. 
When he pulls away, you follow, not wanting his mouth to leave yours. Eddie chuckles when you give a needy whine. 
"It's okay baby, I'll give you what you want." He coos. "But first, since you wanna get yourself off, you've got to make yourself cum on my leg."
You pout. "But Eddie…"
"Ah ah, don't complain sweet girl, you'll only make it take longer. Now get to work."
You do as he says, rolling your hips with purpose against him. He doesn't help you at all, he only provides support and kissed along your jaw every few seconds as he watches you work. 
It's harder than you thought it would be. The layers of denim dulled the sensations yet added to the tension your clit felt as the fabric rubbed against it. 
"Mmm, fuck." You gasp, fingers gripping onto Eddie’s shoulders. "M'so close. Eddie, I'm so close."
He smiles at you and he gives your body gentle touches. "That's it, Princess. Let go. Being such a good girl for me."
You moan loudly at his praise. 
"That right sweet girl, use me to get yourself off. That's it, keep going."
His words are spurring you on, your hips, although losing their rhythm and steadiness, keep going strong. Then, you feel it. That tautness in your tummy and the ache in your bones. You are so close.
"Please, Eddie. Ah- so close. Need more." Your words are short and your hips move faster. 
"What is it, baby? What do you need?" Eddie asks, willing to give you just a little.
"Kiss me again," you beg. 
He obliges. Taking your face in his hands and practically devouring you. 
The canter of your hips stalls as your body shudders against him. A sticky wetness can now be felt,  uncomfortably, between your legs.
"So good for me." He praises.
You can feel how hard he is, his needy cock prominently pressing into your thigh.
"Wanna feel you. Eddie please, I need to feel you." You're practically begging him to fuck you now.
"Yeah, sweet girl? You need me to stretch that pretty pussy on my dick? Make you feel so good, baby." He trailed his kiss down to your neck, stopping only to suck and nip at the sensitive skin. 
You nod frantically. "Yes, yes Eddie. Need you inside me."
Hands rush to unbutton pants, fingers caress bare skin, breaths hitch. You tug at Eddie's pants impatiently as he pulls your own down. The sudden feeling of cold air hitting the pool of slick between your thighs. 
You are both a whirlwind of arms and clothes and a few books falling from their shelf. Eddie’s fingers make their way to your center, exploring between your folds. 
You throw your head back, cracking it on the shelf above. "Ow," You moan out in pain.
"Careful there, Sweetheart." He gives you another kiss and moves his unoccupied hand to cradle your head.
The pain is instantly forgotten when two of his thick fingers circle your clit before pushing into your entrance.
"Mmmm- god." He feels so good inside you, fingers curling into your walls. The wet slick of him moving fills the stagnant air of the bookstore.
"You're sucking me in, baby. Pussy squeezing me so tight." Eddie rests his forehead on yours, his breath mixing with your own. "Can't wait to feel you around my cock."
Gasping in response, you buck your hips up into his hand. "More-"
It doesn't take much convincing for Eddie to pull his hand from between your legs and position his hard length at your entrance. Slowly he slips inside, meeting no resistance with how wet you are. 
Eddie pushes into you, cock stretching you out farther than you think you've ever been before. His one hand rests on the back of your head while the other pushes your shaking hand out of his way as he goes to press it against your neck.
You grasp his arm, nails scratching his skin as he chokes you. 
"Oh- oh, Eddie. Fuck me." You cry, cunt fluttering around him. 
Your words are music to his ears. His pace begins steadily. In and out at a lazy, leisurely speed. Then he picks it up, hips bucking faster and faster. 
He's giving it all to you. Everything you've dreamed of since you saw him on your Twitter all those months ago.
The head of his cock is repeatedly hitting that one spot inside of you that makes your toes curl. You can’t keep yourself up. The feelings coursing through you have your knees buckling and Eddie does a good job at catching your weight. 
He stops his movements to try and situate you. “Come on, baby, gotta stand up.” 
You shake your head. “I can’t, s’too much.” Your heart is pounding in your chest, if you even tried to stand you would just fall again. “There's a couch.” You point to the back of the store. “It’s in the break room.” 
Eddie grunts as he hoists you up in his arms and follows your directions. 
The couch is old and made of leather. It is cold on your skin as Eddie lays you down and you shiver as he rips your pants and underwear from around your ankles. Never would you have ever imagined being naked from the waist down in your work break room. 
In contrast to the cool leather, Eddie’s hands are searing hot. He grips the back of your knees, picking your legs up and spreading you out. You’re almost folded in half. 
“Jesus fucking christ. You. Are. Beautiful.” He enunciated every word. The complement has you keening and clenching around nothing. “Fuck, look at that pretty cunt. She’s gaping for me.” Eddie smiles, eyes flickering to yours before looking back to your most intimate part. 
You let out a wonton gasp when he spits, a glob of it falling right atop your parted slit. Eddie takes a hand away and grabs his cock. He rubs the tip through your folds, giving your clit a heavy tap tap tap before entering you again and grabbing the back of your knee again. 
Eddie wastes no time in pistoning his hips into yours. The new angle gives him free range of movement to fuck you fast and deep. The skin of his thighs makes a sharp slapping sound when he connects with your ass, it sets the rhythm for the song of your shared moans. 
“Pull your shirt up.” He commands and you do as he says. Lifting your shirt up and over your breasts. Eddie lets out an irritated grunt at the sight of your bra. “That too.” He puffs out and you pull it up as far as it will allow. 
Your breasts bounce as Eddie fucks you mercilessly into the couch. His eyes are shamelessly trained on them. “Fucking hell, Princess. Gimmie our hands.” 
You reach out for him and he grabs your wrists, guiding you to hold your legs back like he had been doing. With the newfound freedom of his hands, he extends them out to play with your tits.  He pinches and tugs at your nipples, making you moan in pleasure as he continues his assault. His thrusts become faster, harder, more desperate. You know he's close and you can't take much more either. 
“Eddie… Ah- Eddie-” You babble out his name. You wiggle under his hold and the harsh prodding of his cock into your cervix. The strings of another orgasm are being pulled tight. 
He growls. “I know baby, I know. Fucking cum for me. Cum on my cock.” 
Tears well up in your eyes and begin to overflow. Your body writhes, back bowing, muscles straining. You’re on the precipice. 
Eddie sees how close you are and moves a hand down between your legs, circling his thumb over your slick-covered clit. 
“Oooh- Oh fuck!” You scream. “Shit shit shit shitshitshitshit…. Ah!” 
“Louder.” He moans. “Want the whole town to hear you sweet girl.” 
“Eddie! Oh, I’m there. I’m fucking there.” You cry, fat tears rolling down your cheeks as you let go. A scream erupts from your throat. Even in your ecstasy, you can feel Eddie’s tempo shift. He’s losing speed. 
“Goddammit. I cumming too.” Eddie whimpers, sinking into you fully. His cum fills you up and you can fill you as it runs down your ass as he pulls out. 
Your body is twitching as he moves you to lay more fully on the couch. He doesn’t follow though. No. He sinks to his knees and before your foggy mind can even comprehend it, he attaches his mouth to your pussy.  
You are pliant under his touch, unable to resist. His tongue explores you and you moan in pleasure. He’s lapping up the mixture of his cum and your slick, humming at the taste the whole time. 
You choke back a sob when his tongue flicks repeatedly over your clit before he begins to suck on the already abused bud. “Eddie, please.” Reaching down you tug on his hair but he doesn’t move. “Ed-” He starts shaking his head, burying himself in your pussy. 
Another orgasm is quickly approaching. Your breathing quickens and you can feel your body trembling as he works you up, sending you higher and higher until you can’t take it anymore. Your orgasm hits you like a wave, and your body spasms in pleasure. He doesn't stop, continuing his ministrations until you finally come down from your high once more.
“Christ. You taste so good.” He says as he crawls up your spent body. Draping himself over you he places kiss after tender kiss all over your face. “Did so good for me. I’m so proud of you.” 
“Yeah?” You whisper. 
“Mhum. So proud.” He grins, the light of the room catching in the wetness covering him from nose to chin. 
Eddie cuddles into you more and your eyes close. He’s exhausted you. You both lay there in silence, content in each other's presence. Eddie eventually falls asleep, his breathing slow and steady. You don’t have the heart or the energy to wake him. You stay awake, just barely, still in awe of what happened. 
It feels like hours have gone by when you finally do shake Eddie, calling out to him softly. He stirs, grumbling as he looks up at you. 
“Eds, baby, I need to lock up.” 
He only rests his head back down between your breasts. You shake him again. 
“Eddie.” You say it a bit more sternly. “Get up and I’ll let you take me back to yours.” 
That gets his attention and he’s up and dressing himself in an instant. You on the other hand are slower, feeling the prominent ache between your legs. He has to help you pull your panties and jeans back on. 
He has to help you close the store as well, your legs weak and not trusted to hold up your body weight without crumbling to the ground. 
Never had you thought this was how this would end. Sitting in the passenger seat of your favorite camboy's car as he drives you to his apartment, grinning like the Cheshire cat as you both think of all the fun things you’ll get up to. Round two was bound to be wilder than the first. 
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irrealisms · 2 months
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i've seen a lot of people talk about mcyt as a constantly burning library of alexandria recently, and to some extent that's true. people are constantly deleting their blogs, going scorched earth with animatics, fanfics, etc., that they made. but i've also seen people (three in the last few days!) make this claim about VODs, when talking about large fandoms like DSMP and QSMP, and.... guys. that was true in 2020. that's not true anymore. archivists have been working tirelessly for years now to make sure that isn't true.
the dsmp VOD masterlist is here. in november 2020, it's missing 16 VODs, if i am counting correctly--which is still a fairly small minority, but it's a lot, and it sucks!--but in november of 2021, it's missing one, and that's because the cc of that VOD does copyright takedowns, not because the archivists didn't save it. no one in the archivist project is deleting VODs off youtube with no backups the way people are deleting fanfics. three months ago, one of my dsmp archivist friends finished coding a tool that let them reconstruct VODs out of twitch clips, and reconstructed six tubbo dsmp VODs from 2020. not only are we basically not losing VODs anymore, we are actively gaining VODs that have been lost for years, that were thought to be lost forever. the library isn't burning anymore; it's being rebuilt.
the qsmp VOD masterlist is here. it is usually a month or two behind the present day, to give creators time to archive their own VODs, but... look at it. in january of 2024, every single qsmp vod was archived. the same is true of december of 2023, and november, and the vast majority of months for the past year.
i'm not going to say that there isn't a problem. just a few days ago, i realized that a lifesteal VOD from last year was missing--that its youtube upload was messed up somehow, and no one noticed and it wasn't mirrored on the internet archive and the person who uploaded it deleted the original file. and now it's gone forever. this made me super sad! like i said: i'm not going to say that there isn't a problem.
but... look at the lifesteal VOD masterlist here. lifesteal's a smaller fandom than qsmp or dsmp. open the 2022 tab and you'll see months and months of lost VODs, of no one's VODs being saved, because there weren't any archivists saving them. then open the 2023 tab and see: they lost four VODs, over the course of a year. even in smaller fandoms, archivists are working. they're making progress. they're saving VODs. in 2024, lifesteal archivists screenrecorded five streams on tumblr live to make sure they would not become lost media. mcyt may be a constantly burning library of alexandria, but the people with fire extinguishers are dedicated. they're making incredible progress. i know people with petabytes of VODs saved, who have spent money on extra storage for this. i know people who are constantly running up against their storage limits as they download/upload to the internet archive/delete for space/rinse and repeat. a decent fraction of the time, my internet at home is slow because it's downloading VODs.
and these aren't the only mcyt fandoms with archiving projects! the outsiders smp VOD masterlist is here. origins smp VOD masterlist is here. smp earth VOD masterlist is here. rats smp VOD masterlist is here. there are so many others that i just don't happen to know about. the older and smaller a fandom is, the more likely it is to not have an attached archiving project, or for the archive to be missing a lot of VODs. but... guys, we've saved a lot. there are people out there, working tirelessly to save even more. yes, mourn what we have lost--the archivists i know are also the ones mourning the most for the VODs that are, in fact, forever lost media. but don't dismiss how much people have saved. we are making progress. we are losing less and less every month. the vast majority of the dsmp and qsmp still exist, i am not going to say they're the same experience as watching live because they're really not, but.. they're out there. people have put in a lot of work to save them.
if you have publicly available VOD masterlists or other mcyt archiving projects that aren't on this post, please add them in a reblog. i want this post to serve as a reference for how much archivists have saved in this community; unfortunately, i'm not super connected to every community. but i know that--for every person deleting things, there are people working, tirelessly & with little external reward, in so many different mcyt fandoms, to save things. and we should appreciate that more often.
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shesnake · 11 months
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Spider-Verse Artists Say Working on the Sequel Was ‘Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts’
Why don’t more animated movies look this good? According to people who worked on the sequel, Across the Spider-Verse, it’s because the working conditions required to produce such artistry are not sustainable.
Multiple Across the Spider-Verse crew members — ranging from artists to production executives who have worked anywhere from five to a dozen years in the animation business — describe the process of making the the $150 million Sony project as uniquely arduous, involving a relentless kind of revisionism that compelled approximately 100 artists to flee the movie before its completion.
While frequent major overhauls are standard operating procedure in animation (Pixar films can take between four and seven years to plot, animate, and render), those changes typically occur early on during development and storyboarding stages. But these Spider-Verse 2 crew members say they were asked to make alterations to already-approved animated sequences that created a backlog of work across multiple late-stage departments. Across the Spider-Verse was meant to debut in theaters in April of 2022, before it was postponed to October of that year and then June 2023 owing to what Entertainment Weekly reported as “pandemic-related delays.” However, the four crew members say animators who were hired in the spring of 2021 sat idle for anywhere from three to six months that year while Phil Lord tinkered with the movie in the layout stage, when the first 3-D representation of storyboards are created.
As a result, these individuals say, they were pushed to work more than 11 hours a day, seven days a week, for more than a year to make up for time lost and were forced back to the drawing board as many as five times to revise work during the final rendering stage.
"For animated movies, the majority of the trial-and-error process happens during writing and storyboarding. Not with fully completed animation. Phil’s mentality was, This change makes for a better movie, so why aren’t we doing it? It’s obviously been very expensive having to redo the same shot several times over and have every department touch it so many times. The changes in the writing would go through storyboarding. Then it gets to layout, then animation, then final layout, which is adjusting cameras and placements of things in the environment. Then there’s cloth and hair effects, which have to repeatedly be redone anytime there’s an animation change. The effects department also passes over the characters with ink lines and does all the crazy stuff like explosions, smoke, and water. And they work closely with lighting and compositing on all the color and visual treatments in this movie. Every pass is plugged into editing. Smaller changes tend to start with animation, and big story changes can involve more departments like visual development, modeling, rigging, and texture painting. These are a lot of artists affected by one change. Imagine an endless stream of them."
"Over 100 people left the project because they couldn’t take it anymore. But a lot stayed on just so they could make sure their work survived until the end — because if it gets changed, it’s no longer yours. I know people who were on the project for over a year who left, and now they have little to show for it because everything was changed. They went through the hell of the production and then got none of their work coming out the other side."
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houseofanticipation · 7 months
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After six months of leaving your window unlocked, someone finally took the bait.
You frequent some dark corners of the internet. When tumblr wasn't enough to get you wet anymore you turned to reddit, and when that stopped working you moved to 4chan. These days the sites you cum to don't even have names, their URLs are just strings of random letters and numbers. It was in one of these places that you saw the symbol.
The only identifying feature of the original poster was an off-putting avatar image of Sonic the Hedgehog's gaping asshole. The post was a single photo of the symbol, written in thick marker on a scrap of looseleaf paper. Below it, the text read: place this symbol in your window to let passersby know it's unlocked, and you're ready to be taken advantage of.
You came when you saw that symbol. (You had been touching yourself for hours at that point, but still, the symbol is what pushed you over the edge.) You saved a screenshot of the symbol, and in the nights that followed you touched yourself to it again and again, daring yourself to do it, imagining the things strangers could do to you in your sleep. When your better judgement finally caved to that insatiable need, you touched yourself again. You sat there for an hour, edging and watching that symbol in the window, until your mind felt slow and stupid with fantasies.
You did that a few more times in the following nights. But the after a week the fantasies alone weren't doing it for you anymore, and you were increasingly realizing something that probably should have been obvious from the beginning: most people aren't into the same disgusting shit you're into. The people in those ugly little corners of the web lived all over the world. What were the odds one of them would just walk past your first-floor apartment one day?
So you forgot about it. Mostly. You left it there, of course, but the more time went by the less you believed anything would ever come of it. You turned to other places to make you cum. Lately you've been getting off on posting pictures of yourself, letting strangers describe the ways they'd like to use and abuse you.
And then this morning you found three polaroid pictures placed neatly on your kitchen table.
All three pictures are of you, naked and asleep in bed. You started sleeping naked ages ago, at the advice of a tumblr post detailing how to be more of a slut. You're glad you did now, because the feeling you get looking at these pictures is like nothing you've ever felt before. It's electric, a vibration in your brain and the pit of your stomach that makes your legs wobble and your knees press together. The first picture is of your body, undisturbed, sleeping on your stomach with your ass in the air. The second is a view from the foot of your bed, your pussy pressed against the sheets and your legs open. The third is of your face, an unfamiliar hand brushing back your hair and an unfamiliar cock resting on your cheek.
Before you can even think you're falling to your knees, masturbating desperately and furiously to those pictures. When you cum it's labored, almost painful, your breath catching in your chest, your moans short and agonized. You manage to stand long enough to take the pictures to your bed, where you're able to scrape together the self-control to edge for about five minutes before you cum for a second time.
The one you can't tear yourself away from his that cock on your face. The knowledge that someone was that close to you without your knowing. Touching you. Pleasuring himself to you. When you cum for the third time, it's to the thought that he didn't rape you, as far as you can tell. That means he intends to come back.
That night you feel like a kid waiting for Santa Clause to come. You toss and turn, too excited to sleep, but terrified that he won't follow through with it if he can tell you're awake. You close your eyes and stay as still as possible. If you can't be asleep, the best you can do is appear asleep.
You wake to sunlight streaming through your window, a little surprised to realize you fell asleep at all. You can feel immediately that something is different; you've been violated, you can feel it in your clit and in your cunt. You hurry to the kitchen and find three new polaroids. The first is a close up of your pussy, already swollen and wet. The second is taken from the same angle, but this time there's a hand in frame, three fingers pushed inside you, stretching you out. The third sends a thrill up your spine. In this picture, a man with a Halloween mask pulled up to his forehead has his head buried between your legs. His face isn't visible from this angle, but it's clear he's eating you out. What really excites you, though, is the out-of-focus smudge in the corner of the shot: you're certain it's the edge of someone's finger. There was a second person in the room with you last night, holding the camera. You wonder if he was there the night before too. You wonder if anyone else has been in your room without you knowing.
When you've cum twice, you're able to think clearly enough to wonder how you managed to sleep through all this. This isn't a cock brushing your face; this is penetration, stretching, clitoral stimulation. That isn't the kind of stuff you sleep through, is it? You get off for a while imagining you really are just that much of a whore, that you can have three fingers inside you and barely notice a thing, but then you spot the cylinder in the corner of the third picture. It's a metal canister, like an oxygen tank, connected at the top to the kind of plastic mask designed to cover your mouth and nose. They drugged you. That's why you didn't wake up. They put you into a deeper sleep so they could do what they wanted with you. Your clit is getting sore at this point, but when you come to this realization you can't help but cum one more time.
In your dreams that night someone is holding you down, kissing you, shoving his tongue down your throat. You're afraid and excited and wet, and you want to scream for help but you can't remember how to speak. Someone is saying something, but the words don't mean anything to you, and the relentless sucking on your clit is making it hard to focus on anything else. You want to moan, to arch your back, to press your legs shut, but your body isn't your own. Maybe you cum. Maybe you don't. It's hard to tell.
You come to slowly, blearily. You become aware of your surroundings one thing at a time, and out of order; first you notice the wetness, then the soreness, then the sunlight behind your closed eyelids. You stretch and rub the sleep out of your eyes, but your hands come away with more than the usual eye grit on them. With a jolt you realize your face is painted with cum, and looking down you can tell that it isn't just your face. There's cum on your tits, on your stomach, even your thighs and feet, and a hand between your legs confirms its inside you too. Hands shaking, you scoop it off your thighs and stomach, trying to get as much as you can into your pussy, fingering it deeper and deeper. You must have really taken a pounding last night, because your pussy is sore and your groin feels bruised, but the feeling of that cum inside you is worth every ounce of pain. You put a few pillows under your ass, trying to keep your hips elevated, keep it from spilling out for as long as possible. You imagine it taking root in your womb, changing your body, making your breasts and belly swell with motherhood. You imagine men you've never seen coming into you home while you're asleep and hungrily drinking your milk, squeezing and sucking so you wake up with your nipples sore. You wish one of them was here to fuck the cum deeper inside you, but you make do with your fingers. This time when you cum it's different. It isn't like the first orgasm of the day. It feels like maybe the fifth time you've cum in the last few hours; barely pleasure at all, just spine-tingling, mind-numbing sensation. Is it possible to cum in your sleep? It feels like it shouldn't be allowed, but you're having trouble thinking straight...
You need to stop touching yourself. You're sore and trembly and weirdly exhausted for someone who just woke up, but you can't stop thinking about those strangers in your bedroom, the cocks that must have been in your cunt and your asshole and your mouth. Your clit throbs, begging your fingers for just one more release. You make a compromise with yourself. You put on some panties to keep too much cum from leaking out, and you go to the kitchen to look at the pictures. But there are no polaroids on the kitchen table. Just a cheap plastic USB drive with your name in permanent marker on the side.
It shouldn't be a surprise that they know your name. They've been in your house, they can obviously find your name on your mail or your computer or your driver's license. But seeing it there in unfamiliar handwriting, one more tiny violation of privacy, makes your clit throb again, as if to remind you of its presence.
The voice of your elementary school librarian echoes in your head as you retrieve your laptop and return to bed. It is profoundly stupid, she reminds you, to plug an unfamiliar drive into your computer. There's no telling what kind of malware it could contain, and that kind of access could allow hackers to take complete control of your computer. But you've already done the most profoundly stupid thing. You've done it repeatedly, in fact, and you're in deep enough now that there may not be any going back. The drive contains a single folder, also with your name on it. The folder is full of pictures and videos, hundreds of them, from different cameras and different perspectives, every angle you could possibly want from the events of last night. Men in rubber masks, too many to count, taking turns raping your lifeless body. Stuffing their cocks down your throat and laughing as you choke reflexively. Squeezing your tits, pinching and biting your nipples. Playing with your pussy, intermittently fucking it and trying to shove ever-larger objects inside it. There's a closeup video of your face as one of the men ejaculates onto it. Another of your pussy as a cock pulls out, allowing a fat glob of cum to collect just at the entrance of your unresponsive hole. The last file in the folder is a .txt file, containing a single line of text: a string of numbers and letters that you recognize.
