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cherry-leclerc · 7 months

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lolita ☆ cs55

genre: age gap (10 years), porn with plot, affairs, forbidden romance, angst, mentions of suicide, mentions of drugs, tragedy, erotic literature

word count: 14.9k

You were young, alluring, floating through a disastrous life with the touch of a thousand angels. Carlos was successful, irresistible and someone who often kept a distance from catastrophe. Never in a million years did he think he would have a complete moment of weakness. Especially the week of his wedding.

nsfw warning under the cut!

18+... sexual tension, penetrative sex, dry humping, riding, size kink, oral sex (f and m receiving), semi - public sex, deepthroating, praise, fingering, handjobs, lots of dirty foreplay, slapping (like once AH), a bit of edging, overstimulation, a bit of crying, sucking on fingers, squirting - i should stop now, oh god.

inspired by this and this !

STOP AND READ:

This by no means - in any shape or form - is something that should be admired or looked up to. It does deal with serious topics such as: grooming, suicide, and drugs. While the reader is of age (19), this is not my way of impulsing my own readers - especially younger ones, if by any chance they come across this - to follow this mindset. Dark themes will take place and if that is not something you are comfortable with, then that is okay, I definitely have more light hearted fics in my masterlist. “Love stories” aren’t always filled with flowers and rainbows, they can also be hurtful and confusing, often misunderstood. This is fictional. Given, this is inspired by Lolita and Blue Velvet by Lana Del Rey (*everyone cheers*) – what that means is that this story will not have a happy ending. Verses of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov are also mentioned (extremely controversial book - as it should be).

cherry here!…hi, guys! i hope you all enjoy and i’m gonna do it now: I’M SORRY.

She was as dangerous as poison could ever be - with no good intentions. She was malicious, sweet laughter that would make anyone fall in love. An Angel walking on Earth, curiously making it her playground.

He was intelligent. A man of few words, but also simply so, the seven deadly sins all wrapped up in one. Keeping a distance from things he knew would bring him no good.

But in order to understand, we would have to take you back to where it all began.

Where Paradise met Hell.

Growing up in Italy for some odd reason made you out to be the girl you were. Men there would throw themselves at any opportunity if they saw a single daisy looking girl in eyesight. At first it felt as if you were walking a tightrope; you knew it wouldn’t be the wisest idea to fall straight into their traps. Except, slowly, it made sense.

They knew how to sweet talk someone so young and naive - you’ll give them that. It only took one taste and that was the moment you knew.

You liked them older.

Men fucked in a way boys never would. Every single one would always put your needs first - but there was this one man that had you realizing how fucked up you could be in order to get what you want. That’s one prize you’d cheat to win.

And that’s a story for later.

Moving away for college was the best decision you felt you would ever make in your entire life. Given, Italy was home, but the people in it weren’t. Often, you find yourself missing your rendezvous but studying abroad in Spain wasn’t much different.

Note; you didn’t grow up with a tight knit family. Your mother was a drug addict with half of her days knocked out on the couch, your father was someone who was occasionally in the picture. He tried his best.

And your older sister, Ollie?

Well, you’d honestly forgotten you even had one.

Some may say that you’re a whore, a slut, a homewrecker, or any other Spanish slur that spits Madrid, but you never cared. You were having fun and why were you the one always being blamed? Perhaps, men, too, should think with their heads rather than their dicks.

Which is how you find yourself still repeating the familiar pattern you had started a long time ago. Riding your professor shouldn’t feel this good. Mierda, he would groan as you bounce up and down like a bunny. Mewling, you shake the feeling of remorse. Not when he felt this good.

Your phone ringing is what makes you stop, him still inside of you, twitching. Ciao? His calloused fingers would slide up to pinch your nipples as you lightly gasped.

“Tesoro! Haven’t heard your voice in so long.”

Your father’s tone makes you wince at the reminder. Occasionally, he would check up on you in a way you would assume other fathers did for their daughters. You could never hate him, though. In his own way, deep down, he still cared.

“Papi, how are you?”

Sliding off of his lap, you zip your dress back on as you pace the lecture room. Bored, he takes out his secret whiskey from under his desk. Your sister is getting married in a few weeks! I was thinking you could fly back home so you could join us. The thought alone made your stomach churn as you bit down onto your thumb. Signaling at the older man, you click your fingers, hinting for a glass of your own. He obliges, handing it to you.

“I’m busy with summer courses. Maybe I can send a gift?”

You try everything in the book in order to get out of what seems like a crappy, dull, Italian wedding. It had been ages since you last stepped foot there. In no right mind would Ollie’s wedding be the one to change that. But he says things that get to you. I haven’t seen you in years. Neither has your sister. She misses you, you know?

You bite down on a snarky remark as you down the rest of the gold liquid. Last time you spoke, she promised that you were dead to her. That she never wanted to hear from you again. In the moment, it hurt, but you grew used to the idea. And what younger sister doesn’t pick up on what older sister says? Now, you despised her as much as she did you.

“Ovviamente. I’ll be there.”

It’s hot as soon as you land. That you didn’t miss. Ale, your fathers chauffeur, picks you up with a bright smile. Saddened, it dawns on you that you hadn’t seen one of those in ages. He’s nice. Let's you sit in the passenger's seat as he introduces himself. He mentions he has 5 granddaughters and has been married for almost 50 years. It’s sweet. Makes you feel human.

Pulling into the driveway, you almost want to correct him. This isn’t my fathers house. You must be mistaken. Only, he says he isn’t. That he had recently moved into his Italian mansion a year ago. You’re skeptical for a minute, but realize you can’t be one to tell. Years have passed; things change.

Still, that didn’t stop you from gawking at the ginormous house that sits on a hill; overlooking all of Tuscany. It even had a beautiful view of the ocean. Why couldn’t you grow up with this?

“I’ll inform your father that you have arrived safely.”

Taking it all in, you slowly pace the entrance, analyzing everything in sight. The crystals hanging from the chandelier, large - expensive - portraits, shiny mirrors. Quirking your head to the side, you glide over to the golden trophy sitting in the middle of the spacious entry.

Carlos Sainz Sr. : Rally Driver of-

“That belonged to my father. He passed away a year ago.”

Startled, you grip onto the trophy tighter as you slightly jump in panic. You curse yourself for being caught as you delicately place it back down before turning your attention to the booming voice.

Instantly, you’re hit with lust. Standing in front of you is a tall man - around his 20’s, perhaps - dark brown eyes narrowed down on you like knives. Messy, untamed, brown hair. Large nose, plump lips, dark brows. His figure is something you can’t wrap your head around that even exists. Richard Mille's watch clung onto his wrist. Giorgio Armani pressed up against his chest, it almost looked as if it didn’t fit due to his rippling muscles. Woody, rich, scent filling up the room.

He was the most beautiful man you had ever laid eyes on.

“I am so, so, sorry.”

Your voice is so soft, it has him intrigued. You wore a short pastel yellow dress that didn’t leave much to his imagination; paired with converse and tube socks. Rosy tint on your cheekbones from the humidity. Berry lips. Wide, innocent eyes. He’d be lying if he said you didn’t take his own breath away. Even though you stood far enough away, he could still smell your vanilla perfume.

Inching closer, he waves you off. “I was kidding. My father is well and alive.” You tippy toe nervously before planting your feet back down.

“That’s not a nice thing to say.”

And he’s surprised with your response. Yet, he finds himself extending his tan hand out to you. “I’m Carlos.”

Carlos. His name sounds as attractive as his appearance. Strong and sure. But also…dark. You shake his hand, legs quivering at his warm touch. Deep down, he knew how much he affected you - it’s something he’s grown quite accustomed to, having people admire his looks, but it took a lot to not show that you had the same effect on him.

“Nice to meet you, Carlos. Do you work for my father?”

Amused, he lets out a deep chuckle. Even a simple sound like that had you pressing your legs together, arousal dripping in between.

“You don’t know who I am?” You shake your head, confused. Should you? He smiles. “That’s okay. We haven’t met before…Though you should get to know me since you’re already here…”

Wait.

“You know,” he leans his head a bit, floppy hair following, “Ollie.”

No, no, no.

“It’s so nice to finally meet my fiancée’s sister.”

Foolishly, you try your best to hide your surprise. How does a man like him end up with a bratty, narcissist, like your sister?

What was so fucking special about her?

Envy fills your veins as you try to show that this hasn’t phased you. Excited cheers echo down the hallway as your father runs over, embracing you into a warm hug. You’re here! Wincing, you lean into his touch, eyes still trained on the magnetic man.

Only then, did Ollie fly down the stairs, immediately running into Carlos’ arms. Making a big deal out of it, she kisses him as she runs her hands against his chest.

“Come here, tesoro. I’ll show you where you’ll be staying.”

The entire time; Carlos kept his eyes trained on you.

It didn’t make sense. Part of you knows it never will. You’ve only just met him, but you can tell he must’ve been fucked in the head to willingly choose someone like Ollie. Sure, she seemed sweet and kind, but she was anything but that.

Dinner that night is carbonara. Carlos is extremely talented. He cooked this just for you. Tight lipped, you thank him, looking down at your plate to avoid his burning gaze.

“How’s school?”

Turning to your father, you remind yourself that you were here for him; because he wanted you there. That’s all that should matter. “Very good. Thank you for asking, papi.”

The sound of glass hitting the table erupts as Carlos hurriedly goes to pick it up, quickly murmuring a strong apology. His dark gaze shortly flickers past you. It leaves you squirming.

Clearing his throat, he takes a sip of his wine. “Where do you study?” Spain, you tell him as he beams. “No way. I was born and raised in Madrid. Moved to Italy a few years ago for work.” Letting out a laugh, you find the coincidence funny. He moved from Spain to Italy and you moved from Italy to Spain.

“What do you do for work?”

“He’s a Formula 1 driver. Drives for Scuderia Ferrari,” Ollie weasels in as she smirks down on you. Anger bubbles inside of her when your attention remains on the Spaniard. Drumming your fingers against the table, you lick your lips. Formula 1? He’s about to explain it all up until Ollie butts in once again. She rubs his hand, a glistening ring shining right in front of you. You physically have to force yourself to look away. “Oh, amor, she doesn’t know what that is. She’s too…young.”

You know she’s trying to make a weak point: you’re only a baby, therefore, you don’t compare to her. And yes, you are young, 19, but it was stupid of her to think that it bothered you. You tsk before leaning back against your chair.

“Of course, my mistake. I forgot I was still a pure flower instead of a wilting one.”

Ollie’s face switches to bright red as she grips onto his hand. An entertained smile slips onto his lips before flattening back out. He rubs her hand, trying to calm her down. You can’t stop the jealousy burning from within.

“I didn’t mean you, Mr. Sainz.”

The 29 year old brushed you as if nothing, a smile displayed. Eyeing you both, Ollie suddenly stands up, chair screeching. Why don’t you help me bring out the cookies I baked? Ever so gracefully, you nod. Following after her, you stop suddenly as she spins, hair slapping her face. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing here? Are you here to ruin my life with your existence?”

“I might.”

Her left eye twitches as she growls angrily. If she didn’t make it this easy to tick her off, then you’d be bored, but luckily for you, it was unchallenging to get under her skin. “This is my wedding; my future husband - so don’t fuck that up like everything else you’ve ever done.”

You try to pretend as if her words didn’t affect you as you stare back blankly. Marching over to the counter, she opens up a box of cookies before sliding them onto a polished dish, leaving you standing there alone.

You thank the higher Gods for not letting you cross roads with Ollie for the next few days. Though, you’re a bit bummed out that you haven’t seen Carlos much either. Peeking out the window, you could see the way a group of workers hurried to set up for the joint bachelorette taking place later that night, right on the beach. The waves look magnificent, so without a second thought, you slip on a bikini before rushing out the door with your necessities.

Lathering a goop of coconut sunscreen, you hum softly to yourself. Weren’t you going out with your sister? Looking up, you see Carlos standing in front of you with his face slightly scrunched up from the bright sun. His cheeks looked as if they’d just been pinched. “Where to?”

He takes a seat next to you. “She said she was going out to go buy a few flowers for later. Said she would invite you.” You shake your head, already bored with the idea.

“You know her,” you tap your head, “Forgetful.”

He cocks his head to the side as he shuts his right eye for a moment. “You two don’t get along, do you?” You try making up a silly excuse. Of course we do. We’re sisters. But he’s looking right into your orbs as if he sees right past your weak attempts. “You’re right. I could be wrong.”

It stays quiet for a while - only the soft breeze being heard. You can see him from your peripheral vision; eyes shut as he takes in the moment of peace he hasn’t had since dawn. Long lashes fan his face, freckles scattered all over.

“Aren’t you too busy to be talking to me?”

“No. Plus, I should take time to get to know my future sister-in-law. Especially since I don't know anything about her even after dating her sister for 7 years.”

7 years.

Squinting at the waves, you slide your sunglasses on. “There’s not much to know, but I can try. I’m 19 years old, studying abroad in Spain, and grew up in Italy. I love the ocean, love a nice cup of hot chocolate - even though I’m allergic - so I only allow myself small sips during the winter. I like to pretend I know how to dance and I kill it in karaoke.” He laughs. You can’t dance? “Unfortunately, I can’t. Once, during my friend's wedding reception, I twirled right into her cake. I spent the entire day on supervision.”

“Dios mío…Remind me to watch out for you on our wedding day.”

Our wedding day. His words slightly sting as you pinch your nose swiftly. Standing up, you brush beads of sand off your legs. Your eyes roam the area before you find your father waving you over. “I should go,” you say as you look down at him. His brown eyes scan you before nodding and standing up. He, too, looks over to where your father waits to introduce you to a group of businessmen. He frowns and that's when you realize just how revealing your bikini might have been, only it's too late now.

“Papi always taught us to greet our elders.”

He clenches his jaw, eyes closing for a second. When his gaze meets yours, you almost choke with how dark and twisted it’s become. “Aren’t you too old to be calling him that?” Confused, you tilt your head.

“Calling him wh- Papi?”

He grinds his teeth together - and then just like that - he’s smiling again.

“Forget it. How would I know?”

Standing next to an empty table, you watch as Carlos and your sister dance along with everyone else. This party has allowed you to pick up on the fact that they seemed to be a much more important couple than you had anticipated. Everyone looked at the Spaniard as if he were a God himself - and being quite truthful - you would agree. There was nothing about him that wasn’t flawless.

Then, Ollie, just looked like any other person. Her eyes were bright, but any time anyone would walk up to him, her stare would become threatening. As if she was his owner and no one else could get close enough to breathe the same air.

Everyone here was older; that much you could tell. Attendees were accompanied by girlfriends or fiancée’s of their own. It made you feel a bit childish, since you clearly were the youngest one there. Reaching out for your margarita, you twirl the straw.

“Not having fun?”

Your attention directs itself to a dirty, blondish, brunette. He looks a bit tipsy, face flushed as he smiles sweetly. He’s tall, handsome. But not as much as Carlos.

“Max,” he introduces himself. Politely, you shake his hand. He points to the large group that dances on the sand. He lets out a croaky laugh. “They could get a bit much sometimes.” You laugh, nodding along with him. He continues talking to you. Brings up how he knows Carlos from driving with him; except he’s signed to Red Bull.

“Everyone here is invited only if they're a driver, huh?” It’s a lame joke, but he laughs and throws his head back as if it were the most fascinating thing he’s heard all night.

“It’s a small circle, but I promise, they're all nice lads.” Discreetly, he takes in your appearance. The way your black dress dances with the wind. Painted red nails glistening under the golden lights.

You were beautiful. Tragically, beautiful.

“You know the groom or the bride?”

“Bride.”

He nods, taking a sip of the beer bottle he had been nursing. You both continue your conversation for a while longer. He’s Dutch. Recently 26. You mention your headache before he brushes his fingers against your hand. Looking down, he pulls away before clearing his throat. He apologizes and asks if you would like to dance. A soft melody now plays and you find yourself taking his hand. It's big as yours disappears into it.

Almost as if he’s shy, he carefully slides his hands down to your waist. You giggle as you throw yours over his shoulders. “I hope slowing down helps get rid of your migraine. Sucks. I get lots of those during race weekends.”

“It is. Thank you for caring.”

He’s sweet. You can tell with the way he blushes when you mention the way you like his dimples. Slowly, you find yourself enjoying his company. You’re in the middle of laughing at some stupid joke he just told, when someone rudely clears their throat. Carlos’ smile appears bitter as he shakes his head.

“I’m sorry - I’ve probably killed the mood.”

“No problem, mate. We were just talking.”

He clicks his tongue before turning to you. Under his scrutiny, you feel as if you’ve just been caught smoking weed for the first time. Dazed, you hum, waiting for him to say something. You know it’s not your place to feel as if he owes you an apology, but you can’t help it.

“Ollie said it’s best if you went to bed.” You let out a sarcastic laugh. Since when does she care if I get a good night's rest? He huffs before running a hand through his hair. “She - she…Just do as you’re told, please.”

Now you’re bothered. Up until that point, you were actually having a good time. Dumbfounded, you turn to Max as he smiles understandingly. Pursing your lips, you apologize. Tippy toeing, you lean up to press a kiss against his stubble. He smiles.

“See you around?”

“See you around, Maxie.”

Walking into the lonely house, you let out a sigh as you pour yourself a cup of water. The summer heat had completely dehydrated you. You could still hear the soft beat playing from outside as you sway in the kitchen. You were upset - angry - that your sister had cut your night short. And any other time you would have put up a good fight, but thought it’d be best to not make a fool out of yourself. Especially in front of people you barely knew.

The door sliding open has you alert as you look up. Carlos silently makes his way in as he groans with exhaustion. Loopy eyes match yours as he clears his throat awkwardly. “So…What were you talking about with Max?”

“Nothing that should concern you.”

His jaw clenches, a large hand running along it. Stepping closer, he takes your cup of water before chugging it down. It leaves you hot and bothered just how close he is. It’s a mixture of salt and musk, his scent. It makes your head spin. Lazily, he takes a step back before nodding.

“Right. Have a good night.”

Carlos knew he had messed up. He had no right lying and saying Ollie had ordered for you to go to bed. That was completely him. It’s just that - seeing you with Max, laughing, smiling, made him seethe - when he knows damn well that he shouldn’t. It wasn’t like he was your boyfriend, after all.

So, he was embarrassed. He kept his distance. In his head it made sense. If you weren’t near then he wouldn’t feel the need to keep his eyes on you all the time. The house felt lonelier, colder without you sliding down the hallways. Rightfully so, you had spent your days locked up in your room. The only person that made happy was Ollie.

Either way, maybe it was for the best. He had a ton of shit to do. Starting with changing their honeymoon destination for what seemed like the millionth time that month. First, it was the Maldives, then Cancún - God - he knew that in a few hours his fiancée would come up with a new place.

“I know, I know we said that, but it’s changed.” He paces the office, stressed. “Can you please just make it fucking happen?”

“Ouch.”

Turning his attention, he sees you peeking at the entrance, phone still pressed up against his ear. Pouting, you enter, sweet aroma filling the room. Excusing himself, he ends the call. “Need anything?” He honestly cared for your response. It had been days without seeing you and he was afraid he blew it before he even had a chance to marry your sister. He told himself it was only because he cared for your relationship with Ollie. But fuck that - he knew not even you both cared that much about each other.

Shaking your head, you walk closer. “You sounded mean. Not a nice look on you, Mr. Sainz.” You’re teasing. You had to be.

“That wasn’t mean. It's called being straight forward.”

Ignoring him, you curiously eye the dark office. Books, trophies, helmets. Letting out a snort, you pick up the nearest picture frame. In it, it’s Carlos and Ollie, smiling wide. Tears brim her eyes as he looks down at her. The sight makes you want to puke.

“When was this taken?”

“The day of our engagement.”

You hum, already setting it back down. You can’t help but picture the impossible. That in the picture it was you instead of her, that you wore that diamond ring, that he looked at you.

Fuck her, honestly.

“Why’d you propose?”

He’s thrown off by your question. He’s expecting you to bring up the fact that it was a joke, but when you looked back for a response, he found himself with a dry mouth. Because I love her?

“Jesus,” you shudder, taking a seat on top of his desk. His eyes wander down your tan legs as you rest them on top of his chair. You're playing mind games - he’s well aware - and still he found himself following them. You were the worst temptation out there. It’s as if you knew the power you held. “I bet fucking her is a chore.”

Shocked at your words, he finds himself dumbstruck. He knew you two didn’t get along, but what the fuck happened for you to aim such insults?

He knows Ollie. Sure, she was a bit much at times, but she was nice. She was pretty. There was no need for your vile words.

You can tell he’s about to get defensive about her and that makes you shrink. Willing, you had handed him a reason to choose her over you.

Looking back at the picture, you purse your lips. “Sorry. That wasn't the right thing to say.”

“You should leave.”

You’re embarrassed over him kicking you out, but you knew you had crossed the line. So much for a peaceful afternoon. You comply, jumping off the desk. Not before making your way over, pressing your soft lips against his neck, which was the only place you could reach, even after tippy toeing. You felt him get stiff.

“Excuse my manners, Carlos.”

Skipping out the door, he’s left with a single thought.

He’s fucked.

The next morning, you’re forced to spend the day with your sister. Whether it was for running errands, fighting; it didn’t matter. As long as you made your father happy. All he wanted was for his girls to get along.

“Go,” Ollie growls as she hands you your bridesmaid dress. Snatching it from her, you slowly climb up the stairs to your room.

It’s a beautiful dress. Strong, dark, cherry red. Just like blood. It hugs your curves the way you’ve always thought all dresses should. For that reason, too, it made you look…older. Trying your best to get rid of the wrinkles, you smooth it down before making your way back.

Papi loves it as he starts throwing out compliments. You look beautiful, tesoro! You are a true gem. His eyes are bright and proud as you stand there with a shy smile. And though you thanked him, nothing else mattered but the man right in front of you.

The Spaniard had just gotten back from a meeting. He was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to eat and sleep the rest of the day, but as soon as he saw a balsé Ollie and an eager father-in-law, he was interested. She had told him to go relax; practically pushing him away. But as soon as you walked down those stairs, he swore his heart had never melted with such a sight.

His eyes became fixated to the point of no return. You stand there like a divine temptress. A siren who was mixed with innocence. Enough to drool over, but also, to adore from afar. Someone he could worship. If God decided this were his last day on Earth, then he would happily follow, since he finally felt as if his life were complete.

His big brown eyes are glued onto you as your father spins you. Ollie’s attention flickers between her younger sister and her fiancé. Tears fill up her eyes as she springs off the couch. You’re not bothered by it; don’t even bat an eye. That is until Carlos quickly runs off after her. That was a slap to the face as you show off a wounded smile to your father who stands there lost at the sudden commotion.

Later on that day, you find yourself trying to forget it all with watered down tequila. That’s really all you could find in such short notice. Leaning against the balcony, you study the soft waves, cold wind causing your skin to flash small goosebumps.

“Disgusting,” you mumble as you finish the rest of the alcoholic drink. Who knew a simple encounter would set you off?

“Woah there. Are you okay?”

Max cautiously steps closer as you shrug with a sigh. What was there to say? I’m a horrible person. I’m a horrible sister. And yes, we might not get along, but never in a million years did I think I would be falling in love with my future brother-in-law.

“What are you doing up so late?”

Sheepishly, he raises his cigarette. Letting out a low hum, you raise a brow. “Can I have one?” He knows he shouldn't be the one to give a teenager a form of drug, but you looked so upset, so drained, that he felt as if you needed it. Lighting it up, you bring it up to your lips as you squint at him. He laughs.

“First time?”

“No. It’s just been a while.”

You’re still not looking at him, but he notices the way you let out shaky breaths. The way you softly pinch your forearm. He frowns.

“I know we only just met, but do you want to talk about it?”

And maybe it was the gist of the moment. Or that he was being sweet - showing that he cared, but it worked because next thing you knew, you were kissing. He lets out an erotic moan with the taste of your lips. All a mix of cigarettes and tequila. This is wrong. He was friends with Carlos and you were only doing this in a moment of weakness, but you just couldn’t stop. Neither could he. Not when you tasted like a thousand crimes.

His large hands grab your ass as you gasp, brushing against his cock. He hissed as he pressed his lips much harder. Surely, you will have bruises tomorrow. Adrenaline rushes through your veins as you grind against him. Clumsily, you both make your way to the couch that’s nearby. Straddling him, you continue to dry humping. Slowly, but surely, the warm sensation between your legs starts to form. Panting, you pull away as he tries to angle his face closer to yours. You smile tauntingly.

“You know what you remind me of?”

You hum, leisurely picking up your filthy actions. He bites back a smile as he grips harder onto your hips.

“A Lolita.”

A menacing smile looks down at him before you kiss down his thick neck, soft bites being left behind. You can’t recall the moment you start bouncing on his cock, or when he sprawls you open like a map, kneeling down in front of you. It’s all a haze; a delicious one, too. You’re falling like a feather from your climax when you hear a thud. Did you hear that? No, he would mumble as he peppers kisses onto your soft skin.

The tides are crashing harder now, signaling that the night was growing older. Timidly, you share a goodbye as you start to skip your way back into your room, but one last thing caught your attention.

A broken flower pot on its side and dirt trailing into the Italian home.

More days had passed since your last encounter with the devilish Spaniard. If you were ever in the same room, he wouldn’t even glance at you. He would simply just walk past by. He was mad. Upset about something. You tried to think of what it might’ve been, but when he walked into his office with an infuriated expression, you decided it was time to call a truce.

Knocking, you flinch at his sharp tone when he commands you away. Ignoring it, you still step in. Head thrown against his chair, man spreading, he has his eyes screwed shut.

“Are you okay?”

Your tone is sticky like honey. It annoys him the way it strings him in. Drumming his finger against the large chair, he angles his head to look at you. You’re almost scared to ask again, so you decide to stand still until he speaks up.

“Why’d you do it?”

Puzzled, you purse your lips, waiting for further explanation. What was he talking about? Did you do something to make him upset? The thought alone made you feel queasy. When he notices you still don’t understand, he clicks his tongue.

“Why would you fuck a friend of mine?”

Oh. Was it possible that this was something he was jealous of? Bewildered, you know you can’t deny it so you start to word-vomit. I am so sorry, Carlos. He came onto me that night - he kissed me first. I was confused. I was lured in by his words. I didn’t know what I was doing-

His eyes soften up as you try your best to break it down. But you were a liar; a good one. You knew damn well it was all you. You had kissed him first. You threw him under the bus and you knew that. Did he deserve it? No. Of course not. But you couldn't handle the Spaniard being mad at you.

He signals for you to get closer. Securely, he grasps your hand and hauls you onto his lap. It’s embarrassing how wet you’ve suddenly become; how your mind replicates a plate of jello.

“I’m sorry he made you feel like that.”

His rough fingers slide up and down your arms and even that leaves you buzzing. Suddenly, you feel feeble. You assure him that you were fine - that it was no big deal. The way he looks at you is what gives you the confidence to lean in closer. A trace of panic slashes his face for a second. He should probably stop this before anything else happens. There was nothing okay about your ass pressed up against him. Or him craving to taste your plump lips.

“He didn’t make me feel anything I haven't before.”

