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#just a million billion thank yous
quinns-art-box · 8 months
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IT IS ONCE AGAIN TIME FOR SAIMATSU WEEK!!!! (on insta and twt) this is the last one so i went all out :')
for day 1: postgame 💖 i am still stuck on this scenario for a third year in a row sorry FHDKFBD i just think……. after the hugging and the crying and the apologizing and forgiving each other because they were never upset with each other in the first place they just need to take an enormous nap. together <3 they have been apart for too long their little bisexual hearts can't take it anymore (+ bonus doodles)
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dxkjf · 27 days
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HI HIII HELLO HELLOOOOO🤭‼️🤭‼️🤭💥‼️💥🥄💥‼️💥🥄💥💥🥄💥🤭💥💥🤭🥄
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I remember that I promised to draw him for you.... AND I KEEP MY PROMISES 🫰🤓
I dunno what else to say about my sketch, so I'll say that I really like the way you come up with characters and their designs!! each of them has its own unique vibes 🙏😔🥄
and I also recommended all my friends (and subscribers 🤭🤭) to subscribe to you, and they agreed with the fact that you have wonderful and delicious drawings 🤲
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BYEEEEEE >:]
IM LITERALLY SHAKING YOU AROUND UHG. I CAN NEVER FIND THE RIGHT WORDS TO EXPRESS HOW GIDDY I GET WHENEVER YOU DRAW HUGGING YOU SPINNING AROUND
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Me when pupcha art and i collapse and die I LOVE YOUR ARTSTYLE SO MUCH IM BEING SO GENUINE IM SPINNING AROUND IN CIRCLES 🗣️🗣️‼️😁‼️‼️‼️🧛‍♂️🧛‍♂️
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gideonisms · 1 year
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burnout is supposed to end at some point, I have read this. However, how do you know when it has ended and you should gradually force yourself through more activities to get used to living a life again, and when doing that will send you Directly back to an even worse ring of hell. Is there like a guidebook or
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saetoru · 10 months
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✩ ‧₊˚ ✩。2:09 AM — GOJO SATORU. (rich boy! au)
contents. college au!, rich boy! gojo, established relationships, alcohol consumption (gojo), mentions of his rude dad tryna break y’all up >:(
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it’s test night. meaning you have a very important test that will heavily weigh on your grade coming up at 8:30 am sharp. gojo should know not to bother you—you’ve told him at least one million times (maybe one billion) that you absolutely will not be coming over.
but judging by the insistent knocking on your door, he’s failed to listen to your warnings and decided to come to you instead. so you decide you’re going to kill him as soon as you open that door—you’re going to walk up, open the door, cup his cheeks and take one last good look at that beautiful face, and then you’re going to kill him and bury him somewhere where no one will find him.
except when you open the door, ready to scold your painfully irritating boyfriend, you’re greeted by his best friend instead. geto has gojo slung over his shoulder with a tired enough look on his face that you almost feel bad for him even after he’s ruined your sleep. almost.
“it’s two am,” you say, unimpressed. gojo perks up as he hears your voice, slurring your name as he tries to take a step towards you—if not for geto’s arm around his waist, you’re pretty sure your boyfriend would face plant onto the floor.
“yes, and i’ve dealt with him until this long. it’s your turn,” geto grumbles.
“just take him home, i don’t want him,” you wrinkle your nose. gojo whines in disbelief, still too drunk to stand on his own two feet or form proper words. you raise a brow and then promptly decide to ignore him.
“well, i don’t want him either,” geto huffs, “and he doesn’t want to go home. he went at it with his father again.”
“then make him sleep in his car.”
“he’s your boyfriend,” geto insists.
“he’s your best friend. you’ve known him longer.”
“you know him just as well,” he argues, “plus, you fuck him. that’s way more than what i do.”
“suguru!” you sputter, earning a sly grin from the dark-haired jerk standing before you—maybe you should kill both of them and hide their bodies in your freezer.
but then again, your tiny freezer in your run-down apartment that you can hardly afford as a tired, overworked college student couldn’t possibly fit two oversized men with abnormally large limbs. so instead, you offer geto a not-so-appropriate hand gesture (that he graciously returns) and grab gojo from his arms.
and instantly, gojo brightens.
“baby!” he slurs, kissing your cheeks with sloppy, scattered pecks. you crinkle your nose at the smell of alcohol surrounding you as soon as he enters your personal space.
“he’s your problem now,” geto mutters, rolling his eyes at the headache he’s had to supervise for the entirety of the night. you suppose you can feel a little bad for him—but only a tiny bit.
“wanna crash on the couch?” you ask sympathetically. it earns a soft smile from geto before he shakes his head.
“nah, i’ll go home. thanks.” with an affectionate flick to your forehead, he turns and walks back to his car, leaving you with the lanky, drunken mess leaning half his body weight on you.
you really should kill gojo satoru—and you should do it before 8:30 am.
“didn’t i tell you i have a test?” you grumble, dragging him to your bedroom.
he flops unceremoniously onto your mattress, snuggling with the stuffed bear by your pillows. and you should stay strong, but before you can help it, you smile softly at the sight.
“i won this for you,” he grins, his sunglasses crooked and falling to the tip of his nose. you grab them from his face and set them on your nightstand.
“yes, i know,” you roll your eyes, “i was there.”
“you kept it,” he giggles, words still slurred and messy.
“yes, satoru,” you snort, “i kept the stuffed bear my boyfriend won me. it’s not a surprise.”
“‘s right,” he nods, “‘m your boyfriend. best one you ever had, huh?”
“sure,” you sigh, pulling him by the arm to sit up. he puckers his lips as soon as his face is close enough to yours, looking at your expectantly.
“gimme a kiss. i need a kiss,” he demands.
“satoru, you’re drunk,” you sigh, trying to work the sweaty button-up off his body, “and you smell like beer.”
gojo is well built—he doesn’t seem like it because he’s a bit lanky and has an awful sense of fashion that doesn’t do his figure any justice, but he’s well built. you try your best not to stare at the sculpted abs and the curves of his pecs—especially not the slight sweatiness of the skin that makes it almost glisten.
nope. you keep your eyes trained on him, not his shirtless torso.
except gojo satoru is nothing if not observant even in his drunken stupor—he grins that shit-eating grin of his that you hate so much but fall in love with every time, noticing the way your eyes wander back to his chest every few seconds for a fleeting glance.
“you don’t have’ta sneak a look, baby,” he slurs smoothly, chuckling, “‘m all yours. wanna feel?” and because he’s an asshole, he grabs your hand and lays it flat on his chest. “i’ve been working out with suguru. can you tell?” he winks.
“no,” you say flatly, pushing him back onto the mattress once you’ve worked his shirt off, “now sleep.”
“can’t sleep unless i’m in boxers,” he pouts, “can you take my pants off for me?”
and he even dares to bat his long, unfairly pretty eyelashes at you, putting on his best innocent face. you see past him, though—you see the smirk he tries to hide and the amusement in his clouded eyes.
you’re definitely going to hide his body in your freezer.
“you’ll live,” you huff.
“please,” he pouts deeper, “can’t sleep in these. too uncomfortable.”
“fine,” you hiss, and for a brief moment, you mourn the sleep you should be getting right before the most crucial midterm of your life.
you glare at his cheeky grin as you work his belt off, unbuttoning his pants and sliding them down his legs, grumbling curses under your breath. this time, you make careful work not to stare at his lower half—you refuse to give him the satisfaction.
“are you ready for sleep now, your highness?” you ask with a raised brow. he giggles and nods, holding an arm out for you.
“c’mere.”
and….well, you can’t exactly complain once you’re nestled comfortably in his arms, cheek pressed against the bare skin of his chest. his arm wraps around your body tightly, pulling you close as he plants a wet kiss on your forehead.
“you’re a handful,” you sigh, “did you bother suguru too much?”
“nope,” he shakes his head, “i was on my best behavior.”
“you’re never on your best behavior,” you grin, rolling your eyes. and because you love him, even when he calls you as you study and crashes your apartment as you try to sleep, you lean up and kiss his jaw sweetly, making him hum happily. “goodnight, satoru.”
“you forgot to say i love you.”
“i hate you.”
“so mean,” he whines, making you giggle.
“i love you,” you murmur, “i’ll love you a whole lot more if you let me sleep for my test.”
“kay,” he yawns, wrapping his arms tighter around you, “i love you too.”
it’s silent for a bit, just the steady breaths from gojo and the loud air conditioning ringing in the distance. you’re sure he’s asleep from the way his chest seems to rise and fall under your cheek slowly—until he speaks up quietly, almost as if he doesn’t want you to hear.
“‘m never breaking up with you,” he whispers, “promise. no matter what that old man says.”
you hold your breath as his warm lips press against your forehead—you’re certain he thinks you’re asleep, and you’re also certain that you were never meant to hear those words in the first place. so you swallow, trying not to give away that you’re still very much awake and very much aware of his words.
and then it hits you—suddenly, you remember the way gojo refused to go home, the way geto mentioned he’d gotten into an argument with his father. it clicks all at once that the subject of this argument must’ve been you—gojo’s father has never been subtle about his disapproval, and it’s no secret he’d greatly prefer that the heir of his company stopped dating someone entirely out of his realm—someone like you.
“you’re it for me,” he mumbles softly. you think he sounds a bit more sober as he speaks the words against your forehead—and for a moment, you think that gojo is it for you too. 
maybe you’re not so mad about your sleep anymore. maybe, as he kisses your forehead one last time, as his breath slowly evens out and his grip loosens slightly around your body, you fall in love with gojo satoru a little harder. 
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stab dadjo and stan suguru ‼️
ps here’s a little part 2
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majorblinks · 6 months
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DOWNRIGHT ICONIC (aespa karina)
(smut, male reader, screenwriter you, stranger karina, public sex, rough sex [choking/slapping/biting/spanking/hair-pulling etc], oral, anal, facefucking, titfucking, facial, bondage, degradation, name-calling, other weird stuff, 26k words, it's been 1 million years..., BUT WE'RE SO BACK BABY <3)
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Hey, turns out the critics really are onto something:
You’re going to win an Oscar for this.
You aren’t surprised when the nominations are announced. It’s all anyone’s been talking about. You’re this up-and-coming screenwriter, this newly-minted visionary, and - cue the applause - you’ve just made the movie of the year. Clips go viral everywhere; the reviews are calling it extraordinary. They all want to know how you - a relative nobody - managed to pull it off. What’s your secret? What’s your inspiration? Where’d you get this billion-dollar box office idea? 
And here’s one version of the truth:
“Well,” you’re quoted saying in every single interview: “honestly, it’s about a girl.”
Everyone eats this up, of course. It’s so fucking romantic.
You’ll tell an abridged version of this story for the rest of your life. A blip in time in early January - a certified slow-motion movie moment. You’ll say things like she was the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen. You’ll say things like, I know it sounds lame, but that’s how it went. She took my breath away. She fascinated me. I saw her and I don’t think my life has ever been the same. 
You’ll never once say her name. 
“It’s weird, actually,” you’ll say in an interview after the news of the nominations drops. “Making this movie about her. She’ll last forever there, you know? She’ll always exist in this film, in this one moment in time. She’s in all of it, basically - every scene, every line. It’s all her.”
“You make it sound like she’s dead,” the interviewer will say, all open-mouthed melodrama.
You’ll laugh. “Oh, God, no,” you’ll say. “She’s alive and well.” As if it hasn’t been years since you last saw her face, watching you from down the corridor, looking lost and torn apart and very, very small. “She’s okay. I mean - I think - yeah, she’s okay.”
As if you’d know. 
Because here’s another version of the truth:
You’re going to win an Oscar for this. You’re going to stand up on that stage and thank your family and your friends. You’re going to stare at all those faces until they swim together into one golden, glittering blur, and then all you’ll see is her - her dark eyes, her glossy hair, her wrist in your grip, her throat between your fingers - her in your sheets, her smiling in your doorway, her shivering in your shower, her sobbing into her hands, her bleeding in your bed, her walking away. Her, her, her. Immortalized forever in this perfect thing you made, winning awards off the reconstruction of a memory. Art imitating life; reality warped into something magnificent, and beautiful, and better. 
And the only thing you’ll feel like doing is throwing up. 
Sure, you’ll bask for decades in the thrill of it: the fame, the fortune, the glory; the adoration, the worship, the attention; the eternal, endless love. You’ll be able to look back on your life when you’re decrepit on your deathbed and know that you - brilliant you, utterly superior you - were divinely blessed with earth-shattering success, and no one will ever be able to take that away from you. You made your mark. You meant something. You were the best, for fuck’s sake, and you have the accolades to prove it - you really, really were. 
So here’s the full truth - the final bottom line:
You’re going to win an Oscar for this. You’ll live the kind of life people beg God for. You’ll get everything you ever wanted. 
It won’t be worth it at all. 
-
First, though, there’s this. 
-
Disturbingly enough, you’re in the romance section of a bookstore when everything starts. 
This is really not your genre - that’s the funniest part. Historically, you’re bored to death by the cartoonish pastel covers; you don’t get your kicks from seeing the same delightfully quirky heroines fall for brooding bad boys, or whatever the fuck goes on in those books. You have your standards. You prefer your art a little gritty, a little fucked up, a little more interesting - the kind of thing that can leave you shellshocked in a movie theater, overcome with the sort of full-body, lightning-struck epiphany only truly good work can manage. It’s not a judgment call - you’re not trying to be pretentious. It’s just that you prefer something with some fucking bite.
The second funniest part is this: 
You’re pressed against the shelves, surrounded by the cutest, chastest love stories ever told-
“Are you serious?” 
-and Karina’s on her knees, about to take your cock down her throat. 
Maybe this is what your contemporaries call cinematic irony.
That’s gotta be the only phrase for it, really. The scene itself dripping with classless, crude, erotic filth - the way she ducks her chin to spit on her hand, the slow pump of her fist around you, the rough hum in her mouth at how achingly hard you are - nasty and irredeemable, too fast and too loud. The gross lack of subtlety in her sex appeal: all pale thighs and porn-star tits, the wet pink flash of tongue. Seductive in a way that screams at you. It’d be so easy to write this off as some deliberately controversial opening scene, gory shock value, horror-film suspense - starring you and the slut you’re about to ravage and ruin and potentially leave for dead. 
“Baby - are you sure?” 
It’d be so easy, if Karina didn’t look like an angel incarnate.
“I mean, you-” You’re stammering. You’ve got both hands in her hair, fingers sliding through the glossy black in petting, soothing motions - your clumsy attempt at reassurance. “You don’t have to, if you don’t - we’re in public - I’m not expecting you to - I don’t need it-” 
Karina’s fine, sculpted eyebrows twitch upwards. Her lips are a twist of scarlet, distinct and amused. She doesn’t quite smirk, doesn’t give a voice to the sarcasm, but the sentiment is the same - yeah, right. 
And then she lowers her mouth to lick. 
“Jesus fucking Christ-” 
Scratch that, then. This is the funniest part. The most inhumanly beautiful girl you’ve ever seen, debasing herself in public like some sort of desperate common whore - come on, bring in the laugh track. 
Not that anyone’s laughing now. 
You’re no poet - they’re a few sections over, Plath and Yeats and Dickinson - but Karina’s the kind of thing that makes you understand the motivation completely: only capable of being captured in metaphor, without context, painstakingly interpreted hundreds of years from now by people who will never get this right. All carved-out cheekbones, fluttering lashes; tight fuckable body clad in a little low-cut dress, feet tucked neatly behind her like she’s simulating worship. Dirty and religiously devoted in how she stretches her full glossed lips around your cock and lets your grip tangle in her hair and- 
“Karina,” you get out, but her only response is to blink sweetly up at you and suck. 
Well, who gives a shit about the poets, anyway? You doubt any of them ever got to fuck a mouth like this. 
There’s an unfamiliar caution to the rut of your hips, a wincing fascination every time she gags - and she gags loud, choking and heaving, saliva dripping slick around you and down her chin - that seems to both entertain and confuse Karina. A skeptical crease in her forehead, saying everything she can’t: you don’t wanna fuck me up? Ruin me? Cloudy spit falling in strands to her tits, seeping into the crimson fabric of her dress; she’s wearing a worn black sweatshirt that’s slipping off one shoulder, exposing the clean line of her collarbone. The hollow of her cheeks, the obscene painful sound of your cock clogging her throat - it’s subtext, explicit suggestion. A preternatural understanding. I know what this is. I know what you want from me. 
Which - she couldn’t possibly. 
“Baby.” You sound so wretched that it’s humiliating. Karina’s sharply lined eyes seem to flash with humor, smug and lazily self-satisfied. “You’re gonna make me fucking cum.” 
The thick, sloppy, choked noise she makes is the closest she’s gonna get to a laugh. 
Oh, sure, whatever, it’s not like you’re not thinking about it: digging your fingertips into her scalp and really fucking her face, relishing in the way those eyes would go wide and glassy with unshed tears; refusing to let her have control, to let her lick and lap and breathe. You’re scripting it in your head already. You’d strip her bare and make her sob. You’d wreck her throat and cum all over her face and force her to walk out like that: coated in the sticky, filthy evidence of everything you’ve made her - look at this, you’d say, look at what I have. Look at what I did - all this, all me. 
“God.” Your thumb braces against Karina’s temple, like the gentle stroke of a brush, like you’re painting her right into existence. “You’re just-” A harsh gag; a fall of dirty, drooling spit. “You’re really enjoying this, huh? Getting on your knees in public for a fucking stranger?” 
That’s why the fantasy of fucking her into brutal submission is actually so understandable. You don’t know her. You don’t owe her shit. You could destroy her and it’s not like she could do anything to fight back - not when she’s already below you, looking up. When she asked for this. 
Except-
“Karina.” You can’t stop saying her name. “You’re - fucking perfect.” 
And it’s true.
So you cum. 
Karina swallows it all with the same amount of sultry grace she seems to do everything - how she laughs and walks and talks and takes your cock like a fucking professional - languishing in the practiced bob of her throat, the preening flicker of her eyelids, her face shiny and pale. It tugs the same feeling out of you as a flawless shot in a film, a well-timed bit of dialogue: watching an expert at work, pulling out all their stops. One hand through her hair. Her nails the same rich color as her mouth and her dress. Nasty, slutty, impressive attention to detail - Christ, get this girl in front of a camera, get the moon to be her limelight - you’re breathless, you’re enthralled, you’re so fucking far gone. 
Then: the sticky retreating glide of her pouty mouth, lipstick smeared badly down her chin, stark and arresting as blood. 
“In my experience,” Karina says, finally, “being perfect’s never gotten me anywhere good.” 
She pulls the sleeve of her sweatshirt up and wipes her face with her wrist. 
“You’re unbelievable,” you say, dizzy.
“Thank you,” Karina says, sweet like she means it, and sits back on her heels. 
You can’t help yourself; you’re petting back her hair again, cupping her face softly in your hand, caught on the dark glint of her irises. Angel was an understatement. She looks more than that - looks like something holy and all-powerful, something omniscient and blindingly beautiful, something who knows exactly what you need and knows exactly how to follow through. Something worthy of mythology. Something like a god.
And any sort of rough, ruthless, fucked-up fantasy - it’s never going to happen. 
You just can’t ruin a girl like her. 
“So?” Karina’s voice is a smoky bombshell lilt, like she’s just stepped out of some film noir from the 1950s. Hands folded primly in her lap, fingers interlocked like a lady. She could be a pop culture icon, an eternal sex symbol - a Marilyn, a Bond girl, a timeless universal beauty. “What now?” 
You think your brain actually short-circuits. “Sorry?” 
Head tilted, lids dropped low. Smirk still sharp and scarlet. “Are you gonna take me home?” 
You open your mouth to respond, but then a customer walks by the aisle. 
You’re a panicked flurry of motion - zipping up your pants, turning away, frantically patting down your clothes - but Karina just stays kneeling on the floor, little chin on an incline, utterly incriminating. It doesn’t matter. The customer passes you by. The world returns to the way it should be: just the two of you.
“Karina,” you say, flabbergasted by her composure. 
Karina’s lips quirk. “What?” 
You shake your head and offer your hand to help her up, but Karina laughs instead - actually laughs. It’s peculiar, beautiful: raspy like a chronic chainsmoker, as though there’s something foreign she’s trying to dislodge. The raw, gravelly aftermath of a skinned knee, a grisly scrape over skin. 
“Wow,” she says, and stands all on her own, tugs the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her fingers. “That’s a yes to taking me home, then?” 
“What are you doing?” You’re laughing too - you can’t help it - reaching for Karina’s tiny waist to pull her in. “What are you - what do you want?” 
When Karina smiles, it seems to set her eyes aflame. Bright and dancing, lashes like a shroud of smoke. “What do you mean?” 
“You just met me.” It sounds feeble, somehow: a thin, useless excuse. Nothing against the way her body slots between your hands, a smooth effortless fit; nothing compared to how she kisses you between sentences, so quick and easy it already feels like a habit. “You don’t - you don’t know me.” 
Karina’s mouth puckers, coy. “No?” 
“No,” you shoot back, grinning, but it doesn’t sound convincing at all. “Come on, baby, seriously. What do you want?” 
There’s gotta be some motive, you’re thinking. There’s gotta be a reason. Karina is so still, so soft and pliant under your hands, all the carved porcelain perfection of a marble sculpture but with none of the cold stiffness. Spine curving under your fingertips, jaw tilting into your touch. 
A complete stranger, maybe - but every part of her body is begging to be known. 
“Don’t you get it?” Karina says. “I want whatever you want.” 
It’s so simple and earnest it takes your breath away. 
“I - Jesus.” You’re biting on the inside of your cheek, drinking her in. “What if I told you I don’t know what I want?”
Another rasp of a laugh, sound like the serrated edge of a blade. “I’d say fine, okay.” Karina’s voice is low, conspiratorial. “But I’d think you’re lying.” 
And here’s the thing you know for sure:
The very second you saw Karina you swear you saw the next hundred pages of a manuscript unfurling in front of you, lines and themes and gorgeous dark-eyed heroines, tragically beautiful endings and stunning cinematography - infinite narratives in the glossy sweep of her hair, in the seductive stretch of her legs, in the way she looked at you in a crowded room and smiled a lovely, secret smile and told you she’d follow you anywhere. She’s worth making art about. She’s worth devoting lifetimes to. The most honest thing you could say to her right now is baby, I’m writing a movie about this one day, and I think you’re really gonna like it.
Karina couldn’t possibly know any of this, but it still feels like she does - impractical knowledge in how she loops one arm around your neck and kisses you again, no hesitation. Like she actually knows you. 
“I want to fuck you,” you murmur against her mouth, because it’s the next most honest thing. “Is that enough for you?”
You’re a screenwriter. You know your horror movies. A small part of you recognizes that this is precisely how they start: fanged vampires, wicked succubi, femme fatales out for blood. Karina’s so gorgeous she can’t be human - teeth so sharp there’s no way her intentions are pure.
“Sure,” Karina says, smirk glimmering like starlight. “Then I want that, too.” 
It’s a murder plot waiting to happen. 
You take her home anyway. 
-
(Oh, and about your Oscar-winning script-
In theory, this is how it begins.
It’s classic. There’s a stranger and there’s a beautiful girl and they’re both sitting at a bar, talking for the very first time. The girl has a rose tucked behind her ear; it matches the crimson color of her lipstick perfectly. The stranger had asked her what the deal with it was, but she’d said something vague and nonsensical about it being a gift, so now they’re talking about normal, average things. Jobs, names, flirtatious pickup lines. It’s obvious because it’s meant to be, like a set-up to some predictable porn - everyone watching knows they’re going to fuck. 
She keeps getting closer to him. At one point he thinks she’s going in for a kiss.
Instead, all she does is pluck the rose from behind her ear, and hand it to him. 
It’s okay, she says. No thorns. 
He stares at the rich furled petals and the whittled-down stem. 
Thanks, he says, amused, charmed. He thinks there’s something odd about her. He likes it, though; if she were as beautiful as she is - which is very beautiful, exquisitely fucking beautiful - and she behaved like most people do, he’d find her terribly boring. 
He takes it from her. Turns over the rose in his hands absentmindedly as she keeps talking. She’s got all this hair: wild and glossy black, pouring over her thin shoulders, her ribs, her tiny waist. After a moment he feels the sharp prick of a thorn against his fingertip and releases the rose in surprise. 
You said there weren’t thorns, he tells her, laughing. Ow. 
Whoops, she says. Then: Did it get me too? 
She turns her head, pulls her hair out of the way. There’s a scarlet bead of blood trickling down the side of her perfect pale neck. He can’t quite tell where the point of entry was, where the thorn had dug in and broken skin. It’s bleeding a bit too heavily. Covering its tracks. 
She swivels, slightly. She sees the look on his face. Is it bad? she asks.
No, he says, though he can’t really tell. But - couldn’t you feel it, though? The thorn? 
The girl presses her hand to the side of her throat. It comes back bloodstained, a neat smear of red along the lifeline of her palm. 
No, she echoes, though this can’t possibly be true. Hey, you wanna get out of here or something? 
Alright, he says, smiling. They both stand. They leave the rose where it is. Let’s go. 
He cups her cheek instead of her neck when he kisses her for the first time, so he doesn’t have her blood on his hands.
It starts simple like that.) 