Right there on the first page of your favorite site is a picture of you, asleep and drenched in cum. Below it is your home address, and a short note:
Found this tasty slut by accident at the above address, just noticed the rapeme in her window and figured I'd come back that night. Good pussy, and she must like what we did to her because she hasn't taken it down yet. Stop by if you're in town; we like a limp body, but I bet she'd put up a nice fight if you'd rather forgo sedatives. Just make sure to gag her lol. don't want the neighbors complaining and ruining our fun. and remember to leave her a souvenir! She especially likes polaroids ; )
By the time you've finished reading you're in a daze. Your eyes can't seem to focus on anything. Your mind can't form a coherent thought. Your clit is no longer asking for your attention; it now demands it. As you begin to pull the panties back down, you notice something: the light next to your laptop camera is on.
You place the laptop on the bed between your legs, and begin stuffing the panties into your cunt.
5K notes · View notes
cupid-styles · 26 days
Text
a helping hand*
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in which y/n can't orgasm and harry is a helpful ex-friend with benefits.
word count: 3.3k
content warnings: mentions of depression/mental health and anti-depressants, discussions of reduced libido, smut (phone sex, mentions of sex toys, dirty talk, description of group sex and mmf threesomes)
this one goes out to all the besties on anti-depressants
masterlist | talk to me
. . .
“No.”
“But—”
“No.”
Harry sighs in frustration before crossing his arms over his chest. If he pursed his raspberry lips into a pout, he’d look more like a petulant child than the young adult Y/N’s known for the past few years. With a roll of her eyes, she lifts her glass to her mouth and takes a healthy swig of her coke and rum. She allows herself to scan the interior of the bar — it’s just barely 6 pm on a Wednesday so she’s not surprised that it’s primarily filled with locals and teams of corporate offices decompressing after a long day. 
“I could always make you come when we hooked up and I bet you I could still do it.”
“Christ, Harry, give it a rest,” Y/N replies, narrowing her eyes at the curly haired brunette. “It’s not just with partners, it’s me, too.”
He quirks an eyebrow and settles his elbows on the sticky table. She huffs when she realizes she’s only piqued his attention even more now that she’s revealed another inkling of her… problem. 
“Can you just tell me what’s going on, then? You know, when I texted you for our semiannual catch up, I didn’t think we’d be getting into your sudden inability to orgasm, but—”
“Can you lower your voice?” Y/N hisses with wide eyes. “I didn’t think we would talk about this either but you’re the one who asked if I’m seeing anyone—”
“Yeah, seeing anyone, not coming for anyone—”
“Just shut up!” she mutters, nearly knocking over her almost-finished drink. “If I tell you, you have to drop it.”
“I can’t promise that.”
“Harry…”
“As your ex-friend with benefits, I have no duty to keep secrets that aren’t about our bedroom-related rendezvouses.” 
“There hasn’t been a ‘rendezvous’ in five years.”
“There could be.”
She sighs and presses her fingertips to her temples. This is why she and Harry never worked out. They’re total opposites — he has the energy of a rowdy golden retriever and she exudes a calm, monotone nature. (She thinks she’s borderline boring if you ask her, but that’s something she’s been saving for therapy.) 
At parties in college, he was always the one working the room, chatting with everyone while she stood in the corner and clutched her solo cup for dear life. 
He had a million contacts in his phone and people remembered him, even if they knew each other from something as small as working together on a project in a class three semesters ago. 
Meanwhile, Y/N could spend two years straight working in the same office and someone would still ask her when she started working there because she looked “new”.
(Seriously. It happened last month, and she had to rush to the bathroom to cry.)
Despite their opposing personalities, they did work for a while, but only as friends with benefits. To begin with, Y/N never wanted anything more — when they started hooking up, they were nearing their senior year of college, and she didn’t want to be tied down to anyone or anything when making decisions about her future. But secretly, she knew feelings for Harry would inevitably pop up. How could they not? Although he was an annoying ball of energy sometimes, bouncing off the walls of her apartment before they even made it to her bedroom, he was kind. He had a good heart — he still does after all these years, otherwise Y/N would never bother meeting up with him without the intention of hooking up — and he was funny, and he made Y/N feel all warm and gooey inside. He was a good fuck, too, and as much as she wanted to widdle his presence down to being purely physical, she wasn’t strong enough for that. 
She was grateful, albeit heartbroken, when six months after their arrangement began, Harry very sweetly told her he had a crush on a girl in his advanced sculpture class and wanted to go for it. As she swallowed a lump in her throat, she told him that was perfectly fine, that she was glad he told her, and that she hoped things worked out between him and Emily.
(They did. For two and a half years. Y/N had never been so thankful when graduation arrived and she could run as far away as possible from the couple.)
Harry tried his best to keep in touch, even after graduating while he was dating Emily — always commenting on her Instagram posts and responding to her stories, even occasionally texting her to wish her well on her birthday or major holidays. Y/N kept him at an arm’s length for as long as she could. That is, until he moved to her city last year.
The only reason why Y/N had a heads up is because of an Instagram story he posted. In his typical overly excited way, he posted a picture of his dog in his new apartment with one of those tacky, premade location tags. (She’s allowed to think they’re ugly — she’s a graphic designer.) So, it didn’t come as a surprise when a week or two later, a text popped up from an unknown number: Hey Y/N! Not sure if this is still your number or if you still have mine, but it’s Harry :) I just moved to your city and was wondering if we could get together! It would be great to see you.
Thus began the tradition of Harry and Y/N’s semiannual meetups. 
It was an unsaid routine they followed — every six months or so, one of them would text the other for drinks or coffee or lunch. They only ever met up in public and they didn’t talk much outside of their scheduled hangouts, though Harry was much more prone to messaging her stupid memes and, on occasion, a picture of his dog, a husky named Fish. 
Much to Y/N’s dismay, the chemistry between her and Harry was still very much there. It had been apparent from their first meetup last February. It was difficult not to flirt, especially when he brought up their past (she would happily pretend none of it ever happened if it meant Harry Styles never made her blush ever again). The thing is, though, is it was fine as long as nothing ever came of it. 
Until now. 
Because as Y/N sits across from Harry in the worn booth of a dive bar a block away from her apartment, she can’t believe she’s seriously considering letting him back in her bed.
“Can you just tell me what you think the problem is?” Harry asks. He slides his elbow onto the table and presses his knuckles up against his cheek, like they’re best friends giggling over some silly gossip. It makes Y/N want to elbow him in the ribs.
“It’s a biological issue,” she mutters, “Like I said, nothing you could fix. Even if I wanted you to.”
“Just spit it out, blossom.”
She narrows her eyes, though she finds it difficult to ignore the way her stomach flips at the familiar nickname. “You’re not allowed to call me that anymore.”
“Tell me what the issue is and I won’t call you that,” he replies easily. “C’mon, it’s me. Remember all the times I helped you pee when you were too drunk to sit up straight? We’ve definitely seen each other in more embarrassing situations before.”
Y/N sighs loudly. He has a point — there was a time where Harry knew her better than anyone else in the world. And frankly, she hasn’t talked to anyone about her problem. 
Scooching her body forward, she attempts to close most of the gap between them. Harry leans closer and she rolls her eyes. To an outsider's perspective, they probably looked like they were performing some kind of sketchy drug deal or like little girls swapping secrets at a slumber party.
“Remember how I struggled with, um… getting pretty sad?”
Harry’s eyebrows draw together and he nods. 
“Right, so it got… worse when I moved here. And I needed to find help, so I started seeing a psychiatrist who put me on antidepressants. They’ve helped a ton — I feel better, and the depression that I do feel is a lot less intense.”
“That’s great, Y/N,” he says, and she can tell he means it by the genuine tone to his voice. “What does that have to do with you not orgasming, though?”
She swallows tightly. “Well, my doctor increased my medication over the winter, and one of the side effects is…y’know. Decreased libido and whatnot.”
His eyes widen. “Oh, shit.”
“Yeah,” she snorts, leaning back against the cracked leather of the seat. “Oh, shit.”
“And you’ve tried vibrators and stuff?”
“Of course I have, I’m not an idiot.”
“So how long has it been?”
She nibbles on her bottom lip as she thinks. Even with flings that she’s had over the past few months, they all gave up at a certain point. The sex was still fun, but she was just the only one who wasn’t coming.
“Well, I can give them to myself if I… work at it,” she mumbles, folding her hands in her lap. “But with a partner? Probably… six months.”
“Six months?!”
The look on Harry’s face is dramatic and theatrical, as if she just told him she was moving halfway across the world and participating in some kind of 90 Day Fiance situation. 
“Shut. Up.” she says through grit teeth, sending him a harsh look. “I don’t need a reminder of how shitty it is.”
“Who the hell are you letting in your bed?” he demands sharply. 
“It can take me an hour, Harry, I don’t expect every person I sleep with to be that patient.”
“They should be, Y/N.”
With a shake of her head, she glances down at her phone on the table. Everything has always seemed so simple for Harry — he’s one of those people where things just come easily for him, no pun intended. A part of her wishes they never delved into the subject matter. Vulnerability somehow always bit her in the ass and this instance was no exception. 
“I’m gonna get going,” she says, pushing her empty glass to the center of the table. “Thank you for the drink, H. It was good to see you.”
His eyes soften as she begins to scooch her way out of the booth. Quickly, he throws a few bills down on the table and gets up to follow her. 
“Can I walk you out, please?” he asks, swallowing as his stomach brims with nerves. She nods, though he’s unsure if it’s a reluctant response. Silently, they leave the bar together, and he nibbles on his bottom lip as she pushes the front door open. The spring air is a welcomed breeze from the sticky interior of the establishment, and she shifts on her feet as she turns around to face him. She parts her lips as if she’s readying herself to bid him a final goodbye, but he beats her to it. 
“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” he says as he stuffs his hands in the pockets of his trousers. “I just meant— like, you deserve better, is all. Someone who will be patient and care to learn your body.”
Y/N nods slowly. “Right. And you’re that person.”
Her tone teeters on mocking and it sends a harsh hit straight to Harry’s chest. He shrugs.
“If you wanted me to be.”
She doesn’t reply to that, but she doesn’t make a move to leave, either. 
“I’ll think about it,” she finally says, and Harry’s eyebrows shoot up in shock. “My hand cramps up when I’ve been at it for too long. Maybe it’ll be nice to have someone else try.”
He huffs out a breathy laugh. “Just let me know and I’m there.”
. . .
A few days later, when Harry is at a friend’s house, he receives a text from Y/N: Are you free right now?
In all honesty, he’s surprised that she’s — assumingly — taking him up on his offer. Y/N remains to be one of the most stubborn people he’s ever known (one time she spent an entire week trying to put together a desk she’d purchased before asking anyone for help. The only reason why Harry was able to do it for her is because she’d called him over for a “destress fuck” and he finished it while she slept). 
He swipes down on her message, his other hand occupied by some shitty IPA Lizzy’s new boyfriend had bought. He keeps asking Harry if he likes it and he has to lie about tasting the hints of citrus, even though it tastes like every other crappy beer he’s consumed. 
At a friend’s house, he quickly types back, Why? Is your hand cramping?
He can basically feel her rolling her eyes as he bites back a smile, watching as the three dots appear to signal her impending response. 
Yes. I was wondering if you wanted to come over.
He’s unsurprised by the casual invitation on a Friday night at 9:40 p.m. (it seems that, as far as hookups go, Y/N hasn’t changed much since college). Nibbling on his bottom lip, he uses his free hand to type a response. 
I’m sorry, I would if I could. I’m trapped at this “apartment-warming” party for my friend. Apparently people host housewarmings even if they’re just renting a new place.
Y/N immediately types back: As much as I’d love to debate that with you, I’m really just looking for an orgasm. So if you’re busy, I’ll go back to buzzing at my numb clit.
Harry snorts at that before placing his beer on a coaster and excusing himself to the bathroom. Once he’s locked the door, he’s quick to pull up Y/N’s contact and press the pad of his thumb to her number. 
“Hello?”
She sounds confused and frustrated when she answers and Harry smirks at that.
“Hey,” he greets, leaning back against the white porcelain sink. “I’m calling about your orgasm.”
“You’re seriously not trying to have phone sex with me right now.” 
Her tone is as deadpan as it gets, and the monotone nature is enough to make a small bit of insecurity crawl into Harry’s stomach. 
“Well, I was planning on talking you through it. ‘S not really phone sex if only one person’s getting off, I think.”
She lets out a noisy sigh and there’s some rustling on the other side. He waits for her response and is surprised when she agrees. 
“Fine,” she huffs, and he can envision the way her eyebrow raises just slightly when she’s decided to give into something, “Let’s give it a try. Porn is getting boring anyway.”
“What were you watching?”
“Well, when you’ve been trying to come for 40 minutes, you end up in some… odd places,” she says. “I started out with lesbian porn, then found my way into threesomes, and somehow I ended up at double penetration.”
“Ah,” Harry nods, “Sounds like you’re having some sort of craving for group sex, then?” 
A pause. And then: “I guess. I’ve never tried it, I just think it’s hot.”
“What’s hot about it for you?”
He thinks he hears her swallow, but he can’t be completely sure. 
“I just like the idea of pleasing more than one person. I think that’s how I got to double penetration stuff.”
“Oh, I see. You want to be used.”
It’s blunt and it’s to the point, but he’s not wrong — he knows he’s not, because he slept with her for six months straight.
“I guess,” she replies non-committedly, “I guess it’s like… a fantasy of getting two people off and them feeling that way because of me. Through oral or… being inside of me, or whatever.”
“So what’s your threesome fantasy, then?” Harry pushes, though his tone teeters are near carelessness at this point, “Girl/boy? Boy/boy? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Who do you want to be between?”
Y/N exhales shakily, “I’ve never thought about it.” 
“Well, now you are.”
She doesn’t immediately reply, but he knows she responds well to the calloused persona he suddenly obtains. She’s always been this way — submissive and good, always looking to please him intimately. It’s too easy for him to put the pieces together and solve the puzzle.
“I guess I like the idea of being with two guys, but it doesn’t matter much to me.” she eventually decides.
“Okay. And in your deepest fantasies, what are these two men doing to you?”
Another pause, though he thinks he hears a shuttered sigh on the line. He doesn’t mention it — not yet at least.
“Maybe… maybe one’s inside of me and the other one’s in my mouth.”
“And how is he fucking you? Is he on top of you, missionary style, or are you on your hands and knees while he fucks you from behind?”
A breathy whimper departs Y/N’s lips and this time it’s loud enough for both of them to hear. He smirks at the sound of it. 
“I like the idea of him behind me. A-and the other one fucking my mouth.”
Harry hums, almost as if he’s praising her. “Close your eyes and envision it, then. Think about how you’re letting two men take advantage of you and use your body, just so they can get off. One’s fucking into you from behind, spanking your ass and grabbing your hips like you’re just some kind of toy to him. And the other one is thrusting deep into your mouth, making you choke, getting you all drooly for him. You’re nothing but a set of holes for them, honey. Isn’t that sweet?”
On the other line, all Harry hears is a series of shattered moans and low curses. Even though it’s been years, he can imagine the way her muscles are all tensed up, her pussy clenching around a dildo or her fingers. He wishes he would’ve asked so he could envision it, too.
“I-I think I’m gonna cum,” she whimpers out, and Harry palms himself through his trousers at the sound of her high-pitched mewls. 
“There you go, blossom. Atta girl, just let go. ‘S easy, let it go for me,” his voice is a near coo and it makes Y/N’s eyes roll back into her skull. It’s like he knows how easy it is for her brain to ping pong to other far less sexier thoughts — like the dirty plates in the dishwasher or the unfolded laundry in the corner of her bedroom — so he continues crooning through the receiver, his low, soft voice guiding her through every bump and ridge of her impending orgasm. 
When she comes, she comes hard, considering it’s been a solid two weeks since she’s been able to give herself an orgasm. It shoots through her entire body and, even with her eyes shut tight, the fantasy she created still plays through her brain — except now, it’s not two mystery men. Now, it’s just Harry fucking into her, all tan muscles and sweat pearling at his hairline. 
She’s boneless and exhausted when she finishes, her throat dry from the involuntary moans she let go. She only remembers she’s still on the phone with Harry when she hears him clear his throat, followed by a call of her name. 
“Hey, sorry,” she mumbles as her cheeks flush a deep red hue, “T-that was good. Thank you.”
“Yeah? You finished?”
If she had more energy, she would roll her eyes. Of course she finished. The entire neighborhood knows she finished.
“Yeah.” she mutters shortly. “Have a good time at your apartment-warming party.”
Harry huffs a laugh, “Yeah, ‘cos that’s what I’ll be thinking about for the rest of the night.”
She doesn’t have a chance to ask him what he means before he’s bidding her goodbye: “Let me know when you wanna do this again. I’m around this weekend.”
1K notes · View notes
altruisticalastor · 3 months
Text
↳˗ˏˋAlastor x Readerˊˎ˗ ↴
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☒ Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five Part Six
☒ Summary: Your heart felt full as Alastor continued his lead. You both danced to the melodic sounds, relishing in the shared embrace. That night was one that you cherished for months to come. But on the contrary, your blossoming relationship with Alastor solidified the beginning of the end. 
☒ Warnings: fem!reader, she/her pronouns used, prequel to the first two parts, alastor and reader are human in this part, 1930's period typical misogyny (NOT from alastor), fluff, falling in love, obsessive!alastor, reader is in hell for a reason, murder, gunshot wound, major character death, one suggestive scene involving finger sucking *giggles*, domestic!alastor, reader and alastor being an absloute power couple, blood, alcohol consumption, dancing
☒ Word Count: 6,276
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You often dreamt of trading places with your dear old friend, Elaine. She had it all; money, family, respect.
You, on the other hand, had none of those things.
When your parents left without notice on your eleventh birthday— you ended up homeless in a matter of weeks. Elaine’s family took you in out of pity, and they made it very known throughout your childhood that they only cared for you to make themselves out to be saints. It didn't take a fool to see that they treated their own flesh and blood better than the rubble they picked up off the streets.
Elaine was often condescending toward you, but you put up with the brunt of it. It's not like you had any other choice- and when her father offered you a typist gig at his local radio broadcasting studio- you had no other option but to accept.
Your treatment from others at the studio was no better than the one you received at home. 
If you could even call that loveless place a home.
The broadcasting biz was male-dominated, as most jobs were in your day. So, of course your counterparts looked down upon you as a woman. You were less than to them, and the constant berating about how you should be wed by now with kids to dote on ticked you off even further.
That was not on the itinerary for you. 
The plan was to save enough of the slim earnings you made being a typist to run far away from this place. To be free of these people, from this town. You dreamt about how lovely it would be not to bite your tongue and endure all the nasty things people spat at you just to have a roof over your head.
Soon, just a little bit longer. 
Grin and bear it. Don't let them know what you hide behind the façade.
"My, my! What a lovely smile!" A smooth voice pulled you from your stupor. You flinched back from your desk as the man standing before you ducked low- extending his hand.
"What's your name, little darling? I'm Alastor! It's a pleasure to be meeting you, quite a pleasure!" You took the man's hand, shaking it slowly sharing your name, and offering the same pleasantries, before peering up to get a good look at this Alastor fellow.
Based on first impressions, you thought he was a well-put-together fellow. His crimson vest hugged his slender frame well, you noted. His white dress shirt underneath contrasted beautifully with the seamless leather gloves adorning his large hands. The black bowtie was simply the cherry on top of his polished look. His features were handsome, and that darling smile of his caused your face to grow hot. His chestnut eyes peered at you behind his round-framed glasses, gazing at you as if you hung the stars in the night sky. 
You had never been captivated by a man until this very instant. You always believed romance was a waste of time. But now... you weren't feeling as opposed.
"Say, what brings a fella like you to a place like this?" You stood from your seat as his hand released yours. His gloved fingertips lingered on your palm for a moment- but it was long enough for you to notice.
"Why a job, of course! You're looking at the new host of the biggest radio broadcast in all of Louisiana!" Alastor's grin widened as he puffed out his chest proudly, bringing his hands up to straighten out his bowtie.
"Oh, my! Congratulations, Mister. I look forward to working with you." Your voice was as lively as ever, putting in your best effort to come off as friendly. Alastor's deep chestnut eyes studied yours. It was almost intimidating. 
Almost.
"Just call me Alastor, my dear! A beauty such as yourself is more than qualified to be on a first-name basis with me." His flirtatious nature had your heart rate accelerating at an alarming gait. Plus, the wink he shot your way to emphasize his statement only added fuel to the fire.
You were at a loss for words, simply nodding in agreement at his terms. Your gaze averted from Alastor's as you rubbed at your arm nervously. You had never been this flustered before. It was... uncharacteristically exciting for you. "Excuse my fowardness darling, but would you allow me to take you dancing tonight? It is a cause for celebration, after all!"
His offer left you stammering as you clutched your arm tightly, your sweaty palm bleeding through your vermilion dress sleeve. "Are you positive you want to celebrate with a woman you only just met?" You chuckled nervously, meeting his gaze once more.
"It would be my pleasure, little darling." You swore your heart skipped a beat as those words left his lips. Alastor was an enigma of a man, and he left you needing to know more about him. "If you insist! I'm flattered, truly."
Alastor chuckled lowly at your words as he took ahold of your hand once more. This time, he turned your palm downward before pulling the back of your hand up to his lips. Alastor's eyes bored into yours as he placed a chaste kiss atop your knuckles. His lips lingered on your skin for a few beats longer until he inevitability abjured from you.
"Lovely! I'll be waiting in the lobby once the workload is finished for the day. Meet me there?" You could only nod in agreement as your heartbeat resounded in your ears. Alastor bid you farewell, leaving you alone with your thoughts.
He just asked you on a date- didn't he? 
Shit, shit- shit! A relationship was not on your to-do list.
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The workday trickled on slowly. You were beside yourself— too focused on your plans with Alastor tonight.
Was your dress formal enough? It’s not like you could go home and change now— and you didn’t have the proper heels on. The pair that you usually switched into before you went dancing.
It would be fine— why were you even stressing over the little details?
More importantly… what were Alastor’s intentions with this— date?
You mulled it over the whole trip to the lobby of your workplace. You felt your nerves prickle your skin when your eyes met Alastor’s. 
He was already waiting patiently for you near the exit. Alastor had a blazer on now, you noted— and he was smiling wider than ever. “Ah, there you are! Ready to head out, dear?”
Alastor’s voice was equivalent to a smooth amaretto. Silky and delightful, with a little bit of an edge to it. Your mouth felt like it was full of cotton from the nerves— and all you could muster was a quick nod.
“Wonderful! We better get going while the night is still young— ha!” Alastor opened the door, tilting his head; gesturing toward the exit. You got the hint, wobbly legs guiding you out of the building and to the dimly lit street.
You knew a speakeasy just up the other street, so you figured that was the spot Alastor intended on taking you. As your feet led you in the direction of the bar, Alastor let out an amused hum. “My, my… am I correct to assume you know your way around these parts of town?” You giggled nervously, as you felt Alastor’s arm brush up against yours as he walked beside you.
“You’re spot on. I’ve lived here all my life, and for a brief period, I was living on these streets.” Your voice was quiet as those words left your lips. Perhaps you should have kept that detail to yourself. You kept your eyes forward as you walked along the sidewalk. But you could feel Alastor’s eyes on you— without peeking over.
