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dilemmaontwolegs · 5 months

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i know u have a gazillion requests but what if we spice up that Carlos fic? if you decide to do a pt 3. maybe Carlos is once again is frustrated because of the penalty after a good quali and has sex with Rebecca cuz he can't find the model. a lil angst

It’s no secret, I’m in an angsty kinda writing mood at the moment 😅 I also forgot who was meant to be the toxic one...and now it's both of them.

Lady in Red (3) || CS55

Pairing: Carlos Sainz Jr x fem!reader Warnings: 18+ only, NSFW, smut, cheating, manipulation WC: 1.5k

One || Two || Three || Four

You had been called away to work just before qualifying finished. You and half a dozen other models were asked to stand behind the top three drivers and wave feather fans for the cameras while an Elvis impersonator pumped out his signature dance moves.

From your position you could see the frustration on Carlos’ face. He had qualified second fastest yet he was going to have to start from 12th on the grid. You weren’t the only person in the area upset by the 10 place penalty and the Ferrari supporters were making their opinion known as they chanted for Carlos.

“Alright, sweethearts, we need you over at the Bellagio for some promo shots and then you’re free for the night,” one of the headset-clad organisers said to the group you were with before checking her watch. “Or should I say morning.”

The drive back from the Bellagio to the paddock seemed to take hours with the road closures and checkpoints, but finally you made it back. Knowing Carlos would be waiting somewhere for you, you scanned each floor to find him before heading straight to the top.

“Fuck, mi amor, this is what I need,” Carlos moaned.

You froze at the sordid scene you had walked in on. Neither one saw you in the doorway of the darkened room, their backs to you as Carlos bent Rebecca over the desk and pounded into her. He curled her hair around his fist and pulled back so to expose the pleasure painted on her face.

You didn’t even notice you were crying until a droplet fell from your cheek to land on your breast, the feather girl outfit he enjoyed on full display. You suddenly hated how exposed you felt in the ridiculous costume. It was almost as ridiculous as you - for thinking a man like him could change.

“Take it, cariña, take it,” he stammered as you recognised the pinch of his brow. He was close. He was close to finishing and you were more than done with seeing it.

You were conscious of your footsteps as you retreated from the room and descended downstairs. You just needed to make it to your dressing room so you could get your stuff and go.

“Hey,” Charlotte called out as she caught your arm and pulled you to a stop with a friendly smile. “Carlos was looking for you earlier. Did you find him?”

“Yeah, I did,” you whispered, quickly wiping the tears from your cheeks. “Don’t bother drafting up the breakup post.”

Her smile dimmed as confusion replaced it. “What breakup post?”

“Huh,” you laughed humorlessly as you shook your head at your stupidity. “The one Carlos clearly didn’t talk to you about. God, I am a fucking idiot.”

You left the track, heading straight back to your hotel room and before you even reached the room you saw Carlos’ name come up on your phone. You sent him straight to voicemail, again and again.

You barely slept as you thought about how humiliated you felt. You wanted to get him back but you weren’t innocent yourself. You knew your career would be over if you outed the relationship you had with Carlos, even if it made you feel better momentarily. No, you weren’t going to bloody your hands for him, there was already a stain on your soul for what you had knowingly done.

You were a survivor and you were smarter than your recent actions showed. You knew things about Carlos that he had been foolish enough to share in the unburdened state that came after sharing his bed. You were going to use it to your advantage and do what you did best, be the envy of every man.

You had turned your phone off when you arrived at the paddock for the race but it was going to be impossible to ignore Carlos when you were assigned to the Ferrari team.

“Stacy, swap with me?” you begged as she waited for Charles to escort him to the grid. “Pleeeease.”

“Whatever, French boys aren’t my thing anyway,” she said with a grin before heading next door to Carlos’ side.

“I’m not French,” Charles corrected as he stepped out of his room. “I’m Monégasque.”

“Today, you’re pole,” you said with a grin as you offered your elbow out to him. “Ready to go?”

You didn’t glance in Carlos’ direction as you accompanied Charles out onto the grid. You didn’t even have to fake enjoying the company as you found the Monégasque had a good sense of humour and made you laugh the entire way.

From the slamming of Carlos’ car door you knew you were getting to him. Carlos’ fear was losing to his team mate and he was sick of always being compared to Charles Leclerc.

Carefully angling the feather fan to hide your faces from the jealous driver, you leant in and wished Charles good luck for the race. To the fans, you were clearly talking, but to Carlos? He would always think the worst.

Charles was high with adrenaline when he arrived at the Bellagio after coming second place. It wasn’t the win he was obviously hoping for but you could see how happy he was with the result.

“So, you like Charles now, huh?” Stacy whispered as she stood as you did, a fake smile on your faces as you lined the interview stage.

You cast her a quick side glance and winked. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“I know why you wanted to swap, Carlos acts like a fucking baby. He practically trashed his garage after Charlotte spoke to him about something. God, I wish I could have heard what that conversation was about.”

“Hmm, me too,” you said with a sick sense of delight as the interviews wrapped up. “Oh, finally, almost time to party.”

“You must be happy, proving Carlos wrong,” you teased Charles as you escorted him back to the Rolls Royce he arrived in.

His steps faltered and he slowed his walk as his other podium finishers drifted further ahead. “What do you mean?”

“Well, he’s been telling everyone how much better a driver he is compared to you,” you stated with a shrug. It was an exaggeration, you had overheard him complaining to his father in the garage. “But you showed him.”

“A better driver?” Charles scoffed. “He is full of shit.”

He seemed to be in deep contemplation as he walked silently, until he reached the car and turned to you. “You should come to the after party.”

Carlos had already added you to the invite list but you smiled and batted your lashes as Charles. “Are you asking me?”

He blushed and laughed at himself as he nodded. “Would you like to come to the after party with me?”

“You don’t have a girlfriend do you?”

“No,” he laughed warmly. “I wouldn’t be asking to take you if I did.”

“Then I would love to go with you.” You gave him your room number that was conveniently in the same hotel as him, since both Ferrari drivers stayed in the same one.

You already had the perfect dress waiting in your room and as you stood in front of the mirror you had to admit you looked stunning. The red dress was tailored to your body and the plunging neckline was risque and exactly what you envisioned it to be. You couldn’t wait to see Carlos’ face when you walked into the party on his teammate's arm.

“Hey,” you greeted as you opened the door after the knock, but it wasn’t who you expected to see on the other side. “Carlos, what are you doing here?”

His jaw fell slack, lips parting, as his eyes trailed down your body. “Mios dios, hermosa.”

You held your hand out, planting it on his chest as he stepped forward to kiss you. “Woah there, buddy, not happening.”

“Why not? Why have you been ignoring me?” he asked with genuine confusion.

“I saw you fucking Rebecca last night after Qualifying.”

He looked a little sheepish as he scratched the back of his heated neck. “I couldn’t find you.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better when you call her ‘mi amor’ too?”

“I didn’t mean it, I-I was thinking about you,” his eyes widened as his voice went up a pitch. “I swear.”

You nodded sympathetically as you rubbed his arm. “Of course, like you were thinking about me when you didn’t have that chat with Charlotte. Yeah, I know you didn't, so just go back to your girlfriend.”

“But I want you,” he pouted as he bowed his head and looked up with big brown puppy dog eyes.

“But I don’t want you. Not anymore.” You gave him a push and he ceded the space in your doorway as the elevator across the hall opened and Charles stepped out looking good in a pair of jeans and a fitted shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbow. “Hey handsome,” you greeted him with a smile as you grabbed a black clutch with your phone and money. “Perfect timing.”

“You are breathtaking,” he said after a few blinks to recover from the sight of you. He smiled as he brushed past Carlos to kiss your cheek, ignoring the Spaniard completely. “Ready to go, chérie?”

You took his hand and sent a dark smile in Carlos’ direction as you passed by. “See you around, red man.”

Click here for part four.

#carlos sainz imagine #carlos sainz fanfic #carlos sainz x reader #formula 1 fanfic #formula 1 x reader #formula one imagine #f1 fanfic #f1 imagine

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gentlebeardsbarngrill · 3 months

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01/15/2024 Crew Recap

Hey all, today has been a very very very long day. I’m typing this with my eyeballs glazed over and half open. However, so much has happened in such a little amount of time I wanted share a few things before I pass out I know a lot of you are in different timezones, are busy with life, and taking a break, so maybe this will help with parsing through some of the crazy stuff the crew has been up to.

The petition hit 50K, and is at 52.5K at the moment

Fundraisers: I didn’t even realize there were two different fundraisers for Palestine/Gaza going on but we blew both out of the water. (Note: the second picture is from a November campaign but I think its just as important to highlight— ty for the correction anon!)

The Emmys hashtag turn out was great tonight. There was some pretty amazing and creative stuff going on across all the platforms. Some can be seen on IG, but if you wanna see the majority of it, check out twitter #SaveOFMD #75thEmmys

---We have new ways of protesting and advocating for our show, see here for the thread on tumblr (from twitter):---

And to support that @saltpepperbeard was kind enough to put together a wonderful guide on how to Call It Through as a Crew: Alleviating Some Phone Anxiety which as someone who is socially anxious and sometimes verbally vomits on people when on the phone, is AMAZING and thank you so much for doing that to help.

-- > There is also this new thread on some new places to call into. Don't quote me on that being an official thing we should do, I'm sure @renewasacrew and others will have more in the AM, I just wanted to share it so people could follow if they wanted to.

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New Articles!

Our Flag Means Death: Here’s why season three deserves to be aired

Petition to save BBC show with rare Rotten Tomatoes score gets 50,000 signatures

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There's so much more that's happened today-- but I can't write it all down because my brain is couscous.

<---So instead, I'm going to use this last part to gush over you all and your amazing contributions in all your unique ways. The community support the last few days has been SO INCREDIBLY UPLIFTING.-->

I saw (and experienced) people reblogging asks where random followers, anons, and mutuals just reached out and sent love because they could tell people were struggling.

I've seen comments all over the place on Tumblr, IG, Twitter, and Facebook where each and every person is encouraging each other to speak their mind, or complimenting their artwork, encouraging them if they were feeling uncomfortable with things outside their comfort zones, coming up with new and exciting ways to fight back, people reaching out to the cast/crew just to say hi and remind them we love them.

I've seen Self-Care checkpoints all over, reminding people to drink water, take a break, block your notifications for a while, not engaging in negative behavior.

I've seen people being so nice on instagram posts that the people who were being dicks about all our comments turned around and decided to watch OFMD!

I saw so many people doing new analysis of scenes and characters, and having really deep and friendly discussions that make everyone think in new ways.

I saw people digging through old tumblrs to bring life back to old posts and artwork.

I saw so much NEW artwork, new FICS! New GIFS! So much new art and love!

I could literally go on and on, but I've just...I had to dump this out of my brain otherwise I'd explode. I've just seen so much today that continues to make me so proud of our little safe space ship and so happy to be apart of this community.

You all continue to be the best of the best of humans, and I am so very grateful to get to witness and be apart of it. Rest up lovelies and have a good day / night, wherever you may be. May you dream of sexy middle-aged gay men kissing, or hugging, or whatever else you want them to be getting into.

#ofmd #our flag means death #stede bonnet #gentlebeard #edward teach #renew as a crew #rhys darby #blackbonnet #save our flag means death #save ofmd #ofmd s3 #renew our flag means death #renew ofmd #ofmd daily recap

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strong-with-the-sarcasm · 9 months

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Part 2 - let the world know

“I wish I could let the world know that it’s okay to let the pain show and even though times seem bad, it always rains before the rainbow.” -A Little More by Machine Gun Kelly

Dp x DC: Regent!Jazz AU Vigilante!Jazz AU

Prompt Masterlist

In traditional Fenton luck, shit goes sideways when Jazz wasn’t looking.

The Joker breaks out of Arkham.

Now, Jazz is fully aware of the Clown’s evil-ness and Danny’s trauma with all things Circus thanks to Freakshow has her hackles raised when the spirits of Gotham start screeching in her ear mid-patrol that “Joker is free!”

Like hell the guy would stay that way.

Lady Gotham is anxiously watching the Regent stomp towards Arkham, where the Mad Clown had yet to fully leave the premises into Gotham proper.

Would Jazz kill the Clown?

Many of the Unquiet Dead of Gotham are the staunchest supporters of kill, kill, kill on a good day, but with the Clown?

They seethed, they writhed, they thirsted for their vengeance and with every life taken by the Joker, the number grew.

Jazz hated the thought of death, ironically.

It’s one thing to rule the Dead and Never-born, but to add to the Realms' population by her own hand?

(It wouldn't be the first time.)

Well, Jasmine Nightingale would have to check her morals at the door, because when Lady Gotham begins to hesitantly (then vivaciously) root for you to “please end him, dear” one has to reconsider a few things about themselves.

For instance, how would she avoid becoming the next Joker? It was a hushed confession of the Lady that made Jazz hesitate at the border between Gotham and Arkham-

A dead man's switch would trigger a Joker Venom bomb, infecting those nearby.

Would the gas affect a Liminal?

True, Jazz was very much a living being (she often woke up in a cold sweat with a hand at her neck, heart beating against her fingers), but she was Death-claimed.

Was this how Danny felt as a Halfa? Weighing the living half vs the dead to see which would win out in a fight?

Not for the first time, Jazz found herself thankful that she was only Liminal.

Heart in her throat, Jazz considered her options.

It would be easy to just run him through with her ecto-sword, a gift from her once-mentor Pandora, but she would likely have to fight her way through bats and birds to both get to and away from the Clown.

Jazz could also just ask for aid from Lady Gotham and/or the Unquiet Dead to enshroud her from vigilant eyes as she absconds with Joker to Crime Alley.