Your implication irks him far too much, he starts to consider this all an unhealthy encounter. He can’t stop the images of you being with other men. Someone else kissing you, pleasuring you. Whilst your words were suggestive, your features were anything but that. Wide eyes stare back at him, slightly crinkled. Moving your body, you scoot closer as if you weren't already. He growls as he pinches your hip. Then, you're kissing his neck, and he should be pushing you off, but he’s too far gone to pick up on how wrong this all was. I’m sorry I’ve upset you, Mr. Sainz. I didn’t think you would care who fucked me or not.

“I-I don’t. It’s just that you shouldn't be doing stuff like that. You’re too young for all that.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” You narrow your eyes. “I’m wiser than one might think. I’m mature enough to know who can and can’t fuck me the way I like.” Your gaze focuses extra hard with your confession. As if it were meant for him.

Pressing your ass one last time against his tight pants, you leap off, giggling.

“Take care, Carlos.”

It's a business dinner, your father fills you in as you sit nearby, enjoying a bowl of ice cream, hairollers dangling around your head. Pouting, you reach up to clip one back into place. He smiles.

“You know, lots of young, talented guys are going to be here. It could be a great opportunity to meet someone.”

You make a face at his idea. “Yeah. No, thank you.” Marching over to him, you gently pat his cheek. “I’m not here to meet anyone.”

Signhing, he grabs your hands. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Are you and Carlos…” Choking on your own saliva, you push away. What? No. Of course not! Why would you even think that? He lets out a breath of relief. “It’s nothing. Ollie just brought it up, but I told her you would never actually do something like that. I know my precious girl.”

The door creaks open as Satan herself walks in, followed by an Angel. First thing you noticed are their intertwined hands. Ollie tries to be coy as she flashes the action right in front of you. She mainly greets your father as she sticks by Carlos like a piece of gum. Hello, he would say to you as you bite back a smile.

“What are we talking about?”

“Your sister might have a boyfriend by the end of the night, that's what,” your father jokes as you slap his shoulder. Boyfriend? The Spaniard’s eyes burn you, subtle threat evident. Ollie fakes a smile as she tugs him back a bit.

“Wow. You know what? That might actually be a good idea. Could help with how uptight you are. But I’m confused, boyfriend as in Max?”

Fury fills you as you shoot daggers right at her. Ollie’s eyes twinkle with satisfaction. You’re dating Max? “Of course not, papi! Ollie is just being a bitch.”

“No, no, no - I don’t think telling the truth is being a bitch. You should be happy, baby sister! You sure sounded like it when you let him fuck you out in the balcony.”

Shocked at her words, you can’t bring yourself to look at your father who stands disappointed. Ollie, that's enough, Carlos warns as he squeezes her hand. She yanks it away, jewelry clinging against each other.

“My bad. Shit, I forgot. I forgot no one knew what a slut you are. Opening your legs for any man around you. We’re lucky you’re not attracted to your own father.” She lets out a sour laugh. “Now, that would be fucked up.”

“That’s low, Ollie,” you spit, skin feeling as if it's on fire. You know where all this pent up anger is coming from, but she had no right to make up shit for fun. What kind of sister does that? Embarrassed, your eyes flicker to where Carlos stands with a hopeless expression. Licking your lips, you force yourself to walk away.

Slamming the door shut, you let out a loud scream. Why? Why was she always like this to you? A hard knock is what makes you wipe your tears away. Ollie slithers her way in. It hurt you how proud she looked. As if she had achieved something spectacular.

“The fuck - Are you crying?”

“What do you want?”

She takes a seat on your desk as she dusts off imaginary lint. “I just want to talk. The way sisters do.”

Ricocheting off the bed, you march over to her as you glare. “Sisters? No. You’re nothing of mine.” Ollie yawns as she rubs her eyes. Then, she clears her throat.

“Do you want to know why I hate you? You’re so stupid you probably don’t even know, but don’t worry - that’s what older sisters are for. I’ll explain it to you. Do you remember, Romeo?”

You do. It hits you all at once; the memories of the first man you ever slept with. He was nice - kind enough to teach you what a man likes. He had jet black hair, a smirk always lingering on his lips. He was tall and a local from where you grew up. He was the perfect experience.

But that still didn’t make any sense. What did he have to do with Ollie?

She lets out a wet laugh. Already, you can see her own tears as she tries to quickly wipe them away.

“I loved you; I did. You were my sister before my enemy. But I also loved him. He was my first love. Promised me a home high up in the hills. But do you know what it feels like to see someone you love fuck your little sister against a wall?”

We probably shouldn’t-

Don’t worry. I’ve got you. No ones going to see us. Men love a good thrill.

“You and him…”

She licks her chapped lips. “We had barely started dating.”

“I didn’t know - I swear to God, I didn’t know!”

If you had, you never would’ve looked his way. Ollie was everything to you growing up. You admired her. Loved her. That’s why it broke you when she started pushing you away as if you were some disease. Later, when your parents got a divorce, she didn’t second guess it when she made the decision to stay behind; causing you to leave with your mother. She never cared for you after that and you never knew why.

But now you did.

“I was young…Younger than I am now, how was I supposed to know?”

“Well, I’m glad we agree on something. You truly don’t know anything.” Strolling over to you, she smiles at your desperate state. “Which is why I’m not making the same mistake twice. Stay away from my husband.”

Ollie’s words felt as if they had opened up past scars. You meant what you said. Romeo would have been someone you would have disregarded if you had known the truth. But like always, you were the one with the entire blame and that you didn’t like.

Despite wearing a pretty dress - one that everyone gawked at you for - you felt ugly. Has it always been this way? Maybe it did make sense as to why she despised you. Playing with your bracelets, you try to pretend you’re interested in meeting your fathers investors. You feel completely exposed when they all stare straight at your chest area.

“How are we all doing?”

They all look up at the Spanirad as they start spitting out their congratulations for his upcoming wedding. He thanks them before checking up on you. His eyes connect with yours. Butterflies swirl inside your stomach as you smile weakly. He’s the first one to truly talk to you that night. To show he cares about your wellbeing rather than the way your dress fits you. Though, you looked stunning as always. Excusing yourself, you make your way into the kitchen, looking for something stronger.

Serving yourself a shot of vodka, you throw your head back, burning sensation sliding down your throat. Coughing, you grip onto the counter. Soft moans whisper in between the walls. You stop breathing for a minute as you try your best to identify where it might be coming from. Striding closer, you press your ear against the closet door. Fuck, a mans voice groans. This is not something you should intervene with, it's not your right, but that all changes when you hear a name that makes you burn all over again. So fucking tight, Ollie.

Pushing the door open, you see your sister banging one of your fathers investors. Ben, you think his name is. Honestly, you could care less. Briskly, she pushes her gown back down as he zips his pants. You let out a cold laugh as you clap in amusement.

“Oh, God. This is great. Amazing. You really outdid yourself, Ol.”

Stepping forwards, she grabs your arm harshly as she tugs you out. “How much did you see?”

You purse your lips as you theatrically scrunch your face up in pleasure. “Oh, Ben! Fuck me! Oh, oh, yes, baby, right there!” You bow. “That much.”

“How old are you, sweetheart?” The brunette says as he scans your body. Ollie glares at him as he steps back.

“Not a word of this to Carlos.”

“Why would I keep this a secret? He deserves to know. What do you think, Benny?”

Panicked, the older man shakes his head as his eyes plead for mercy. That’s enough. Raising your hands up in defense, you grin back at Ollie. “You’re not mentioning anything if you know what's good for you.”

“Oh, yeah?” You tilt your head back. “And what’s good for me?”

“If you tell him anything of what you just heard - saw - then I’ll just tell him how you’ve been bending over for every man in this house. Charles, Lando, Lewis, Pierre…you name it.”

“He won’t believe you…”

She laughs sinisterly. “No, I think he will. I mean…You’ve already done it before.”

“Hey,” his soft voice enters the room as you turn to look at him. The Spaniard’s eyes dance between you and your sister and Ben. “Is something wrong?”

Ollie shakes her head with a bright smile as she walks up and kisses him. You flinch. “Nothing, amor. We were just talking.” She runs her hands through his hair as his eyes remain on you.

“Are you okay?”

Nodding, you grind your teeth together. “Yes. Ollie was just introducing me to Ben.” Awkwardly, the man waves from behind you. Slowly, Carlos nods.

“Papi asked me to introduce them. You know - with the whole ‘boyfriend’ thing!”

“He was serious about tha- Oh. Okay.” He reaches down to take your sister's hand as he eyes you and Ben. “We should probably leave you two alone then.”

Hastily, you nod. “Sure.”

If you were willing to try and fix your relationship with Ollie before, then that was long gone. This is what you knew her for. A pretender. She wistfully makes everyone believe she’s some sort of saint, when really, she’s a wolf in sheep's clothing. She’s a hypocrite. She has a man that everyone desires and she does this?

You hated her.

You hated seeing the way she beams when Carlos’ mother gives her a necklace that belonged to her own mother. She didn’t deserve it. Or the way his sisters helped her slip in and out of her dress, making sure it's perfect for the big day.

Still, you try your best to be a supportive sister. Especially around the woman who raised a man like Carlos. Biting down on your lip, you take a sip of your champagne as Ollie disappears behind the curtains with the lady who is taking some last minute measurements. Reyes smiles warmly.

“We didn’t know Ollie had a younger sister.”

You smile. “Best well kept secret, right?” The older lady laughs. Your heart warms up as you notice it's the same way Carlos does. Ana and Blanca grin.

“Well, we’re glad to finally get to know you. Might I add, you’re beautiful. Those eyes!”

“Thank you,” you blush.

Ana takes a sip of her drink before clicking her fingers. “That’s what you remind me of! You - Carlos - almost have the same puppy eyes!” She turns to her mother. “Mamá! What’s that saying? Soulmates look alike…Something like that, no?”

“Be quiet, Ani,” Blanca hisses before smiling apologetically. “Excuse her - she can be a bit invasive.”

“No problem,” you reassure as you bite back a smile. Ana frowns.

“Lo siento, I don’t mean to come off as overbearing. It’s just that you do…”

Reyes clears her throat as she winks over at her daughter. “Don’t misunderstand us, please. We love Ollie, we do! It’s just…you’re different.” She examines you. “I like you.”

Their words stick with you like a post it. Do soulmates look alike? Playing with the sand, you circle your finger agonizingly slow. Why did their words matter so much to you?

“I always find you alone.”

You stick your tongue out at Carlos as he chuckles at your childish behavior. You pat the sand, inviting him to join you. What are you doing out here? You point at the ocean. “I told you it was my favorite place.”

“Ah. I see.”

You sneak in a quick look before looking straight ahead. “Nervous?”

“About?”

“Marrying a monster.”

He gives you a deadpan look, bumping his shoulder to yours. “She’s not that bad, you know.” He glances at you. “Ollie has been there for me through so much. Through my failures. Through my accomplishments. She’s the one who convinced me not to quit racing.”

“You were thinking of quitting?”

He nods. “It’s not as easy as it looks. It fucks you up mentally. But she…” He smiles. “She helped me overcome that. I thank her everyday for it.”

It’s a bittersweet feeling hearing him talk about her like that. On one hand, you’re thankful that she had made him realize that he should carry on doing what he loved. On the other, you knew her true reasons. She loved having a famous fiancé; someone she can brag out to the rest of the world.

Somewhere, far away, you hear a melody. It’s low enough that if you didn’t pay close attention, you wouldn’t catch on to it, but you did. You grab his hand, leading him to stand up. He quirks a full brow.

“Want to dance?”

“I thought you said you didn’t know how to.”

“Nice memory, old man.” You gently kick some sand towards him. “But I feel like dancing. Plus, you should be practicing.”

Tugging you closer, he hums. “Alright. Only because that's true.”

His hands feel warm against you - so much so - it feels as if he’s on fire. An ease comes to it, too, as you both sway under the moonlight. You giggle when he spins you, dress flying around you like petals. The way you grin makes his heart speed up in a way he’s never felt before. It’s alarming. He pinches your hip as you yelp.

“Mentirosa.”

“Wha- No, I’m not! Can’t dance to save my life.” Clumsily, you dig your toes into the sand. He winces playfully.

The air grows heavy the moment he brushes your hair behind your ear. Your eyes flutter shut as you lean against his warm hand. One look, and he’s hooked. It’s meant to be something lighthearted, but the way he wishes to feel your soft lips against his indicates that it’s not. He’s tried his best to see you for what you are; his fiancée’s little sister. Someone he shouldn’t find himself caring if they slept well, ate their three meals a day, or that they didn’t talk to any other man that wasn’t him or your father. This was sick and twisted and yet…

His lips meet yours as your eyes spring open for a nanosecond before letting yourself go under. It feels as if you’re exploding like firecrackers on a Fourth of July. Something about the way he cradles your face endearingly has your head spinning. Knees become weak, but his grip is secure. It’s better than you could have ever imagined. His tongue fights for dominance and when you don’t give it to him, he squeezes your ass. Moaning, you open your mouth and that's all it took. He kisses you the way you’ve seen in movies - only better. He’s hungry - desperate - for you as you smile against him. Biting down on his bottom lip, he groans as he kisses you harder than before. You were beginning to think your lips were about to snap.

Letting go, he stands there, staggered. He’s ashamed when he realizes that he regrets nothing. You both stay quiet; only waves crashing and heavy pants being heard. At first you think he’s going to apologize, and maybe that might have been the case, but no words would come out. Pressing a peck against his swollen lips, you smile.

“Goodnight, Carlos.”

Carlos rues the day that he kissed you because that only made things more complicated. He couldn’t find a way to not look for you when he walks into the garden, full of family and friends. Or the way he would want to punch Max when he made you laugh. But there is also something sweet. Like the way you would gossip with his sisters and share stories with his parents. He had never seen them laugh and smile so much, not even with Ollie.

He flinches at the cold hand that wraps around his own. Faking a smile, he presses a soft kiss on top of his fiancée’s head. Continuing the clicking against her glass, she smiles widely.

“Grazie a tutti per esservi uniti a noi!”

Everyone claps and a few of the drivers whistle. Rolling your eyes, you lean your head against your father’s shoulder. His heart skips a beat. Ollie continued her speech filled with thank you’s, thank you’s and more thank you’s. Your father kissed your cheek before making his way up to his eldest. Taking the microphone from Ollie, he starts to share warm felt memories about her. You have to admit, you’re jealous about their bond. Somewhere in the past, that had been viciously stolen from you. He notices the way you shrink with sadness and he finds himself about to walk over to you when Ollie laughs awkwardly. Amor. It’s your turn.

“Right.” Fixing his rolled up sleeves, he smiles at the crowd of guests. “Uh…Well like my fiancée said, we’re extremely happy to have you all here. It takes a lot to get this many people out here all at once.” A few laughs echo as he continues. “This means a lot to me, too, to have my friends and family. To have met new faces.” His gaze flickers past you as your breath hitches. “Many ask me what about Ollie made me fall in love with her…And I’m here to be as brutally honest as I could get. I love the way she makes me feel as crazy as the ocean. I could spend calm days with her and not worry about getting bored. Or I could find myself getting into trouble. Ollie has made me a better man. Because of her I know what true love is…” His loopy eyes meet yours. “True love are the waves that meet the shore.”

He lets out a sheepish smile. I want love like that, Lando yells out as he downs his glass of milk. Everyone claps and cheers and that’s where your nightmare begins.

Let’s give it up for the happy couple! Kiss, kiss, kiss!

The chants continue as Carlos let out a nervous laugh. That’s something private between me and her, he tries but finds himself being booed. Leaning down, he pulls Ollie in for a peck before pulling away with a tight lipped smile. He hates himself for his sudden realization.

Kissing her suddenly did feel like a chore.

With all the whoops and whistles being thrown out by friends, he finds himself trying to find you. It doesn’t take long as he notices you had picked up on your conversation with the Dutchman. His jaw clenches.

“Maybe Ollie’s younger sister would like to share a few words.”

Why would he say that? Frozen, you choke mid sip. Me? Your father beams as he nods excitedly. Oh! That’s such a great idea! Unfamiliar faces turn to look at you as they wait. Taking in a deep breath, you nod as you make your way over.

As he hands you the microphone, he can’t stop himself from grazing his fingers against your hand. Coughing, you yank it fast.

“Ciao a tutti.” Everyone greets you back as you lick your lips. You take a moment to figure out what to say, but there’s not much. Cringing, you try to come up with anything. “As some may know, I’m Ollie’s sister…And I could go on forever about how great she is-” You suppress a sarcastic laugh as Carlos knowingly winks. Your nerves ease up. “But I think I should talk about the man who makes my sister the happiest. Carlos Sainz…When I first met you, you seemed uptight - more than the Grinch - but slowly I got to know the man that even my papi swoons over.”

True, your father laughs. “You’re kind, respectful, and charming…Ollie is one very lucky girl. But there’s something also sensitive inside of you…Despite the permanent frown on your face, you still seem to like days by the ocean. Maybe it's a reminder that peace still exists or maybe it's the way…” Looking up, you see everyone staring deeply. Suddenly, you feel like this might be oversharing as you twirl your dress. “...Or maybe it's the way your face lights up when you take my sister dancing on the sand. Uh…Thank you for making her happy.” Handing the mic back to Carlos, you smile weakly at the strong claps.

“That was quite sentimental,” Max points out as you bite down on your finger. Was it too much? He shakes his head. “Don’t worry. It looks like you and Carlos get along well enough. I, for sure, thought he hated you with the way he looks at you.”

“Oh. Yeah.” You pause. “I thought so, too.”

Aside from the fact that the wedding was approaching quickly, the mansion was quiet. The silence can almost be heard; it's scary. Carefully, you fix your dress as you skip down the stairs barefoot, lollipop painting your lips red.

Peeking around the corner, giddiness fills your body as you snatch a handful of pre-washed cherries. Earlier that day, your father had scolded you for finishing the new batch. Popping them into your mouth, you hum a song as you kick your legs against the kitchen counter. It creeps you out the moment a chill runs down your spine. As if someone were watching.

“Boo!”

“Santa mierda,” you yelp as you clutch your heart. Laughing loudly, the Spaniard bends over as he gasps for air. You pout and kick his knee. “Cabrón, you scared me! Warn a girl!”

“Fuck - I’m sorry.” His lips form a thin line as he stands firm. Slowly, the corners lift up, wobbly at his poor attempt to not burst out laughing. You frown.

“You’re fucked up.”

Again, his laughs echo the dimly lit kitchen. “Can I have some?”

“No. They’re mine. Grab your own.”

He narrows his eyes. “Aren’t you on cherry prohibition or something like that?” You gasp as you look around before flipping him off.

“Keep your voice low or papi will disown me!”

He zips his lips as he whispers. “I won’t tell a soul. But I want one of those in exchange.”

Tapping your finger against your lip, you pretend to think about it before nodding. You extend your hand out, a single red cherry for him. You’re waiting for him to take it and leave to where he came from, but what he does instead has you swallowing a lump down your throat.

Crouching down, he opens his mouth as he picks up the cherry, lips slightly wrapping around your fingers. This was triggering you as you tried your best to keep sane. But there was no way of going about that when he looked up at you with deep, brown eyes. Licking the red juice sliding down your hands, he steps back. He licks his lips before swallowing. It amazes you the way his Adam’s Apple jumps up and down; thick neck begging to be sucked on.

“Fucking delicious.”

Blinking, you look down at the rest of the cherries in hand. All of a sudden they seemed like a sultry fruit rather than a drupe.

“Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Of cours-s-e.”

Stupefied, you throw the leftovers straight into the trash bin. You had no clue what made you do that. A small chuckle escapes past his lips as you shut your eyes in embarrassment. Maybe they weren’t as sweet as you made them seem. Too mortified to speak, you keep your eyes focused on the way your feet hit the wood as a distraction. It takes all of you to not run away as he steps closer once again.

“Is there something in that dirty little mind of yours?”

The room feels hot all of a sudden as you shake your head. There’s no words in your vocabulary when he stands this close. You can smell his cologne mixed with shampoo. If richness were a scent then this would definitely be it. His hands cage you in like a butterfly behind glass. Clicking his tongue, he steps aside as you let out a shaky breath. Taking the opportunity, you jump off the edge, bare feet slapping against the cold tiles. Cuidado, he mutters when you almost slip from the sudden action.

“If you need anything I’ll be upstairs.”

Not sure why you said that, but it seemed like a rationalized excuse. Por supuesto. And that would have been the end of your night. That would have been another successful day of not falling for the forbidden apple. You had held out for so long; the kiss didn’t count. But it only takes a few steps for him to clear his throat. Almost as if this were your secret language, you spin and you find him staring after you; dazzling eyes following your every movement as if he’s trying his best to decipher anything you do.

Smiling wide enough for your eyes to look as if they had a smile of their own, you think - fuck the consequences - as you clumsily run up to him; jumping like a kid onto a tree. Legs wrap around his torso and his hands hold you close to him.

“Do you-”

“Yes,” he whispers. “Since the first day you walked through those doors: yes.”

If you had thought you were obsessed with his kisses before, you were wrong. So very wrong. Because now you were addicted. He kisses you with urgency as you run your hands through his locks, so soft against your fingers. He grunts when you tug on it.

His kisses were stimulating enough for you to plead for something. Anything. Smirking, he pecks your nose before leading you both upstairs. It amazed you how he could continue kissing you as he hurried to get to the bedroom. Noticing him making his way into his and Ollie’s, you pull away. There’s no way you would let him do that. You spin your finger lazily through his hair.

“How about mine?”

He doesn't care if he fucked you against the floor, he needed you. Kicking the door shut, he throws you onto your bed as you squeal. He smiles fondly as you brush your hair out of your face. He’s had his fair share of girls. Models, nepo-babies, Ollie, but none of them compare to you.

He was almost scared of touching you again, even though that’s exactly what he wanted. Doe eyes stare back at him as his cock gets harder at the sight. Ollie had always tried her best to look at him that way, but you didn’t even have to try. It naturally happened. Nothing about this felt forced.

You look untouchable. Like a complete goddess waiting to be ruined. Carlos, you would say as you squeeze your tits, eyes struggling to stay open. Carlos, please. Don’t be mean. Towering over you, he shakes his head.

“Linda, I could never be mean to you.”

Slipping your dress off, he groans when he sees you weren’t wearing anything underneath. He shuts his eyes as he tries to not finish inside his pants, which by the way, were starting to hurt. He pinches your nipple before slapping your tits. You hiss.

“Please tell me you did this for me and no one else…”

“You know it’s always been for you.”

With that, he stands up as he yanks his shirt off; jeans and boxers following right after. A bit worried, you find yourself staring at his rock hard dick. You had never been with some as big as him; it kind of looked as if it would split you right open. That didn’t stop you from wanting it, though.

“Don’t worry. I’ll prepare you nice and good, cariño.”

His lustful tone snaps you out of it as you nod. His fingers rub your wet folds as you cling onto his bicep. C-Carlos. “I know, baby, I know,” he coos as he focuses on the way your face pinches. He slowly starts slipping his finger in as you gasp at the thickness. So big and long. He chuckles. “Oh, come on now. It’s not even fully inside of you yet.”

Stunned, you look down and sure enough, it isn’t. You almost cry out when you notice it’s barely even the tip. “I don’t think it’s going to fit.” He kisses your temple as he slips his finger back out.

“Let’s start off with something else then.”

You almost pass out when he angles himself in front of your pussy. Glistening clit stares back at him as he moans. So pretty, he thinks as he touches you slowly. He stops himself, though, as he goes in for kitten licks instead. You squirm. His large hands pushed you down against the bed, to keep you in place.

“Do you want me to make the ache in between your legs go away?”

“Yes.”

His pink tongue teases you as he hums. You bite down sharply. “You’re going to have to stay still. Relax, bonita.” Following instructions, you close your eyes, trying your best to not think of the handsome Spaniard. As if that were possible. Impressed, he leans in again as he licks you, picking up your pre-cum. Oh, fuck.

Then it’s almost as if Carlos is taken over by something as he dives in like some animal. His stubble burns your legs, but you’re too fucked out to even care. You’re sure you're being loud, but how can you not be when he licks and sticks his tongue inside of you, exploring places you never knew existed. You choke back a moan when he rubs his nose against your clit, only adding to the euphoria.

“Yes. Oh. Fuck, yes.” Looking down at the brunette, you find him taking in your appearance as he rubs himself against the sheets; a way to try and pleasure himself. And that’s enough for you to cum all over his face. He smiles as he greedily tries to drink up everything you give him. He knows he lost control, but he loves the way you were able to keep up. To take everything he gave you.

And that was only going to multiply.

“You taste so fucking sweet,” he groans in between your legs, picking up the white nectar. Crying out, you push his face away as you gasp for air. He sucks your tits as you take a break. His tongue swirls around your bud as you wiggle against him like a fish that jumped out onto land. He laughs. “Can you handle my fingers, now?”

No, you whisper as you push him away. But he knows you’re giving up too soon. He knows there’s an animal inside of you and he’s just waiting for it to decide to join him. He ignores you as he slides his fingers down to your center. You mewl against him. “Hey, hey, I got you, cariño. I’m right here.”

His voice makes you clench harder against his fingers as he grins like a kid at a candy store. Slowly, you start dripping more than before, making it easier for his fingers to slide in and out of your hole. Can you handle a third? “Yes,” you respond, eyes still screwed shut. Hot air hits your ear.

“There she is…Good girl. Justo asi.”

Picking up speed, his fingers reach the gummy part inside of you as you scratch his arms in an attempt to remind yourself to not black out. His long fingers cross, doing figure 8’s as he touches your g-spot as if he knows your entire body better than any map. Leaning up, he bites down onto your nipple before sucking hard. You should be embarrassed with the way you squeal and shake against his actions, but he just made it so hard not to. Much to your surprise, if you dare believe it, he does the thing you last expected.

He adds a fourth digit.

“No, no, no,” you pathetically chant as your eyes fly open. He cocks his head to he side as he clicks in tongue as if seeing you struggle filled him with pride.

“Ah, ah, ah. Just trust me; do you trust me?”

He didn’t need to ask because he knew you did. I do, you whimper out as you start grinding against his fingers. Amazement fills his dark eyes as he looks down to where you clench around him, juices sliding down his arm. It only takes a couple of more swirls before your shriek, velvety walls clenching around him as you reach your climax.

Bringing his fingers up to his mouth, he licks your cum as if it were a meal he’s dreamed of having his entire life. Your mouth hangs open as you watch him lick them clean. You’re sure he’s going to fuck you now, but that flies out the window as he lays down as he drags you onto his face.

This man had stamina. Lots of it. You're trying to beg for a break of some sort. I can suck your dick. Give you a handjob. Just please let me rest. But he wasn’t even listening.

Maybe somewhere deep down, he knew this would be the only night he would have you to himself and if that meant no pauses, then he would push all your buttons.

Like a starved man, he starts licking you all over as you grind against his face. The way he sucks on your clit and adds his fingers make you squeal as you push down harder. His nose rubs against you in such a way, it has you seeing stars. He seems to be enjoying that though, as his moans vibrate against you. Biting hard onto your lip, you try to distract yourself as you reach behind you for his rock hard cock. The moment your small hand wraps around him, he growls like a lion.

Smug over his reaction, your hand slowly starts jerking him off as he eats you out with more urgency. It takes all of you to control your actions as he shakes his face in between your legs. S-slow down, Carlos. He grunts as his actions speed up, but so does your hand. Gripping onto his erection much harder, you furrow your brows as you twist your wrist. Choking on your juices, he opens his eyes wide, whimpers flying past his lips.