“Might I ask why, darling?” You swallowed harshly, not expecting a follow-up question. You secretly hoped Alastor would have skirted past that little detail about your past. “Ah well, my parents moved out of town on my eleventh birthday. I think they forgot what day it was, truthfully. They were too hopped up on pills and booze,” You laughed bitterly at the memory before continuing. “My parents owed the bank a lot of money, you see, so the first thing those brokers collected was the house I still lived in at the time.”
You shook your head in disbelief, scoffing as you continued the recollection of your youth. “Those money-hungry sharks didn’t even give me a month to collect my things or find somewhere to shack up. When the cops arrived, I told them I’d be staying with a relative— but that was a bold-faced lie!” The speakeasy was in your sights, so you tried to get to the end of this pitiful little tail. “Long story short— I lived on the streets for a couple of weeks until my friend’s parents took me in.”
Alastor swiftly opened the bar door for you, gesturing you in. You were met by the smooth sound of jazz the moment you stepped foot in the joint. The smell of cigarettes and liquor saturated the space. Alastor interlocked your arm with his as he led you to a nearby table. You felt heat rush to your face from the unexpected touch. “I’m truly sorry you had to experience such hardships at such a young age, my dear. That must have been very difficult for you to process.” Alastor’s voice was soft as he offered his sympathy. He pulled the wooden chair out, allowing you to sit comfortably. Alastor gently pushed your seat in before taking his across from you.
“Thanks for saying so. You’re the first person to actually consider my feelings.” You chuckled, raising your hand and gesturing your fingers in a come hither motion to grab the waiter's attention. “What ever do you mean?” Alastor propped his elbows on the table, cupping his face with his hands as he leaned forward. His eyes swirled with curiosity. Alastor was genuinely curious to know you better— your heart skipped a beat from the notion.
“Well— most people just praise Elaine— that’s my friend… if you could even call her that— anyway, as I was saying! Most folks boast about how heavenly Elaine’s parents are for taking in a poor old nobody like me.” The waitress knew you well, so he kindly placed your usual atop the creaky table. One for you and one for your date. You offered the fellow a warm thanks before taking a sip.
“Praise? Those folks did the bare minimum! Tell me more about your friendship with Elaine, hm?” Alastor didn’t bother downing the liquor just yet. He was too enthralled by you and your musings. You felt nervous under his curious eyes— so you took another sip of the saccharine quencher before continuing. “You sure—? I feel like I’ve been talking an awful lot, and where are my manners? I haven’t asked you a single thing!” You shook your head in disbelief, feeling embarrassed with yourself for your rude display.
Alastor’s gloved fingers wrapped around your hand in the blink of an eye. Your eyes flickered down to where the two of you were now connected before his voice tore your gaze back to his face. “Nonsense, my dearest! Please, I insist. I’d be delighted to know more about you.” His words were so earnest, and he spoke with much confidence. All you could focus on was the feeling of his gloved fingertips caressing the back of your palm and the echo of your heartbeat resounding in your ears.
“Alright— if you insist… but if I ramble too much, just tell me to shut it, will ya?” You downed the last of your drink as a laugh escaped Alastor. “I would never silence you, darling. Don’t ever allow a single soul to treat you that way for that matter, understood? Now, carry on!” You felt your blood pressure spike from his kindness, and your hand twitched under his grasp from the giddiness you felt before you continued on. “U-Understood. Anyway, um, Elaine is an old-school buddy of mine. But we grew apart the older we got… so, by the time we reached junior high, she practically hated my guts!” You laughed at the recollection as the alcohol buzz began to kick in.
“Elaine would make up nasty rumors about me and then deny the fact that she did. Any other friend I tried to make, Elaine would somehow do or say something to make them dislike me. I couldn’t do anything about it— I had to play nice because of the living conditions. I still do!” Alastor’s eyes never left yours, and neither did his hand. He continued to rub the back of your palm soothingly as you rambled on.
“Even my job at the radio station… it wasn’t my choice. But Elaine’s father owns the company, so he offered me the typist position. Not like it was really an offer, though— I had no choice but to accept the opportunity. Otherwise, I would have been ungrateful. Christ, I really hate those folks… they look at me as if I’m—“
“—Scum?” Alastor chimed in. His voice was low as he leaned in closer. Your head was a bit fuzzy from the alcohol as you felt his breath fan across your cheeks. “Yeah… like scum.” You felt his hand tighten around yours. His smile was smaller than before, a bit more rigid, for that matter. 
“I knew you and I were the same. The moment laid eyes on you, I knew,” Alastor paused, bringing his free hand up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind your ear.
“You see, I was treated that same way my entire life, my dear. Until I decided I was quite the opposite of what those disrespectful wretches deemed me as.” His hand lingered by your face, daring to cup your cheek. 
Alastor's breath had a hint of coffee and spice to it— you noted— as his face inched even closer to yours. “And you are too, my dear. Those fools don’t hold a candle to your magnificence.” Your body felt light, and all you could focus on was Alastor’s chestnut eyes— every breath you took fogged up his glasses a little.
“You really think so?” You muttered, a lazy grin stretching across your face as Alastor finally allowed his gloved palm to rest against your cheek. 
"I know so, my sweet girl.” He caressed your burning face with much tenderness. Your heart was beating a mile a minute, and your thoughts were all out of sorts as you tried to articulate a proper sentence in your drunken stupor. 
“What did you mean before when you said— that you and I are one and the same?”
Alastor let out a soft chuckle, causing your eyes to flutter shut for a moment. He leaned over the table, invading your personal space. Dipping his face low— lips lingering next to your ear. “You use your smile as a tool. Hiding how you truly feel behind that pretty little mask of yours.” Your breath hitched from his words— was it that obvious? Could everyone tell that your welcoming smile was nothing but a lie? Before you could spiral further— and as if Alastor could sense your worries— he eased your mind with his words. “Worry not, my dear. Only I can see through your façade. One should recognize themselves when looking into a mirror, yes?”
Alastor slowly pulled his head back. Allowing his face to come into your line of sight. “So you… and I… are alike in that way, huh?” You mumbled out, letting an airy chuckle escape you. Alastor squeezed your hand once more before he leaned back in his chair. You watched as the man sitting before you picked up his untouched glass of liquor. He downed his drink in the blink of an eye slamming his glass against the table before standing up from his seat.
“I take pride in keeping my promises, and I have intention to dance with you tonight, my dear. So, shall we?” Alastor outstretched his hands toward you, his toothy grin cascading across his features. You took hold of him without hesitation, giggling youthfully when he pulled you to your feet with ease. “I’d be delighted!” Alastor wasted no time pulling you to the open floor. The music was as vibrant as ever now that you were closer to the live band. The vibrations of the music reverberated through your sternum; as did the butterflies when you felt Alastor’s large palm drape around the small of your back.
His other hand took ahold of yours, and instinctively, you placed your other palm flat against his shoulder. Alastor began leading you to the melody of the song. Your cheeks hurt from how wide your grin was. You couldn’t remember the last time you smiled and meant it before tonight— all thanks to this mysterious man you met today. “Alastor, I know we only just met, but I feel like I’ve known you all my life!” You shouted loud enough for only Alastor to hear beyond the music. His chestnut eyes swirled with an emotion you couldn’t quite put your finger on as his eyebrows lifted in shock.
“You took the words right out of my mouth, my dearest! The moment I saw you, I knew you would be truly magnificent.” Alastor dipped you low, his grasp on you tightening to support you. He was slow when he dragged your upper half back up, allowing your chest to slot against his own. 
“Well, did I meet your expectations?” You joked. Alastor ducked his head low, allowing his face to invade your personal space. This time, his nose brushed against yours, lips mere centimeters from colliding. 
“You exceeded them.” Alastor’s voice was quiet, but you heard him. Loud and clear. 
This moment felt too good to be true, and the longer you gazed into his captivating eyes, the more lost you became in Alastor. Your lips trembled in anticipation— and your hand at his shoulder clenched and unclenched— a small habit to help ease the nerves. 
“Would it be foolish of me to say that I… feel like I’m falling for you.” Your voice was barely above a whisper as you searched for any displeasure that dared to cross his face from your confession— but you found none.
“And if I admitted to reciprocating those feelings… would that make me outlandish as well?” Alastor’s hand released yours, now opting to slide up between your bodies to cup your chin beneath his gloved fingertips. He tilted your head up just a touch more. 
Alastor finally closed the gap between your lips and his. Your eyes widened in shock from the chaste kiss he gave you. You caught Alastor’s intense stare on you while he pressed further into you before your eyelids fluttered shut. The grip you had on his shoulder tightened as his lips danced along yours. They were warm and cracked slightly from his incessant smiling. But you didn’t mind it one bit. He tasted of your favorite liquor and conviction. 
Your mind went fuzzy from the mix of alcohol running through your bloodstream and the feeling of sharing your very first kiss with a man you met only earlier today.
It’s strange. Even though you only crossed paths with Alastor this morning— he was the first person in your life to ever see you; the real you. The woman you kept hidden behind a plethora of masks and musings. You prided yourself on your foolproof façade, so when Alastor just waltzed past your guarded walls, it threw you for a loop. But this change of pace was the best thing that could have ever happened to you. For the first time in your life, you felt a sense of control over your own life— over your own freedom. Alastor believed in you, so why shouldn’t you believe in yourself?
Alastor parted his lips from yours slowly, savoring the moment with you for as long as he could. Your eyelids peeled open, taking in Alastor's pleased countenance. "Oh, my darling. There's no way I'm letting you out of my sight now."
Your heart felt full as Alastor continued his lead. You both danced to the melodic sounds, relishing in the shared embrace. That night was one that you cherished for months to come. But on the contrary, your blossoming relationship with Alastor solidified the beginning of the end. 
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You could hardly stay away from Alastor after your first date. It was as if a magnetic force was pulling you to him. He walked you home from the radio station each night and met you at your doorstep each morning. He even told you one time that he memorized absloutely every part of your day so you could always have time for each other. It was the little things that made you fall even harder for him. Alastor would leave a bouquet of roses atop your desk every Friday when you took your lunch break so that when you arrived back, you would be pleasantly surprised by his gesture.
Alastor was a proper gentleman, and his kindness and care toward you almost made you forget about the rotten things in your life— almost.
Elaine grew jealous of your new beau. She noticed you were livelier than ever, and that just wouldn't cut it. Misery loves company, after all.
She had her father triple your workload, forcing you to stay after hours. It took a toll on you and made it harder to keep time for Alastor. 
But that wasn’t all— your room would be trashed by the time you came home. And somehow, your very few belongings started going missing. 
The last of your patience went out the window when you noticed the locket Alastor gifted you for your one-month anniversary was nowhere to be found. 
It didn’t take a genius to realize Elaine was behind your sudden stroke of bad luck. You put up with the torment all your life, but not anymore. You were at your wits end with Elaine and her arrogant family. 
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“Christ, I hate that wicked woman!” You groaned in frustration as you barged into Alastor’s apartment. The lanky man whipped his head in your direction from where he sat at the piano. His fingers stilled against the keys, ending his song with a dull note. “What did she do this time, my dear?” You stormed over to him before slotting yourself beside Alastor on the piano bench. 
“The locket you gave me for our one-month anniversary is missing! She stole it— I just know it!” You gritted through bared teeth. Alastor wrapped an arm around your shoulder, hugging you close to his side as he cooed at you. “You know, the offer to move in with me still stands.” His voice was gentle as he placed a kiss atop your head. His large palm smoothed over your arm; in an attempt to ease your nerves. 
Heat rose to your face from the mention of his proposition. Sure, you thought about it countlessly. But you and Alastor were only approaching that six-month mark of your flourishing relationship. You always believed in the notion of waiting to live with a partner until after marriage. That’s what you conveyed Alastor. “You know we can’t… unless you are willing to get hitched tomorrow,” You joked, turning your head slightly to peer up at him. 
“Darling, you know I would marry you in a heartbeat. But one of us is not ready for marriage quite yet!” He quipped, dipping low and nuzzling his nose into yours. Your heart did a flip from his unyielding confession. 
You knew Alastor would do anything for you at this point— this man was like no other. He worshipped the ground you walked on, yet you still were on the fence about marriage. You still had your personal goals you wanted to achieve before tying the knot, and Alastor respected your wishes. But you knew deep down he was aching to put a ring on your finger and claim you as his for good. 
“Hey— don’t tease! I just… It’s becoming harder to put up with their nonsense. I wish they would all disappear! Elaine, her father, and her mother.” You let out a long sigh as your body slumped forward. You rested your head atop Alastor’s broad shoulder, smiling softly at his familiar scent. 
“Well, I could make that a reality for you, my sweet girl.” Alastor’s voice was low and dripping with mystery. You laughed at his cryptic utterance. “Yeah, by doing what? Throwing them in a ditch?” You joked, raising a brow as his hand halted against your arm. The air became thick with tension as the silence grew louder. 
“…Well yes, my dear! But the ditch part would be after all the fun.” You quickly turned to face him, your frantic eyes scanning his features for any semblance of falsehood. You found nothing of the sort. 
Alastor’s features were as relaxed as ever. As if he asked you something as mundane as 'what day was it?’
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Your voice was level as your eyes locked with his chestnut ones. You nervously anticipated his response. “Quite so! Have you noticed the lack of journalists around the radio station lately?" His question threw you for a loop. 
Now that you thought about it- yeah, there has been a lack of jerks around the office. The same fellows that undermined you just for existing. 
“Well now that you mention it— yeah, I have. What does that have to do with anything?” You tilted your head slightly, still not following where your boyfriend was going with this. Alastor’s grin sharpened as his eyes flickered to your lips. “My, dearest, you are too pure for your own good. It drives me crazy.” Alastor’s other hand drifted from the piano keys. His thumb and forefinger came up to grasp your chin. He pulled you in close as his eyes flickered back to yours. 
“Well, I took care of those nasty good-for-nothings! They are resting comfortably in a ditch deep within the preserve. So, no need to worry your pretty little head over it!” Your eyes widened from his confession— his even tone and frenzied stare proved that what he said was factual. 
“They had it coming! Speaking down to you in such a way. I could hardly stand it any longer, so I decided to take matters into my own hands.” Alastor sounded pleased with himself as he confessed to murder so casually. Your eyebrows rose in shock as he tugged you closer. Your lips ghosted over his. “You killed those men for my sake?” 
You could smell the whiskey on his breath from this proximity. Alastor’s hand— that rested on your arm— now found purchase around your waist. “Indeed, and I would do it again in a heartbeat for your sake.” You could sense his anticipation to kiss you at that moment. 
His love for you was suffocating in the best way possible. You didn’t know you were capable of drowning until you sank into his touch. “And I would take pleasure in ending Elaine and her parents’ lives. If it meant your precious mind would be at ease.” 
Your heart fluttered as you closed the gap. Your lips molded against his, moving in tandem. You turned your body toward him through your shared embrace, sliding a leg up and over the piano bench— now straddling the seat. Alastor’s grip on your waist tightened. His fingertips twitched with need as they danced further along your side. You reached out for him, desperately carding your hands through his chestnut locks. Alastor’s chest pressed tightly into yours as his lips moved against yours with a searing desire. You only dared to pull back when your lungs started burning. Alastor rested his forehead against yours as you shared the same air. 
“You really mean it?” You asked breathlessly, allowing your hands to cup his cheeks. 
“My dear, I would die for you,” Alastor paused, the pad of his thumb swiping across your bottom lip sensually. 
“I would lie for you,” His thumb pushed past your parted lips, and your tongue instinctively swirled around his deft digit. 
“I would happily follow you to hell if you asked me to.” You gave his finger a playful suck, reveling in the sight of Alastor’s deep blush. 
His chestnut gaze fixated on your mouth as you pulled off of his thumb with a wet pop. Alastor shuddered at your sultry display. His grip on your waist was firm. 
“Please, Alastor. I want to be a part of it this time. We will be unstoppable together.” 
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Alastor swore he fell in love with you a thousand times over the moment those words left your lips. You couldn’t be any more perfect for him. 
Alastor wanted to tell the whole world about the colors he saw in your eyes; the colors a man out of love could never recognize. He truthfully would have married you the first day you met. It was fixation at first sight. 
He was overjoyed to commit murder alongside you— one of the many memorable first times you would come to share. Alastor saw the pieces fall into place before his very eyes the moment he witnessed you take someone’s life. 
The frenzied stare you harbored; the blood spattering over your perfect face, decorating your smile in a picturesque way. Alastor swore meeting you was his life purpose, and assisting you on your first kill solidified that sentiment for him. 
Alastor could not suppress the urge to touch you at that moment. He pulled you close, taking the lead like many times before. You danced around the dead bodies, laughter filling the barren space as the record player skipped from the other room. 
He always knew red was your color. The first time you met, you were wearing a vermillion dress. But the deep crimson blood covering you from head to toe was your best look yet— he thought. 
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After you both hid the evidence and any proof of life— fabricating notes on Elaine and her parents' behalf to make it seem like they went abroad— you celebrated. 
Celebrated the past no longer having you in its clutches. 
Celebrated the freedom of never having to grin and bear it to survive; ever again. 
Celebrated the ever-growing love you held for Alastor— as he did you. 
Celebrated the new beginnings and the best that was yet to come. 
You saw life in a new light from that day forward, seizing each day with delight. 
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With Elaine’s father out of the picture, Alastor became the man in charge at the radio station. He had full creative freedom to take his radio show in any direction he pleased. If folks dared to disagree, Alastor would promptly take care of them. 
Business was booming for Alastor at the radio station, and you were finally out pursuing hobbies and careers that inspired you. 
Alastor ended up popping the question a couple of months later as things began to settle down for you both. It was romantic, really. His gesture was over the top and grand in the best way possible but still entirely authentic to Alastor. You finally felt ready to take the next step in your relationship. And so, you said yes. 
Alastor was over the moon when you agreed. You could have sworn you saw a single tear roll down his cheek— but he denies it vehemently. 
You didn’t have any friends or family, and neither did Alastor— with his mom having passed years prior, so you truthfully had no need for a grand ceremony. Alastor sorted out the date for you to be wed. The anticipation only elevated your excitement by the day. And when the date finally approached, you could hardly contain your joy. 
You took on the day like any other— you made breakfast, hung the laundry on the clotheslines, participated in your favorite pastimes, and met up with Alastor in the preserve to assist him in burying his most recent victim. 
You didn’t know the dead fellow, but you were sure Alastor had a fair reason for killing him. The man probably took the last jar of special spice from the store that Alastor used to recreate his mother’s jambalaya— and in that case, the prick had it coming. 
It was dusk. The sky was a mesmerizing red and orange ombré as you walked hand in hand through the woods with Alastor. Your free hand held a shovel, and his free hand gripped the ankle of the deceased man whom he dragged from behind along the rocky path. Now and then, the dead man’s clothing would cling to a stubborn stone, making Alastor halt in his stride. You would share a chuckle before he tugged the man free, continuing down the path with you by his side. 
You were so excited to get this over with, so you could head to the courthouse with your beloved Alastor. As you recited your vows in your head, you suddenly heard a loud boom before your hearing failed you entirely. Everything was motionless after that. 
Your mind scarcely processed what had happened until you turned to face Alastor. The sight before you had your stomach in knots. Your beloved was bleeding from his forehead, and as if you were in slow motion— your arms reached up to him as his legs buckled beneath him. You knew you were screaming by the burning sensation in your throat, but your ears were still ringing in a deafening manner. The last thing your conscious mind ever saw was the grim view of all light leaving Alastor’s eyes. 
Those same eyes that grounded you. That brought you purpose and offered you nothing but love and devotion.
All of that was gone in a split second.
After that, you felt a searing pain in your head before your vision went dark. 
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It was as if you were underwater. You felt lighter than air as you sunk deeper into uncharted waters. You could hear muffled voices and flashing lights shining from the surface— but it was all out of reach. You just sunk peacefully. Enjoying the enshrouding darkness. 
However, your peace was torn from you as quickly as it was obtained. 
“She’s a Jane Doe. Poor girl got caught in the crossfire. I bet she didn’t even know the guy she was walking with was a serial killer!” Your eyes burned from the bright lights and the nauseating white ceiling that took up your line of sight as the distant people continued to chatter. “I bet he tricked her into thinking he was a good guy— bet he led her out in those woods just so he could kill her like that poor fellow he was dragging out there!” 
The rhythmic beeping increased as all your focus shifted to the intense shooting pain coming from your head. “Oh— she’s awake! Miss, can you hear me?” You groaned softly as an older woman came into your line of sight. She was peering over you. You must have been lying down— you thought. 
“Loud and clear.” You mumbled, trying to sit up only to be pushed back down by the stranger. “Miss you can’t do that! You’re in the hospital. You suffered from a severe injury. Please, don’t make any sudden movements.” Her words took a moment to process through your semi-conscious mind. 
“What happened to me?” You managed to mutter as you closed your eyes. The intense lights were causing your head to ache even worse. “Miss, you were shot in the head. It was a hunting accident gone wrong,” The nurse paused, giving you a moment to digest her words before continuing. 
“Turns out the man you were out in those woods with was a wanted serial killer. That Alastor fellow was an active murderer for decades! The papers say he was good at steering clear of the cops for all these years. The hunter wasn’t even aiming for you both. His target was a nearby deer,” Your mind was struggling to piece things together as the nurse rambled along. 
“The bullet you took probably was the exact reason you’re still alive! Who knows what that maniac would have done to you? Which reminds me, do you remember your name, sweetheart? You didn’t have identification on your person. We asked around the area to see if anyone recognizes you, but we've had no luck with that.” 
You were surely dreaming, right? 
Everything this woman was saying sounded outlandish. How did you even end up in a situation like that, and more importantly— 
Wait… what is your name? 
“I… I don’t know. I can’t… remember a thing.” You shook your head, which only caused you more pain as your eyes shot open. You were still met by the sight of the noisy nurse, and the white hospital walls. 
Nope, not a dream.
The nurse looked at you with a horrified look. “Oh geez… the doctor said your injury could cause memory loss, but it was a slim chance. Let me go fetch him. This is way out of my pay grade.” The sound of her footsteps echoed through your head before they slowly dissipated. You gaped up at the blank wall. 
A clean slate, nothing to give the surface any character. 
Ironic. 
You had no clue who you were and no memories of your life before this accident. 
You were left with more questions than answers. 
The only thing you knew about yourself was that you were one of many Jane Doe's. 
Fuck.