-
Karina’s so out of place in your apartment that it’s almost laughable - or it would be, if you were capable of thinking about anything but her mouth and her hands and her tits crushed up against your chest as you pin her to the doorframe. She keeps making these little sounds into your mouth: low and throaty, almost agonized. You swallow all her moans off her lips - oh, baby, you’re okay - and you only kiss her harder. She doesn’t belong, among your carpet worn-down from pacing and your laptop still open and idling and the mess of incoherent colorful post-it notes pasted to your fridge. She doesn’t fit here. Here kissing your mouth, here in your arms, here on fucking earth with the rest of you heathens-
“You wanna fuck me so bad,” murmurs Karina, chin on an incline, staring up at you, “then do it already.” 
She doesn’t squirm or fidget; she doesn’t get needy or start begging. She stays pinned down by your body, lips parted, and stands completely still. 
It’s like she’s telling you to make your move. Waiting for something inevitable. 
“What happened to patience?” you say, anyway. 
Karina’s mouth curls. She palms your cock through your pants. “What the fuck is that?”
You try to laugh, breathless and turned on, but all she does is kiss you again.
You’re a creative - you’re ready to attribute meaning to every movement - but there’s nothing so profound about it when you get Karina on your bed, all that thick black hair fanned out on your sheets, her hands grasping to get your shirt off - off, she murmurs, off. Even that comes out measured. She never shakes. She’s so sure. You kiss her everywhere you can reach, her face and her neck and her collarbone and her tits, drunk on the soft, humming sounds she makes when you do. You’re so fucking gorgeous, you can’t stop saying, and Karina keeps laughing that same raspy laugh, like it’s the most hilarious thing she’s ever heard. 
“You told me you already know that, right?” You’ve got her face cupped in one of your hands and your other one at the neckline of her scarlet dress. “So what’s so funny?” 
“Everything.” Her teeth glint the way fangs would, a deliberate trick of the light. She’d be villainous if she weren’t so content to be trapped underneath you. “All of it.” She presses her palm to the side of your neck. “You’re too nice.” 
“Fuck.” Your thumb accidentally digs too hard into her cheek. She doesn’t wince, but you feel it - the stomach-turning thrill, the possibility of leaving a bruise. Your hand drops low - lower, down her throat and her tits and her flat midriff - and slips between her thighs, up her dress. It feels safer, somehow. “How do you manage to make the word nice sound like an insult?” 
“It’s not,” she says, simply, and spreads her legs. 
And it must not be - because Karina’s so wet. 
She makes another low velvety sound when you first touch her, seems to melt into the stretch of your finger in her cunt - just one finger, and her back arches faintly, prettily, hips lifting to take more. “Jesus,” you mutter, but Karina’s not looking at you: her eyes are shut tight, lashes fluttering black, tits heaving in her dress with each draw of breath. You’ve fucked girls who’ve seemed unsure of themselves - embarrassed by their own wantonness, how wet they are, how bad they want it - but all Karina does is wrap her hand around your wrist and tug, once: a clear soundless plea for more.
For a second you’re actually, positively certain that you’ve lost it. 
It’s abject fantasy. It can’t be real. You in your apartment with the dream girl - the personal Aphrodite - the muse; God, if anyone was ever made to be a fucking muse, it’s her - underneath you with her ridiculous tits and her tight little pussy, face like a Hollywood dream. Ludicrous. Impossible. Bucking as she tries to fuck herself deeper on your fingers, all the way to the knuckle - slowing down only to say you wanna fuck my cunt open with your big fat cock or what? 
“I,” you try to say, strangled - her mouth’s so fucking filthy. “I was - I mean - we could take it slow-”
“How romantic,” says Karina - and this, too, sounds like a heinous insult coming from her - but she drags your wrist to her lips and sucks her own slick off your hand anyway. 
You choke on your next breath. “Karina-” 
She looks up at you, unflinching, tits half out of her dress and cunt dripping down her thighs. Lipstick worn-down, kissed-off. All over your mouth, or your throat, or your shirt. Mouth chapped from the cold and stained marvelously pink. There’s something in the way her smile forms slight and crooked every time you say her name, as if there’s some private joke you’re not in on. 
“You’re such a gentleman,” Karina purrs, all syrupy-sweet condescension. Then: “You really don’t have to be.” 
She licks the pad of your finger. She’s so completely shameless. You feel monstrous on top of her, in this sick, superior way, like she’s just too small to be so sopping wet and slutty and fuckable - too beautiful to be anything but treated just right. 
“If you want me to fuck you like a whore, baby,” you tell her, half-joking, “then just say that.” 
It’s a mistake the moment it leaves your mouth - a line crossed. Because all Karina does is cock her head, your wrist gripped delicately in her hand, her legs parted underneath you, and stares. Almost droll, bemused. Like you’re so goddamn predictable.  
“Didn’t you hear me?” That perfect face sears right through you. You’d nearly fucked that face. Not quite. Not yet. “I want whatever you want.” 
She’s even tinier than you originally thought she was. You only realize this now, tracing her stomach under your fingertips, feeling the sharp relief of each rib straining beneath her skin. You don’t know it until you touch her, but you can span the width of her thigh under one hand. It sends a strange shiver through you: mapping every jut of bone, every startling edge. She’s tiny. Breakable, practically. Men meaner than you have probably thrown her around, fucked her up against walls, used her like a toy. 
“So,” says Karina. “What do you want?” 
Your fist clenches tight in her grasp, right in front of her face, knuckles going horrifically white.
Like you - like you’re going to-
An accident. A primal sort of gesture, like you’re less than human, turned under her touch into some feral hot-blooded animal who can’t control itself: carnivorous, predatory. You stare at your own hand and then the sharp scythelike curve of her mouth and feel revolted embarrassment crawl straight up your spine. 
It’s abhorrent. 
It also doesn’t even seem to matter.
Karina doesn’t go wide-eyed and nervous; she doesn’t look at your wound fist like she’s scared of what it could do to her. She clicks her tongue, once. Like this, too, is something she already saw coming.
“I thought so,” she says, anyway. Maybe this is it, what does it for her; looking the devil full in the face and begging to be burned. “Then do it.” 
“I can’t do that to you,” you mutter, but you tug her dress up, and you fuck her anyway. 
-
She’s a stranger. This is the point of fucking strangers. To do things to them that you’d never do to anyone else - to take out your worst impulses and tell your best lies and know that none of it matters, in the end. Because they’re nobody, and because you’ll never see them again. 
But you just can’t. 
She’s too indulgent and stunning and soft, with her low moans and the addicting drenched heat of her cunt, hand gentle and careful on the nape of your neck so she can keep pulling you into a kiss. She’s made up of curves, delicate edges - those hips and those tits you can’t keep your hands off of and her lips in a dreamy smile - and you find yourself stroking her hair back from her face so you can drink it all in: the blush in her cheeks, the almost serene way she lets her eyes slip shut and her mouth drop open, slack and enticingly wet. So good, baby, you keep telling her, because she is, her entire body warm and wanting and so easily fucked open, little pussy swallowing your cock right up. She doesn’t fidget or plead. She’s so sweet, such a perfect fit, humming into your mouth as your cock eases her open; so wet you can hear it, the sloppy squelch of her cunt when you bottom out. Your voice comes out coaxing. You like that? That feel good? Taking my cock so nicely, huh?
“Mmm,” Karina breathes, in an exhilarating moan, right into your mouth, against your tongue. “Mm, mm-”
She never quite manages full sentences. Never finds it in herself to make any more obscene demands. Just gets all small and soaking underneath you, licks messily at your bottom lip, and lets you do all the talking - lets you draw a careful hand through her hair and drop your other one between her thighs, clenches tight around your cock when you rub at her clit, keens low in her throat and listens. To the good girl, to the I got you, baby, to the that’s it, there you go, this is what you wanted - I know, honey, I know, you just needed to get this cunt fucked right, you just needed to cum real bad. I know what this is. I know what you need. 
“Fuck.” She’s flushed pink to her chest, delightfully ineloquent. “Yes-” 
Well - good thing you’re decent with your words, when it counts. Let Karina blush and drool and slick up your cock with every stroke. That’ll work just fine with you.
It’s the kind of juxtaposition you’d really lean into - the kind of thing you’d write just to get so self-indulgent with, a personalized note to the director, a wink and a nudge to every audience member. Look at that. Look at her eyes like something straight out of poetry. Look at her body like a pornographic fantasy. Look at how she gets so tamed and docile and compliant when she gets her tiny pussy stuffed full, creaming all over that cock, huge tits bouncing - look, that’s art, isn’t it? What else would you call it? What else could it be?
“You gonna cum, baby?” She’s so fragile underneath you. Color staining her cheeks apple-red; lips swollen and begging to be kissed. Fictive little fairy tale. “You gonna cum for me?”
“Yeah.” It’s breathy and barely-there. Her chin trembles, jerks in a weak nod. “I’m - I - fuck-” 
See: you just can’t rough her up. It’d be blasphemous. Sacrilege. Taking one single look at the stained-glass windows of a church and tearing it all to the ground.
Still, you’re mesmerized by how utterly vulnerable she looks: the glossy shine to her irises; the way she inhales all slow and shaky, body slipping from some sort of precipice. Not just like she’s near-tears, but like she’s stunned - struck dumb from a violent blow, mouth wide open in the aftermath. And it’s just sex - and, fuck, you’ve said it, you see things the way every obsessive artist does; sex is never just sex. Every one thing means something more. A metaphor. An allegory. You get nasty and debauched and dirty because you know exactly what you can spin it into. Put the entire scene in a silent film and everyone can swoon about the things you might be saying to her, this impossibly captivating stranger in your bed with her graceful name, her dizzying moans, her shuddering frame in her orgasm. Don’t you get it? you could be telling her, hand brushing gently over her sweat-damp hairline. Don’t you feel that? You’re a stranger to me, baby, but you don’t have to be. There’s a reason we met. There’s a meant-to-be here, somewhere. I’m not a believer, sweetheart, but you could make one out of me - I swear you could, I promise-
But that’s the reason why these things are best left to the imagination, anyway. 
A million scripted sweet nothings - and none of them manage to make it out of your mouth. 
“Karina.” Your hips jerk hard. You sound half-possessed. “So pretty, cumming all over my cock like that. Such a perfect little cunt, baby - so fucking good-”
Her eyes suddenly shut tight; her body arcs into your touch, lips parted in a silent gasp. And for a second it seems like such a snapshot of innocence, like she’s brand-new to getting fucked quick and rough and dirty - though you know this can’t possibly be the truth, not with the way she flirts and whines and drips for more like she’s made for it - but she’s trembling under your fingertips, and you can dream. She’s your beautiful stranger, your pristine muse; you can pretend she’s whatever the fuck you want. 
“God,” Karina murmurs, so soft and weak it makes your head spin. 
Before you know what you’re doing - before you can even think twice about it - you’re pulling out, and cumming all over her stomach. 
You can’t help it. You shouldn’t have had that thought about innocence. Jesus. This is what you mean, about you and your own painful humanity; you’ve got all the same vile desires. When you see a pure thing - all that porcelain skin, all that thick glossy black hair, all those gleaming white teeth in her open mouth - your very first instinct is to fuck it up bad.
You’d do worse, if you were worse - you’d make a real fucking disaster out of her. 
“Baby,” you say, breathlessly. “Are you…”
And Karina, then, does something truly evil: 
Sighs luxuriously, stretches her arms above her head, eases those gorgeous eyes open, and smiles. 
As if she’s reveling in it. The scent of sex - the defiled tautness of her tummy - the way you’re not sure where her little red dress or her shoes or her panties are, how her cunt’s dripping wet onto your sheets, her hair a glorious mess. Grinning in the face of utter filth. 
“You,” you exhale, running your palm down her side. “You’re so…” 
Karina’s mouth pulls up at a corner, like she’s daring you to finish the sentence, but you never do. 
You can’t stop staring at the stretch of cum-covered skin before you. Coating her belly, pooling into her navel. You realize with a start that there’s a new bruise blooming on her chest, a vicious sort of bite mark. You can’t remember when you did that. You’d been kissing her - of course you kissed her - her mouth and her neck and her tits, but you’d been so gentle, sucking light and soothing her skin with your tongue after-
“You didn’t want to cum inside me?” Karina asks, hoarsely. 
You blink so hard your vision blurs. “What?” 
“Right.” Her eyeshadow’s smudged dark underneath her eyes, making her look deliciously used up. “You did want to cum inside me.” 
“Karina,” you warn - or, at least, you mean to make it sound like a warning - but her name comes out too faint. It’s horrific. Your hand traces her hipbone so reverently. You’re no match for her. 
Karina arches a brow in unhurried challenge, ghosts her hand across her tummy. Takes two fingers and drags them through the cum you spilled, pulls back with it clinging thickly to her skin. Drifts down, down, down. 
“Karina,” you try to say again, even more pathetic than last time. “Jesus-” 
But you saying her name holds no weight here; she’s made that more than obvious. Nothing to stop her as she smears her cum-slick fingers across her glistening pussy, gaze locked amusedly on your face, tracking your reaction. She’s still so fucking wet - she rubs your cum in circles across her clit - tossing her head back a little, chest heaving and falling, fingertips just barely dipping inside her cunt-
“I can’t.” Karina lifts her hand to pop her fingers in her mouth, sucks them clean. Pointedly flashes her too-sharp nails at you like she’s unsheathing claws. “If you want it, you’re gonna have to do it yourself.”
“You,” you say, though your hand’s already pressing hard into her ribs, “are fucking cruel, baby.” 
“And you,” replies Karina, head tilting, “just want to see my cunt all filled up and leaking your cum.” 
Oh, she hasn’t been wrong about you all night. She certainly won’t start now. 
“What?” A sly, languid smirk tugs at her lips. “Afraid you’re gonna knock me up or something?” 
Your breath halts right in your lungs.
You’d been right about her too, it seems. Succubus. Vampire. She must be; she’s bloodthirsty. Tits gleaming with sweat, the scarlet stain of that bite mark you can’t remember leaving, cunt all dripping wet and desperately empty - body like a fatal fucking blow. 
Karina’s eyes glint. I want what you want, she’d said. 
With the way she spreads her legs, she’s gotta be ready to prove it.
So you never stood a chance. You give in and scoop up cum with one finger and sink it deep inside her aching cunt, feeling as she clenches down, as she takes it so well; like a good girl, you tell her, letting me do whatever I want with this needy little cunt; that’s my good girl. Karina lifts her hips - goes so still and so obedient - and lets you repeat it over and over again, fucking into her with your fingers until the plane of her stomach is bare and sticky and her cunt’s dribbling your cum onto your sheets. It’s completely nasty. It’s hot. It’s Karina craning her neck back and shutting her eyes as you bury three fingers inside of her and fill her with your cum, every part of her in utter surrender, entirely at your mercy, breathing out hard through her nose until your thumb rubs at her clit and she’s cumming again, all over your hand. She gets this look on her face, afterwards - exhausted, every line of her face gentle and lax - staring up at you like you’re the only person still left on this planet. Adoring, almost. As if you’re something out of another world. 
It’s an expression too sweet for a scene like this - and it’s exactly what men like you make art about. 
“There,” you say, soft and mesmerized, wiping your hand across her chest. “Satisfied?” 
Karina laughs her strange, gravelly, gorgeous laugh. 
“No,” she says, shamelessly. “But that’s not your fault.” 
Your fingers curl around the curve of her jaw. “No?”
She barely looks like she belongs in your bed - she must be something divine, lit from within, god-blessedly gorgeous. She’s a fucking fever dream: stunning eyes and the bob of her throat and her tits and her curves and all that hair. Stay, you think of telling her. Let me see what I can make of you. I don’t know you yet but I could, baby, I really could. 
“Nope.” Karina smiles, and somewhere, soliloquies are writing themselves. “I always want more.”
“Okay,” you say, mouth hovering over hers. “Then stay.” 
-
So she stays.
-
(An update on your script:
The stranger and the girl are back at his place. They’re sitting on his couch. Nobody has cleaned off her neck. He’s been too busy pawing at her: at her face, between her legs, at her tits in her tight dress. I need you, he’s been murmuring to her, and it feels like he really means it: like he’ll die if he doesn’t get her desperate and whining underneath him, his cock stretching her tight little cunt wide open. He doesn’t feel too bad about it. She’s a dirty slut. She’s said as much. She’s got her own needs, too. 
What happened to your window? she asks, suddenly.
He pulls back from her chest, his spit clinging shiny to her skin. 
She isn’t looking at him. He has the sudden, unnerving feeling that she hasn’t been looking at him the whole time. Not like she’s had her eyes closed in blinding, overwhelming pleasure - but like she’s deliberately been trying to look at anything else. 
But his hand falls between her thighs, and he realizes she’s already wet. 
A bird flew into it, probably, he says. That happens, sometimes. 
They’re talking about the stain on the once-clean glass of his window. The backdrop of the night sky behind means it’s barely visible, but the suggestion of it is enough. Implicit gore. Tiny little black feathers, caked in blood from the impact, dark and dried. It’ll be scrubbed off soon enough, he knows. It’ll be all gone eventually. 
Oh, she says. She doesn’t apologize for potentially killing the mood. She hasn’t, anyway, not really. She’s still wet and small underneath him, begging for it. Poor thing. 
Yeah, he says. 
She turns back to him. Her hair’s everywhere, all over the arm of his couch, wayward strands beneath his fingers. She’s clearly expecting something - to be kissed, to be fucked hard, to be called baby and angel and good girl. It doesn’t really matter either way. Those are the only things he can give her. 
He stares at the blood on her neck. 
Let me clean that off for you, actually, he says, and goes to the kitchen to get a washcloth.)
-
Much, much later:
“I admire you,” Karina says, all tucked up in your bed, underneath your sheets, half-buried into your side. Moonlight bleeds into the room. Her eyes gleam like galaxies. “For showing some self-control.” 
“What?” 
Karina’s hair pours over your pillowcase. She takes your hand and brings it close to her face, working your fingers into a tight fist. 
“Fucking bitch,” you mutter, and then regret it immediately. It lands too harshly, too strange and serious. “Sorry. I didn’t - that came out weird. I don’t think you’re a bitch.” 
Karina’s lips brush your knuckles. “Not the meanest thing I’ve been called.” Her voice twists with humor. She shouldn’t be so comfortable curled up with a man she doesn’t know in the middle of the night. You think of kissing her hard, of scraping her neck with your teeth, of warning her about self-preservation - sweetheart, you could tell her, this is how people end up dead. “Not the meanest thing I’ll be called, either.” 
You shift. Your fist, unconsciously, goes tense in her hand. “What’s your deal?” 
Her mouth tilts. “What’s yours?” 
You huff out a laugh. “You’re unbearable,” you say softly, which feels much kinder than calling her a bitch. “What are you - what do you mean?” 
I’m not hard to figure out, you want to tell her. I’ll let you in if you ask me to. But you - you, you imagine saying, cupping Karina’s face in your hands and saying her name like you’re praying to her, drafting scenes in your head with each whispered syllable - you. Look at you. I’d fill a thousand pages trying to find a way to understand you. 
“If you want to hurt me,” Karina says, “then hurt me.” 
Your throat dries up. Your fist falls open. “What?” 
“I wouldn’t blame you.” Her voice is matter-of-fact. You see her tongue dart over her bottom lip, the slick glimmer of spit. “If that’s what you wanted.” 
You stare at her, hard. 
It’s not difficult to make out her silhouette in the dark; she’s illuminated so distinctly by the moon, like it’s her own on-set spotlight, professionally arranged - she’s got the cosmos calling her shots. You think about how careful you’d been with her: doing what she wanted and making her cum and kissing her like you have history and maybe fucking her like you love her, just a little.
You think about that bruise you left on her chest, her skin between your teeth, the feeling of biting down. 
“It’s not,” you say, and the lie tastes acrid in your mouth. “It’s - it’s not, Karina.” 
“You fucked my face in public within like an hour of meeting me. And fucked me and came on my stomach. And fingered your cum inside of me.” It’s far past midnight. She sounds more alert than she should. “You’re gonna start being polite now?”
It sends an odd knot to your gut, the way she puts it. Equating all of that to hurting her. Laughing in the face of your clenched fist - not because she thinks you won’t do it, but because she knows how bad you want it. 
Hurt me. She says it like it’s so easy. Fuck me. Let me stay the night. Hurt me; you’ve earned it. 
“I’m not polite.” The truth doesn’t taste much better. “I just have, you know, common fucking decency.” 
“Hm,” Karina says, a nonchalant little noise, and nothing else.
You brush her hair off her neck and your fingertips graze the hollow of her throat. You feel her swallow under your touch. You open your mouth, though you’re not sure what you’re about to say - Karina, like a chant, like she’s consumed you in a matter of moments, Karina - but she shuts her eyes delicately, and curls close to you, and just like that the moment is over. 
I have common decency, you’d said. I won’t hurt you. I promise. I can control myself.
So maybe you weren’t right about everything. You’re not the devil. That’d be a delusion of grandeur - the idea that you’d ever have that kind of power over a girl like her. 
Not for long, she’d replied, in the knowing tilt of her smile. Not if I can help it.
-
In the morning, it’s a picture of crime-scene proportions. It takes a little work to piece it all together.
Karina’s not in bed when you wake up, but there are traces of her everywhere - telltale, incriminating bits of evidence. Strands of her hair on the pillow. Blood-red lipstick stains on the fabric. Her crimson dress crumpled on your bedroom floor, sporting a tiny tear in the hem that you don’t remember leaving; you can still smell her perfume all over your sheets, like a calling card. If this was a TV drama - a clichéd police procedural - she’d probably be dead in your living room right now, blank-eyed and beyond saving, rigor mortis deforming her perfect body into something grotesque. 
This is also probably not a thought you should ever relay to Karina, but you do anyway.
“Sorry to disappoint,” she replies. She’s perched on your kitchen counter, dressed in one of your t-shirts, bare legs swinging. “I’m very much alive.”
“I was being dramatic,” you try to say, gesturing with your hands to set the scene - the lighting, the fake blood and the special effects, the potential pallor of her face. “I’m - I’m a screenwriter. It’s in my nature. I didn’t mean I wanted to find your fucking corpse out here-”
“It’s okay if you did.”
You choke. “What?”
“I’m right with you, babe.” Karina leans forward conspiratorially. There’s a sharpness to the dark glint in her eyes that kind of makes you think she really does understand: that she has the same tendency to jump to the worst possible conclusions. A kindred, morbid spirit. “I get it. I’m pretty devastated that I’m still breathing, too.”
She says this all in a scratchy, sultry voice, hoarse as though she’s been sleeping for years instead of hours. Lashes fluttering like she’s just told you something very adorable and sweet.
“God,” you say, desperately charmed, and laugh until you feel light-headed. “You’re sick.”
Karina’s mouth curls. “Right.”
“I’m serious.” It’s surreal: her wearing your clothes and sitting on your counter like this is an everyday occurrence, indulging every fucked-up thing you say to her. Maybe you’re still caught somewhere in a dream, just waiting to wake up. “You’re, like - not normal.” 
“Hey.” A light, careless shrug; her palm rests over the back of her neck. “No arguments here.”
You rub a hand over your eyes, smiling like an idiot, and take a breath. 
It’s late January, and cool sunlight drips into the room, over your furniture and your floors and the angel right in the middle of your kitchen. It should wash her out, blur her at the edges; it doesn’t even come close. Turns her to a freeze frame instead, carefully color-graded, every hue just a bit too intense: skin ghost-pale, lips pouty and pink, hair jet-black and tangled to her waist. Your shirt hangs off of her slender frame like it aims to swallow her up. You thought you’d been stunned by Karina before, lulled by the late night, the electric rush of touching her - you’d assumed you could blame it on the alcohol, the slutty dress and the sultry makeup and the long-held habit of artistic romanticization-
But it’s nothing compared to seeing her now. 
Karina crosses one leg over the other, and waits as though expecting a rating: to be starred out of five like a film. 
Face scrubbed clean. Bone structure a study of faultless symmetry, delicate in a way that feels both inhuman and invulnerable. She’s so classically breathtaking - a miraculous second coming of a tragic, iconic movie star, a phenomenon back from the grave; jaw and nose and mouth all clean lines, aesthetically precise art - but God, those eyes. Enormous without the thick liner, suggestive only of impossible innocence. Like some darling baby animal, some long-lashed lamb to the slaughter - something pristine and completely untouched. 
The morning after, the direct light, the exposed behind-the-scenes - she’s still beyond beautiful. 
And somehow she’s still here with you. 
“That’s insane, by the way,” you say, unable to stop yourself. “That you stayed.” 
There’s a loud cracking sound. 
You squint, disoriented. “What-” 
Karina blinks at you, wide-eyed; her jaw shifts. The sound echoes again, startling and sudden. “What?” 
“Are-” You step closer. “Are you chewing on fucking glass or something?” 
“Or something,” Karina replies, smile’s tiny and closed-off. She gestures to the cup next to her. “It’s just ice.” 
She’s so calm watching you approach her. You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the freakout, for the breakdown - or, at the very least, the scrambling excuses before the walk of shame. Here’s the truth: she doesn’t know you. Here’s an even worse truth: judging by her hickey that looks like you might’ve tried to rip her throat out earlier, she’d have every right to take one look at you and run. 
Karina doesn’t do any of it. Just raises her cup to her lips and tips it back, the arc of her neck so inviting. 