(Jazz was sure Red Hood wouldn’t mind if she dropped a dead clown at his feet. He seemed the type to appreciate a job well done.)

(If her heart raced slightly in response to that thought, no it didn’t.)

Despite all her reservations about murder, killing the clown felt like an honor for the Regent.

(Blood had long since been on her hands.)

The morning would bring chaos as the people learned of the Joker's fate, Batman's failure to return him to Arkham, and how someone finally had enough of the black furry's inaction to stop the clown.

Sometimes, inaction is just as bad as action.

(A Fenton who learned that well.)

Jazz, in full Regent armor, mounted the Joker's head at the mouth of her alleyway, the same one that she used as a checkpoint between her apartment and the Park Row graveyard. A grotesque trophy that would be used as a symbol of the Regent's authority to avenge, of her willingness to cross the line of morality.

The Unquiet Dead who owed their demise to the Joker could now pass on and Jazz could call it a night.

That was, until whatever tomorrow brought around to spite the younger Fentons.

Typical.

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[This was more of a short fic rather than the prompt I first started with, but it just came to me. I want to explore some things with events leading up to Danny and Jazz in Gotham, but I'm not sure. I need help to describe Jazz's armor because I have a general idea, but I'm not sure about the details. Ideas?]

[Hopefully I'll be able to put more Regent!Jazz than Vigilante!Jazz, but I also really like Jazz as one. Bet you can't guess the name I use for her as a vigilante!]

#dp x dc #dc x dp crossover #dp x dc au #dpxdc #jazz fenton #Regent!Jazz #Liminal!Jazz #Jazz kills Joker #Sprinkle of Anger Management in there somewhere.#Vigilante!Jazz

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littledata · 30 days

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what are these "best fics youve ever read that barely have any hits" you mentioned? can you give us a top 5 or sonething?

Oh God, you've really shamed me here because I read a LOT of random fics from fandoms I'm not even part of and the stories I was referring to largely come from there.

However, in the interest of practising what I preach, I sat down today and read a bunch of Warrior Nun fics I'd never read before so I could rec you some. To be totally clear, these aren't necessarily going to have "hardly any hits" but are fics that I think could use more love in general.

In no particular order:

I was seeing black and white (and now I'm living in color) by gayestcatra - 1281 words, a beautifully soft fic set in Switzerland with gorgeous description. By the same author I also enjoyed (your life was) my life's best part, an angsty Mary/Shannon exploring Mary's (heartbreaking) grief after Shannon's death.

Cat’s Cradle security checkpoint logs by @jtl07 - 518 words, have I raved enough on tumblr yet about how much I love their writing? No? Oh okay I'll do it again then. JT is one of my favourite writers in the fandom and I love this series of fics they did giving creative looks into the characters - this particular one is the contents of their bags but the whole series is worth checking out (and everything else they write too, obviously).

Lauds by @sisterdivinium - 3152 words, Mother Superion/Jillian Salvius. WE LOVE A RAREPAIR. Gorgeously written fic where you feel the weight of every single action. The author has a TON of fics if you liked this one too.

you're my best friend (in a world we must defend) by @daisychainsandbowties - 3980 words, avatrice and Pokemon. Beatrice's characterisation in this drives me insane. I MUST know more. If you know nothing about pokemon here's your primer: they're funny little guys you catch and make fight, exactly like the Catholic church did to Ava. There, now you've got no excuse not to read it.

Dead People Don't Shiver by waterintheshadows - 2068 words, avatrice soulmate AU set in a morgue FUCK YEAH. This is the kind of shit I live for. Great concept, great execution.

Where The River Bends by @itchyouchyz - 100,750 words, avatrice 1960s midwife AU. Full disclosure - it's 100k - I haven't finished it yet. But I LOVE what I've read so far, tender and lovely. Check the tags for trigger warnings on this one!

keep me in your mirror (but don't take your eyes off the road) by minutetuna - 26,343 words, avatrice season 2 road trip au. It made me feel this precise emotion: hnnnnnnghhhhh. There is a particular style of writing which is just bouncy and pacy and still draws you into every single emotion and this author has it in spades. LOVE.

This was so much fun! If anyone else wants to hit me up with some recs I'd love to hear them - even if (especially if) they're your fics. It's a long weekend, might as well spend it reading fanfiction.

#warrior nun #avatrice #ava silva #sister beatrice #fic recs #i'm also writing fanfiction update is coming i swear #not really a good rec list just a list of my opinions #i wrote this post as I was reading and you can see me getting steadily more excited by all the awesome fics as I go #asks

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onsunnyside · 1 year

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SONSON! please my cravings for daddy jake from checkpoint... phew💦 i keep thinking of how jakey would help his cute bimbo!gf with catching up on late work because i know i need help with my late work and the entire time, she's just gawking over his beefy arms andandand!!! 👀 she only gets interested in completing the latework when he mentions he'll give her a reward. buttttt he never ends up giving her the proposed reward since she doesn't finish her assignments—TO BE FAIR CAN YOU BLAME HER? JJ's just so yummy. 🤗 and jakey's all disappointed and says something like: "oh honey, i know you're smarter than this. you're not just a dumb airhead, right? this is so disappointing... I can't even reward my baby for her hard work." djfhhdjfkfk 🥴 daddy!jake>>>>>>>

OMG HE WOULD TOTALLY SAY THAT !! BUT SO WOULD MEAN BF!JAKE AND MEAN DADDY!JAKE 😫😫😫

#allow me to just #checkpoint ask #mean daddy jensen #mean bf jensen #fic ask #wips ask

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criminalskies · 4 months

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Not Alone. Aaron Hotchner x GN!reader

Hi all! so, this is actually a birthday gift to a beautiful friend and mutual who has been struggling recently. I heard him say that Aaron would not be proud of him at this very point in time, and well. I just couldn’t disagree more. So! That sparked this. I hope all of you reading can hear the message I originally intended to shine through the words. <3 And Happy Birthday, Casper!!!!! @softhairedhotch

word count: 3,400.

THIS IS HEAAAAAAVY ON THE HURT AND HEAVY ON THE COMFORT SO PLEASE HEED THE WARNINGS!

This fic contains: graphic depictions of depression/depressing imagery. Brief mentions of alcoholism/alcohol as a coping mechanism. Some allusions to suicidal thoughts and loneliness/bullying. Mentions of reader shaving and accidental cuts (no mentions of where on their body). Mentions of caffeine consumption.* *not tagging due to the heavy themes in this particular fic, I don't want to pressure anyone into reading if they aren't completely comfortable*

Numb. The only way to describe the way you’ve been feeling, or rather, unfeeling lately. What you know to have been weeks, feels like months, could have been years stretching on and on feeling this way. You have, of course had moments of joy and happiness, seemingly outnumbered by those where you’ve felt a kind of misery seeping in through the windows at night, staining your carpet with its seething despair. You’ve been trying and trying and trying to avoid it, standing on the furniture as it rises and rises. Now you must be clinging to your raised curtain like a cat, trying still to escape the dreary fog.

Of course, you wake up every morning, noticing there is no stain at all. The sunny daylight bleaches every fiber in sight and washes away all your signs of last night’s struggle. You turn off your blaring alarm, wipe a restless sleep from your eyes and have to get on with your day. Every. Damn. Day. You throw on your uniform and you begin the endless trudge to Quantico. You can’t help but look around on your long commute, wondering if every other train passenger feels the same way you do. You see the same faces appearing time and time again, expressionless on their way to their same mind numbing 9 to 5. But surely, not everybody feels this weighed down. Not everybody feels like their boots are packed with lead and every step is in the wrong direction. They can’t all have been pushed to their last limit, violating every rule they set for themselves because they just can’t deny themselves a moment’s pleasure. A moment’s reprieve in a world that is otherwise frankly draining.

Looking around, you note the absence of a particular man you’ve labelled Hat Guy. Until two days ago, you saw this man every morning on the same commute. He’ll often share a row with Newspaper Dude and sit in their comfortable silence. They never greet each other, though. In fact, you wonder if any of these people find the same brimming sense of familiarity and calm that you feel seeing the same faces each day. Actually, do any of them even know you? Would they notice if you stopped riding this train? If you were here every day for the past who knows how many months and then you weren’t?

Luckily, that crisis is cut off by the shrill sound of the doors grating open, you’re finally at your stop. You pick up your daily energy drink from the corner store before beginning your short hike to Quantico’s FBI Headquarters. Greeting the guards at the security checkpoint, you’re predictably asked to remove your bag and belt, putting your drink aside while you make your way through the scanners. The metal alarm sounds as you rush to explain to the guards you have a plate in your arm from an injury as a child. The guards seem equally surprised by this every day. Every day the same. You’re starting to wonder if you’re actually living the plot of groundhog day as the younger, more by-the-books guard picks up the metal detector wand, waving it over your body ‘Just to be sure’. You narrowly avoid telling him, like every single morning. that you’re quite literally one of a few people entering this building without a gun on your hip. There are about a thousand armed agents he should be more concerned with than you.

You take the elevator up to the sixth floor, barely needing to glance ahead of you to know the path towards the BAU doors like the back of your hand. You push through the doors, the ever predictable Dr Reid being the first to turn and notice your figure trudging past his desk.

“Morning.” He offers you a tight lipped smile as you note that he’s never even greeted you by name. If he didn’t have an eidetic memory you’d be convinced he didn’t know it.

“Morning, Reid.” You offer him a similarly forced little smile as you trudge by the other familiar faces of your coworkers, all too absorbed in their work or in quite literally anything more interesting than you, you suppose. You set down your things with a sigh, shedding your jacket over the chair and looking over to see your three fellow evidence technicians deep in conversation, all sat around your ex-partner’s desk, laughing about how much they enjoyed going out for karaoke with the team’s field agents last night. None of them seem to notice your presence as you wake your computer and start rummaging through your desk drawers for your notepad, yesterday’s nearly finished evidence logs, pens and a calculator.

One of your peers laughs so hard at a joke the infamous Derek Morgan made that she tips backwards, her hand flying out to catch her as it collides with the cold metal of your energy drink, spilling it all over your desk. The fizzy liquid quickly soaks into the loose pages of your entire week’s work as you just watch the can gulp more and more sticky drink over your things. You raise your hands to your head, taking a moment to breathe and tell yourself that you can redo the work. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Things can be replaced. It’s just useless. Seriously, what’s the point of trying anyway if everything is just ruined in the end? This is always the way it goes. You feel before you see the now empty can picked up and placed gently into the wastebasket by your desk, a long set of legs planting two shiny soles beside your chair as a throat clears, loudly beside you.

The room comes to a grinding halt, your coworkers piling off the desks around yours, clambering to their feet to face their very unimpressed boss.

“Agent Summers.” You hear a cold but familiar tone directed at the particular ass which collided with your morning caffeine.

“Yes? Um, sir.” She stutters, clearly surprised to be greeted at 9:02 sharp with such a directed reprimand.

“Clean this mess up, please. This is furniture, not a playground. We don’t go swinging beverages over important documents. Although, I expect since you and your colleagues were meeting in your paid hours, you guys can come up with some plan to make up for this lost work? I trust you can make out which documents you just carelessly ruined on your own?”

“U-Um, yes, sir. I’m sure we can, We can fix these-” She began peeling the dripping messes of paper off the desk as Agent Hotchner carefully wheeled your chair back just out of the splash zone.

“Good. And don’t let this happen again.” He gave one last icy stare to the group of fools you once called friends as he carefully moved a hand to your shoulder. He bent down closer to you as his tone turned to one of delicate care. “Come with me.” He offered you a very neutral, soft expression as you pulled yourself to your feet, willing to just move one in front of the other, like always, and stay calm. Whatever he’s about to hit you with, you probably deserve it.

It’s worth noting that you and Agent Hotchner had been in a sort of dance for months now, both of you had clearly been harbouring feelings for one another but each time one of you took a small step forwards, the other was nearly sent flying back. It was torture. His unwillingness to just be seen as even a little bit unprofessional even once in his life made it impossible to read him as anything other than neutral, if not even a little off-put by your continued presence in his life. Your building anxiety over his indeterminable feelings for you eventually led to the mounds of dead weight you’re now forced to carry with you day to day. The notion you weren’t enough for him to risk his reputation for and the nagging feeling that he only ever did what was right or polite of him to do towards you, and no feelings ever really existed for you continues to burn your throat where your loving words had once died trying to work their way to him. In any case, you’ve been actively avoiding him ever since your strong feelings of regret towards him began following you around like a bad smell.

You follow him up the stairs to his office where his blinds are already drawn, his hand resting on the door as he allows you in before shutting it behind you. You walk towards the chairs opposite his desk, ready to be fired honestly for someone finally noticing your sluggish and lazy work ethic these past few months, only to be stopped in your tracks.

“Not there. Over here, please.” You turn and see Aaron gesturing to the small couch by the window. You take a seat, pointedly staring at your now stained work pants as you feel Hotch lower himself onto the couch next to you. You sit for a moment, hand fiddling with the seam of your pants at your side while you await your doomed fate.

“Y/N. Please, try to look at me when I say this.” Your head turns towards the more seasoned agent, but your eyes stay glued on your reflection in his overpolished shoes. “I’m worried about you.” You’re caught off guard by this, fully expecting the reprimand of the century for your lackluster job performance. You turn to him fully now, a frown pulling at your features as you try to think of what to say next.

“You mean… like, worried about my job performance, or?” He doesn’t care. Mister professional, mister perfectly fine can only care about one thing and it’s this unit.