Smiling down like the devil, you nod as your hand picks up its pace. Now it's his turn to be groaning with pleasure. He seems to have forgotten what he was doing as he takes in strong whiffs of your aroma. You shudder when his warm breaths escape to warm up your dripping pussy.

His cock twitches and he seems to snap right back into it; already diving back into your hole. Lurching forward, you grip onto his hair as the other remains wrapped around him. It’s a game to see who can make the other cum first, and you were not about to be the loser.

Lively, you circle your thumb around his pink tip as he groans and finishes all around your hand. Sucking hard, he bites gently onto your clit as you screech and trap his head between your thighs. Shaking, you twitch against him as you reach your third orgasm that night. Huffing, you roll off him as he laps his tongue.

The way he looks at you makes you want to ride his face all over again, but you know you needed a break if you didn’t want the night to end so soon. Kneeling in front of him, you raise your ass up high as you lean down to wrap your lips around his cock. He flinches, slightly sensitive, but doesn’t dare push you away. Instead, he rubs your face with his calloused thumb; encouraging you. There's something so hot about the way your lips stretch around his fat cock. The way drool exits your mouth, messy blots of mascaras on the corners of your eyes.

Light of my life. Fire of my loins.

Gagging around him, you squeeze your eyes shut, feet curling up along the way. For sure, your throat would be bruised tomorrow, but you didn’t mind. In fact, you wanted that. Deepthroating him as best as you can, your small hands wrap around the rest of his length. He was huge. Dirty slurps bounce off the walls. You try your best to not pull away when you feel his sticky pre-cum connect inside your throat. Not when he looked so good with his head thrown back. His thick neck is a clear display. With his large hands wrapped around your hair as he fucks your face like theres no tomorrow. Spanish curses flowing past his lips.

“Que linda. Arrodillada como una santa.”

When you giggle around his erection, he groans, head thudding against the headboard. His mind quickly slips over to Ollie - but not in the way one might expect. It hits him like a truck when he compares her to you. With Ollie, she would last at least 20 minutes before calling it a night. He pretended not to mind - he would never force her to do something she doesn’t want to, of course - but once she would knock out, his large hand would slide down past his boxers, looking for a new release.

Then there’s you, ever so pretty. It seems like with everything you do, you want more. You sucking him off as if you’ve done this for him a lifetime ago. Sure, you’re struggling, but that only makes him harder. You’re trying to keep up with him and it’s working. Now, it’s like he’s the one trying to keep up. Swallowing, your throat closes around him as he flies forward, voice cracking as he presses for more.

Glossy eyes look back up at him as you repeat your action. With one last blow, he pulls out as he cums all over your face. His dick immediately gets hard again when you smile wide, fingers going to pick up his mess. Greedily, you pout as you wrap your lips around your finger like the lollipop you had been sucking on a few hours ago.

“Fuck,” he mumbles, abs contracting together as he tries his best to even out his breaths.

“Will you fuck me now?”

You’re moving at a snail's pace as you lick his sweaty neck. A chill runs down his spine with the feeling of your warm tongue. Grinding slowly against his thigh, you throw your head back with pleasure, wet lips rubbing against him. He smiles.

“You’re a dirty girl, you know that?”

“I thought that’s what you liked about me, papi.”

In a flash, he flips you onto your back as he hovers over you like a giant. A beautiful, beautiful, giant. His large muscles he works so hard for stare back at you as you admire with an open mouth. It looks as if he could carry mountains on his shoulders. Dilated pupils admire you as you let out a pathetic whimper. Long gone were his brown eyes as they now appear completely black. Sensual.

“Then you should be fucked as such.”

With that, he swings your tan legs over his broad shoulders, practically bending you like a pretzel. You pat yourself on the back for all those pilate classes. Jerking himself off a bit, he looks straight at you, making sure this was something you wanted. The way you bat your cartoon eyes is all he needs to slip inside of you.

First thing he notices is how tight you are despite him already stretching you out to perfection. Raw moans leave both your lips as you try your best to adjust to his size. You had been with men before - that’s all you really knew - but no one’s cock had ever made you burn with such satisfaction. More than satisfaction. He’s reassuring you with his words in order for you to relax.

I’ve got you, preciosa. Just let go for me. I’m right here.

Still, you can’t help but squirm underneath him. His fingers make their way to your mouth as you stare back confused. Suck, he commands before forcing them in. Caught off guard, you gag around them for a bit before your tongue begins to twirl around them. Your cheeks burn up as you hear your low mewls. Ah- ah- ah, you cry out against his digits as he grins down at you. Retracting them, he slides them down to your clit as he starts rubbing small circles.

“Oh God.”

Instantly, you open up against his tired cock as he hums. There you go, he praises as you make it easier for him to thrust into you. You should both be ashamed of the way gushy sounds bloom from your mixed cum. Or the way he pounds into you so hard and fast that it has you sliding further back against the bed, hair tangling along the way. His fingers dig into your calves as he holds them in place.

“Mierda,” he wheezes as he throws his head back, ripping his eyes away from the way your puffy clit envelopes around him. Pants and whimpers escape you as you arch your back from the fulfillment.

Carlos is a man - you know that - but in this moment; right now: he’s proving it the way a scientist would their hypothesis. His cock brushes against your g-spot as you gasp at the sensation. He’s looking at you as if you held the key to all secrets.

The keys for the gate to Heaven.

Though he knows that this all feels like Heaven, he deserves nothing but Hell for cheating on Ollie. But that’s the least of his worries.

“Does that feel good, bonita?”

Wide eyes look up at him desperately as you nod to the point where your neck starts to ache. Yes - Oh God, yes. So good, Carlitos. Yeah, baby - right there. Snapping his hips harder against you, your mind goes foggy with the way his hair flops around him. Sweat causing long strands to stick to his face. Beads of sweat drip down your legs as he presses sloppy kisses. His cheeks look as if he’s been out in the sun for hours.

In this moment; he looked immortal.

“Carlos, I’m gonna-”

“Hold it.”

Like a doll, you flop back against the bed as you start to leak acid. No - please. Don’t ask me to do that. Feeling a sharp sting, you gasp. His hands dives back in to massage your cheek after slapping you. He cocks his head with fake sympathy. “I know you can do it,” - thrust - “Wait for me, yeah?”

You have no word as you wail - tits bouncing with every assault from his hip. Your stomach burns with the way his abs glisten, with the way his bottom lip juts out, or the way his muscles shine with a layer of sweat as they hug your legs like a teddy bear.

He was yours. In this moment, he was yours.

“Alright, linda-” He brushes your hair out of your face as he wipes your sweat with his hand. “Cum for me?”

It’s an out of body experience the moment you squirt around his dick - the way your tummy feels like it's on fire. Sore groans leave his lips as he finishes inside of you, brown eyes trained on the way you gush around him. He freezes in place at the feeling. You squirm for a few seconds below falling limp against the bed. The room smells like nothing but filthy sex.

Pulling out of you, he carefully places your legs back down before kissing your ribs. Then your bruised tits. Then your cheeks, forehead, and lastly, your lips that taste like home. Sighing against him, you try your best to remember the way he kisses you as if you're the only form of oxygen that exists. As if this were a dystopian world and you were the only source of survival.

He pecks your lips once more before brushing his fingers against your temple. “Get some sleep.” Yawning, you nod as your eyes flutter like a butterfly's wings. Will you stay? And he doesn’t know what takes over him when he says-

“I will.”

When you wake up you notice it’s still dark out. The moon shines, eyes flickering around, looking for the Spaniard. You let out a low breath of relief when you see him sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Ollie,” he whispers into the phone as he runs a hand against his jaw. “...I made a mistake.”

Your heart stops with his words. He makes sure to speak low, thinking you're sound asleep. She - I - it was a mistake. She’s just a kid…Fuck. She’s just a child. Your heart shatters with the evident blame in his voice. You weren’t a kid. Sniffling, you stop breathing when you realize you’re crying. He pauses for a moment before standing up and making sure you’re okay. Bringing the phone up against his ear, he shakes, already walking out the door.

“Where are you? Let me just see you, amor. I’ll explain it all.”

There’s a saying that goes: You know, a heart can be broken, but it keeps on beating, just the same.

You would personally like to punch that person in the face. It’s not true. It doesn’t beat the same - because then why does it hurt everytime it pounds against your chest? Why is it hard to breath when the priest says-

“You may now kiss the bride!”

Everyone’s faces are blurry; cheers sound far away. You can’t be too sure you're standing upright as your father beams at the sight of Ollie pressing her lips up against Carlos. The way his hands slide down to her waist as shows her off proudly like some champion ring is what hurts the most. You feel flames all over your skin, letting out a flinch when your fathers signals for you to clap, too.

You don’t know what happened after that night. Whether Ollie forgave him or not - though clearly she had. Maybe she didn’t know about you the same way he didn’t know about Ben. This was all starting to feel like some nightmare. But it’s very much real life with the way the newlyweds hold hands, smiling brightly as guests throw a mixture of confetti and baby breath.

“Nice ceremony.”

“What? Oh.” You shrug towards Max as he points over at the couple. “Y-yeah. It was…”

He goes over his next words for a moment because Lord knows that if he has it all wrong then he would appear to be the biggest jerk to ever exist. “You fell in love with him, didn’t you?”

“I-I-I’m not sure I understand,” you trample over your words as your cheeks burn the same color of your red dress. He shares a small smile.

“It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone.”

Walking away, you’re left alone, second guessing everything. The violin seemed too happy. The guests seemed too bright. All of this was fake, couldn’t they see? Pursing your lips, you try your best to hide your broken heart as you catch up with old friends. How is college? How does it feel like having a brother-in-law who drives for Formula 1? Must feel pretty great, right?

The night is boring. Half of it you spend faking smiles and the other you spend trying to avoid the Spaniard. Life was better back in Spain, where ironically, he was never around despite it being his home country. You’re in the middle of conversing with the Dutchman - who quite frankly is an honest listener - when Ollie walks up looking like a ball of whipped cream. Can I talk to my sister alone, please? Max’s concerned eyes ask if you’re okay with that as you nod. Slumping away, he squeezes your knee one last time.

Blue Velvet plays as she fixes herself onto the stool right next to you. “Have you tried the cocktails? They have cherry flavored; your favorite.” Something about her sweet voice makes you unsteady as you raise a brow. She shows off her veneers. “This is weird. Sorry. I’m just so…happy.”

“Good to know.”

“But enough about me!” She places her left hand over yours, shiny rock sitting perfectly. You wince. “I want to talk about you! How’s school?”

“Like you care.”

She pouts. “I do now…” You furrow your brows. What do you mean now? She gasps. “Oh, you poor thing! You don’t know I know!” Your stomach drops. “Well, you know, as your older sister, I’m also your guardian since our mother is too fucked up to look after you…And a little birdie filled me in on your reputation back in Spain.” She giggles as she takes a sip of your drink. “Doesn’t surprise me, though. It only makes sense that you keep messing around with men old enough to be your father. You always had a thing for those.”

“What does this have to do with anything?”

Ollie grins ear to ear when she notices how annoyed you’ve become. “Carlos told you he was born in Madrid, right? Okay, well, he also has a whole bloodline there. And let’s just say, a cousin of his - my goodness, his daughters are beautiful - is a professor at your Uni.”

No.

“And well this birdie also told me how you’ve been sneaking in and out of his lecture room, late at night. And I wonder…What have you and him been doing behind closed doors?”

It can’t be.

Professor Vázquez de Castro, he says as he extends his hand out, eyes roaming every inch of your body.

Suddenly, the name sounds familiar. The surname is Carlos’ extended one. Ollie’s eyes shine. “I see it’s clicking.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I want you to leave me and my husband alone. I want you to grab your things and leave. Don’t look back; just leave. Don’t contact papi ever again. I don’t want to hear a single thing from you. It’s bad enough you’ve already fucked my spouse.”

She knows. He told her. And they still got married.

“Ollie, don’t…”

Tugging your hand harshly, she slaps her phone on it. And you don’t know how, but in it, it’s a video of you riding your Professor - Carlos’ cousin.

“Leave or I’ll show this to him. Your choice.”

Wet sobs leave your mouth as you shake your head in disbelief. How did this happen? Who took this video?

“Ollie, please…I love him.”

Her gaze sharpens as she takes the phone back and stands up. “You know what to do.”

Bringing your shaky hand up to your lips, you stare in shock. Wobbly legs walk past Max as he asks if you’re okay. One last smile looks back at him before you brush past by.

Carlos is craning his neck, looking for you. He had confessed that night, but so had Ollie. He was breaking off the engagement. Spilling apologies as she cried against his chest. Despite it all, he still cared for your sister. But he knew it wasn’t going to work out. He was ready to leave when she brought up the tape of you and a cousin he didn’t even know he had. I’ll get her expelled. Don’t do this, Carlos. And so he stayed. He knew how much you loved school, regardless of what others might think. I just want to help others, you swooned one day by the pool. It’s what I wish someone had done for me.

You get to him before he spots you as you tap on his shoulder. He fills up with worry when he sees your red brimmed eyes. Sheepishly, you take his handkerchief as you wipe your rosy nose. What happened? Who made you cry? You shrug.

“Carlos…I love you.” He blinks. You let out a wet laugh as you lean up to kiss him. You didn’t care who saw anymore. This was it. He doesn’t seem to care either as his hands wrap around your waist. Holding you close, as if you might vanish into thin air. He was the waves, you were the shore. Pulling away, you wink. “Save me a dance, yeah?”

Then, you’re walking away. Becoming smaller as you stroll over to the Italian house. Clutching his chest, he chokes: I-I…I.

“Carlos!”

Turning to face Ollie, he sees her waving him over to the giant cake.

“Coming.”

Running into the quiet house, he calls your name. He looks behind every door, hoping to find the girl in red. Stumbling up the stairs, he swings your door open. He breathes heavily when he doesn’t find you, even here. Panicked, he grips his hair in despair. Only then, does it occur to him to open the restroom door, hoping to not scare you.

“¿Bonita?”

Silence. He still pushes it open as he carefully walks in, finding no harm in checking. And why? Why couldn’t he be as truthful like you were? Risk it the way you would have willingly done. Why did he let you walk into the house alone?

Falling to his knees, he desperately crawls over to your lifeless body, dark blood flowing from your wrists.

As red as your dress.

He must be dreaming. This can’t be real. Surely, it can’t.

“No, no, no.” He drags your limp body into his arms. He can’t even pinpoint the moment his tears flow down his face. “Bonita, no. No. No. No.” The Spaniard cradles your colorless face into his hands. He gently taps your face a few times, but almost stops breathing himself when it only rolls back. Blood stains his white shirt. “Hey, hey. C’mon, please. You want me to say it?” Hurriedly, he picks up your head as he kisses your lips over and over. He winces when he feels how chapped they’ve become.

“It doesn’t feel forced. I’m not saying it because I think it’s what you want to hear - I love you. I do. I love you as infinite as the ocean. I love the way you laugh, the way you trip over anything in your way, the way you say my name…I love you.”

But he knew you weren’t listening. Not anymore.

A piece of him died that day along with you. After that, life was a sickening blur. He’s out of it the moment he hears your father yelling out in agony or when Ollie screams at the gruesome scene.

None of it mattered anymore.

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vivelegalite · 10 days

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dear dead boy detective (especially paynland) enjoyers: have you yet heard of the biggest gift bestowed upon the fandom so far, aka jayden's charles playlist? the one he mentioned in interviews? well, he dropped it on twitter at 19th of may. and man, do i have stuff to say about it.

there's a lot of 80's bangers, for sure, great to get into the mood and character, but some of the choices...

i'm gonna focus on a few of my favourites, songs that made me go insane when i saw them. honorable mentions: - category 1 (so devoted the lines blur): ain't no mountain high enough by marvin gaye and tammi terrell, there is a light that never goes out by the smiths, inkpot gods by the amazing devil - category 2 (family life): family line and summer child by conan gray, seventeen going under by sam fender, matilda by harry styles, father by the front bottoms - category 3 (being queer in the 80s): smalltown boy by bronski beat, boys don't cry by the cure - category 4 (there's no heterosexual explanation for this one): good luck, babe! by chappel roan, yellow by coldplay, fight or flight by conan gray (is this about monty? the cat king? i need answers!), the prophecy by taylor swift, arms tonite by mother mother, sweet by cigarettes after sex, head over heels by tears for fears

this list is by no means complete or comprehensive!

and now, the songs that made me go the craziest: (they're predominantly in charles' pov as it's his playlist)

found heaven by conan gray

the only reason this song made it into the list and not the honorable mentions instead of smalltown boy is that it makes almost the same point, just so much more explicitly. i don't think i have to say much about it, it's a story of a young person griping with their queerness, being forced to leave home, a common theme of the playlist. "you're in love, you found heaven" when he chose edwin over his own afterlife, heavily implied to be heaven, and built his heaven with him on the mortal plane? ouch! (and we see this same notion repeated in another bop from the playlist, heaven is a place on earth by belinda carlisle).

2. like real people do by hozier

"i miss kissing" charles rowland, 202X romantic meaning aside, the verses show a sort of a common understanding the boys have around the manner of their deaths and their lives before it. we already know from the show they don't really talk about it, with edwin not knowing about the severity of the abuse charles suffered. it feels like one of them saying "let the past be past, we're together now, yeah?". but also, jayden: can there ever be a platonic explanation for this? ghosts can't touch, can't feel, so they wish they could just kiss like "real" (alive?) people do?

3. flaws by bastille

not the most romantic song, but i absolutely love how well it fits their dynamic. despite his edwardian brand of repression, edwin truly is the one that's more open about his feelings (recognising of course that in this case, the bar is so low it's in hell. haha, get it). edwin has worn his flaws upon his sleeve, and charles has held them buried - eg. bottling up all of his anger and resentment towards his family and his own death. the song presents a very sweet outlook, in which their flaws are brought up to the surface (for example, charles' outburst against the night nurse in episode 4), but they learn to accept them as they are, an extension of themselves.

4. a pearl by mitski

you know it's gonna get intense if there's a mitski song in the mix.

the song is about a person who finds love in their partner, someone who treats them way better than they've ever been treated - and yet they cannot bring themselves to reciprocate the affection ("it's not that i don't want you, sorry i can't take your touch") despite reciprocating the feelings themselves because of the trauma. charles is known to bottle things up ("you're growing tired of me and all the things i don't talk about"). the person in the song recognises the love the other person holds for them ("you love me so hard and i still can't sleep"), which reminds me of charles' response to edwin's confession. not a "no", but a "maybe, as time passes".

5. fair by the amazing devil

this one made me genuinely gasp when i first delved into the lyrics. it's simply so sweet, such a genuine and domestic portrayal of love. at first i thought it was way too open about being a love song (normal text instead of the subtext i'd be used to) for jayden to choose it with edwin in mind, but... there's no one else it can really be about. it's far too domestic, too "established" to refer to crystal. refers to a relationship that's laster for a longer while.

the narrator in the first verse is a person deeply in love with the other person, someone who loves to make his lover laugh and simply drinks in their presence. the "he" in the song i believe is charles, while the "she" refers to edwin. edwin promises to fight off anyone - or any feelings pulling charles down (we can see this in the first episode: "you ever think... what if death did catch us? she'd force us to go to the afterlife and split up" "i will make sure this never happens."). charles feels left behind by the world (seeing as he clings to crystal at first, refering to her as "someone their age who's still alive") and believes edwin to be so much stronger than he's ever been. i'm not going to break down the song verse by verse, but if you read it yourself while subbing out "he" for charles and "she" for edwin you'll see just how sweet (and... strangely very in character?) the song is.

6. work song by hozier

if the previous song made me gasp when i saw the lyrics, this one made me go "NO WAY" out loud when i saw the title. the first one verse is just pure toothrotting sweetness, but the chorus is what i want to draw attention to:

when my time comes around lay me gently in the cold, dark earth no grave can hold my body down i'll crawl home to her

HELLO? charles, who keeps escaping death and afterlife to be able to stay with edwin? charles, as he literally takes his last breath with edwin right there, choosing to be by his side rather than move on? charles, who keeps choosing him despite night nurse's promises and threats? charles, who literally crawled through hell for him?

verse 2, to me, can be interpreted as referring to when charles died. edwin found him at his worst, and he "woke" up with his presence comforting him. he was shivering due to hypothermia and his injuries. edwin didn't ask him about what happened or pushed him, he simply listened. the lines "i didn't care much how long i lived, but I swear, i thought i dreamed her" are pretty self explanatory.

in verse 3 we still see the same attitude of "damn the afterlife, at least we have each other" as charles portrays througout the series. they're free, and heaven and hell are simply words to him.

7. orpheus by vincent lima

i literally have no words for this one. it fits too well. if you want commentary for this one, just... i don't know, rewatch the staircase scene.

8. francesca by hozier

(cracks knuckles) this is the big one. the album francesca is from, unreal unearth, is based on dante alighieri's divine comedy, a fourteenth century poem about a man venturing into hell, purgatory and eventually heaven. the eponymous francesca is one francesca di rimini, a woman who was politically married off to a man older than her, called giovanni malatesta. francesca didn't love him, and eventually fell deep in love with giovanni's younger brother, paolo. the two carried on with the affair for years, before being murdered by giovanni upon his finding out. francesca and paolo are mentioned in canto v of the first book, inferno, as two souls damned in the second circle of hell, lust. their punishment is to be permanently locked in a hurricane, swept away by the winds the moment they manage to get close enough to touch one another.

as opposed to their portrayal in the poem, the song is from the perspective of paolo, explaining that no matter the punishment, he wouldn't change anything about his life because he got to know, and love, francesca.

the first verse brings to mind the scenes in hell, especially on the staircase ("do you think I'd give up? that this might've shook the love from me? or that I was on the brink? how could you think, darlin', i'd scare so easily?" as an echo of charles' "sorry. no version of this where i didn't come get you"). "my life was a storm since i was born, how could i fear any hurricane?" could relate to charles' tumultuous family life, an assurance that nothing he has to deal with while by edwin's side will faze him given the things he's lived through. no, despite everything he's suffered through, charles wouldn't do anything differently - because his (admittedly shitty) life led him to edwin ("i'd tell them, put me back in"). we already know charles would choose him over heaven, willingly sacrificing his own afterlife to stay with a boy he's known for hours, someone kind enough to keep him company as he drew his final breath. all of it - his father's abuse, his schoolmates' bigotry, the pain of his own death, as well as everything he's gone through since - he'd do it all again, for edwin.

"for all that was said of where we'd end up at the end of it" could be taken as an allusion to the fate the boys would meet at "at the end of it", when they're finally caught by death and separated, or as more of a general "if you sin, you will go to hell when you die" (up to you to decide what the sin itself would be - an interpretation that would work with other songs on the playlist is that one such sin would be same sex attraction). then their hearts ceased, they never knew "peace", nor did they want to find it in death. their deaths were too soon, them being ripped away from life, but even though it would break his heart: charles would ask to do it all again.

the outro, i think, beautifully pulls it all together: heaven is not fit to house a love like theirs.

to wrap it all up:

jayden, what were you cooking in there? what do you know??

#please interact w me please please please i need dbd moots <3 #dbda #dead boy detectives #dead boy detective agency #paynland #payneland #painland #paineland #chedwin #charles rowland #edwin paine #edwin payne #dead boy detectives agency #dead boy detectives analysis #aough jayden your mind #my art #<- my umbrella trashcan tag

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ma1dita · 3 months

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to catch a thief

a 'partners in crime' installment - luke castellan x dionysus!reader

words: 3.7k

summary: (post-TLT, sea of monsters compliant/spoilers) The one where duty calls at Camp Half-Blood. Again. Your reunion with Luke is nothing you both could have ever expected. (Luke Castellan x fem!Dionysus!reader)

a/n: we’re so back trouble!verse ;) sorry for the post birthday hiatus on this, hope you like it! crack banter but err... she got a lil angsty

(posted 3/22/24, semi-edited)

—

When you wake up to the gentle rolling of the sea, it feels like a comforting embrace in a distant dream. Tangled within pristine white sheets, you could smell the salt through the small opening in the bay window–though this was a far cry from a fairytale conjured by your mind. This was your reality.

You wouldn’t call it a nightmare per se, but the circumstances were definitely less than preferred.

This is not the CSS Birmingham. No, that went up in flames. Retracing your steps to what led you to this—cushy cruise line of a prison, you reckon it’s been a few days now since you’ve become a stowaway, or a hostage. You haven’t quite decided yet.

Gods, this is what you get for passing up on that summer research internship.

Dropping off Percy, Annabeth, and Tyson at camp was supposed to be a fun walk down memory lane—until meeting with your dad, finding out Thalia’s tree had been poisoned, watching Chiron get fired, and essentially getting kicked out by the troll of a man who originally got sent to the Fields of Punishment for marketing the taste of human flesh made you remember that nothing at camp is the way it used to be.

Not like before, when you and Luke used to run it.

Your dad told you to go home and wait till you were needed. Home. Driving away from it this time around was harder than you thought it would be. You’d never been the patient type, and to drop everything just because a god told you to? Hilarious, really.

But almost a week later, after rejoining your friends on an undead ship that you let the kids commandeer, your vital mistake was thinking that Clarisse’s quest would be a breeze. Rookie move, since the last one you were on left you as scarred as Luke was. Even thinking of him now, you run your thumb over the rough patch of skin on your palm.

At the very least you hoped Tyson was okay. The last memory you have of the young Cyclops was watching him from your place on the ladder as he stopped the engines from overheating. Maybe it was the ex-head counselor in you, or your increased threshold to pain, but there was no way in hell you were leaving that kid behind.

The sound of voices from outside your door gets louder now, your throat feeling like you’ve been swallowing wads of cotton and a persistent ringing in your ear that hurts just as bad as when you watch Chris Rodriguez walk in with a plate of food. The last one he slid through the door bumps against his boot, still uneaten and he sighs.

“So what, you’re on a hunger strike now? I forgot how difficult you could be.”

You bark out a laugh. Thankfully it’s loud enough that it almost conceals the rumble of your stomach. Gritting your teeth, you mumble, “Wish it could be an idiot strike. I forgot how much of a bitch you are when it comes to your brother, Rodriguez. How long are you going to keep me here? It’s been days.”

Your former friend rolls his eyes at your dramatics like he doesn’t hold the key to your freedom.

“Three since you woke up, actually. Come on, you’ve gotta eat, or I’ll get my ass kicked,” he grumbles. You raise an eyebrow at that, walking towards the window to dodge the uncomfortable tension that fills the room. He plucks an apple slice off your plate.

“He couldn’t splurge on a balcony view? Monsters aside, it’s not like you’ve reached full occupancy.”

“There are more mortals here than you think. To be honest, he was worried you would find a way to overthrow us,” the tanned boy admits, placing the tray on the dresser. It was always a wonder to him how you and Luke were more alike than you think, even now—even when Luke hasn’t come to see you. Talking to you reminded him that you’re both pains in his ass, and Chris was still unsure of who to be more wary of, but he’s been in charge of watching you for the most part.

“Well tell your stupid captain he has no right to be worried about me. I’d much rather try to jump if given the opportunity.”

There’s no response, so you turn to face Chris who’s eating a croissant with a bashful grin.

“Seriously dude?”

“Listen, I’m hoping if I think of the right words to say, he’ll come in and deal with you himself. Opposite sides of a war and you’re still both giving me a headache. Just like old times,” he chuckles, flakes of pastry dotting across his chest plate. Your mouth quirks into a bitter smile. Old times, when Luke would shove you if he couldn’t think of a reply fast enough. When you’d punch him to get your point across if he wasn’t listening. How a kiss could end any waging war between the both of you.