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tags; @danveration @celestial-vomit @jyoongim @stygianoir @polytheatrix @mmik3yy @littlebullofblythe @cxrsedwxrlds @lillithhearts @nogiggleonlybitter @minniemumbles @chewbrry @lbcreations-blog @nonetheartist @call-me-nyxx @zombiesnips-blog @stawberrypimpsimp @wonderlandangelsposts @villxinmiixx @persephoneblck @maxlynn17 @littledolly2345 @karolinda007-blog @falling-endlessly @greekyoghurtwithberries @bladeismine @aloraaaxcrystalzx @doctorswife221b @scaramoochiie @fairyv-ice @chirikoheina @veroneverleft @tired-of-life-86 @saccharine-nectarine @c-thegingergirl @tsunaki @geminixbunny @softangxlicss @alleystore @sirens-and-moonflowers @fairyv-ice @honey132 @alastorsaries @zenix108 @michi-keinz
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zylev-blog · 3 months
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Ellie has gotten in trouble every day this week at school. She keeps fist fighting this rich kid, Damian Wayne. Danny is not thrilled with this, and genuinely has no idea why Damian makes Ellie’s blood boil the way it does. (Nobody knows that it’s the Lazarus out corruption reacting to Ellie’s ghost half.) all Danny knows is that Ellie keeps throwing hands, and he’s worried that Bruce Wayne might try to sue him if he doesn’t get his daughter under control. He wouldn’t ever financially recover from that, and he actually likes this dimension.
Bruce can’t get a clear answer to why Damian hates this girl. At first he thought it might be his son’s first teenage crush, but he genuinely didn’t know anymore.
The two dads sit down in a meeting with the school board. Both kids will be suspended, and if they continue to fight, both kids will be expelled. So Bruce and Danny take this matter into their own hands. Twice a week Damian will come to Danny’s two bedroom apartment to spend time with Ellie outside of class. Twice a week, Ellie will go over to Wayne Manor. The alternate three days of the week, the teens are free to do whatever they want.
The first month goes terribly. Danny’s apartment nearly gets burned down, and he is 100% sure that he will not get his security deposit back. On the other hand, the kids have plenty of room to run around Wayne manor, but that doesn’t stop the fire department from being called, and for Bruce to have to lay off his gardener when Damian and Ellie cut up the backyard with Damian’s “fake” swords.
By month two, things are faring better. Bruce and Danny decided to watch the kids together one day of the week, and they had gotten to talking. Turns out that Danny could see straight through Brucie’s persona, so Bruce didn’t have to pretend to be an airhead. The two dads become fast friends once Bruce is sure that Danny isn’t after his money.
By month three, things are improving. The two teens are still not friends, but they’ve moved on from trying to kill each other…most of the time. As the weather got warmer, they tended to play by the pool. After multiple drowning attempts, they had to ban the kids from the pool. Damian had also had his swords confiscated after he tried to maim Ellie with them.
Bruce suggests a camping trip on month four with another family called the Kents. Danny and Ellie agree, and the group hike deep into the mountains. To nobody’s suprise, Ellie and Damian encounter a bear. But before Damian could warn Clark or Bruce, Ellie had climbed on top of the bear and wrestled it to the ground, all while cackling madly.
By month five, Damian and Ellie had gotten closer and had finally become friends. They didn’t seek each others presence, but stopped their attempts to kill each other by that point. Jon had been hanging around the duo after the camping trip. Jon and Ellie were fast friends. Clark was delighted to have another dad friend who totally understood how destructive kids could be.
At month six, the trio were close friends. Damian and Ellie hadn’t fought in a few weeks, so all of the adults counted the situation as a success.
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textmel8r · 9 days
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[ SMAU + DRABBLE ] 𝐎𝐅𝐅𝐈𝐂𝐄 𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐒 ! ( sixth installment ) in which you are forced to plan a corporate event with your office enemy .
୨୧˚ part; one. two. three. four. five. six. seven. eight.
୨୧˚ incl; kento nanami
୨୧˚ cw; profanity , mentions of sex
୨୧˚ an; so sorry if anyone asked to be tagged recently and you didn’t get tagged!! tumblr is being screwy again and i can’t see any of my comments😭😭 also apology time from nanami woo hoo!!!
Nanami stole yet another glance at the expensive watch wrapping around his wrist. Your promptness was certainly an issue; how does she show up nearly thirty minutes late to a meeting she called?
And then he scoffs at himself, giving a little shake of the head. Meeting? There he goes again, speaking in corporate tongue.
But finally, you do show up. Bursting through the entrance of the quiet café, making an embarrassing show of noisiness with your heaving breaths and wheezes. Not that it had been much of a disturbance to anyone else—only two other patrons resided in the small establishment; one too engrossed in her book to care, and the other scrolling mindlessly through his cellphone with a pastry in his free hand. Even so, you bashfully clapped two hands together as you peeked around the room. “Sorry!”
The older woman behind the counter nods in appreciation. Nanami can’t help but exhale roughly through his nose in sort of an almost-chuckle. God, you were a mess, weren’t you?
“Sorry, I’m so late!” You approached the table he resumed, one near the front window like you’d asked for. Your heels clopping against the grainy tile, knee-length dress flowing like water around your legs. He stands, walking to the opposite side of the tiny, rectangular table and pulling out the chair for you.
“Impressively late,” Nanami derides, but it’s not full of any malice. Truth be told, he did have the patience of a saint when situations like these were called to question. He didn’t mind waiting, because despite your utter tardiness, he trusted that you'd show up eventually, rather than ditching him altogether and leaving him to sulk in the humiliation of being stood up over a cup of black coffee. You were scatterbrained at times, yes, but dependable? Always.
Nanami returns to his side of the table after pushing your seat in. It wasn't meant to come across as a romantic gesture; Nanami had made it a habit of serving the women in his life nothing but a respectful demeanor. Whether it be lovers, colleagues, friends, and anyone in between. Though admittedly, his behavior towards you these past couple of months has been anything but respectful. It’s too late to start making amends to things, but the least Nanami can do now is try.
You shudder. Flustered, maybe? “Y’didn’t have to do that,” you tell him, placing your phone and clutch bag onto the table.
Nonsense. “My mother would have my head if she knew I let a lady pull out her own seat.” While true—his mother, bless her heart, raised him to be the gentleman his is today—he also just… wanted to do it. It felt right to serve you a seat.
Your elbow slams rudely on the table, finger reaching across to wag in his face. “Sounds like a good woman!” You laugh, and Nanami gingerly swats your hand away. He’s about to say something, but you beat him to the next sentence. “Hey, what gives? I thought this was supposed to be a day of relaxation?”
He worms under the scrutinized glare you wave up and down from his face to neck to chest to abdomen, finally peeking under the table to gawk at his shoes. Nanami curls his toes, a feeble attempt to shrink away from the judgement casted in your eyes. “What? Stop looking at me like that.”
“You’re dressed in fancy-man clothes.” At that, he takes it upon himself to look down at his wear; an ironed dress shirt clung to his chest, tie resting flat and perfectly centered between his pectorals. His slacks were ashy grey and devoid of any wrinkles, cut and hemmed around his ankles just above those stiff, leather shoes snug on his feet. The matching suit jacket was slung neatly over the backrest of Nanami’s chair, sleeves tucked away into its pockets.
His least expensive suit, sure, but still far too pristine and tidy for a little coffee shop outing. "Is it so bad that I like to remain presentable?" Nanami offers the question while he busies his hands, plucking open the pearlescent buttons at his wrists and rolling back the sleeves off the off-white button down.
"Presentability and discomfort don't always go hand in hand, you know. I mean, look at me," your voice echoes the mocking tone of cockiness, clearly a joke but also not at the same time. With a gesture towards yourself, you beam and shimmy in the simple, breezy dress. It had a floral pattern, Nanami notices. "Cute, stylish, and comfortable."
He isn't jumping to disagree with that. "Sorry, all my sun dresses were in the wash." He surprises himself with the jest, but it has you splitting an unladylike snort, so he doesn't come to regret it.
The toe of a thick, wedged heel jabs into his sock-clad ankle. "You business men are all so sassy." Nanami glowers at the adjective chosen to describe him, but doesn't refute. You sigh. "It's fine, I guess. Nothing we can do about it now. Wear some sweats next time though, would you?"
Next time. There’d be a repeat of this?
“Sure.”
“Great.” Your toothy grin beams over your clutch purse, of which is now wrangled in your grabby hands. Rifling through its unorganized contents, dumping out tubes of chapstick, loose change, and sticks of gum onto the table before fishing out a wallet. “Right, I’m starved. Did you look over the menu any?”
Nanami looked it over five times during the wait, if not for anything other than something to pass time. “Not really. Tell me what you recommend.”
You bite. Rambling about the array of pastries and baked goods that have been worthy enough to be placed in the category of y/n’s favorites. Nanami soaks in your excited, leaning in ever so slightly with open ears a you passionately ramble about cake.
“I take it you come here often?”
The question has you nodding. “Like, all the time man. This is my spot, you should be so grateful that I’m not a gatekeeper.” You look back at the menu once more before verbally deciding: “I want pistachio cheesecake and peppermint tea.”
The man poorly stifles his chuckle, rising from his seat. "Alright then, stay here. I'll go order."
"Oh, okay thanks." You shove your wallet into the wall of Nanami's chest, "take my card with you."
He is bewildered that you would even think he'd let you pay for your own meal. "I've got it," Nanami tells you, gently pushing the leather thing back to you.
"Nanami, stop."
"Stop what?"
"Take my fucking wallet," you gnarr, and he thinks you look much like a soaked kitten in this state of agitation. "Don't make me slap you."
It's an unserious threat, but Nanami plays a long. He raises two thick, blonde eyebrows. "Jesus, okay, you win. Just please keep your hands to yourself.” He revels in your little smirk of satisfaction, snatching your wallet back before making his way to the front counter.
Nanami kindly asked for two slices of pistachio cheese cake and two drinks; for you, peppermint tea, and him a coffee, black. Of course, everything was charged to his card. You didn’t need to know that, though.
You scarfed your portion down with swiftness, slinging spoonfuls of chartreuse custard into your mouth with such savagery that Nanami feared you might choke. He was a much more serene sight, preferring to savor each bite between slow swigs of piping coffee. The dark roast complimented the nutty pistachio flavor stunningly. For such a nameless little eatery, the food was exquisite. He takes another calculated bite of cake.
“You like?” The question was garbled behind a mouthful, cheesecake clinging to your milky teeth as you smiled brightly. A childlike excitement radiated warmly off you, clouding across the table to heat him up, too. It was sweet how wired you were, hopeful that he’d, too, enjoy your choice of confection.
Nanami huffs, amused. “Swallow before you choke.” You make a show of swallowing, a big hearty gulp with your eyes squeezed shut. “And yes, I like it a lot. Your tastes are surprisingly refined.”
“Surprisingly?” You gape, offended.
Nanami wants to crack a quip, something referring to your sub-par taste in men, but this little get together was nice. Yeah, it was really nice, actually. So he refrained from ruining it like the asshole he’d been lately, and drowned the snide remark with another toss of coffee. “Sorry, sorry.”
The remainder of the evening was cushy; you both fell into easy conversation about the randomest of topics. Discussions that never breached corporate subject matter, and he was eternally grateful for that. You spoke in tangents, whistling appreciation for a new movie you caught recently, to describing a long list of bands you enjoy, to lamenting about the headache that your minty iced tea sprang upon you: “Ah, brainfreeze!” Nanami doesn’t add much to the conversation, but he is content to listen and provide little hums of encouragement to urge you to keep talking. His eyes, inquisitive honey-colored things, found your lips and stayed there. Despite the uncouth display in which you carry yourself ( Nanami had been itching to tell you to close your legs, what with the way you sit spread-thighed in your seat donning that dress. So careless and unabashed. If the cafe had been a little more crowded, had a little more men around, and he might’ve slipped his foot over the imaginary boundary line to your side underneath the table and nudged them shut himself ) there was an elegance in the way you spoke about topics of interest. Passion flourished from the little curve of your lips, teeth bared in a great smile because you really were just that happy. Nanami feels envious when he watches you.
“I’m shocked at how well this is going.” You grin cheekily, licking cream from the pad of your thumb. “Kind of makes me sad that we didn’t get off on the right foot, you know? I think we could've been good friends.”
“Is it too late for atonement?” Nanami bites back a frown. “I understand if you can never see me as anything other than an asshole. But I never got to formally apologize for my behavior these past few months, Y/n. And I’d like to, if you’ll let me.” Why was this humiliating? It was a seldom occurrence when Nanami was in the wrong, but he was never one to let his faults drift by unaddressed. You deserve an apology—a proper one, not over measly text messages. Still, he miscalculated how awkward this would be. 
You flail. “A formal apology? Nanami please, a simple ‘I’m sorry’ will work. It doesn’t have to be a whole thing, I’m mostly over it anyway.” But that was a lie and an obvious one, at that. You weren’t over it, he could see it in your eyes.
The blonde clears his throat and rubs his hands together mindlessly. “No, please. It’s long overdue, and if we’re going to be working in alliance, then you deserve to feel secure with me.” Though Nanami’s hands wrench restlessly, his gaze never detracts from yours. He bares his sincerity in the intense eye contact, offering a peek into his soul. Vulnerability. “I’ve been nothing but rude and ignorant and vulgar towards you, ever since…”
“That night.” You finish for him. “It really upset you, huh?” 
“Yeah, I guess it did.”
“Why? Do you have a revulsion to sex or something?”
“What? Wh—I—No, t-that’s not…” Nanami sputtered, his ears growing warm from your accusation. “I don’t… mind sex?”
You play with the dainty straw flouncing around your drink, seemingly oblivious to Nanami’s flummoxed reaction. “You seem to have a strong opinion of whores, though.”
He groans, embarrassed with himself, and drags a palm down his pallor face. “Who you choose to sleep with does not make you a whore. It never did, I was just being petty and grasping at straws for anything that would get a reaction out of you.” Nanami runs his tongue over the roof of his mouth, inwardly wishing that the mug of coffee before him would turn to water so he could cure the dryness that ached in his throat.
“Why go through the trouble?”
Nanami opens his mouth, then closes it. Then opens again, “I don’t know.”
A piss poor attempt at playing the fool. Surely there was a reason for his unabashed cruelty towards you, but what the fuck was it? “Well, when you figure it out, let me know?” To his utter surprise, your expression doesn’t hold an ounce of animosity; you’re smiling at him. Finding humor in any situation had to be your special talent. Nanami nods dumbly. “In the meantime, you’ll just have to start making it up to me. You were a dick, big time.”
“I know,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
“Hmmm,” you make a comical show of humming, touching your index to the point of your chin, and now Nanami knows you’re fucking with him. “Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm. I guess I can start the forgiving process if…” A pause for dramatic effect? The man raises his brows expectantly. “You and I make this,” you gesture between both bodies at the table, “a weekly thing.”
Nanami was expecting a punishment, but this suggestion was anything but. “I’ll need to take a look at my schedule first.”
“Listen, man, do what you gotta do. But I’m telling you, we are getting together at least once a weekend.” You scrub the corners of your lips with a napkin before crumpling it into a tight ball and discarding it on your empty plate. Nanami looks down at his own to see a healthy portion of his cake left. Wordlessly, he slides his plate across the table, and you accept the offering with open arms. “Oh shit, thanks! Like I was saying, this is fun, what we’re doing here. You’re having a good time, right?”
Sitting in a desolate coffee shop and listening to you prattle on has been the most fun he’s had in a devastatingly long time. “Yes, I am.”
“Good. You look fun-deprived.”
Fuck, I am. “I’m not.”
“Keep lying, I see through them all.” You scoop the last bite of Nanami’s cheesecake into your mouth, sighing with satisfaction and rubbing over your full tummy. “Anyway, I think hanging out would be good for us. Healthy, you know? Besides, I’ve been dying to know what off-duty Nanami looks like.”
He cracks a chuckle. “He’s nothing special.”
Your finger snaps in his face, invading his bubble of personal space, but this time he doesn’t shoo you off. “Another lie!”
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hier--soir · 4 months
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a lover's pinch | eight
joel miller x f!reader
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pairing: professor!joel miller x f!reader rating: explicit, 18+ mdni summary: the one where they get caught. warnings/tags: au, university professor joel, age gap [20 something years diff], ethically dubious relationship due to inherent power imbalance, domestic bliss, gratuitous descriptions of joel reading, joni mitchell, explicit unprotected piv sex, delayed gratification, dirty talk, finger sucking, biting, academic praise kink, cream pie, who's in the pic on joel's desk??, angst, confrontation, an orpheus and eurydice metaphor uh oh, those blue panties from 3 come back to haunt us. word count: 6.9k nice series masterlist | main masterlist chapter moodboard a/n: i need someone to make me write [or not write] the way j miller phd does in this... also sorry and i hope you like it and sorry again follow @hier--soirupdates if you'd like to be notified when i share my writing this is part eight of ALP. you can read the previous parts here: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
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Winter descends over Maine not with a bang, but with a whimper.  
The days and weeks fold together in a blurring mess of sleep ins and papers and coffees, until suddenly a month has passed, and you hardly noticed it slipping through your fingers.
You spend less time at home, and more tucked on one side of Joel’s couch, your feet in his lap as he lounges down the other end. You dip pale toast in runny yolks at the table, listening to him on the phone to Sarah in the other room. Hear him say I’m good, baby girl… I’m really good when she asks how he is.
You ride shotgun in the truck between his place and the university, slipping out the passenger door a little early every time. Walk the final stretch lest someone notice his glasses, your hair through the windscreen.
On campus you watch him up there on his stage, a burn in your chest, and see how he seeks you out in the after. How he props you above him and returns your gaze finally. Curls his body around yours and repents for every time he had to look away.
It's warm and it’s kind and it’s trading books with scribbled notes in the margins.
It’s rain smacking against the windows as you read, his scruffy chin nesting in the slope where your neck meets your shoulder, two sets of eyes staring at the same words.
It’s nodding off in his bed where the sheets have started to smell like your perfume, eyelids heavy as you wait for him to get home. It’s wearing only his clothes and being woken up by his face between your thighs, pupils blown and lips slick.  
It’s finding each other at the end of a long day and hearing him say, I thought about you all afternoon.
And this feeling of familiarity writhes between the slats of your ribs. A comfortable, quiet fondness that you see reflected in his eyes when he looks at you; that you hear when that tender mouth forms your name.
You gorge yourselves on it. Put lips to the crooks and thorns in each other’s bodies and suckle on that fondness, swallow, swallow, and watch the well never run dry.
The bleed is endless. Beneath the stain of time it floods and flurries, melting the two of you together until you start to feel certain it could never end.
Until, of course and at last, it does.
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Sunday.
It’s late, you think. Somewhere in the mess where time blurs between sunset and midnight, Winter stealing hours that feel like minutes.
The curtains in his living room are drawn, low yellow light warming the room from a tall lamp in the corner. Blue spins in the on the record player, a gentle sway of sound that fills the room.
I like listening to Joni on Sundays, he’d confessed in the bathroom, bashful as he rubbed a towel over you, drying the wet ends of your hair and the slick skin of your shoulders.
He reads at the table now, strong chin cupped in his palm as his eyes flit across the pages of a textbook.
Something to do with conservation; a Minoan palace in Knossos, you think. He’d explained it earnestly, but his curls were soft and fluffy from the shower and his glasses were resting on the tip of his nose and so you’d found yourself zoning out, eyes going from round to heart shaped as you nodded along from the couch.
Every few minutes he grips his pen and jots down a note before glancing up to check on you. And whenever this happens you avert your eyes quickly, pretending to be enthralled by the half-finished essay on your screen. You have a feeling he catches you each time, because he keeps laughing softly, tutting under his breath as he goes back to reading, foot never stopping its tap-tap-tap in time with the music. The only time he gets up is to flip the record, and soon those little laughs and huffs start to mix with Joni’s bell-like voice, and the opening lyrics to California swell through the room as you type at a glacial pace.   
She sings, I met a redneck on a Grecian isle, and you glance up again, eyes turning wide and doe-like when you find Joel already watching you. He gave me back my smile, Joni sings. But he kept my camera to sell.
“How’s the writing going?”
“Good.” Liar. “Great, even.” Bad liar.
Joel’s eyes narrow behind his glasses, lips twitching in a clear attempt to smother a laugh, but he just nods, looking back down at his book.
He’s wearing home clothes. That’s what he called them. Home clothes.
When he’d said it, still pulling them on, you’d wanted nothing more than to grip his hands and stop him in his tracks, but you’d sequestered yourself to the other side of the room instead, sorely committed to the study evening he’d suggested. But he’s in soft grey sweatpants and an even softer looking white t-shirt, and every time he sips his coffee he hums happily against the rim of his mug, and his bare foot goes tap-tap-tap and Joni sings Oh, will you take me as I am?, and—
“Come here.”
You blink. His eyebrows raise expectantly, lips split into a broad smile now.
“Unless you’d rather stay over there and keep starin’.”
You reach him as The Last Time I saw Richard, the final track on side two, begins to spin.
Joni sings, all romantics meet the same fate, and Joel’s knees fall apart, thighs splayed so handsomely across his chair, inviting you to take a seat. You ignore the woeful lyrics and focus instead on the knowing smirk on his face, taking a step forward, and another, until you’re stood between his open legs.
He doesn’t touch you. Just smiles, all saccharine and easy, leaning back in his chair.
“Much left to do?” He points at the laptop in your hands.
“Maybe another hundred words,” you grumble and put it down on the table. “Today, at least.”
Joel hums, eyes flicking down. His gaze skirts across the bare skin of your legs, the soft sleep shorts you’re wearing; ones he puts on you himself, and knows you don’t have anything beneath.
“Come here.” He pats his thigh; stops you with a soft tut when you try to straddle him. “Naw, baby, like this.”
Soft hands tilt your hips, turn you until your back is to his chest and he’s drawing you onto his lap.
“Oh.” You smile, leaning your head back onto his shoulder.
Nose turned into the side of his face, you brush a kiss to the edge of his jaw and sigh in relief as he wraps his arms around your middle and squeezes.
The space between his chest and the table is a little tight; small enough that if you were to lean forward a few inches your ribs would knock against the wood.
As if he’s thinking the same thing, Joel leans forward. Presses you against the table, one hand coming up to hold your face. His fingers are soft on your skin, offering small amounts of pressure as he grips your jaw and encourages you to look forward.
“Gonna tell me what’s on your mind?” he asks.
The hairs on the back of your neck stand up a little, skin prickling at the shift in his tone. Still soft, still quiet, yet with something… demanding, shifting just below the surface.
“You,” you say, cringing at the way your voice takes on a higher quality all of a sudden. Steeling yourself, you add, “You’re distracting me.”
“Wasn’t doing anythin’,” he responds simply. “Just sittin’ over here, minding my business while you burn holes in my head.” 
“You know what you’re doing.”
“I cooked dinner.” He squeezes you again. “Fed you. We showered, and now I’m readin’.”
“You were humming.”
Joel kisses the shell of your ear.
“And tapping.”
He flutters his fingers against your hip.
“S’that such a crime?” he murmurs.
“No, but…” You sigh when his tongue snakes out, tracing the soft curve of your earlobe. “But it…”
“But but but,” Joel mocks, and you can feel his sick smirk against your neck, teeth teasing along your carotid now. “But all you can think about is my cock, ain’t that right?”
Your stomach falls away. Everything firm inside you turns to goo as he laughs, knowing he’s right.
“So needy,” he taunts you, holding your hip tighter as his length begins to thicken against your ass. “Had all day to ask for it.”
You don’t respond, tongue tied and more uninterested in your essay than ever.
“Just lookin’ for a distraction now,” he teases lightly. “The more you put it off, the harder it’ll be to get it done, baby.”
“I know.”
“If you know.” He hooks a finger over the waistband of your shorts. “Then finish it.”