“No. I mean you. Come on, Y/N. You think a seasoned FBI Profiler can’t notice when somebody is clearly struggling?” You resent that he had to say clearly, as if all of your efforts to hide your anguish and your pain have been for nothing, if it’s as clear as day anyway. “I don’t say this just to hurt you. I want to help you. I’ve seen you shrugging off every person who tries getting close to you recently, and I don’t want to let that happen here. I can’t let you push me away.” The gentle tone of Aaron’s voice drifting through the narrow space between the two of you almost moved you to tears. His offer to help you hanging in the air while you took a deep breath, trying to keep the beads in your eyes at bay.

“I don’t know how to fix this, Hotch. Even if I wanted to let you help. Everything I’ve tried has only made this worse. I can’t get out. I come close but then each time I think I have a handle on my senses, I end up sinking further from the surface again.” You hear your boss actually take an audible gulp. His throat is tightening hearing you admit you’ve been struggling this much. The way your voice keeps wavering mid sentence is making his chest feel tight. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep treading water, Aaron. I’m tired. I’m so, so tired. There’s just no end to this.” You bury your head in your hands, only when your palms meet your cheeks do you realise they’re wet with tears you’ve held back for too long. The dam has burst.

“You start by admitting you’re not okay. You start by talking to a friend, or even just someone you can bear, and you admit that one person cannot move this mountain alone. You just did that.” A warm hand lands on your shaking shoulder as you move to sit more upright again, finally turning to look at the kind soul seated next to you. ‘Someone you can bear’ you note that this must be the sentiment aaron thinks he holds in your mind. God you’ve made such a mess of things. “It’s hard. I can’t pretend that reaching the other side of this is easy, or even that it’s fast… or linear. There are a dozen ups and downs and it’s so so slow going, but one day, you look up and it dawns on you that you haven’t been carrying such a weight around for a while. You realise it’s lifted. Little by little, without you even knowing, it got better… It does get better, Y/N. It did for me, at least.”

You face the older man fully now, searching those deep, soulful eyes of his for the slightest hint that he’s lying. That he’s making this up just so you won’t stop treading water.

“And I was like you. I won’t lie. I thought I was handling it, and I was handling it, and even as I lost my handle on it, I refused to let people in. To let them even see how bad things were. I couldn’t face my own employees knowing they’d seen me so weak or so vulnerable. I thought they’d all be disappointed to learn their unshakeable unbreakable boss was exactly as terrified and shattered as a person can be. But, you start with a conversation, and then you start changing the way you talk to yourself. The way you treat yourself. If we treated ourselves half as well as we’re willing to treat other people, I really think we’d live an awful lot longer. Fuller lives, too. But, I digress. I just wanted to say that I’m in no way disappointed in you. In fact I’m proud of you. Every day, no matter how bad you’ve been feeling, you have walked through that door and you have tried, even for a second, greeting this unit with a smile. Every day you’ve tried. Even if there was a whiff of alcohol on your breath from the long night before, or if you had to take home half your work for the day, trying to complete a respectable amount even though your brain is so clouded with shit that you can’t even find the lead end of a pencil. Even the mornings you’ve come in with fresh nicks and cuts from shaving yourself with shaking hands. I have been proud of you. You’ve never quit trying.”

You swear you must be staring at Aaron like he has three heads by now. He saw everything. He saw right through you, all of your greatest faults and flaws, and he felt… pride? You feel a gasp rip through your chest, your now thick lens of tears in your eyes making it hard to tell if this is a dream, finally, the sweet dreams you’ve been hoping would interrupt the endless cacophony of hurt you’ve felt every night as you tossed and turned in restless sleep. Aaron’s weight shuffles closer to you on the couch as he moves to wrap his arms around you. Seeing your trembling form blubber beside him was beginning to make his chest physically ache as he saw himself in you. He thinks maybe that’s why he’s so inclined to help you. You helped him. The part of his story he didn’t disclose, was that the moment he realised the weight had long since left his shoulders, was the same moment he saw you setting down your things at a desk in the bullpen. Your quirked smile as you bounced from foot to foot, shaking your new colleagues hands had cut through the ashy gray of his known world like a beam of light. He had only then noticed that his back had stopped aching from carrying all of his grief with him.

Right now, he pulls you into him as your fists ball in his neatly pressed shirt in the back, his cupped hand finds the back of your head and he instinctively rocks a little, side to side, his hand smoothing over your mess of hair so gently. The two of you feel yourselves drifting slowly apart from the flow of time as you sit there, heart to heart. All of your months of stress and heartache and dread finally move away from the forefront of your mind, drawn to the back for once, out of the spotlight. You can’t help but wonder if Aaron’s hand is a magnet for negative thoughts, but surely that is a thing of fiction. His smoothing motions over your slowing mind sure are dulling the terror and sadness that usually run rampant through your every synapse, though. Your mind feels almost clear when you pull back from Aaron, sniffling and removing your hands from his now very wrinkled, tear stained shirt as his arms loosen their hold around you.

“I’m sorry, I-”

“Don’t be. You are more important to me. Okay?”

“Okay… then can I at least apologise for being such an ass every time you tried asking me out?” You look at the wonderful, sensitive, caring man before you and cross your every finger, toe and hair follicle that he’ll let you express your regret for the way you acted towards him. He clearly doesn’t deserve to be treated so hot and cold.

“Pfft, only if you let me apologise for your probable whiplash the morning I scolded you for trying to take everyone’s coffee orders in a classified briefing right after I’d told you I had feelings for you the night before. I think I was trying to appear impartial to you but I very, very badly overcompensated and swung the other way towards disdain. If anyone should apologise for you not meeting me on the roof for dinner, it’s me. That was my own doing.”

“Wait, that was you going for impartial? You threatened to charge me with Unauthorised Disclosure if you saw me even blink at Morgan’s open casefile again.” Now it’s Hotch’s turn to bring his hands to his face and groan.

“God. Maybe impartial isn’t my strong suit. Actually, maybe dating isn’t my strong suit. But, dating or not, I really want to make sure you have someone in your corner for this. Even if you’d rather that’s Garcia, or, or Rossi. I just need to know you’re not alone. That you know you’re far from alone.”

“I think you’re about the only person who’s been able to draw me out of my own head in months, Aaron. I really think you’re the best person for me to turn to here. Besides, it sounds like however far you’ve come since you were, um, treading water, you could maybe use somebody in your corner too. I’d like to do that for you.” You only notice now that the other agent had let go of you completely when he relented his role to the other agents in the unit. You make the move this time to be the one to put a warm hand on Aaron’s shoulder. Letting him know he’s also not alone. “Deal?” You offer your spare hand for him to shake. You think for a moment you catch sight of the stone-faced agent’s chin wobbling as he steadies himself in your grasp and moves to hold your hand, not shaking it. Interlacing both of your fingers between your laps where your bodies are exchanging the same warmth.

“Deal” He offers you a shaky smile, letting a moment pass before he turns, checking the blinds are still closed and that time isn’t really at a standstill since you two fused with this couch. “Now, let me try look up what can get Mango Loco Monster out of cotton workpants.” He stands, moving to his desk too swiftly to peel open his laptop. You don’t miss the moment where he brings a knuckle up to his eye, wiping a stray tear onto his own pants as he rounds the desk.

In that moment, you decide that you don’t particularly care if none of the other commuters, none of the other evidence technicians or even the field agents know you exist or notice your absence. You know now more than ever that you’re not nearly as alone as you thought you were. Once Aaron Hotchner is in your corner, he’s immovable. Destined to remind you that you’re worthy of love and of pride, even in your darkest moments. And you, in his.

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 4 months

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Napoleonville [Chapter 2: The Jailhouse]

Series Summary: The year is 1988. The town is Napoleonville, Louisiana. You are a small business owner in need of some stress relief. Aemond is a stranger with a taste for domination. But as his secrets are revealed, this casual arrangement becomes something more volatile than either of you could have ever imagined.

Chapter Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), dom/sub dynamics, historical topics including war and discrimination, smoking, blasphemy, kids, parenthood, alcoholism, y'all know exactly who is in jail come on now, Pizza Hut, a wild ex-husband appears!

Word Count: 7k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @marvelescvpe @toodlesxcuddles @era127 @at-a-rax-ia @0eessirk8 @arcielee @dd122004dd @humanpurposes @taredhunter @tinykryptonitewerewolf @partnerincrime0 @eltherevir @persephonerinyes @namelesslosers @burningcoffeetimetravel-fics @daenysx @gemini-mama @chattylurker @moonlightfoxx @huramuna @britt-mf @myspotofcraziness @padfooteyes @aemonddtargaryen @trifoliumviridi @joliettes @darkenchantress @florent1s @babyblue711 @minttea07 @libroparaiso @bluerskiees

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Amir is sitting at the kitchen table and icing peach cobbler cupcakes; he has a single white flower from a dogwood tree poked through one of his cornrows. He wears a short sleeve button-up shirt with a kaleidoscopic geometric pattern, high-waisted khaki shorts, and eyeglasses with large rectangular, tortoiseshell frames. He has one leg crossed over the other and is kicking it absentmindedly as he works, a habit he’s had since long before you met him in your 9th grade English class. The microwave is humming. Walk This Way is blaring from the little pink boombox.

“Ho, I mean it this time, I gotta get the hell out of this town.” Amir uses a fork to place a small peach wedge—sauteed in butter, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla—atop the swirl of buttercream frosting, then sprinkles the cupcake with cinnamon before moving on to the next. “Guess what some inbred neanderthal swamp creature did last night. They busted a window out of my car again.”

“I told you to take that thing off it.” Amir has a homemade bumper sticker on his Ford Escort that reads, in holographic rainbow cursive: Fuck Ronald Reagan (not literally)!

“That war criminal can let 50,000 people die of AIDS but I belong on America’s Most Wanted for exercising my First Amendment rights?”

“I know you’re not wrong. You know you’re not wrong. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“To be afraid is to behave as if the truth were not true. Bayard Rustin said that.”

“And I’m sure he was a very smart man, but he didn’t have to live in Napoleonville.” The microwave beeps, and you remove the sweet potato inside with an oven mitt and place it on the counter alongside the others. This is a trick you’ve learned: they’re so much easier to peel and slice once they’ve been microwaved a bit, thirty seconds for a small potato, one minute for a larger one. “You want me to ask Willis to do a stakeout or something?”

“He might be the one committing vandalism.”

You frown down at the sweet potatoes as you peel them over the cutting board and toss the skins into a bowl so Cadi can feed them to the squirrels later. You doubt Willis is responsible, but one of his friends very well could be.

Amir sighs, acquiescing, wistful. “Six months from now I’ll be in San Francisco.” Yes, he will; he’s been saving up for years. The thought of him leaving is practically apocalyptic. You can’t envision a future without Amir. It’s like the very worst version of when you’re a kid and some event—Christmas, your birthday, summer break, prom—is so glimmeringly monumental that whatever life will exist beyond it is incomprehensible, a haze of other people’s dreams and warnings. Surely you won’t exist in that timeline; surely you will dissolve away once that fateful checkpoint is reached and become nothing but sun and sand.

You don’t tell Amir any of this. You don’t want to make him feel guilty. Instead you tease: “You sure you don’t want to stay and get a job on one of those shiny new oil rigs?”

He laughs as he pipes buttercream frosting onto the last peach cobbler cupcake. His artistic talents far surpass yours, but you bring the baking techniques and recipe ideas. Still, you have always split the bakery profits—however meager they might be—equally. “Yes, how could I possibly pass up the opportunity to lose half my skin in an explosion caused by company negligence? Or inhale toxic fumes, or have my limbs ripped off, or fracture my skull? Or fall off a platform in the middle of the night and be eaten by a gator before anyone bothers to fish me out? I will surely regret all my life choices when I’m lying on the beach in Pacifica next to my new boyfriend who looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

The front door opens. It’s Mr. Fontenot, the town pharmacist. You call out: “Hi there! Come right on in! We’ve got your cake ready. Blue velvet with marshmallow cream and topped with candied blueberries. We read up on how to make them just for you. So thank you kindly for the learning opportunity.”

Since you’re wrist-deep in sweet potatoes, Amir leaps up to retrieve the box. He opens it so Mr. Fontenot can inspect his order. “When you cut into it, you’ll see that it’s a dark royal blue on the inside. Cookie Monster blue, not robin egg blue, just like you wanted.”

“Will ya look at that,” Mr. Fontenot says, beaming down at the cake. Written across the marshmallow cream in blue icing is (in Amir’s most elegant script): Happy 8th Birthday, Corey! “My grandson is going to get such a kick out of a blue cake.”

“He sure is,” Amir agrees. “Now can I talk you into anything else for the party? Some peach cobbler cupcakes, perhaps? Praline brownies? A brown sugar pie? Homemade Fruity Pebbles Rice Krispie Treats? Kids love them…!”

You say once Mr. Fontenot has gone: “He works for the company, you know.”

“Huh? Who?”

“Aemond. He works for Jade Dragon. He’s an engineer.”

“Ho, you are obsessed with that man!” Amir says. “You’ve brought him up, like, four times already!”

“Yeah,” you confess, a humiliation that is futile to deny. Parts of you are still sore from what he did to you; other places are aching for more.

“And you didn’t even get to see the dick?!”

You shake your head as you cut the peeled sweet potatoes into haphazard chunks. Amir puts a pot of water on the stove so you can boil them until they’re soft enough to mash into filling for a sweet potato pie. “Didn’t see it, didn’t touch it…”

“Didn’t lick it, didn’t suck it?”

“Okay, that’s enough, Dr. Seuss. But no.”