“That’s so fucking bad for your enamel.” You’re laughing again. You’re in front of her now, settled between her legs. “You’re gonna break a tooth.” 
Karina sets her glass down. Wipes the corner of her mouth with her wrist, eyes locked amusedly on yours - heavy-lidded enough to seem lazy, but pupils blown enough to be a siren call, a deliberate suggestion.
“Oh, no,” she says, all smoky sarcasm. “Who’d ever want me then?” 
She parts her thighs the second you touch them; her body’s so obedient under your fingertips, like a doll’s, something to be dressed up and posed and played with. Daring you to do everything you’re already thinking about doing. 
“You’re ridiculous,” you murmur, and give in completely.
So:
Look, you know exactly how the movies would frame this. Pandering to the wide-eyed teenagers and hopeless romantics; adding the swell of strings every time your eyes or hands or lips meet, each motion accompanied with unsubtle cues - there’s the meet-cute, there’s the moment, there’s the love-at-first-sight. It’s ridiculous to drag any of that into your real life, of course. It’d be like believing in God. Giving up logic to put your faith in something silly and mythic and implausible - to follow true love like a religion, expecting it to save your soul; to pray to the one like a healing property, a benevolent higher power. 
You can’t believe in that. You can’t. 
But-
Karina pulls back the barest amount, eyelids fluttering open like a new day dawning, and smiles when she sees the look on your face. So sweet and gorgeous; so struck and adoring. So comfortable wrapped up in your arms.
“Hi,” she murmurs. 
And - as though it’s some bone-deep instinct, saturating your bloodstream - you just have to kiss her again. 
Don’t you feel that? you think of telling her again, your hand slipping to cup her cheek - the sentiment always seems to come back around. You swear you can see scenes flashing behind your eyelids, the beginnings of a creative epiphany; it must be seeping through your fingers, staining her skin with ink, every possible action depicted neatly between brackets. A laugh, a look, a touch. A version of Karina projected across the silver screen to a wild, wanting audience. Don’t you see what you could do for me? What you’re capable of becoming? 
You can’t believe in any of this, but it’s gotta be something close. 
The feeling doesn’t end when the kiss does: only intensifies, made tangible somehow. Sculpted into the spit-slick curve of her lips, the flinty gleam in her eye. Like she feels it too. Like she knows. 
“And it’s not insane that I stayed,” Karina says, belatedly. “You asked me to.” 
For a moment you just stare at her, seconds from her mouth and speechless. 
It’s the truth without difficulty. It’s a confession with no strings attached. It’s the fucking dangerous way she says it - as if whatever you want extends to a lot more than sex. 
“And you don’t-” Your throat closes over a swallow; you find your eyes darting between hers, searching for anything but honesty. “You don’t think that’s insane? Doing whatever a stranger tells you to?”
Karina only laughs her strange laugh, gritty the way good music is, demanding to be heard.
“Nope,” she says, like this is all so simple. “That’s just what I do.”
It’s unbearably filthy in its implication - and it’s exactly what you need. 
The room seems to fill with potential, fantasies pouring in from the ceiling, enough to bloat any manuscript to its breaking point. You let out a breathless laugh, loud and unabashed. You think of pushing for even more, pressing your nails in and digging deeper - why me, why this, why now - but Karina leans in close before you can and slots her mouth to yours, and you’re no fool: there’s no line of questioning worth giving that up. 
Seems like you’ll have to come up with this character motivation all on your own. 
-
“Look at us,” she murmurs against your lips - meaning this very minute, the chemistry, how every glittering star must’ve conspired to get you here. “Kinda feels like this was meant to be, huh?” 
She’s clearly kidding, because it’s too soon and too fucking crazy, but-
Well, the way you kiss her then is absolutely your version of a yes. 
-
Here’s something people should probably know about artists like you:
You’re rather enamored with the idea of a magnum opus. 
It’s a natural thing to reach for, to visualize - the concept of your one great masterpiece. Something you can pour years and years into, water into roaring reckless oceans; time transforming the things you make into something worth remembering forever. Everyone you know - your sculptors, your songwriters - has their own version of this, somewhere. When I finally create this one perfect thing I’ll be - go on, fill in the blank. Fulfilled. Gratified. Happy. When I finally do this, I’ll feel whole. 
It’s strangely fantastical. A lifelong dream a kid would have - a childlike, storybook aspiration. 
Yours - as far as you’ve figured out - looks a little like this:
“It’s not as romantic as it should be,” you admit, now. “I’m not really into that as a theme. True love, I mean. Or optimism. Or hope. I want something more…” Something rougher, you mean. Something with pain. Something with blood and bruises. “Nuanced, you know? Complicated, messy.” 
“I get it,” replies Karina. She has her hands twisted in her lap, watching you very closely. You’re obsessed with the way she looks at you - like she’s drinking every word in with those smoldering dark eyes, greedy for more. For you. “All the best art is about pain, huh?” 
You snap your fingers, pleased to be understood. “Exactly.” 
Karina smiles, small and knowing, and gestures you on. 
In your vision, your magnum opus is always about a girl. Like you said, it’s the way it goes with all the best films ever made: not about love, but the futility of it lasting. Think of all the famed examples - think of the filmmakers and their obsessions, sneaking the great loves of their lives between each line: there’s something she said, there’s a dress she wore, there’s a conversation they had in the middle of the night, tangled up in sheets and whispering against skin. Your future muse will be just like that. A reincarnation of the infamous women who haunt all the greatest artists - an amalgamation of their bodies contorted into narratives and replicated in loving, graphic detail. Someone with skin like marble, a statue you could take a sledgehammer to. Someone who looks unfathomably pretty when she cries. 
Someone like-
“Uh-huh,” says Karina. She must’ve just gotten out of the shower before you found her, because her hair’s damp enough to have left wet patches on your t-shirt. She licks her bottom lip, once. “Sure.” 
Someone to be what you’ve always wanted: a flawless girl to fall from the sky into your lap. To fulfill your promise to yourself: when I meet her, I’ll know. I’ll be able to make this movie. When I meet her, everything will slip exactly into place. 
Karina cracks another ice cube between her teeth.
“So,” she says, low with insinuation. “When you told me last night that you found me inspiring…”
She doesn’t need to finish the question. She knows exactly what you want.
“You’re…” You shake your head. “You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. I saw you and I just - I felt like I knew. I knew. I wanted you.” You shrug helplessly, smiling. “Do you think I’m nuts?” 
She should, probably. You’re a total stranger, a practical lunatic, an artist talking of your visions like you’re possessed. You don’t know her - that’s the reality of the situation. You don’t know her. 
But then there’s everything else.
The unbelievable sex, the staying the night; the way she lets you touch her, blinking slow and subservient, like you already have a claim to her body. You think muse and you think in abstract concepts, glittering stars, guiding lights; you think of skin cut up and sewn together, of creators and their finest monsters, of the implicit poetry in the undoing. You think muse and you think of the way Karina smiles at you now, full lips and frail bones, a painter’s portrait reference. Unmoving, unafraid. Too otherworldly for your day-to-day but just right when she’s in your arms, like a trial-run demonstration: this is what we’re capable of. You could make it happen. You could make me fit.
You swear you’ve been dreaming of someone like her your whole fucking life. 
You think muse, and now you can only think of her. 
It’s a sign. It must be. And this, the next one:
“No,” Karina says, easily. “I think you’re just like everyone else.” But she raises an eyebrow, so you know it’s a joke. “I think you’re all the same.” 
You laugh, delighted; Karina’s smile widens, shows her teeth. “Shut up.” 
Karina acquiesces immediately - claps a hand over her mouth like it’ll keep any other words from escaping. It’s so adorable that you can’t keep yourself from pouncing, suddenly all over her like an animal: wrenching her thin wrist down, fingers threading through her hair, tugging her lips to yours as if you’ve been starved and she’s something to devour. She’s so cold, ice still melting on her tongue; even her body feels glacial, more porcelain than real. It drives you wild - the stunning impossibility of her. The desire to see it all reworked, unwound, shattered. 
“So,” you breathe over her mouth. “I can write about you?” 
“Babe.” Karina’s dark eyes sparkle, frozen-over streets in the mid-winter sun. “You can do anything you want with me.” 
That’s the whole point of having a muse, after all. Everything they are becomes yours. 
-
“But,” you can’t help saying right after: “you don’t have to be, like - concerned. About what I said. About art and pain. I mean…” You falter. You’re standing in between her spread legs now, thumbing the sharp curve of her jaw. “It’s fiction. I’m not that kind of guy in real life - I’m not going to hurt you.” 
Karina just stares at you, sentiment clear and unspoken. 
“Not like - not seriously.” You roll your eyes, laughing it off. “Not like that.” 
“Not like that,” Karina echoes. The hickey on her neck seems to flush redder every time you look at it - a photograph in a darkroom, developing. “But in other ways.”
Your mouth opens, but whatever defense you might’ve had gets traitorously stuck in your throat.
Karina laughs hoarsely, lets you trace her bottom lip with a finger. She seems to get the picture - that you’d love to see it bitten and bloody, but only ever in the name of art. There’s a kind of sick, sadistic beauty in destruction, battles waged and lost. She leans into your touch like she’s seen all the war films and knows precisely why they’re so well-loved. 
“For the record,” she tells you, arms looped loosely around your neck: “I look very pretty when I cry.” 
“Jesus Christ.” You’re smiling. She couldn’t be more perfect if you’d dreamt her up yourself. “Then I guess I’ll have to make it happen.” 
-
It’s like fate, probably. 
-
(Up next in your script:
The girl is standing in the stranger’s bathroom. She’s turning a little glass perfume bottle over in her hands when he stops in the doorway. He’s perfectly content to watch her; she’s the kind of beautiful that deserves to be observed, like some exotic wild animal caged between four walls in an elaborate exhibit, mildly unaware of all the attention. Her hair is messy; her head is tilted down. Unseeing. 
Oh, he says. That was my-
Except he doesn’t even get the rest of the sentence out before the girl whirls around, and the bottle slips from her hand and shatters on the floor. 
Jesus. The stranger jolts back. Jumpy. He’s not too concerned about the broken bottle; it’s not his, anyway. Why the fuck did you do that? 
Sorry, the girl says. She’s leaning rather casually against the counter, observing the glass covering the ground, the sickly-sweet smell of the perfume sticking to the tile. Honeysuckle and the sharp note of alcohol, rendered unrecognizable. You scared me. 
He looks down. A crystalline stretch of tiny little shards - if she tried to move she’d slice her foot open. 
No worries, he says. Hold on. 
He ducks into the kitchen to get a broom and when he comes back he stops in his tracks. There’s something slightly off about the picture in front of him. She’s small against the background counter, frozen, barely blinking. Everything about her looks suddenly frail, fair skin ghostly underneath shitty bathroom lighting, cheekbones gaunt and sunken-in, hair pouring ink-black in endless waves. A vengeful spirit. An incorporeal haunting. 
Did you…? he starts to say, thrown. 
She blinks, finally. Did I what? 
He pauses, reassesses. She’s gorgeous. She’s art. She’s vibrantly alive. 
Never mind, he says. 
It seems kind of like she’d moved, but he can’t tell. He forgets about it. She’s still beautiful and she seems okay and so he steps forward and clears the worst of the glass out of the way. 
It’s silly, she says, watching him. I used to know someone who wore that perfume. 
It was my ex-girlfriend’s, he says. She left it here a while back. I think it’s a common brand or whatever. Hey, let me help you. 
He’s very chivalrous about it, sweeping her off her feet, cradling her bridal-style across the possible remnants of glass. She laughs all the while, playing into it - a princess out of a fairy tale, being carried to safety by some gallant knight. But then he sets her down and cups her ass and says, You gonna pay me back for the property damage or what? and she laughs harder, because there’s nothing funnier than that: sweet moments turned filthy, a startling hairpin turn in intention. 
Or - conversely - a revelation of the absolute truth. Because what else could he ever want from her?
So she says, Yeah, sure, take everything, and leans in to kiss him.
It’s a normal kiss, mostly. It’s just that it begins pointedly erotic but seems to turn strange after a second, like he might be gripping her hair too hard, like she might be corpse-limp in his arms, like at any moment he could unhinge his jaw and sprout fangs and swallow her whole, cannibalistic, viperous. There’s too much spit and sound. There’s too much teeth and selfishness. It stretches on too long and lingers where it shouldn’t and overstays its welcome terribly - the score seems to fall off-beat, the lighting seems to shift dark and discolored-
But then the kiss breaks, and it’s over. 
When he pulls off of her she looks like the perfect picture of flushed contentment. Eyes half-lidded and lashes fluttering, her pouty lips swollen and rosy. Smiling like she wants more, like she wants it so, so bad. 
It didn’t get you? he asks finally, looking at her neck, thinking of thorns and pinprick pain and the rivulet of crimson that’d decorated her throat. The glass? 
No, she says. Don’t you wanna fuck me now? 
Oh, God, he says, grinning, and every other thought melts away into nothing. He likes how she doesn’t play coy. He likes how she’s smaller and has to tilt her chin up to look at him. He wants to fuck her, so he does. 
It’s excellent sex. The blood on the tile doesn’t really matter.)
-
Before you really start writing, there’s just one singular problem: you don’t know anything about her. 
“That’s not true,” Karina replies, right away. 
You open your mouth, then close it, because - okay, she’s not completely wrong. 
For about an hour now you just haven’t been able to stop talking to her. About anything, everything: your start into screenwriting, your favorite novels, your greatest inspirations, your neverending passion for eerie, erotic art. You can’t seem to shut up. And it would be bad - would be making you feel self-conscious right now, if it were anyone else - but it’s just not. Because it’s, well-
It’s you, you told her, thoughtfully, watching as the sun climbed higher into the sky, golden light grazing each scalpel-sharp edge of Karina’s body. You’re easy to talk to. Has anyone ever told you that?
Karina blinked at you. Tucked a strand of silky hair behind her ear and looked away, considering it. 
She has this way about her: this serene openness to her big eyes, her body language. Leaning back on her hands, humming and nodding and saying I get it, I feel that way too, I understand with such sweet sincerity that you can’t help but believe her. Like a Catholic confessional, a pristinely blank page - something you could pour hours and hours of words into that would never, ever complain. 
Yeah, Karina said, finally. She pulled one leg up to her chest; you could see the lacy black of her panties. I get that all the time. 
Just one of those people, huh? Her character was taking shape already. A vault for everyone else’s thoughts and ideas, cradling them between her fingers like something infinitely precious. A listener. Such a lovely trait; a perfect protagonist characteristic. An observer. 
Yeah. Her cheek rested gently against a knobby knee. Exactly. 
It’s something of an art study. You’ve been filing away these details about Karina since the moment you met her, unraveling her bit by bit.
She always seems to think deeply before she speaks, a sort of charming self-scripting, like she wants to make sure she gets every sentence just right. She makes silence seem like the most natural thing in the world. She doesn’t laugh nervously or blush or get embarrassed, ever. She’d mentioned offhand during one of your tangents about your most beloved movies that she tends to like films about gorgeous, dangerous, scarily self-possessed girls: Thirteen and Black Swan and Girl, Interrupted. She seems both intensely present and consistently lost in thought, there one moment and gone the next, her long-lashed gaze falling in and out of focus like a camera lens. A contradiction, you think to yourself. An enigma, even. Profoundly complicated. Not just a girl but something more. 
Art in and of itself, displayed deliberately on your kitchen counter, waiting to be understood. 
“No, you’re right.” Your fingers have strayed to your open laptop; you’re seconds from typing Karina’s name like a title, something you’ve created all on your own. “I know…”
You’re trying to think of something nonchalant to say and failing. I know you - the first instinct, somehow. I know you’re something brilliant and remarkable and new. I know I’ve never felt this way before about anyone. I know there’s something here, I know what I feel, I know what I want - you, you, you. 
Karina stares at the ice melting in her glass. 
Then she says, mouth tripping up at a corner: “You know I’m a world-class fuck.” 
“Jesus.” You laugh out loud, surprised. “Okay, yeah. That.” A pause. “And, obviously-” 
“Obviously,” Karina echoes, like she knows where this is going. 
“I know that you’re, like - outrageously fucking beautiful.” 
Karina hums once, letting the compliment wash over her, and turns to look out the window. 
You bite down on your lip - bite back all the other too-soon things you could say about her, threatening to claw their way out of your mouth - and go in on your script instead. 
It’s shockingly easy to write with her in the room. The details seem to stitch themselves together on-page, the restorative aftermath of an autopsy: sealing the slit chest cavity back up, prepping a corpse for an open casket, making something disconnected whole and beautiful again. You’d pulled these specifics from her like pulsing, throbbing organs - her tits, her tone, her tiny waist - and now all you’re doing is repurposing them. You know her body now. You turn stretches of pale, bruised-pink skin into prose, the curl of her little fingers around her thigh into dialogue. You imagine taking that perfect frame and picking it apart again, bit by bit; not just undressing her but peeling back layers of flesh, familiarizing yourself with the stark scarlet of her bloodstream. Until there’s nothing to hide and you can finally say it - I know you - and it’ll feel earned, and real, and honest. 
All very melodramatic, of course. It’s just the process: the natural consequence of being a writer. 
Your eyes trace the jutting protrusion of muscle in Karina’s throat, and you think about fucking her again. 
“Also,” you say, as though your earlier conversation isn’t long over. “I want to know-”
Karina makes a huffy, half-impatient noise.
You grin, gaze flicking back to her face. “What?” 
“You want to know more?” Her brows furrow in exaggerated confusion; her smile is absurdly self-deprecating. As if there’s anything she could possibly be insecure about. “You already got the two most interesting things about me, babe.” 
“Stop.” Your mouth twitches. “No way.” 
Karina’s smile stills in place, expectant. “No?”
“Come on.” Your hand slips from the keyboard to trace her knee. “I’m sure there’s all kinds of interesting things about you I haven’t learned yet.” 
The laugh she lets out is quiet and nearly secretive, legs parting to let you touch her. You’re already half in some faraway daydream, wondering if you can bottle the color of her eyes and turn it loose on the page.
“Okay,” Karina says, easily. She nudges your laptop away, scoots closer to you, her sharp chin pointed down at you. “Come and learn them, then.” 
“God.” As if that’s what you’re doing. Memorizing her body as some private education; taking her apart in a classroom dissection. “Can I - I’m trying to write, Karina. I’m being productive. I…” You’re shaking your head as though you’re not already giving in, fingers slipping up her thighs - she’s smirking at you like she knows it. “You’re fucking insatiable, you know that?”
“Then satiate me.” Karina’s head tilts, lids heavy. “Fuck me. Use me.” She leans down like she’s telling you a filthy, sordid secret. “Cum in me like I know you want to.” 
There’s something surreal about how certain she is: never tripping over her words or waffling over intentions, the most practiced actress you’ve ever seen. Every move - her tongue wetting her bottom lip, her hand sliding gracefully through her hair, her mouth forming a sweet little pout - all clean, choreographed precision. 
I know you, she says - like it’s earned, real, honest. Inexplicable, but there anyway. I know you want to. 
“Karina.” Her name comes out embarrassingly strangled. You’re pulling her thighs further apart, toying with the edge of her underwear. “You’re such a fucking - you’re so needy.” 
Her smirk sharpens even as you tug her panties roughly to the side. “I’m what?” 
“Needy.” 
“No.” She’s so wet - she’s probably seconds from dissolving into a whimpering breathless thing, begging to be underneath you, begging for more. That damn smirk is probably seconds from shattering completely. “What were you going to call me?” 
“Nothing.” You drag a finger down the slick drenched heat of her cunt.
“A slut.” Her voice is a purr, gravelly and sensual. “You think I’m just this fucking slut who needs your cock all the time, huh?” 
But it’s the kind of question that you already both know the answer to. Karina takes your finger-fucking so well, hips raised and rutting, hair cutting across her cheekbones - seems to give herself over to desire so fucking easily, with her whole body, back arching and neck craned and hot little cunt a sloppy mess. Never puts up a fight, never demures or acts shy; never says wait or don’t or stop. Only spreads her legs, and drips down your hand, and waits to be fucked good and hard.
And - hey, there’s one dirty word for a girl like that. 
“Well.” You raise your eyebrows at her: a challenge. “Are you?”
It’s dangerous. This is all dangerous. Stumbling down a treacherous path, asking a stranger something like this. Are you what I think you are? Do I know you? Do I really? 
Karina makes a low, luxurious noise at the stretch of your fingers in her cunt, buried to the knuckle. 
“Sure,” she says - and the gleam in her eye tells you she knows exactly what she’s getting herself into. “I’m whatever you want me to be.” 
-
So, it’s possible this is really the most interesting thing about her: she’s the kind of girl who never says no. 
-
That scene goes down how all scenes should:
“Fuck, fuck, fuck-” 
Karina’s choking out curses like she can’t recall any other words, head lolling back to expose the pretty bob of her throat. You thrust deep right then and she lets out a sound like an aching gasp, like you’ve doubled down with a fist to her gut, like you’re knocking the the air right out of her; you might as well be - oh, she moans, like she could be in shock or awe or pain - with the way you’ve got one of her thighs pulled up so you can fuck deep into her tight dripping cunt. It’s not nice, not really. Her back keeps hitting your counter. You keep staring at her neck and her hair and her face: the faint flush of her cheeks, the flawless construction of her bones underneath - there’s so much unmarked skin - God, she’s so clean, it’s like she’s never been fucking touched-
“You gonna cum for me?” you murmur, voice coming out thick and half-animalistic. 
She has one hand curled around the back of your neck. She’s got those ridiculous clawed nails on her but she never presses down. Her pussy can’t stop clenching around your cock but she takes it so well, lets you make room inside her little cunt, shuts her eyes and trips over her own breath as you force her spine hard against your counter over and over again. 
“Karina.” 
“Yeah,” she exhales, raspy and strained, as your cock stretches her out. “Fuck, yeah-” 
“Cum for me, honey. Cum all over my cock - oh, there you go, good girl-” 
It’s hypnotic. The tiny bitten-off sounds spilling from her ice-cold mouth - that small pristine face and all that hair tangled to her waist, just available to be knotted and tugged and fucked all the way up - Karina clings to you when she cums, and you feel so much bigger than her when she does, like you’ve got her sloppy and open around your cock and you could do anything to her, that’s what she told you, and even if she hadn’t, it’s not like she could stop you - she’s gorgeous but she doesn’t have it in her - she’s just too fucking delicate-
It happens too fast to process. 
One minute you’re buried inside her pussy and the next Karina’s on her knees, on the ground, and you’re jerking your cock until you’re cumming all over her. 
It’s obscene. It’s fucking inevitable. Thick ropes of creamy cum coating her forehead, her cheekbone, her nose and mouth and getting all in that hair-
Her hair. You don’t realize how hard you’re gripping her hair with one hand - balled in a brutal fist at the back of her head - until you disentangle your fingers from it and Karina sinks to the floor like she’s just been cut loose from marionette strings, breathing fast and hard. She doesn’t even say anything: doesn’t comment on the fact that you’d just shoved her straight to the ground or complain when the head of your cock smears cum across her jaw. Doesn’t even flinch when your cock slaps heavy across her cheek, at the indecent sound of the impact. 
You’re staring at her, open-mouthed. At her gorgeous, breathtaking, defiled face. 
Karina’s not looking at you. Instead, she’s preening in the most lewd, pornographic way possible: swiping her thumb through the cum streaking across her forehead, popping it into her mouth to suck. Halfway through she seems to remember you’re still in the room - seems to recall the value of a performance - and she redirects her gaze up at you, lids heavy, and smirks. 
“Did I…” you start, without knowing how the sentence will end. “Did I - was I-”
Karina lifts a cum-covered eyebrow. Her mouth’s an arresting pink, puckering around her thumb like it puckered around the cubes of ice, how her lips formed a ring around your cock back in the bookstore yesterday. She lets it slip free, shiny with spit. 
“No,” she says. “You’re good.” 
You can’t stop looking at the cum caught in her hairline. She’d been so fucking clean. 
You glance down and realize there are strands of black hair broken off in your clenched fist. 
Karina’s looking at her hair in your hand too, now, but with a sort of amused detachment. She stands shakily, using the counter for support. There’s cum all over her. Her knees are red from how hard she’d been pushed down.
“You’re so cute,” she tells you, grazing the side of your neck with her fingertips. “There’s no shame in being rough with me, babe.” 
“Right.” There’s an unnamed pressure coiling in your chest. “But - but you-” 
“Hey.” The word comes out in a rasp, and then Karina laughs, pushing the low hoarse lilt of her voice to its limits. She steps closer, angles her little cum-stained chin up at you. “Are you really gonna tell me you don’t like seeing me covered in your cum?” She’s tonguing the corner of her mouth. “Turning me into a-” her smirk pulls wicked; your next breath hitches so badly- “messy fucking whore for your cock?” 
“God,” you get out, because she’s winding an arm around your neck, and her pretty face is still sticky with your cum. “I-” 
“It’s what you wanted.” Karina blinks, in a show of such doe-eyed naïveté that saliva begins pooling hot in your mouth - like you’re feral, like you’re rabid. “Isn’t it?” 
You’re looking down again. Her knees are going to bruise. Black and blue, as if someone’s bullied her in the schoolyard, pulled her pigtails and knocked her to the asphalt. An echo of something teachers could’ve told her years ago: oh, look, he’s mean to you because he’s got a crush. It’s okay, really - he only hurts you because he likes you.  