You swallow, turning slowly to watch your reflection in the glass of the windowpane.

Why hasn't he come to see you? The first day, you remember spending out on the sea—treading water with no land in sight, calling out to your friends until your voice went hoarse, but you didn’t cry. You know better than to show weakness now, even when no one’s around. Chris tells you over a gulp of orange juice that you washed up next to the Princess Andromeda on the second day like it was fate. Though fate was never truly that kind to anyone; it felt like it was laughing in your face. Knocked out cold for two days after, and ignoring all of Chris’s attempts to keep you alive in the days that followed, you’ve been in this room ever since. You barely notice Chris’s departure.

Entering the ensuite bathroom, you splash your face and sip on water from the tap before stopping at the doorway. A shadow flits at the seam near your feet, someone standing just out of sight when you peer through the peephole.

But you know Luke’s there. Sons of Hermes have almost undetectable footsteps, however, Luke walking in and out of your life for as long as he has—there’s no inconceivable way to not know him. Perhaps you couldn’t hear the sound of his feet, but there’s a way the wind shifts your hair, your heart slowing in ease at his presence, and the scent of him reminiscent of skin kissed with the peel of an orange. The skin you used to kiss and greet and know like your own.

The shadow fades just as your hand reaches out towards it, leaving like he always does. Always out of reach.

Even as the Princess Andromeda continues to set sail upon the calm waters of the Atlantic Coast, you look out to the unending horizon and still feel like you’re drowning.

—

“Status report, soldier?”

Chris rolls his eyes, popping the last piece of apple into his mouth as he strolls into the command deck. The both of you had a flair for the dramatic—it serves as his reminder of why you two worked so well. Luke is sitting in his captain’s seat, watching the waves crash against the hull as the sun begins to set on the skyline.

“She’s angry. Anyone would be if they were locked up like that.”

“Well, yeah, but tell me something I don’t know. Something useful, Rodriguez,” Luke says, flicking his pocket knife closed. It’s still sticky with the juice of the fruit, catching onto his finger. He hisses, but then the sound of loud footsteps boom down the corridor, along with the sound of maniacal laughter as the door slams open. The two sons of Hermes look at each other curiously, knowing it all too well.

“You know, the next time you send a 9-year-old to stand guard, remember to not make it the one we used to throw into the lake,” you drawl, sauntering into the bridge and looking around until your eyes land on your ex, “and also remember that you taught me how to pick locks.”

Ethan Nakamura heaves behind you, hands on his knees before he stands to attention and salutes his captain.

“Sir, I was just following orders… and I’m not 9 anymore!” he snaps, glaring at you. Laughing at the absurdity of the situation makes it easier to get through. You thought being surrounded by the undead on the CSS Birmingham was scary enough, but standing in a room with ghosts from your past was somehow worse. Honestly, you learned a lot more by being in that room than if you were to jump ship like you wanted to.

“I taught you how to tie your shoes, Ethan. You’re always gonna be a little kid to me,” you scoff, brushing him aside and walking towards Luke, “your new digs are fancy, by the way. I could tell by all the teenage soldiers chasing me through the tourists.”

He stands up and meets you head to head, as the both of you inspect each other closely.

It’s been a long year without you.

You look thinner. You’ve lost the softness in your cheeks and your eyes are tired. He wonders what you chose to major in, who your roommates are, if you still think of him with a smile on your face. You’re still beautiful.

“You know me, I like to travel in style,” Luke says offhandedly, a half smile on his face. For someone leading a war against the gods, he’s calm in your presence.

“Back when I knew you, we traveled in a tin can that we also called a car.”

His clothes are nicer than anything you’ve ever seen him in. He looks really fucking good, for someone on the run. It’s almost frustrating to see how brawny he’s gotten, muscles rippling as he crosses his arms. You suppose he has nothing to do now but practice and spar (that or he’s definitely flexing for you). Pulling at the drawstring of the joggers you wear, you realize his initials are embroidered on the pocket. Pretentious fuck. Did he change you once you got on board?

Chris and Ethan suddenly get the feeling that they’re interrupting something—a reunion in a blockbuster romantic movie they’ve seen the mortals play out on the ship deck’s projector on Friday nights. The two of you stand there arguing like a married couple despite the fact you are no longer lovers and the bickering continues even when more of Kronos’ army files in. You laugh again at the sight of children walking in—some strangers, others you’ve sung to sleep in cabin 11, all still children, even back from the time before when laughter didn’t have to have a reason, light and airy in the summer sun.

“You’re sick, you know that? Did you just plan to let me rot in that room until it was all over? You didn’t even talk to m—”

“Classic, you’re more mad that I didn’t talk to you over the fact that you’re a prisoner,” he seethes, but you don’t stand down—not now or ever.

“Prisoner? I walked out and none of your Boy Scouts could do anything about it!”

His face is turning red now, jaw tightening at the angst but deep down he misses this—the banter, the thin line between hate and love you both tread on. You may be a damsel. But you were not in distress. To further prove your point, you swing an arm toward one of the boys in black (their uniforms were annoyingly corny), and they all take a step back toward the wall. Your eyebrows furrow, “What type of prison has guards terrified of the prisoner?”

He shrugs, “It was only time before you came and found me. I even gave you a bay window.”

That was not the right thing to say.

“I’ll fucking kill yo—”

“Sir? So do we try and detain her, or….” one of the demigods you don’t know interjects, and Chris Rodriguez sucks at his teeth before he responds.

“Alright. We’ve seen enough of the show. Everyone file out and let Castellan reunite with his girlfriend.”

“GIRLFRIEND?”

“Girlfriend…”

The both of you look at each other, one in anger, the other in sheepishness now that you’re alone. It's even funnier that neither of you deny it.

“You left me there in that room, and by the sight of things around here you prefer being in the company of monsters than being with me, so by the gods, what do you want, Castellan?”

You fall into the captain’s chair exasperatedly, watching him watch you.

“I’m giving you a choice,” he says simply. “You can stay here with me, or you can go.”

“A choice? You captured me to tell me I have a choice,” you spit, as if that was the stupidest thing he could say. “You didn’t give me a choice when you left me.”

“It was a matter of the circumstances. And I didn't capture you—are you mad that I betrayed everyone or not, because I can’t really read you right now, trouble…”

Your eye twitches and your hands are in fists across your lap. Another wrong thing to say.

“Keeping me here until I get the nerve to talk to you is not a choice, asshole. Do you think you could just hide me away until the bad part’s over? To save me until everything's good enough for you?” Your eyes catch onto the droplets of blood that fall onto the hardwood flooring near your feet. His hand is bleeding, and like it’s nothing of the sort you reach out for it.

Luke thinks that if he lets you your hand will still perfectly fit in his, so after a moment, he pulls his hand away out of your reach. Pulling a handkerchief out of your pocket (also embroidered with his initials—note to self, never let a son of Hermes have money), you stand to wrap it around his hand to stop the bleeding. You pretend not to notice his heartbeat increase through the throbbing of the cloth.

“Don’t let my actions make you believe that what we had wasn’t good, trouble.”

“Stop calling me that. Why are they all scared of me? Why won’t you let me touch you?” you whisper, putting pressure on his finger until the blood clots. It doesn’t even hurt, to tell you the truth. Not touching you when you’re right here in front of him is a pain he can’t find the words to describe. But what he’ll never understand is that he’s right. You two were good together. You’d have him through the bad too, if only he let you.

“Because you might think you can fix me.” Or worse, you might change his mind. You don't have to say you love him for him to know it. A part of him wishes he didn’t have to do all of this to prove to you he feels the same.

“Would you have left with me?” he mutters. A wistful look cuts through your anger and he knows he’s finally said something right. His pocket knife is on the control board and your hands drop to your side again when you realize that he may have forgotten to tell his battalion of who you are to him, but he still remembers how you like your apples cut. The silence is loud, even with the twinge that comes with the pain in your eardrum as you sway a little on your feet. Your body still knows it can relax with him, knees buckling with a false sense of security despite your willpower.

“I would've made it so that there was no other option for you but to want to stay.”

A soldier bursts through the door and apologizes for the intrusion, but the both of you have found out all you need to know. The moment is over and Percy Jackson has been captured by the army in his efforts of trying to save the day. There’s a look shared between the two of you that wonders if this will become a trend.

—

Licking your lips as your…Luke guides you out onto the main deck with your hands behind your back, you can taste the salt in your air. It’s almost as evident as the surprise in your friends’ faces when they see you alive. This time, they don’t question your allegiance but in the chaos that ensues, for a moment, you do.

For a moment, you wonder what would change if you decided to stay with him. Would the sky fall under your feet? Would the gods kneel like Luke said they would? Looking at him in your periphery, you realize it’s not what the both of you want, even if it’s the easier way out—to be together despite it all.

The two of you against the world instead of the world against the both of you.

But he won't even touch you—he’s holding you over the sleeves of your shirt, too scared of what you’ve become in his absence. You suppose you’re scared of what he’s become too.

The realization hits that you could defect from your friends, family, and home. You could undo everything that you and your friends have worked towards. But nothing he can say will change the fact that he didn’t choose you.

Luke was right, then.

You did have a choice, one that he still forces you to make as you nod at Percy to flip his last drachma into the open water, opening a direct line of communication to your father to catch the thief—of both lightning and the beat of your heart, in the act.

You realize that if the gods were the least bit grateful that you’ve kept their kids alive for the past half-decade, perhaps fate would be on your side and Luke would still be yours. But life has a funny way of working itself out when Luke admits to the open air of another crime to tack onto his list.

“Kronos was right. I should’ve killed you, Percy.”

The son of Poseidon goads Luke into another duel and you survey your surroundings for a way out. Annabeth burns holes into the side of your head and it gets you thinking, moving faster than you have in days as you walk towards her and Grover. At the raise of your hand, the demigods holding onto the pair drop to the deck, incapacitated with illusions of madness they will never comprehend. The more of them that surround you drop like flies as Luke’s eyes flicker between you and the boy he has at swordpoint.

You’ve gotten stronger in his absence—you never needed to touch him to use your powers after all. Just waiting for the right moment to strike, attacking when Luke finally let his guard down for you. He cracks his neck, knowing you’ve made your choice, so he makes his.

“Get them.”

The monster scrambles across the deck but it approaches you first, clawing at the wood and barely missing your feet as you scream for help, defenseless without a sword and you hear Luke yell your name in alarm before a punching glove-tipped arrow sends it hurtling overboard.

Your eyes lock with his again as you disembark with the Party Ponies, you with your crew as he corrals the mess you made of his. It has to be the salt air that makes your eyes seem a little misty.

Your fates have always been tied.

You protect your home, and he does what he can to protect you. Luke looks over your form like he’s checking if you’re okay, even from a distance— and it makes you wonder if this is how it's supposed to be. Someone leaving, and the both of you apart.

It’s weird to be the one leaving this time, but it isn't as easy as Luke makes it seem each time he does it. You avert your eyes once you see him put his hand in his pocket, him finding what you snuck in on the way to the deck. Luke pulls out a leather bracelet with a black camp bead, the one he missed in the year he’s been gone. He rolls the bead between his fingers, the thing you last touched before leaving him, an emblem of his archnemesis and the summer that changed everything—the consequences of his actions ripping you away from him. When he slides it on his wrist, it lightly clinks against the hilt of his sword, the lone clay bead a force of its own against Backbiter's reverberating power. He feels nostalgia for what could have been crawling through him—though Luke supposes he’s always been too vulnerable when it comes to you.

Is this what you’ve been feeling every time he walks away?

It starts to rain after you leave. Luke watches his crew take cover from the downpour, running in all different directions to hide away from the storm that ravages the Princess Andromeda.

But he stands still, looking up at the sky and hating it for how openly it’s able to cry. Luke is far away from home again—from you and it makes him wonder how much longer he’ll have to be away from you when being with you is what he truly wants.

The mission continues and the ship keeps pushing forward even as the rain washes over him, soaking through his armor and straight to the bone. Raindrops pelt through every crevice, though this onslaught is much kinder, more gentle, even when it’s angry. He closes his eyes and lets it touch his skin.

For a moment, it feels like you.

—

A hand penetrates the tide searching for yours, gripping onto your unconscious one. He’s spent hours ripping holes through time to try to find you, an advantage given to him in a dream by the Titan. The agreement, what keeps him from not running back to you is that you live—and as Luke pulls you out of the ocean waterlogged and turning blue, he wonders if it’s all a farce.

Losing you isn’t worth the wrath of the gods if you’re lifeless in his arms like this.

He shouts your name, pumping your chest with his fists and breathing life back into your lips until you cough out saltwater, head lolling against his knee. Luke’s fingers stroke your hair, touching you for the first time in a year. As life slowly brings the color back into your cheeks he silently thanks Hestia for keeping your flame alight. His soldiers call out to him from the deck, and he steels his resolve as he rows the lifeboat back to the ship. Still, Luke has to uphold his side of the agreement.

He wonders if you’d stay. Even if he knows the answer, Luke wonders if you would ever change it for him.

—

And they tell me you are evil and I answer: Yes, I know. –Patricia Smith

½ luke taglist: @kissingyourgrl @dorcas4meadowes @lorarri @andrewgarfldsgf @noodlesketchbook @10ava01 @poppysrin @ashisabitgay @timhalamet @liv1104 @leeknows-wife @mxtokko @bugcuti3 @luvvfromme @midmourn @2hiigh2cry @yuminako @niktwazny303 @lukecastellandefender @intergalactic-padawan @iliketopgun @annybah @dangelnleif @thegrinningghost @alyssajunelle @obxstiles @m00ng4z3r @visndcaitswhore @b0ok-lover @elegant-face-tree @this-barbie-is-having-breakdowns @amortencjja @idonevenknow1359 @maliaaaa @targaryenluvs @sakyira @dhdjdjjdhsjdiri

#luke castellan x reader #trouble!verse #percy jackon and the olympians #luke castellan x dionysus!reader #pjo x reader

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zepskies · 2 months

Text

A Crime of Passion

Pairing: Beau Arlen x F. Reader

Summary: When Beau Arlen decides to “make it up to you,” he’s damn thorough.

AN: I couldn't help myself lol. I wrote this last night. Here's a quick little drabble for the Take Me Home series, set directly after A Good Man Is Hard to Find!

Based on this request from @jessicalynnann.

Word Count: 550

Tags/Warnings: 18+ only! Implied smut, fluff, and a murder (of sorts).

Catch up on the TMH-verse: ⤵️

❤️ Take Me Home Masterlist

You just…you couldn’t stop laughing.

“All right, you done?” Beau asked.

You never thought you’d see this man blush so thoroughly. It made you laugh harder, though you tried to stifle it with your hands covering your face.

He had you laid out beside him, still skin against naked skin as the cool air began to dry your dewy bodies.

You were lying against him in an odd position, considering your bed now had a deep crack in the bedframe that ran all the way down the middle. It meant your legs were bent at an angle, almost like you were laying in a recliner seat.

You just couldn’t believe it.

This man had really broken your bed.

In fact, he murdered it. Killed it dead. Though you supposed it was a crime of passion, in this case. (You held in a snort at the thought.)

There were even a couple of screws that had rolled across the tile floor.

“Again, I’m sorry, sweetheart. I promise I’ll pay for a new frame,” Beau said contritely.

The truth was, he was embarrassed beyond belief.

Another giggle escaped you, though you tried to soothe him by caressing his cheek.

“Baby, it’s okay. This thing was old. I’m surprised it survived the move all the way from Chicago, honestly,” you said. The twinkle of mischief in your eyes made his face warm further.

“But how damn lucky am I,” you added, your lips curving. “My man quite literally shatters expectations when he makes love to me.”

And despite the unexpected cracking sound that had left you wide-eyed, it had been a spectacular finish. Even now, you were still tingling between your legs from how hard you’d come on his cock. (Twice.)

You slipped your bare leg between both of his and pressed a sweet kiss to his chest.

Beau fought it, but he had to smile at your words, and your affection. He sunk a hand into your tangled hair, first brushing his thumb against your cheek.

“You sure you’re okay then?” he asked.

“I’m more than okay,” you said. He felt the shape of your smile against his skin. You pulled back to meet his eyes. “Better the bed than my back, anyway. Jesus.”

Beau let out a sigh. Another giggle bubbled over and escaped you. You rubbed his arm.

“Think of it this way,” you said. “Now we can go pick out a new bed together.”

Beau tilted his head at that, and he nodded. A smile grew across his face.

“Now there’s an idea,” he said. It was probably too soon for him to broach the topic of moving in with you, but this could be a good first step.

“Right?” you replied in excitement. But there was something else dancing in your eyes. “We’ll just have to make sure the frame’s reinforced with titanium or something, because goddamn.”

Beau couldn’t help but laugh. He dropped his forehead against your shoulder while his own shook. You held him to you and didn’t bother to try and hide your own amusement anymore.

One thing you knew for sure?

There was no way in hell you’d ever let him live this down.

And one thing he would never tell you…

Beau Arlen was damn proud of himself.

AN: 😂 Well then. That was fun, and I hope you enjoy! ❤️

Ko-Fi Me ☕

Take Me Home Masterlist

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Main Masterlist

Series Tag List (Part 1):

@kazsrm67 @letheatheodore @agothwithheavysetmakeup @jacklesbrainworms @foxyjwls007

@wincastifer @iamsapphine @roseblue373 @brianochka

@branj19 @globetrotter28 @hazel-eye-coffee-shop-girl-blog @ades106 @charmed-asylum

@waywardxwords @deanwinchestersgirl87 @this-is-me19 @rachiem4-blog @sweettimelady

@leigh70 @clinicallydepresso @emily-winchester @xiphoidbones @skoveu

@nyotamalfoy @kmc1989 @deans-baby-momma @tabsluvsu @samanddeaninatrenchcoat

@deanwanddamons @anticxrrupt @lacilou @deans-daydream @deans-spinster-witch

@agalliasi @venicesem @chriszgirl92 @lyarr24 @iprobablyshipit91

@ladysparkles78 @solariklees @lostin-jensenseyes @deansbbyx @candy-coated-misery0731

@curlycarley @sarahgracej @bagpussjocken @deanfreakingwinchester @chernayawidow

#A Crime of Passion #beau arlen #beau arlen x reader #beau arlen x you #beau arlen x female reader #beau arlen smut #Beau Arlen series #TMH-verse #Take Me Home #beau arlen fanfiction #beau arlen fanfic #big sky #jensen ackles #big sky season 3 #jensen ackles characters #A Good Man Is Hard to Find sequel #zepskies writes

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claimedcrossbows · 9 months

Text

Served! Sanji x Fem!reader

Slight anime spoilers/foreshadowing.

This is OPLA Sanji though.

You were laid down in your quarters trying to keep the vomit down after you had been sick the entire night. Your head was killing you and you were simply not ready for whatever chaos was happening downstairs, but you had a kitchen to run, so you slowly got dressed, and slowly made your way downstairs to absolute anarchy.

“Y/n! We’re out of crawfish and it’s tonight's specials!” Your little sister says immediately approaching you.

“How did we run out of crawfish?” You groaned.

“Rasha forgot to order more and the nearest port ship is still a day away.” She explains frantically.

“Substitute it for lobster in the mac and cheese, and 86 the Crawfish Etouffe Balls.” You demanded hoarsely your vocal chords still fried from vomitting all night.

“Y/N are you okay? You look awful.” Your sister says looking at your haggard appearance and your overall sweaty pale face.

“Great, now go do as I told you, and make it quick rumor has it a critic is dining with us tonight!” You say the last part loud enough to attract your team of cooks attention.

“YES CHEF!” A chorus of voices ring out as you nod and all but wobble your way to the fridge for some much needed seltzer water.

Of all the days for one of the most known critics on the grandline to come pay your restaurant a visit it just had to be today when you could barely stand up right.

Fortunately for you you had a great team of chefs under your command as you watched them all hurry about prepping and making numerous dishes that looked about as masterful as could be.

You were by far one of the best restaurants on the grandline, your restaurant resided on a small beach in a lighthouse where many ships sailing by frequented your restaurant when they were in need of a good meal and conversation.

And you were no doubt one of best female chef’s the grand line had ever seen.

At just age 7 you had won your local cooking competition taking home a wonderful gift basket of exotic spices that had eventually lead you to your well known name of The Spice Queen.

You specialized in Cajun styled cooking, but you could cook just about anything in any style, you were well versed in cuisine having read numerous cookbooks throughout your life, you even knew quite a few special recipes to help revitalize sailors who were in need of more than just a flavorful meal.

Many pirates sought you out after large scaled battles that left them in tatters, if anyone asked any of those pirates what saved their lives and healed their wounds, they would name you.

Which is how you got your second name, as The Crock Pot Doc.

Yep, one taste of your special famous soup was said to cure a man on his death bed.

But none of that mattered if you couldn’t pull off a perfect dinner service tonight of all nights. You had to make sure this critic was absolutely blown away and you weren’t about to let a little food poisoning stop you.

So you chugged your seltzer water and began mincing and julienning veggies.

That was until a loud bang echoed throughout the entire lighthouse followed by a bunch of screaming and crying.

You quickly put down your knife and made it to the dining area where you absolutely could not believe your eyes at what had unfolded before you.

“WE NEED THE CROCK POT DOC, BRING THEM,PLEASE HURRY!” A man in a straw hat yellled looking around the room of patrons and chefs who had also exited the kitchen to see what was happening.

You stepped forward trying to process the sight before you, a group of pirates had barged into your restaurant all with desperate faces and who you could only assume was the captain carrying a orange haired woman who looked to be on the brink of death.

“I’m her, what the hell is going on??” You asked trying to wrap your head around this and the current state of your dining room that has been nearly destroyed by their barging in.

The straw hat man hastily made his way toward you carrying the woman with desperate eyes.

“I’m Monkey D. Luffy, and you have to save my friends life.” He said shakily but with a determination you could respect.

You laughed in disbelief, this man trashes your dining room on a special night and expects you to just save his friends life??

“And why would I do that?” You scoff looking at the state of the girl who looked worse than you felt.

“Because I’m the man who will be king of the pirates, and I promise I will pay you whatever you need and more if you save Nami’s life.” He says unwavering.

A few of your cooks scoff and laugh, “King of the pirates? This kid?” One of your cooks laughs.

You frown, “I don’t work for free, especially not when I have a important critic frequenting my restaurant tonight, there’s a doctor village not to far from here maybe a day’s travel at the Drum Kingdom-”

“She doesn’t have a day!” Luffy stresses.

Your frown deepens, your about to protest before a wave of nausea makes you wince. “Look I don’t have time for this I’m sorry but you need to leave-”

“Madam.” A voice behind this so called Captain Luffy rings out and you look past the kid and sees a tall blonde man in a black suit stepping forward, his face tense but gentle as he addressed you. “I understand your busy, but she will die if she doesn’t receive some kind of medical attention and I hear your not only one of the best cooks on these seas, but your cooking even rivals most medicines prescribed by doctors.” He says as he walks up to you.

“And you are?” You ask raising a skeptical brow.

“Sanji, The best cook in all of the east blue and maybe the world Mam’.” He says confidently as he shoots you a wink.

You immediately laugh, “Wow you have a lot of nerve to say that to my face.”

His face drops as he immediately shakes his head, “I’m sorry I didn’t mean to offend you I just-”

“Well you wouldn’t be a good cook if you weren’t cocky, so there must be some talent behind your words.” You say crossing your arms. “Your Sanji, Chef Zeff’s prodigy I assume.” You say watching his eyes widen.

A small smirk crosses his lips, “Ah, so you’ve heard of me madam?” He says flirtatiously.

“Yeah, I heard a flirty handsome chef trained by Chef Zeff himself has been making his name in the culinary world as one of the best chef’s out here.”

“Oh really?” He says his smile widening.

“Yeah, but it looks like they only got the flirty part right.” You smirk back watching his face drop.

“Sanji’s the best cook on the grandline!!” Luffy immediately defends.

“Yet he can’t make a healing dish?” You interject.

Luffy grunts in annoyance, “Look we don’t have time for this Nami’s dying will you help us or not!?” He shouts angrily.

“N-”

“You say a food critics coming tonight right?” Sanji suddenly says.

You turn to him and nod, “Yes and I need to get ready-”

“You look sick, how do you expect to impress a critic and you can barely stand up right?” He asks staring directly into your eyes.

“How the hell do you know i’m sick?” You questioned.

“I know when a lady’s suffering.” He says gently.

You didn’t know how to respond to that so you just let him continue.

“So how about a deal, I help lead your cooks tonight and pull off an exsquisit meal to impress the critic, and you in turn heal my friend?” He says.

“And what makes you think you can make any of my dishes East Blue Boy?” You challenge, honestly intrigued by the cockiness of this man.

“I’m a fast learner mam, just give me a sample of what needs to be cooked and i’ll make it.” He says.

You were about to deny this foolish request until the sounds of numerous peoples stomachs gurgling suddenly caught your attention.

“Uhhhggg, Chef Y/N we don’t feel so good.” One your top chefs say holding their stomachs.

“Neither do I.” Chef Rasha groans.

“Oh no..” Another chef groans running out the room and into the bathroom.

“I feel fine?” Your little sister says looking at you in disbelief as more and more chefs ran out the room in distress as you watched your customers quickly flee out the front door.

You couldn’t believe this..your entire staff had contracted food poisioning.

You look between Luffy and the dying woman and then back at Sanji as your stomach churned even more.

Uhg.

“Fine, but my little sister will be your sous chef, she’s basically the mini version of me so listen to her directly got it?” You say approaching the blonde man who’s flirtatious smile made its way back onto his face.

“Anything you say Madam-’ ”And please stop with the Madam, Call me Chef, Y/N.”

“Chef Y/n, beautiful name, fits a beautiful woman.” He says.

Your stomach churns again as you quickly grab your little sisters chef hat and proceed to heavily vomit directly into it.

“Wow Sanji, your flirting literally made her vomit.” A man says placing a pitiful hand on his shoulder.

“Shut it Usopp!” Sanji hisses. “I’m going to have my friends help me considering your now understaffed, is that okay?” He asks looking at your concerningly handing you a handkerchief from his suits pocket.

“Fine, but don’t let that one” You say pointing to luffy. “Anywhere near the food.” You say getting a strange vibe from the straw hat boy just from the way he was eyeing your customers abandoned plates of food they had left.

“Trust me, I wasn’t.” He admits.

“Fine its a deal.” You say reaching out your clammy shaky hand that he immediately picks up and kisses.

Your face contorts into disgust as you take your hand back, just who did you let in your kitchen??

Hey guys wanted to do a little Sanji One shot I think this will be a two parter but I thought it would be so cool if Sanji met another incredibly talented chef who just so happened to be a woman right before we meet Chopper at the Drum Kingdom arc!!

#sanji vinsmoke #sanji #opla sanji x reader #sanji x y/n #one piece sanji #one piece #monkey d. luffy #one piece nami

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asterias-record-shop · 11 months

Note

BINGOO! Can you please write a Miguel O’Hara sugar daddy story with prompt 15? I’m not creative enough to write a description for this but could you add a mention of the age gap? Miguel is Like 30 or something. Reader is young and wants money ofc. They met online and are meeting up irl. Thank youu

—𓆩[mi menté, cuerpo, corazón, y alma]𓆪—

I am so sorry anón honey, I got completely carried away!! I hope you enjoy it though!