“Secret dick, scar on his face, missing an eye…” Amir mutters. “Maybe he’s a veteran who lost his andouille in combat! Yes! That’s it! He was there when we invaded Lebanon or Grenada or Libya and now he’s horribly disfigured and can’t bear the prospect of your inevitable horror and rejection!”

“His andouille is definitely unchopped. I could…uh…tell. Through his jeans.”

Amir closes his eyes and presses his palms together. “Sweet baby Jesus, please send me a gainfully employed big-dicked blonde man too.” He looks at you again. “But he really wouldn’t use it?!”

“Aemond said he wanted me to trust him first.”

“Maybe he doesn’t trust you. Maybe he thinks you might be on the prowl for Shotgun Wedding #2. You should tell him he’s got nothing to worry about in that department. You’ve been on the pill practically since Cadi was born.”

You murmur: “And I will be forever.”

“I know,” Amir says gently, pausing to squeeze your shoulder before taking the sweet potato hunks you’ve sliced already and dropping them in the boiling water. “So! When are you going to call him?”

You startle. “I can’t call him! I called him the first time. Now it’s his turn to call me. I can’t call him again, that would be desperate. Right?” Right?!

“Does he even know your number?”

“He knows my name, and he knows about the bakery. The number is publicly listed, he can find me in the phone book.”

Amir groans. “Lord have mercy, just call him! Pick up that pink phone right there beside the refrigerator and press those cute little buttons and say, loud and proud: Come on over here, big boy, I want to see that traumatized war veteran dick.”

The phone rings. You trip over your own feet as you lunge for it.

Amir snickers. “Pathetic!” He takes over slicing the rest of the sweet potatoes.

“Hello?!”

You hear a deep, slothful drawl; Willis’ family have been bayou people for longer than the United States has been a country. “Hey sugar, you want to bring your favorite ex-husband some dessert?”

You sigh. “Hi, Willis.” From across the kitchen, Amir makes retching noises.

“So what’d ya say? I just had a late lunch and got to thinkin’ of you. Gave me a sweet tooth.”

“Um, I don’t know, we’re really busy right now.” Amir snorts; you’ve had three customers in the last hour. There’s usually a rush first thing each morning and then again around closing time.

“Ya ain’t got time for me? Well, alrighty then. Maybe I won’t have time for you when you need a wild hog chased off your porch or a flat tire changed out there on Route 401.”

This is the eternal dilemma, the balance you wrestle with like a boat in a storm: not making him angry, not letting him get too close. You and Willis don’t have a formal agreement for custody or child support. You’ve worked it out yourselves, and he typically doesn’t make it too difficult. You’ve always felt that appeasement is the wisest course of action. As the elected sheriff of Assumption Parish, Willis Boudreaux is responsible for all criminal investigations, court proceedings, and tax collecting. Even when he was just a deputy, he had plenty of friends at the little white courthouse in the heart of downtown Napoleonville. You’re better off working with him than against him. “Okay, fine, I guess I have a few minutes. What do you want?”

“Why don’t you make a professional recommendation?”

You glance irritably at the kitchen table. “We have brown sugar pie, peach cobbler cupcakes, praline brownies, lemon blueberry cookies, uh, I’ve got half a strawberries and cream cake left in the fridge…”

“Definitely the cake,” Willis says. “I love strawberries. Remember how you fed them to me on the beach when we went to Grand Isle?”

That was…what, eight years ago? Ugh. “Barely.” You like when Willis has a girlfriend; then he mostly leaves you alone. Tragically, he and his most recent fiancé Colleen broke up last month. “I’ll drive the cake over now.” You slam the phone receiver into the base before Willis can respond.

“Let’s kill him,” Amir says.

You laugh. “I’ll consider it.”

“We can feed him to that gator out in the tree row.”

You grab a flat white bakery box off the pile, fold it open, and fetch what remains of the strawberries and cream cake from the refrigerator. “You’ll get that sweet potato pie in the oven if I’m gone for a half hour?”

“Yup. Then I’ll start working on the brown butter oatmeal raisin cookies. Is the recipe…? Oh, I see it, it’s right here on the counter. Got it. Have fun with your awful ex-husband. You sure you don’t want to add a little something special to that cake? Windex? Rat poison? He sure looks like a rodent to me. That nose? Those eyebrows?!”

“Amir, he’s just French.”

“He should be exiled to Saint Helena.”

“I’m going to have to put my own ad in the Bayou Journal,” you say, smiling sadly. “Who’s going to run the shop with me when you’re in San Francisco?”

Amir winks. “Maybe your traumatized, half-blind, hung-like-a-horse war veteran knows how to bake.”

Outside, the gator is sunning herself by the gravel driveway. She’s only about five feet long and dozing with her muddy green eyes closed, jagged upper teeth on display, missing toes here and there, back scarred by boat motors. It’s 90 degrees and sunny, warmth flooding over your bare legs and arms: denim shorts, lime green tank top. You can hear cicadas, doves, chickadees, starlings, goldfinches, ospreys, the benign droning of bumble bees. You throw the white box in the passenger seat and start your Chevy Celebrity, yellow paint, wood paneling, brown velour upholstery. You crank down the windows—the air conditioning is broken, that’s one reason why Willis’ brother was willing to sell it to you so cheap—and turn on the radio: 867-5309 by Tommy Tutone. You pull out onto Route 401, headed northeast towards downtown Napoleonville.

You pass fields of sugarcane and soybeans, shacks and trailers, grass green like emeralds. The hot mid-May air, humid and stagnant, blows through your hair. If the ride was any longer than ten minutes, you’d have needed a cooler for the cake. You find a parking spot on the street outside the Assumption Parish Sheriff’s Office and grab the box containing half a strawberries and cream cake, probably just starting to get melty around the edges. Deputy Melancon is on his way out when you arrive. He holds the glass door open for you.

“Comment ca va, cherie? Is that for me? I hope so!”

“I think your boss would chew your arm off if you tried to get between him and this cake.”

Deputy Melancon guffaws as he ambles towards his police car. “Have fun in there! It’s a zoo today.”

“What…?” But now you can hear the noise coming from inside the building: howling, banging, Willis telling someone to sit down and shut up, his Cajun drawl lethargic and calm. Willis is not a yeller, and you’ve never witness him raise his hands in violence. The being a cop part of his job is the aspect he enjoys the least. But sitting around jawing with his deputies until long after midnight, regaling them with tales of supposed glory acquired while you were home with a screaming baby, scrubbing floors, fixing dinner, still bleeding eight weeks after birth, waiting—because it was all there was to look forward to—for him to walk through the door and shuffle to the couch and collapse there with an ice-cold can of Bud Light in his fist, dripping condensation down his sinewy forearm? That’s what Willis lives for.

Willis is at his desk and grudgingly plodding through an intake form. His sunglasses have been shoved up into his dark curly hair; his hat—which he loathes wearing—is resting atop a mountain of deserted paperwork. There’s a poster of Heather Locklear on the wall along with a dartboard with a cutout of Tommy Lee in the center. There’s a man in one of the three holding cells that you’ve hardly ever seen used. He has slicked-back blonde hair, an aristocratic wisp of a moustache, an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt and tiny red shorts and thick foam rainbow-patterned flip flops. He’s the person responsible for the ruckus.

“I want my phone call!” the prisoner shouts as he beats his palms against the iron bars. “Hey! Hey, mullet boy! I want my fucking phone call!”

Oddly, the stranger has a British accent. Aemond? you think for a split second. But no; this man couldn’t possibly be related to Aemond. He is short, slouched, soft all over, uncoordinated and uncomposed, pathetic, petulant, innately pitiful. Willis ignores him. He speaks to you instead.

“Bienvenue, sugar. Ya got something sweet for me?”

Obediently—though not entirely willingly—you bring him the white box and set it on his disorganized desk. Willis produces a stack of Styrofoam plates and a Ziploc bag full of plastic eating utensils that he keeps stocked in a drawer specifically for such occasions. He opens the box and sighs euphorically, his eyes on the moist pink cake and layers of whipped cream frosting as if it’s the flesh of a naked woman.

“Hey!” the prisoner shouts, gripping the iron bars and pressing his flushed cheeks flat against them. “Hey! I like cake too!”

“Just what I needed,” Willis tells you, as if the man isn’t there. “Sit down, eat with me.”

“I really don’t have long.”

“Ya got five minutes, don’t you?”

I guess I do. You sit down but don’t take any cake. As Willis cuts himself a slice, you can’t help but watch the man in the holding cell. He stares back at you, a little ashamed, a little defiant, palpably weak. You ask Willis: “What did you book him for?”

“DWI,” Willis says with his mouth full of cake. “Driving While Intoxicated.”

“Huh. You don’t usually pick people up for that.”

Willis points at the prisoner with his fork for emphasis. “This one was very intoxicated.”

The man kicks the bars with his flip flops. “I want my fucking phone call!”

“Ya already used it,” Willis says pragmatically, and nods to something on the floor of the holding cell: an empty, grease-stained Pizza Hut box. The prisoner looks at it, regretful.

“I didn’t know I’d only get one,” he admits. “But also! You ate three slices of my pizza!”

Willis chuckles. “Consider it payin’ your taxes.” Then, to you: “It was tres bien. Meat Lover’s. Ya can’t argue with that.”

“Hey cake lady,” the prisoner says, his prominent eyes weepy, needful, a deep stormy blue. “Can I have a piece? Please? Please? I’m having a rough day here. My flip flops are giving me blisters and your redneck husband committed pizza theft. And I’m in jail.”

“Ex-husband,” you correct him.

“Good for you. Smart cake lady.”

Willis says: “You just settle down and I’ll drive you over to the parish jail as soon as I’m done with my dessert.” He shovels cake into his mouth; he eats like a gator, like a pig.

At last, you cut a portion of strawberries and cream cake—the whipped cream frosting turning thin and runny—and place it on a Styrofoam plate. Then you get up to take it to the prisoner. You have a soft spot for the freaks of the world. You and Amir, you know exactly what it’s like to be freaks.

“Don’t give him no fork or nothing,” Willis says around a mouthful of cake. “I can’t have him tryin’ to kill himself.”

“As if I’d give you the satisfaction, Sasquatch!” the prisoner flings back.

“It’s the Rougarou we got down here, son,” Willis replies, unbothered.

You set the plate on the beige linoleum floor close enough for the prisoner to reach out and drag it to his cell. When you step back, he retrieves the cake and eats it with his bare hands. “Oh, fuck, this is so good!”

You turn to Willis. “Cadi keeps mentioning some horseback riding camp that a bunch of her friends are going to this summer. Can we make that happen?”

“Are you kiddin’ me?! It’s over $300! That’s a new boat!”

“I think it would mean a lot to her.”

“Tell her if she grows her hair back out, maybe she can go next year.” Willis licks pink cake crumbs from his fork. “Why the hell’d she ever get it cut like that?”

You shrug, irritated. “Because she wanted to.”

“Never wears no skirts or dresses, doesn’t care about jewelry, always got dirt on her face…ain’t she gonna want a boyfriend in a few years? Who’s gonna take her out lookin’ like that? Who’s gonna marry her one day?”

“She’s ten years old, Willis.”

“She’s been spending too much time with your little friend, that’s the problem.”

You glare furiously at him, but are interrupted before you can say something unwise. The man in the holding cell has finished his slice of cake. He sucks frosting off his chubby fingers and then yanks on the iron bars in vain. “I gotta go home! I gotta feed my ferret!”

“Guess ya should have thought about that before driving 70 miles per hour in a school zone, Mr.…” Willis glances at the intake form to refresh his memory. “Targaryen. What the heck is that, Italian? Polish? It ain’t French, that’s for sure.”

“It’s Greek, you dumb hick.”

Willis jabs his plastic fork at him. “You oughta watch that, son, or you’ll catch yourself a nasty case of what the liberals call police brutality.”

“He’s a Targaryen?” you ask, stunned. The man in the cell peers back at you with large, ever-wounded, ocean-blue eyes, glassy but not entirely unintelligent.

“So what?” Willis says.

“Willis, those are the oil people. Jade Dragon, the new rigs on Lake Verret? The Targaryens own that company.”

“Well I’ll be damned!” he marvels. “Really? This bon a rien right here, his family are a bunch of millionaires?”

“Yes. And you should probably let him make another phone call.”

“Yeah!” the prisoner says excitedly. “Listen to the cake lady!”

“Alright, alright,” Willis grumbles. “Guess I don’t need no legal trouble.” He picks up the phone off his desk and walks it to the holding cell; the cord stretches just far enough. “Make your damn phone call, gros couillion.”

Mr. Targaryen snatches up the receiver, punches some buttons, and listens as it rings. “Hi. Okay, don’t yell at me. Here’s the deal. I’m at the Assumption Parish Sheriff’s Office and I need you to pick me up. Wait, I said don’t yell at me! Stop yelling!!”

“I really need to get back to the bakery,” you tell Willis as you make for the door. “I’ll see you around, okay—?”

“Hey, sugar.” You stop and wait for him to finish. He’s considering you in that way he does sometimes: mild, thoughtful, vaguely sad, how’d we end up like this? He should know, you’ve told him a hundred times, but that doesn’t mean he understands. “I’m supposed to be gettin’ a new deputy next week. When he shows, I’ll send him down your way, recruit ya another customer. Charge him a little extra if you want. He won’t know no better.”

“Thanks, Willis,” you say, and you mean it. Then you step outside into sun glare and the shrieking of cicadas.

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s almost dinnertime when the phone rings. You’re heating up the turtle soup that Amir brought over earlier, stirring the pot as the sky outside turns from a crystalline blue—just like Aemond’s eye—to rust and amber and fool’s gold, as the twilight air breathes into the room warm and ancient. There’s a plump nutria nibbling on grass at the edge of the backyard. Wham’s Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go pipes from the boombox. At first you’re too startled to race for the phone—too terrified that it won’t be Aemond, too afraid to get your hopes up—and you hesitate just long enough for Cadi to answer instead.