“You like me like this,” Karina murmurs, dangerously low. “All sloppy and slutty for you.” Her gaze is trained on your mouth. “Marking me up.” Her hair slips from your hand. “Owning me.” 
Her name clogs your throat, cloying and candy-sweet. “Karina-”
Karina’s head tilts. “Yes or no?” 
She’s too close to you. She’s so filthily beautiful she seems somewhat alien, some kind of foreign invention. Her jaw is smeared with your cum and her flawless teeth shine like jewels and she’s like every creative vision you’ve ever had cut in clips and playing back in a movie theater, made to be scrutinized. 
“Yes,” you tell her, winded. “You’re fucking - you’re unreal, you know that?”
You’re smiling like it’s flattery, like it’s an exaggeration. Like she’s not living, breathing, visionary art. 
She smiles back, like she knows just how much you really mean it.
“So I’ve been told,” Karina says, and taps your neck, lightly. “Go make breakfast.” She shakes her hair out; some of it gets stuck to the cum on her cheekbone. “I’m taking another shower.” 
“Right.” You bite into your bottom lip, hand skimming down her side. “Go get clean.” 
“Clean?” She steps back and flashes a disbelieving grin, gestures pointedly at herself - her creamy thighs, her porn star tits in your t-shirt, her body like sex itself. Dirty by design. “Never happening.”
Some cynical part of you keeps waiting for a slip-up, some mistake in a masterfully crafted script - no one can be that gorgeous and still be here with you. But Karina moves and your eyes are hopelessly drawn to the disheveled curtain of her hair spiraling down her back, the sharp distinct lines of her calves, the flex of muscle in her thighs. Her hands, balled into little fists. She’s alluring as if manufactured that way: engineered to be perfectly bruisable, ruinable. It defies logic. It’s movie magic.
“Well.” You snort with laughter, swat at Karina’s ass as she turns to go. “At least you can try.”
You don’t even think she can help it - that’s the thing. It’s just what she was made for. 
-
“What would you have done if I said no, though?” you ask after a moment, as she wavers in the doorway. “Like - what if I told you I didn’t like you like this?” 
Karina shrugs.
“I would’ve been something else,” she says, and closes the bathroom door behind her. 
-
(Next:
The stranger and the girl fuck and afterwards he promises her breakfast and then he realizes his cabinets are bare, his fridge painfully unstocked. Sorry, he says, as she pokes around his kitchen. I don’t know how that happened. I usually have something to eat here, I swear. 
I don’t mind, she says. Her fingertips sweep his shelves. She seems fascinated by the emptiness, admiring the vacancy. Oh, wait, look. 
She finds a half-eaten jar of honey that she ends up scooping up crudely with her fingers, dripping sticky amber down her hand. He’d tell her that’s disgusting but she makes it - as she seems to make everything - into a pointed seduction, her tongue pink and wetly visible, her skin gleaming as she licks it off. It’s funny. He’d never thought it possible to turn eating into some sort of sexual performance but she manages it anyway: meets his eyes, sucks loud and lewd, smacks her lips and wipes her mouth with her thumb, ill-mannered and stunning. 
I can’t imagine that’s very filling, he says, delighted by her commitment. 
Yeah, well, she says. It’s a good thing I hate feeling full. 
But it seems like a moment of hilarious irony when ten minutes later he’s got her bent over his kitchen counter, tits pressed punishingly to the flat surface, honey stuck to her neck and collarbone as she’s fucked hard again and again, stuffed with his cock, his fingers everywhere, like her own body barely even belongs to her - all mine, he keeps saying, and means it; you’re all mine. All filled up. Overfed. Bursting. 
Sex is a manner of consuming, it seems. He might as well be eating her alive.)
-
“Do you do this a lot?”
Eventually, it turns into one of those lazy Saturdays. An afternoon of sitcom plot points. 
It’s just so easy to fill the time, the space, the page - you tell Karina some inane story from your college years and she reacts in all the right places like your own built-in studio audience; she says something off-handed and enticingly vague and suddenly you have a new thread of dialogue to explore. You’re both sprawled out over your couch, Karina’s got her thighs tucked over your legs, wearing another one of your t-shirts, a fresh hickey bruising over her throat. There’s something delightfully domestic about it - like you’ve been doing it for a lot longer than you have, or like you could do it eternally if given the chance, holding all the silken comfort of an old routine. When you’d mentioned it - I kind of feel like I could do this forever - she’d laughed her scratchy laugh and said forever’s nowhere near as long as you think it is, babe. A perfectly cinematic line. You stared at her, leaned over, and added it immediately to your draft. 
“This whole…” You’re trying to elaborate now, staring at the blinking cursor on your laptop screen. Your knuckles skim her bare, bony knees. “You know.” 
“Eloquent.” 
“Shut up.” 
“I thought you were a writer.” 
“Karina.” You’re charmed by the drawl of her voice, the raspy roll of sarcasm. “I’m just wondering.”
Karina shifts in your lap. You’ve got one hand sneaking up the hem of her shirt - your shirt - skating up her tummy, her ribs. You’re probably about five minutes from snapping your laptop shut and pulling her on top of you and saying something crass about her tits and passing it off as a character study. 
“What do you mean?” She’s as close to clean as she can be. You made sure of it - licked the hollow of her collarbone earlier after she got out of the shower, tasted nothing but soap and skin. “Do I have a lot of sex with strangers? Or do I stay the night a lot after I have sex with strangers?”
“Both.” You think of taking her hair down, sifting your hand through it, wrapping the strands around your fingers. “All of the above.” 
Karina shoots you a look, fluttered lashes, suggestive understanding. You hear it without her having to say it. You want me to tell you that you’re special. 
“I’ve kind of been going through a phase,” she says instead, nonchalantly. 
Your eyebrows fly up. “A phase?” 
“I’ve been, you know.” She gives an airy sigh. “Trying to find myself in the big city. Running wild. Terrified of monogamy but being very brave and quirky about it. Sordid past with love and romance and general human connection. Doing the whole manic pixie dream girl thing.” Her eyes flick to your open laptop, abruptly too wide and innocent. “That sound about right?” 
“Fuck off.” It’s a complete non-answer. You run a hand past her stomach, laughing. “You’re fucking with me.”
“What?” Karina inches closer. “Isn’t that what you wanted? Your textbook rom-com love interest?”
You make a rather disparaging sound in the back of your throat. “Ugh.” 
“Oh, my bad.” Her mouth curls, contradictory. There’s nothing apologetic about her. “I forgot. You don’t believe in art about love. You wanna see broken people and broken people only.” 
“See?” You’re obsessed with her tone; all flirtation, some distorted version of come-hither charm. Talking of suffering like it’s a seduction tactic. “You get it.” 
Karina rakes a hand through her hair; her fingers fall to the back of her neck and linger there. She pulls herself out of your lap and turns, hooks one bare long leg over you until she’s straddling you. Your hands find her hips. You’re disarmed by her strange weightlessness, like she’s seconds from either shattering or taking flight.  
Then she asks, “Is that what you’re doing with me?”
It’s gotta be a very roundabout request to fuck her stupid, because she follows it up torturously: ducks her chin, parts her lips, rocks her hips down until you groan. You watch her throat, the way muscle works over bone, picturing unspeakable things: taking her by that pretty neck and pinning her to the wall, ripping your shirt right off of her with your fingertips leaving bruises - bending her over to fuck her fast and cruel until her cunt’s raw and aching and leaking your cum - until she’s begging pathetically, saying please, God, please - and you’re triumphant, victorious. Telling her you asked for this, didn’t you? You said anything. You said anything I want. 
“Depends,” you reply, when you can breathe again. “Are you a broken person?” 
Karina stops, moments from your mouth. 
“Depends,” she echoes. “Is that what you want from me?”
It actually takes a beat for the question to sink in. Then two, then-
“No,” you say, loudly. “Obviously not, Karina, Jesus. Why would I…”
You falter. 
Karina only looks back at you, patient, tolerant. Like if right now you said that’s exactly it: I want you broken, I want you ruined, I want you decaying and dead and buried, she’d smile and say do your worst. Flashing those white, white teeth, perfect like pearls, ready to be knocked right out and strung together. 
You blink the bloody vision away. “Why would I ever want that?”
Karina studies you for a second longer, expression indecipherable. 
“Okay,” she agrees, breezily. “Then I’m not broken. I’m just going through a phase, like I said. I don’t like being tied down.” Her shirt rides tantalizingly high up her thighs; her hand slips down to palm your cock. There’s a twist to her lips, a dirty sort of smirk. “You understand that, right?”
You stare at her.
“Right?” Karina prods, again, low and sultry. 
“Right,” you say, unable to fight your sudden smile. 
The pout of her mouth’s an inevitability; her little body in your lap’s a seductive form of foreshadowing. You dig your fingers into her protruding ribs, playful, and you don’t quite get the squeal of laughter you were expecting - all Karina does is curl closer, expecting more, expecting harder. She knows what you’re capable of. You’re both just biding your time until you cross the same line you’ve been crossing and you fall back into bed again.
“A phase,” you add, considering. It intrigues you, anyway - the casualness, the connotation. “So - I’m not special, then. That’s the moral of this story.” 
Karina’s fingers sift gently through your hair. “You wanna be special?”
“I mean, yeah.” Your palm falls to her neck, presses down. She doesn’t seem to mind. “Doesn’t everyone?” 
Her eyebrows rise in vague, unconvinced amusement. It makes sense: she’s the most special of all, a cosmic glitch, an angelic fluke. Someone like Karina wouldn’t understand the aching, clawing, consuming desire to be extraordinary. She’s already there. 
Your hand on her throat looks even bigger now, tendons straining from underneath skin.
“I think we all want to feel important,” you mumble, thumb grazing gently across her jaw. “Don’t you?” 
You’re pretty sure the wry, glittering smile that sits at Karina’s mouth is an answer in itself. 
-
Alright, forget your television metaphors - you’re not sure there’s any sitcom out there that goes quite like this.
“By the way,” you say, grinning against her hair as you pull her to the bedroom. “Did you say you don’t like being tied down?” 
Karina turns in your arms and doesn’t even flinch when you force her too hard against the doorframe and its edge smacks into her shoulder blade, digging in hard. You should apologize but you don’t; the possibility of her in pain seems laughable, a distant fantasy. This is how it goes, fucking a girl who looks like a god - your brain is convinced she’s wholly immune to hurt. The universe wouldn’t actually let someone so pretty bleed. 
“Oh, sorry,” she says, voice raspy with insinuation. “Let me rephrase.” 
“Karina,” you say, not really like a warning - more like you’ve got something to prove. This is real. You’re really here. You’re really this perfect, gorgeous, greedy thing. You’re really made for me. 
Karina only lets her lips tilt in a smirk, devilish and knowing.
“I meant that I don’t like commitment,” she says. “I love being tied down.”
She’s still smiling when you shove her through the doorway, across the threshold - across that same old fucking line.
-
Not that it makes a difference now, but one of the reasons you and your most recent ex-girlfriend broke up was because of what you’d both referred to as sexual incompatibility. Actually, there were about fourteen other things, too - she was a trainwreck and a textbook attention whore; you spent all your time writing and she took offense to the fact that you found your scripts more interesting than her - but the crux of the sex problem between the two of you was that she thought you wanted too much power over her. She seemed to assume that was the point of potentially tying her up and shit like that: to exert power. To put you and only you in control. To make her into this helpless little toy - and I hate that, she’d said, working herself into a fit, I hate feeling helpless. 
You hadn’t pushed her. You’d also tried to justify it in a number of ways. It isn’t about that. It’s not about control. I’m not trying to make you feel bad. But it hadn’t made a difference and she hadn’t believed you and you’d come to the reluctant, inevitable conclusion that that particular dream would never actually get fulfilled. 
Until-
“Look at you, baby.” 
Until now, when you’ve got Karina stripped bare and tied to your bed, thighs parted as you kneel over her, pretty little cunt glistening wet and tits heaving with every breath as she waits, and waits, and waits. 
Eyes half-lidded. Utterly fuckable. A curated collection of every salacious desire you’ve ever had. 
“You’ve been looking at me forever,” murmurs Karina, her tone still humorous, like the reason her voice is run so ragged is because she’s holding back a fit of giggles. “You gonna fuck me anytime soon?” 
To Karina’s credit, the idea of tying her up didn’t seem to bother her one bit. She’d let you knot her wrists to your bedframe and only grinned sharply when you asked her if it was too much. She didn’t seem to care about feeling helpless or feeling bad. Actually - judging from the wetness that collects on your fingers as you rub two of them over her cunt - it all seemed to turn her on either way. 
“You’re so fucking mouthy.” You lift your hand only to ghost it over her stomach, leaving a lewd shiny streak across her skin. “It’s like you want to be punished.” 
“Well, you put in all this work.” Karina yanks at the ropes tethering her wrists to the bedframe until they bite so severely into her skin that it turns white. “I’d hate to see it go to waste.” 
“Not a waste.” 
“No?” She’s got that seductive little smirk on, legs spread shamelessly, head back and throat bared. 
“Nope.” Your eyes rove down her body. “It’s a great view, actually.”
You’re shocked by the sound Karina makes, then: harsh and derisive, scratchy and painful, like she’s choking badly around some injury in her throat. You’re half-expecting her to turn her face and spit blood onto your sheets - all murder-scene evidence, horrifically vibrant gore. Coughing up her own vocal chords. 
It’s so awful it actually takes you a minute to realize that she’s laughing. 
“Karina?” you say, perturbed.
“Oh, please.” Karina hacks out one more horrid laugh. “Cut the shit.” 
You draw your hand back uncertainly. “What are you-”
“Come on, man.” There’s a glint to Karina’s gaze as she looks up at you: bored, mocking, infuriating. Irises flashing like the darkest corners of haunted houses, set-ups for a summoning; lashes like cobwebs, self-spun and delicate. “Fuck me or leave me alone.”
For a second you just stare at her, unmoving, something caustic and furious threading up your spine. 
And then-
Look, none of this next part is on you. You can’t blame yourself. It’s her - her tiny hands in tight clenched fists, tummy so flat it seems caved-in, hollowed-out; her own glimmer of slick smeared on her belly, physical proof of how desperately slutty she really is. The bruise on her chest; the one on her throat. Her goddamn eyes. Her lazy, lilting drawl, the exact matter-of-fact casualness she’d had last night when she’d told you to hurt her - fuck me or leave me alone. 
It’s so obvious what she’s trying to do - provoke a reaction out of you. It’s gotta be the only reason she’s talking to you like that. Like, what else are we here for? Like, what else could I possibly want from you? 
So - no, God, it’s not your fault. 
But-
It’s over before you can even think about it. Before you’ve even rationalized doing it, before you recognize the sound ricocheting through the room as the perfect violent land of a blow, the hot whiplash of skin on skin, your palm connecting with its target. Before you blink, and recalibrate, and you take in the rapid reddening of her cheek, and her angled jaw, and her hair falling starkly past her chin - it’s too late. It’s already done. 
Because you’ve just slapped Karina clean across the face - hard. 
“Oh.” You’re babbling as if on autopilot, all your nerves on shutdown. “Oh. Oh, God. Karina-” 
Karina licks the corner of her lip, like she can taste the impact. 
“Jesus Christ,” you’re saying, panicking; you can’t shut up. You don’t know what to do with your hands; you find yourself kneeling carefully in front of her, cupping her face, stroking her temples with your thumbs like it’ll soothe the sting. You can’t believe you hit her. All the things you could do to a girl like that, and you - “I’m sorry. I didn’t - fuck, baby. I’m sorry.”
Karina blinks up at you, expression placid and blank, porcelain-doll cool. 
“For what?” she asks. 
You freeze, her face still between your palms. “For-”
But the serene tilt of her mouth makes the words die in your throat. 
“Seriously.” Karina’s voice is softer now, a kind twist of mirth. “Isn’t that what you wanted to do with me this whole time?” 
Her features seem to fall out of alignment, occurring to you in cut, edited fragments - the baby-animal eyes, the bone-white glint of teeth, the pretty blooming flush of her cheek, blood rising underneath skin but never breaking through. No evidence of a limit breached; she doesn’t wince or wail or cry. She wears the hit so well. She’s smiling. A you-don’t-need-to-be-sorry smile, a you’re-forgiven smile: I’m strong, I’m good, I can take it. Whatever you need. Whatever you have to give. 
You blink and Karina reassembles, stitched up at the seams, beautiful and uninjured and intact.
“You want this,” you exhale, a wondrous revelation.
“Of course.” Karina’s shoulders rise as much as they can with her arms so tightly tied back. “You do, don’t you?” 
The panic recedes, and something else - something electric and brutal, visceral, intoxicating - takes its place instead. 
It’s the way she says it: rhetorical, all-knowing. As if she’s seen exactly what’s in your mind - what repulsive daydreams have settled right behind your ribcage, clawing to be set free - and she’s offering her own body in sacrifice. Saying here, put them here. 
So you do. 
She doesn’t even look surprised when you slap her again. 
“See?” Karina’s chin tips upwards in delicious, submissive invitation: eyes darkly pleased, pale skin a burning wildfire, curled mouth a beckoning. Like it’s been what she’s waiting for, all along. “There you are.” 
And when you’re finally able to catch your breath:
Oh, you think, in some exhilarating epiphany. Here I am. 
Every single reservation falls out the window. Karina’s smirk slants viciously and then you’ve got your hands all over her, on her shoulders and her tits and her hips and her throat and her face, thumb digging hard into her cheekbone. Any sort of gentle caution is gone when you’re getting on top of her and burying your cock deep inside the suffocating vice of her aching little cunt, half-drunk on the high mewling moans you’re forcing out of her, head swimming at the drenched audible sound of her pussy every time you fuck into her - at how tight she clenches down around your cock. Fuck it all, then, it’s not like it means anything - hurt me, she’d said, running through your head on loop; I want it so bad, I need it, hurt me - and so you do, wrapping a hand around her delicate neck and pressing down, slapping hard against her heaving tits, salivating over the marks that you leave. She doesn’t even struggle. Takes it like a good girl, an obedient girl: something meant to be hit and torn up and pulled apart. A hands-on art piece. A disassembling, made purely for audience consumption; a sign hung around her neck that says leave your mark, that’s the point. You’d been so naïve, thinking of being careful with her - like she’d ever even fucking want that-
“You like it like this.” Your voice sounds raw, almost unrecognizable; your fingers press into the base of her throat. “This is all you needed, huh? You just needed to be roughed up real hard.” Your hand trails up to grip a fistful of her hair, merciless. Karina shuts her eyes. “Like you’re just a slutty fucktoy-” 
Karina chokes out a small, wet gasp.
“Oh, baby.” You yank harder at her hair. “It’s okay to admit it.”
But in a way, she already is. Doesn’t fight against the restraints tying her wrists, doesn’t flinch at how rough you’re fucking her, doesn’t whine or blink back tears at the harsh graze of your thumbnail against her nipple. Like she’s a plaything, here in your bed for your pleasure alone. Like-
“Like you were just fucking made for this, yeah?” She comes undone so easily: cunt a wet sticky mess when you reach down to rub her clit, teeth pearly-white where they’re caught on her bottom lip - though nothing can hold back the anguished noise Karina lets out at your pace, the thick stretch of your cock, your palm smacking at her tits over and over. “Look at you. That face, these tits, this little fucking cunt-”
Like it’s her one and only purpose - to have all her fair skin turned searing red and bruised under someone else’s hands. Her cunt just begging to be split open and stuffed full, railed so hard she could break. It’s gotta be what she was created for. She’s more than mortal, so above the concept of imperfection; a nasty little fuckdoll of a girl, meant to be used hard and licked clean. She looks too irresistible all fucked-out and ruined. It has to be in her nature. Made for this, you keep telling her: to be fucked until she can’t walk. To be treated forever how you’re treating her now. 
Your ex-girlfriend couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s not about power or control at all.
“You’d really just let me do anything to you, huh?” you murmur, awed, but you’re holding her throat too hard for her to reply. 
You fuck her, and fuck her, and fuck her. Rub at her clit until she clamps down and cums around you, until you can really get on top of her, force her to hold those huge tits together so you can fuck them. You can’t handle how tiny she is underneath you, her face and her mouth slack with lust, eyes glazed over entirely. She squeezes her tits around your cock. She’s hardly even human. It’s the best thing about her. 
“That’s how I know you’re a fucking whore.” Your grin feels wide and manic on your face. You’re gonna cum all over her - again. “None of this even matters.” 
And it’s only after - after you’ve painted her collarbone and chest creamy white and let up on her throat so she can fight for air; after you’ve groped her tits and grabbed her face after just to see your cum glistening all over her perfect slap-marred cheeks; after you’ve rolled off of her and you finally leave her alone - that Karina gives you a response. 
“No,” she says, hoarsely, staring up at the ceiling. “It really, really doesn’t.” 
-
Power just isn’t the right word for it. It’s something much more beautiful than that. 
Desire. You’re dozing off, halfway in a sleepy fantasy. You imagine rolling the word around in your mouth, using it in speeches, citing it as an obvious central theme. It’s about desire, you’d say, in interviews, at film festivals, patiently explaining your motivations to the masses. That irrational animal instinct. That innate human greediness. You’ll maybe even throw in some fun anecdote about how people in past relationships never agreed with you. It’s never been about power, though, you’d explain: how foolish, how crude. It’s about the ache of truly wanting something. Isn’t that so much more romantic?
So you’ll make a movie about this one day. So you tied Karina to the bed and slapped her hard and fucked her senseless. Actually, you picture yourself explaining, foggy and on verge of falling asleep: actually, it’s about hunger. Irrepressible, all-consuming hunger. That’s why I did this. That’s why I’ll keep doing it. You’re all like me; you get it. That makes sense, doesn’t it? 
And it will, to raucous, riotous applause.
Good. You’ll laugh so hard. You’re dreaming, now; you can’t tell if you’re talking about the sex or the hypothetical future movie. I’m glad you understand. Anyone would’ve done what I did. 
Because - honestly - what’s the point of starving yourself of something that’s right in front of you?
-
(Let’s pull back from your script for a second. Here’s a real story:
A few months back you were visiting a museum with one of your friends when you got into this conversation about performance art. He’d told you about a woman back in the seventies who walked into a gallery and laid out various objects and let the audience do whatever they wanted to her for six whole hours. Her as the artist, in title only; herself as the art. A free, untethered canvas. 
And what happened? you asked, morbidly curious. 
Your friend grimaced. What do you think happened? 
It was a rhetorical question. The performance had been a test of what the general public was capable of - a reflection of their moral compass, of what they’d do if left unchecked. The setup spoke for itself. You didn’t have to get all the gory details in order to understand. 
Seriously, though, your friend said, about the artist: I don’t know what’d compel someone to do something like that to themselves. He’d shaken his head, baffled. Like - I think it takes a deeply fucked up person to just give up their body like that. Like it doesn’t even matter to them. 
It’s strange. It’s an almost universally accepted fact that, at least on some level, artists are inclined to put pieces of themselves into the things they create. A memory; a feeling. Condensing twenty different emotions into a single acrylic painting, or a lyrical reenactment of heartbreak into a song - something personal and unique and lovely. Often inspired, sure, but yours. 
I think that’s what’s funny about it, you told your friend, before you realized that funny was a fucked up word to use here. There’s nothing personal about that. It’s so detached. It’s about the rest of the world, whatever they might make of her - it’s not about her at all. 
You were both quiet, thinking. Visualizing what it might’ve been like. To be there, one of many in the audience, watching this woman who had thrown herself to the wolves and asked to be ripped apart. 
She’s just - material for them to use, I guess, you said, after a moment. A blank page. 
Removing her own identity; becoming nothing, no one. A ghost. An empty vessel. A slab of clay, taking on the impression of everyone who’s ever touched her: the ridges of fingerprints, the half-moon cuts of nails, molding her into something new. Even if it took some force. Even if it hurt. 
Still, it’s what she’d asked for. 
You can’t imagine she’d ever expected anything else.)
-
There’s this fascinating complaint people have about films these days, you’ve found. It’s actually quite the phenomenon. You talk to your colleagues and scroll through social media and read comments on movie trailers trying to get a grasp on it all: market research. This isn’t realistic, people gripe. It’d never sound like that. She’d never look like that. This would never, ever happen - God, are you kidding? Who are they trying to fool? As if they’ve somehow missed the point of fiction - of a sweet, escapist fantasy. As if they’ve convinced themselves that the real world is better. 
Which is moronic, obviously. 
“So what’s the solution?” Karina asks.
Well, you’re no expert; it’s been a while since you’d finished your last movie.
“But you have an idea,” Karina interpets. She’s perched on the edge of your coffee table, nursing a new glass of ice. She’s watching you with her head at an angle, eyes shrewd. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be telling me this.” 
As with most of her guesses about you, she’s right. 
“It’s all about the details,” you say, after a moment. “It humanizes a person. Having little bits and pieces about who they are - it makes them alive. Their likes, their dislikes. Embarrassing stories. Things that make them laugh. Diary entries, favorite foods - first loves, first heartbreaks. So on and so forth.” You’ve got one of Karina’s ankles between your hands; your thumb brushes against the bulbous protrusion of bone. “It’s what makes people real.” 