𓆩[main masterlist]𓆪 𓆩[request/ask me something!]𓆪 𓆩[updated bingo card!]𓆪 𓆩[bingo masterlist]𓆪 𓆩[join the bingo taglist!]𓆪

𓆩♡𓆪 CHARACTER - Modern AU! CEO! Sugar Daddy! Soft! Miguel O'Hara x Sugar Baby! Fem! Reader

𓆩♡𓆪 TYPE - fluff, smut, angst

𓆩♡𓆪 WORD COUNT - 3.1K

𓆩♡𓆪 SUMMARY - You loved being a sugar baby. Truly, you did. The only con was the fact that you had to get with someone who was literally a hair away from dying, so when Miguel found you, it was truly a saving grace. After a while, he made you cut off all of your other sugar daddies, easily matching what they give you and more. Things have gotten weird lately, though… and you’re not sure how to take it, even when he says everything is ‘strictly pleasure’.

𓆩♡𓆪 STORY WARNINGS - cursing and foul language || obsessive behavior || sugar daddy & sugar baby relationship || possessive! Miguel || his wife and daughter do not exist anymore 🤍 like at all || Latina coded reader || featuring Jessica Drew as another CEO because we love her (spider-verse variant) || sugar daddy & sugar baby relationship turned real relationship || i speak rancho spanish so i write rancho spanish, it ain’t google translate so it might not make sense- || miguel is lowkey an asshole so he is an asshole now || fighting || you make him fix himself || i’m ngl, i don’t know what the hell i did but i had fun and there’s smut so enjoy || this is so much more kinky than it initially was going to be- || kinda OOC Miguel || sub turned dom! reader || sub! Miguel || sounding || cbt || slight oral || praise & degradation || riding || non-protected sex || cumming inside || ending is supposed to be humorous I’m not weird ||

Finding a sugar daddy that wasn’t quadruple your age was hard. Very, very hard. What was wrong with men? Couldn’t they just become billionaires at twenty-five?

Bastards.

Oh, but then Miguel O’Hara came along. A man in his early thirties that absolutely towered over you at 6’9”, built like a fucking god with looks to match and wealth to pair.

In the beginning, though, you had your doubts, so many doubts. You didn’t know what made him drawn to you in the first place, mainly because you had over five sugar daddies and he easily matched the prices immediately and made you get rid of them. He easily matched all your prices, doing even more before purchasing a test to make sure you were ‘healthy’.

After that, everything else happened extremely quickly - him buying you a car, jewelry and clothes, but the most recent was having you move in with him in his extremely large mansion. The first thing you noticed was that he had nothing in his home that gave it personality. No pictures, just crazy expensive art and photographs of things that were also crazy expensive.

He didn’t even have plants. Or a dog. Or a cat, something to give him some sort of personality besides that stupidly hot face. And stupidly hot money, but that’s why he was at work while you were at a shelter, promising yourself that you’d take some sort of pet home. You had settled on a kitten, a tuxedo kitten with a little bow tie and a mustache, along with small little mittens on his paws.

He immediately curled in your lap, a giggle falling from your lips as you stroked the back of his head. “I’ll take this one… I’m gonna name him Hart.”

And with that, you took him home. You bought him his own bed and all of the toys he could ever want or need, and you sat in the closet you had made his room as you wagged the cat toy in front of him, Jessica on the phone.

“Y/N, I really think you’re going to kill him bringing that cat into his house!” She laughed, snacking on her latest craving.

“Oh, he won’t! You’re being overdramatic, he’s gonna love Hart,” you wiggle the stick some more, the kitten swatting at it as you heard Miguel’s loud voice yell out for you. “Oh! He’s here, I’ll call you later Jess! Love you!”

“Don’t get killed!”

You giggled as you hung up and quickly stood, running out and fixing your skirt. “Miguel!”

He was tired today, you could tell. His body was more tense than you had ever seen, the buttons at the top of his shirt undone and his tie loose with his blazer open. You paused, his clenched fists making you swallow slightly. You had your share of violent lovers, and you sure as hell weren’t going to have another.

“Hola, mi reina,” he whispered, voice hoarse as he set down his briefcase and his fists unclenched. He softly set his hand on your hip, kissing softly against your temple as he sighed. “I’m sorry, it’s been a tough day.”

You inhaled as he softly pressed kisses down your temple around your eye, along the apple of your cheek. “Wh-What happened?”

He shook his head, his hands going from your hips to the pretty skin of your thighs that was exposed by the skirt. “Stupid idiots who don’t know how to fucking do their job.”

You hummed softly as you stroked the back of his head, twirling the locks of his hair with your fingers as you kissed his sharp jaw. You were already on your tiptoes, his hands supporting you as he ducked down. “I’m so sorry, Miguel,” you whispered as he let out a soft hum. “I uhm… I got something.”

“Ah si?” he responded, his hands slipping under your skirt to tease your pretty cunt. “Es esto, mi reina?”

“No,” you giggled, shaking your head. “Lemme show you.”

He smiled as you dragged him along, pulling him toward the closet you turned into the kitten’s room before turning around. “You can’t get mad.”

He started to cross his arms, raising a brow. “Why would I get mad?”

“You won’t be mad because you can’t. That’s my whole point,” you say, nodding firmly. “Okay?”

“You can’t say I can’t get mad and expect me not to get mad.”

“Oh, shut up!” You laughed, shaking your head as he hummed softly and leaned down. “Just… trust me.”

He hummed again as you opened the door, the loud mews of the kitten making his eyes widen. You felt your smile disappear as you inhaled, shaking your head as you turned around. “This is Hart! He’s a little spy,” you giggled, kissing the kitten’s small head. “H-He was named after-”

“I know who he’s named after, Y/N,” Miguel growled, glaring at the kitten in your hand. “Why is it in my house?”

“Our house,” you correct him, a scoff falling from his lips. “What?”

“My house,” he basically growled, stepping forward as you started to step back. “Just because I fuck you like a ragdoll and cum inside of you like a cumdump doesn’t mean that this is your house.”

You inhaled as you held the kitten closer to your chest, scoffing. “You’re a fucking bastard, Miguel O’Hara. This is strictly business as always, isn’t it? You fucking asshole.”

He scoffed as you went around him, shaking his head. “This is mine, Y/N! All of it!”

“It might be yours, Miguel, but you don’t want it! You keep this giant house full of nothing that you love, nothing that you care for! You don’t even have a damn plant here!” You yelled at him, inhaling as you sent him a glare. “You’re a self absorbed bastard, Miguel.”

“I have you here,” Miguel spoke, something that completely betrayed his previous words. “You’re… all I could ever need.”

“You don’t need me though. The only thing that you fucking need is a damn whore,” you shake your head, keeping Hart close to your chest. “I will get myself a lawyer to get myself out of this contract, and we’ll never have to see each other again.”

“Y/N, wait-”

“No! Fuck you!” You were already rushing to your room - which was sadly one you shared with Miguel - locking it before he could come in after you.

“Y/N, amor… mi amor, I’m sorry.”

“No you’re not!” You yelled, sighing. How could you ever think this would go any other way? “Just… go away!”

To be honest, you weren’t sure what made you think you could love him. Actually love him and have it reciprocated, but you didn’t want to leave. You had worked so hard in this relationship with Miguel, gaining his trust and what you thought was his love, for fucks sake you couldn’t lose it now. What he said just… got to you.

It wasn’t until you heard a soft knock that you unlocked the door, Miguel slowly stepping into the room. “What do you want?”

“I just… look at this,” he gave you the binder, swallowing. “If you uhm… look at it, it annuls our last contract… if you sign it, mi amor-”

“What, are you gonna try and bribe me?” I ask, softly scratching Hart’s ear before he gives you the binder.

“Perdóname, amor,” he whispers, slowly falling to his knees in front of you. You certainly weren’t expecting this. “Read it.”

“Summarize it for me.”

“It says that you own me,” he says, tilting his head. “Everything I own, you own. Everything I am is yours,” he takes your hand, softly kissing against your wrist. “I’m sorry… that it took me so long to see how important you are to me. Soy tuyo, mi mente, cuerpo, y alma.”

You swallow as you stare at the dotted line, looking down at him as he kisses your skin. “Tu cuerpo? Es mío?”

He groaned as your hand shapes his jaw, softly tugging on his hair as Hart jumped down, sauntering out of the room as though he knew what was about to happen. “Todo es tuyo, mi amor,” he whispers, groaning as you pull his hair so he’d stare up at you. “Todo lo que quieras, es tuyo. Nomás me digas y es tuyo. Todo, todo es tuyo.”

You hummed, sighing as you moved your hips to come off the bed slightly. “Show me. Show me that you belong to me and I’ll sign it.”

He hummed, sending you a smile as he started to kiss against your wrist. “Of course, mi reina.”

You smile slightly as he starts to tug off his shirt, carefully unbuttoning and kissing along your calf before slipping off your heels. “If this keeps going, Miguel, you need to know that I’m not putting up with your bullshit.”

“Ya se, mi reina,” he whispers, his tongue flattening up your thigh as he pulls down your skirt. “I’m aware.”

“I’m going to sign that shit in your cum.”

He laughed, nodding. “If that’s what you want to do, mi amor.”

You tilted your head down at him, raising a brow. “That raises no red flags?”

“No, they’re actually green.”

You hold back a laugh as he slowly stands up, already taking off his clothes before you put up a finger. “I’m in charge, right?”

“Yes,” he said, tilting his head slightly. “What would you like me to do, hm?”

“Get on the bed,” you say, standing and slipping off your clothes. “Why are you just standing there? Go.”

Miguel smirked slightly, but followed your orders, his bare body looking perfect against the bed. “Well, what do you want me to do next, mi amor?”

You hummed, staring for another few minutes. “Get hard. I’ll be back.”

You go into your closet, but after hearing Miguel’s moans, you knew he listened to what you said. It wasn’t until you went into your drawer filled with sex toys did you know what you wanted to do - oh, you were going to make him sob. You grabbed the small silver toy you had never had the chance to use on him, biting your lip as you finished taking off the rest of your clothes and fixing your bra and underwear.

It was normal to makeup with Miguel with sex, then talk about what happened and why it should never happen again before you fell asleep, resulting in Miguel waking you up with breakfast in bed and another lavish apology gift.

When you walked out, you smiled when you saw Miguel bucking his hips into his hand, his thick cock dribbling precum out of his bright red tip. “Look how pretty your cock is, baby… so, so pretty.”

He lets out a dry laugh, groaning. “Oh yeah? Que vas hacer?”

You giggled, slowly sliding between his legs and taking out the metal sounding rod. “Voy a jugar con lo que es mío.”

He lets out a choked moan as the cold tip of the rod dragged in a circle along the tip of his cock, already lubed up so you wouldn’t hurt him, a giggle escaping your lips as you slowly pushed it into his cock. He lets out a choked moan as you laugh, watching as it slowly disappears inside of his cock.

“Hijo de su pinche madre,” he cursed, groaning as he bucked his hips, stomach clenching as you watched his body slowly fall to your mercy. “Amor, please, please- I'll be good, I just need to fuck you.”

“Cállate,” you ordered, giggling as you pushed it inside until the ring was showing, your mouth latching onto his balls and sucking softly. “Come on, be a good boy and fuck it.”

He cursed as he starts to roll his hips, following the sounding rod as he groaned loudly. One of your hands rubs along his thighs, giggling as you stared up at his face all scrunched and desperate. He really did make a good sub.

“Come on, don’t stop now, Miguel, you’re doing so good,” you move away from his balls but continue to cup them, moving so that his fat cock was settled on his abdomen and you rubbed your now bare pussy against his shaft. “Come on baby, I know you want to cum. As soon as you cum, I’ll put your cock in me and I’ll let you fuck me.”

He groaned loudly, almost growl-like sounds falling from his lips as he forced his hips to go faster, fucking into the sounding rod as he rubbed against your wet cunt. You couldn’t hold back your own moans, the friction of his cock perfect against your cunt and he wasn’t even inside of you yet.

“Amor, please, please!” He was begging to cum, even if he didn’t quite know it yet, a groan falling from your lips as you continued to squeeze and rub his balls. He had never been this quick to cum, and you knew you’d have to try this again soon. “I’m close, chingao, I’m close.”

You let out a laugh as you watch the sounding rod start to be pushed out, pushing it back in as he whined. “Not yet, amor mío.”

“Por favor, mi vida, necesito- fuck!” He screamed out as you continued to hump against his length, pushing and pulling the rod in and out of his cock.

“Say it again. That you’re mine.”

“Fuck, I’m yours! Soy tuyo, mi mente, cuerpo, corazón, y alma, ¡chingada madre!” He yelled out as you finally let go of the sounding rod, watching it pop out of his cock and a perfect, pornographic cumshot follow. You moved your hand from his balls, lifting your hips as you continued to pump his shaft. You watched as the pearlescent liquid spurts onto his toned abdomen, smiling before cupping your hand in front of his tip and gathering his cum.

He panted, watching as you slowly smeared it along your cunt and placed the sounding rod onto the nightstand. “Next time we need to go bigger.”

“Whatever you say, amor,” he whispers, groaning as you pull his cock to push into your cunt, another loud groan falling from his lips. “Fuck, you feel so good.”

“I know,” you spoke, laughing slightly as you gasped. No matter how many times his cock was inside of you, you never got used to it. “Fuck, Miguel, It’s like you get bigger every time.”

“Maybe I do,” he smirked, offering that playful wording as you finally sat on his pelvis, groaning loudly. “Look at how perfect you look with my cock inside of you, mi reina. Fucking perfect.”

You whimpered, groaning as you started to roll your hips, his cock feeling as though it was deeper than it ever was. “N-No, no.”

He smirked, tilting his head. “No what, amor? Tell me.”

“Stop that,” you order, knowing damn well if he kept talking like that you’d soon be on your back begging for him to fuck you. That’s now how it was going to happen, not today. “I’m in charge. Not you.”

“I never said you weren’t, amor-”

You leaned forward, pressing your lips firmly to his as he held your hips, helping you rock onto his cock. “Stop talking.”

He laughs as his other hand pulled you in for another firm kiss, your hands searching for the contract before his hips slam up into you. You pulled away, gasping as he lets out a loud groan, cursing. “Thought you needed some help, mi amor.”

Your hands claw against his shoulders as he keeps your chest pressed to his, using his strength to easily thrust up into you. For fucks sake, he couldn’t even let you have this, but you weren’t complaining as he grunted underneath you and you felt his cock rub against every place you ever wanted him to be. He repeatedly thrusted into you at that perfect rate to hit that spot inside of you that just made your body go limp, stomach twisting and turning.

One of the pros of having a man who knew your body like the back of his hand was that you could always count on him making you cum.

You gasped as his cock finally thrusted against that perfect spot that easily made you come undone, mind blurring as you basically see stars right as your nails dig into his skin. Your cunt clenched and squeezed his cock as a result of your orgasm, a hissed groan falling from his lips as he thrusted a few more times and finally came inside of you.

Your eyes rolled back, the added feeling of his cum spurting inside of you, filling you up as your inner thighs started to register slight heat from the power of his thrusts. You panted as you started to sit up, Miguel letting out a slight laugh before you grabbed the sounding rod and the contract.

“Q-Qué estás haciendo?”

You looked up at him, giggling as you dipped the rod into his cum. “I said I was going to sign it with your cum.”

“Mierda, Y/N, don’t do that!”

“What?! You think I was joking?! I said it was a red flag!”

Thank all of you so much for supporting me!! Even though Bingo requests and Bingo itself is done, I have my next event already planned - please stay tuned!! Requests are closed but they will be open when I clear my inbox, and again, thank all of you so much!!

Bingo tag 𓆩[@ennycutie]𓆪 𓆩[@yoongiwife23]𓆪 𓆩[@urlocalbum12-blog]𓆪 𓆩[@theonetheonly-mee]𓆪

Regular taglist: 𓆩[@lem0ns77]𓆪 𓆩[@cecepop15]𓆪 𓆩[@memeorydotcom]𓆪 𓆩[@your-favorite-god]𓆪 𓆩[@xyzstar]𓆪 𓆩[@just-my-shit]𓆪 𓆩[@your-mom21]𓆪 𓆩[@c78r]𓆪 𓆩[@dizscreams]𓆪 𓆩[@copypastedaphne]𓆪 𓆩[@asrt5]𓆪 𓆩[@xoxomoonlightbabe]𓆪 𓆩[@ineedmentalhelp123]𓆪

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heartsofminds · 2 years

Text

Blooming (III)

“Scoot over then.”

(Y/N)’s eyes almost explode out of her skull. “You want me to what?”

“Jesus, chick. It was just a suggestion,” he chides, “Getting your panties all in a twist because I won’t sleep but then won’t let me sleep? Kinda counterintuitive, don’t you think?” or Rooster gets caught up from a hospital bracelet and she finally gets that kiss she wanted.

Warning: Contains curse words and mentions of an age gap.

A/N: Welcome back to part three of the Blooming series! I’m so incredibly excited to share this with you all. Thank you much for your continued support and patience. Stay tuned for more of the Blooming-verse as part four will be out soon! But for now, enjoy 10.8k words about the story of Rooster Bradshaw facing his relationship fears.

Blooming, Blooming II

(Y/N) considers herself to be a private person.

She’s an extremely private person, actually. But that’s only until someone wants to get information out of her and gives her that look. You know, the pointed one with the raised eyebrows and the slight smirk, the corners of their mouths serving as picks to the lock of all her inner thoughts.

She swore she could give Ella Enchanted a run for her money by how quickly she would fess up if simply asked for the truth.

(Y/N) partly blames herself but mostly blames her parents. Growing up in a military household with a greatly admired and high-ranked father meant that honesty and excellence were never not expected from her. And after the dissolution of her parents’ marriage, growing up with her helicopter mother who didn’t believe in keeping secrets put a nail in the coffin for her sub rosa thoughts and actions.

Her high school friends joked around with her saying that they could never sneak out or drink or do anything outside of the agenda she had told her mother before leaving the house because the minute that someone with authority asked her for the truth, (Y/N)’s mouth was running a mile a minute with the hurried apologies following suit after. She simply couldn’t help it, and her upbringing paired with her innate desire to always do good and always do what was expected of her cemented her truth telling tendencies even farther.

And so when she comes home in a stormy mood after being out past three AM and slams Penny’s guest bedroom door shut (waking Amelia up in the process who had school in the morning), her god sister knew something was up and was determined to get to the bottom of it.

Amelia is mischievous and so fucking precocious. She had been raised around adults all her life so how could she not be?

She didn’t know what the kids table at Thanksgiving looked like or what watching cartoons on a Saturday morning felt like. Hell, (Y/N) doesn’t think Amelia has ever played with a goddamn Barbie doll ever in her life, let alone relished in the thrill of going to a Build-a-Bear Workshop.

She, much like her twenty-one year old god sister, liked the more “classic” things in life. They liked Raisin Bran and sudoku puzzles. They liked older 80s movies in comparison to their more modern remakes. They liked playing Scrabble and checkers.

And while (Y/N)’s “refined” taste (which, the more she thought about it, really happened to emulate all that of an eighty year old man who resided in a nursing home) came from her own father and didn’t make an evident appearance until she was an older teenager, Amelia had always been this way.

Because of that, Amelia was a bit of an odd ball to her peers but (Y/N) loved it. Her parents had split when she was eight and because of her father’s age and her mother’s anxiety towards parenting, they never dared having another kid after (Y/N). So when her Aunt Penny announced that she was having a baby,(Y/N) was more than ecstatic.

She still remembers damn near exploding from joy when she found out Amelia was going to be a girl.

Amelia was the closest thing (Y/N) has to a sibling and despite the seven year age gap, they’re so extremely close. It’s unusual; to have someone so much younger than you somehow be on the same page all the time but with (Y/N) and Amelia, there are no questions or genuine thinking required to read each other’s minds.

They just knew how to.

And despite how much (Y/N) adores Amelia or how much Amelia looks up to (Y/N), they irritate each other like no other. Getting under each other’s skin is each of their favorite pastimes and in true sister fashion, they go from ruthless screaming matches to braiding each other’s hair while sharing funny stories about their day.

When the fighting gets really bad, (Y/N) usually drives to the closest Dunkin Donuts and buys Amelia her usual; wordlessly leaving it outside of her bedroom door. Amelia usually slips a note under (Y/N)’s door with a “One free ‘Yell at me’ coupon,” which makes (Y/N) laugh and embrace her in a huge hug stating, “I only yell with love,” which makes both of them bust out laughing at how ridiculous they both are.

Even though Amelia is rather mature for a fourteen year old and her and (Y/N) basically share the same brain cells (even though they both joke about letting the other have ownership over them the day of a huge exam), she’s still a kid. And boy, does Amelia do all the shit that kid sisters tend to do.

She doesn’t mean to be, but Amelia is fucking nosy. She’s always hated being out of the loop. In her humble opinion (which, okay she does admit that she’s only fourteen and that her credentials in the age category aren’t looking too hot), being the last to know is the deadliest punch in the gut. Being blindsided is the absolute worst, and if she can do anything to prevent it, she will.

So as she lies in bed at three fifteen in the morning because (Y/N) came home pissed and slammed her door shut, Amelia knew something was up. (Y/N) had big emotions, but not big actions. Someone or something must have had to really piss her off for her to act that way and because she’s so goddamn private, Amelia knows that she won’t spill unless she absolutely has to and she won’t unless she’s made to sweat.

And that’s what Amelia plans to do.

The younger girl is spitting her toothpaste in the sink of the bathroom that stands between her bedroom and the guest bedroom when she notices that (Y/N)’s sour mood carries over to that morning.

The door is closed and there’s no sign of life other than the faint sound of ocean waves in the background that (Y/N) has to put on in order to calm her mind to be able to sleep. It’s a quarter till eight, and (Y/N) being in bed still is extremely odd.

Amelia knows that (Y/N) is usually up and awake by now; having done her morning run or sunrise yoga or whatever the hell she usually does before Amelia gets ready to leave for school. She’s usually sitting on the porch with her mom by now, those ceramic mugs that have some cringey ass quip printed on them and sipping raspberry tea while they gab about life and college and boys.

But she isn’t, and Amelia almost convinces herself it’s a good idea to knock and see if her god sister is awake before she chickens out. Her thoughts are interrupted by (Y/N) swinging the door open harshly.

Her hair is thrown up messily and the dark circles under her eyes say that the ocean wave white noise she had on did little to assist her into slumber. The collar of the gray USD Law sweatshirt she has on sat crooked on her shoulder and her sleeping shorts are twisted. Another noticeable sign that it was a more than rough night is shown through the one sock on (Y/N)’s foot and the other being bare.

She rubs at her face with her sweatshirt sleeve and shoots daggers at Amelia with her eyes; as if she was saying “I dare you to fucking speak to me right now” to her god sister. (Y/N) brushes by without as much of a wave or a “Good morning.”

So yeah, she’s fucking pissed and cranky.

And Amelia is clever but sometimes her curiosity goes against her own best interest. Was it smart to follow (Y/N) to the kitchen when she had just woken up on the wrong side of the bed? Absolutely not, but Amelia always claimed that smart was something that she is occasionally, and not something that she is all the time.

Also, she just had to get to the bottom of this.

The honey-blonde teenager holds her breath as she waltzes into the kitchen, finding (Y/N) aggressively shaking the bag of Special K cereal into a ceramic bowl. Amelia goes to the fridge and gets out the almond milk. She shakes it and puts it next to (Y/N) who mumbles out a weak, “Thanks.” before filling her bowl and stabbing at her cereal with her spoon.

Amelia leans on the counter, eyes lasered in on the back of the older girl’s head. She was gonna get her to talk and the only way to do so is to corner her. But right now her god sister’s rage emulates that of a rabid raccoon and she’s animal control with no equipment.

She knows she’ll get her head bit off, but the void she has in her life that’s absent of her own drama desperately needs to be filled and she’ll be damned before she’s left out of anything going on with the people living in her own house.

“Are you gonna fucking speak, Meals? Or are you just gonna stare laser beams in the back of my fucking skull like a dumbass?” (Y/N) grumbles and she knows that what she said is mean and uncalled for, but she’s just really not in the mood for her kid sister’s shenanigans today.

Bradley Bradshaw really pissed her off last night and the feelings she feels are burning her up from the inside out. (Y/N)’s hurt, embarrassed, even because who the fuck does that? Who flirts and flirts and flirts and then unloads all their childhood stories before almost kissing her goodnight and then dipping out because she’s “too young”?

“Too young” her ass. She’s a woman, for Christ’s sake. A smart, likable, kind (okay, well maybe not right now with how she just answered Amelia, but usually she is) young woman who is going to law school and is a college graduate.

She’s not too young. Amelia is too young; especially to be butting her nose into (Y/N)’s business the way she is.

(Y/N) knows that Amelia is just dying to ask her what’s wrong; hopeful to get a taste of whatever drama is brewing in the older girl’s life. She can see it now - the slightly upturned eyebrows and the small open mouthed gasp that Amelia does when she’e intently listening. She also folds her hands together in front of her and hangs on to every word that’s being said because Amelia ponders long and hard over what she hears and psychoanalyzes everything about it.

(Y/N) would say that she hates that about Amelia but can never find herself to because she knows that she’s the same exact way. Her god sister’s nosy tendencies are simply learned behavior.

So as she stabs at her cereal and almost grinds her teeth as she chews because of how angry she is, she tries to find it within herself to withhold taking out her anger on Amelia. She almost throws her a bone and lets her in on what had happened, but realized that she’d have to omit so many details that Amelia would never be satisfied and would keep picking and picking and picking until she finally broke and (Y/N)’s just not ready for that. She’s not letting her fourteen year old god sister know how embarrassed she is. She’s not letting her know how little sleep she got over the entire situation or how irritated and disrespected she feels.

“Wow. Aren’t you a goddamn ray of sunshine this morning,” Amelia snarls back, already having enough of (Y/N)’s piss poor attitude. (Y/N) may be pissed, but she’s not the one who got woken up at three in the morning because of some hissy fitted rage party. .

(Y/N) drops the cereal off of her spoon back into the abyss of milk. She sets her utensil down before turning her head to the side, adjusting her vision so she can see Amelia a little bit better.

“Language. You know how your mom and I feel about you cussing,” is all she can manage to say and seriously, when did Amelia get so sassy?

Amelia rolls her eyes. She may be younger than (Y/N), but she’s certainly not a child. She’s always been told she’s mature for her age, so why is her god sister acting like the seven year age gap is a big deal now? And besides, she already has a mom and a dad.

She doesn’t need (Y/N) trying to fill in for what’s missing.

“So it’s okay for you to say an entire dictionary of cuss words but the second I say some “is it or not” cuss word you’re lecturing me?”

(Y/N) rolls her eyes. She’s totally, absolutely, positively not in the mood today. “If you’re trying to be nosy and play Nancy Drew or whatever you’re doing, please don’t try it,” she snaps, “M’not putting up with your bullshit today, Meals. Go find something else to do.”

Amelia raises her eyebrows. “Seriously?” she quips, “You wanna be like that with me when I’m not the one who pissed you off?”

(Y/N) groans because great; not only is she pissed, but now her appetite is ruined. “You’re pissing me off right now because you won’t butt out. Leave me the fuck alone.” She slides the stool away from the bar top counter and puts her bowl in the sink.

She’ll just come back and clean it later. She just seriously needs to get away from Amelia right now because she’ll explode if she’s around her pestering god sister for any longer.

“And you’re pissing me off because someone obviously peed in your Cheerios and you’re making it everyone else’s problem.”