“S’not that simple,” you whine, rolling your hips over his lap. A sharp puff of air warms the back of your neck, so you do it again. His hand tightens around your jaw.
“Just a hundred words, right?” he coaxes gruffly. “Come on now, I’ll make it worth your while.”
You feel his thick cock beneath his sweats, stiff and pressing between the crease of your thighs, melting what’s left of your resolve. You want to grind down against it. To pull your soft sleep shorts to the side and let him sink inside with no more pretence. But you put your hands on the desk, eyes on the screen, and Joel slides his warm palms beneath the hem of your t-shirt. Floats them over the curve of your stomach, the soft flesh around your ribs, waking thousands of tiny hairs that cover your skin until his fingers meet your chest, and he cups your breasts.
You shiver, lids growing heavy as he squeezes and tickles at your skin. Your nipples harden to peaks against his rough palms, and he sighs at the feeling, face resting against the back of your neck as he plays.
“Fuck,” you sigh, voice a broken buzz in your throat as he pinches one of your nipples between his thumb and forefinger. “I thought you wanted me to write.”
“I do,” Joel murmurs unconvincingly. “A hundred words, go on.”
Hands like lead on the table, it feels like an impossible task. Even more than it did ten minutes ago. You force yourself to lift your fingers to the keyboard, vision sharpening as you look for where you left off. You try to shut him out, try to ignore the way his tongue warms the skin on your neck, the way the hairs on his thighs tickle against yours, and begin to write.
But he doesn’t make it easy.
The second you finish the first sentence one of his hands drifts down your stomach to cup your pussy over your shorts. You flinch, heart galloping in your chest when he sighs in your ear.
“Joel,” you whimper, pleading already. “I can’t if you…”
“You can,” he soothes. The warmth of his palm is suffocating, so hot against where you’re already wet and wanting. Thick fingers press against the fabric, nudging it between your slick folds until it goes damp. “Just ignore me, baby.”
“Easier said than done,” you reply. You type five more words, chest rattling with heavy breaths as he paws at you, thumbing at your clit through your shorts.
His breath is hot and heavy against your neck and his soft curls tickle your skin as you try to focus.
“Ignore me,” he repeats, and you squeak as he tilts you forward. A rush of breath spills from your mouth, chest flush to the desk, ass suspended above his lap as he shifts behind you. And when he pulls you back down, you sigh pathetically over the fact that he’s pushed his sweats down.
The full weight of his length presses against you, nestled between the rounded flesh of your ass, and you manage to mumble his name.
“Just—” You’re panting now; considering begging. “—I can do this later. I will finish it later, I swear, just—”
Joel nudges your shorts to the side and presses a finger between your folds. A ragged gasp stutters out of you, finger jammed against the keyboard. A steady stream of kkkkkkkkkkkkkkk fills a line of the document as he smears your wetness up to your clit.
“Fuck,” you mumble, hips tilting forward, trying to chase the feeling.
“None of that,” he tuts quickly, other hand slipping down and pinching the skin at the inside of your thigh. You’ve only backspaced half of the k’s when he slips two fingers inside you. “Come on, now.”
Thirty words fly as he crooks his fingers inside you. Slow and gentle, thumb rubbing messy circles against your clit as he works you open.
“That’s it,” he coos, pressing a third finger inside. Your cunt sucks desperately at his fingers, the skin of your face warming as you catch a glimpse of your reflection on the laptop screen. Jaw hanging low, a silent prayer for relief written across the open slant of your mouth. “My smart girl. Knew they didn’t give you that degree for nothin’.”
You gasp and swat at his wrist, but a satisfied little smile cracks your face for a moment when he laughs. Only for it to fall seconds later when he lays a sharp bite to the back of your shoulder. You moan, voice cracking around his name, rutting desperately against his hand.
“You can do it,” he flatters you, sickly sweet and entirely convincing as he strokes at your insides. Curling and stretching until you’re turning to a wet trembling mess in his lap, wobbling through half-assed sentences that you aren’t sure even match up with your essay outline anymore.
“Good,” Joel murmurs. “That’s good.”
“Don’t look,” you slur out, heart pounding at the idea of him reading anything you’ve written in this state. “It’s f-for your class, you can’t look.”
“Not lookin’.” He noses at the back of your ear. Presses an open-mouthed kiss to the hinge of your jaw. “Just lookin’ at you, m’always just lookin’ at you.”
“I’ll finish it.” You switch up your tactic now. Voice low and breathy, the back of your head resting heavy on his shoulder, eyes longing to close. “Tomorrow, I’ll write it—”
“Tomorrow?” His thumb drags harder on your clit.
“Yes,” you gasp, stomach tensing. You feel a bit floaty all of a sudden. Locked out of your own mind, all thoughts spilling from between your thighs as desire grips you, consumes you. “Please, just…”
“What, baby?” he prompts. “Say it.”
“Just let me sit on your cock,” you groan. “Please, I can’t think right now, I’ll finish it, I promise.”
“You fuckin’ promise—Christ,” he grumbles, fingers drifting from your tight clutch. “Just a little more, baby, for me.”
You don’t even really know how it happens after that. Ears roaring, skin tight, everything is a blur as you write and write and write and he presses his leaking tip between your folds works you down onto his length. Hands everywhere, so warm, so rough, holding your thighs, your waist, your breasts, your shorts to the side. Slower when your gasps spin higher, you think, always knowing when to ease up, when the burn gets too much too quick.
Joel grips your thighs, prying them apart until your calves are on the outside of his, and then he’s shifting his legs open wide, giving your own no choice but to follow. You feel the full weight of him in this position. The long, thick stretch of his cock inside you as your legs dangle listlessly over his lap, toes straining and failing to reach the floor. You can do nothing but rest heavily across his thighs, those hands still everywhere all at once, and whine pitifully as your walls spasm and clench around him, coil inside pulling tighter and tighter.
Vision waning, the text on your screen warbles as Joel slips the pad of his finger against your clit and begins to play with it. Soft little rubs that have you going tense and leaning forward on the table, braced on your elbows and grinding down into his lap, desperate for release, for movement, anything. It feels like your brain is splintering into a thousand tiny pieces inside your skull.
“You’re so wet,” Joel rasps, forehead heavy against your shoulder blade as he groans. “Pretty pussy’s drippin’ all over me, honey. You really need it that bad?” 
You say something you think, mouth moving and eyes rolling as his hips shift up in a weak little thrust. Just one.
“Keep goin’.” He sounds pained, half-drunk as the words stumble out of him.
Your mind slips further from your grasp and you’re typing pure gibberish. Slurring messes of letters cloaked in perfect punctuation. Your fingers fly across the keys, painting commas and full stops and semi colons around complete and utter bullshit as your cunt flutters and your belly stirs.
His finger glides and his cock pulses and your vision darkens and you come. Shoulders hunched, table digging into your forearms, you fold forward and cry out as an agonisingly brief orgasm rips through you.
It’s over before it’s even begun, but Joel groans and offers a shallow thrust, your cry turning to a gasp as he grips your thigh for dear life.
“Oh good girl,” he murmurs, fingers slowing against your nerves, not wanting to overwhelm. “Fuckin’ squeezing me so tight, baby.”
“Joel.” There are tears in your eyes now. Liquid frustration that pools against your waterline and threatens to spill when he still doesn’t fuck you how you need him to.
“How much left?” he asks roughly, rocking his hips against yours in a steady pace now. Gentle, rolling movements that snag on the heels of your orgasm and hold it close.
“Huh?”  
“How many words?”
“I don’t…” Your eyelids flutter. “I don’t know.”
“Shit, sweetheart,” he laughs a little then, rueful but not unkind. “That’s gonna be hell to edit.”
With a furious groan you slam the laptop closed, the sharp smack of metal on metal filling your ears as he grips your hips and really starts to fuck you.
It’s not fast though, not rough. Just deep, lingering strokes that grind against the end of you and nudge you stumbling toward the edge. He pinches your clit between the tips of his middle and ring fingers, rubbing slow drags up and down against the hood like that. Moaning and sweating, you slip your hand over his. Press lower and let your fingers glide around his girth, thick and vascular between your thighs, hot skin wetter every time he pulls out of you.
“Feel that?” Joel pants, teeth nipping at the top of your spine. “You’re creamin’ for me, baby. Fuck, I—I need to taste it.”
“Shit—oh god.”
He grips your wrist and drags it up, chin harsh against your shoulder as he sucks your fingers into his mouth.
The groan he lets out is filthy as his hot tongue snakes out to lick the webbing between your fingers, and you tip your head to watch his eyes roll back. His thighs tremble beneath you, but you can’t be sure it’s not just the vibrations of your own body tricking you.
But no, it’s him. His hips stutter against yours, deep plunges stilting into shallow movements, and he stalls deep inside your cunt for a second on the end of every thrust, as if his brain is short-circuiting.
You hook your fingers in his mouth, the tips digging into the gums behind his teeth, and tug him back to reality. He nips at your fingers and moans, hand falling heavy between your thighs again. And he doesn’t stop now; keeps pushing and pinching and fucking and grinding until your pussy is pulling tight and slick around his length and your fingers are fanned loose and shaky across his face, and you can hardly breathe except to say Joel or please or oh my god.
“Can feel it,” he grunts breathlessly, skin smacking against yours in a sharp staccato beat. “Deep breath, baby, c’mon, let me have it.”
“Your teeth,” you gasp feverishly. “Bite me again.” 
“Fuck,” he snarls and then he’s grating the hard line of his incisors along your shoulder.
The sweet pinch of his canines digging into your back sets your cunt aflutter around him, mouth hung open in silent ecstasy as he fucks you full of his seed and you suck it in deep, tight with longing, still panting and high when it begins to drip from where you’re connected, spooling around his cock and smearing between your thighs and his.
His chest heaves against your back. Chest hair damp wet sweat, dripping through your thin shirt until it can’t decide whether to cling to his skin or yours. There’s an ache at the base of your spine, maybe a muscle pulled, and his thumb presses into the flesh there as if he can sense it.
Sounds come back slowly. Joni’s finished and the needle tracks around the runout groove on the record, a little crackle flaring every few seconds where the two channels join. Joel’s breathing too, rough against your shoulder, harmonising with the wet sound of his lips peeling from your skin.
You tilt your head to the side.
Wild eyed, cunt-struck, Joel knocks his nose against yours. Groans low when you flick your tongue out to graze across his bottom lip. He’s bitten it rough and ragged and red, and you want to soothe the sting. His glasses are on top of his head, smudged lenses tucked amidst wild fluffy curls.
You try to kiss him, hard and wet, but he stops you with a hand to your jaw. Cradles your face and strokes your cheekbone and wipes the spittle from your lips before kissing you lightly. Chaste and gentle, like the two of you are ten and have never kissed anyone before, have never been brave enough to use your tongues.
That invisible bleed in your chest drips heavier. You picture a thick spurt of red against your chest cavity as he kisses the corners of your mouth, the tip of your nose, your eyelids.
“You good?” he asks quietly.
You nod, smiling when his lips catch and drag across your skin with the movement of your head.
A moment passes like this. Searching kisses dotted over your smiling face. The swell of your cheeks, the ends of your eyebrows.
“Sometimes I feel like you aren’t real,” Joel confesses. A bare bones whisper that tickles the skin between your eyebrows, where his lips rest now. “Like you might just melt away if I don’t hold on tight enough. Disappear if I look away too long, and I’ll be stuck tryna convince myself that you were ever really here.”
Twisted up in his arms, you can feel the way his heart batters against his chest, thrashing through to vibrate against your back. He might as well be plucking the admission straight from your own mouth.
“I’m real,” you murmur against his neck. “I’m here, it’s real.”
“Me too,” he says. Something wet tickles your skin, but it’s gone in a second. Rubbed over by his thumb, soothed with another kiss.
I love you, you think, but when you speak it comes out as, “No melting.”
Joel laughs softly. Kisses you again. “No melting.”
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Thursday.
“It was too much.”
“It was fine.”
“I said the word grateful three times.”
“Four, actually.” You chew the inside of your cheek and shrug apologetically. “I counted.”
“Jesus,” Joel sighs, reaching up to a drag a hand over his face.
He’s pulled his desk chair all the way across the office. Tie loosened and top buttons undone, he slumps in it a little. His thick knees almost brush against yours where you sit in his armchair.
“Hey, I liked it,” you smile, bumping his knee. “It was nice - shows you care.”
“Well, you ain’t all that hard to please,” Joel smarts, lip quirking up into a sly grin.
Mouth open in a scoff, you feign offence, dragging your laptop from your satchel and making a show of ignoring him.
“How the mighty fall,” he continues, sighing dramatically and tilting his head over the back of the chair. The light coming in through the window hits his face just right, and the grey hairs in his curls shine. “Grateful to have been your professor… asshole.”
“Don’t be precious,” you laugh softly. “You’re just embarrassed because you said you were going to miss us.”
“That was a lie,” Joel tuts, brushing you off with a hand in the air, biting back that grin. “I ain’t gon’ miss any of you assholes. And when those final papers come in—” He taps a finger against the top of your laptop “—I’ll be sayin’ my prayers that any of you can string a worthwhile sentence together.”
“If you’re lucky,” you drawl, batting his hand away. “You’ll teach some of us again next year. And when that semester finishes, you’ll say all of that shit again, because you’re a sap, Joel Miller.”
Joel stares at you for a moment, face softening, and then clicks his tongue on the roof of his mouth. “Smart ass.”
“And you love it,” you quip easily, only balking a moment later when the word hangs awkwardly in the air. Hands pausing on your keyboard, you glance up, neck hot, only to find Joel watching you still. Face suspended in a small smile; eyes light as he nods.
“I do,” he says after a moment. “But you’re on thin ice, wise guy.”
He plucks a book from his desk and spreads it open on his lap, either not noticing or simply not caring as you watch on, slack jawed. I do.
After a moment, Joel taps his foot against yours again. “Write.”
So, sucking in a breath, you do. Time passes and rain starts to drizzle against the window as you write, and Joel reads. Having forgotten to put a record on like normal, he hums lightly under his breath; some tune you can’t place but still nod along to. Every few minutes he turns his page, and the sound sends a shiver down your spine.
You hate the way he holds books. Hate the way he cradles the spines, thumb hooked around the footnotes to hold his page. Hate the way his fingers trace the stanzas as he reads, tender and patient, and always afraid to miss something. Hate most the way the tendons on the backs of his hands flex when he turns the page. How the veins around them go fat and blue the longer he does this, as if all the blood in his body is sprinting towards the words. It’s a dangerous sort of eroticism, watching him read. You hate how much you love it.
In need of reprieve, you focus on your own hands. Crack tired knuckles and stretch out cramps and aches, taking a moment to peer over at his desk. The picture frame you’d once been so curious about is propped on the edge of it once again.
You can see Joel behind the glass panel, sporting a shit-eating grin with Sarah, clad in a graduation gown, tucked proudly against his chest. Taken the day she finished high school, you know now. And you’d never noticed it that first time, months ago, but Ellie’s face rests in the corner of the picture. Pink tongue stuck out and eyes pinched shut; she’d snuck her head into the frame at the last second apparently.
You gaze fondly at it, and feel that familiar warmth in your chest over the fact that he’s put it back out. No more hiding.
“What’re you lookin’ at?” Joel glances over his shoulder, and then smiles.
“It’s a good photo,” you say. “You look so happy there.”
“I was. It’s one of my favourites,” he nods, adjusting his glasses on his nose. He seems to consider you for a moment, eyes flicking around your face, fingers fidgeting with the corner of his page. “Hey, I uh… Sarah actually called yesterday.”
He pauses. Takes an unusually deep breath and folds the book shut.
“Okay.” You blink, confused. “Is she alright?” 
“Yeah.” He nods quickly. “Yeah, yeah, she was uh, she was askin’ about the holidays, and if—”
The office door creaks open, and Joel’s mouth seals shut as Rachel walks hastily inside, rushed words filling the small room.  
“Joel, sorry, I need to grab—oh.”
There’s an odd pause after the words catch in her throat. A moment of uncomfortable stillness as the three of you inhale all at once, glancing around the room as if seeing it for the first time.
You and Joel aren’t touching, but your knees rest close, one of his feet in the space between yours on the carpet. Laptop propped on your knees, your final essay still lays open with a stream of edits pasted through the margins, cursor blinking at the end of the word nostos.
Joel, tie undone and sleeves rolled up, looks painfully casual in your presence.
“Sorry.” Rachel blinks, hovering awkwardly as the door clicks shut behind her. “I didn’t realise you had a… a meeting today?” The end of her sentence flares up, as if she’s confused, phrasing it like a dubious little question.
You offer a smile in her direction and hope it comes across as relaxed, a little encroaching even; as if you are the one who has interrupted; the one who should not be here.
“It’s fine,” Joel supplies easily, straightening in his chair to give her his full attention. His face gives nothing away. Stoic and calm, the way you’d imagine him to be if you weren’t here at all. “Everything alright?”
“Yes,” she says, frowning like she’s affronted by the question. Looks between the two of you again, listless fingers curling at her sides. “Just came to get that Livy copy back
You look back at your screen and will yourself to type something. To appear casual, studious, as if your heart isn’t lodged in the base of your throat.
“Sure,” he nods, gesturing vaguely toward his desk. “It’s in one of the drawers on the left.”
Rachel nods, walking over to the desk, and as her back turns you spare a glance at Joel. Find him already looking at you, eyebrows pulled down a little. Pink lips mouth It’s fine, married with a soft nod of his head, and for the second time in seconds you attempt a smile. 
There’s the sound of wood sliding against wood, and then a soft, tired kind of silence. The lack of sound seems to swell, the air in the room thinning, your eyes focusing on Joel’s fingers on the armrest of his chair, tap tap tap, Rachel’s unruly curls somewhere past that, her face downturned, looking at something. Wary breaths held in unison, synced heart beats racing. It’s fine, it’s fine, no melting.
“Is this some kind of joke?”
Your head snaps up. Joel turns in his chair and begins to ask what’s wrong, but all that ends up coming from him is a sort of choked noise, rough around the edges, and breathless in the middle. Chest on fire, you let yourself look past him to where she stands.
Her gaze is hard as she stares Joel down from across the room. A slip of blue; soft material visible between her fingers, held up for a stunned chorus to see.
Your hearing deafens a little as you look on, motionless, a vague memory of birthday boy and got your cute little panties all soaked thinkin’ ‘bout my cock? playing in your mind. Of a damp patch on his shirt as he tucked blue into his desk drawer.
Joel says Rachel’s name, you think. Can see the way his jaw moves, the way her dark eyes sharpen, flitting back and forth between the two of you. And then, like a volcanic eruption or the swell beneath a wave, realisation crests the hill and It’s fine cracks and crumbles and turns to dust in your grasp. You don’t know what she knows, or how she knows, you just know that she does.
“You… what is this?” Rachel’s face shifts into something uncomfortable. A warped, grotesque shot at a smile. But as her lips curl upward, eyebrows down, it’s nothing but a contorted mess that blurs endlessly between confusion, surprise, and then horror. “This… her? She’s the reason you—”
“Rachel.” Joel’s entire body is wound tight. You can see the edge of his jaw from where you sit; the way his shoulders pull back, tight he watches her.
Your body seems to hold itself together for a moment. Breath caught on an inhale, lungs expanded, eyes frozen on the hard line of his nose, the arm of his glasses—places you feel safe to hover. But then she speaks again, and everything lurches back into focus. Like a needle scratching on a record, or tires squealing as a car pulls to an abrupt stop at a red—the words make you cringe, chest deflating and face crumpling.
“Jesus Christ, Joel,” she’s saying, and her voice raises, louder to match the disbelief in her tone. “You… she’s a fucking student.”
When the fear hits it doesn’t come slowly. It strikes hard and solid; an icy sheet of dread that sucks at your fingers and numbs your extremities. Cool and abrupt, it sinks to your bones and promises that you’ll never again feel anything but this. It laughs in the face of your warm kind month, pressing its chilled ice picks to the back of your eyes until they burn.
Her words hang heavy in the air, thick weights that press down on three sets of shoulders, and you have never wanted anything the way you want to see Joel’s face right now. To look at him and believe that this isn’t as bad as you know it to be. See that mouth tell you it’s fine and remember how it tastes.
Instead, a fear-stricken Orpheus, you will yourself not to look at him. Despite that longing, the way your arms beg to stretch out, to hold and be held, you do not look. No, you don’t think you could suffer the double death of both knowing this is happening and seeing him know it too.
In his place, you let your eyes turn to Rachel, and find that she already stares at you, small mouth cracked ajar in incredulity.
Mind whirring, racing, stumbling; fumbling to pin back together the pieces of who you once were in her eyes and who you are now. This woman you admire so, whose career path you’ve dreamt of, whose wit and quirk has propelled you, invigorated you.
It’s agonising to watch—the way her face morphs into something so unfamiliar as she looks at you now. An expression that once held only admiration, kindness, marred here by an inexplicable sense of pity. Not hate, or contempt, which perhaps would be easier to handle. Easier than the way those dark orbs go round and solemn with worry as they fall upon your anguished frame. It’s a slap in the face; camaraderie washed down the drain like the dregs of a long overdue bath, as she grips your soiled underwear in her fist.
Joel says her name, you’ve lost count of how many times he’s said it now, and she spurns his attempt at placation like a snake. Fast and deadly, venom dribbling from her tongue. 
“Someone else?” she says, and her voice is like never before. Mirthless and cold, fury laced through every word. With a sharp jerk of her elbow, she tosses the underwear across the room. They land against Joel’s chest, caught silently in his fist. “You’re fucking sick.”
“This isn’t what you think it is—” Joel starts, and you think you hear his voice shake.
“It isn’t?” She laughs cruelly at that. “You haven’t been sleeping with one of our students?”
The cursor blinks on your screen. Nostos, nostos, nostos, nostos.
“Listen, can we talk about this somewhere else?” he asks. “Not like this, I—”
“Oh, is this not a convenient time for you?” she scowls. “Jesus Christ.”   
The urge to speak bubbles in your chest. You don’t even know what you’re going to say until the words are spilling from your lips, disjointed and warbled, a voice that doesn’t even sound like your own.
“I pursued him,” you say.
You can feel them looking at you. Can hear the way you must sound to her, like some kid and not a woman who’s almost thirty years old and just as much to blame. But you can’t stop it.  
“We’re both adults. He never made me do anything I didn’t—”
Joel says your name sharply. His fist, in the periphery of your downturned gaze, grips your balled up underwear so tight that the blue is entirely invisible within the thick masts of his fingers.
You suck in a breath, and it feels like the last bit of air in the room disappears into your lungs, so you hold it there. Keep it safe inside and figure that if all three of you were to suffocate then at least the truth, and all the foul consequences that come with it, would die here with you.
“Can you give us a minute?”
Silence falls in the lull after those words, and it takes a moment for you to look up, finally. To realise that the double death wasn’t in looking at Joel, but in understanding that he’d spoken these words to you, not her.
Eyes locked with his, you feel the fear move to your side. Hang low until it ebbs and flows in the space beneath your ribs—a sharp ache with no end in sight. He looks tired; resigned. Mouth thin and downturned, cheeks splashed with red.