“Hello?” she says, and then: “Yeah, school was good.”

Everything sinks in you, heart, spirit, the sweltering pressure of blood ebbing in your veins. Oh. It’s Willis.

Cadi continues chatting away obliviously. “Uh huh. Not really. We learned about robber barons and cannons of Italy. Yeah, captains of industry, that’s what I meant. Uh huh. Yup. It was okay, I guess. Yeah. Today it was pizza, but it’s always shaped like a rectangle. Exactly, no crust. It’s weird. Pepperoni. I always sit with Michelle and Erica. Erica has this totally tubular book about horses she showed us. Yup. I like the Appaloosas the most. Uh huh. Okay, I will. Yup. Bye.” Then she hands you the phone. “For you,” she says, then resumes setting the counter: cups, bowls, spoons, folded Bounty paper towels, dinner for two. You never eat at the kitchen table. The table is reserved for business.

You raise the pink phone receiver to your ear with some uncertainty. What does he want now? “Willis?”

“No,” Aemond says, amused. “Though we’ve been to some of the same places.”

You try not to let the smile fill up your face. You fail. “You were asking Cadi about her day?”

“Evidently.” You don’t know what this means; you don’t ask. “When are you free?”

“I usually have the house to myself on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.” It’s currently Monday.

“Great. I’ll see you tomorrow. What time?”

“I should be done in the bakery at around 5:00.”

“I’ll be there at 5:01.” Then Aemond hangs up. So do you, your skull suddenly abloom like springtime, colors and promise and warmth. He’s going to be here in less than 24 hours. I really am going to see him again.

You turn towards the counter. “Cadi, what are robber barons?”

“Rich people who are mean to their workers to get as much money as possible. They don’t care about others. They just want more and more and more. They’re very greedy and are never satisfied.”

“So like the Rockefellers and Standard Oil,” you say, thinking back to your high school American History class. It feels like a lifetime ago, it feels like trying to catch lightning bugs in your bare hands.

“Yeah.” Cadi pours herself a cup of Tang. She’s wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt and green corduroy pants; her father would not approve. “Or Jade Dragon Energy.”

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s Tuesday, 5:03 p.m., rattling cicadas and golden light like the lit coil of a stove burner. You’re still scrubbing dishes, and Amir is icing the last of the orange creamsicle cupcakes for the next morning. Aemond opens the unlocked front door and strides purposefully into the kitchen: ripped jeans, red t-shirt, Converses to match, Marlboro jacket. He is carrying a neon teal duffle bag that he drops on the sloping wooden floor where the living room meets the kitchen. He is momentarily taken aback when he sees Amir, then recalls what you told him about your friend who helps run the bakery. Aemond pulls out one of the kitchen table chairs and sits. He lifts the glass lid from a cake plate, takes the last peach cobbler cupcake for himself, makes unflinching eye contact with you as he licks the frosting off it with long, slow, sensual drags of his tongue.

Amir says: “Hey Scarface, that’s $1.”

“Amir!” you scold, mortified. But Aemond doesn’t seem offended. He smirks, extracts his black leather wallet from the pocket his jeans, and fishes out four singles. He slides them across the table.

Amir sighs. “This bitch can’t even count.”

“I’m sure he can count,” you say, smiling. “He’s an engineer.”

“He’s mouth-fucking this cupcake right in front of me, he’s clearly unstable.”

Aemond looks to you. His voice is low, imposing. “I need to know what your limits are.”

“Oh my God!” Amir squeaks, bent over the table and icing as quickly as he can.

“Okay,” you tell Aemond. You rinse the pearlescent soap bubbles from your hands, wrists, forearms. Then you step out from behind the counter and watch him, remember him, imagine what will happen next.

He gives the peach cobbler cupcake another lap. Buttercream frosting coats his mischieviously curled lips and then is swiftly licked away. “Can I spank you?”

“Yes.”

Amir mutters to himself: “Grandma is never going to believe this.”

“Can I tie you up?”

“Yes.”

“Can I bite you hard enough to leave bruises?”

You pause. “Only places that will be covered by my clothes.”

“And what should you say if you ever don’t like what I’m doing?”

“I just tell you to stop.”

“Exactly.” Aemond grins. His right eye skates from your face to your chest to your hips to your thighs to your ankles, drinking you down like the earth swallows rain, like the vines and cypress trees and Sanish moss of the bayou thieve sunlight and never give it back. His left eye doesn’t move at all, though this is not something you would notice if you didn’t know to look for it. “Good girl.”

“Done!” Amir announces triumphantly, completing the swirl of frosting on the final orange creamsicle cupcake.

“Can I pull your hair?” Aemond asks you.

“Yeah, I think so. Not hard enough to yank it out though.”

Aemond scoffs. “Of course not. I don’t actually want to hurt you. That’s what some doms are after, but not me. Not here, not with you. You don’t want real pain, do you…?”

“No, definitely not,” you say, relieved.

“Brilliant. Then we’re on the same page.”

Amir could leave, but he doesn’t. His eyes dart between you and Aemond from behind his large rectangular glasses, fascinated, scandalized, too astonished to move.

Aemond continues: “Birth control?”

“I’m on the pill and have been for years. I can show you the pack if you don’t believe me.”

“I believe you. I saw them in your bathroom last time I was here. I’m in the practice of using condoms regardless.” He tilts his head impishly. “Can I fuck your ass?”

“Um.” You hesitate. This is uncharted territory, though you cannot say that you are entirely unintrigued. “Maybe one day.”

“Noted. Some people find the sensation, the taboo, the fullness…quite pleasurable.”

“Do you?” Amir asks flirtatiously.

Aemond gives him a lazy, ludicrously charming smile. “Well I’ve never been on the receiving end, but I’m game to give it a try if you are.”

Amir bursts out laughing, then says to you: “He’s alright. He can commit abominable sins with you, I guess.” He stands and shakes Aemond’s hand. “Nice to meet you. Kind of.” Then he saunters off through the living room and out the front door. After a moment, you and Aemond listen to his blue Ford Escort rumble to life and then the crunching of gravel as it rolls out of the driveway. From the boombox drifts Just What I Needed by The Cars.

Aemond licks the last of the frosting from the peach cobbler cupcake and says: “Now you’re going to be the cupcake.” He crosses the kitchen, kneels down in front of you, roughly yanks down your denim shorts. He presses his face to your royal blue satin panties—hastily purchased this morning while Amir watched the shop and changed into just one hour ago in anticipation of Aemond’s arrival—and inhales deeply, desperately, like a drowning man gasping for air. Then, through the sheer fabric, he begins to tease you: nudges of his nose, nibbles of his lips.

Your fingers tangle in his short blonde hair. Blonde like the drunk man in the holding cell, you think randomly. “Aemond, why didn’t you want me last time?”

“I wanted you. I wanted you then and I want you now.”

“But I disappointed you. You didn’t finish.”

“Oh, I came,” he purrs. “Went home, got in the shower, thought of you. It didn’t take long. I would have disappointed you terribly. Woke up in the middle of the night thinking of you. Tried to miraculously get some work done yesterday while thinking of you. Crawled out of bed this morning thinking of you. Are you noticing a theme?”

You smile as his tongue presses forcefully against the satin. “I might be.”

“How many times in your life has a man treated his orgasm as essential and your own as an afterthought, if he considered it at all?”

Oh God. That’s the fucking truth. “A lot more than once.”

“So consider what we did on Sunday as one little notch in the other column. Just restoring a bit of much-needed balance to the universe.” He hooks his thumbs under your panties and tugs them off. “Open your thighs for me,” he orders as he pushes them apart with his palms: large, smooth, artful hands. You brace your own hands against the kitchen counter as he buries his face between your legs, not lapping in a tentative, exploratory sort of way but feasting on you, drowning in you, lips and tongue and then fingers that skate up the downy inside of your thigh to taunt you, enter you, fuck you expertly yet leave you wanting more of him, all of him. Your nerves are on fire, your blood is simmering. Outside the birds of prey are emerging from their liars and battle-scarred gators stalk boldly through the green prehistoric wildness of the Deep South.

What happened to his eye? you think through the lust-pink haze, knowing you cannot ask him. Aemond respects your rules. You must abide by his as well. How was he injured so gravely? Who hurt him? Did they atone for their misdeeds, did they pay the cost?

Suddenly, Aemond stands and pulls you against him by your waist, rips your yellow tank top over your head and unhooks your bra, kisses you fiercely. His mouth is dripping with you, clean mineral longing; his right eye is gleaming, famished, not just lustful but half-mad. No one else exists. No one ever has or ever will. “Go to the bed and wait for me there.”

“No.”

He spanks you once with his open palm; the sound is sharp and exquisite. “Go.” And this time you obey, counting the seconds in the dusk-lit splinter of time before he joins you.

In Aemond’s duffle bag—among other things, surely—are silk scarves the color of sapphires. First he fastens one over your eyes as a blindfold. Then he ties one around each of your wrists and binds both to the same bedpost, low enough that while your hands are kept up by your head, you still have some room to maneuver on the freshly-laundered, wildflower-patterned duvet. “Not different posts?” you ask Aemond.

“No. Tying your arms far apart like that can cause cramps in your back and your shoulders. It can even make it difficult to breathe. I want you to be comfortable. I want you to be focused entirely on what I’m doing to you.”

You moan as his fingers slip between your legs and circle over the place that makes your muscles yearn and twist and tighten until you feel they might snap, until you can imagine every string of you breaking and dissolving from the prison of flesh into water, air, gravity, the eternal silent progress of time. He bites and sucks at your nipples, flicking his tongue over them, admiring them, praising them, ravenous for them. You are enraptured by the weight of him on top of you. Without your sight, everything else is more noticeable, more real: his warmth, his sweat, his every brush of skin against yours, his smoke and cologne and gasps and sighs, the grinding of his bare cock against your thighs as he makes you ready for him. And you beg for it long before he gives it to you.

“Roll over,” he commands breathlessly, and then guides you: your fingers clutching the scarves that secure your wrists, your elbows propped on the mattress, your back arched and hips angled up towards him, his lips murmuring against your shoulder, your cheek, the side of your throat. He’s telling you so many things, perfect things, delicious things you’ll never hear enough of: how beautiful you are, how badly he wants you, how well you’re doing. There is the sound of Aemond opening a condom wrapper, and a strange sorrow ripples through you. I wish I could have him raw.

One of his hands reaches around to stroke you, keeping you soaked and supple for him. The other begins to guide his cock into your aching, starving wetness. You stretch for him, you accept him eagerly…and then there is resistance. He stills immediately and tries a slightly different angle. Nothing. He could force it, probably, but he won’t. He recedes from you, agonizing emptiness, dire unfulfillment. I’m disappointing him, he’s too big, I’m too tight, too nervous, too inexperienced at being dominated, I can’t please him. You whimper: “Aemond, I’m sorry—”

“No,” he says, more ferocious than any words you’ve ever heard from him. You are not allowed to criticize yourself. You are not allowed to give up so easily. He leans down and whispers into the shell of your ear, his ribs against your spine, his heat entombing you: “Relax. I’m in charge now. I’ll take care of you.”

You want him to. You need him to. His commandment rolls through your blood and bones like a wave, loosening those last vestiges of anxiety, shaking grim psychological heirlooms from the highest shelves. You can surrender yourself completely to Aemond. He is worthy, he is safe, he is euphoria made flesh. His fingertips are still stroking you. He pushes your thighs just a little farther apart and—slowly, cautiously—eases his cock into your throbbing warmth. He hisses in a breath, though he tries not to break character, to show you that he might just be a little bit at your mercy too.

You moan loudly and shamelessly, letting him know you’re alright, more than alright, in ecstasy, in bliss, in torment, on the edge. When Aemond thrusts, he finds a place that’s never been hit so directly or so well. The climax is on you before you are aware of it, one of those swells that rises out of nowhere, capsizes the boat, fades back into the endless blue of the ocean. It jolts through your pelvis, your spine, your skull, and then evaporates like steam from a bathroom mirror. And now Aemond is trying to finish too, but something is off. He tries a few different rhythms, can’t seem to get it right. You think you can feel him beginning to soften. No no no, I can’t leave him unsatisfied again.

You look back, though you cannot see him through the blindfold; instinctively, you want to be closer to him. “What am I doing wrong?”

“Nothing,” Aemond says. “Nothing, nothing, nothing is wrong. You’re perfect. You’re so fucking perfect.” He turns your face so he can kiss you deeply, his tongue in your mouth, swallowing you down, entangled in every way possible. And only then he is able to come: powerfully, trembling, crying out like he’s in the kind of pain that leaves scars for life.

He glides his cock out of you, and you can hear him snap off the condom. Then he unties your blindfold and your wrists. You reach for him, then stop yourself; he reaches for you—a reflex, surely—and then shakes the notion away and collapses beside you on the duvet. You both lie there panting, gazing dizzily up at the long shadows of centuries-old oak trees that cascade across the ceiling, minds drained, bodies spent.

After a moment, Aemond clambers off the bed to grab a lighter and a pack of Marlboro Reds out of his jeans pocket. Then he flops back down next to you, lights a cigarette, takes a deep, slow drag. “So, cupcake,” he says nonchalantly, exhaling smoke, hand shaking. “Where’d you get married?”

You laugh; this is ridiculous. “Why on earth would you want to know that?”

“I want to know things about you. Things other than your tits and your pussy. I mean, those are great. I enjoy them tremendously, and I plan to keep enjoying them. But I also enjoy you.”