(Y/N) rolls her eyes again and starts to stalk back up the stairs. She knows that she’s being childish and she can’t believe that she’s about to argue with a fucking middle schooler, but she’s standing her ground. The last thing she needs is Amelia teasing her relentlessly about Bradley Bradshaw and how he basically curved the fuck out of her the night prior.

Amelia follows her. (Y/N)’s not getting away from her without any answers just yet; especially taking into account that she really just wants to know what’s wrong with (Y/N) and how she can help. She may be nosy, but she also has a conscience.

“Can’t you just leave me alone?” (Y/N) damn near growls. God, why did Amelia have to be so damn stubborn? “I’m obviously mad and you’re not making my day any better!”

“Can’t you just not get all pissy and aggravated and slam doors at fucking-” (Y/N) shoots her a death glare before Amelia corrects herself.

The cussing, right.

“Freaking. I meant freaking. You can’t just be all mad and slam doors at freaking three AM when I have school and you know I was asleep,” Amelia continues, “That’s just crappy, (Y/N), and I would never do that to you.”

(Y/N) stands at the top of the stairs and angrily huffs. Amelia has a point and a pretty fair one at that but she’d rather die than back down now. That’s (Y/N)’s problem in a nutshell; she’s too goddamn hardheaded but also strives on being a people pleaser and if you asked her (or anyone on the street, really) that would be considered a combination for disaster.

“And I would never put my nose in business that’s clearly yours. Fuck off, Meals.”

(Y/N) stomps back to her bedroom and slams the door even harder than she had the night previously. She’s so enraged and she feels so stupid. She’s never been this embarrassed over a boy since she was a freshman in high school and she knows she’s being childish and she knows that what she said to Amelia isn’t fair or kind in the slightest, but she can’t help but fall back into that “being mad at the world” teenage narrative she had thought she left behind.

Hell, she’s only not been a teenager for two years but the amount of growth that she’s done since then has just drastically taken a decline. She feels like she’s sixteen again and fighting with her mother about a stupid boy who convinced her to sneak out or break her curfew or lie about where she was going or whatever melodramatic teenage drama bullshit that seems like a big deal at the time but ceases to pose a real threat the minute you move out of your parents’ home.

Amelia groans in frustration before turning on her heel. She’s not sure if her irritation is because of her lack of sleep or because (Y/N) is being, for lack of better term, a total bitch right now. The teenager slings her backpack over her shoulder, and stomps obnoxiously to her front door.

(Y/N) lays on her stomach and puts back on the ocean wave sounds she had turned on late last night and her stomach drops when she realizes that that was the background noise to the memory that had Bradley Bradshaw cupping her face and telling her that she’s too young.

ii.

Jake Seresin had really done it this time.

It wasn’t a secret that him and Bradley weren’t the greatest of friends.

Well, actually, scratch that.

Rooster and Hangman weren’t friends at all and that fact was made so obviously apparent to anyone who found themselves in the same room with the two pilots for longer than fifteen seconds.

The constant banter and low blows, the “joking” that wasn’t really a joke, the more than aggressively sarcastic handshakes and back pats; it was a limbo contest of who could go the lowest without one of them jumping up and trying to beat the brakes off the other.

It’s stupid, they know, but what else is expected when you’ve been told you were great all your life? Competition obviously rises and “survival of the fittest” starts to kick in and the sooner you can push someone out, the sooner you can be pushed into the vacancy that person had left.

Jake is charismatic and can get anyone to do his bidding if he so much as put his hand on their shoulder and stared deep into their eyes. He has a talent for getting anyone to follow him, but he’s selfish and extremely reckless. Jumping off the bridge is certainly his idea until his loyal followers do so, and then he bails after realizing how stupid the idea was in the first place. He’s a leader who never asks for a crowd, and that’s evident once he leaves them hanging.

Hence, the call sign, Hangman, but that doesn’t take a genius to decipher.

And call Bradley old school but that’s definitely not how military men should be and it drives him absolutely insane.

Bradley is more calm and is the literal epitome of a dad, but a good one. He listens intently and gives everyone his full attention. He’s stubborn but adaptable. He takes his time and plays it safe always, even when he knows that he should take a risk every now and then. He’s always looking out for other people and is constantly sacrificing his happiness and successes for the well-being of others.

Bradley is a skilled pilot; the patience and meticulous practice made him so whereas Jake was good because he was a natural (by some freakish fluke of nature). The difference between the two is their confidence and Bradley can’t wrap his head around how Jake gets a thrill from putting himself and his team in constant danger, and Jake can’t understand why Bradley acts as if he’ll spontaneously combust every time his F-18 goes up in the air.

Bradley has a tendency to parent everyone else and he never means to, and it always just sort of happens, but being told what to do (which makes joining the Navy an odd career path for him) is one of Jake’s biggest pet peeves. It’s just annoying, Hangman thinks, how Rooster corrals everyone and is constantly playing dad.

Jake already has a father; he doesn’t need a guy who’s only four years older than him trying to parent him.

Their rivalry started as just friction. They have vastly different personalities and it’s not like any of that isn’t okay. It wasn’t like either of them had to be best friends after graduation. But then Jake realized that “Holy fuck,” Rooster was good and then Rooster realized that “Holy shit,” Jake was good.

And the innate, primal need to succeed, to prove who was better and who would come out on top, just started one day and it never stopped. It was a conscious effort at first, but then it spiraled into a muscle memory-like performance.

They competed over everything. They competed over who could get their flight gear on the fastest. They competed on who could lift heavier and for longer durations of time. They even fucking competed to see who could complete a crossword puzzle fastest.

Jake and Bradley know that they’re ridiculous and that the dick measuring contests that they always seemed to be having were quite childish for grown men. They shouldn’t be fighting like rowdy first graders at recess after eating a lunch packed full of sugar, but they can’t help it and they would rather die than lose and let the other having bragging rights.

But then somewhere along the road the competition changed into an uncontrollable beast; a means to be watching each other constantly to see what could make the other tick and thus a new game was created: Who could make who lose their composure first?

To be totally fair, Bradley started the war by moving Jake’s things one day after a training session. He hadn’t meant to move the items in a way that would’ve set the pilot off, but he did and then Jake came barreling in and freaking the fuck out because his water bottle and shirt were placed in a different stall than he had originally put them. The thought to fess up and apologize definitely crossed Bradley’s mind, but he withheld.

He liked seeing Jake frantic and upset. He liked knowing that he could toy with him and that he could make the blond sweat if he truly wanted. Bradley was raised better than that, he had known, and he’s sure his mother and father were looking down on him with some disappointment about being so mean, but fuck it.

Jake Seresin was like a canker sore when you’re eating salt and vinegar chips; annoying and downright painful to be around.

Over the years and time spent freakishly observing each other, they had learned quite a bit. Bradley hated the sound of teeth scraping against utensils and Jake made sure to find a seat near Bradley but never next to him, and would bite the hell out of his fork whenever he ate his dinner. Jake loathed the sound of styrofoam rubbing together, so whenever Bradley would get handed a styrofoam to go box, he always made sure to be around Jake before opening and closing the box repeatedly. Jake knew he was doing it on purpose but couldn’t help but wonder how the hell someone could find the willpower to open and shut a fucking takeaway box over and over and over again.

And yes it was annoying and yes it garnered many eye rolls from their friends, but it was entertaining and always kept the pair busy. If anything, it was like a big brother, little brother relationship; irritating the hell out of each other but never going too far.

Except this wasn’t a big brother, little brother relationship and that they were both, in fact, fighting to be the big brother because big brothers always have more respect.

And they usually never went too far until one day, Jake just did.

He was raised by a more than conservative Baptist pastor in Texas, and Jake knew that his parents would have a cow if they ever pieced together that he was having premarital sex; let alone, premarital sex that was with someone else’s girlfriend. He was raised better and he knew it, but he was also raised in a family full of sisters and if there’s one thing he learned from having five older ones, everything was an eye-for-an-eye.

So when Bradley off-handedly joked about fucking Jake’s ex-girlfriend one day, he couldn’t help but let the comment grind his gears until his gears started turning on the perfect way to get back at the brunette pilot.

While what Bradley said was a joke and was exactly just that, Jake was plotting, and he wasn’t joking in the slightest. So the true hatred and resentment started when a leggy red-head (That amazed Jake with how flexible she was because goddamn, girls can bend like that?) was scratching at his back and calling him “daddy” in a supply closet, and he can truly say that that exact moment was when he knew that there were no limits to the competition he and Bradley Bradshaw had.

“An eye for an eye” it was, and “an eye for an eye” it would always be.

So when he notices the tension between Captain Mitchell and Rooster, Hangman can’t help but find him studying the two. He notices the golfball like bulge that emerges from Rooster’s jaw whenever he has to speak to Maverick. He notices how Maverick’s eyes nervously dart across Rooster’s face; as if he’s searching for answers in the younger man’s features without having to ask him questions.

Jake is always looking and always scheming; even going as far to ask Phoenix if she thinks Bradley is acting weird to which she rolls her eyes and says, “If this is you trying to get under his skin, please leave me out of it. Had enough of you two dumbasses in flight school. I don’t need this shit now.” And then she slammed her locker shut before slinging her duffle bag over her shoulder and leaving the base for the day.

But little to her knowledge did she know that her answer gave Jake all the information he needed. Phoenix had a protective streak to her, but she never stuck up for someone unless she felt they couldn’t do it themselves. So with the aggravated body language coming from Rooster and Maverick’s interactions in the past two days they had been training and Natasha’s head biting whenever he asked her a simple question, Jake Seresin had an sparkle in his eye and his smirk saying that he was up to no good.

He snoops around the headquarters for more evidence to further solidify his suspicion and what he finds truly falls upon him like a lucky accident.

It manifests itself as a labeled picture on the wall with Maverick Mitchell and Goose Bradshaw, arms slung across the back of each other’s necks along with Admiral Kazansky and various other pilots whom he’d encountered from his time floating from base to base; the Top Gun class of 1986.

And holy fucking shit, did Seresin have some ammunition for Bradshaw.

He likes to play dumb; like all he happens to be is a pretty face with a hot body but no one is that dense to not give Hangman credit for being intelligent. So he waits to unleash his findings until he knows Rooster is at one of his most vulnerable moments.

He waits and waits and waits and then he strikes, which sends the entire fleet of pilots into a fit of gasps and has Bradley beet red and ready to wring his neck.

Jake Seresin wasn’t afraid of many things, but the absolute anger and rage encapsulated in Bradley Bradshaw’s face was a look he had never seen before; even when he had been caught fucking that red head all those moons ago. This was different and he swears Bradley’s eyes are completely black with fury and his body emitting so much heat that Jake feels like he’s on fire himself the minute the other pilot has him by his collar.

The knife was already plunged and it was too late to back out now; no matter how truly terrified he was of Bradley in that moment. He knows he should quit, but a job half done isn’t a job well done.

And in true asshole-ish Hangman fashion, he has to be calm and collected and to twist the knife even more he adds a, “You know he’s not cut out for this mission,” which makes Bradley completely seethe and molt into one with his anger.

Jake softly grins to himself as soon as the altercation is broken up and Maverick announces that they’re done for the day. He knows that he won and Bradley lost.

Bradley can feel it too and he’s so inexplicably pissed, but nothing makes him feel more angered than the deceased father he never had the pleasure of getting to know and the stand-in, who let him down and let an entire fifteen years pass with Bradley thinking he didn’t believe in him.

iii.

(Y/N) likes to tell herself that she doesn’t hold grudges; that she’s understanding and empathetic and “noble.”

Her entire life was wrapped up in achieving the nirvana of selflessness and she doesn’t know if it’s because she was raised by such charitable and giving people or if she was born with some freakish gene that always made herself put her well-being last no matter what.

She was the kindergartener who would cry in solidarity whenever a kid scraped their knee on the playground. She was the third-grader who donated all her birthday presents to kids whose families were in need. She was the middle schooler who still invited everyone in the class to her birthday parties (even if they were weird or cruel or just downright annoying, but she could never find herself rejecting anyone). She was the high schooler who offered everyone rides home after soccer practice despite her mother yelling at her for “wasting” her gas.

She was the girl who was always said to be kind and helpful with a sweet heart and bright eyes.

But here she is on a Tuesday night at 11 PM about to crush a shot glass in her bare hand because of some stupid comment some pilot said about her age. If she could punch Bradley Bradshaw square in the face and break his stupid aviator sunglasses (and maybe his nose too, but then she figures that that’s too much harm to wish on someone), she would with no hesitation.

The main problem she’s finding with directing her anger is that Bradley wasn’t rude about it. What he said about her being too young wasn’t some idiotic flirtatious remark that came off creepy. It wasn’t an insult. It wasn’t even a true comment, and from the way he said it, it almost seemed like it was a thought he had had that was never supposed to grace her ears; as if he was thinking hard and his thoughts were too loud for his liking.

There are better things to be upset about and she knows this, but she still can’t help but feel the hot anger in her chest. It’s the same kind of anger that flourishes when you’re just on the cusp of getting what you want and it’s pulled away from you; taunting you as the picture of it grows blurrier and blurrier and you’re left screaming because you’re so damn frustrated; because you were so fucking close.

And yeah, (Y/N) does admit she’s being dramatic, but she can’t remember ever wanting someone’s attention so badly before. The last boy who she found enticing cheated on her after two and a half years together, and that was during the summer of her Junior year of college. Nevertheless, the disrespect still hurts her feelings if she thinks about it too hard and the lack of sex she’s had since then was almost insulting.

So sue her if she was hoping Bradley could provide her with a few orgasms and some cuddles. He also wasn’t a bad storyteller and despite her anger, she wasn’t blind. He was hot as hell, too.

But she just can’t get over the way he held her cheek that night. The way that his hazel eyes found her’s; searching for a reason to say what he said. She can still feel the gentle squeeze of his palm on her face. Her ex-boyfriend had tried to make that their “thing” when they had first started dating and it always made her uncomfortable.

He was too rough, too unthoughtful, and ultimately too unfaithful. She thinks her feeling borderline disgusted by her ex cupping her cheek was a foreshadowing of him cheating on her. It was ironic how he was holding her face with that same hand and then smushing the face of another girl into a pillow soon after.

But Bradley was different.

His actions were slow and thoughtful. He was gentle, almost like a child holding his mother’s good China and not wanting to drop it. Bradley was cautious and sweet and that was something that (Y/N) had never truly experienced with a man; no matter how interested or in love with her she thought he was.

She was dying for him to kiss her and dead she is because he didn’t.

“You’re too young.”

It echoes in her head and she finds her face growing hotter and her knuckles getting more white the harder she squeezed the shot glass she had in her hand. Her age and Bradley’s disdain for it rings in her ears as if it's a fact and it is one, which is the shittiest part about it all.

“You’re too young,” patronizes her mind as if she wasn’t successful and brilliant and mature.

“You’re too young,” taunts her and embarrasses her, as if she’s ten years old again and being banished to the kids’ table at Thanksgiving.

“You’re too young,” screams at her as if her lack of experience and lack of opening herself up to the world is the reasoning behind why things never seemed to ever work out for her.

And the pressure of the thoughts her mind is bogging her brain down with starts to shut off her oxygen. She can’t see the empty bar. She can’t feel the shot glass in her hand. She can’t even feel her heart beating.

Her knuckles are white from trying to hold on for some explanation, some reason, why she can’t seem to shake this statement and there’s no other thoughts floating around in her brain that allow her to dislodge it.

“Fuck you, Bradley Bradshaw,” she thinks.

And she squeezes her hands together so tight that she’s snapped out of her hateful thoughts when she feels a shooting pain in her left hand and oh fuck.

The scarlet flowing from her palm sends her into a panic and her face turns white.

Holy shit, there’s no way this is happening.

There’s no way this is happening at 11:15 PM on a Tuesday night while she’s closing at the Hard Deck with no one else around.

“Penny is gonna fucking skin me alive,” she thinks, the blood dripping down her baby blue tube top-covered torso the closer she pushes her wound to her chest. The fabric is stained purple from how quickly her blood is absorbing into it.

Napkins, she needs napkins.

And she frantically scans the bar for a table that has a dispenser on it, knowing that Penny doesn’t keep any at the bar top. Her eyes look around almost comically before landing on the man of the goddamn hour: Bradley fuckface Bradshaw who has his eyes wide and his mouth gaped open.

“Holy shit! What did you do?”

iv.

Bradley knows he should stop coming to the Hard Deck when they close, but he needs to see Penny.

He figures showing up unannounced at her house isn’t the best way to go; especially considering he hadn’t been there in close to fifteen years. It doesn’t matter if he sends her a Mother’s Day card each year or knows that she would never turn him away. Something about it doesn’t sit right with his soul.

He tends to not do a lot of things if it doesn’t settle right in his stomach.

He’s usually calm. He’s usually collected. He usually has it all together but ever since he received orders to come back to Miramar, he’s been losing it. The bags underneath his eyes are prominent and he’s been averaging a total of four hours and twenty-two minutes of sleep each night (per the Sleep Cycle app on his phone which he knows isn’t very accurate but he can certainly feel the exhaustion so he’ll let it slide).

Bradley was really set off today with Jake and Maverick and the lack of sleep he’s been experiencing. He needed guidance. Truthfully, he needed his mother and he would have rather died than admit that when she was still alive and he was a prideful eighteen-year-old, but here he is now at thirty-five with an ache in his chest and a hole he’s not quite figured out how to fill.

Penny Benjamin, his old babysitter, is the closest thing he had to a mother now and he just has to find her.

So Bradley barrels into the Hard Deck and slams the door open on his quest to find Penny and figure out why the fuck he’s feeling this way.

The jukebox has been turned off and all the stools are stacked on the tables. The Hard Deck is a sorry excuse for a hangout spot at this hour and the smell of draft beer and scotch that usually soaked the atmosphere was gone; dried up like water spilled on the sidewalk on a hot day.

Bradley wrinkles his nose, using his curved pointer finger to roughly rub the end of it; a nervous tick he developed when he was a kid.

He doesn’t know why he feels so nervous to see Penny. She was comforting and sweet; the best kind of woman and someone who Bradley could say he trusted with his entire life. He used to say the same about his Uncle Maverick, but like they say, things change.

And things change indeed when he bursts through the doors and sees Penny nowhere in sight.

Well, fuck. (Y/N) is Penny’s replacement, he guesses.

The avalanche of actions tumbles down on him the minute he sees her; baby blue tube top sitting perfectly pretty on her body and her shoulders slightly shiny from either sweat or leftover tanning oil she may have put on earlier in the day. The sight makes Bradley’s mouth water with want and dry with embarrassment, simultaneously. His eyes drink in the sight of her face and his palms can feel the ghost of her cheek he held the night before.

(Y/N) has a frown on her face and is dissociating. The shot glass in her hand and the purple rag she has in the other serve as simple distractions for her hands. Bradley takes in how she doesn’t look up at him and how white her knuckles are - almost like she’s holding onto dear life to keep her from spazzing out.

And then it clicks that she’s probably angry with him and Bradley, despite his better judgment, decides that he needs to do some damage control.

He’s such a fuck up, he thinks, and he can’t afford to fuck someone else up in the process too.

“(Y/N)?” he asks softly, cautiously approaching the bar top; eyes swimming in her appearance to see if she was okay.

She doesn’t meet his gaze. She just stares ahead, her fingers gripping the glass in her hand so hard that her arms are shaking.

“Hey! Are you okay?” Bradley asks again, footsteps approaching her cautiously.

A small pop, a sound that could be made by someone stepping on some small fragments of glass with their boots on, can be heard and Bradley is just astonished. The crimson falling from her hand gives proof of what she had just done; her eyes widening comically and her face looking solemn like a child who had just been caught stealing cookies from the jar.

Her face is drained of color and Bradley figures it still hasn’t clicked that he’s in front of her. She clutches her hand to her chest and the fabric of her shirt is covered in blood. Bradley’s never done well with blood and other things like that; almost threw up all over himself whenever he would skin his knees when he was little.

But his instincts kick in and he lives up to his call sign: Rooster. He’s about to corral her and protect her the best he can. He has to.

“Holy shit! What did you do?” he yells, rushing towards her.

She looks at him wide-eyed and no words can rush out of her gaping mouth. She looks fearful and shocked. While he suspects her injury isn’t extremely drastic (okay well getting a shot glass crushed in your hand has to hurt like a bitch, he admits), she’s bleeding a lot and she’ll definitely need stitches.

“I-I don’t know. Fuck, my hand,” she pauses before turning to him again, “Fuck! Penny’s gonna kill me! I got blood all over the bar. Oh my God, she’s gonna skin me!”

Rooster shrugs off his Hawaiian shirt and pulls the white tank top underneath off by its straps. He needed to get her something to help her apply pressure and absorb the blood. He knows that the thin, poor excuses for napkins Penny has at the bar won’t do much to help, and asking her to take her tube top off to wrap around her hand would be a little too much.

She definitely can’t have on a bra with that top. He had been around enough girls in his life to know that for a fact and besides, it wasn’t like he was here to make her uncomfortable purposely.

“No she won’t,” he comforts. He has his shirt in one hand and folds it vertically to maximize the surface area.

“Here,” he directs, taking her arm gently and inspecting her wound, and God, did that glass cut fucking deep.

Two deep cuts carved their way into her left hand and the pools of crimson flowing from them tell Bradley all that he needs to know.

She indefinitely needs stitches.

Bradley wraps the tank top around her palm and instructs her to hold it tight. She presses her lips in a faint line and tries to calm herself.

One deep breath in, one deep breath out. One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, the-

“Where’s your purse? I’m taking you to the ER.”

She narrows her eyes at him. Now he wants to play hero, she thinks. If it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t be in this situation at all.

“I can drive myself,” she snaps.

He chuckles and shakes his head and she instantly feels patronized. It was the kind of laugh her babysitters used to do whenever she asked if ten was a grown-up age. Newsflash, it wasn’t and she came to know that pretty quickly, but not before she felt the fury and embarrassment of being chortled at; especially when she had done nothing amusing.

“Really? You want blood all over your car? And what’re you gonna do about using your turn signals,” he tries to reason, “You don’t have the fingers to do that, chick.”

And God, does she want to punch him in his stupid, handsome face.

“Fuck you,” she mumbles underneath her breath. No matter how upset she was, she couldn’t not agree that he had some valid points. Being a bitch got Amelia pissed at her earlier. The last thing she needs is to be left hanging with glass in her hand with no ride home because of her own childish emotions.

Thank God he didn’t hear her.

“Where’s your purse? I’m locking up and taking you to the hospital.” She opens her mouth to argue with him again, to insist that she can call an Uber or Penny, but Bradley shuts her down.

“Non-negotiable.”

She puts her head down like a scolded puppy and points to the back by the kitchen with her uninjured hand.

Rooster offers her a warm smile. “Good girl,” he says, patting her shoulder as he walks past her to grab the bag from the back.

He tosses the keys to his Bronco on the bar top. “If you want, you can start the car. Just promise not to drive off with it?” He offers her a weak smile.

(Y/N) puffs and exhales her annoyance. “Can’t promise I’ll be there still once you lock up.”

Bradley knows that she won’t take off. She can be snippy and has proven it to him time and time again with her quick remarks and her attitude toward him right now, but to her core, she’s a good person. She would never intentionally do something like that to anyone; no matter how pissed off they had made her.

As he hears the front door to the Hard Deck open and close with (Y/N)’s exit, he looks up at the clock. It reads 11:30 PM and fuck, waking up tomorrow is gonna be a pain in the ass, he knows. But he would rather have a late night with her than his own thoughts.

And yeah, Bradley Bradshaw thinks he can start to get used to the smart ass girl sitting in the passenger seat of his car right now.

“Are you planning on buttoning up your shirt anytime soon? I’m sick of the nurses coming by and gawking at you,” (Y/N) gripes, “Giving you all the attention when I’m the one with my hand damn near hanging off.”

Bradley scoffs. “You’re being dramatic. And besides, this is kind of your own fault. No one told you to turn into the Incredible Hulk and crush a shot glass with your bare hand.”

The emergency room is bustling with people; moms in labor, car accidents left and right, and people coming in screaming in pain. There’s no way her low “high” maintenance stitches would be taken care of any sooner than later. That was predetermined the minute they decided to drive instead of calling an ambulance.

It’s nearing 2 AM and (Y/N) is still clutching Rooster’s white (well, dark red now) tank top in her left hand and with a sulky frown on her face. Her ass hurts from the vinyl plastic that serves as an awful mattress that makes up an ER bed. She knows that Bradley is more than uncomfortable from the way he shifts constantly in the mossy blue chair next to her bedside.

She ignores his statement. What she had done was rather childish and she can’t come to grips with it herself, so what does she look like telling the person who caused her rage-induced tantrum?

“You’re sunburnt,” she states. That’ll have to do for now. Bradley already knows a lot about her. He doesn’t need to know everything.

“In a sexy Baywatch kinda way?” he jokingly asks and (Y/N) gives him a soft laugh.

“No. Your chest is pink,” she continues, “More of a Patrick Star kind of way.”

“You like it though.”

“We’re here to fix my hand. Not your self-confidence.”

Bradley laughs before starting to button his shirt up. “You’re a hoot, chick.”

(Y/N) raises her eyebrows. In the past two and some hours she’s spent with Bradley Bradshaw (and the various other times she’s been with him, but she’s not sure that those can actually count for something) she’s learned a lot about his mannerisms.

He’s always tapping his foot or rubbing his hands up and down his thighs when he’s sitting down. He uses old people's jargon. He leans on his right arm more than his left and he’s always checking his watch. When he gets tired he mumbles and then swipes his hand over his face before sitting up straighter.

A big yawn comes from his pink lips and (Y/N) knows that she should speak up. He has to be up at five AM tomorrow morning for training at six. He should at least be able to go home and get some sleep.

“Bradley?” she softly asks.

“Hmm?” he answers, slouching down in his seat a little bit more but instantly shooting up to sit straight.

(Y/N) chuckles softly and Bradley can’t deny that the sound makes his heart melt the smallest bit.

“You can go home if you need to. I’ll get stitched up and figure out a ride.”

Rooster sits up straighter; confusion plaguing his features. “Why would I leave you here?”

Her eyes widen. Holy shit, he wasn’t planning on leaving anytime soon.

“You have to be up early tomorrow. Just go home. I’m a big girl,” she flexes the small and albeit mushy muscles of her right arm, “I can handle it.”

“Are you kidding? A shot glass took you out. No way I’m leaving you at the hospital by yourself.”

And like how it was at the Hard Deck, the look he shoots her tells her that what he said is “non-negotiable.” He was staying, driving her home, and that was final.

“You need sleep, Bradley. You can’t just pull an all-nighter and then go and operate a plane. That’s just dangerous,” she lectures and Bradley lets out a yawn during her sentence.

She almost says some snide remark about him being rude and how she’s not that boring but Bradley beats her to fill the silence with his voice.

“Scoot over then.”

(Y/N)’s eyes almost explode out of her skull. “You want me to what?”

“Jesus, chick. It was just a suggestion,” he chides, “Getting your panties all in a twist because I won’t sleep but then won’t let me sleep? Kinda counterintuitive, don’t you think?”

She’s at a loss for words but he can’t have the final say. No one else could ever have the final say with her.

“Be my guest,” she says as she scoots over on the ER cot and makes enough space for him to lay down.