You think you must say something. Some fumbling, awkward acknowledgement, because Rachel is giving you that look again and you can’t bear it. Can’t stand those eyes, that misplaced pity.
You collect your things, hands numb as you pile them into your bag and head for the door, skin prickling in defence against the silence that follows your movements.
Outside his office, alone in the long corridor, you know you should go. Should follow the wall down the stairs, out to your car, and not look back. Can you give us a minute? But that sharp ache leaves you cowering against the wall, limbs heavy, ear to his door. 
“Rach,” Joel says softly, and it’s so familiar that your stomach rolls, lids fluttering closed. “It isn’t what you think, just let me explain, alright? We met before the term began; before she was my student. Before.”
“And then?”
“What?”
“I said, and then?” Rachel’s voice is steely. “You met her before and, what, you saw her in class and decided it was fine to let it continue? You—”
“Everything was consensual. You know me, I would never—”
“It’s not as simple as that, and you know it. Did you not think about what would happen if you were found out? Her credibility will be destroyed, Joel.”
“I know—”
“I mean for fucksake, her first major presentation was given at a conference where you were the keynote speaker. How do you think this will look?”
“Fuck, I know. Can you keep your voice down, please.”
There’s a brief silence. You hear shuffling, feet against carpet, and a dull spike of fear flares in the back of your mind. The idea of getting caught a second time, eavesdropping from outside the door. Against better judgement, you don’t move, and Rachel speaks again.
“You’re wrong,” she says. “I don’t know you. I… you aren’t the man I thought you were.”
You don’t hear Joel’s response over the drumming in your ears. Hot blood thrashes and roars inside your body, veins pounding with terror. Hands shake damp and weary at your sides, thinking hard, hard, grasping for solution, for the chance to say I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, this is my fault.
But he must have said something because then you hear it. A low fragment of a human voice, words spoken clear as day. They slice through your ears and have you peeling away from the door, swallowed by a white-hot longing to disappear as you stumble down the hall, the stairs, until you’re sucking in cold air on the pavement outside.  
It’s raining hard now. Thin spray that comes at you sideways, lashing at your face and blinding you. You curl your back to the downpour and search thoughtlessly for your car, hands outstretched, those words of hers ricocheting off the inside of your skull.
When you find it, you press your key into the door and slump inside, and you still can’t avoid it. She might as well be standing right by the door, peering in at you. Shock in the jut of her brow, disappointment in the slant of her mouth as she whispers those words over and over through the crack in your window.
"I don’t care if you love her, Joel. I have to report you.”
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refs:
joni mitchell's 1971 Blue album. [life changer]
the hollow men by t. s. elliot [fat juicy banger of a poem]
orpheus and eurydice from metamorphoses by ovid, tr. by a. d. melville
thank you for reading x
1K notes · View notes
greensagephase · 10 months
Text
Nonviolent Communication - Part One
** BEAUTIFUL fanart for this part can be found here by the lovely @lauraolar14 . I'm not over how soft and beautiful these sketches are  😭 😭 Please show them some love!! Thank you again, @lauraolar14 ❤️**
Miguel O'Hara x FemReader
Summary: You don't show up to a meeting or report for other duties as a Spider Society member because of your period. Your boss shows up to your apartment.
Word Count: 5,144
Warning: A little bit of angst?/Mention of death
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine |
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Part One
You were recruited four months ago into the Spider Society. Ever since the beginning, you couldn’t help but gravitate towards the leader and founder of the society. You learned quickly about his past and the way he carried himself these days.
Miguel O’Hara worked day and night. If he wasn’t in his lab working on something, he was out on missions with a select few members or on his own. There were days that you wouldn’t even see him. You wondered if anyone did on those days. You told yourself to mind your business. It’s not like you were friends and you hardly interacted anyway. You were a member of the Spider Society but one of the newest ones. You weren’t part of the most trusted members for Miguel.
And yet… There was something. You felt a need to look after him. You couldn’t understand it. You wanted to chalk it up to interest. Maybe you found his story interesting. How a man had simply replaced a version of himself in another universe to be a father, only to lose her when that universe collapsed. How heartbroken and guilt-filled he was over it. That had to be it, you told yourself. It was just intrigue. 
You figured that if you just gave in to your interest, it would go away eventually. It would fade away… So, you allowed yourself to be interested. You showed up to meetings earlier than anyone else when Miguel scheduled them. You stopped by the cafeteria to pick up coffee cups beforehand and arrived at the meeting earlier. You came in, looking unbothered and uninterested as you placed the cup of coffee in front of him, greeting him.
“The cafeteria staff gave me another cup, and I didn’t know what to do with it,” you’d say as he looked up with an uninterested look on his face.
You’d walk away and take a seat a few chairs away, picking up the nicely done reports he provided at every meeting. You did this every week with a different excuse each time. You didn’t know if he ever wondered why the cafeteria staff gave you so much coffee since that was usually your excuse. You doubted he even cared; you were just another member.
The first few times, you noticed the cup would sit in the same exact spot you’d leave it. Miguel wouldn’t even acknowledge it after looking up at you. You still brought it each week. After some weeks, he wouldn’t even look up when you placed the cup in front of him on the desk but – he started giving you a small grunt of acknowledgement. You’d walk away with a little grin, quickly putting it away when you sat down on your usual seat so he wouldn’t notice it.
Then about two weeks later, you saw it. As he was going over the reports and listening to Ben Reilly ramble on about his past because of some anomaly he caught that week, he picked up the coffee cup and took a sip. You looked away as you felt his gaze about to turn to you. The reports looked very interesting indeed.
All throughout this, you also started showing up to his lab after he and Jessica requested to see you about a mission. You noticed there was quite a mess of gadgets lying around. You offered to organize it, as it is something you enjoy and are good at. You didn’t even know why you offered but Jessica seemed eager about the idea while Miguel frowned.
“Oh, come on, Miguel. Some organization around here wouldn’t hurt, you know? Look at this mess,” Jessica said looking around, pointing at different areas cluttered with all sorts of tech pieces.
“Fine,” Miguel said as he walked away, apparently done with the conversation.
Jessica beamed at you. She seemed to like you a lot since you did your job well and didn’t get into any drama. You were like the perfect pupil. You nodded at her, with a warm smile.
So that’s how you ended up showing up once a week to Miguel’s lab to do some organizing. You show up and organize as he works on something. Sometimes he is up in the air on his platform, going through monitors. You simply greet him as you arrive before you begin organizing and cleaning. Sometimes there is no response, other times there is just a “hmm”.
These visits have led to Lyla taking a liking to you. She often asks you questions as you work while Miguel is there. You don’t know if he pays attention to what Lyla and you talk about. You honestly doubt he even listens. He is always so engrossed in what he is doing.
Lyla definitely makes the time pass faster. It isn’t like you wanted it to but the silence in the lab is… off sometimes. Lyla asks you all sorts of things like whether you have plans for that weekend, if you enjoy a certain activity because other spider members enjoy it, if you like a certain food, or how missions have gone, etc. It is always something different. You respond to her questions as you work. You are fast and efficient.
You never miss a week, and you are never late as you have made it a habit to show up at the same time. Except this week that is. You started your period and this month is kicking your butt with excruciating cramps and lower back pain. You barely make it to your home after patrolling your city, sliding into bed in pain.
You dig through your nightstand, looking for the specific medicine you take to take care of this even if it makes you extremely drowsy and dizzy. You take it and lie down, hoping it will help right away as you groan in pain. You lie in bed, clutching your stomach. The medicine definitely makes you drowsy and dizzy, but it doesn’t seem to help much with the pain. You pass out a few times but wake up again, the pain too much.
You’re so out of it that you don’t notice the time. You don’t remember the day. You don’t notice the sun out behind your closed blinds. You don’t hear a multidimensional portal open in your small apartment living room. You don’t register the heavy footsteps that move through your apartment. Your eyes are closed, hands clutching your stomach, soft groans escaping your lips. You don’t see the large shadow moving through your room until the last second.
“Go away,” you say weakly, thinking someone has broken into your home.
Despite your pain, despite feeling drowsy and dizzy, your mind still has the time to find this funny. The one day you feel like absolute crap is the day someone decides to break into your apartment. And you’re Spider-Woman! How ironic, you think. Let them take whatever they want, you think, as long as they don’t hurt you.
However, you are surprised when you feel a warm and heavy hand pressed to your forehead.
“No fever,” the voice says stating it as a fact.
You continue to clutch your stomach, eyes closed. Unbeknownst to you as you lay in bed in and out of it, a man is in your apartment. His height towers over you in bed.
Miguel O’Hara is in your apartment… Checking on you. He stares down at you as you lay in bed. He sees you clutching your stomach and as he observes carefully, he sees no injury. There is no sight of blood either. His eyebrows furrow in confusion. You are clearly in pain but why? He turns to your nightstand, noticing the bottle of pills. He inspects it. Painkillers…
His eyebrows furrow further as he realizes what it could be. He walks to your bathroom to confirm. His suspicion is confirmed when he takes a look at your garbage can, spotting the plastic wraps of feminine products. His suspicion is further confirmed when he sees a pack of feminine products on the counter, ready for easy access.
“Coño,” he says quietly as he realizes his suspicion is true.
He walks out of your bathroom, looking at your shape in the bed. You are still clutching your stomach and soft groans escape from your lips ever so often. Miguel remembers the days he used to take care of his wife before everything collapsed. It was a long time since he had even thought about doing that for a woman, but his mind started remembering everything he did to ease his wife’s pain each month. He stood there, thinking before he walked out of your bedroom and into the one room that was the kitchen, the living room, and dining room all at once… New York apartments, Miguel thought, as he took in your apartment.
You were organized and clean, but that didn’t surprise Miguel. You did organize the lab each week with such ease despite Lyla peppering you with questions the entire time. Your apartment was warm with its colors. It gave the impression of someone happy and warm. Miguel noticed a bookshelf in the part of the apartment that plays the living room. It is filled with so many books that you have some stacked horizontally over the vertical ones. An avid reader, Miguel thinks before he heads to your kitchen.
It is clean for the most part except for a plate and a cup. Miguel searches through your kitchen, looking for something specific. He returns to your room, looking through your drawers looking for something else. A few minutes later, he returns to your bedroom. You lay still. Seems that you have passed out at last. With ease, Miguel slides some homemade socks with warm rice under your sweatshirt. He places one on your stomach and the other one on your back.
A satisfied hum escapes your lips, letting Miguel know his idea was somewhat successful despite it being homemade. He gives you one more look before heading out to your living room.
He doesn’t even know why he came. All he knows is that you didn’t show up to organize the lab like you did each week. You didn’t show up to the morning meeting either. Jessica hadn’t heard from you in hours and there was no activity from your gizmo.
A few hours later, you wake up from your slumber. You yawn and stretch your body gently. You lay in bed for a few seconds, realizing your pain is gone. Now you just feel the exhaustion that comes from having a period. You sit up in bed slowly, feeling something on your stomach. You look down. Your sweatshirt is tucked into your shorts on both sides. You untuck it and two socks filled with something slide out. You furrow your eyebrows as you lift them up to inspect closer. You bring them to your nose.
“Rice…” you say, recognizing the specific scent of rice. Your eyebrows furrow but you shrug. You don’t even remember getting up to make these, but you thank yourself for doing it despite being out of it. You get up from bed slowly and check the time. It’s already evening. You decide to take a shower to ease your muscles.
Your shower is hot. You fill the bathroom with fog, but it doesn’t matter. It makes you feel like a million bucks when you get into fresh clothes, all shower and fresh. You head out of your bedroom to get something to drink and that’s when you see it. The lamps in the living room are on, there is music playing from your record player. You look confused as you step out further.
“Mierda,” you hear an annoyed male voice, causing you to jump a little.
You turn to the voice, located in the kitchen and find…
“Miguel?” you say slowly but with confusion as you find him with his back to you.
He stands in front of one of your kitchen cabinets, holding it open. There’s a screwdriver in his hand. He turns around at your voice.
“Y/N… You’re awake,” he says turning fully around now.
You take him in. He’s in his suit as always. You’ve wondered many times if he ever just dresses in casual clothes since he’s always in his suit. He stands tall, of course, and you can’t help but think how he makes your already small kitchen look ten times smaller than it is with him standing there. You rub your eyes, making sure this isn’t just some hallucination.
“Um- you are here,” you say looking at him again.
Miguel nods, turning back around to the cabinet. You watch as he uses the screwdriver. You remember then. Your loose cabinet that has been a pain in the butt for months now. You look around the place. There were some dishes in your sink, or at least you remember there being some but now they’re gone. You notice the trash was taken out. Clean dishes were put away. And to your surprise, there’s food on the stove. There’s also a sweet scent lingering in the air that you cannot pinpoint right now.  
“You feel better?” Miguel asks, with his back still to you as he finishes fixing the cabinet.
“Yes. A lot better, actually…” you say as you cross your arms across your chest, finding this situation so strange.
Miguel turns around to face you now. He looks at you before looking down at the screwdriver in his hand. The screwdriver looks like a toy in his hand, you notice.
“Yeah, well…” Miguel starts, looking up at you again. “Jessica was worried about you. She said you didn’t report to the meeting we had this morning. She asked if you had gone to my lab to organize it and when I told her no, she grew worried something had happened to you since she also noticed no activity from your gizmo. She wanted to come herself and check on you, but the baby kept her busy today. She asked me to come in and check for her.”
I nod, realizing that makes perfect sense. Jessica has grown fond of you after all, you just never realized she was that fond of you.
“Well, thank you for checking in on me for her. I’ll be sure to thank her tomorrow,” you say looking around the kitchen again.
“You probably shouldn’t do that,” Miguel says, putting the screwdriver down on the counter. It looks normal sized again. You raised an eyebrow. “She doesn’t like it when people thank for her… caring. If you want to thank her, just get her a coffee and tell her you appreciate her mentorship,” Miguel explains, resting his hands on his hips.
You nod slowly, maybe it was better to just thank her for everything instead of just this act. You sigh.
“I guess you’re right,” you say, scratching your neck softly. “Did she also tell you to fix my cabinet, or did that just bother you so much?”
Miguel’s face remains void of any expression. You wanted to ask about the homemade socks with rice since it became apparent to you that you weren’t responsible for them, but you kept your mouth shut.
“I was looking for – rice when I noticed your loose cabinet and other messed up things around here. You have a shitty landlord or something?” he asks, looking around.
You shrug. “Yeah, but the rent is good.”
“You’re not exactly strapped for cash, are you?”
You shake your head. It was true. You had some money. You could afford to move somewhere else where the landlords were better but…
“Why are you still here then?” Miguel asks.
His question is laced with interest, and you can’t help but think about how this is the longest conversation you’ve had with him since… meeting each other. And even then, that conversation was probably about three minutes long. You avert your gaze from him, looking at the wall nearest to you. Your eyes land on a single picture amongst many.
You lost your Peter three years ago, just like many of your spider colleagues. Losing him has been the hardest thing you have ever experienced. You have been punched till the air was knocked out of you, you have laid in ruble with buildings crushed over you, and you have been on the verge of death many times, but nothing has ever nor will ever compare to the pain and grief of losing Peter.
As you look at the picture of Peter and you, the one you took the first day you moved into this apartment, you think about all the memories in this apartment. It was all the two of you could afford back then but you two loved it. It was your place. It was the first time you were living together, and it didn’t matter much that it was a little rundown. You guys just wanted a place to live together. You two made it what it is now. A warm and happy place where you two could come home after a long day of work. You spent hours thinking of how to decorate it. Choosing the right and most affordable couch, choosing the wallpaper, choosing where the furniture went.
In the end, it had turned into a beautiful apartment. It was a haven for the two of you but what mattered the most was that you shared it with him, your Peter. You sigh, feeling overwhelmed by the loss again. You had moved on, of course. You had to. How else would you live otherwise? And you had promised Peter you would. Your mind is overwhelmed by the sudden memories as he laid in your arms. He had been crushed by ruble during an attack by a villain, his body was weak, his eyes glistened as they looked at you. You remember caressing his face and hair. He loved it when you did that. He always said it was the perfect way to soothe his nerves. The perfect way to get him to relax and nap after a stressful day.
Your own eyes were filled with tears as you saw it. The way his life was slowly leaving his body. What hurt a million times more, if it was even possible to hurt that much, was that you knew he knew. He knew that was it. There was no turning back. There was no miracle. There was no secret medicine or miracle serum that could make him get up and walk away from this unscathed. That was it.
You held him in your arms, rubble all around you. He looked at your eyes, his own hazy, as you caressed his face and hair. He gave you a gentle smile as he reassured you, he was okay.
“You will move on, right, baby?” he asked you, his voice indicating how little time there was left. “You have to… You must promise me you will. This city depends on you.”
You nodded your head and unable to hold them back any longer, your tears spilled down your face. You remember how some of your tears had landed on his pale yet still beautiful face.
“You must promise me, out loud, darling. Please,” he said, struggling more to get his words out.
“I promise. I promise I will try my best…” you said, and he had nodded. He looked satisfied with your response.
“You must continue – you are my hero. You always have been. And you are the love of my life, darling… I only wish we had more time. That I had more time to make you happier… To make you, my wife. Please – promise me you will be open to other loves,” he had gasped out.
You shook your head. That was impossible. How could you fall for someone else when Peter was the love of your life? Peter, noticing your reluctance, lifted his hand weakly to your face. Despite everything, he was still trying to comfort you. You felt something in you break further. He wiped your tears and gave you a weak yet comforting smile.
“Please promise me you will allow yourself to love again… If there is someone out there that makes you feel like that, please promise me you won’t shut them out. Please, love, promise me,” he said, looking at your eyes and cleaning your tears away.
His voice was weaker, and you noticed his chest was beginning to rise slower and slower. The time was running out…
“I promise I will. I will open my heart if someone comes along but I promise I will never stop loving you, Peter,” you had answered, trying to make him happy in his last minutes. He smiled at you, sweetly, and thanked you. You held him close to you, breathing in his scent. You tried to hold on to his warmth desperately. You clung to him, like you could defend him from Death herself. Like you could defy her this one time.
You cried your soul out as his heartbeat ceased to beat. You cried out as his body became limped in your arms. You cried as his chest stopped moving. You cried, cried, and cried as you held him close to you like your tears and grip could bring him back.
You cursed Death.
You often worried about hurting Peter if something happened to you. You never counted on Peter being the one who left too soon.
You inhale shakily. Your vision has become blurred with tears as you continue to stare at the picture on the wall. You turn around, remembering that Miguel is there. You wipe your tears discreetly. You swallow the lump in your throat, trying to force it down. Otherwise, the moment you speak, your tears will flow. You clear your throat.
“It doesn’t really bother me – and besides, I spend a lot of time out,” you finally say, sounding somewhat normal now. Though the ache is there, deep in your chest. It’s like someone stabbed you in the heart with a wooden stick and left a small piece of it stuck. It always hurts, it always aches.
Miguel doesn’t reply as you turn back around, feeling more in control of yourself. However, you can see something in his eyes. Perhaps understanding? You guessed he probably knew to some extent what had happened to you. It was a canon event for all spider-people. To lose someone.
“Have you eaten anything?” Miguel asks suddenly, dropping the apartment conversation probably for your own sake.
You shake your head. It was hours since you had eaten something. Since yesterday, really.
“There’s some food here. Let me…” he says trailing off, turning around to get a plate from a cabinet. You can’t help but feel a little surprised at how fast he learned his way around the kitchen. Then again, it’s not that large you realize. You approach the kitchen island and take a seat on one of the two island chairs as Miguel turns around with a plate of pasta. Your eyebrows raise in surprise. It is one of your comfort foods. Miguel slides it over to you, gently. A fork is already on it, ready for you.
You slide the plate closer, the scent of it making your stomach growl instantly. You’re definitely hungry.
“Thank you,” you say before you dig in. You can’t help but smile with satisfaction. It is amazing. “This is really good.”
Miguel doesn’t say anything, just watches you. You eat some more, feeling a bit self-conscious as you feel his gaze on you, but you ignore it. Or try to.
“So, are you a really great cook or is pasta one of the few things you can cook?” you ask, slowing down on your eating, trying to fill in the silence.
Miguel shrugs. “My mother taught me how to cook when I was a teenager. It stuck.”
You nod, still eating. “Great skill to have, really… It helped me and –“ you pause, realizing you were about to mention Peter. You swallow. “It helped Peter and I when we were in college,” you finish, looking down at your plate.
A hint of a smile forms on your face as you remember Peter and you cooking for the week over the weekends. You guys lived separately but shared groceries to help each other out. It saved you guys a lot of time and money and brought the two of you closer.
“It is a great skill to have,” Miguel agrees quietly as you continue to eat, looking down at your plate.
You nod silently as you finish eating. You look up at Miguel, he’s looking down at the counter. His hands are flat against the counter, and he looks lost in his own thoughts. You can’t help but take this time to look at him. The sight of him in your kitchen is really something. You think about how great he is at these things like looking after a woman when they’re on their period or cooking. You want to facepalm yourself as you realize it’s obvious he would be good at these things. He did have a wife and daughter at one point, you remind yourself. You look down at your plate.
“Oh, I made this for you, too,” Miguel says at last, breaking the silence.
You look up curiously, wondering what else he had made. He turns around towards the stove and you watch carefully as he retrieves a mug from one of the cabinets. Again, you feel surprised seeing how he knows exactly where to find what he’s looking for. It disappears from your view in front of him and you hear him pour something. He turns around again, holding one of your mugs. Whatever it is, is hot as you can see steam from the top. He sets the mug down on the counter and slides it over to you. Again, his movements are gentle. You lean forward and reach for it.
“Careful. It’s hot,” he warns, as you pull the mug towards you gently.
The scent fills your nostrils quickly and you recognize the sweet scent that met you earlier when you exited your bedroom. You look up at him.
“Canelita,” you say, grinning.
Miguel nods. “Growing up, my mom said it helped with cramps. It used to help my…” he trails off.
You nod. “Yeah, my grandma used to say that, too.” You pause as you inhale the sweetness of cinnamon. “Thank you…” you reply, with sincerity, still meeting his eyes.
Miguel only nods. You drink the warm liquid, enjoying the warmth that spreads down your throat, chest, and finally your stomach. As it settles in your stomach, you feel warm and cozy.
Miguel clears his throat then and looks down at his gizmo. “Well – I should get going. I have some things to catch up on,” he says turning his attention back to you.
You nod as you place the mug on the counter gently and get up. He walks out of the kitchen portion and heads to the middle of the room. He starts clicking on his gizmo, presumably starting a multidimensional portal. You walk towards him, leaving some distance, of course. He looks up at you as the portal appears in the middle of your apartment behind him.
You clear your throat. “Hey – I just wanted to say thank you… For everything. I know Jessica asked you to check up on me, but you did much more than that. I truly appreciate it,” you say, hoping that you’re fully expressing how grateful you are.
You can’t help but think about how you’d probably still be in bed right now. Miguel nods.
“It’s no problem…” Miguel replies, though he looks like he wants to say more. You watch, waiting but he just stares back with little emotion until he nods at you and turns around. He starts walking into the portal. The bright lights coming from the portal create shadows in your apartment. You watch wordlessly until he looks behind his shoulder. “Don’t forget – don’t mention it to Jessica. She can be weird about being thanked sometimes.”