Karina’s mouth twists, sharp and strange; it takes a second for you to realize that she’s grinning. 
“Oh, right,” she says. “You want me to spill my guts to you.” She pushes her ankle further into your grip. Her legs are just like the rest of her: thin and pale, waifish. Like a nineties catwalk model. “That’s how you’re gonna make me real. In your movie.” 
You pull a face, letting her ankle slip from your hands. Spill her guts; what an ugly figure of speech. As if you’re doing something much more invasive and violent than just writing about her. 
“Basically,” you agree, anyway. “I mean, it helps that you’re already, you know - a real, whole, living person.” 
“Ugh,” says Karina, dry and amused. “Barely.” 
You wonder if she’s also thinking about this morning; you, stunned and staring at her cum-streaked hair, calling her unreal.
She’s got a point, in a way. There’s something slightly uncanny about her sitting in front of you, as if she’s been taken straight out of some wildly different scene - some spotlit stage, some movie set, some glossy high-budget existence - and haphazardly edited into your life. You reach out and press two fingers to the side of her neck, like they do on television if they think someone’s bleeding out. 
Karina tips her head to allow you access. Her pulse throbs hotly under your touch. 
“I don’t know,” you say, smiling at the swanlike line of her throat. “You seem pretty alive to me.” 
“Sure.” Her hair tickles your wrist. “But you want more.”
She says it like it’s this given - as if she’s always faced with people wanting more from her. You wouldn’t doubt it, little tease she is. You can picture her in motion so easily. Always running. Letting people pine and plead for more. 
“Yeah,” you say. It seems pointless to lie to her. “I want more.” 
Karina leans in closer. She reaches up and touches one of your knuckles with the pad of her thumb. Without makeup, you can see the shadows of dark circles underneath her eyes, but even those look painted-on, pre-planned; a study on the aesthetic allure of bruises. She lets her gaze drop to your mouth, then bites down on her bottom lip. Impish.
“Karina,” you say, grinning wider now. 
It’s one of those unspoken things: the translation of body language, the transcription of the tilt of her mouth. Then have me, she’s saying, almost certainly - like a swooning melodramatic heroine, throwing herself into your lap, wanting to be saved. You want more? You want me? I’m right here. I’m yours.
“Fine,” Karina purrs, and kisses you again, like sealing a contract. “Take it all.” 
-
You don’t fuck her again - not at first. There’s more than one way to take someone apart. 
Karina says she’s got a story for you and then she pulls out her phone. 
“This was back in high school,” she explains, scrolling back through her photo gallery. There don’t seem to be a lot of recent additions to it; you’d expected selfies, pictures of her with friends. There are more photos of food than anything: plates of pasta and donuts and burgers and pastries piled with whipped cream. It’s cute. It makes you laugh. “When I won prom queen.” 
You splutter. “When you what?” 
“What?” Karina gives you a bemused, sideways look. “Does that surprise you?” 
It floors you, actually. At first you can’t quite put your finger on why, but then you look at Karina again - at her intense dark eyes and pouty fuckdoll lips and the exaggerated pinup proportions of her body - and you realize you’re making that mistake writers often do: buying into archetypes. It just makes sense that she’d be some kind of brooding bad girl. Mysterious, promiscuous; in your creative vision she’s probably cutting classes and chainsmoking in the girls’ bathroom. A favorite of the rumor mill. A pretty little delinquent.
“Wow.” Karina makes a funny noise in the back of her throat when you tell her this. “No. I was - I did fine in school. Perfect attendance, almost. And I can’t stand the smell of cigarettes.” But she doesn’t look offended, either; you imagine people make these assumptions about her all the time. “The prom queen thing - it wasn’t my idea, though. My best friend did all the campaigning for me.” 
“That’s sweet.” You watch as she reaches the year she’s looking for. Flashes of her in a sparkly dress with her arms thrown around another girl - a tiny doe-eyed brunette - slide by. In one of them, Karina’s got her head tipped back, clearly mid-laugh; in another, she and the girl have their heads bent close together as if they’re trading secrets, unaware that they’re being photographed. “Well - I think it’s sweet.” 
Karina’s fingers stall. “Why wouldn’t it be?” 
“I’m just saying-” You shrug. “It’s a nice gesture if it’s something you wanted, I guess. Seems like a lot of attention, otherwise.” 
“Oh.” There’s a pause. “Yeah. It was - I didn’t get to go to junior prom, so it was kind of - this was - senior year. Senior prom.” Another pause. “Yeah. She did it to make me happy.”
“And did it?” She passes by pictures that fill up with more people: friends with big grins who stick close to her side, wrapping her up in an embrace. “Make you happy?” 
“Of course.” Karina’s thumb pauses on a video, the preview dark and unfocused. She says it like she doesn’t even have to think about it. “She was my best friend. She always knew what I wanted. Hey, look at this.” 
The video’s of her in the back of someone’s car, prom queen tiara askew on her head, satiny sash falling off one shoulder. She’s yelling, laughing; the sound isn’t on, but her mouth’s wide open and her dark eyes are crinkled to half-moons, creased underneath heavy false lashes and glittery makeup that’s begun to smudge and fade. It makes her whole face look very soft. Young, too - cheeks full and flushed pink with excitement, hair blown-out and everywhere, glossed black. As if she’s having the time of her life. 
“How old were you here?” you ask, in awe. 
“Eighteen. Just turned, I think.” 
“You look-” Like a baby, you almost want to say. It’s true, though. Big brown eyes, scrunched little nose - grinning like the rest of the world hasn’t quite dug its claws into her yet. Skin unmarred and infant-smooth. “You look pretty.” 
Karina doesn’t look at you, but you can see the slight, entertained upturn of her lips. All the nasty things you’ve called her - all the irredeemable ways you’ve touched her - and now, inexplicably, you’re going for pretty. 
“Thanks,” she says, and clicks the volume up.
“Shut the fuck up,” baby Karina is saying, delightedly. Her voice sounds high, childish and carefree. “You’re so dumb. It wasn’t - it wasn’t even like that, I swear!” She flaps one hand in the air, her nails all short and painted the same rich deep maroon as her dress. “No - you’re just saying that because you’re jealous, you idiot, I know you - you just-”
The person behind the camera says something that you can’t quite make out. 
Baby Karina presses one hand to her sternum, pearl-clutching, and gasps. 
“I would never,” she admonishes - over-the-top like an actress from a movie - before she throws her head back and laughs. 
It’s a startling, wonderful laugh. A little-kid laugh. A mess of wild, unabashed giggles, hiccupy and sweet, so loud and infectious you can hear the other people in the car start cracking up with her; out of frame, someone reaches out to interlace their fingers with Karina’s, waving their joined hands until they smack against the car window and Karina only laughs harder. With her whole body, shoulders shaking and all. Streetlights flashing across her face, making her look sort of blurry and surreal, like something out of a painting. 
“Your laugh,” you find yourself saying, stunned. 
Karina’s touching the back of her neck, completely engrossed in the video. “My what?” 
You don’t laugh like that anymore. That’s what you mean to say. That scratchy, almost painful laugh that she’s been gracing you with since the moment you met her - there’s no trace of that in how baby Karina wriggles with laughter in the backseat of the car until her happy, breathless blush spreads to her neck and her chest. Head tipping back against the seat, like she’s all tuckered out. 
“Um,” you say, voice caught in your throat. 
On the screen, her eyes fall shut, lashes fluttering so delicately. 
You can’t do anything but stare. Brilliant, past-life, prom-queen Karina - grinning at nothing, and sleepy from a perfect night, and laughing as if she’ll exist as this version of herself forever. As if she just doesn’t know any better, yet. 
“You,” you start to say, again-
Karina shuts her phone off, and turns.
And you’re about to say something - something about the gnawing, uncertain feeling you get when you watch this former self of hers. It’s on the tip of your tongue. You don’t laugh like that. Something happened to you. For a moment the whole image just seems off - like the way people make posthumous holograms of pop stars, superimpose faces of long-dead actors on stunt doubles. A kind of intense wrongness. A murmured, uncomfortable: that’s not really you, is it? It can’t be. I barely recognize her. 
“What?” Karina asks. Her smile reveals her teeth. “Why are you looking at me like that?” 
Then reality hits you, all at once. 
“Sorry.” Your hand finds her thigh. You laugh because you’re being ridiculous - how would you know who she really is, anyway? “I was just thinking - I don’t know. Never mind.”
She seems to take that at face value. You like that about her. How she seems to trust so easily - going home with you, winding up in your bed, staying when you ask her to stay. Giving you whatever you want: her body, her story.
“So,” you say, eventually. “I can put in my movie that you totally peaked in high school, huh?” 
Karina snorts. “Yeah,” she says, playing along, and taps her dark phone screen with a clawed nail. “Say it was the last time I was happy.” She pulls a face, like the thought of it is just unspeakably pathetic. “That’s a tragedy if I’ve ever heard one.” 
“Shakespearean,” you agree, and let her clamber into your lap. “It’s perfect.” 
But you know she’s kidding. You’d like to think that you understand girls like her. They live in a different world than the rest of you - the kind of world where every person on earth looks at them and falls to their feet, falls madly in love. You’ll write about it one day; you’ll feel out the narrative for her, a curious exploration. That rose-tinted life she must flourish in, closed-off and flawless like a snow globe, her spinning and protected in the glass.
“Perfect,” echoes Karina, and kisses you - like she’s proving she really means it. 
That’s the reality, here. That’s it. This is all there is. 
-
Well, almost.
-
Karina lets you scroll through the rest of her photo gallery, front to back. You take the opportunity, because you’re greedy for as much as you can get. 
There’s a lot of photos that are just her, funnily enough - selfies posed in front of the same full-length mirror, over and over again, clad in unholy outfits. Swimsuits, sports bras and little running shorts, lingerie: shit that makes your mouth water, eyes lingering, groaning out loud as she laughs at you. But it’s also her in faded old t-shirts, holding the hem up to expose her stomach. Body angled to the side in girlish sundresses. Hair pulled up, showing off her neck, her gorgeously sharp collarbone - in makeup or out of it, stare intensely focused and sultry. 
“That’s hot,” you comment. “Self-obsessed as fuck, but hot.” 
Karina smiles - her tiny private-joke smile - and doesn’t say anything at all. 
There’s one video in particular that catches your eye. It’s recent, relatively - the date reads late December, last year. Less than a month ago. Christmastime. You click on it, curious. 
Karina’s immediately recognizable in it, black hair winding past her shoulders, drowning in a large black sweatshirt. She’s smiling, but it looks sort of tense and tired - bags under her eyes, like she hasn’t slept in a while. She’s got both hands balled up into fists, held close and protective to her chest; her sharp chin rests on her pale knuckles. There’s a tiny smear of red across her mouth, lower lip bitten bloody. 
“You just got here,” she says. She’s looking at something behind the camera. “The first thing you wanna do is hear me sing?” She laughs once, scratchy and hoarse. “Why are you even filming this?” 
The answering strum of guitar strings, a pretty, perfect chord. An invitation, or a demand.
“You’re kidding.” Karina’s voice is flat.
Another chord - evidently not. 
“Wow,” says Karina. Her smile, out of nowhere, goes very soft at the edges. “You just do this because you know I can’t say no to you.”
“What?” you ask Karina now, laughing. “Is this - what is this? Do you - are you really going to sing?” 
And then - crazily enough - she does. 
“Oh,” you say out loud, adoring, and Karina turns her face into your shoulder. 
Her voice in the video is breathy, sweet. Shyly unpracticed, raspy from disuse, completely and utterly gorgeous; lids slipping shut and open again, laugh leaking into her melody line in lyrics about black eyes and kisses and wanting someone who’s just so, so bad for you. But what surprises you more than anything is the look that dawns on her blurry on-screen face - irises sparkling and smile bashful, hiding her mouth behind the sleeve of her sweatshirt, curled up with her knees to her chest. You see now that she’s wearing pajama pants, fuzzy and patterned with snowflakes. 
She looks radiantly pretty. She looks vulnerable. And not even in a sweaty, satiated, filthy post-fuck kind of way - actually, genuinely vulnerable. Soft and wide-eyed and tender.
Suddenly, you just can’t tear your gaze away. 
“Stop.” 
The song’s over. On-screen Karina’s fully grinning now. Porcelain-fragile, but undeniably happy, too. 
“I hate you,” she says. “Baby, I really do.” 
“You love me,” says the person behind the camera. “You’ll love me for the rest of your life and you know it.” 
And in the video - in vivid, fluid motion - Karina laughs. 
Whole-hearted, lovely. Familiar. For a moment, you swear she’s still that girl sitting in the backseat of a car with her prom queen tiara on, giggling free and uninhibited, unhurt, untouched. A month ago - less than that, even - looking like she’s coming back to life. 
That’s where the clip ends. 
It doesn’t change anything, if you actually think about it. It’s just another version of reality. A Karina from a whole other universe, laughing like a child, and so, so far away from whoever she is now. 
-
(Back between the lines of your script-
The stranger and the girl drink to get drunk and that’s about it. She reads the label of his wine; he makes fun of her for being a snob. She doesn’t really drink, she says at first, but he laughs like this is a challenge, and pours her a glass anyway. She flushes pink and fidgets around. She seems to shed hair like a cat and he thinks this is the most hilarious thing he’s ever seen, picking up thin black strands off of the arm of his couch, teasing her about girls and how they really like to leave their mark, huh?
Leave their mark, she repeats. There’s some trick of the lens here, some sort of strategic camera work - he’s in the forefront and she’s in the background, and she looks so much smaller than him. Why do you say that? 
He still had his ex-girlfriend’s perfume in his cabinet. He probably still has some of her clothes in his closet. Not out of any particular emotional attachment, but sometimes this is just the way things are: when you spend years intertwining your whole existence with someone else’s, it’s hard to rid yourself of that connection. You’ve grown into each other’s spaces, tangling limbs and heart lines, putting down roots. It’s gonna take a little force to get them out. 
They’re just so much, he says, gesticulating with his hands. And they affect everything in your life, like a fucking infection. And then it doesn’t work out, and you - he makes a wide, sweeping motion here, attempting to encompass the wreckage. You have to fix everything they broke. Purge them from your system and all that. It’s so fucked up. 
It’s like this, he means to say - you love someone and then they leave you behind and you’re left staring at the blown-up decimated crater that used to be your life together. You love someone and they don’t love you back and all you have now is the debris.
They’re both drunk. There should be music here and there isn’t. It’s only eerie, too-still silence, suffocating the both of them with every passing second. 
Well, she says, laughing, and takes another sip. You and I can agree on that, at least.)
-
It happens like this:
There’s a monologue you want to write. 
You tell Karina this after you’re finally fucking her again, when she’s balanced on the edge of your glass coffee table with her legs spread and your mouth slick with her cum. Well - not after, technically. She’s between orgasms and you have your thumb on her clit, tracking the expression on her face, the split-second moment where she comes apart. It’s then when you realize so badly that you want to write some great speech for your heroine - something about the sweat beading on Karina’s midriff and her tits that you can’t stop touching and the jerky movements of her hips, trying to get your tongue back on her clit, panting and delightfully desperate. Something about desire. 
“Desire,” repeats Karina, voice halfway into a raspy, worked-up moan. 
“Yeah.” You’ve replaced your mouth with your fingers, fucking up into the obscene tight heat of her cunt. She’s trembling, dripping everywhere; she’s the very picture of what it means to want, probably. “But I just can’t figure it out.” 
Karina laughs roughly, and then she cums. 
“Is that funny?” you ask her, after, when you’re wiping your wet mouth with your wrist and she’s sucking on your glistening fingers, licking the taste of her own cunt off your skin. Her eyes big, lips all full and pink - slutty angel on her pedestal, perched above you. “Me writing about desire?” 
Karina lets your fingers free with a loud pop. She’s still clutching your hand close to her mouth, thumb dragging through the sticky gleam of her spit. “No,” she says, eyes distant. “It just reminded me of something. There’s this Anne Carson quote, about men and desire…” She shakes her head. Presses her lips once to your fingertips in a small, startlingly sweet kiss. “It doesn’t matter. Tell me more.” 
There isn’t much to tell, truthfully. Except that you’ve got this love for movie lines that are just so utterly quotable - things that make their way into the pop culture consciousness. That’s the kind of work you want to be doing: creating something that has an impact, something that’ll exist long after you’re gone. Everlasting. If you had to pull for an example, you’d say-
“You ever seen Closer?” 
“Yeah.” Karina drops your elbow into her lap. “Oh, I get it. He tastes like you but sweeter. Lying’s the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off - et cetera.” She hums the melody line. “So you want an early 2000s pop-punk band to make a song about your movie? Ambitious.” 
“More or less,” you say as she shimmies her shirt back down, hem falling back over her midriff. “But like I said, I’m kind of stuck.”
Karina rolls her neck. Her hair is everywhere, sweet-smelling; snapped-off strands decorate your table, looking like cracks in the glass. 
“Any suggestions?” you ask, thumb skimming along the pale bruised inside of her thigh. 
She smiles, mischievous. “Maybe.” 
That’s how you both end up curled on your couch together with your laptop in front of you, Karina’s eyes glued to the movie playing on the screen, watching as the four main characters fuck and flirt and cheat on each other and scream at the top of their lungs. Melodramatic dialogue. How do you feel about him using your life? You’re lying; I’ve been you. This will hurt, which Karina laughs at - as if announcing the pain will make it better, playacting at exoneration. 
It’s also - predictably - how you end up fucking again. You barely make it an hour in, and then-
“Hey.” Karina’s breath tickles your ear. She’s already seconds from climbing in your lap already; her thigh is hooked over yours, bare and inviting. “Are you inspired?” 
You’re swallowing back a grin. “Sure.” 
“Oh. Great.” She’s no actress herself, clearly. She couldn’t be subtle if she tried. “Do you wanna be more inspired?” 
And - whatever. It’s a movie about sex. If anything, at least you’re sticking to the theme. 
The dialogue plays in the background as Karina rocks her hips down on your lap - you can feel how wet she is again, like she never stops wanting to be fucked. You’re telling her something about how she’s the most insatiable girl you’ve ever met; the sound of the film saturates the room, setting the tone like it knows its purpose. How? How does it work? How do you do this to someone? This big, infidelity-ridden confrontation. Did you phone her? Beg her to come back? Asking him why he falls for another girl, getting this ridiculous answer - it’s because she doesn’t need me.
“Huh.” You smile into the curve of Karina’s neck, already palming her ass. “That one’s funny.”
“Is it funny?” Karina’s sharp jaw brushes against your cheekbone. Her eyes are so dark, shadowed by her long lashes. “I think it’s pretty realistic. People don’t like needy girls. It’s a burden to be loved so hard.” Her tongue darts across her teeth; her smile’s somewhat caustic. “Too much to handle, I guess.” 
“What are you talking about?” This strikes you as fairly fucking ridiculous, too. “What men have you met who don’t like needy girls?” 
Karina just laughs and leans in for another kiss. 
It’s easy to let the rest of the film float away in the background, the lines coming disjointed, unconnected. A spoken-word soundtrack, tone perfuming the air: the angst and pain and eroticism seeping into your clothing. Once in a while you’ll pull back from kissing Karina’s neck or tits or mouth and see a thoughtful little quirk to her mouth. Like she’s genuinely listening, even as you’re taking off her shirt, slipping a hand back between her legs. Where will you go? Disappear. I can’t still see you - if I see you, I’ll never leave you. I amuse you, but I bore you. 
“I bet you’ve never felt that,” you say, half into the silk of her hair. 
Karina pauses. Her shirt’s on the floor; she’s gloriously naked on top of you. “Felt what?” 
“I amuse you, but I bore you,” you recite. You already sound sort of fuck-drunk, far gone. “You’re the farthest thing from boring.”
Back in the movie, the female lead sobs into her fists. Karina studies you, fingertips grazing the nape of your neck. You try to imagine it - her as one of those heartsick heroines, crying herself to pieces, begging a man not to leave her - but you draw an utter blank. Some people just aren’t breakable in that way. 
“You’d be surprised,” Karina says, after a moment. “People get bored of me all the time.”
“Oh, please.” Even when she’s the one top of you, you can’t help feeling so completely in control. It’s gotta be the look in her eyes, dying to be obedient. “I bet you have lots of ways of keeping guys interested in you.” You smack her ass hard just to make a mark. “I bet you let them fuck you however they want.” 
“Exactly,” Karina agrees, without missing a beat. She moves in close until your noses bump together. Lets her voice go all smoky and suggestive. “Wherever they want, too.” 
You open your mouth - probably about to say something very rude about what a dirty whore she is and how you should’ve realized it the second you saw her; I knew it, I know you - but then your hands slip lower and Karina presses her lips to yours and licks into your mouth, over your teeth, making you swallow your words. Filling you up until there’s nothing but her and the movie, playing on.
I think I’ll be happier with her. 
You won’t. You’ll miss me. No one will ever love you as much as I do. Why isn’t love enough? 
“Romantic, right?” murmurs Karina, sweet against your tongue. 
“Shut up,” you say, and grab her by the hair, tugging her off your lap as you stand. “Bedroom. Now.” 
Later, you’ll take the time to consider the different ways filmmakers illustrate a power dynamic - it’s playing on your laptop screen right now. The heroine’s sitting on the arm of the couch, clutching desperately at the hero’s jacket. Gorgeously emotional and pleading for another chance, her tiny chin tilted up, eyes so large and watery. Made fragile and fearful by everyone: the protagonist, the narrative, the director, the audience beyond. By herself, even. It’s a stylistic choice - she wants to look that pathetic.
And you-
Well, you’ve got Karina’s long hair wrapped up in your fist, tits bouncing as she stumbles to her feet, ankle knocking hard and horribly loud against the leg of your table. Cute little ass all red from your hand. Thighs shimmering from how drenched she is, cunt dripping from how you’ve treated her. She hasn’t managed to work her mouth into a trademark smirk fast enough: when she looks at you over her shoulder, her eyes are abyss-dark and bottomless, crease between her brows, lips parted in pained surprise. 
The definition of pathetic, too - but that’s exactly the point. She’s just so much more fuckable like that. 
“Ouch,” you say, touching her hurt ankle with the side of your foot. 
“It’s fine.” Karina’s skin feels clammy and cold. Her smirk’s intact now, camera-ready. “I’ve been through worse.” 
Her ankle throbs under the pressure of your touch; you still haven’t let up on her hair. You’ll go through worse, too, you think of telling her: a sly comment about how rough you’re about to fuck her, what vicious marks you’re about to leave. How you’re gonna hurt her exactly like she asked you to. 
You don’t say a thing.
She must already know all of that, anyway.
-
So, Karina’s not breakable like the helpless, weepy, soft-hearted girls in the movies - but that’s alright. She’s breakable in much more enticing ways.
Case in point:
“Oh, get real, baby. Don’t pretend you don’t love it.”
Well, breaking someone down doesn’t really get better than this.
It’s all a scene of your own making, a perfect pre-arrangement. You on your bed, Karina limp and bent belly-down over your lap - you in control and Karina as the most impressive toy you’ve ever gotten your hands on, creamy ass and needy cunt and skin that turns bruises to artwork. You’re goading her and failing - trying to get her to just admit to what she is, what a filthy slut, what a nasty eager fuckdoll - but it’s hard to get a response when even breathing seems to be a chore for her right now. Every noise out of her mouth is nothing but a gasping, choked-out whimper. Her face is buried in her forearm, hidden. And through the shine of lube dribbling down your hand and her ass and into the sticky wetness of her cunt, you’ve got two fingers stretching out her little asshole - and you’re just getting started.
“I know you fucking need this.” Your other hand slides up her back, slips to tangle in her hair. “You’re just too good at it.” You pull hard, wrenching her head from the crook of her elbow. “Too good at being an obedient fucking whore for me, huh?”
Karina’s whole body stiffens when you fuck your fingers deeper, as if tugged taut on a string: the flex of her feet in the air, shoulder blades straining, neck craned back almost painfully. You pull harder. It’s a buzz at the base of your skull, live-wire thrilling: the knowledge that you can yank her into whatever position you want - fuck her anywhere, work her ass open with your cock, fill her up with cum - and she’s just going to have to take it. Like she’s this pliant, powerless thing. Like she’s yours. 
Your self-satisfaction seeps right into your voice. “Answer me.��� 
You hear Karina gulp down a breath. “I,” Karina mumbles, but she can’t do anything but babble. “I - fuck-” All teeth-clenching nonsense; she shoots a baleful glance over her shoulder, desperation clawing its way into every word. “Please-”
Your fingers pause. “You want more?” 
Her cheeks are splotchy and pink; you swear there are tears wobbling in those big dark eyes. The heavy arousal in your stomach turns to violent hunger, as though your mouth could start watering at any second. You can’t help it. The thought of seeing her cry is fucking exhilirating. “You - oh-” 
“Answer me. You want my cock?” You’re waiting for the breaking point. “You want me to really fuck your ass?” 
“Fuck-” 
But that’s not a proper reply and Karina knows it, so she doesn’t protest when you pull your glistening fingers out of her and smack your palm hard across her ass. Once, then twice, and then you just don’t stop. She yelps like a hurt animal - trembles uncontrollably, her thighs and her shoulders and her quivering bottom lip - and makes a sound in the back of her throat that might be a sob, but she still lets you hit her: gives into the harsh crack of skin on skin, over and over again. Listens as you tell her that she deserves this, that she wanted this, that you’re making her into a good girl and this is what good girls get when they’re too cock-hungry to follow orders or answer a fucking question, you know that - you know I’m this rough for a reason. It should hurt. It’s so much more fun that way.  