Rooster smirks to himself. He didn’t think that would work, let alone work on her. She doesn’t know it and he sure as hell will never tell her, but his heart was racing during that entire interaction. The rejection would have been rather embarrassing; especially considering they didn’t know how soon she could get stitched up and that he promised to drop her off at home.

He slides onto the bed next to her but he’s too broad. His shoulder is nudging her off the bed and he knows that she’s uncomfortable but is such a giver that she won’t say so and would let him fall asleep like that if he really wanted to.

But Bradley’s not an asshole (at least he isn’t one consciously) so he speaks up after he clears his throat.

“Yeah, this isn’t gonna work. Not at all,” he says and turns his head to the side to look at her. Her eyes tell him that “Well no dip, shit.” but he knows that she wouldn’t dare say it out loud. Not right now when she feels indebted to him for driving her to the hospital and staying with her while she waits.

He nudges her shoulder before sliding back out of the bed. Bradley reaches for her right hand. “Here, budge up.”

He pulls her up as if she weighs nothing and she stands in awe as he lays down first on the bed but spreads his legs. And oh, now she knows what he’s doing.

“Come lay down with me. You deserve to sleep some, too,” he says and she cautiously meanders her way to lay between his legs; her back pressed to his chest and her head falling into the crevice between his neck and shoulder.

“Won’t your arm fall asleep or something? I just don’t wanna be a bother.”

Bradley lets out a puff of air before wrapping both his arms around her front. His hands are joined together beneath her sternum.

“(Y/N)?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up and go to bed.”

She rolls her eyes but she can’t fight him on it. And as they lay there she can hear the soft snores of the older man laying behind her and allows herself to drift off to a comatose state as well.

vi.

The doctor comes in about an hour after they doze off.

She’s a short woman with dark hair and tan skin; some crow's feet by her eyes and the skin on her hands slightly thinned. She looked kind and motherly and as she pulls the curtain back softly, she finds the two dead to the world in their slumber.

Doctor Tharp has to stop herself from audibly cooing.

The position (Y/N) and Bradley are in makes her think of her and her husband years ago. Lovebirds, she thinks, and while she would rather sit there and stare at them in awe, she knows that she has to get this poor girl stitched up and sent on her way home as soon as she can.

She nearly had a cow when she had heard that they had been waiting to see a doctor for stitches since 11:30 the night before. How the hell they had slipped through the cracks? She doesn’t know, but she makes a mental note to be extra kind to them while she performs her services.

Doctor Tharp gently shakes (Y/N) awake; the younger girl stirring with a gasp and some anxiousness before a hand is placed on her shoulder.

“Good morning, (Y/N). Have a good rest?” the doctor asks and (Y/N) hopes that this is who is going to stitch her up and send her on her merry way.

“It was okay. Would’ve been better if bozo here wasn’t snoring in my ear the entire time,” she answers and that makes Doctor Tharp laugh softly.

“Let’s get you stitched up,” she says, and (Y/N) unwraps Bradley’s arms from around her midsection and scoots closer down the bed to be near the tray that holds the instruments needed for her stitches.

Doctor Tharp numbs the area with lidocaine and asks her to move her fingers and her thumb on her left hand and as she starts suturing the wound and picking out the shards of glass left in her skin, she finds things to talk about with the younger girl.

(Y/N) tells her the basics that she’s seemed to be telling everyone older than the age of twenty-one these days; that she just graduated from undergrad and that she was going to law school in the fall, that she’s not from here and visiting her godmother, that she loves California and doesn’t know why she left it.

And Doctor Tharp knows she shouldn’t and it goes against her own beliefs but she just has to know who the young man sitting behind (Y/N) is and wants to comment on how sweetly he was holding her just a few moments prior.

“You and that boy are such a sweet couple,” she says and (Y/N)’s eyes bulge out of her skull.

“Oh me and Bradley? No. No, no,” she starts and she knows that she’s rambling. She does it quite a bit when she gets nervous and doesn’t know what to say.

Her damn Ella Enchanted gene is kicking in.

“We’re just friends. Sorta just met a week and some change ago,” she answers and while what she said wasn’t a lie in the slightest (they were friends and they did just meet not that long ago) she can’t help but feel the ache in her heart that adds that she wants more than a friendship from him.

But she can’t risk sounding ridiculous or getting ahead of herself before the race even starts, so she leaves her statement at that; just a statement and not a wish.

“Well, you’re quite cute friends, then.” Doctor Tharp says. She can tell that what she had said had made (Y/N) uncomfortable.

Too far.

It takes (Y/N) all of ten minutes to get stitched up before Doctor Tharp pats her arm with a smile and tells her that she’ll have the papers for proper care at the front desk.

“You take care. Of yourself and your heart,” the older woman says and (Y/N) knows that she should find some wisdom in her words, but they almost sound like a sort of doomed prophecy.

Whatever, she thinks. She’s just excited to get home and to sleep in the comfort of her own bed.

“Bradley,” (Y/N) whispers, shaking his bicep to get him to stir. He’s like a lump on a log, soft snores coming from his mouth and his head thrown back. His arms have crossed themselves over each other and made a home on his chest to replace the space (Y/N) had taken up before she moved.

“Bradley!” (Y/N) shakes him again.

He still sits asleep; completely dead to the world.

(Y/N) twists his nipple through his shirt and bingo. He wakes up with a scream and shoots daggers at her with his glassy eyes.

“M’all stitched up. We can go now,” she says and they exit the stall and make their way to the front desk where the charge nurse goes over how to properly clean her stitches and that she’d need to be back at the hospital in a week to get them removed.

She gives the charge nurse a weak smile and her and Bradley walk back outside to his parked Bronco; the ocean breeze making the night sky chilly and (Y/N) shivers. He notices as he opens the passenger door to let her in.

He rounds his way to the front and locks the doors before sliding into his seat.

“Cold?” he questions and she gives him a slight nod.

He purses his lips before turning the key in the ignition and starting the car. His hand instantly finds the heat dial and turns it up and they pull out of the parking lot.

“Penny’s house. Right?” he breaks the silence again and (Y/N) nods, leaning her head on his window.

The fifteen-minute ride from the hospital to Penny’s driveway is quick; the stillness of the night comfortable and washing them in warmth.

His Bronco is parked in the driveway before (Y/N) turns to him again.

“Before I go, I have to ask one more favor,” she says and Bradley raises his eyebrows in amusement.

“Not gonna ask me to donate a kidney to you or something like that. Right?” he jokes and she playfully rolls her eyes at him.

“No, you dinky dink. I just need you to rip my hospital bracelet off. They put it on my right hand and I can’t use my left to cut it off.”

Bradley reaches over and takes her hand without hesitation and pulls at the plastic band wrapped around her wrist.

“Thank you,” she sheepishly praises, “Thank you for everything. I could never owe you enough.”

Rooster grins, all the anguish of the day forgotten with the dopey-eyed grin he gives her.

He doesn’t say anything. He just holds her palm in his hand; the action muscle memory and leans forward; their forehead resting against each others.

Her breath hitches in her throat because she swears to God if he doesn’t kiss her tonight she might rip out her stitches with her teeth and jump off of Penny’s goddamn roof.

“Please,” (Y/N) whimpers and she didn’t mean for her request to be said out loud.

Thankfully, Bradley ignores her words. She doesn’t know how she would live down the embarrassment of that one if he did manage to bring it up just then.

He presses their lips together. His lips are plush and soft; the right amount of dry and moist. They move in sync with hers, molding together like the perfect puzzle. His kiss is deep but gentle, all-consuming but allowing her space if she wanted it. He kisses her once. Twice. Three times. And then he pulls away, his hand still on her cheek as he licks his slips subtly.

She’s certain Bradley Bradshaw needs to add “perfect kisser” to his resume if he hasn’t already.

“Didn’t take you as a beggar, chick,” he says, and fuck, there it is. That smart alecky remark she was waiting for.

“If that’s the case, I’ll go inside and not give you my number,” she teases and Bradley feigns a gasp.

“You wouldn’t. Don’t leave me out to dry now. Your blood was all over my shirt at some point. Too late to turn back now.”

She gives him a toothy smile; one that’s reserved for her happiest and flirtiest moments.

(Y/N)’s grabbing a napkin from the middle counsel of his car and a pen from his cupholder. She scribbles her phone number down on the napkin with a cute, “Text me! :)” written after it.

She gets out of the Bronco and shuts the door, damn near running inside and waving at Bradley through the window of the living room where she can see his car in view.

Bradley just shakes his head and smiles with glee.

vii.

One thing Natasha Trace was proud of was how well she could read people.

Any boyfriends her sisters ever brought home didn’t have to get the stamp of approval from her father. Oh no, they had to get the stamp of approval from her.

And she had always been right. She knew the ones who lied about their jobs or the ones who were chronic cheaters (because they had done it so much they were pros at hiding it, just not from Natasha) or the ones who were just downright fucking nuts.

So if she can read people she had barely spent ten minutes with and could draw up a pretty good judgment of character, she knew that her analysis of people she knew well was never wrong.

When Bradley Bradshaw, her right-hand man and one of her best friends, pulls up to her government-supplied housing in his Bronco at 5:25 the morning after his huge blowup at Hangman, she knew something was off.

He didn’t have that shitty cassette mixed tape playing like he usually does and he’s basically inhaling a peach-flavored Red Bull. The thing about Bradley and energy drinks was that Bradley never drank them unless he was about dead from exhaustion.

And from their text exchange last night, he was home at 8 PM and had all the intentions of going to bed soon.

And well shit, that was apparent to be a lie.

He’s uncharacteristically quiet. Rooster wasn’t a morning person but once he was awake, he was awake and was always ready to chat which drove Phoenix absolutely crazy, but the silence they’re sitting in on their way to base is deafening. She knows something is up, yet she can’t quite put her finger on it.

“Good sleep?” she asks, testing the waters to see if Bradley would lie to her.

He curves his pointer finger and rubs it against the tip of his nose. This bastard was about to lie to her.

She can feel it.

“Great, actually,” he says with no delay so she knows that he’s not telling the truth.

Phoenix knows that Rooster doesn’t do well with confrontation. He’s a born people-pleaser and anything that wasn’t able to be handled maturely made him want to get up and flee. She’d save calling him out for later.

Besides, they had bigger shit to worry about for the time being; one of those being the fact that they’re being sent on a suicide mission in three weeks.

Natasha turns her body to the side of the car and looks out the window until something catches her eye. She turns to look at Bradley and sees that his eyes are cemented on the road. She bends down to pick it up swiftly; her movements so fast and contained that from Bradley’s peripheral vision, it just looked like she moved a little bit to get comfortable.

It’s a fucking hospital bracelet and as she turns it around to read what’s on it, she sees a name she doesn’t recognize and her eyes nearly bulge out of her skull when she sees the birth year.

The year starts with a 20 and she feels sick to her stomach.

There’s no way Rooster had a little girl in here. There’s no way that that’s the reason he’s acting so weird. There can’t be.

And then she starts counting the current year from the year on the bracelet, and then it clicks that, “Oh shit, this chick isn’t underaged.”

She’s just young, and math has never been Natasha’s strong suit.

She audibly exhales which makes Bradley turn his head to look at her and she stuffs the bracelet underneath her thigh before snaking it down to her pocket.

“You okay?” he asks and Natasha eagerly nods.

“Yeah, just a little jittery,” she answers and Bradley nods in agreeance.

He brings his Red Bull back up to his lips before taking a swig and placing it back down in the cup holder.

“Me too.”

#bradley bradshaw #rooster bradshaw #rooster x reader #rooster top gun #bradley bradshaw x reader #bradley rooster bradshaw #bradley rooster bradshaw x reader #rooster x you #top gun #top gun maverick #miles teller #mt #rooster bradshaw fic #rooster bradshaw fanfic #rooster fanfic #bradley bradshaw fic #writes #rooster

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lockea · 4 months

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10 Fanfiction Recs

In honor of IFD 2024 and @ao3org organizing the feedback fest, here are 10 fanfiction from my bookmarks (all complete, lots of oldies) spread across as many fandoms as I read.

Scylla and Charybdis by Mithrigil, puella_nerdii Fandom: The Hunger Games "Finnick decides that, come hell or high water, he is bringing his tribute home from the seventieth Hunger Games. That tribute is Annie Cresta. But Finnick never thought that he would have to choose between bringing her home and keeping her safe, and he wants both. How Annie Cresta crept up on Finnick Odair."

I heard Hunger Games was back in fashion, so have this fic from 2011 that's just so good.

Primary Colors by RobotSquid Fandom: Homestuck (no, I am not apologizing!) "As a young troll living in the desert with the Dolorosa, the Signless comes across an unconscious psionic wriggler. Over the next few nights, they come to understand and care for each other. Although seemingly destined to be apart, they make a promise to be together again. But the destructive ways of the highbloods are becoming more widespread, and as the Signless begins to dream, he dedicates himself to regaining the peaceful world Alternia once was. But troll society as it stands now holds no sympathy for a candy red mutant, a psionic slave, or the matespritship they have."

A canon-compliant (I think, I stopped reading Homestuck around this time) story about the Signless that's full of great world building and honestly I don't remember much but I have it on my bookmarks list for a reason, I'm sure.

A Long Road to Destiny by Miko Fandom: Final Fantasy VII (set in Final Fantasy X verse) "The summoner's journey is a long, hard path to walk. Having guardians you trust makes all the difference in the world."

The story follows Cloud, who is half Al-Behd, as he makes his pilgrimage to be a summoner. Early on, he's joined by Sephiroth, a former Summoner, and Zack, who wants to be Sepiroth's guardian, and the three begin quite the epic adventure to save Spira.

Immovable, unbreakable by Cards_Slash Fandom: Assassin's Creed "Altair has known since he was thirteen years old, the year he realized he was an omega, that his body was never going to be his own. He thought he had overcome his own fate when Al Mualim agreed to allow him to stay on as an Assassin but even becoming the youngest Master Assassin ever did not save him. Following the semi-failed mission at Solomon's Temple, Altair is gifted to Malik as a reward for his service. Malik doesn't want Altair but he does not turn down the chance to show him his place."

A retelling of the first game if Altair was an omega, lost his assassin status, was summarily married off to Malik, and had to work around all that to still solve the mystery and save the day. Altair is truly the biggest badass in this story, and the historical perspective on an Omegaverse is truly neat.

Teach Me How to Fight (I'll Show You How to Win) by Skalidra Fandom: Batman (DCU) "Dick is taken by the Court after his parents' death to be trained as a Talon. He becomes loyal, deadly, and the Court's primary Talon. At least until he meets a boy from the Court's secondary, darker kind of servant who gets assigned to be his partner, and makes him start to care about things other than serving the Court. Tim, a boy-genius member of the Court, could have told anyone who listened that pairing Talon with the other boy - Jason - was a poor decision, and the fact that the Grandmaster of the Court doesn't listen, at all, is something he's finding less and less tolerable."

I love this fic so much that it was my first attempt at fanfiction binding.

Oh, You Wondrous Creature by Ginia Fandom: Final Fantasy XV "Ignis Scientia had learned at a young age to perform his duties quietly and flawlessly. He learned not to draw undue attention to himself, as attention had often lead to pain and humiliation at the hands of those who considered themselves to be his betters.

He has no idea what to do when the attentions of one Gladiolus Amicitia are directed at him. He expects harshness and cruelty, but is met with something quite the opposite."

This is classic frenemies to lovers scenario. Ignis and Gladio start off disliking each other, but as Gladio uncovers more about the discrimination Ignis endures, he shapes up to be a friend, ally, and eventual lover for the steward.

Someone You Have To Let In by Arsenic Fandom: Batman (DCU) "Basically a horribly sideways BDSM-AU where Talia actually raises Jason from the dead to use him to get Damian to safety. If you're looking for super indulgent h/c, I got your back. If you're not, this is probably not the fic for you."

This was my introduction to the BDSM-AU, also called the Dom/sub AU, where people have biological imperatives towards either dominance or submission. The world building here is especially great, as there's parts that talk about how you raise kids in this kind of dynamic. Also I love me some Dick/Jason so there.

Holding Cell by red-catmander Fandom: Guild Wars 2 "Rytlock Brimstone is trapped in a human jail with a hairless mouse, a talking plant intent on infuriating him and a headache the size of the Black Citadel. Now he's stuck fighting in the arena, buying his freedom one slog at a time, and the only thing awaiting him when he gets out is scrapper duty.

He hates these people. He's sure of it. Especially Thackeray.

He really, really wants to hate these people."

Listen, this fic is hilarious. Like funnier than anything Snargle Goldclaw could write (if you know you know). It's Rytlock/Logan in like the crackiest way possible and while I unironically love this fic to pieces, it's main use in my life is to deal 1d6 of psychic damage to members of my GW2 guild.

Maan'alor - The Prime by papermachine Fandom: Star Wars (Prequel Trilogy Era) "Jango Vhett was Mand’alor only briefly to the Mandalorian Empire before he was captured by the Jetii and Republic forces on Galidraan.

Now an unwilling guest on Kamino, he is buir to Boba and he fears his protection can only stretch so far for the rest of the children made in his image. Jango doesn’t know if he can save all of the clones from the Kaminoans or the Republic, but he does know this: Verde sa akaan nau tracyn kad. Warriors are forged in the fires of war.

These children are made for war, and they have been fighting to stay alive since their creation.

He will do what he must to save them."

The series is ongoing, and this is technically the third installment in the series, but it's a great place to start reading. The series follows various characters in this AU where the Sith Empire, the Mandalorian Empire, and the Republic are all at war with each other. Meanwhile, an unwilling Jango is template to the clones, and he is NOT happy about is. But rebellions are built in secret, and Jango never was a very good spy.

hope has bloody knuckles by independent_variables Fandom: Star Wars (Clone Wars Era) "Davijaan discovers mountains, thinks about the war, and maybe falls in love."

I think some people are turned off from this fic because it's a relationship between Davijaan (Odd Ball) and an OC, but the main focus is on Davijaan and Cody's relationship with each other as clones, as having survived the Clone Wars with no Order 66. There's also some lovely word building around Pantora which is the real appeal of the fic, imo. And of course Loren herself is easy to like, with a strong personality and well developed character. You really want to root for her and Davi as the story goes on. Like, come on you two idiots! Figure it out! I do love this fic very much.

Oh my gosh picking only 10 fics was hard. Here's my bookmarks page if you want to see what else I'm reading.

#ifd2024 #feedback fest

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box-of-roses · 5 months

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༄ؘ ۪۪۫۫ ▹ Testing, Testing◃ ۪۪۫۫ ༄ؘ

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ Characters: Bokuto, Y/N

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ Warnings: Profanity, Light Hurt/Comfort

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ Synopsis: You’re best friend is also your Music Director and both of you are pining over the other. Who will confess first though?

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ Words: 2K

The lights dimmed as Y/N stood in the center of the stage guitar in their hands. “You got this Y/N!” A smile crept onto their lips hearing the ever so familiar voice of their best friend. “2…3…4…Kill…it…go.” They lifted their head and leaned into the mic as they started strumming.

“You’re all I need? That’s all you have to say to me! You’re all I want? What you wanted wasn’t enough! Kiss my boot, that's all you’re gonna get from me!” They stepped away from the mic a little bit and nodded towards their drummer, quieting down to let the other person be heard more.

“Get…it!” The metronome and helpful voice chided off in your ear. “Verse…2..3..4”

“Who’s sorry now? Cause it sure as hell ain’t me. I’m on stage having fans cheer for me. Where are you now? Cause it sure as hell ain’t with me. He’s all you’ll never be!” It’s a good thing their best friend hasn’t put together that the subject of the song is him. Because he is all that their ex could never be and so, so much more. He’s the one who gets to see you perform, he’s the one who holds you when you cry, he’s the one who wishes you goodnight. He’s the one who has your heart.

“On…fire!” There he is, the one who captured their heart. Maybe after a couple more runs of the song he’ll figure it out. For now though Y/N had a show to finish and they weren’t going to disappoint.

.·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ ..·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ ..·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .

After the show was finished Y/N was a little sweaty and very exhausted but still had more work to do. After all there was a fan meet and greet. “Hi! Good evening! Did you enjoy the show?” They asked as two girls walked up smiling widely at them.

“It was awesome!” She clapped her hands as her excitement grew. “We know you’ve never said it before but who’s the song about?” Y/N smiled and shook their head.

“I’m the only one who needs to worry about that. It’ll stay a secret till he figures out it’s him.” They put a finger up to their lip and made a shushing sound. “To let you in on a little secret though, he’s a little dense so maybe there’ll be a special edition coming out soon.” They winked and the girls were absolutely giddy about being in on a special release. The meet and greet was only two and a half hours though so the girls quickly took their picture and left.

Everyone was really nice throughout, which was expected but still. It was nice to know there weren’t any weirdos. Maybe they spoke too soon though as they saw a familiar head of hair on the last person in line. Bokuto Kotaro, their best friend, their crush, their weirdo. “Y/NNNN!!!!! You did so good!!!” He hugged them and they rolled their eyes hoping no one caught the blush or goofy smile that accompanied it.

“Ko, we’re both still technically at work. So come get your picture and then out.” As much as they enjoyed seeing him they didn’t want too many rumors to spiral again after the last incident. They had sat on their couch for months because someone saw them out and thought they were dating and Bokuto replied to say they were just friends.

“But Y/N!” He deflated a little bit and pouted.

“No, buts! I’ll see you when I get home. You know the drill.” He nodded and smiled again to get his picture before moving along so Y/N could get home faster. Home for this week was a nice hotel far enough away from the venue that people wouldn’t follow them easily but not far enough away that it was necessary to leave 3 hours earlier than normal.

Soon enough Y/N was back at the hotel and after a quick shower was ready to give Bokuto their full attention. “Finally! I was so bored Y/N!” He has started pouting again but they quickly put a stop to it by placing his head in their lap and running their fingers through his hair.

“You know how it is Meet ‘N Greet night Ko.”

“I still can’t believe you haven’t told me who your song’s about.” He huffs but can’t stand to be mad at them. How could he? It’s not their fault he was in love with them and the thought of them finding someone else to spend their time with or even worse already having found that person was distressing. He wants Y/N to be happy of course but the hurt that Y/N might not love him was enough for him to be upset every time he heard the song.

“Now I know that look, what’s wrong Ko?” They looked down, clear concern in their eyes. Bokuto’s saving grace was that they were still wearing the necklace he gave them. Nothing too flashy, just a simple heart.

“I just missed you.”

“You were literally talking to me the entire show.”

“Not the same thing. You weren’t able to reply.” Their reply was the song. The song where they basically professed their love to him. If only he got it. Maybe he did. Maybe he just didn’t want to hurt them by not reciprocating their feelings.

Bokuto sat up abruptly and turned to face Y/N. He cupped their face and leaned his forehead against theirs. “Now you're the one that’s sad. What’s wrong Y/N?” They leaned into the touch they craved so much and smiled.

“Nothing Ko, it’s getting late and we have a plane to catch in the morning. We finally get to go home, I love being on tour but I’ve missed my bed.” They laughed and stood up. “Now, let’s get you ready for bed mister.” They held out their hand and led him to the bathroom. He sat down on the toilet and closed his eyes already knowing what was coming. His favorite part of the night.

They calmly applied the face cream to his face. It was their favorite part of the night too. They got to enjoy the peace of his face in a quiet secluded place. A safe place. Here it was alright that they were in love with their best friend. Here it was alright if he didn’t love them back. Because here they could pretend. “I’m gonna pat your face to get the cream off now. Don’t fall asleep on me yet Ko, I’ve still got to put on some moisturizer.” He hummed, clearly falling asleep at the gentle hands patting his face. Bokuto frowned when the actions stopped and that made Y/N chuckle. “Come on sleepy, let’s get you to bed.” They turned over their hand and held it out, Bokuto’s face heated up and his brow furrowed.

“Sleep already? I thought we were gonna talk?” His head tilted to the side and a piece of hair fell in front of his eyes. Before he could move it though soft skin gently pushed it back up. Their smile was gentle, their eyes filled with love and face heating up.

“We can’t talk tonight silly. You’re too sleepy to even keep your eyes open.” They leaned down a bit, their face coming much closer to his.

“Obviously that’s gonna happen when you play with my hair.” He was pouting again as his eyes drooped. It wasn’t his fault their nails felt so good against his head.

“We can talk in the morning while I get ready.”

“We’re going to the airport.”

“And? People will see me and I’ll let you hold my hand if we can go to sleep now.” His face lit up at that. Getting to hold hands with the love of his life? Sign him up right now. One more concert in their home city and then he could have their undivided attention for a few months before inspiration stuck again. The smiles on their faces were growing as Y/N grabbed Bokuto’s hand, rough calluses touching warm skin. They pulled him back into the room, they laughed and fell back onto one of the beds as Bokuto followed them.

“You’re so silly.” They kissed his forehead and held his head to their chest returning to combing their fingers through his soft hair again.

“I don’t want to move back to my bed, I’m comfy right here.” Y/N rolled their eyes.

“Either way we’ll have to move to get under the covers. Might as well move now if you’re wanting to cuddle.” Seriously? Cuddling the love of their life? This wasn’t going to help either person’s predicament. The only thing that could would be if they actually talked to each other. One might say they’re always talking, another would point out that talking about random things and about how you felt about each other were two entirely different situations.

Spending the night in Bokuto’s arms sounded lovely. They’ve done it before, falling asleep during a movie and waking up in the morning to see the other curled up against them and arms wrapped around the other. Like a hug but much closer. Of course those mornings always sounded awkward but it was more comfortable than anything, the warmth of the sun slowly waking them up and hands held up to block the sun from the other’s face. Sleeping together never happened on purpose, it was always an accident of one of them falling asleep and the other following soon behind.

This meant a lot to both of them, in similar but different ways. So began the slow shuffling of getting under the covers and arms gently cradling the other person. Shapes being made on skin, soft breath hitting cheeks, and hearts sounding off rapidly. The more Y/N thought about it a public confession didn’t sound right. A confession didn’t make them sick when they thought of it in moments like this when the world is quiet and their breathing is in sync. Not now. Bokuto’s eyes were struggling to stay open even as Y/N kept his attention with their eyes looking around his face like they wanted to remember exactly how he looked in this minute. With that contentment his eyes finally slipped shut and they faded off into the calm.

When the alarm went off both of them groaned as Y/N rolled over to try and snooze it. “I don’t wanna get up, I’m comfy right where I am.” They frowned and sighed. Nine more minutes couldn’t hurt.

“Don’t leave yet!”

“I’m not, I’m not. I hit snooze. We have nine more minutes.” They closed their eyes and rested their head against Bokuto’s chest again. He hoped that they couldn’t feel his heart hammering in his chest. He reached up and gently rested his hand on the back of their head. “Ko? Can we talk?”

“Serious sit up talk?”

“Serious, yes. Sit up, no. Because I don’t want to get up. Can we stay like this?”

“Of course.” His brow furrowed and he frowned a bit as he grew concerned. It can’t be too serious otherwise Y/N would have them sit up. “What do you need to talk about? I’m right here, always.”

“I think I’m in love with you.” They squeezed their eyes closed and held their breath. Bokuto’s breath was also caught in his throat as his face heated up.

“Think?”

“I’m in love with you Bokuto Kotaro.” Good news at least was he didn’t seem immediately disgusted. Bad news he still hadn’t really replied. “Will you say something?” They finally looked up at him, the love in his eyes evident.

“I love you too Y/N. I’ve been in love with you for a while honestly, probably since the day you saved me.”