You nod. “I won’t bring it up, no worries. Thank you again. Enjoy your night!” you call out and he just nods before he disappears into the portal. The portal disappears a few seconds after him, taking away its shadows with it.
You sigh as you stand there for a few more seconds before taking a seat again on the counter island. You drink more canelita, still cherishing the warm feeling. You look at the stove. Everything is in containers and there’s no sight of dirty pans, pots, or utensils.
“Cooked and washed the dishes…” you say to yourself before taking a sip again.
Your attention turns to the cabinet you found him fixing earlier. You get up and walk towards it. You open it with no issue. You think about all the little nicks this kitchen has. Like the drawer that doesn’t come out fully or the other cabinet door that makes a noise every time you open it. Curiosity gets the best of you because before you know it, you are pulling said drawer. Your lips part in surprise as the drawer fully slides out without issues. You check the other cabinet door. No sound.
You sigh as you look around, your eyes landing on the containers. One of them is full of leftover pasta and the other one contains the canelita. Your thoughts are interrupted as you hear your gizmo go off. You turn in the direction it came from, trying to remember where you left it last night. You are usually very careful with it but last night you barely made it through the door.
You find the gizmo on the console table in the living room section of your apartment. You realize there are a few messages from your colleagues like Hobie, Miles, Ben, and Jessica. You quickly reply to the first three who asked about your whereabouts before you move to Jessica’s. You realize she sent multiple messages all ranging from asking how your last mission went to why you weren’t answering to asking if you were okay. The last one makes you stop. Your eyebrows furrow in confusion as you read it.
“Okay… You haven’t replied to any of my messages. Do I need to send someone to check on you? You’ve been MIA all day. Let me know you’re okay!!”
You look up towards where the portal was opened just minutes ago. You shake your head and reply to Jessica, notifying her about what happened. You leave out Miguel though. You put away your gizmo in its usual spot and look around your apartment, thinking. The lamps in the living room section are still on, the record player has stopped playing, however.
“Hm.”
---------------------------------------------
Might do part two. If it matters, I listened to "Nonviolent Communication" from the ATSV album as inspiration. Such a lovely song for Miguel, I think.
Translation for italicized words:
Coño - fuck (it varies by country)
Mierda - Shit
Canelita - a tea made out of cinnamon sticks
I love Miguel O'Hara. That's all.
2K notes · View notes
reiderwriter · 1 month
Note
hii I absolutely love your writing!! I was wondering if you could write a one shot with gun kink? maybe not really something *aggressive* but just gun kink in the plot !! and please smut with no angst, also maybe aftercare in the end? it's totally okay if you're not comfortable. im loving your kinktober one shots! have a good day :)
A/N: This being one of like... three gun kink requests I've received, we are all not seeing the pearly gates lmao. If you enjoy reading this, even 50% of how much I enjoyed writing it, then I'm happy 😚
Warnings: Undercover FBI Agent reader, gun kink, interrogation room sex, oral (f receiving), unprotected sex, creampie, some BDSM themes, Spencer has to 'rough up' the reader etc.
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Being rough-housed by a group of FBI agents and pushed against a wall before being handcuffed was never your idea of a fun Tuesday night. It wasn't exactly high on the list for any night of the week, really, but here you were. 
“Caitlyn Grant? You're under arrest for being an accessory to a felony and evading law enforcement, whatever you say…” You drowned out the rest of the statement. It was nothing you didn't have memorized. 
“You're not the usual drug crew, and you don't look sturdy enough to be on most of the other teams either. What part of the Bureau are you in?” You asked the lanky man currently pinning you to the wall as he made sure your handcuffs were aptly tight. 
“You have the right to an attorney, if you can't afford one-” 
“I waive my rights. It's not human trafficking. You wouldn't be working this case if you were human trafficking.” 
The man just stared at you in vague disapproval as you grinned back at him. His closeness meant you could see every detail of his face up close, the five o'clock shadow, the dark circles from lack of sleep. On most of the agents you'd encountered, it had the effect of making them look older, a little haggard, and depressed. On this man, it was honestly very hot. 
He started your pat down by spreading your legs, though honestly, if he'd asked nicely enough, you'd have done just that for him. You near enough told him just that as he reached the two pockets on the ass of your jeans. 
“Watch it, Agent, my bite is worse than my bark.” 
“Turn around.” 
You pouted at his solid resolve, wondering what it would take to get the man to crack a smile or even a frown. Something that wasn't just disinterest slapped on a face and called a day. 
You did as he asked, making sure your body pressed nicely up against his the entire way until your shoulders were resting on the wall and he was feeling along your waist. 
“Come on, what kind of weapon are you going to find there?”
“Standard protocol, please let me do my job.”
“Standard protocol is calling one of your female agents over here to maintain the boundary, Agent. This feels more like you're just trying to cop a feel.” 
Those words finally got a reaction. The subtle clench of the jaw as his hands tightened slightly on your waist had you suddenly regretting your decision to be put in handcuffs. Your hands should've been free to tuck the stray lock of hair that had fallen in his eyes behind his ear, free so your fingernails could trace a path down his face and neck and chest. 
His gaze landed on the simple silver chain you wore around your list and he delicately pulled it out of your shirt, careful not to touch you (and avoiding you even as you arched your back into him). 
With a quick tug, he pulled the necklace clean off your neck, not pausing to bother with the clasp at all. 
“Clever boy. I'll see you in the interrogation room, shall I?” He said nothing as the female agents you'd mentioned earlier stationed themselves on either side of you as you walked away. You didn't break eye contact until the doors to the police van closed behind you. 
Six months undercover on a case, and this was the first time you'd stepped foot in a police precinct since you'd ditched your real name and life. 
The interrogation rooms hadn't changed in that time, at least, still grey and depressing. Time felt void as you waited for company, and thankfully, you weren't waiting long.
“Agent Y/N, sorry about the arrest, we wanted to make it look as real as possible while pulling you out.” The woman who greeted you obviously held the authority, and while you wanted to respect that, the sight of the man trailing behind her actually caught her full attention. 
“Pleasure to meet you….?” You let the question hang open for both of them but kept your gaze fully focused on the man, who stood himself next to the door, keeping surprisingly quiet. 
“I'm Unit Chief Emily Prentiss, this is Doctor Spencer Reid, we're from the-” 
“Behavioural Analysis Unit, of course. I was close, you know, earlier. A face like yours wouldn't last five minutes in cartel land. I almost guessed cyber, but you looked a bit too bookish. Doctor Reid, hmm.” 
“This interview is taking place with Agent Prentiss. Please direct all your questions to her.”
“Oh shit, sorry, where are my manners. I didn't mean to disrespect you like that, Agent Prentiss. It's just been a long few months.”
The other woman just chuckled and shook her head, leafing through some documents to pass you over the information on the case they needed assistance on. 
“We think there's a serial killer in the drug ring you infiltrated,” the woman explained, passing over the files with the case details. You took a moment's breath before opening to the crime scene photos, steeling yourself for what you might encounter. 
“There are probably a lot of serials in the organization. It's a drug ring. What makes this one worse?” You said, just as you flipped the file open and answered your own question. 
“Shit- Okay, that's what makes this one worse. He can't be more than 15, right?” 
The answering grimace on the two agents' faces suggested you'd been generous in your estimate. “Okay, how can I help?” 
xxxxx 
A few hours passed in the interrogation room, and you'd walked them through all of your up to date information on your case and cover. The chair wasn't exactly comfortable, but you were glad to be finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. The interview was ending, and you could see an end to your undercover work swiftly following too with the BAU's assistance. 
You weren't looking forward to having to acclimatize back into the real world. You'd gone from pushing papers at a desk 9 hours a day to rubbing shoulders with drug dealers and junkies, a lot of whom were kids, young people like you who had no other options than the streets and crime. 
You made a mental note to give a few warnings to the younger kids on the streets to stay alert and then started getting back into character. 
“Thanks again for your help, Agent. We appreciate your time.” Prentiss nodded at you as she gathered the folders, getting ready to leave. 
Spencer Reid stood, too, stretching himself out as he rose from the chair, giving you quite the show as your eyes dragged from his face, down his chest and down further still as you appreciated the view. 
The last few hours had been strictly professional, and you'd enjoyed bouncing ideas off of him, running through theories. Now, trying to get back into your ‘lusty barmaid’ persona, you thought instead about how much you'd like to bounce on him yourself, possibly while running your hands through his hair. 
A girl could dream. 
“Hold on a second, I'm still in cover, I can't go back out there looking this pristine, it's too suspicious,” you said, the two agents turning back to you curiously. 
“What do you mean?” 
“Someone needs to throw me around a little. Rough housing, you know, a few bruises will do it.” 
Prentiss looked at you, caught halfway between impressed and amused. The good Doctor however seemed to darken slightly, covering his shock with a tensed jaw. 
“She's all yours, Spencer,” Wmily winked at the man, turning the door handle and beginning her exit.
“What? Why?” 
“I don't hit women.” 
“And I do? Emily, wha-” 
But the door to the interrogation room has already closed with a small cackle, and you're already being drawn closer to the man like a moth to a flame. 
Turning to face you, you see the shock of the situation on his face before he looks away in a flash, refusing to meet your eyes as he keeps himself close to the door. 
“Doctor Reid, I'm not actually a criminal, you know?” 
“I thought you wanted one of us to treat you like a criminal now.” 
“You make a good point, shall we begin?” 
He signed and rubbed his temples as you advanced, letting you get a little bit closer before holding his hands up in surrender. 
“Wait, wait, tell me first, what should we be doing?” 
You took a deep breath and expelled it, then took the time to think about it. 
You would need some visible marks of the FBI's unkindness - wrists red, a bruise or two on your knees, maybe, from falling. The problem was, you couldn't think about how to get the marks without driving yourself insane. 
There was a quick and easy way to get tender knees, an even easier way to mark up your neck and chest, but you couldn't figure out how to ask Spencer Reid to do those things without spreading your legs and letting him do whatever he wanted. You weren't sure you wouldn't do that eventually, anyway.
“Let's start with my wrists. You were too generous with the handcuffs earlier - just grab them really tight, pin me against the wall if it helps.”
He nodded and took a hesitant step towards you, thinking for a second, before grabbing one wrist and spinning you around. Before you could even process the action, he had you pinned, chest against the wall, arms above your head. 
“Is that okay?” He asked, his grip tight  but not bruising yet. 
“A little tighter, I want the marks to last a while. Why is my face against the wall?” 
He gripped tighter, the pain sending a jolt through your wrists that trailed all the way down to pool between your thighs. 
“I thought you'd be less uncomfortable like this.” 
“With your dick pushed up against my ass? Yes, Doctor, great decision.” 
He let out a cold, quick laugh, leaving you flushed as he pushed your upper body into the wall, too, finally getting to the grip strength he needed to get attention. 
“I'm sorry to disappoint, Y/N, but that's my gun,” the words whispered in your ear were the last straw as you shuddered in his grasp, his hands releasing your wrists as he stepped back a little. 
You shook out your hands a little, trying to momentarily relive the stiffness in your joints. 
He took a few paces to the desk and upholstered his weapon, placing it on the desk before joining you again. 
“So you don't get confused again,” he explained at seeing your raised eyebrow. 
“Oh so next time, it will be your dick?” You whispered, moving back to the desk and sitting yourself on the edge or it, picking up the gun and studying it for a few minutes. 
“Y/N, put it down.” 
“Ooh, possessive, are we?” You giggled, aiming it at him for a second before grabbing it by the barrel and holding it back out for him to grab. 
“Hold it, point it at me or whatever. Maybe it'll help you rough me up.” 
His brow furrowed, but he grabbed it anyway, not immediately slipping it into the holster as he stepped forward. 
“What now?” He asked, and you shrugged. 
“Whatever feels natural. And looks visible, I guess.”
It took him a few minutes to decide, surveying your body like it was a puzzle. Professionally, of course. You were about to speak up and urge him to get on with it when his hand shot out and wrapped around your throat. 
You tried to gasp, but the grip was firm, and boy, was it driving you crazy. Your legs had naturally parted as you sat yourself on the edge of the desk, and he walked into that space now, his free hand still holding the gun. 
Your body pushed forward into his, suddenly awash with arousal as your chest heaved with tiny breaths, lungs burning. 
“Are you enjoying this, Y/N? Or is it Caitlyn Grant that's enjoying this?” 
You felt the gun touch your thigh gently, and you moaned, just as he softened his grip on your throat. 
“Answer me, please. This is an interrogation room, after all.”
You met his eyes, checking to see how far he would take this, how far you could push back. 
“I'll admit, I'm not against mixing pain and pleasure.” 
His gaze flicked down, slowly pushing his gun up the skin of your thigh, raising your skirt with the barrel to catch a quick glimpse of your panties. 
“I can tell.” 
If it weren't for his grip on you, you'd have lunged for him right then and there. The cool metal against your thigh had you shuddering against him, growing wetter by the minute. 
“I read somewhere once that we can't pretend to be someone else without actually becoming them in some small way. You've been a cartel whore for six months, I wonder if this is a lasting effect.” 
He was so close now all he needed to do to close the gap was change the angle of his head, but he kept you in place with that gun, pointing up from your pussy, flush against your stomach. 
“I'll tell you a secret - the part of me that's aroused right now definitely predates this cover.” 
His lips drop to yours, tongue clashing with yours furiously as he grabs the back of your head to angle you better. 
Letting his hand drop back to your thigh, he gently coaxed you further open, skirt riding up. Putting down the gym momentarily, he pressed a wandering finger against your pantie-clad pussy, feeling your arousal before he used it to coat his fingers. 
A second later and the offending pair of underwear lay discarded on the floor. 
“Fuck, Spencer,” you said, gasping for breath as he again picked up the gun. 
“You wanted this so badly, didn't you? You've been needing someone to treat you like this for months now. It didn't even have to be me.” 
He traced circles on your thigh with the gun, and you twitched, years of training not letting you relax around the weapon and months of sexual frustration, making you desperate for something to touch you. 
“Yes, yes, please touch me.” 
The hand at your throat slid down to your chest and pushed gently  urging you to lie back and let him do whatever he wanted with you. The desk was cold - metal biting at your bare skin - and it only sent more shivers down your spine as he lowered himself to his knees and parted your legs for his tongue. 
The first touch was heaven, a state of bliss you'd been without in what felt like forever. His tongue danced across your folds as he tasted every inch of your exposed cunt, grip still strong on the gun pointed now to your chest, pinning you between the machine and the table. 
You tried to be as still as possible, to take the pleasure he gave calmly, but you couldn't. You writhed, moaned, chest heaving as you tried to hold off the first orgasm you'd achieved with someone else in probably a year.  
Like a man on a mission, Spencer Reid did not care. He gladly suffocated between your thighs as you squeezed them together, wrapping them around his head so you could keep feeling the insurmountable pleasure of his tongue on your pussy. 
“Spencer…Spencer, fuck-” you said as he finally pried your legs apart, lifting them just slightly so his tongue could reach further inside of you, curling with each wave of passion. Your hands fisted his hair, desperate for something to ground you to the moment as your pleasure spilt out of you, orgasm jolting through you in tiny sparks of pleasure. 
The gun moved first, coming level with your chest as you untangled your fingers from his hair. Spencer stood, wiping his face with the back of his hand as he kept the gun on you. 
“I think this turns you on even more. You've been ruined by this cover, Y/N, you're so used to being in danger that you can't even get off without someone threatening you.” 
You attempted to scoff, to brush off his words somehow, but his hand was suddenly back around your throat, picking you up off the desk and pulling you instead towards the room's one-way window. 
“Look at yourself,” he said, again twisting you around so you were pressed into the wall, wrists above your hair, raising your shirt to expose the cold skin underneath. He ran the barrel across the fresh skin, leaving a field of goosebumps along his path. 
“I don't think it would've mattered who came in to rough you up. I think you'd just as happily have convinced Emily to fuck your little pussy raw, right Y/N? As long as there was a gun…” 
Your moan was the only response as he used the weapon to spread your legs. You naturally arched your back and kept your hands in place as he holstered the weapon momentarily to unzip his pants and let his cock free. 
You couldn't see it, but you saw his reflection in the mirror as he slowly stretched you out with it, mouth dropping in a lustful ‘o’ as he fed his dick to you, hard and thick. 
As soon as it was in, the gun came back out, this time to rest against your temple. 
“Get yourself off,” his voice was so low it was practically a growl. “Use my cock, and pleasure yourself.” 
Your body listened immediately, beginning to move back and forth on his cock as he held himself in place. His moans and groans were all the encouragements you needed, the gun at your temple was just made the pleasure more profound as you approached your release. 
But he kept you pinned to the glass, your full range of motion limited, and you whimpered in frustration that you couldn't feel every inch of him. 
“If you need something, use your words, Agent.” 
“More, need more, please..please,” you gasped, breathing ragged. 
The hands at your wrists released, and he fisted a hand into the flesh at your hip, your wrists resting on the glass next to your face as he took over your thrusting. 
“Can't even do this anymore, what a spoiled little whore,” he said as his hips began snapping into you, reaching that spot deep inside you as you drooled against the glass, wondering if anyone had just happened to step into that room and what they must think about you. 
“Cum for me, Y/N. Cum on my cock,” he said it, and entranced, your body did just that, your orgasm taking the last breath of strength you had as he too plunged himself deeper and stilled there, his cum coating your walls. 
Neither of you moved for an eternity, but the first sign of clarity returning was the careful return of the gun to the holster. 
Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, Spencer minimized the mess you made together, cleaning you up as he slipped out of you. Discarding it momentarily on the floor, he pulled your clothes back into position and led you back over to the chairs. Just as he moved to sit you down, though, you turned and wrapped your arms around his waist, pulling him into a hug. 
His arms hung suspended for a minute or two before he let them rest on your back, stroking your hair. 
“Sorry, it's been… it's been lonely, and I didn't realize how hard it had been until-” 
“It's okay. Take your time,” he said, sitting down in the chair and letting you curl up in his lap, burying your head in his neck
“We’ll catch this guy, and then you're out, okay Y/N? We'll come back and get you out soon.” 
Lifting your eyes to his, you nodded, pressing your lips to his with a smile as you again worked yourself back into character, regaining your earlier composure and lifting yourself from the man's too comfortable arms. 
“Well, Spencer, what do you say we get me back into panties and handcuffs and cut Caitlyn Grant loose?” 
942 notes · View notes
Honey Girl. Chapter Five.
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Chapter One. Chapter Two. Chapter Three. Chapter Four. Chapter Six. Chapter Seven. Chapter Eight. Chapter Nine. Series Masterlist. The Playlist.
Chapter Synopsis - Does absence make the heart grow fonder, or does it just make everything ten times more difficult?
Pairing - Dad'sBestFriend!Bucky Barnes x Female Reader - soulmate au
Warnings - smut. cursing. alcohol consumption. angst. mention of illness.
Age Rating - 18+
Word Count - 5.7k
Author's Note - it's here!! as always, I can't thank you enough for your love, support and patience with this fic. us writers lead busy lives, and i've been trying my hardest to find the time to write whenever I can, so it means so much that you guys stick with me - even when things take longer than expected. love you all. you're angels. please feel free to spam my inbox with thoughts and suggestions - it always makes my day when you're all so passionate. mwah.
as always, reblogs, comments and feedback (even anonymous feedback) are immensely appreciated!! your reblogs are the only way to circulate my fics, which keeps me going <3
Masterlist. Inbox.
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The sand is warm beneath your feet, cooling breeze cascading across your skin. The waves caress the shore in repetitive motions, lulling you into calm.
Sunlight beaming down, you shield your eyes and look up, sighing in contentment at the shades of blue that paint the sky.
A shriek and a laugh come from somewhere on your right. You look over and see a couple and their toddler running after each other, sprinting down the beach and into the ocean. The little girl can't stop giggling, tripping over her own feet as she chases her parents. Something tugs at your heart, deep and visceral.
It's been three months since you left home.
It's been three months since you saw Bucky.
He calls every few days, trying to give you the space you need while also keeping in touch. You have to resist the urge to call him every ten minutes. It's an improvement, at least. It was five minutes when you first moved.
He texts you good morning and goodnight everyday without fail, just to let you know he's there. You can't sleep until you get his text. It's like a lullaby, reassuring and soothing. Like a chamomile tea, warming and calming you from the inside out.
You think about him the most at night time. Your days are spent running around preparing for the bakery. Testing, retesting, writing up recipes, measuring out quantities. You want it to be perfect.
The baking is taking your mind off Bucky, for the moment at least. You've thrown yourself into your new role, eager and excited. Stella's ecstatic to have you around. You love that you're still just as close as you were, despite the time apart. Friendships like that are rare.
Lacie calls you most nights. She demands to know what you did that day, who you spoke to, what you made. It's like therapy, sitting and decompressing together over videochat. She's a lifeline, whether she knows it or not.
And of course, the most supportive people in your life - your parents. Your Mom is desperate to come and visit, begging that you let her know when you're less busy so you can show her around. She loves the sunshine just as much as you. A woman after your own heart.
On the nights when the doubt creeps in, unwelcome and dark, you remind yourself how lucky you are. Surrounded by people who adore you, support you, love you unconditionally. And then the night doesn't seem so dark. The light pours through the cracks.
You walk home from the beach, warmed and carried by the knowledge of love.
✵  ✵    ·  ✵    *  · ✵
"This is ridiculous."
Stella's perched on the edge of your countertop, blush pink macaron in her hand.
"Good ridiculous?"
She scoffs, looking at you incredulously.
"Where did your confidence go? You never doubted yourself in school. Yes, good ridiculous. It shouldn't work, but it does."
Shouldn't work, but it does. Seems to be the story of your life at the moment.
"I need these on the menu."
"You don't think they're a little... pretentious? My best seller is a chocolate chip cookie. A honey and rosewater macaron isn't exactly a childhood favourite."
"Babe. That's the beauty of this. You can put whatever the hell you want out in your bakery. So what if they're unconventional? They're delicious. That's all that matters."
"Okay. Fine."
You relent, thinking about her earlier question. Where did your confidence go? When you graduated culinary school, you never doubted your abilities. Your technique, your flavours, your presentation - you had full faith in all of it. Now, you seem to be second guessing yourself.
You know it's because of your Tethering.
Before, you understood how the world worked. Good, bad, in between. Love, lust, the very clear difference between the two. You watched as other people found their forever person, and acknowledged their new journey.
And then you found Bucky. Or, Bucky found you.
Suddenly, the world you'd lived in before no longer made sense. The people, the places, the relationships, all impacted by the way you feel about your soulmate. Everything, everyone, everywhere, reminds you of Bucky. You're experiencing emotions you've never felt before. It's disorientating, confusing, complex. Your understanding of the world has changed completely.
It takes time to adjust.
No one ever talks about the way your Tethering turns your life upside down.
For some, it's completely positive. They enjoy the uprooting, revel in the change.
For others, it's a huge adaptation. One filled with tears, and confusion, and doubts.
Both are valid. Both are understandable.
You remind yourself of this every day.