“I’ve been too fucking nice to you,” you mutter, teeth gritted in an effort to hide your grin - as if you even need to. It’s obvious how much you enjoy this. It’s the point. “That’s the problem with girls like you - you never learned your fucking place, huh? Never really been punished for anything?”
Karina mumbles out something unintelligible, slurring from her drooling mouth to the sheets.
“Yeah.” Your hand comes down again - she flinches just before her body goes slack. “That’s what I thought.” 
And after you’ve spanked her so hard that her fair skin is ravaged and raised with goosebumps along the slope of her back - her whole body in revolt - you finally, finally stop. 
Karina doesn’t budge except to breathe, and even that releases shallow, unsteady. You read it all in the shaky lift and fall of her thin shoulders, her hands in white-knuckled fists, her face pressed to your sheets and hidden - her hair coats everything, all ink, all words written but left unsaid. She shivers beneath your fingers. Her cunt’s dripping all over your lap. She’s a masterpiece. She’s a wreck. 
You’re filled up with thick, swollen pride. “Karina.” 
Karina. Your own personal creation, transformed under your touch. Might as well have your name carved into her, too. A brand right across her back, slicing through tissue, scarring to seal her fate - this is who you fucking belong to. 
“Poor baby.” You follow the sharp ridges of her spine, tracking notches, keeping a tally: counting how many times you’ll hit her, how many days she’ll stay in your bed. How many movies she’ll let you make out of her, being your brilliant muse for decades. “It’s painful when you don’t listen to me, huh?”
But then - inexplicably - you think of her bruising ankle. Her twist of a smirk, detached and humorless. I’ve been through worse. 
You’re abruptly glad you can’t see the look on her face. 
“Come on, sweet girl.” You dig the heel of your palm into her lower back, half a warning. “Pull it together.” 
Between the strands of glossy hair tumbling over Karina’s skin and your sheets, you spot a reddish mark on the back of her neck. Like the impression of a thumbprint, small and round. Blurry enough in the dim light that your brain starts conjuring up strange theories; an old wound, maybe. A birthmark or a burn, a childhood injury.
You graze her shoulder blades with your fingertips, exploratory. She feels so small draped over you like this, a tiny wet wisp of a girl. A doll. 
She still hasn’t moved.
“Karina.”
Nothing.
“Karina,” you say again, suddenly uneasy. Your hand stops. “Are you-”
For a few terrible seconds, you can’t even hear her breathing. 
But then Karina shifts. Slow, sensual, deliberate. Pushing herself up off your lap, arching her back, the slick pucker of her asshole obscene from where you fucked it open with your fingers. Her bruised knees dig into your mattress as she straightens up, and her gorgeous pale face seems to glow in the midday light - heavy dark eyes, bitten-pink mouth, black hair curtaining her cheeks like a frame to a portrait.
“You,” you start to say, feeling suddenly like you’re looking at her for the first time. 
“I’m really sorry,” Karina murmurs.
She doesn’t look close to tears at all. She’s so unfazed, as if having her ass spanked punishingly raw is something that happens to a girl like her on the daily. A run-of-the-mill occurrence - a consequence of having a body like that, made to be brutalized. She’s already reaching towards the nightstand for the lube. 
“I just wanted it so bad I couldn’t think straight,” Karina tells you, with erotic-film certainty - reciting all the lines that’ll make her seem the most insatiably slutty. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Her lips form a pout; she leans down to press them to the tip of your cock, all sweet and demure, like she thinks she needs to convince you. Eyes flicking up at you through her thick lashes, molten-hot. “I should’ve listened.” It’s only a breath, warm and torturous. “I deserved that, I know.” 
Your hand winds tight in her hair. You want to force your cock down her pretty throat, make her gag and choke over her simpering apologies, spitting up your cum until it trickles down her chin, her tits, her tummy. Both a game and a power play: prove how sorry you are. 
Karina pulls back before you can, and holds up the lube. 
“Babe,” she says, the term of endearment almost a singsong - a lilting reminder. “I thought you wanted to really fuck me now.” 
“Uh-huh.” Her tits heave as she moves, crawling closer, offering herself up. “And I always get what I want, right?” 
You feel drunk with power. You forget that this isn’t supposed to be about power. You watch as Karina coats her palm with lube and pumps your cock, her fingers slick and hot, her veins starkly blue at her delicate wrists. Expression delighted at how hard you are, pink little tongue poking out between her teeth - seduction down to an art form, meticulously calculated. 
“With me?” Her smile burns. “Obviously.” 
You pull her in by the neck to kiss the smirk off her mouth. 
It’s interesting. There’s this other thing regular critics and moviegoers have been saying about films these days: sex scenes need to have a purpose. Some sort of coherent motivation. Strip your lead actress down to nothing and get her keening and moaning and you’ve got to explain it away somehow. It forwards the plot, you could insist, pitching it to producers and directors. It does something for the character dynamics. It’ll draw in just the right audience, the ones dying to see their favorite celebrity debauched and getting dirty on-screen - they’ll see it over and over just to get a taste. Isn’t that enough? To satisfy the masses? Isn’t that why we’re all here?
Because otherwise all people are staring at is a play at pornography: useless half-convincing make-believe. The heroine can writhe and whine and arch her back all she wants. Everyone knows she doesn’t feel anything. 
“Tell me the truth.” 
Oh, if you two were a movie - you don’t know how anyone could justify a sex scene quite like this. 
It doesn’t matter what artsy angle you take. It all comes down to the same unforgivable details: Karina face-down ass-up on your bed, the perfect bowed curve of her spine, the depraved wide stretch of her asshole around your cock - the sweat shining along her shoulder blades, the hard smack of your palm against the red raw skin of her ass, your other hand at the crown of her skull with your fingers wrapped entirely in her tangled hair - her cunt fucking ruining your sheets, wet all the way down her thighs, each brutal shift of your hips sending her little body into full-blown shudders-
“Tell me that you fucking love it.” Your hand slips lower until you’ve got her pinned down by the back of the neck, fingers pushing down: a grip she couldn’t escape even if she wanted to. “Whoring out your slutty little ass like this for a stranger. Getting on your hands and knees for me just because you’re so fucking needy for cock, baby - don’t even try to deny it, you’re so wet, nasty fucking girl-”
You just can’t stop yourself. It’s so easy. She really is so fucking pathetic. Too fragile to get free - too easily manipulated and manhandled. Trembling and drenched and giving way as you make room inside her, forcing space. She’s just so tight - it’s godless, how you make your cock fit in her lube-slicked asshole, how she moans like a bona fide bitch in heat over it: needing faster, needing harder, needing more. Cheek pink and pressed hard to your mattress, sharp nails digging into the sheets rough enough to tear through the fabric. Giving herself up to be fucked cruelly and stupid and senseless. 
Like she’s a real-
“Natural fucking cockslut, huh?” 
Look, seriously - you can’t be held accountable for the things you say to her here. 
Because when you say shit like you’d just let me do anything - like you’d let me fucking tie you up and keep you here forever, be an eager fucking cumdump for me whenever I want you, I know it, I know you - that’s just the moment talking. The circumstances. The pretty arch of her back and the drooling wetness of her cunt and the indecent tightness of her ass, conspiring to make you lose your mind mid-fuck - that’s the whole reason you even tell her any of it. You think you’re good for anything else? Right at her ear, your body covering hers, your cock buried deep. You’re not. Just made to get this slutty ass fucked open, and your mouth, and your cunt - this is all anyone’s ever gonna want from you and you know it - better get used to it now, baby. This is all you got. This is all you are. 
It’s Karina’s fault, really. She just takes it - all of it. She doesn’t even try to fight it. 
“But that’s okay,” you murmur, as she gasps and squirms and cries out like you’re killing her. “I’m still gonna make you cum.” 
And with your cock filling her ass and your hand between her legs, slapping hard at her sopping cunt until she can’t do anything but collapse - shaking, shattered - her whimpers fucked-out and drool-soaked and bleeding into one big nonsensical mess, everything about her used and ruined-
“You’re mine,” you tell her, laughing as she falls apart. “You get that? You’re mine.” 
-then, you do.
When it’s all over, Karina rolls over to face the wall, breathing hard. She’s slick everywhere, sweat and saliva and lube, your creamy cum dripping out of her well-fucked asshole and trickling down her thigh. You trace her lower back and grin at the way her skin seems to give into you, turning pink with a press of your fingertips. You’ve come to realize you adore her like this, the fugue state after you fuck her: utterly dead to the world. 
Like she could become a permanent fixture in your bed. Too tired to move. Too tired to ever leave. 
“Mine,” you say again, softer.
Karina doesn’t argue. 
It’s basically all the confirmation you need. 
-
So, really, if you two were a movie-
It goes like this: life can imitate art, too. It happens all the time. The line between fiction and reality blurs together until it’s indistinguishable - until you can’t tell where the fantasy ends, or if it ever did at all. 
-
(It goes like this: the heroine smiles sleepily and tells the hero he’s the best she’s ever had. You’ve seen this film before. The movie stars with their fake on-screen fucks might not feel a damn thing, but at least it’s still fun to pretend.)
-
Also, the mark you saw on the back of her neck isn’t actually what you thought it was. 
“It’s a tattoo,” you realize out loud, drowsily awed, brushing her hair away so you can get a better look. You’re both tuckered out, an inevitability when you fuck like you do; you’re seconds from dozing off. Karina’s looking away from you, on her side to escape the soreness of her ass, sheets loose across her chest. She lets you touch her wherever. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice that before.” 
“You don’t know me,” mumbles Karina, half into your pillow. “It’s not your job to notice anything about me.” 
The tattoo’s crimson-red, all delicate linework. It really does look like it hurts: like someone painstakingly cut the shape into her skin. It’s of a heart, rendered in anatomical detail - valves and ventricles and arteries. It’s beautiful, you realize belatedly. Bright instead of faded, and obviously cared for. Lovely. 
The only permanent stain on her perfect body. You press your thumb against the ink, fascinated. 
“What does it mean?” you ask, but Karina’s already fallen asleep. 
-
(In your script, the girl and the stranger watch some gory crime show, except they don’t pay very close attention and he tugs her into his lap and makes her ride his thigh. The episode they’ve got on is about a serial killer who murders so-called sinners - liars, adulterers, the like. Slaughters them like sacrifices, cutting their throats with vicious efficiency. Fake blood drenches the screen with every crime scene: a form of fucked-up baptism, a psuedo-religious cleansing. 
The girl’s putting on an equally decent show on top of the stranger: head thrown back, eyelids fluttering, high-pitched little moans. He sinks his teeth into her shoulder and keeps watching the TV.
Hey, he says, a murmur against her skin, a close-up on his mouth. You’re a sinner, right?
She’s got her hands on his shoulders, hips rolling. Sure am. 
How do you think this guy would kill you? 
He thinks this’ll shock her, but she doesn’t even pause. Like he kills all the rest, she says. Like an animal.
I think he’d be more careful with you, the stranger muses. You’re too gorgeous. He’d have to use, like - a scalpel, or something. Something cleaner. Something that’d keep you intact. 
It’s no use. Nothing he says seems to scare her. Her eyes are far-off, almost glazed in recollection. Like she’s thought about it too - her own untimely end. Her own vivisection, skin flayed and organs visible, viscera and bone. There, hold the shot: now the audience can consider it with her, ponder all the ways she could be torn apart, all the repulsive things they could do with her desiccated body. All the ways flesh can warp under a human touch: the blue-black yellow-green purpling of bruises, a whole palette on one tiny girl. There’s value in that, isn’t there? There’s something intimately, incomparably beautiful in suffering. There’s art. 
Isn’t that why everyone’s watching? 
I get it, the girl says, still soaking his thigh, smiling as if it’s an inside joke between them. You want me dead. That’s been obvious since the moment you met me. 
I don’t want you dead, he says, and grabs her by the jaw. I just want to fuck you. 
Okay, she says, uncaring, like there’s barely a difference. Fine. Whatever you want. 
They don’t turn the TV off. They let the characters scream and bleed out in the background; he fucks her like she’s got a death wish. It’s funny - he expects her to get louder the harder he fucks her, ruthlessly working over the tight clench of her cunt - but she keeps getting less and less responsive, as if he’s pushing her little body into some sort of trance: expression vacant and blank, body limp and lifeless, mouth open and speechless. It makes him angry. Give me something, he’s saying, frustrated, clawing at her hair: baby, it’s not fair, it’s no fun like this. The on-screen shrieks aren’t enough - he wants it from her. Actually, he keeps saying he needs it - as if fulfilling desire is on the same level as food or air, as if he’ll drop dead in seconds if he doesn’t get her sobbing. He gets his overlarge hands on her face and starts contorting it, pushing her mouth open, her eyes wider, his fingers down her throat until she spits and gags and chokes. Oh, the audience will love this one: it’s reminiscent of those filthy exploitation films with their cult followings, so cleverly referential. Look at her pathetic and pinned down. Look at her helpless and struggling. Think of your favorite on-screen murder scenes, and then think of this.
Anything I want, the stranger reminds her, yanking back her hair as she drools down his wrist. You asked for this, didn’t you? You said anything I want. 
Except now the girl can’t say anything at all. 
This moment will start rumors, invite horrified scandal the same way some purposefully marketed horror movies are passed off as snuff films - that really went down, they really died like that. This scene’ll get a similar response. Did he actually fuck her? Did he actually hurt her? Did everyone - the writer, the director, the crew, the captive audience - actually just stand by and let that happen? 
Sure. Or she might just be a really, really good actress.
There. The stranger’s murmuring to her now, watching her manufactured expression, watching the tears fill her eyes. There you go. There’s my girl. And she is his, she really is - transformed into something all beautiful and new under his clumsy fingertips, molded right into art. The camera will zoom in close on her gorgeous, cadaverous face, a perverse little gift for the audience: here, have this, take a look. She’s all yours now. 
There’s something to be said here about the manmade link between sex and violence - inescapable, brutal, primeval; bodies in all shades of red - but he forgets it the second he touches her, and she’s being fucked too hard to remember.
Maybe they’ll get to it next time.) 
-
AND WE'RE BACK!!!!!!!!!!! <33333
all my luv ever to @capslocked @worldsover @passingnotions @braaan for beta reading my dumbass shenanigans and also for being the best ever I LOVE U!!!!!! AND ANYONE WHO IS READING THIS I LOVE YALL TOO.................. PART 2 COMING SOON!!!!!!!!!!!
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inklore · 10 months
Text
just a taste
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premise: meeting luca after work doesn't usually end up with the two of you in an intense lip lock, both of you knowing once you start it's hard to stop. but that's what offices are for, right?
pairing: luca x (f)reader
word count: 3.1k
contents: literally barely any plot here, oral (f rec), unprotected p in v, coming inside, established relationship, doing it at the workplace, teasing, dirty talk, pet names.
note: i know the bare minimum about this man because i’ve never seen the bear but those tattoos, the accent, the hair?? fill me like an eclair is all i have to say ok!
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The cool breeze of the night air almost makes you regret not just heading straight home and slipping under the steam of a nice long shower and grabbing the first blanket you see on the sofa and planting yourself there for the rest of the night. Await your boyfriend's arrival under the comfort of cotton and cushion that he’ll surely plop down next to you on after he’s kicked off his shoes. His cold fingers finding you under the blanket to pull you close to his side, a string of kisses pressed along the side of your neck before finding your lips. The smell of yeast and sugar—embedded in his skin at this point—making you bury your nose into his collarbone. 
But this was a ritual for the both of you. 
You finishing your studies and then meeting him after work. 
The two of you walking home together, barely making it through the threshold of your place before lips and clothes were being pressed together and thrown to the floor. Luca’s soft laugh at needing to shower. Thus always leading to your face pressed into the wall of the shower and Luca’s fingers digging into your hips as he thrust inside of you. 
So that nibble of regret doesn’t last long when you come to a stop in front of his work. The makings of anticipation pull at the corner of your mouth as you grab your phone from your bag and start to text him to let him know you’re out front. 
A text that’s barely on the last word when the breeze of the door is hitting you and making you look up, “you can go in. He's in the back.” a co-worker you’ve met a dozen times, but his name slips your mind as you give him an appreciative smile and thank him as you slip through the doors as he walks out. 
You could enter the kitchen a dozen times—a million, a billion—your nose filling with that sweet aroma, Luca bent over a table, a dish, fingers deep in a ball of dough, the monochromatic uniform making his tattoos stand out on his skin like the most beautiful canvas, and you’d never get over the view. 
Over how your insides react when you see him in his element.
See him doing what he loves. 
It’s like the first time every time. 
Just like the first time he dragged you into the kitchen after your tenth date. Showing you his own version of paradise. His love. His joy. The way his face lit up when your eyes brightened when you bit into the scone he had made—saved—for you. The euphoric sweetness a good dessert can do to one's brainstem is still a scientific mystery to you, but you’d gladly leave the research to the experts if you could experience it forever. 
Taste Luca’s creations forever. 
That memory seems like ages ago. Now well into two years of your relationship. 
Nothing seems to fade with Luca. 
Your first times feeling just as tortuous to your fluttering insides as the tenth or twentieth time around. 
It knocks you off kilter in the best way. 
And when you look over at Luca after dropping off your bag and sweater in an open chair, you can not help but laugh when he finally looks up from cleaning off the surfaces of the metal tables and that stone look of him being in chef mode falls from the creases of his face and his features melt into something soft. 
He doesn’t say anything until his arm is around your midsection, drawing you in. “Hi, beautiful.” He smiles as your lips meet in a long kiss. Kissing you as if he hasn’t seen you in days, as if he has spent the entire day waiting for this moment and this moment alone. “How was your day?” 
“Not as good as it is now,” you tease. Hand in the back of his hair, pulling his mouth back to yours. 
The hum that makes your lips buzz and that lands on your tongue as he backs you up so your back is pressed into the doorframe makes anything you could tell him about what happened in your day lackluster. Incomparable. How could you possibly think of anything worthwhile—how could anything be as worthwhile—as his tongue moving along your bottom lip, his hand at the side of your neck, his thumb rubbing a small circle into your skin? 
It couldn’t.
"Let me finish cleaning up," he smirks. Thumb and pointer reaching for your chin, squeezing it, luring you in for one last kiss before returning to cleaning and leaving you dazed in the doorway.  
And if you didn’t know how seriously Luca takes this, from the ritual of making pastries to maintaining a stern, clean kitchen, you would tell him to hurry. Complaining that it is not fair for him to kiss you like that and then make you wait for him to finish, but the payoff was always worth the wait. And you love Luca’s love for his craft. Love him in this element—watching him and seeing him go into that little part of his brain that makes him go into boss mode. 
The stern gentleness of it all. 
It’s breathtaking to watch.
It’s art.
He’s art. 
So that’s what you do. 
You push off the doorframe and enter further into the kitchen just to watch him. 
“How was your day?” You ask while watching him write on the white board in the corner. 
“Good. We got a new guy who came in.” 
“Is he any good?” 
“Better than he thinks he is.” 
“I bet you brought out his best. You always do.” You smile at him when you watch him shrug off the compliment, not missing the twitch of the corner of his mouth. Ever so modest. 
Wordlessly, he puts the cap back on the marker and sets it against the metal of the board, walking over to one of the refrigerators and pulling out a small bowl of something green and white. 
Something that looks too beautifully crafted to eat, let alone eaten by someone who might not fully understand what went into making something so decadent—something that looks like it would be served to someone with a gold card, not someone who eats boxed mac and cheese for dinner twice a week (which Luca always tries to make fancier than Kraft ever could). 
Luca hands you a spoon, “told him the only critic that mattered was sharing a bed with me.” You make a face, the both of you knowing how outlandish that sounds when the food genius himself is standing in front of you. The critic who mattered to a lot of people more than the girl who was sharing his bed. 
But it still brings a smile to your face. 
“Did he think you were utterly insane for such a statement? I think eating greasy takeout two nights in a row is five star dining.”
He chuckles, “you’re the only critic that matters to me.” His palms come down on the edge of the metal table between you as he leans against it. “The only important one at least. Try it.”
The swoop that runs through you from his words, from his eagerness to hear your thoughts on a dessert you do not even know the name of, but know you will appreciate more than anyone else because it came from someone he admires, makes your cheeks heat up. 
And when it touches your tongue, when that euphoric sweetness overcomes your tastebuds, you don’t think the English dictionary could come in handy with describing the taste. The goodness of it. Compliments, which you know Luca and his fellow chefs have heard many times before and then some. But still bring that artist's joy to their chests when your eyes widen and you look at them in something akin to shock. 
The moan you let out makes him grin.
“Good?”
“Is he single?” 
“Oh, that’s how it is, huh?” His arms cross over his chest, a playful brow raised.
You take another bite of the dessert, “I think you might want to start looking for another job.”
“And a girlfriend?”
You nod, “with something that tastes this good, I would give him my social security number easily. Oh my god.” You dramatically moan around the spoon, the action doing little to hide the simpering look on your face.
“Here I thought I was the only one who could make you spill such confidential secrets.” Luca strides across the table, coming to stand at your back. His lips pressing against the back of your neck and the top of your shoulder. 
Finding its home where your collarbone meets the junction of your throat, where he lets his warm breath blow against the known sensitivity there, then presses his lips to it. Making your back push into his front, your body melting against him. 
A soft noise lays dormant at the tail end  of your throat, making a ghost of a smirk etch against your skin from his mouth as he murmurs, “and the only one who can make those noises come out of you.”
Your voice is breathy when you say, “so much for being humble.”
"When it’s the truth, I do not need to be humble." His lips trailing to your ear, fingers running up the back of your exposed thighs, pulling up your skirt until they are at the apex of your hip, skating forward and close to your clothed mound. “Am I wrong? Should we see?” 
The spoon in your hand lucky you don’t have superhuman strength because it would be crushed in your grip right now. 
Luca’s fingers splay themselves across your pelvis, toying with the top of your underwear. “Hmm, awfully quiet now. Where’d my mouthy girl go?” An airy chuckle tickles your ear as he lets it out, “humbled are you?” 
There’s a teasing sneer forming on your mouth before it does a 180 and morphs into an ‘o’ as Luca’s fingers push into your underwear, the pad running through the clear as day arousal that’s been making your thighs clench uncomfortably since your kiss in the doorway. 
When the finger moves against your clit there's no covering up the gasps that fall from your lips. Or the way your ass grinds against the erection that’s pressing up against it. 
“Who’s humble now?” He teases. A cheeky grin on his face when he pulls his hand out from your underwear, bringing his finger to his lips and sucking it into his mouth. Making your cheeks heat even more when you turn to look at him. Your teasing turns needy as you give him that look, the one that always makes him drop whatever he is doing and have his body on yours within seconds. 
You both know that making it home now will feel ten times longer. Ten times more agonizing in the cool air with your warming bodies.
With you soaking your underwear and him hard against his zipper. 
So when he says “office”, all you can do is chew on your bottom lip in eagerness as you make a beeline towards it. Luca closer behind you than you expect when you hear the door shut seconds after you’ve entered and his mouth immediately on yours, your ass hoisted onto the nearest surface. 
Luca’s fingers making quick work to pull down your underwear, your skirt bunched at your hips. You fully expect him to pull himself up from his knees after slipping the lace from your ankle and tossing it to the floor. You expect him to come back up and slide inside of you quick and easy, but instead he’s trailing kisses and bites into your thighs. 
Blue eyes look up into yours, and he must see the need in them—that glint that tells him all you want is for him to be inside of you right now. The heady woes of foreplay just torture at this point. 
His teeth sink harder into your flesh, making you gasp. “I’ve worked hard all day; don’t I deserve a treat? A taste of the best dessert out there.” 
And how could you argue with that?
You can’t.
Not when his tongue runs from the bite mark in your skin to your wetness. Spreading you around him as he licks a stripe up your pussy. Your grip on the metal your ass is under hard and tight enough to leave marks against your palm. 
And as crude as it makes you sound, as obscene and cocky as it comes off your lips, you will never hold back from telling Luca that his talent as a chef will never outweigh how good he is with his mouth and cock. 
He’s multi-talented and it’s a blessing and a curse to your insides. 
“Oh, fuck. Luca,” your head hangs between your shoulders. Your fingers in his hair, the heel of your shoe pressed against his back—his apron long gone, leaving him in that navy blue—his fingers digging into the side of your thighs as he keeps you against his mouth. 
The mouth that’s switching between sucking your clit between his lips and rolling his tongue against it. Eating you like you’re the best dessert his tongue has ever had the pleasure of tasting. 
It never takes him long to get you there. To make your chest heave and your nerve endings light up, as if they are about to make you panic from the overwhelming feeling of pleasure that is completely taking over your body. 
His fingers have created beautiful, mouth watering food, just as they’ve made you completely lose your mind. Your legs shaking around his head. Your back involuntarily bows until it hits the metal surface of the desk you’re perched on. 
It’s when he slips two fingers inside of you that you completely lose it. The sob that pulls itself from your lungs feels red-hot in your throat as your fingers grip the strands of his blonde hair as you come against his mouth. Your hips riding out your high. Rolling against his tongue in a languid way, drawing out the aftershocks of your orgasm. 