You sigh. Aemond waits, puffing on his cigarette. “The parish courthouse.” Plain, boring, economical. “I wanted a wedding at Saint Honoratus, but…”

“Saint…who?”

“The Chapel of Saint Honoratus of Amiens,” you say. “It’s this gorgeous place in a town called Belle River on the other side of Lake Verret. Very small, very old, it’s a historic site or something, they can’t ever knock it down.”

“Why couldn’t you get married there?”

You shrug; how much could the details matter now? Someone needed to organize it, someone needed to decorate, someone needed to pay for food and drinks, someone needed to send out invitations, someone needed to care enough to make it happen, and that someone would have been you, just you, seventeen and broke and bedridden with morning sickness until noon every day. “It just didn’t work out.”

“Sounds like a lot of things didn’t work out for you.”

You raise your eyebrows. Aemond winces.

“Sorry. That was…not the way I meant to express that sentiment.”

You forgive him. You’d forgive him for anything right now, right here, in a bed stained with his sweat and your wetness and the seed you wish he could have spilled inside you. You taunt him: “Should we meet up at your house next time?”

He recoils, horrified. “No. Definitely not.”

“Why? What’s at your house? An abandoned wife and six tall, blonde, prominently-jawed children?”

He chuckles; he has collected himself again. “No. It’s just that…well…I have family in town currently. They’re staying with me while I get set up with the new job and everything. Quite a lot of people. And my family is…unorthodox.”

You wish he would stop using words you don’t know. That’s the hazard of affiliating with a highfalutin petroleum engineer, you suppose. “So they’re strange?”

“That’s a kind word for it.”

“I like strange people. I like you.”

Aemond smirks warily. “You wouldn’t like them. Just trust me on that.” He traces the border of your face with his fingertips, contemplating your secrets, tending his own like a nightscape garden. “Do you ever want to do something…not in your bedroom?”

You grin and he kisses you, nicotine and quelled desire; he can’t help it. You say when you break away: “What, like dinner or flowers or any of the other activities that were very clearly not a part of this arrangement?”

“Arrangements are flexible.”

“Are they?”

“This one is. Increasingly so.”

You ponder his proposition. “There’s this new restaurant I really want to go to. I’ve never been before, but it looks pretty rad in the commercials on tv. It’s up in Gonzales.”

“The same town as your illustrious Kmart engagement. How fortuitous. Pease continue.”

“It’s an Italian place,” you say.

“I love Italian.”

“It’s called Olive Garden.”

Aemond’s mouth falls open. He is bewildered, appalled. His cigarette smolders forgotten in the crook of his fingers. You might as well have told him you wanted to run over puppies with lawnmowers. “You want me to take you to Olive Garden? Seriously?”

You are wounded. “What’s wrong with Olive Garden?”

“Cupcake, Olive Garden is not real Italian food. That’s like saying Taco Bell is Mexican.”

“…Isn’t it?”

“Okay,” he capitulates. He smiles as he smooths your disheveled hair and touches his lips to your forehead. “It’s fine. We’ll go to Olive Garden.”

“Really?” you reply, beaming.

“Really. You’re free Thursday?”

“Unless Willis has to switch nights for some reason, yeah.”

“Then we’ll go Thursday.” Aemond rolls off the bed and finds a mug—Return Of The Jedi, Princess Leia and the Ewoks—left on your dresser to put his cigarette out in. He looks through the screen of your open bedroom window as the sky turns ever-darker, as the moon and stars begin to rise, and he breathes in the verdant, humid, ageless witchcraft of the bayou. “You have no idea what the last few days have been like for me,” Aemond says softly, his bare back turned to you, the ridge of his spine like a road cut through a swamp or a forest or a field of sugarcane. “You have no idea how badly I needed this.”

#aemond targaryen #aemond targaryen imagine #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond x y/n #aemond x you #aemond x reader #aemond targaryen x you

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justagalwhowrites · 7 months

Text

New in Town - Ch. 5: First Fight

Joel tries to figure out where things might have gone wrong. A continuation of New in Town chapters 1-4 found on Tumblr here.

Pairing: Best Friend's Dad!Joel Miller x Female Reader

CW: Angst. Lots of angst. No use of Y/N. Age gap (reader is 35 Joel is 47, not a focus of the fic). Minors DNI, 18+ only

Length: 5.3k

AO3 | First Chapter | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Joel had never had a reason to be happy when Sarah left.

Not that he was happy she was gone. He missed her before she’d even gotten through security at the airport. But this time was different.

Before when Sarah left - when she drove back to college or he took her to the airport - Joel would smile until she was out of sight. Keep on the brave face so she wouldn’t feel bad about leaving. Then, he would trudge back to his truck or back in the house and try to not think about how acutely empty his life felt now that she was gone again. That was the problem when your whole world was your kid. If you raised them right, eventually they leave you.

But now, Sarah leaving had a silver lining: seeing you.

He was getting addicted to you, that much he knew. He’d only spent the night at your place twice now but he still found himself wanting to pull your soft, warm body against him when he went to sleep. When he saw a food truck that looked interesting, you were the first thing he thought of. When he looked for a movie to watch, he wanted to text you to see if you’d seen it, what you thought of it. You were in everything now, some part of his mind always lingering on you, second only to Sarah.

He’d all but raced to your place the night before. The second Sarah had disappeared through the security checkpoint he felt the familiar twinge of sadness, the longing for the time when she was a little girl who would come home from school and babble about whatever subject had caught her mind that week and they would watch a cartoon and he would read to her before she went to sleep. But the fog of loneliness that usually clung to him in the days right after Sarah left wasn’t there. Instead, there was you. You and your sexy little sundress and your collection of movies and your postcards from places you’d lived hanging on your fridge.

Joel still wasn’t sure why you seemed to be as desperate for him as he was for you. The way you pulled him into your apartment and all but ripped his clothes off, the way you rode his cock and moaned his name didn’t make any sense to him. But you did. And then you sat across from him at a picnic table outside some hole in the wall pizza place he’d taken you to and laughed so hard at something stupid he said that you almost fell off the faded wooden bench. You were the most beautiful woman Joel had ever been with and there you were, wanting to be with him, too.

He picked up donuts for the crew on his way to the job site Thursday morning. He was in such a good mood, he couldn’t help it. He’d woken up next to you that day and was going to fall asleep next to you that night. It was going to be a good fucking day.

“The hell got into you?” Tommy asked when he got to the site later that morning.

“What d’you mean?” Joel frowned, leaning against the truck bed next to Tommy.

“You look…” Tommy gestured vaguely at Joel’s face. “Not miserable. Which is a fuckin’ miracle since Sarah went home last night. So, what the hell got into you?”

“Nothin’,” Joel shrugged quickly. “Just having a good day is all.”

“Sure,” Tommy scoffed lightly, going to check on the status of some drywall. Joel took the moment alone to check his phone. You’d sent him a selfie, smiling hugely with your iced latte, looking like he’d made your whole damn day.

“You’re setting a high bar here, Miller,” you texted. “But thank you!”

You’d sent a heart emoji, too.

It made Joel’s actual heart skip a beat. That stupid little cluster of red pixels had his mind going a mile a minute, analyzing your every move for the past few weeks for any indication that you might feel the same way he was starting to.

“Got you to send me a selfie,” he replied. “Think I’m winning in this exchange.”

He checked his email and was about to stick his phone back in his pocket to get back to work when you sent another selfie. This one just at your desk in your office, just as beautiful with all your makeup on and your hair done but less intimate than the one from the morning with your skin bare and your eyes cloudy with sleep. But there was the trade off of cleavage in your form-fitting dress and he wasn’t about to argue with that.

“About to go wine and dine a client,” you wrote. “Fingers crossed for me!”

Joel smiled.

“Don’t think you need any help from me, Beautiful, but knock em dead!”

There was a cabinet delivery that Joel had to supervise - check over the different pieces to make sure nothing was damaged and everything was sized right - and it was so hard to not keep checking his goddamn phone. He wanted to see if you’d texted, see how your lunch had gone, pull up the selfies of you he’d started saving in a separate folder so he could find them easier and just look at you when he needed a reason to remember that life could be good to him sometimes.

When he checked his phone again after the delivery, he had a text from you. He smiled for a second and opened it but his heart sank as soon as he read it.

“So sorry, something came up at work,” you wrote. “Can’t see you tonight.”

He tapped his phone against his palm for a moment, trying to think of how to respond. You probably wouldn’t want a clingy guy but it felt wrong to pretend like he wasn’t disappointed by it.

“Shit happens. I’ll miss you. Tomorrow night?”

You had read receipts turned on and you opened the message right away. He stared at his phone, waiting for you to reply. But you didn’t. After a few minutes he couldn’t justify not working anymore and stuck his phone back in his pocket and got back to it.

He didn’t see Tommy again until that afternoon. He’d snuck a peek at his texts half a dozen times at least since your last message but you still hadn’t replied.

“Oh hey, before I forget,” Tommy said, jogging to catch up with him. “Maria wanted me to invite you over for dinner tonight.”

Joel sighed.

“Can you tell Sarah that I don’t need babysittin’?” He said, a little harsher than he meant to.

“And there’s the asshole I expected at work this mornin’,” Tommy clapped him on the shoulder.

“Sorry,” Joel sighed again. “Really, not tryin’ to be…”

“S’OK,” Tommy shrugged. “Does Sarah want to make sure you’re not just sitting at home, watching paint dry? Sure. But do I actually like seeing your sorry ass outside of work? Yeah, I do. And Maria rightly pointed out that we don’t get out the same way we used to now that she tied me down…”

Joel snorted.

“Lucky she’d have you and you know it.”

“Yeah yeah,” Tommy smiled a little. “But really. Come over, have some beers. Maria is making ribs and cornbread and potato salad and if you don’t help us eat it all I’ll be sick of it by the end of the week. You’d be doin’ me a favor, honestly.”

“Alright, alright,” Joel smiled a little. “Stop sellin’ it so hard, I’ll come over.”

“Now was that so fuckin’ difficult?” Tommy smiled back. “Tonight, six. Bring a change of clothes if you want, we’ll make up the guest bed, drink through some of the moonshine I’ve got sittin’ around.”

“Tommy, it’s fuckin’ Thursday.”

“It’ll be Friday somewhere,” Tommy winked.

Joel rolled his eyes. Apparently even marrying a lawyer wasn’t going to make Tommy stop being Tommy.

When Joel left work that evening, you still hadn’t texted back. He hoped you were alright, that you weren’t too stressed. But he was also starting to wonder if he’d fucked up somewhere and hadn’t realized it. You always texted him back the second you saw his message. You’d always been nothing but up front and transparent, none of the stupid games he remembered trying to play when he was dating back when he was closer to Sarah’s age. What if trying to see you all the damn time was too much too soon? Especially right after Sarah had been in town, the reminder that the two of you were sneaking around behind her back and putting one of the most important relationships in both of your lives at risk so the two of you could do… whatever the fuck it was you were doing. What if he just misread your signals and you were having fun but not looking for anything else? What if you just weren’t that interested?

He showered and grabbed his phone from the counter halfway through, finding the pictures you’d sent the other night, the ones where you were touching yourself to the idea of fucking him. He came so hard he made a mess of his shower wall and he was still panting for breath when you - finally - texted back.

“Don’t think so,” you replied. “Looks like I’ll be hung up through the weekend at least. I’ll text when things free up.”

You sent a little heart at the end of that text, too, which made Joel feel a little better at least. He wondered if it would be weird to bring a coffee by your office or send you flowers. It’s not like he’d ever visited you at work before. But he wanted to make your week better, not have it be filled with stress and whatever else was bringing this on.

He was still distracted when he made it to Tommy and Maria’s that evening, a six pack in hand. Part of him was trying to picture coming here with you, picture folding you into his daily life. Maybe you’d hold his hand as the two of you walked up to the door, maybe you’d lean against his shoulder when he put his hand on the small of your back as you talked with his sister-in-law, maybe you’d raise your eyebrows at him in just the right way when you were ready to head out and then let him fuck you when the two of you got home.

“Hey man!” Tommy opened the door, looking Joel up and down. He frowned a little. “Who pissed in your cheerios?”

Joel frowned back.

“Weren’t you just sayin’ I was in too good a mood?” He passed Tommy the beer.

“Yeah, this is how I expected you to show up to work,” Tommy said, leading the way inside. “Like someone kicked your dog right in front of you. Everything OK?”

“Fine,” Joel shrugged, wishing he could actually talk to Tommy about what was happening with you. He was married now, he’d clearly done something right. “You said something about moonshine?”

“Hell yeah,” Tommy clapped him on the shoulder and headed for the kitchen.

Joel was surprised to find that he really liked spending the evening with Tommy and Maria. He only checked his phone for a message from you half a dozen times - far less than he would have if he were at a bar alone or sitting on his couch. He was pleasantly tipsy and still trying to get the last of the BBQ sauce off his fingers when Tommy and Maria gave each other a small look before Tommy spoke.

“So,” he said, looking like he was trying to not smirk. “Got a question for you.”

“Shoot,” Joel said, frowning slightly before taking a swig of his beer. Nothing good had ever come from Tommy looking at him like that.

“Just how long have you been fucking Sarah’s friend?”

Joel choked on the beer and almost dropped the bottle onto the table as he coughed and tried to clear his throat.

“What?” He managed, still coughing.

“Think you heard me just fine,” Tommy smirked and Maria elbowed him, raising her eyebrows at him. “Right, sorry, don’t worry, we didn’t tell Sarah…”

“You say anything to her?” Joel asked, his mind working overtime. If Tommy or Maria had talked to you, maybe that’s why you were pulling away. That would explain everything.