“I didn’t save you.” They rolled their eyes before realizing what he said. “You love me? You really love me? Not just saying it because I did?” He moved his hands to cup their face and he looked at them seriously.

“L/N Y/N I have been in love with you for so long I don’t remember what it’s like not to love you. Loving you feels like breathing.”

The first time I’ve written for this boy so I hope you liked it. :) my requests are open currently and if you want another part of how their relationship is now that they confessed just ask :D !

Masterlist

#haikyuu fluff #hq x reader #haikyu x reader #bokuto koutaro x reader #bokuto x reader #haikyuu bokuto #hq bokuto #haikyu angst #haikyuu x reader #bokuto x y/n

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moonxsuncelestials · 1 year

Text

@thelazyeditor said:

Ears drop. "You don't like when I call you that?" He didn't see the tail

Oh his mate is far too cute with this. “Aki, I do it’s just...that also has slight consequences that I don’t want our cubs seeing.” He leaned up and kisses him sweetly. “I love it, Aki. But that is also a turn on.”

#thelazyeditor #verse: hell is now more than ever home #yun ic #rp

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beechersnope · 7 months

Note

omg trick or treat red light spells danger 🏮

regretfully i do not have anything new from that verse prepared, but i do have a few other anons clamoring for max or maxiel content, so i shall offer a ghost town fic that is a bit longer than most of the stuff that i've posted for the trick or treat fills

***

The sun had already set behind the black ridge of the mountains when Daniel finally pulled onto the stretch of rough dirt road that led into the town of Coldspring.

Calling it a road was a kindness it didn’t deserve, Daniel decided after bouncing along in his truck for nearly half a mile before a haphazard collection of buildings in varying states of disrepair came into view. He felt practically an expert on the subject after spending the last fifty-odd miles on a relatively well-maintained gravel road that ran north-south between Highways 6 and 50. If he’d known what he was in for after that, Daniel might have taken the long way around—but eager to get to Coldspring before dark, he’d opted for the more straightforward route.

Daniel didn’t know much about Max Verstappen or her ultimate plans for Coldspring even after countless emails exchanged over the last three months in addition to a handful of curt, to-the-point phone calls in the last two weeks. But he did know that she would be driving a truck almost identical to the one he’d picked up in Vegas after he’d landed a couple days ago, and when Daniel pulled up alongside the only vehicle in town—a rusty pickup with a bed cap that might have been white, once upon a time—it became immediately clear that Max wasn’t here.

As soon as Daniel hopped out of the truck, his boots crunching loudly through the clumps of gravel and sand, the door to the building he was parked in front of swung open to reveal a grizzled old man in plaid and overalls, a cowboy hat adorning his otherwise bald head. His beard was halfway down to his gut, and everything about the man’s appearance set off alarm bells in Daniel’s head. He didn’t have much Este that Max had done her due diligence in making sure the former owner of Coldspring wasn’t a serial killer. At least he’d had the presence of mind to buy a gun before hauling his ass out to the middle of the desert, though he hadn’t ever really planned on using it.

But surprisingly enough, the man paid Daniel barely any attention at all. “I was expecting a lady,” he said in a gruff voice with a similar cadence to the way country folk spoke back home. His eyes moved straight past Daniel and off into the distance, like he was expecting to see Max’s truck trundling up the road any second now.

“I know her flight landed in Reno this morning,” Daniel explained, “but I haven’t had any cell service the past couple hours, so I’m not sure where she is. She should have been here by now. You haven’t seen her?”

The man shook his head. “I’ve been waiting here nearly all damn day, and I ain’t seen a soul.” Finally, his eyes drifted back to Daniel with a suspicious glint. “You the handyman she mentioned?”

“Yeah,” Daniel replied, nodding. He wasn’t sure where the man was headed with that line of questioning, but he was starting to wish he’d put on his holster as soon as he’d stepped out of the truck, just so everyone was on the same page.

The man seemed wholly unaware of the effect his presence was having on Daniel as he responded. “You’ve got your work cut out for you,” he said with a derisive snort. “That’s all I’ll say.”

Daniel had figured that, seeing as Max had bought the place for a fraction of what the land should have cost—regardless of the level of disrepair the buildings appeared to be in. Evidently, the man in front of him had been desperate to rid himself of whatever burden owning this ghost town had become.

The man seemed just as eager to get the hell off the property now that Daniel had shown up, despite the fact that Max was the one who should have been there for the passing of the torch, as it were. But after fifteen minutes of the two of them standing there in uncomfortable silence, waiting, as the sunlight rapidly waned, it became clear that something was gonna have to give.

“All right, why don’t you show me around,” Daniel finally offered. “I’ll go into town tomorrow and make some calls if Max doesn’t show later tonight.”

“You know where town is?” the man asked in a skeptical tone.

“Keep going north, right? Until you hit the highway, then west for a few miles.”

The man nodded, seemingly impressed. “Y’all did your research, at least. Don’t see how it’ll help you much with this dump, but God bless you for taking it off my hands.”

Daniel was tempted to ask why the man was so desperate to sell, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to open that can of worms with a stranger who seemed like he wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of dodge.

The man—whose name Daniel still couldn’t remember from the sale documents though he’d been wracking his brain trying to recall it since the second he’d pulled up—took Daniel’s silence for the cue it was and started to walk up the dusty road that used to be the bustling main street of a turn-of-the-century gold mining town.

Daniel was surprised by how many structures were still standing even though practically every building was crumbling at the foundations, so ill-cared for in the century since the town’s abandonment that it was a wonder there was anything left. There was a bank, a schoolhouse, a jail, a handful of residences, and a brothel, all nestled within the narrow valley that sloped up toward the crown jewel of Coldspring: its namesake—a deep limestone pit with clear blue water that lay at the base of the mountain in the north end of the valley.

The man stopped where the road had been overtaken by sagebrush just a few hundred yards from the limestone caldera of the spring. Behind it, Daniel could just make out a dilapidated wooden path that meandered up into the mountains, where the great yawning mouth of a mineshaft stood starkly amongst the vegetation even in near darkness.

“Well, that’s the lay of the land,” the man told Daniel, his eyes flitting toward the mineshaft up on the mountain for just a brief moment before returning to Daniel’s face. “If you or Ms. Verstappen have any questions, you’re welcome to call and ask, though truth be told, I’m rather relieved to be done with this place for good.”

Once again, Daniel made a conscious decision to keep his mouth shut, instead of asking the question the man almost seemed to be daring him to ask. “Where do we sleep?” he inquired instead. He’d had a long drive after all, and for all of Coldspring’s charm—or lack thereof—Daniel wanted nothing more than to crawl into his sleeping bag so he could get some rest. He didn’t harbor any delusions about sleeping in an actual bed.

“The saloon,” the man said before starting a quick pace back to their trucks, both parked in front of the building in question. “It’s really the only building still fit to live in. For now, anyway.”

“Yeah, we’ll see.”

Once the former owner had raced down the valley toward the main road, leaving Daniel on his own in the growing darkness, the magnitude of his decision to take this job finally started to set in.

When Daniel had first responded to the listing, which had asked for someone with a litany of skills better suited to a contractor and his entire crew, he hadn’t taken more than a few minutes to look up where the hell Coldspring was before deciding that the job was his.

The strain of the pandemic that had led Daniel to move back in with his parents now had him desperate to get as far away from Nashville as possible. Running away to the middle of the desert and getting paid to do it had seemed like the perfect solution. It wasn’t until after he’d actually gotten the job and signed the paperwork that Daniel even bothered to research why this particular ghost town had died.

In Coldspring’s case, it was literal. The entire town had perished without warning in the late 1800s from an apparent mass poisoning. The prevailing theory was arsenic contamination of the groundwater supply caused by a mining accident, though no definitive evidence to that effect had ever been found.

While that hadn’t been enough to scare Daniel away when Max had booked him a one-way ticket to Vegas, it was the only thing he could think about now as he unpacked all his necessaries from the truck and brought them inside the dusty saloon, which didn’t appear to have a single working source of light. Thankfully, Daniel had come prepared.

Daniel set up camp behind the bar, his lantern perched on the countertop near the windowsill as a beacon of sorts, though he wasn’t expecting Max to come strolling in any time soon. There was a deadbolt on the inside of the saloon door and a more elaborate padlock on the outside. Daniel removed the padlock and secured the deadbolt once he’d retrieved everything that he thought he might need, and then tucked himself into his sleeping bag, the lantern still sitting on the bar top casting the rest of the space into shadow. Daniel stared into the patch of darkness in the corner for a moment before finally sitting up to turn off the light entirely.

It wasn’t until he was lying there surrounded by the pitch black and the overwhelming quiet that he realized he’d never asked the former owner where he was supposed to go if he had to take a shit.

Daniel woke up bright and early the following morning from a sleep that had been fitful at best. It was difficult to get used to the change in the ambient sounds. Gone was the frog-song that had lulled him to sleep since he was a baby; in its place the rhythmic instruments of insects hiding in the brush, their melody muted now that fall was in full swing.

Daniel’s mind was busy as well. Max still hadn’t shown up, which meant that he had a long drive ahead of him before reaching the nearest town, Austin, and even then, there was no guarantee he’d have cell service. Or that Max would, for that matter.

But luck was on his side. Daniel made it up to Austin just in time for mid-morning breakfast, and his signal made a reappearance almost as soon as he crossed into town. Max answered on the first ring and out came a long, rambling explanation for her absence which boiled down to her car breaking down somewhere just outside of Fallon, where she’d spent the night, and that she was on her way to meet him in Austin as they spoke.

Satisfied with her assurances (for now at least), Daniel strolled into the little diner on the side of the highway in the center of town and sat down for a bite to eat.

There was a waitress at the head of the table almost as soon as he slid into a booth, a broad bucktoothed smile on her face as she greeted him. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Just water, miss, thank you,” Daniel replied. He didn’t like to rely on caffeine to keep himself going. “Do you have any breakfast specials?”

“Eggs and bacon with toast or a short stack with fruit,” the waitress recited easily. “But if you’re looking for something a bit more substantial, Pierre makes a mean chicken-fried steak.”

Daniel thought it over a minute. “Yeah, all right,” he decided. It would give him a reason to hang out in this diner a little longer, at least. “Side of scrambled eggs with that, also.”

“You got it, boss,” the waitress replied with a flirtatious little wink before sauntering back to give Daniel’s order to the cook.

Daniel watched her walk away with a bit more interest than he’d shown before and made a mental note to try to get a look at her nametag, assuming this place had the budget for something like that.

It did, as it turned out, and when the waitress came back with Daniel’s glass of ice water, he discovered that her name was Este. When Este came back with Daniel’s chicken-fried steak, slathered in thick white gravy that had his mouth watering before the plate reached the table, he also discovered that Este liked to gossip.

“You planning to stay in town long?” she asked, nearly leant up against the table while Daniel cut his steak. He couldn’t really fault her for hanging around, seeing as he was the only customer in the whole place, but he had to wonder just what she meant by it.

“In the area, yeah,” Daniel replied.

Este scoffed. “There’s not much else ‘in the area’,” she countered playfully.

Daniel took a careful bite of his steak, chewed, and swallowed. “You know where Coldspring is?” he asked her.

All the color drained from Este’s face. “You work for Don Stevens?” she asked in an almost breathless rush, her tongue stumbling over the words. “Don’t tell me he’s planning on fixing up the place.”

“Was that the guy who owned it before?” Daniel clarified. “No, I work for the person who just bought it.”

“Someone bought it?” Este sounded utterly incredulous. “You’re not staying there are you?”

Daniel nodded. “Through most of the winter,” he replied, “long as the weather’s mild enough to work.”

A taut expression took over Este’s face as she drew back from Daniel’s table, her eyes darting toward the door, where another customer had finally come in. “Well, I’d rethink that plan if I were you,” she snapped before rushing away like her ass was on fire.

Daniel had to suppress the urge to laugh out loud.

He thought Max might find the anecdote amusing as well, but when she finally showed up a few hours later, it was clear that the young woman was in no mood for ghost stories. She looked uncharacteristically frazzled when she burst through the door of the little diner, her long blonde hair knotted up into a messy bun atop her head, and she blew straight past Este without a word, her fiery gaze fixed solely on Daniel.

“Nice to meet you,” was the first thing she said, her consonants sharp and carefully enunciated, though beneath that Daniel could still detect the remnants of a lisp. The second was: “I didn’t get ripped off by that Don guy, did I?”

Daniel shook his head. “Long as you knew you paid for some rundown old ghost town in the middle of nowhere,” he told her.

Max rolled her eyes. None of his previous interactions with her had been what Daniel would consider the height of professionalism, so he wasn’t really taken aback by her attitude, but it was a whole other thing in person, that was for damn sure.

“All right, let’s hit the road, then,” she said, gesturing for Daniel to follow her back outside.

Daniel climbed to his feet a bit reluctantly. He was sort of hoping to grab lunch before heading out to the boonies. “You don’t want to grab a bite first?” he asked. “I don’t know about you, but I didn’t exactly stock a gourmet kitchen when I packed.”

“If gourmet’s what you’re looking for, I’m pretty sure you’re in the wrong place,” Max replied with an unjustified sneer before storming out the front door.

They caravanned back to the saloon in Coldspring at a slightly quicker pace than Daniel would have liked, though even Max for all her impatience couldn’t maintain the same speed once they reached the rugged trail that led up into the mountains.

It wasn’t until they parked in front of the saloon and Max hopped out of her truck that Daniel finally took real stock of her, realizing almost immediately that this woman did not seem well equipped for living off-grid over the next three to six months, or however long she expected this damn project to take.

But he had to give her credit where it was due: as soon as her designer leather boots hit the dirt, she was already rolling up her sleeves and getting right to work.

That work consisted mainly of surveying the entire property from top to bottom and making a list of everything that needed to be done. Daniel followed along, letting Max know exactly what was required for each task in the way of supplies and manpower, and the whole time, watching the grimace on her face deepen ever-further with each new item added to her notebook.

“What exactly are your big plans for this place, anyway?” Daniel asked after they’d combed practically the whole town top to bottom—with the exception of the mineshaft looming high above them and the spring below.

“Tourism,” Max replied vaguely. “People love ghost towns.”

Daniel wasn’t sure that even the most hardcore would-be ghostbusters could be convinced to come all the way out to Coldspring to get their rocks off, but he just nodded and let Max keep believing that all of this wouldn’t just be one massive money sink in the end.

“First snowfall could be right around the corner,” Daniel pointed out to her as Max leaned down over the bar top to jot something else down in her notebook. His eyes dropped to where the first few buttons of her shirt were undone. Her fair skin was already starting to burn. He forced himself to look away. “We might not have much time to work on the exteriors before winter makes things harder than it needs to be.”

Max glanced up sharply, but if she’d intuited the focus of Daniel’s gaze, she didn’t make any indication of it. “I guess we better get started, then,” was all she said in reply.

Over the next week, Daniel managed to make significant headway on repairing the foundations of the major structures in town, though he still wasn’t convinced some of the smaller residences could actually be saved. Max was a surprisingly big help throughout the whole process; Daniel had anticipated more traditional foremanship on her part, but when it came right down to it, she didn’t seem at all afraid to get her hands dirty.

With another human being sharing the saloon floor—albeit on the other side of the bar, out of view—the town didn’t seem quite so threatening at night. Daniel slept well after each day of strenuous manual labor, and with Max keeping them supplied with fresh food from town, Daniel was missing a lot fewer creature comforts than he’d expected.

By the end of the first week, the days started to blend into each other. Without being able to rely on his phone, which had been tucked into his backpack turned off since the last time Daniel had gone up to Austin with Max for gas and propane, there wasn’t much to keep him tethered to the trappings of the outside world as he worked. It was everything Daniel could have hoped for and more. Complete and utter freedom.

But Daniel couldn’t quite seem to shake the sense of unease that came over him every time he caught a glimpse of the abyssal void of the mineshaft in his periphery. Sometimes he forced himself to stare up at it for minutes at a time, squinting against the wind that howled through the valley in the late afternoons, trying desperately to convince his subconscious that whatever movement he’d thought he’d seen in the darkness was just a trick of the light.

The next time Daniel went up to Austin on a supply run, he bought a calendar from the gas station and started marking the days.

It was a Tuesday when something finally happened that Daniel couldn’t explain, nearly two weeks after his first arrival in Coldspring. He was doing measurements in the old jailhouse, flummoxed as to how to begin restoring the damn thing without just knocking it down and starting all over, when he heard it.

“What?” Daniel called out frustratedly. It was the fifth time Max had called his name in the last twenty minutes with no additional response. After the sixth, Daniel finally threw down his measuring tape and notepad and stalked out of the building to see what she wanted. But when he walked outside, Max was nowhere to be found.

It was only after he turned a full one-eighty degrees that he spotted her, sitting out on the porch of the saloon where she usually hung out when she was thinking over a problem. The only thing was, Daniel could have sworn he’d heard her calling him from the opposite side of town.

Daniel slowly turned his head again, his eyes drifting upward to the mineshaft that Max still hadn’t made any mention of in her grandiose plans for restoring the town. He squinted hard as he stared up into the darkness, half-convinced that if he tried hard enough, he could make sense somehow of the disquiet that fell over him every time he remembered the source of Coldspring’s demise.

“What are you doing?” Max asked.

Somehow, she’d managed to come up behind him without making a sound. Daniel whirled around to face her, and then glanced over her shoulder at the place where she’d just been sitting to find the chair on the porch empty, though he wasn’t sure what to make of the relief he felt at the sight.

“Were you just calling my name?” Daniel wondered.

Max shook her head. “No, why?”

“Nothing,” Daniel replied. “Don’t worry about it.” Then he put the whole thing out of his mind and got back to work.

By the end of the third week, Daniel was positively certain he was going stir crazy.

He hadn’t had any more auditory or visual hallucinations, or whatever the hell it was that he’d experienced the week before, but he was waking up every day painfully hard in his sweatpants with no hope of release. It didn’t help that he was spending each night in the saloon just a few feet away from Max, who hadn’t shown the slightest bit of interest in Daniel since they’d met—and honestly, Daniel was kind of grateful for that, but it didn’t help him address the more immediate problem he was facing, and that was that he desperately, urgently needed to get laid.

Per their agreement, Daniel was entitled to a full two days off of his choosing every week. Today was a Friday. Barely five minutes after waking up, Daniel had decided that he was going to make a trip up to Austin that afternoon to see if Este was maybe a little bit interested, even after their sour farewell at the diner that Daniel had been carefully avoiding since their first encounter.

Este wasn’t interested. Georgie, a tall English tourist who was dressed more appropriately for mid-July rather than late-October, was.

“Please tell me you have a hotel somewhere around here,” Daniel muttered against Georgie’s sweat-soaked skin as he pressed her up against the cab of his truck. He had a knee wedged between her bare thighs, and he almost felt like he would die if he didn’t get inside her in the next five minutes.

“I have one of those van conversions,” Georgie replied with an awkward giggle. “Got a whole mattress in the back. We could really make my bed rock, you know?”

Daniel nodded, barely registering a word she was saying. He was pretty sure he would have followed her off a cliff if she asked nicely enough in that moment, but when he finally pulled away from her so they could do just that, it wasn’t Georgie’s face looking back at him. It was Max’s.

Then Daniel blinked, and like that, whatever he’d seen was gone. But the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach was only growing stronger.

“What’s wrong?” Georgie asked, reaching forward to pull Daniel back in.

He dodged her and stumbled back a few feet. “I have to go,” he said, mouth dry as he fumbled through both pockets before remembering that his keys were attached to his belt. “Sorry, I—”

Daniel didn’t finish the sentence before climbing into his truck and speeding away, leaving Georgie and the rest of Austin behind.

But when Daniel finally made it back to Coldspring about an hour later, Max’s truck was gone. She hadn’t said anything to him when he’d left that morning, but a cursory examination of the saloon revealed a note hastily written and taped to the bar top. Went 2 Fallon for more supplies. That was it, no further explanation of when she planned to be back or why it was so urgent that she’d left midday for an errand that would take her at least six hours of driving to complete.

Frustrated with Max, but more-so with himself for letting this damn place get the better of him, Daniel buried himself in his sleeping bag and screamed into his pillow until he tasted copper in the back of his throat.

It was dark when Daniel woke up on the floor of the saloon, and it took him a moment to realize what it was that had woken him. Usually, on nights where the moon was full, as it had been the past two nights, the light shone straight through the saloon windows, illuminating the entire space with an eerie glow. But when Daniel’s eyes opened, all he could see was blackness, and there was a disorienting period of half-awake confusion before it finally dawned on him that the shape obscuring the moonlight belonged to a person.

Daniel’s blood ran cold. Instead of opting for fight or flight, his body simply froze.

Daniel watched as the shadow moved, completely silent, with none of the tell-tale creaking of the wooden floorboards underfoot that had become the de facto confirmation of either his or Max’s presence within the saloon. He held his breath as the shadow drew closer, and then—

“Max?”

She put a finger over her lips and moved closer as Daniel sat up in his sleeping bag.

“What is it?” he asked, in a whisper this time.

Max answered with a press of her lips against Daniel’s, surging into him, forcing his mouth to open to the insistent pressure of her own. She tasted metallic, but her hands against Daniel’s thighs were electrifying, distracting him for the moment from the strangeness of the encounter.

Then he remembered himself—remembered that Max was his boss and that there couldn’t be a worse idea.

Daniel pulled away sharply, and as he did so, he caught a glimpse of a face that wasn’t Max’s face, desiccated and bone white. But when he blinked, the apparition was gone, and it was Max staring back at him again, though there was still something about her that seemed…off. Different, somehow.

“If we’re going to do this,” Daniel started to say before just as quickly backtracking. “We shouldn’t,” he finished, though it felt like he was trying to convince himself more so than Max.

Once again, Max didn’t respond, but when she leaned forward to kiss him again, this time, Daniel didn’t put up a fight. He tangled his hands tightly in her long blonde hair as she laid a trail of bites along the hollow of his throat and down his chest, his other hand struggling to find a way to take off whatever it is that she was wearing. A nightgown? Bloomers? Before this, Daniel had never seen her go to bed in anything less than a crewneck and sweatpants, but maybe that was the reason she’d gone to Fallon, to plan for this—whatever this even was.

Finally, Daniel managed to literally tear the undershirt off of her. With it gone, he drew back to appreciate the way her breasts were illuminated by the moonlight. Under other circumstances, it might have all been very romantic, but as it was….

Daniel quickly flipped Max over onto her back, temporarily getting himself tangled in his own sleeping bag before managing to break free. She stared up at him quietly, her expression calm and supplicating. The silence was a bit unnerving, but it wasn’t hard to ignore now that Daniel had his thumbs tucked into the waistband of her lacy bloomers. He slowly pulled them down, savoring every centimeter of skin revealed to his eyes. He was surprised to find a full thatch of dark blonde pubic hair between her thighs, but he certainly wasn’t disappointed.

When he ducked his head down to press his mouth against her cunt, Daniel was startled once again by the sharp metallic taste, the same as her tongue. It took him a moment to get used to, but then it faded quickly, and all Daniel could taste was a familiar mix of sweetness and salt.

Max sighed quietly when she came with her thighs flexing against Daniel’s face. He sat back, fingers shaking to unknot the front of his sweatpants, his cock so hard it almost hurt. Condoms, he remembered belatedly. There was a stash in his backpack on the other side of the bar.

“I’ll be right back,” Daniel reassured Max before running around to the front of the saloon to grab his bag.

The condoms weren’t in the pocket he remembered putting them in, which led to a frustrated scramble as Daniel searched every pocket and seam for them before finally finding them tucked between the pages of his notepad. He breathed out a quiet sigh of relief as he tore one away from the rest before hurrying back to where Max was waiting for him.

Only she wasn’t there.

Daniel stared down at the imprint in his pillow where Max’s head had just laid, his mind conjuring up a vivid memory of her moonlit blonde hair standing out starkly against the black fabric. He stood up slowly, examining every corner of the saloon for any sign of her, but she was just…gone.

“Daniel.”

He turned his head to find the door to the saloon hanging open on its hinges. Through the darkened entryway, he caught a glimpse of something out in the sagebrush, a distinct silhouette with bright eyes, reflective like an animal’s, but whatever it was he’d seen, it disappeared too quickly for Daniel to get a good look at it.

Daniel slowly stumbled over to the open doorway. He peered outside cautiously, taking note of his truck, which was parked on its own next to the vacant spot that Max’s vehicle had occupied before he’d left for Austin yesterday. It didn’t make sense. He should have heard her pulling in, loud enough to wake him, or at the very least, driving off again. Had she parked further down the road? How had she gotten out of the saloon without him seeing her?

Daniel swallowed, trying to clear his throat so he could call out to her, but as he stared out over the lonely valley, his vocal cords seized up, a paralyzing fear suddenly washing over him like a tidal wave. Daniel stood there just a moment longer, and then reached forward to slam the saloon door shut. His fingers were trembling as he secured the deadbolt. It was a long time before he managed to fall asleep.

Daniel woke the next morning to the sound of tires crunching against the gravel outside the saloon. He ripped himself from his sleeping bag immediately and stumbled out into the daylight, his eyes slitted against the sun’s late-morning brightness as he watched Max hop down out of the cab of her truck, looking for all the world as though she’d had a perfectly peaceful evening.

“Where the hell did you go?” Daniel demanded as she walked over to the front door of the saloon.

Max paused, looking a bit startled by the venom in his tone. “Didn’t you see my note?” she asked.

“I mean last night. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Max countered. “I left yesterday right after you did. I just got back. And good morning to you, too, by the way.” She stormed past him into the saloon with a quiet ‘asshole’ muttered under her breath.

Daniel remained standing there on the front porch for a minute or two, he wasn’t quite sure. When he finally came back inside, he walked straight past Max and into the backroom, which might have served as living quarters once upon a time before the gaping hole in the wall had rendered it unusable. The mirror still worked, though, for all its spiderweb cracks and layers of dust, and Daniel approached it with a trembling hand pressed to his collar.

Daniel stood in front of the mirror for a few seconds, just staring at his own reflection as if to reassure himself that he was still real, and then at last, tugged down the neck of his t-shirt to reveal a pattern of pale white marks that trailed down the side of his throat to his sternum, tracing the exact path of Max’s mouth the night before. They weren’t bruises—the exact opposite, in fact, as though the pigment in his skin had literally been leached from the places where she’d marked him.

All Daniel could hear was the sound of his own heartbeat pounding in his ears as he stared at the marks. Then something—a face in the mirror that wasn’t his own. Daniel whipped around to find nothing waiting over his shoulder, just the same gap in the wall that had always been there, opening up onto the sagebrush-covered landscape, illuminated fully under the bright sunlight.

But Daniel could have sworn he’d seen something.

When he finally emerged from the backroom a few minutes later, Max was standing at the bar, her eyebrows furrowed in concern. “Are you feeling okay?” she asked him.

Daniel nodded. “Fine,” he lied. “Just a little….” He paused and swallowed hard. “Have you noticed anything strange lately?”

“Strange like what?” Max asked.

Daniel just shrugged.

Max laughed. “You should really stop letting the locals tell you ghost stories about this place,” she advised.

Daniel forced a smile and nodded. “You’re right,” he told her.

“Come on, then,” she said. “Let’s get back to work.”

#my fic #trick or treat ask game #this might be the last one i do for the night #but i'm not kidding about it being long it's like 6k #sorry for bus drivering pierre esteban and george but i needed randos

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