Your body still reeling and alight with that desire-train that still has it wanting more. That heavy ache between your legs that wants to be filled. To be fucked by something bigger and thicker than a finger.
Your mouth comes down on the tabasco tattoo below Luca’s wrist in a gentle kiss, one of your favorites of his, when his hand comes to cup the back of your head to pull you up to him. 
His thumb runs from your cheek to your chin, where he pushes it up, so you’re looking up at him and he’s looking down at you as he stands between your legs. Your nails run along the tattoos along his arms, up his bicep, and to the nape of his neck. A fire burning in his eyes when your fingers run between the strands back there. 
“Tell me,” he says close to your lips. He’s checking in. Seeing if you’re too spent for his cock, seeing if there's more you want. If you want to wait until you get home. If you’re ready for him now. 
“It’d be cruel to not fuck me now.” You say it in a half-tease-half-serious tone. 
“Ooh,” he murmurs against your mouth, his tongue clicking against his teeth. “I don’t want to be cruel.” You can feel his other hand move between the two of you, undoing the button of his pants and messing with the zipper until he’s pulling himself out of them, hard and leaking. “What kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn’t give my girl what she so desperately needs?” 
Luca smirks when you laugh into his mouth, “the worst kind.”
With one last kiss, lick, and nip at your lower lip, he’s rubbing the tip of his cock against your clit, making your thighs shake. Nails dig into his skull as he soaks up your oversensitivity to coat himself before going lower and slipping inside of you in one slow, fluid motion. 
Your mouth hung open at the stretch, and your breath caught in your lungs. Your foreheads resting against each other as you let your walls accommodate his girth, both of your breaths heavy. The pounding you can feel between your legs—that you’re not sure is coming from him or you or something more poetic and overwhelming like your conjoined bodies aching as one, like a heartbeat aches for a chest cavity when it’s torn from a body. 
The two of you need this. 
Need each other. 
When Luca starts moving, you know the two of you are both completely fucked. Spent and so full of desire that you know your time in this office is just the start of a long night of tangled limbs and wet mouths. 
The sounds you are making against each other's mouth are breathy and intoxicating. His tongue in your mouth swallows every mewl and moan he coaxes from your body with each stroke of his cock. 
His fingers find the back of your head again, not allowing you to even think about leaving his mouth. 
You think you see stars when his palm finds the back of your thigh and pulls your leg higher on his hips. Think you could let this man completely consume you, and you’d still never be satisfied. Never get over how good it feels to feel his hips drive deeper into you, to feel the head of his cock hit that spot inside of you that makes his name roll off your tongue like a prayer. 
“Who’s pussy is it, baby?” 
"Mm'fuck," you are not sure if he is still playing the game of you leaving him for the new chef or if his filthy mouth is attempting to completely destroy you—which is nothing new when he has you coating and tightening around his cock like this. 
When you say his name, when you whine it into his mouth like a pathetic desperation, the erotic noise that it’s met with makes you cling to him tighter. Makes you press yourself closer to him. The movement makes the outside of his pants grind against your clit. 
“So beautiful,” Luca murmurs. The octave of his voice grows lower and choppy with heavy breaths the closer he gets. Neither of you lasts much longer when his pace picks up. The grip the two of you have on each other is hard and rough, enough to tear and leave marks that you’ll later kiss with gentle lips, unlike the passion that’s coming through with the hard kisses your mouths are giving as you both come. 
“How’d I get so lucky?” He breathes into your mouth, twisting your insides even more. 
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peachesofteal · 5 months
Text
18+ mdni / dark and twisty, whump
It’s snowing.
You don’t even have to move your head to see in order to know. There’s something about how it hangs in the air, how the world sounds and feels during a snowfall that blankets everything, houses, trees, mountains, your mind.
You love it. Always have. Even as a child, winter was your favorite. Winter brought you a sense of calm, of peace. It was what drove you to move out here in the first place. Chasing the snow. The feeling of a quiet forest, lying still beneath the soft spun expanse of white. The smell of the air the morning before a big snow, the eternal quiet that exists in the darkness when everything is dampened down by the weight of a million, billion unique, crystallized webs.
Except this snow feels different. It doesn't feel like a velvety white, soft dream world, but a nightmare... one filled with pain, anxiety. Why are you here? What's happened?
And why do you hurt so fucking bad?
"You're awake." A deep voice says from your side, and you flinch on instinct, immediately wishing you hadn't as lighting sharp pain shoots through your upper arm all the way to your neck, and you cry out. "Easy." It's the brown eyed man, the bigger one. He's sitting in a chair that cannot possibly be comfortable, watching you.
"Where... am I?" You manage to choke out through stiff lips, your head spinning and the world tilting at the same time. It sours your stomach, more than you thought possible, and you try to choke back the burn of bile that's racing up your throat.
"Are you going to be sick?" He reaches, stroking a finger down your face. You hold your tongue, unsure, and he must not like it, because he sighs, and then frowns at you. "Tell me."
"No, I don't-" You can't even finish your denial before your stomach is heaving, and he's springing to action shifting you amidst unbearable pain, turning you on your side to where a clean bucket sits, right beneath your bed.
"It's alright, that's it." A hand soothes up and down your back as you dry heave, sputtering on nothing, tears leaking from your eyes.
"Nnnrgh-"
"I know, I know. Poor thing." He coos, and it sounds so... endearing, so sweet yet... frightening, like the poison of a predator, a pretty display meant to draw you in before it snaps a set of jaws shut around your face.
"H-hurts." You cry as he rolls you back into your original position. "It hurts."
"I know it does, sweet girl. We're going to fix it." He dabs a cloth on your face, across your forehead and then down to clean your mouth up, just as the man with the mohawk appears on the bed, one knee down, leaning over you, concern rife in his features.
"Poor baby. Were ye sick?" You blink up at him. What is going on? He presses a glass to your lips, encouraging you to drink, and then pulling it away after you've had a few sips with a gentle 'not too much'.
"Who are you?" You smack your lips. The water is cold, refreshing, but a ting acidic, and you wonder if it's well water, maybe?
"I'm Johnny." He's setting up something, beside you. You can see him organizing something, but can't quite make them out due to your lack of mobility. "An' this is Simon. Or Si. But ye probably won't be callin' him that quite yet." Johnny and Simon. Did they find you? Did they rescue you? Why can't you remember?
"What happened?" You try again, gritting your teeth against the pain.
"Ye had an accident, remember? We talked about this yesterday? Ye slid off the road, ended up in a thick of trees. Ye're lucky the one didnae impale ye." Impale?
"And you found me?" You're starting to feel tired again, all the sudden, woozy and weird, exhaustion pulling at your limbs. Shouldn't you be in a hospital? Why haven't they taken you to a doctor?
"Aye, we did. Pulled ye free, brought ye home." Home?
"We couldn't leave you to die, and the storm is pretty bad. Pass is closed." Simon offers as an explanation, and you close your eyes. Of course. The pass is closed.
"Thank... thank you." Johnny hums, and then to your complete shock, leans forward, brushing his lips against yours as you blink furiously.
"Want ye to know, if we didnae have to do this, we wouldnae." What?
"Do what?" The broad one, Simon, casts you a mournful glance, rising from the chair. He's got a piece of leather in his hand, like a cut from a belt, and your eyes dart between them. Do what?
"Bite down on this, precious." Simon instructs, placing it against your bottom lip, to which you jerk away in protest with a whimper.
"Do what?" You try again.
"We need to set your humerus, and clavicle." Set your humerus? And your-
Oh. Oh no.
"N-no. No, you ca-can't." You stutter, but Johnny gives you a sad look, shifting on the bed to place a hand on your belly, stroking upwards to the middle of your chest, the other holding firm against your good shoulder, the one that doesn't hurt. His hand is warm, so warm against you, and his thumb rubs in a cautious motion against your skin, lightly grazing the underside of your breast. It feels weird, and wrong... intimate. "Please, don't. Please, please-"
"It's alright." He shushes you, and the pressure against your body increases as Simon wedges a thick finger between your teeth, slipping the worn leather into your mouth, bracing a hand above your elbow, and below your shoulder on the side that hurts. You gasp for air, fear shaking your body, and Johnny coos at you, telling you you'll be alright, that you're with them now and they'll take care of you, that it will only hurt for a little. "Ye'll probably pass out, bonnie. We'll get the second one done while ye're down, and I already gave ye something for the pain." He assures, like it's supposed to relieve you, and your nostrils flare as something tightens against your arm. Simon's grip.
This can't be happening. How can this happen? No, nononono-
There's a crack. A crunch. Burning, obliterating agony that's delivered to your arm like a shot. You scream and bite down at the same time, raw misery trying to claw it's way out of your throat. You think you're crying, hallucinating from the pain, having a heart attack, everything all at once. It hurts. It hurts so bad, it hurts-
"We're sorry, we're sorry." Simon soothes, thumb wiping your cheek, but you can hardly hear him, your mind starting to sever itself from your body, floating away as you slip inside a dark tomb of your mind, losing yourself to unconscious as they both stare down at you, sickeningly sweet concern layered overtop the faces of a bear and a wolf, predators licking their maws in preparation, waiting to devour their prey.
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astonmartinii · 7 months
Text
head in the clouds | lando norris social media au
pairing: lando norris x fem flight attendant!reader
there's no one more attractive than the stranger at the same gate as you at the airport and sometimes that stranger works on your best friend's private jet.
yourusername
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liked by maxverstappen1, danielricciardo and 3,105 others
yourusername: violently hungover, don't tell my boss x
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user1: i need to be her
maxverstappen1: your boss follows you on instagram genius
yourusername: oh yeah lol but i'm still alive and i was still on time
maxverstappen1: you took a nap on the flight?
yourusername: it was about ten billion hours long so spare me the lecture
maxverstappen1: you're so lucky we're friends otherwise i'd fire your ass
yourusername: you love me too much to do that maxy (and i know way too much about you) x
user2: how did you get this job?
yourusername: nepotism babes x
danielricciardo: i think you masked it pretty well for the first three hours
yourusername: THANK YOU
danielricciardo: but i did hear you throw up around hour four
yourusername: nothing like a tactical chunder on your childhood friend's private jet
landonorris: i for one couldn't tell you were hungover
yourusername: well look who's my new favourite, you should fly with max more often
danielricciardo: he's only saying that cause he has a crush, I'M STILL YOUR FAVOURITE
yourusername: whatever helps you sleep at night x
landonorris
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liked by danielricciardo, yourusername and 1,034,566 others
tagged: danielricciardo
landonorris: reunited and it feels so good 😊
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user3: always obsessed with this pairing
user4: they're cute but i know they're so annoying to fly with
danielricciardo: i knew you missed me :)
landonorris: of course i did you big sap
danielricciardo: so you didn't replace me with a younger and sexier version of me?
landonorris: not technically no
oscarpiastri: i'm just gonna take the compliment, thanks dan :)
danielricciardo: massive compliment, i'm extremely sexy
user5: thank the lord daniel is back who was going to make lando blush all the time?
danielricciardo: believe me he doesn't need me to do that when he flies on air max that's all y/n
landonorris: DANIEL?
danielricciardo: she took these photos - look at the blush. LOOK AT THE MATERIAL
yourusername: i think i'm just a better photographer than you two combined so i just capture my subjects well
danielricciardo: nope. i think lando just has a BIG FAT CRUSH
maxverstappen1: LMAO
yourusername: who wouldn't? (i'm shaking)
user6: wtf is going on here?
user7: i think we're witnessing bullying
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maxverstappen1
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liked by landonorris, yourusername and 892,330 others
tagged: georgerussell63, alexalbon, landonorris & yourusername
maxverstappen1: getting some padel in on the weekend off
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user9: max really puts his hyperfixations above his beef because who thought we'd see him playing with george after baku
danielricciardo: how did lando get through a whole session with y/n there he can barely get through a sentence around her
landonorris: why are you so obsessed with exposing me in public
danielricciardo: funny.
yourusername: he did very well, he took a few balls to the face but he took them like a champ.
maxverstappen1: i'm sure he'd rather be the one putting balls in your face. get it? his balls? sex?
yourusername: i got it, you're not funny pal
maxverstappen1: well i think i'm hilarious so
user10: poor lando is going through the ringer rn
yourusername: whipped all of your asses call yourself professional athletes?
alexalbon: you were freakishly good what is your trick?
yourusername: only time i'm not playing padel is when i'm asleep or on a charter with max it's the only thing i can be better than him in
landonorris: you're definitely better looking than him and like 10 million times nicer than him
yourusername: you're not too bad yourself norris, you've just bagged yourself an extra bag of peanuts next flight x
alexalbon: romance is dead
f1wagsupdates
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liked by user11, user12 and 4,109 others
tagged: yourusername
f1wagsupdates: this is y/n y/ln potential new girlfriend of lando norris. she is a close friend of max verstappen, to the point that after she finished university and was without a job, he financed her education to be a air hostess, the job she now has on max's private jet. as far as we know she's never been in a public relationship but she also lives in monaco, is a padel enthusiast and has exchanged flirty comments with lando. also, she's a real one because she refuses to charter if jos wants to fly on air max - she slays for that one
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user13: if she's a longtime, potential childhood friend of max, the jos thing probably makes sense
user14: gosh she's so pretty
user15: giving your bestie a job and a life where you get to have her travel with you everywhere is really what nepotism should be
user16: for real where's my friend who will pay for me to learn to be a air hostess so we can hang out all the time
user17: i think her and lando would be cute
user18: and they would also make sense, they'd have a schedule that completely lines up and y/n would understand the sport and the lifestyle
user19: she also knows all of his friends already and they seem to get on with her
user20: "never been in a public relationship" she's just like us
user21: except she's gonna pull lando freaking norris and we're all still lonely
yourusername
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liked by landonorris, danielricciardo and 17,098 others
tagged: maxverstappen1
yourusername: THE way to spend your saturday, perks of the job x
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user22: hey siri play that should be me by justin bieber
maxverstappen1: glad you could take a break from being a tourist to actually come watch me
yourusername: lies i'm always there you just don't know because i sit in hospitality so i can drink ;)
maxverstappen1: is that why my mum looked so happy to see me after sitting with you in hospitality?
yourusername: NO! sophie just loves me
user23: omg y/n and sophie just chill in hospitality? i love them
landonorris: i heard mclaren have great hospitality and actually has a cup of tea with your name written all over it
yourusername: hmmm we'll see if it beats the team who broke the cost cap on catering but i'm willing to take that risk
landonorris: i promise it's worth your time
danielricciardo: @maxverstappen1 look he's finally making a move 👀
maxverstappen1: ugh finally !!!
yourusername: yall mind? ACTUALLY i'm not coming back to red bull you're annoying
user24: has the bullying worked ?
mclarenf1
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liked by yourusername, oscarpiastri and 1,093,455 others
tagged: landonorris
mclarenf1: lando is back on the podium with a p2 finish with oscar just behind in p4 congrats papaya boys!!
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user25: LET'S GOOOOOO THE WIN IS COMING I CAN FEEL IT
oscarpiastri: congrats lando :)
landonorris: your podium will come oscar you're killing it right now
user26: omg faves i can't wait until the double podium
user27: y/n in the likes ..... 🤔 makes you think
yourusername: idk what you conspiracy theorists want to hear but you don't need to know everything that happens in the drivers' personal lives and i can like posts of my friends doing well
user28: so you're not together
yourusername: you people have the reading comprehension skills of a rock
maxverstappen1: congrats mate, try not to get too drunk tonight, air max is scheduled early in the morning 👍
landonorris: i'll be there no worries
danielricciardo: of course he will, his favourite will be there
landonorris: laugh all you will but i have a pack of peanuts promised to me
yourusername: i'll put salt in their drinks don't worry lando
maxverstappen1: i have done nothing wrong?
yourusername: i am in solidarity with lando
maxverstappen1: i'm ur best friend?
yourusername: he's cute :)
user29: you can't tell she doesn't like him back
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danielricciardo
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liked by charles_leclerc, yourusername and 1,209,778 others
tagged: yourusername, landonorris
danielricciardo: podiums give you balls. balls get you girlfriends.
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user32: HOLYYYYYYYYYY SHIT
maxverstappen1: they are not awake yet lol they're going to kill you
danielricciardo: i'd like to see lando try. y/n i am afraid of though.
maxverstappen1: you should be, a girl once threw a drink over me in the club for walking into her and y/n went feral. i was afraid and impressed
yourusername: had to protect your virtue max
maxverstappen1: much appreciated, probably the only time i've been attracted to you
landonorris: AND THE LAST TIME
user33: considering their new relationship just got exposed, they're doing pretty well
yourusername: oh we're waiting until daniel is in an enclosed space where if he tries to escape we all die :)
landonorris: he's going to regret this before such a long flight, esp with a hungover y/n
danielricciardo: is it too late to say i love you guys?
yourusername: free enchante merch and i'll drop it
danielricciardo: done.
landonorris: Y/N???
yourusername: what were we really going to do? plus i've had a crush on you for so long people would definitely know by now if i wasn't dead in bed
landonorris: you had a crush? why was i the only one getting bullied?
maxverstappen1: please refer to my comment about the feral club night
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landonorris
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liked by danielricciardo, yourusername and 1,237,903 others
tagged: yourusername
landonorris: on a scale of 1 - 10 how annoyed would you be if someone joined a particular club on your private jet?
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user35: THE MILE HIGHER CLUB?
maxverstappen1: you're banned from the bathroom now, get a UTI i don't care do NOT shag on my plane
landonorris: so is that a 10 definietly not?
maxverstappen1: i will make sure you will never be able to use it again if you have sex on my plane with my best friend
landonorris: understood 😅
yourusername: i don't know how you did it but you made your first post about me even less romantic than dan's and his mentioned balls TWICE
landonorris: but i love you so that's all that counts right?
yourusername: i love you too but i also clean that plane so no one will shag on it or i'll scrap them
landonorris: i get the message no mile higher 😭
yourusername: but at least you get extra peanuts and the best pillow for life
landonorris: you spoil me too much
oscarpiastri: happy for you mate, it was painful watching you mope around the garage
yourusername: awww you moped ???? that's so cute
landonorris: i moped because i really liked you and daniel made it his mission to embarrass me constantly in front of you
yourusername: babe i've cleaned dan's sick off the floor of the jet nothing he could say could make me not like you
landonorris: thank the lord cause if i didn't ask you out i think i may have combusted
yourusername
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liked by landonorris, maxverstappen1 and 30,987 others
tagged: landonorris
yourusername: the 4am call times and mad max tantrums have all been worth it to meet you <3
view all comments
user36: god i have seen what you have done for others
maxverstappen1: now you're together i can say this, 1) i love you guys and i'm glad you're happy. 2) lando saw you once at a karting competition and had a crush ever since this was not new
landonorris: THAT WAS BETWEEN ME AND YOU
maxverstappen1: and he confessed that seeing you in your uniform is what finally pushed him over the edge
landonorris: STOP WHAT ARE YOU DOING
maxverstappen1: bro don't worry you guys are together, you're set for life
landonorris: thanks for having faith i guess?
maxverstappen1: BRO SHE IS SUPER DUPER IN LOVE WITH YOU
yourusername: he's not wrong
landonorris: hehehehehehehehe
oscarpiastri: he's literally sat in hospitality giggling and kicking his legs btw
landonorris: proudly so, my gf LOVES me
user37: lando got a gf before a win and i respect that
landonorris: i love you, can't wait for the rest of my life with you
yourusername: i can't wait, i'll even play golf with you x
danielricciardo: mate at least wait until the six month mark before you propose
landonorris: no promises x
note: hope you enjoyed, had this thought and i just had to do it. i'm working on requests and mamma mia p4!!
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blingblong55 · 4 months
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My kind of love -Keegan P. Russ
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Based on a request:
Just a thought : Keegan strikes me as the guy who would hold wife! reader close to him when they sleep in their bed. Or he'd carry her when he finds her asleep on the couch. ---- F!Reader, fluff/romance, established!relationship, boyfriend!keegan, cuddling ----
A/N: thanking Bon Iver and Niall Horan for this fluff🙏
It's four in the morning, Keegan comes home after nearly ten months of deployment, his duffle bag placed on the floor. Steps soft to not wake you up, after all, he is meant to surprise you with his early arrival. As he was about to go and check on the dog, who slept by the sofa, he noticed a blanket, your blanket. He approaches you, his gaze softens the second he watches his beautiful sleeping. You look so peaceful, so calm and in this moment when things for months went so wrong, this view is all he can adore.
"My love, I'm home," Keegan whispers, in his arms, he carries you to bed. They say people have a certain amount of luck and you are proof of that. Maybe out there in the cruel world, he doesn't have much luck but in this place, a warm, cosy and safe place he calls home, he knows luck is there. No one can say they are lucky because they don't have you and he does. A million men can say your name, a million more can watch you but just one gets to come home to you. One man in a sea of billions gets to kiss you, to listen to your ramble about crazy theories, to listen to you hum a tune and to love you and be loved back.
That man is him and in this precise moment, he knows why he proudly waited day and night to hide that ring in his pocket. If he wasn't a romantic, he would propose to you right here right now but he wants that moment to be magical because his precious girl deserves it. "Keegan, it's you," your voice so soft. Fuck, why must you make his heart melt like this? Why must you- damn you! Why do you love him? Why do you see what others don't and why must you make him blush just from the sound of your voice? Couldn't you be any less cruel to his weakened heart? Oh but he loves it, he loves that voice, that touch and stare, he loves the kisses and the 'Did your job go well? Are you hurt? Did you miss me?' he loves it all.
"Of course, it's me, darling," he sets you down on the bed and covers you with the sheets. "I'll be back," his lips touched your soft skin before leaving to take a short shower. You lay in bed, not being able to sleep without him anymore, you wait for him. Once he snuggles to you, you can feel his fresh skin, how his embrace wraps you with love and with care. "Did everything go to plan?" you ask as you nuzzle your face on his chest, a low chuckle escapes his lips as he brushes your hair. "It did, which is surprising," he kisses the top of your head and drapes his leg over yours.
In a warm bed, you and he lie, legs intertwined like they are the perfect match. Your back to his chest, soft breathing filling the room. As you close your eyes, he finds himself admiring your beauty from his angle. His arm wrapped around your waist, keeping you close for the rest of the night as the other arm caresses your head. His fingers brush through the hair, and slowly, they make their way to your forehead, where he slowly catches himself falling asleep.
Until morning and maybe even after being awake, he keeps you in his hold and under those warm bed sheets. "I love you to the moon and back- no, let's keep going beyond the moon," he whispers as he keeps holding you close. If only he dared to propose already and make you his missus. But only the brave wait for the exact right moment.
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envy-of-the-apple · 11 months
Text
Sweet Home
idk how the multiverse works so im just fucking up the worldbuilding but basically my hc is that whenever a dimension suffers trauma (too many ppl leaving dimensions, rift in time etcetc), it will create a shield around itself, preventing anyone from entering or leaving as it works to self-correct. 
(Yandere, dark, kidnapping, captive, delusional behavior, gn reader, implied deaths, talks of bombs)
Yandere!Miguel O'hara x reader
Honestly, you weren’t much of a threat. 
It was a rather misfortunate case of wrong place wrong time. One second, you were in your home, mulling about. The next, you were across dimensions. 
At least, that’s how it was explained to you. You had no idea there could be more than one spiderman, and now you were surrounding by millions. Maybe even billions. Here they all were. Heroes, all working together to save the multiverse, returning innocent people, like you, back to where they came from. 
But, according to Miguel, you were a special case. 
“It’s not too hot, this time?” He asks, his face in the same scowl as always. Before, you assumed he hated you. Now, you realize the man had a hard time showcasing emotion. 
It’s still there, though. You can see the concern in his eyes as they soften ever so slightly, as if he was remembering the scalding hot tea that burned your tongue. 
You tasted it, smiling at its perfection. When you mentioned you preferred something sweet, you had almost choked on the lump of sugar at the end of the cup Miguel prepared. After that, he was much more lenient with sugar. 
Ever since, you were put into his custody, he made it very clear your comfort would be his top priority. You never considered a superhero agency to be comforting, but the room he lent you was spacious and had a warm fluffy bed, food was always delicious, the guilt-filled gifts were always nice. It was clear the man spared no expense. 
“It’s perfect,” you say, “thank you.” 
He gives a smile. Though, it’s strained, like he’s not sure if he’s doing it correctly. He finally gives up, staring down at your techband. It wasn’t as sophisticated as his, you understood why you couldn’t have one, you were just grateful it stopped you from glitching. 
“So...is there anything new?” You ask, careful to broach the subject. 
You couldn’t go back home, not yet. It had taken a while for you to calm down when you were first brought here. You had been terrified, fearing for your life surrounded by these strangers who all strangely resembled spiderman. It was Miguel that had talked you down. He wasn’t patronizing, didn’t coddle you, but he wasn’t unkind. 
He explained things carefully. When you had been ripped from your dimension, something had gone wrong. The dimension had closed in, as if it were a living creature defending itself, an armadillo creating a thick shell. No one could go in or out. 
So, here you stayed at the spiderman’s headquarters, temporarily dimensionless. 
You peered into Miguel’s face. He was tired. He always looked tired. You wondered if he was getting enough sleep. Guiltily, you knew you were partially a reason for that. 