“Course not,” Tommy said. “How long have I been sayin’ you need to get laid? Not out to fuck that up for you, probably take you 10 years before you found another woman who would fuck you…”

“What my husband is trying to say,” Maria cut him off with a glare. Tommy laughed. “Is that we weren’t looking to get in the middle of anything…”

“I don’t know why you’d think there was anything to get in the middle of,” Joel interrupted her, but Tommy barked a laugh.

“Brother, if you’re gonna fuck a girl in the bathroom at a party, you might want to try to be a little quieter about it,” he was grinning like the cat that ate the goddamn canary.

Joel groaned and put his face in his hand.

“Jesus Christ. Who else knows?”

“Just us,” Maria said, her voice calm and even. “And it wasn’t THAT bad. I happened to come in to use the bathroom at just the wrong time.”

“Just the right time if you ask me,” Tommy said.

“Oh fuck off,” Joel glared at him. He laughed again.

“Look,” Maria glared at Tommy who tried to stop laughing and did a shit job of it before looking back at Joel. “You’re both adults, it’s your business. We just didn’t know if Sarah knew, if you two were a couple or just having fun or what…”

“I have no fuckin’ idea,” Joel sighed even though there was an odd relief in him. It was nice to know that he could actually talk to someone about this now. Nice to not have to try to figure it all out himself. “Sarah doesn’t know. We didn’t mean to, Sarah’s the one who had us meet in the first place, thinkin’ we could both use a friend but Jesus Christ, Tommy, she’s like the perfect fuckin’ woman. She’s gorgeous, so goddamn pretty I was staring at her across the damn bar before I knew who she was, swear I was half done in for her before I ever even talked to her. But she’s so smart, I could listen to her talk all week about anything and she’d make it interesting. And she likes the same shitty movies I do, the same music…”

“Damn,” Tommy said, smiling a small smile at Joel now. “She really is perfect. You’re fucked, man.”

Joel frowned.

“C’mon,” he said. “I don’t…”

“I haven’t seen you like this about a girl since we were in high school,” Tommy smirked. “You’re down bad. Where’s she at with all this shit?”

“I don’t fuckin’ know,” Joel sighed again. “I haven’t done this in so damn long I feel like I’m fucking it all up. Feels like it’s too soon to talk about it but man, besides Sarah? She’s all I fuckin’ think about anymore. But I was supposed to see her tonight but she had to cancel this afternoon…”

“Explains the mood change from this morning,” Tommy nodded.

“I’m terrified of messing up with this,” Joel said, bouncing his foot impatiently under the picnic table. “I don’t want to lose her, I want to do this right. I just don’t know what that looks like anymore.”

“Joel,” Maria leaned across the table and covered his worried hands with one of her own. “You’re a great guy. If she can’t see that, she’s not the woman for you.”

“You plannin’ to tell Sarah?” Tommy asked, before Joel had a chance to argue with Maria’s point.

“I don’t know,” he sighed. “Seems like the right move but I don’t know how to bring it up. I don’t want to fuck things up but we can’t sneak around forever. She deserves better than us sneakin’ around behind her back like goddamn teenagers. But I don’t want to hurt Sarah, they’re so damn close, I can’t see her being happy about this.”

“Well, is she worth the risk?” Maria asked, brows raised. “Does she make you happy? Do you see a future with her?”

Joel thought for a moment.

In the weeks since he’d met you, Joel was the happiest he had been in years. You were something he looked forward to, something he wanted to wrap himself up in so he was surrounded by you all the time. All he wanted to do was be next to you. It seemed like everything in the world would be better if it was next to you. If he could wait in line at the grocery store and look over to see you reading back over the list to make sure you didn’t forget anything, if he could pull weeds in the front yard while you set out flowers where you wanted them to go in the garden, if he could come home after an absolute shit day at work and find you napping on the couch when he got there, it felt like life would be worth it. Like all the shit he’d lived through, the years where he was positive he wasn’t doing the right thing with his daughter because he had no idea what the right thing was, the years he came home from work sore and tired and wishing he could have somehow had both Sarah and his dreams, the years he’d been so short on cash he was worried his card would get declined at the grocery store, all of that would fucking mean something. It all led to you in the end.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Yeah, she makes me happy. So fucking happy. And I do see a future with her and I want it. I want it so damn much that I need to try. I don’t think I can just stop this now I just… I’m so afraid of fucking this up. When was the last time I had a relationship that actually fuckin’ worked?”

“High school,” Tommy said. Joel glared at him. “Sorry, probably not a real question…”

“No, it wasn’t,” Joel muttered. “But I’m one thing all those relationships had in common. Me. There’s something I do that just fucks it all up and I cannot risk that with her.”

“Joel,” Tommy shook his head a little. “You really think that? That you’re going to fuck up every relationship you’re ever in?”

“That’s sure as hell what it feels like,” he sighed. “I dunno, maybe it’d be better to break shit off now. Before it goes any further and before Sarah finds anything out and I manage to fuck up with her too…”

“Why, you really want to be alone forever?” Tommy asked, incredulous from across the table. “When I said I hadn’t seen you like this since we were kids, I meant that. You’re happy. I haven’t seen that, outside of Sarah, in fuckin’ decades. If you end it because you’re afraid of fucking it up, you’re just as alone as if you let it run its course. Just do the damn thing, man. Get out of your damn head and have a real conversation with this woman and stop setting yourself up to fail.”

Joel nodded for a moment, his jaw clenched.

It was like he was standing at the edge of a cliff with everything he wanted sitting at the bottom of it. The only way down was to jump and trust that the parachute he’d packed himself would get him there without destroying it all. But there was terror in that, too. He didn’t want to hurt you or Sarah or himself. He didn’t want to put you all through something that would just blow up.

But fuck if he didn’t want to see what life with you could be.

“You’re right,” he said. “You’re both right. But fuck, that’s…”

“It’s scary,” Maria finished for him when he trailed off. “But most things worth doing are.”

He just nodded again.

“Any reason you’re worried you’re fucking up?” She asked. “Or just anxiety from past relationships?”

“I dunno,” he fished his phone out of his pocket. “I’m probably reading too much into this shit but…”

He unlocked it and found your text messages and scrolled to the start of the day.

“Don’t… uh… don’t scroll up past that…”

“Oh damn, you been sexting like a fuckin’ teenager?” Tommy cut him off. Joel glared daggers at him. He laughed. “Good for you, man.”

“Anyway,” Joel continued. “Things seemed normal this morning but she canceled plans last minute, took a lot longer to respond to my messages than usual… Just feels like I messed up somewhere and don’t know what I did.”

Maria nodded slowly, looking down at the phone and scrolling down, nodding along. She handed the phone back to Joel.

“Sounds like she’s just got a lot on her plate,” she said. “She said she was helping set up a new branch down here, right? Probably just has something with a really tight deadline that got added to her workload last minute. Don’t sweat it and just… be there when she’s done.”

“Right,” Joel nodded, the knot in his stomach loosening. “You’re right. I’m bein’ crazy. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

Joel tried to keep that in mind through the weekend when you sent two or three word responses to the texts he did send. He tried to not think about the fact that this was the first weekend he’d spent on his own since he’d met you, how much you’d already become part of the pattern of his life, how much he looked forward to downtime so he could spend it with you. He tried not to let the grip of anxiety rule him as he found ways to keep busy around the house. He fixed a few things he’d been putting off, wiped down shit he normally didn’t touch like fan blades and the tops of his kitchen cabinets, washed his truck in the driveway even though the forecast next week called for rain.

“Hope things are getting better for you at work, Beautiful,” he texted when he was on a break Monday afternoon. “Missing you. Can I bring you dinner or anything?”

The read receipt showed it as read almost immediately but you didn’t respond. He groaned and shoved his phone back in his pocket.

“Still not acting normal?” Tommy asked.

“No,” Joel sighed. “I dunno, maybe I got in too deep too fast here. I thought we were on the same page but…”

“Just give her some space,” Tommy said. “Like Maria said, don’t sweat it yet, alright? Not like I know the girl but she sure seemed into you. Don’t think she’s just going to disappear on ya.”

Joel wasn’t sure he believed it but he nodded along just the same.

He pulled back on the texts. Maybe that was the right move but he wasn’t sure. You responded to them eventually, sometimes just a “thanks” with a heart emoji or an “lol right?” But you did tell him you’d let him know when your schedule got better.

“Hoping by Sunday,” you wrote.

“See?” Tommy said Friday afternoon as Joel stared at his phone when on a break yet again. “That’s a timeline. If she really wasn’t interested she wouldn’t be just sharing that. So get out of your head, alright?”

“Been more than a week,” Joel frowned before he sighed. “You have shit like this with Maria?”

“She’s a district attorney man,” he laughed. “Work comes first an awful lot. S’OK. She comes home to me at the end of the day, that’s all that matters. You’ll get there.

“Speaking of my wife,” he continued. “Did you know what Sunday is?”

“No,” Joel frowned.

“Our anniversary,” he said. “Officially made it a year!”

“Good for you,” Joel replied, trying to be happy for Tommy and not think about what he’d do to still be with you in a year.

“Yeah, it is,” Tommy nodded. “Which is why… I could use your help.”

Joel sighed.

“With what?”

Tommy smiled.

“I can’t believe you forgot your anniversary until two days before,” Joel muttered that evening as he walked through the mall with Tommy. “Don’t you have a fuckin’ phone reminder or something?”

“Well I do now,” he scoffed. “So next year I’ll have some warning. Jewelry’s a good option, right?”

“Isn’t there that shit you’re supposed to get for each other based on what anniversary it is?” Joel asked, remembering back to decades before when he’d tried and failed to make shit work with Sarah’s mom.

“Oh shit, I think you’re right,” Tommy said, getting his phone out and typing something in before nodding. “Right, right, paper… the fuck do you get that’s paper?”

Joel laughed a little.

“Could get her a nice notebook,” he said. “Stationary maybe…”

His voice trailed off as he looked across the mall, over the gap between the walkways that opened to the level below.

You were there.

It looked like you’d probably just come from work, in jeans and heels and a blazer, your hair and makeup done. But that wasn’t what caught his attention.

No, it was he man walking next to you, about a head taller than you, an arm over your shoulders pulling you to his side.

Joel couldn’t help but stare, couldn’t take his eyes away from it. Like it was a fucking train wreck, the carnage inevitable and clear and he couldn’t avoid taking it all in.

The man looked to be about Joel’s age, maybe a few years older but probably in that age range you’d mentioned the time you’d talked about the dating apps.

“Joel?” Tommy asked, looking where he was for a moment before noticing you, too. “Oh fuck… Shit, I… I’m sorry man I don’t…”

The man kissed your temple just before the two of you turned to go down the next wing of the mall, a bag dangling from his hand.

Joel’s chest felt tight.

“S’fine,” Joel said, turning and walking back in the direction they’d been going originally, putting some distance between you and him. “Not like we were anything official…”

“Still,” Tommy said, falling into step beside him, looking genuinely sorry. “Shit. Look, I can finish this on my own…”

Joel scoffed.

“Not gonna let you fuck up your first anniversary,” Joel said, trying not to think of that man kissing you other places, all the places you let Joel kiss you. “Let’s just… find her a good notebook or something and get out of here.”

You said you’d deleted your dating apps.

Said you weren’t fucking anyone but him.

That work was too busy to see him in almost a week but that you’d see him maybe Sunday.

Were you dating someone from Seattle who’d come to town to visit? Had Joel just been a way for you to keep busy while you and that fucking guy were long distance? Had you found someone here who could give you more than he could? Shit like nice dinners every date instead of fucking pizza places? Trips to the mall where he bought you nice things? Had you never thought about him the way he thought about you? Had you ever even considered things with him that he ached for with you?

He couldn’t make sense of it. Not when Tommy found a notebook that could get stamped with Maria’s initials, not when driving himself home in a daze, not when sitting at his kitchen table with a glass of whiskey in his hand.

It didn’t feel right, none of it felt right. It didn’t feel like something you’d do. But it was you he’d seen, he was positive of that. Not like you had a twin sister wandering around. You’d told him that you had no family but, truthfully, you didn’t need to. Sarah had mentioned it, the first Thanksgiving she knew you, when she talked about going to a restaurant with you for dinner that night.

“She’s not goin’ home to her family either?” He’d asked her the night before.

“Nah,” she said. “She doesn’t have any. No siblings, her parents died years ago apparently. Said she always does the restaurant thing for holidays and it does sound kinda fun…”

“That’s too bad,” Joel’d said. “About her family.”

“Yeah,” Sarah sighed. “But she seems pretty OK with it. And sometimes the best family is the one you find, right? I wouldn’t mind a bigger family.”

Joel had smiled at that, his big hearted daughter latching onto you that way.

“Me either, baby girl.”

So it had to have been you that he saw. You, with another man. His arm around you. His lips on your temple. His company you wanted to keep.

You could have at least fucking called. Texted. Had the courtesy of telling him you were done with him.

Which seemed like something you would do. You didn’t seem like the kind of person who would just vanish, who would pull away and blow him off until he gave up. You were the kind of person who would fucking talk to him. He knew it. He was sure of that.

So why hadn’t you?

“Fuck it,” he muttered, tipsy off whiskey. He set an alarm for the morning. He’d just go by your place. He’d talk to you. If you ended it, fine. Then he’d know. He could stop stressing over this shit, stop worrying about the heartbreak and actually live through it and then move on.

But he hoped he was wrong. There had to be an explanation. There just… there had to be.

He drove straight to your apartment in the morning, his mind still going through every possibility, trying to come up with some explanation. He didn’t send his usual good morning text.