✵  ✵    ·  ✵    *  · ✵
"There's someone in the café that wants to speak to you."
The youngest waitress, Isabel, stands in the kitchen doorway, looking at you hopefully. You set down your piping bag and wash your hands, talking to her over your shoulder.
"Who is it?"
"No idea. Some guy. He's kinda hot. Brown hair, tall, beard."
Your heart skips a beat, breath caught in your lungs. Bucky jokes sometimes about coming to see you, but would he just show up announced? Do you want him to?
You can't feel it in your chest, you realise suddenly. You can't feel the ease, the relief, the knowing. Maybe being apart for so long has weakened your connection. The thought makes you strangely emotional.
You inhale carefully and thank her, before making your way out. It's almost closing time, and there's no one around other than the man stood with his back to you.
He turns around, and you realise quickly that your hope was misplaced. You've never seen this person before. He is handsome, admittedly. But he's not your soulmate.
"Hi."
"Hey. Are you the baker here?"
"I am."
He holds out his hand for you to shake, stepping closer.
"I'm Rafael."
You tell him your name, and he smiles, nodding.
"Forgive me if this is weird, but I had to meet you. To thank you properly, in person."
You don't say anything, so he continues.
"Let me, uh, explain. Sorry, should have started with that. My sister is sick. She's going through treatment currently, and it's been super hard on her. She's had no appetite whatsoever, and she's losing weight rapidly."
He takes a deep breath before continuing.
"A couple of weeks ago, I picked up a load of stuff from this place because my Mom was coming to visit. My sister tried your earl grey and lavender cookie, and ate the entire thing. It was the first time I've seen her eat for weeks. So, I came back and bought basically all of them every day."
You laugh, coming to a realisation. You wondered why those cookies were selling so well all of a sudden.
"I just wanted to say thank you. It might not seem like a big deal, but it's really huge for us. I also wanted to explain why all of those cookies were suddenly going missing at like ten in the morning."
You gesture at him to sit, the both of you taking a seat at one of the tables nearby.
You talk for almost an hour, listening intently to Rafael as he tells you about his family. He moved to California to be with his sister Maria when she got sick, no one else around to care for her. He asks about yours, and you tell him about your parents and their constant encouragement. He's also interested in how you got into baking, so you tell him all about culinary school, and the dreams your Grandma gave you when you were a kid.
"You're really talented, you know."
"I bet you say that to all of the bakers around here. But thank you."
His fingers brush yours where they're resting on the table, making you shiver.
"I'll make Maria her own box, if you like. I'll leave them behind the counter, just tell Isabel who you are."
"You'd do that for her?"
"Of course," you smile. "The idea that I'm helping someone with my silly little creations makes me really happy. We can work out a schedule, and I'll make sure I bake Maria some extras when I do my usual batch."
"You're incredible. Seriously. Thank you."
He squeezes your hand and you squeeze back. The two of you are sat in the café as the sun sets, orange glow illuminating the room. You didn't expect to make a friend today. You're glad you have.
"Well, I should probably go and clean up the kitchen. You know where to find me, if you need anything. It was lovely to meet you, Rafael."
He rises when you do, smiling at you earnestly.
"You too. Nice to finally put a face to the cookie, so to speak."
You chuckle and show him out of the door, waving as he walks down the street. Suddenly, he turns around, striding back towards you.
"I'm so sorry if this is forward, and please feel free to say no, but... are you single? If you are, I'd love to ask you to dinner sometime."
The answer to that question is much more complicated than Rafael could ever imagine. So instead, you say,
"I'm not. I'm Tethered, actually."
His brows raise in surprise, but he's smiling.
"You are?"
"Yeah, I am. He doesn't live here, though. He lives back home, where my parents are."
"You guys are married?"
"No! Not yet. It's, uh... a complex... situation."
"Ah," he says, gentle, knowing look on his face. "I thought Tetherings weren't meant to be complex. Isn't that the whole point? That they're easy?"
You laugh, but it's not malicious. You're thinking about how sweetly naive he is, how he's got a huge storm coming his way one day.
"He's my Dad's best friend."
You're not sure why you're admitting this to a man you met an hour and a half ago, but you are. It's almost a relief, to get it off your chest again - to tell someone who's completely neutral, who doesn't know either of you.
"Woah."
"Yeah."
"That... is complicated."
"Yeah," you chuckle. "Understatement of the century."
Rafael leans against the wall, watching you intently. He's curious.
"How did your parents react?"
"They don't know yet."
His eyebrows raise almost comically high.
"Wait, what? How did you hide that? I thought it was supposed to be impossible to hide that you're Tethered. Although, I guess I had no idea, seeing as I asked you out."
"We wanted to figure it out for ourselves first, before telling anyone. And then I moved out here, so we're doing long distance. Like I said, complex."
"Understatement of the century," he laughs.
You look at each other for a moment, before he smiles.
"I'm sorry I asked you out. I wouldn't have, if I'd known."
"Please, don't apologise. I admire your... courage?" you grin. "And I appreciate you coming to see me today. I have like two friends here in Cali, so it's nice to feel like I've made another."
He smiles again, wider this time. Someone's going to be lucky to be Tethered to him one day, you think.
"I know it might surprise you, given my good looks and... courage," he chuckles, "but I don't have many friends out here either. I've been so focused on Maria, I haven't had time to socialise."
"The Universe works in funny ways, huh?"
"Sure does."
You wander back through the door, ready to close up for good this time.
"I'll see you tomorrow, for the cookies. And I'd love to meet Maria one day, if she's up for it."
"I'm sure she'd love to meet you. I'll bring her by."
"Thanks, Rafael."
"Of course. Thank you."
"Of course."
That night, when your Mom calls, you get to tell her you've made a new friend. That makes the both of you very happy.
✵  ✵    ·  ✵    *  · ✵
You're testing out a recipe in the kitchen of your new apartment when your phone rings.
"Hey, Dad."
"Hey, kiddo. You doing okay?"
"Yeah, I am, actually. I'm settling in."
"Good, I'm glad. I don't wanna keep you on the phone for too long, but I wanted to ask you something."
"Go ahead, Dad. Anything."
"How would you feel about surprising your Mom for her birthday?"
"What kind of surprise?"
"I know you haven't been gone all that long, and I know it's kind of last minute, but, I was thinking you could come back to... be her gift? She really misses you, you know."
"I miss her too," you say softly, trying to keep your voice even. "I'll talk to Stella, see if we can figure something out. I'd really love to see you guys."
"We'd really love to see you too, sweetheart."
"I'll call you back later, when I've organised everything. Love you, Dad. See you soon, hopefully."
"Love you, kiddo. Proud of you, you know."
"I know," you smile. "I know."
✵  ✵    ·  ✵    *  · ✵
The journey always seems shorter when you know you're going home.
You make it back in record time, salty ocean breeze whipping through your hair as you cruise along the roads. You take a deep breath and sigh it out, relief filling your lungs. It's good to be back.
You can't let your Mom see you, so you head straight back to your apartment. Your Dad told you they're in the process of renting it out, but they haven't made much progress yet. For now, it's still yours.
You inhale the familiar scent, smiling gently. There's something so particular about the way a place smells when you feel like you belong there. It's like home and comfort and ease all rolled into one.
You unpack a little, folding your clothes and tucking them into the dresser. You told Stella you'd probably stay a few days, wanting to spend as much time with your family as possible. You're rifling through the refrigerator and thinking about a grocery list when there's a knock at your door.
You know who it is.
A feeling of relief washes over your body, tension melting from your shoulders. Your lungs fill easier, your breath falls deeper, everything is a little brighter, a little more colourful.
You open the door to be met with the sight of Bucky Barnes.
He's in work pants and a white t shirt that's stained with grease and oil, heavy boots on his feet. He must have come straight from the Garage.
He looks at you carefully, as if he isn't sure that you're real. You rake your eyes over his form, trying to drink him in. All the pictures you've taken and saved don't do him justice.
He exhales, beaming grin appearing on his face.
"You're here."
You can't help but smile back, his happiness spreading through you.
"I'm here."
Bucky rushes forward and scoops you into his arms, enveloping you completely. He wraps himself around you as he tucks you into his chest, his grip tight and unrelenting. You breathe him in, overwhelmed with emotion and sensation. You didn't realise how much you needed this. Three months is too long.
"What are you doing here?" he asks, slight shake in his voice. He's holding off tears. So are you.
"My Dad wanted me to surprise my Mom for her birthday. It's all a secret."
He smiles, before leaning down to capture your lips in a knee buckling kiss. A kiss that says I missed you. A kiss that says I need you. A kiss that says please don't leave me again.
"How did you know?" you whisper when you pull away for air.
"I felt it. I think I knew the moment you arrived back in town. Thought my mind was playing tricks on me, for a second. But there's no mistaking that feeling. I had to come and see for myself."
"We're getting pretty good at this whole soulmate thing, huh?" you laugh, unaware of the tears running down your face. "I missed you, Buck. So much."
"I missed you too," he murmurs, kissing you again. "Didn't think I was going to survive, some days."
"Me too. Do you know how many times I stood with my car keys in my hand, ready to drive back to you?"
He chuckles and then sniffles, emotion dripping down his cheeks.
"I did exactly the same thing. So many times."
You wrap your arms around his middle, reveling in the way he smells like gasoline and home.
"How long are you here for?" he murmurs, worried he'll disturb the peace.
"I'm not sure. A good few days, at least."
"Okay," he breathes. "I can do a few days. We can do a few days."
"Sorry I didn't tell you sooner. I didn't know, to be honest. It was all kinda last minute."
"It's okay, pretty thing," he mutters into your hair. "It was a nice surprise."
"You're coming tonight, right? To my Mom's party?"
"Wouldn't miss it."
You stay wrapped up in each other for a little while longer, savouring his warmth. He rubs absentminded patterns across the skin of your back, committing the softness of it to his memory.
"I should probably get back to work. I took off with no warning."
"You're the boss. You're allowed," you chuckle.
He laughs with you, and the sound lights up your nerves, illuminates your bones. It settles itself in the hollows of your ribcage, tangles itself in your heartstrings. It's like medicine.
"Can't wait to see you tonight," you whisper. "Wear something cute."
"I always do," he winks, pressing a kiss to your forehead. "Miss you already."
"Miss you more."
He looks at you, smiling.
"Man, we're the worst."
"Truly."
He kisses you once, twice, three times before finally leaving, reluctant to let you go. You spend the rest of the afternoon floating on air, relaxed and at ease. You haven't felt like this in a while.
✵  ✵    ·  ✵    *  · ✵
Your Dad sneaks you into the house through the side door, hiding you in the kitchen as he ushers your Mom through to the back yard.
It's decorated with floral garlands and streamers, flowers in vases covering the table he's set up. The golden, warm fairy lights illuminate the space, keeping it soft and intimate. He's been watching, carefully observing the way that she does things. He's recreated her party style perfectly.
There's a few of her closest friends waiting for her, gifts littering the spare chairs. Your Dad walks her outside, hands covering her eyes.
"Surprise!"
You watch through the door as your Mom gasps, grin on her face.
"Oh my God! You guys!"
She runs into your Dad, wrapping her arms around his neck.
"I can't believe you managed to pull this off," she says in disbelief.
He sets her back down on the ground and kisses her gently.
"I got you something. I hope you like it."
That's your cue. You sneak out as quietly as possible, standing behind her.
"Happy Birthday, Mama."
She whips around to face you, shock written across her face. Her eyes well up, tears threatening to spill. Yours do the same, bottom lip quivering.
She throws her arms around you, tugging you into her.
"I'm so happy you're here, baby girl. I missed you so much."
"Missed you. You look beautiful."
"Not as beautiful as you! Look at you, all sun kissed and glowy. You look so pretty, sweetheart."
You grin at her and she does the same back, your Dad beaming at your identical smiles.
"You're the best gift I've ever received. Then and now."
You're overwhelmed, suddenly, by the realisation that no matter what happens, no matter what life throws at you, no matter how many miles are between you - your Mom will always be in your corner. Your Dad will always be in your corner. Bucky will always be in your corner.
You think, for a moment, that despite everything, you might just be okay.
✵  ✵    ·  ✵    *  · ✵
The night goes off without a hitch.
You drink, you laugh, you sing. You and your Mom dance to ABBA, Bowie, Donna Summer. Your Dad joins in, and can't help but grin every time he watches his girls together.
What a life, he thinks. I'm the luckiest man in the world.
When everyone gets a little past tipsy, your Mom changes the music to something slower, jazzier, richer. Your Dad pulls her into his chest, holding her close as they move to the melody. You're sat at the table taking off your heels when Bucky slides into the seat next to you. He pulls your foot into his lap and undoes the strap, sliding the shoe off gently. He rubs his thumb into your sole, smirking when you groan.
"Have you been avoiding me tonight, pretty baby?"
His cheeks are flushed slightly, top few buttons of his shirt open. He's been drinking a little, his walls lowered more than usual.
"I have to."
"Oh yeah?"
"I feel like I'm gonna burst into flames every time you look at me," you whisper. "I kinda want to rip your clothes off, baby."
He groans at the nickname. You know exactly what you're doing.
"It only takes one look for a minute too long to figure out how I feel about you, Buck. They'll work it all out instantly."
"Dance with me," he murmurs suddenly. "Your parents are too busy staring into each others eyes. Come on, honey. One dance."
His big blue eyes bore into yours, and you know you're fucked. You're never going to be able to say no to him.
"One dance," you whisper.
He takes your hand and leads you to the decked area, brightened by the golden lights. Bucky slides a hand over your back, resting there carefully. You intertwine your fingers with his and step into him, embracing the warmth that rolls off his body.
I'll Be Seeing You by Billie Holiday begins to play, and the two of you start to sway gently, eyes never leaving each others. Bucky pulls you in closer, and you melt into him. You don't care about the repercussions anymore.
Maybe it's the wine talking. Maybe it's something else.
✵  ✵    ·  ✵    *  · ✵
"That was close!"
Your Mom's giggling as your Dad holds her, having just saved her from tripping down the front steps. Everyone's giddy, both from drinking and from laughing.
"Sweetheart. Bucky. Come back for lunch tomorrow. Your Dad ordered too much catering, and we need help eating it."
"Mama, are you sure?"
"I want to see you as much as possible before you go, babygirl. You too, Buck. I feel like we don't see you as much as we used to."
"He'll be there," you reply before he can protest. "We'll carpool, and I'll bring a strawberry and cream tart that I made for you."
She kisses you on the cheek, your Dad leaning in to kiss the other side.
"Love you both."
"Love you," they say in unison, laughing and yelling jinx. "Get home safe, you two!"
"I'll take care of her," Bucky chuckles. "Always."
✵  ✵    ·  ✵    *  · ✵
"Why don't you see my parents much anymore?"
You and Buck are walking home along the sandy coastal path, fingers intertwined and sides pressed together. You look up at him, frowning slightly when he hesitates.
"Don't lie to me, James. I can feel it, remember."
You place a hand on your chest to remind him, and he nods.
"It's not the same here without you."
You weren't expecting the sincerity. It knocks you off balance a little.
You stop when you reach a wooden bench, sitting down and pulling him with you.
"So you're isolating yourself from the people who love you?"
He smiles, sadness rife in his eyes. Your tough guy act is crumbling.
"Not on purpose. It just kinda happened."
"You promised you'd talk to me, Buck. Especially if it got too hard. You need to accept support from people, or everything is going to come crashing down."
"I know. I know. But every time I go to their house, I'm expecting you to be there. Every time I go to the beach, I'm expecting you to be there. Every time I walk past your building, I'm expecting you to be there, waiting for me to pick you up. Even when I'm sailing, I can't stop thinking about that day we spent on the boat."
"The other day I had to make three batches of buttercream, because I messed up the first two. I was so distracted thinking about you that I split them both."
He laughs, then, wholehearted and genuine. You can't help but join him, shaking your head at the absurdity of it all.
"Bucky, you have to promise that you'll keep going, even without me. You have to see my Mom and Dad like you used to, you have to still sail and go to the beach. You can't put your life on hold for me."
He takes a deep breath, sliding an arm around your shoulders to pull you in closer.
"Okay. I promise."
You whip your head around to look at him.
"Just like that?"
"Just like that, honey. You're right. I've been waiting for you to come back, so I can start living again. But life is still happening, whether you're here or not."
"Wise words, wise man," you smile. "Not a minute goes by where I don't think of you. You know that, don't you?"
"I know. I feel it."
You watch as he brings your linked hands to his chest, placing them there. You rest your head on his shoulder, lulled into calm by the steady melody of his heart. You swear it beats to the rhythm of your name.
✵  ✵    ·  ✵    *  · ✵
The two of you can't bear the idea of separating, so Buck comes home with you.
"Have you got a blanket?" he asks as he's kicking off his shoes.
"I have. What for?"
"The couch."
You process for a moment before it clicks.
"You're not sleeping on the couch, Buck."
"No?"
"No. I want your ridiculous, radiator-like body heat in bed with me."
He smiles, all giddy and lopsided, before striding across the room to you. Cradling your face in his rough hands, he kisses you with fervour. He's making up for lost time.
You tangle your fingers into his hair, tugging and pulling, smirking when he groans. He retaliates by grabbing your ass and picking you up, wrapping your legs around his waist. He carries you through to your bedroom, lips never leaving yours.
Throwing you down onto the bed, he pulls his shirt over his head, watching you hungrily as you do the same with your dress. You're left in your underwear, leaving little to the imagination.
"You're so beautiful," he murmurs. "Makes me want to cry."
You reach for him as he settles on top of you, your hand sliding along his stubbled cheek.
"I'm so glad you're feeling what I'm feeling," you whisper. "I'd think I was going insane otherwise."
Bucky kisses you again, before trailing his lips across your jaw, your ear, your neck. He's careful not to leave any marks, as much as he wants to. You glide your hands along the expanse of his shoulders, his back, his biceps. He's so strong, so broad. It makes you ache.
"So fuckin' pretty," he mumbles against your chest. "Like a goddamn dream."
You throw your head back as he attaches his mouth to your tits, nipping and sucking as he goes. Your hands are in his hair again, reveling in the way his groans vibrate through you.
Bucky slots his knee in between your legs as he kisses across your chest, smirking when you grind your hips into it. You chase the friction as best you can, moaning when it hits you just right.
"Needy baby. You don't want my fingers? My mouth? No? Just my knee?"
You nod, then shake your head. You're not sure what you're asking for, drunk on him already.
"Please, Buck. Anything."
"I'll give you whatever you want if you keep saying my name like that."
He makes quick work of pulling your underwear down your legs, swiping his fingers through your wet heat.
"Oh, fuck," he chokes. "Fuck, honey. Is this all for me? Hmm?"
"Yes, yes, yes."
"Yeah?"
"It's yours, Buck. I'm yours."
Bucky drops his head forward, bumping your nose with his.
"I think that's my favourite thing you've ever said," he mumbles against your mouth.
You reach up to kiss him, sucking his tongue before biting at his lips. You can't get close enough. Every inch of your skin is pressed to his, and you still want more.
Bucky crawls down the bed, situating himself between your legs. He nudges at you with his nose before diving in, lapping at you like a man starved.
You'd forgotten what people said about sex when you're Tethered, but it all comes back to you now. Everything is heightened, your senses on overdrive. It's like Bucky has the handbook to your body, and all he has to do is read the instructions the Universe has given him.
He's got you teetering on the edge in no time, right on the precipice. No ones ever made you feel like this. It feels like some sort of small miracle is happening, an otherworldly connection.
"Give it to me, honey baby," he murmurs into you. "Let me see how pretty you look when you come."
You tug at his hair as you reach your climax, the vibrations of his groan only prolonging your release. Bucky helps you ride it out, only ceasing his action when he's satisfied you're satisfied.
He rests his head against your thigh and looks up at you as you come down, breathing heavily.
"You good?"
"So good," you grin. "Never better."
"Me neither," he whispers, crawling up your body to kiss you again. You taste yourself and whine, desperate to feel closer to him.
"Need you," you demand against his lips. "Need you more than anything."
"I know, baby," he soothes as he smooths the hair back from your face. "Gonna give you everything you want. Anything in the world."
You're on the verge of tears again, completely overwhelmed. He's looking at you like you hung the stars in the sky just for him. You think maybe you would, if he asked you to.
Bucky slides home in one gentle thrust, easy as breathing. The both of you exhale, savouring the moment. It's like nothing either of you have ever felt before.
You pull his face down to you, resting your foreheads against each other.
"Buck, I-"
"I know," he breathes. "Fuck, I know."
"Need you to move, baby."
He nods and kisses you sweetly, before pulling his hips back and gliding forward. The angle is just right, both of you keening.
"Fuck, honey. So pretty. So tight. Fuck."
Bucky sets a steady rhythm, not too fast, not too slow. It's like he can read your mind, knowing exactly what you need. All you can say is his name as stars cloud your vision.
He slides his hand down your front, rubbing perfect circles on your clit with his fingers. You clamp down on him and he groans, low and gutteral.
"Need you to come, pretty baby," he whispers hoarsely. "Please. Waited so long for this. Please."
The desperation in his tone is what throws you into your release, muscles tensing and back arched. You grip his biceps, scratching your nails into his sun kissed skin.
Bucky can't hold on any longer, falling over the edge with you. The way he says your name as he does will be ingrained in your mind forever.
He drops his weight onto you entirely, no longer able to hold himself up. You wrap your arms around him, drawing absent minded patterns across his back. You're both sweating and panting. You're both completely content.
"Holy shit," he whispers after a while.
"You think it's gonna be like that every time?" you ask, grinning.
Bucky rolls off you and lands on the bed beside you, pulling you into his chest.
"Honey, just you wait. I've got moves you've never seen."
You snort, unable to hold in your laughter. You're floating on cloud nine, satiated and warm.
"You're the worst," you giggle, running your fingers over his abs gently.
The two of you stay intertwined for hours, enjoying the way your bodies fit together like two pieces of a puzzle. You both drift in and out of sleep, conversing in the gaps. At some points, you just lay in silence, completely comfortable. No one needs to say anything. You both know what the other person is thinking.
Eventually, the sun rises, casting the room in a golden orange glow. Bucky looks like an angel, illuminated by the morning light. You wonder for a second if he is, sent down as a gift to you.
Suddenly, you feel an intense sadness in your chest. You look up at Bucky from where you lay across him, and see a single tear drip down his cheek.
"I don't want you to go."
The only sound that can be heard is his sorrow hitting the pillow.
"I don't think I want to go."
He strokes your hair softly, taking a deep breath to try and get a handle on his emotions.
"You have to, baby. It's your dream."
Your bottom lip wobbles for a second, before the words come spilling out.
"You're my dream."
Bucky sniffles, and you continue.
"I could have nothing, but I have everything if I have you."
You sit up and Bucky does too, capturing your lips in a tear stained kiss.
"We'll be okay, my honey girl."
You crawl into his lap and wrap your arms around his neck, letting his warmth bleed into your bones.
"I know," you say, unsure if you're trying to convince yourself or him.
You know you'll be okay. It just doesn't feel like it right now.
You wonder how many times you can keep leaving and coming back before one of your hearts breaks for good.
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tag list part one
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