Joel’s stomach got tight as he got closer and closer to your place. He had to fight the urge to just turn around and go back to his house, to pretend like he’d never seen what he saw at the mall, just hope you’d actually text him to hang out again eventually and act like he hadn’t seen or heard any of it.

But could he live his life that way? Build a relationship of any kind with you on a lie?

He didn’t think he could.

There was no car in your space when he got to your building, something that made his heart sink. It hadn’t occurred to him that you might spend the night at the other man’s house. His stomach twisted.

But he saw the door to your unit open and he was almost relieved until he realized who was walking out.

It was the man from the mall.

Joel got a better look at him now and he had to be a few years older than Joel, his hair almost entirely gray. But Joel thought he was wearing something different than he’d worn yesterday and he wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. The man got in an Uber and, before Joel could think better of it, he was out of his car, heading for your front door.

He rang the bell before he chickened out and he heard you inside before he saw you.

“I swear to God if you forgot something you’re not coming back in…” your voice broke off, eyes wide, when you opened the door.

“Joel,” you whispered. You were in one of those fucking not-quite-sweatsuit sets Joel loved. He hated that the other man got to see you this way. “What are you…”

“Can I come in?” He cut you off, fighting to keep his voice calm. You nodded. “Think we need to talk.”

Next Chapter

A/N: NEXT CHAPTER WILL ANSWER THE CLIFFHANGER QUESTION

I PROMISE IT WILL

But y'all. I gotta have a little angst. As a treat. Because it's me.

Feel free to yell at me about it in the comments or in my ask box. Also, subscribe to https://www.tumblr.com/justagalwhoupdates to get my fics delivered right to your alerts!

Thanks for putting up with my shit. Love you all!

Taglist: @fanficismydrug

#fanfic #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #new in town #joel miller x oc

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barnesafterglow · 2 years

Text

only the two of us

summary: stuck together, you and bucky find yourselves in an unfortunate position (or maybe not)

pairing: tfatws!bucky x fem!reader

word count: 2.5k

warnings: dubcon (very much consensual but it's sex pollen so yk just being safe), unprotected sex, oral (f receiving), fingering, pining bucky (just a little), one computer was harmed in the writing of this fic

a/n: here is my next prompt: sex pollen with tfatws!bucky. i really liked writing this one! i'm sorry i haven't posted hardly any prompts but i'm trying not to pressure myself. please reblog and comment so i know you liked it!

you can join my kinktober taglist or follow @theafterglowlibrary to get updated when i post 🤍

kinktober masterlist ─ main masterlist

The sound of your fist hitting against metal echoed through the empty room. It would be your luck that you’d get stuck in a metal bunker the same night you had your first date in months.

“I know you’re feisty, but I don’t think even you could break down that door.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Barnes.” You spun to face him, your back pressed against the cool door. “We wouldn’t even be in this mess if it weren’t for you.”

He rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, casually leaning against the metal shelf on the other side of the room. You looked away from his stare - god that man could stare - and took in your surroundings.

It was a fairly small room, two shelves lined without unlabeled chemicals across from the door, a desk with a computer older than you and then some, and what looked like a lab table - cool black countertop littered with beakers and metal instruments.

“If saving your ass counts as my fault then sure, I’ll take the blame.” You could hear the sarcasm dripping from his voice, which only irritated your situation.

“I didn’t need help,” you said, voice raising a few octaves, as you threw your hands in the air in frustration. “I was totally fine.”

“Maybe you didn’t need help, but it wouldn’t kill you to take it every once in a while.”

It was your turn to roll your eyes. He was in the same position as he was before, looking entirely unbothered despite his tone matching your own annoyance. You knew he was right, not that you would ever tell him.

Two enemy agents had you backed towards the room you were currently in, though you could tell they were not in fighting shape. You had one down when Bucky rounded the corner, taking your attention away just enough for the agent to swing his knife at you, slicing through the thick material of your Kevlar suit. He went in again, this time aiming for your jugular, and Bucky pushed you out of the way, getting off a shot as the two of you careened into the room, the metal door closing shut.

The same door you now pushed off of, pacing back and forth in front of the door, trying to strategize your next move. The comms were out, so you had to hope that Sam would notice when the two of you missed your checkpoint. But your checkpoint wasn’t for another hour, and then he would have to send a team, and then they would have to figure out where you were and how to get you out. You guessed it would be at least three or four hours before you were free from this tiny box.

“I want to get out too, but you don’t have to pace like that. We’ll just wait for Sam. It’s not like we have anywhere else to be.”

“I do,” you replied. “I was going to- I had plans tonight.”

“Plans?”

“Plans.”

“What kind of plans?” You threw your hands up in the air at his question.

“Plans that are none of your goddamn business, Barnes!” He blinked, not fazed but shocked nonetheless. He held his hands up in surrender.

Of course he would be able to make you feel bad for snapping him without saying a single word. The effect he had on you was not one you had ever examined closely, nor would you want to.

“I just,” you took a deep breath, deciding if you really wanted to share something so personal with him, of all people. “I was supposed to have a date tonight and… it’s been a while.”

You wrung your hands together, waiting for the pieces to click into place for him. It only took a moment - damn him and his incredible brain - before he nodded knowingly. Then a lazy grin spread across his face and you immediately regretted ever opening your mouth.

“I’m sorry you’re gonna miss your date. Try Tinder when we get back, I’ve heard it’s great for fulfilling your needs.”

It took all your willpower not to throw your boot at him, but you managed to keep from doing any bodily harm - for now. Instead, you turned away from his amused stare and began making a slow circle around the room, you trailed your fingers along the way, searching for any kind of groove or crevice that could be hiding your escape. When you reached the shelves - where Bucky still stood - you avoided eye contact, instead examining the shelf for anything out of place. If you were being honest, everything was out of place, but for the sake of being optimistic, you carefully examined the glass vials and beakers.

Bucky, who had been following your movements, zeroed in on the gash on your arm. It wasn’t deep, and the blood had dried, so you weren’t concerned. But apparently had turned into a field medic or a mother hen, and gripped your arm to look at it.

“Just let me -” “Quit that -” The two of you spoke at the same time, and you pulled your arm away from him.

Not realizing just how close you were to the shelf, your elbow knocked against it, shaking the rack just enough for a vial that was too close to the edge to fall towards you. Even with his supersoldier instincts, Bucky couldn’t stop it.

You tried to grab it, and the thin glass shattered in your hand. Tiny cuts bloomed across your palm, and whatever the hell liquid was inside seeped into your wounds. You tried in vain to wipe the liquid off on your pants, but you knew it was useless. The mystery chemical took effect almost immediately, heat spreading through your chest and face.

White hot pain flashed through your entire body, bringing you to your knees. Bucky shouted your name, picking you up and setting you in the old desk chair. He had to keep his hands on your shoulders to keep you upright, the pain still coming in harsh waves.

“What was that?” Each word was broken by a heave; even talking was a painful task. You looked at Bucky and for the first time, you let yourself truly take in just how beautiful he was. You had always known - anyone with eyes knew that - but the thought of even acknowledging the feelings that bloomed in your stomach every time he looked at you was terrifying.

Your relationship with Bucky was tumultuous - sometimes coexisting in sync, as if you had been friends for years. Other times, you got under each others’ skin so bad that Sam would have to scold you like children. It was an odd dynamic, and you could never decipher his feelings towards you.

Now, though, none of that anxiety stirred within you. Instead, you could feel the imprint of pure fire where he touched you, and he was closer than he had ever been before.

You took in the small details of his face, the ones you would never see unless you were so intimately close like you were now. The dip in his chin, the small scatter of freckles across his nose, the flecks of darker blue in his icy eyes. The heat in you increased tenfold, this time spreading through your core, and when Bucky moved one to lift your chin towards him, a small whimper left your lips.

His brow furrowed, then he frowned - his thoughts obviously circling rapidly - before his eyes finally widened in understanding.

“Buck, do you know what it is?” Your voice came out small, trying to dampen down the arousal that pressed between your thighs.

“Yeah it’s -” He looked down, biting his lower lip. Whatever it was, it was clearly hard for him to explain it. “I’ve only ever seen it once, with HYDRA. I don’t even remember what they called it, but basically it creates an intense sexual desire. They used it to torture traitors of the institute. The gist is, you have to have intercourse or it will burn you from the inside out. Fry your brain.”

“Oh.” It made sense now, why your body felt like it was on fire, why Bucky’s touch unleashed rampant feelings.

His eyes fell to your thighs, where they were squeezed together, trying to stamp down the waves of arousal. You knew he had hypersensitive senses, but you prayed to the gods that he couldn’t smell how wet you already were from his slight touch. You knew your hopes were in vain when he met your eyes again, his own so dark and intense that you had to look away before you did something stupid.

Then another spike of pain struck your abdomen and you doubled over in pain, burying your face in Bucky’s neck as he steadied you.

“Please.” Your voice was a whisper, a whimper, a plea. “Help me.”

“I can’t -”

“You can. You always lecture me about how I never ask for help. Well I’m asking for it now.”

More pain rolled through you, and you pushed closer to him.

“I didn’t want it to be like this.”

You didn’t have time to question his words before he was cradling the sides of your face and drawing you to him for a kiss. You could tell he was trying to keep it chaste, free of passion, but that wasn’t what you wanted. Needed.

You grabbed his hands, moving them down your body until they rested on your chest. He pulled away, looking into your eyes, and your small nod of consent snapped something within him.

He pulled you up from the chair, lips finding yours again, and pushed you onto the desk. Except there was something blocking his movements - the old computer - and he gave no thought as he pushed it out of the way. As it crashed to the floor, he settled you farther back on the desk, stepping between your legs.

Your moans echoes through the small room as he undid the buckles and zips of your tact suit. When he finally managed to slip the top from your body, his mouth immediately trailed downwards, nipping at your jaw, snapping open your bra as if it were second nature. Once you were bare to him, he took one of your nipples in his mouth, his left hand circling your other, and the cool sensation of the metal nearly took your breath away.

He looked up at the sound of your gasp, a look of concern that melted away as he took in your debauched state. You gripped the short strands of his hair, pulling his mouth back to yours. As you worked off his own tact suit, he pulled back for only a moment to slip off your boots and his own, then easily slipped your pants from your body as his mouth attacked yours again.

In a matter of minutes, you were both bare to each other and you had never wanted anyone more than you did him in that moment. Maybe it was the drugs coursing through your veins, maybe it was the feelings that had been hidden and buried since the moment you met him. All you knew was that you were going to die if you didn’t have his body pressed to yours.

“Buck,” you said, reaching your hand out for him. “C’mere”

He was more than happy to oblige you, gripping your hand and marrying his lips to yours again. The kiss was short, too short, and you whined as he pulled away until his knees hit the concrete floor, spreading your legs even wider.

You gasped when his tongue circled your clit, and you clenched around nothing when he groaned at the taste of you. Feeling your distress, his eyes bore into yours as he easily slid two fingers into you.

“Bucky please.”

“Gotta make you feel good, baby.” You could swear your intermingled moans rattle the metal surrounding you as he buried his face between your legs.

Your body still felt as if you were burning alive, even as you came around his fingers, drenching his face. It wasn’t enough. Nothing would be enough until he was buried deep inside you.

And he knew that, because he stood - grabbing your hair and tilting your head back so he could kiss you again. You pulled away just enough to speak, opening your mouth to beg again - you would get on your knees and beg if you had to - but he bit your lip, effectively shutting you up.

“I know,” he soothed. “I know what you need, honey.”

You cried out as he slid into you, the stretch present even with his preparation - even though your body was more than ready to take him in. He pushed and pushed, and you thought he may never bottom out, but then his pelvis was pressed against yours and you threw your head back in pleasure.

“Look at me,” he whispered, gripping your hair again and pressing your foreheads together. The look in his eyes only heightened your pleasure. “Wanted this for so long.”

You were hearing things. This drug was making you crazy. Even though you could feel the heat dissipating with every thrust, you were sure your brain was already fried, because you could never have imagined hearing those words from Bucky.

But even as your mind cycled through surprise and denial and confusion, you knew that you felt exactly the same, even if you had never let yourself admit it.

Your foreheads were still pressed together, breaths heavy against the other’s mouth, when he finally spilled inside you, and the feel of that alone pushed you over your own edge.

He fell forward, still inside you, and began scattering small kisses along your shoulder. You shivered at the gentle touch juxtaposed with the arousal still lingering, and you felt everything crash around you.

“Bucky, I’m so sorry.” The panic was evident in your voice now that the drug had fully left your system. And even though your revelation still rang true, you felt a pit in your stomach at the thought of you forcing yourself on him. It was like he could see the thoughts racing through your head, because he gently pressed the pad of his thumb against your lips.

“Don’t apologize. You’re okay. I’m okay.” From the pile of clothes on the floor, there was a crackle of static before Sam’s voice rang through.

“Guys? I got Parker to fuck around with your comms when I saw you went offline. Are you okay?”

“We’ll talk about this later,” he said before pressing a gentle kiss to your lips.

He searched through his suit until he found the small device, and described your location to Sam as best he could.

As he talked, his eyes found yours, and a small smile tugged at his lips. You could feel a blush creeping across your face, but you still smiled back at him anyways.

kinktober taglist *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

@treatbuckywkisses @sgt-barnesveins @bucky-barmes @opheliastark @sweetascanbee @writing-for-marvel @sophiejay @christywantspizza @hi-sarahh @highlyintelligentblonde

#kinktober 22 #tiff's kinktober #tiff writes #only the two of us #bucky barnes #bucky fic #bucky smut #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes smut #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky x you #bucky barnes x y/n #marvel #mcu #sebastian stan

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