“Nothing.” He sighed. “We still can’t communicate to your spiderman, nor can we break into the gates. So far, no progress.” 
You had a feeling that’d be the case. You gave a strained smile, feeling more and more hopeless. 
“Hey.” His hand was warm on your shoulder. “I’ll find a way to get you back home, I promise. Don’t give up on me just yet.” 
He was close, leaning in just so your faces were inches apart. Miguel was just being kind, you knew that. But his height and stature had always intimidated you. A part of you was sure he knew that. It was why he would always hover over your, like it was some way to subconsciously keep you in check. 
It was an absurd thought. As always, you shook it off. 
“And besides, if we can’t, you’re always free to stay here.” He gave a lazy wave to the spacious room filled with gadgets you couldn’t even begin to describe. 
 It was a joke. You knew that. Miguel was adamant about ‘anomalies’ being returned to where they belonged. You were certain he would’ve thrown you back into your dimension if the situation were different. Yet, just the thought of staying here forever, never seeing your friends or family ever again tugged on your heart. 
You appreciated everything Miguel had done for you, he had gone above and beyond, but you were lonely. Due to protocol, only Miguel was able to see you. You understood it, but it didn’t mean you were not allowed to have human emotions. 
You longed for home. 
He must have seen it in your eyes because he pulled back some. The lines on his face hardened ever so slightly. He was angry. Not at you. Never at you. 
“You done with that?” He changed the subject, gesturing to your cup. 
Nodding, you return it to him gratefully. He stands up, grabbing the remnants of lunch and dirty dishes. 
“I’ll be back.” He tells you, and he’s assured you plenty of times that you weren’t, but it was hard not to feel like a prisoner as you watched him leave through a metal door. 
You waited for ten seconds, and then you rose from your own seat. 
There were only two rooms you had access to. Your own, and then Miguel’s office. 
Well, it wasn’t really an office. It was a large computer room, but Miguel always worked here, and you always kept him company, much preferring the companionship of at least one human rather than the solitude of your bedroom. 
Over time, he seemed to trust you a bit more. Or maybe he started underestimating you. Over time, he had accidentally given you most of the passwords to this place, not really paying attention as you not-so-secretly spied on his work.
You felt a little guilty for snooping, but a part of you was frustrated. You’d been stuck here for weeks, with no concrete answer. Miguel always seemed to evade your questions. You wanted an explanation. Assurance. 
Strangely enough, you felt a little old as you clumsily operated a machine that was decades into the future. It was a humbling experience. You typed in your dimension number, a sequence you knew by heart. 
Huh. 
You weren’t sure what a closed dimension looked like, but it certainly wouldn’t look like this. It looked fine. Despite your minimal experience with looking at dimension maps, you could tell the gates were opened. You could even see tiny dots flitting in and out. People.
Everything looked fine. 
Then...why did Miguel say you couldn’t go home? 
“What are you doing?” 
You hadn’t even noticed he’d come back. He had been so silent. Like a spider. 
You whirl around to face him. For the first time, you realize you’d never actually seen him without his signature blue and red costume. His face was stony. His demeanor had changed, as if earlier he was actively trying to pretend around you. Before, he used to slouch slightly, his hands would drape awkwardly at his sides. Now, his back was straight, arms ready. 
You’d never thought Miguel as threatening before.
Still, you try your best to loosen the sudden tension in the room. You give a sheepish smile, hoping it doesn’t wobble like your heartbeat. 
“I think my dimension just opened up,” You mutter, halfheartedly pointing to the screen, “Does this mean I can go back home?” 
He steps forward. You inch backward as he makes his way over to the computers. All the screens shut off. You can barely see him in the dim light. 
He works he jaw, like he wants to tell you something but can’t. 
Despite your heart going a mile a minute, you don’t want to be scared of Miguel. The only friend you had here. You bite your lip, gaining all the courage you could. 
“Did you lie to me?” It was a stupid question. Of course Miguel would say no. He wouldn’t do this to you. He couldn’t. 
His eyes slice into you. Crimson. 
“Yes,” he says simply, “I did.” 
You weren’t expecting that. You couldn’t have. Your mind was whirling, desperately trying to piece together an explanation. 
The tears burned in your eyes. You forced yourself to keep them at bay. 
“Why?” It was barely a whisper, you weren’t sure if he had heard you. 
He rakes his hand through his hair. It was something he did when he was stressed. You’d once jokingly told him that if he kept doing that he’d go bald. 
You had joked with this man. 
“I was going to put you back,” He said, almost like he was pleading to you. As if you were his judge, his executioner, and not his helpless prisoner. 
“That was the plan. I was going to put you back but...” He sucks in a breath. He gives a laugh with no real mirth. 
“But then I realized how much safer you’d be here.” 
You didn’t understand. You take another step back. He follows. 
“Your dimension opened back up two weeks ago.” You’d been stuck here for three. “Communication has resumed like normal. I lied about that.” 
It felt like a sick prank. Like he would suddenly start laughing, telling you how gullible you were. 
But it feels even worse when he doesn’t do that. He just stares, almost like he feels sorry for you. 
You don’t want his pity. 
“You haven’t met your dimension’s spiderman, have you?” He suddenly asks. “He’s a good kid. But that’s all he is. Just a kid. Thinks everything comes easy. His fate is worse than most.” 
“His recklessness causes a bomb to detonate. 126 people die.” His gaze is stiff on your figure. 
“Including you.” 
You freeze, staring at him, unable to move. The word of your death still lingered in the air. 
“I told myself I’d send you back,” he continues staring into the dark screens, “But you were so sweet and you made me feel so-” He cuts himself off with a huff. 
“I always have to make the right decision. Every time.” He finally says, looking back at you. 
“Just for once, I wanted to be selfish.” 
“Miguel-” 
“I won’t.” He interrupts. “I’ll keep you here. I’ll keep you safe. I always keep things that belong to me safe.” 
You don’t like how he phrased that. You don’t like anything about this. This didn’t sound like your Miguel. 
Or did you even know him? Was the weeks of kindness all an act? A ploy to keep you satisfied?
Look how wonderfully that worked? You walked right into his trap like a stupid butterfly, struggling in the sticky webs. 
“You said it yourself,” you whisper, “I’m an anomaly. I can’t-I can’t stay in a dimension that isn’t mine. I could cause rifts-or-or even worse disasters.”
You try to throw his words back at him, hoping it’d knock some sense into him. He just gives a hum at your attempts. 
“Not if you stay here,” he replies, “Not if I keep you contained. Keep you here.” 
You shake your head, stepping back. This felt like a nightmare. The tears were falling in full force, down your quivering chin as you stare at him. 
“You-you can’t do that,” You mutter, backing up against the wall as he makes his way towards you, “You can’t do that.”
He crowds you against him, hushing you as he bundles you up to his chest, stroking your hair. He’s so warm. His scent of woodland mountains is so strong. He suffocates you. You hadn’t realized it until just now. 
“I know you don’t understand.” Miguel replies, sounding so genuine. It makes you sick. “But you will. One day. One day you’ll thank me for saving you.” 
Saving you. This wasn’t saving you. This was keeping you. This was killing you. 
“I want to go home.” Your voice breaks, cracks under the weight of his confession. “Miguel please. I-I need to go home.” 
For the first time, he smiles. A sincere smile. 
A condescending smile. Like you’ve said something adorably naïve. 
“Mi amor.” He purrs, affectionately kissing your cheek. 
“You are home.” 
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budbuddnbuddy · 4 months
Text
Little obey me headcanons (pt3)
(Pt4)
A/n: uhhh not really sure what to say here, but I’m glad my posts are getting the attention similar to what I had when I first picked up writing fanfics and headcaons. Thank all of you so much hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas.
As MC spends more time in the Devildom and makes more pacts with the brothers, they’ll start to have a slightly more evil look to them. Get what I mean? Like how Megan Fox has “evil beauty.” However its not as visible, they’ll still look like your normal boring human first glance.
“The celestials know every language in the human wor-“ *LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER* Sorry but I respectfully hate this headcaon with all my heart, it doesn’t make sense. Sure these guys are immortal powerful beings that have lived for millions and billions of years, but they don’t even keep up with the human world like that and that’s CANON. Also if we’re looking at it through their perspective where as a hundred years is literally just a couple of blinks, humans would be making new languages every second.
They probably know 2-6 MAX, and that’s not me underestimating them that’s me saying that they either don’t have the time or will to care about 7,139 OFFICIAL languages there are in the human world. But enough of that let’s dive into the languages that they can speak.
Lucifer: English, French, Italian. and a little bit of Japanese due to Levi but not enough to be fluent. Mammon: English, Spanish. Levi: English, Korean, Japanese, and sign language. (idk if that counts) Satan: English, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish, Arabic. Asmodeus: English, French (mainly because he thinks it sounds hot 💀) Beelzebub: English and German. Belphie: English, Spanish, German (because of Beel), Japanese. Diavolo: English,Italian, a bit of Spanish but not enough to be fluent. Barbatos: Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, English, French. Simeon+Luke: English right now but Luke wants to learn Spanish.
Solomon is probably the type of person to wake up at 12:30 in the afternoon whenever possible. Mf probably has an alarm set for that exact time too, and when you ask where he’s been for like half of the day he’ll tilt his head to the side and be like “I was sleeping????”
I feel like we can all come to a sort of mutual understanding of this, but the brothers fan clubs and MC do not mix well together like at all.
“Asmo, get your crazy ass fans under control! They’re fucking insane!”
“Oh they can’t possibly be that bad dear! They’re MY fans after all!”
“I let it slip that we had a date planned for this Saturday and one of them threatened to cut me before calling me a warm toilet seat!”
“Oh.”
Asmodeus, Barbatos, and Simeon call you Hon/Honey sometimes.
For all of your RAD classes, every brother except Lucifer shares at least ONE class with you. Also all of the exchange students are in the same Main classes.
Everyone is a tad bit insane about you, just a little bit, a sprinkle if you will. No I am not explaining this.
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babydollmarauders · 7 months
Text
QUINNY’S B-DAY — JACK HUGHES
part of the el!hughes au
quinn hughes x platonic!reader
notes: a short birthday post for our now 24 year old captain 🫶🏻
y/n.hughes
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liked by _quinnhughes, jackhughes, and 119,361 others
y/n.hughes Q, you taught me what familial love really is. you took a quiet, introverted, anxiety ridden, 13 year old girl under your wing, and i’m so grateful for that. you constantly reminded me that my home life did not make me who i was, but that it could help shape me into who i wanted to become. it’s because of you that i met my soulmate and have the amazing family and support system that i have now. where everyone else saw an outcasted 8th grader who snuck in to watch hockey practices, you saw someone who needed your love and guidance, and you had never been more right. you showed me that my house was not a home, but yours was. you showed me that i could live a life that made me feel good. and most importantly, you showed me what it was like to feel loved and wanted in someone’s life.
i’m so thankful that i get to call you my brother. i’m thankful that when i call, you answer; when i cry, you do anything to make me smile; and when i’m living, you’re cheering me on.
i love you from the north pole to the south, a million times over 🤍 thank you for providing me with the chance to be happy “because i deserve it”
happy 24th, snuggles!
tagged _quinnhughes
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_quinnhughes was i expecting to cry a bit today? no. thank you, lovie. i love you from the north pole to the south, a billion times over 💙
y/n.hughes oh- a billion is a lot more than a million
_quinnhughes yes it is, it’s also how much i love you
y/n.hughes oh okay
jackhughes you broke my wife, jackass
_quinnhughes @/jackhughes aren’t you supposed to be nice to me on my birthday?
jackhughes i was gonna, and then you made my lovie cry again
_quinnhughes @/jackhughes again?
jackhughes she already cried going through her camera roll to find these pictures and writing the post
_quinnhughes @/y/n.hughes call me 💙
lhughes_06 @_quinnhughes happy birthday, Quinner! best oldest bro there ever was 💪
_quinnhughes thanks, moose!
_alexturcotte @_quinnhughes happy birthday, Quinn! 🫡 go beat the Oilers!
_quinnhughes thank you, Alex! i’ll sure try!
colecaufield @_quinnhughes haps birth, cap bro!
_quinnhughes you didn’t finish a single word in that sentence… thanks, Cole?
colecaufield you’re so welcome!
jackhughes @_quinnhughes i guess happy birthday big bro, hope you have a good day and a good game!
_quinnhughes lovie made you say this, didn’t she?
jackhughes you know it
_quinnhughes i’ll accept it anyways, thanks Jacky
jackhughes El also says happy birthday
_quinnhughes she can’t even say happy birthday, dude
jackhughes but she CAN say “appy day-day, winny!”, i was paraphrasing
_quinnhughes big word for ya, bud
jackhughes just for that, you don’t get to see my daughter or my wife
_quinnhughes too late, lovie is facetiming me rn. talk to ya in two secs
jackhughes damnit, lovie!
y/n.hughes i love and miss him 🥺
jackhughes damn, i can’t stay mad at you
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seonghwaddict · 2 months
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EYES DON’T LIE — iii. a worthy competitor.
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synopsis. you've always resented jeong yunho, and you were positive that the end of high school would've marked the end of your rivalry and hatred. yet now you find yourself in the same crappy hotel as him. assigned to be right next to each other much like the good old times.
pairing. jeong yunho x fem! reader. genre. mini-series, fluff, slice of life, mature, academic rivals to lovers, non-idol au. chapter warnings. swearing.
word count. 2.1k. rating. pg-13
chapter ii. chapter iii. chapter iv.
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yunho’s life post high school was blissful, to say the least.
he went to his dream university and just like you graduated as the top student of that year. not long after that he landed a job at a relatively large tech company and after promotion upon promotion, he became the multi-billion-won company’s CTO. He lived lavishly; a shining example of what he was able to achieve thanks to his determination and unwavering passion.
at least until all of that came crashing down.
because the CEO just had to get involved in activities that became the downfall of the company. unbeknownst to him, the CEO had been part of an underground piracy organisation and sold the private information of millions of users to malicious parties. when the news got to the police, well… it was chaos. law enforcement swarmed the headquarters to detain the CEO as well as anyone that was identified on the list of people involved. a mess that he had no part of.
in hindsight, yunho should be carrying more than the company card and a suitcase when traveling for business trips, during which all this news got out. but how was he supposed to know he’d go from a highly respected worker to jobless in a matter of 24 hours?
and so he found himself in a shitty hotel, paying with the few bills he could find after rummaging around in his bag. the company card declined when he tried booking a different hotel—the fancy one the company had paid for forced him to leave after they found out he was affiliated with that company. for obvious reasons, he had been confused until he checked his phone for the first time that day and found hundreds of notifications flooding the lock screen that depicted picture of him and his best friend.
speaking of his best friend.
as soon as got into his his temporary bedroom—aka the hotel room that smelled so odd he opened the window as wide as he could and stuck his head out to avoid the stench—he called the man he’s known since they were toddlers, ranting about the situation. unsurprisingly, he found the situation immensely funny.
“so you’re poor now?”
“no, mingi, i just don’t have my personal card. i’ll go withdraw money tomorrow morning.” yunho propped his camera up on the small desk opposite the bed, leaning back in the creaking wooden chair as he rubbed at his temples, dreading the oncoming headache he was starting to feel. “but i’m jobless, for now.”
mingi pursed his lips, nose scrunching as he looked at his phone screen, watching how distressed yunho looked. “how can i help you, then?”
a shrug was the first response he got. “just-” the rotating chair squeaked as yunho leaned a bit further to stare up at the ceiling for a moment before reverting his gaze back to his phone. “just talk to me about something else, distract me for now.”
“okay then,” the fake blond’s face brightened and a wide grin spread across his face as he sat up and leaned closer. “so, you know my boss hongjoong, right?”
and so the next ten minutes were filled with him gossiping about how his boss seemed to have the hots for a cute reporter. yunho listened, grateful to get his mind off his current predicament, but barely registered any words being said. he occasionally replied with agreeing hums or other reactions suitable for the context, but he couldn’t help but feel the tell tale signs of his body wanting to rest. mingi seemed to catch on as he paused his story and squinted at his phone screen, catching the way his best friend’s eyes drooped with fatigue.
“hello? earth to yunho?”
he stirred awake, snorting in a breath before yawning. he checked the time on his very expensive watch briefly before his eyes flickered back up to mingi.
“you look tired, man,” worry was written all over his face, sure he could already see dark circles forming under yunho’s eyes. “get some rest.”
“yeah… yeah, that’s a good idea.” yunho spoke through his yawn, hand covering his open mouth.
they said their goodbyes and ended the call. yunho sat in silence for a moment. he turned the chair, inspecting the bed. it was sad, small and pretty empty. wishing he was back home on his soft king sized bed, he poked the mattress, frowning at the firmness before pulling back and looking at the pillows. well, pillow. singular. while the mattress felt to stiff, the pillow the opposite. he got up to check the little closet for another pillow that he could stack on top to add some firmness, but to no avail.
after a moment of hesitation, he decided to ask the guy at the lobby if he could possibly have an extra pillow. before head for the door, he stopped in the bathroom, checking his teeth and brushing his hand through his dark hair, a little overgrown and resembling a mullet. he fixed the tie of his suit that he had yet to take off and left the bathroom, his hand wrapping around the door handle of the room and pulling it open.
as he stepped out, his temporary neighbour seemed to have just arrived. turning to greet the stranger, he stopped in his tracks just as she had.
what a perfect end to his day. the cherry on top, really.
truthfully, he hadn’t given you much thought after your high school graduation. (he actually did. a friend of his went to the same university as you and he’d occasionally ask him if he knew how you were doing). but seeing you now, he realised you hadn’t changed much. of course, you seemed to have a grown a tiny bit and you looked more mature, but those eyes—those soft eyes, so pretty, red and puffy through your tears—were undeniably yours. he recognised you before he recognised the state you were in, a sobbing mess. in all the years he had known you, he doesn’t recall ever seeing you cry. seeing you like this, with flushed and tear stained cheeks, made his head spin for a moment.
before he could open his mouth to say anything, you were gone. he watched the door of your room fall shut, followed by a thud from inside the room. what it may have been—a kick to the wall, a punch, an item thrown across the room—he wouldn’t have been able to tell as he stared at the door dumbly. he wasn’t sure how long he stood there, but what else was he supposed to do when he ran into you of all people in this obscure hotel and somehow ended up next to each other?
watching you disappear through that door reminded him too much of the last time he saw you.
though it had been a warm summer, it rained on the last day of school. having checked the weather, he brought an umbrella with him. but as he watched you stand front of the entrance of the school, alone and looking out into the rain without a jacket, let alone an umbrella, with a conflicted frown and nothing to protect you from the rain but the roof, he found himself caring about you. before he realised it, he stood in front of you, holding out his black umbrella and consequently getting a little wet.
you couldn’t help but stare at him, your gaze switching between his unusually sincere face and hand extending the red handle of the umbrella. you shook your head, insisting that you won’t take it, but he cut you off.
“come on, it’s just an umbrella, i have no problem walking home in the rain.”
“no, please, yunho, it’s your umbrella, i’ll figure something out. you’ll get sick.”
after some more back and forth, he offered a compromise. you could walk home together.
and that’s exactly what the two of you did. you walked side by side, squeezed together under the umbrella, droplets of rain occasionally hitting your right shoulder or his left shoulder. despite the weather, it was oddly peaceful. a steady conversation flowed between the two of you, free of any teasing or insults. you weren’t quite sure why he was being so nice, but you supposed it was the last you’d see each other before heading separate ways.
unfortunately, the two of you thought at the time, you lived in the same apartment building. while you lived on the third floor, he was up on the fifth. he decided it only made sense to walk you to your place first. unlike your walk outside, the short journey from the elevator to your front door was dead silent. even when you got to the front door, neither of you spoke for a moment until he cleared his throat, his voice almost… emotional?
“i guess this is it, huh?”
“yeah… i guess… have fun finding a better, funnier, smarter rival in college.”
“nah, i don’t think i’ll even bother.”
“hm? really? i thought you’re all about that competition.”
“yeah, but you’re the only person worth competing with.”
he’d never forget the way your eyes widened comically as you looked at him after that, a blush so faint it was easy to miss in this horrible lighting. maybe all the people saying you’d make a good couple were on to something. still, he knew you’d never see each other again, there was no point in trying anything. his cell phone rang, interrupting the tense silence. it was his mother, telling him to hurry and get home.
“i… uh, i have to go… but i’ll see you around, someday?”
you smiled, a smile so genuine his stomach did a cartwheel.
“i’ll see you around, someday.”
you stared at each other for a moment, stood across from each other in the hallway. he wasn’t sure what to do. should he hug you? should he just turn and leave? you seemed just as conflicted. after a long minute, you both extended your hands for a handshake at the same time. a small laugh was shared as your hands intertwined in a slow handshake, holding onto each other a few moments too long. his thumb rubbed over the back of your hand gently. he gave it a small squeeze before letting go and bowing his head, winking playfully.
“good luck out there, y/n.”
“likewise, yunho.”
and with the you disappeared through the front door, much like you had moments ago. though at that time you didn’t look so heartbroken. eventually he got himself to put one foot in front of the other and head to the lobby for his original mission.
he thanked the lobby man quietly as he was handed two more pillows, his mind still occupied with you. you’d think that whatever he felt for you on that last day would’ve dissipated by now, but that was quite the opposite. despite it having been so many years, seeing you again felt like a punch to his throat.
on his way back to his room, he thought about knocking on your door for a split second. in the end, he concluded you probably wouldn’t want to talk to him. he wasn’t sure what he would’ve said anyway. hey, it’s really nice seeing you again, by the way did i mention that i’ve realised i had a massive crush on you that time we said goodbye and those feelings haven’t gone away?
no, absolutely fucking not.
he nearly slapped himself at the hypothetical monologue, dragging himself to his hotel room. a soft thump resounded as he tossed the pillows on his bed before undressing and getting under the thin covers. the time it took for him to fall asleep was unclear as he stared up at the ceiling. whoever rented the room above him seemed to want to make a joke in the ground, thundering stomps making the ceiling and his open window shake.
had he not stepped out at that time to get pillow and bumped into you, he would’ve probably been cursing and swearing to himself to get out of this place first thing in the morning. but, considering who his current neighbour was, he couldn’t help but think…
would one or two more days really be so bad?
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[ lilo's notes . . . ] hii sorry it took so long to update this, i hope this makes up for it 💔💔 we finally get a little gimped into yunho’s feelings!! yippee!! i’m sorry he comes off as a little stuck up near the beginning, but please understand he went from a luxurious suite to a hotel on the brink of falling apart; i think most people would be a little disappointed 🙏🙏 he’s not a bad guy i promise
[ networks . . . ] @cromernet @wonderlandnet
[ taglist | series + permanent . . . ] @yuyusuyu @diorwoo @loveyluv7 @ad0rechuu @h-nji @nakiiko @lelaleleb @moon-gyus @baribaaari @bvidzsoo @kunikku @kyeos4ng @sankatchu @mlink64 @yeosangsbbg @seonghwasbbgirl @likexaxdaydream @dreamingofyeo
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nrdmssgs · 10 months
Note
Hello id like to humbly request a scenario with König where y/n previously went MIA, and is assumed dead. König is sent on a hostage rescue mission and when he gets there finds out not only is she alive, but she’s one of the hostages he’s there to rescue 🩷 i ADORE your writing!
Masterlist
Angst, hurt/comfort
Pairing: König x afab reader
TW: Mention of alcohol, several mentions of grief and depression, mentions of injuries, mention of human trafficking, swearing.
Authors note: I've tried to keep all the disturbing stuff very mild, but I can't help but see, as the readers` alleged death would absolutely crush König. Sorry for taking so long. I love this request so much, I can't stop thanking you, dear anon. Love you! This is actually kinda songfic, so if anybody needs music for this one: here you are.
Scarlet shell
“König, listen to me! Please! There is no body! There is nothing, we could possibly miss here!” His squad mate is trying to catch up with König, but it's impossible: he moves forward, maneuvering, between cargo transports at incredible speed.
How many times did he search for you past days? More precisely, how many dozens of times? 
He searched every centimeter of the perimeter where you worked, checked literally everywhere.
He did not take breaks for food or sleep. His team gradually lost strength, but he did not give up: he continued to circle around the place where the explosion thundered on that fateful night.
Koenig could not bring himself to stop and admit the obvious: if you were at the epicenter at the time of the explosion, only a damp shadow on the ground and a couple of scraps of clothing could remain from your body.
You don't need to talk if you don't feel like it, my love. Please never feel sorry for staying silent around me. Never beat up yourself. We all are born different, we walk different paths: your journey has made you waste most of the words we could have shared very early. It sometimes happens so, I know. The truth is that you don't have to put into words what you feel when you are next to me: I see it all in your eyes. You have reached such perfection in these silent speeches that I am ready to sit and listen to you endlessly. Even if "listening" means just looking into your eyes.
At first, he can't make himself come into your room. He comes to the door, holds out his hand and, after standing there for a while, turns around.
He needs to collect your belongings, make room for a new resident. But König can't gather enough strength.
When he finally forces himself into your room, a deafening silence engulfs him: your voice no longer here, your laughter, even your breathing is no longer heard.
König starts to collect your things, putting them carefully in a cardboard box: clothes, equipment, books, small utensils. All this absorbed your smell, your warmth. Every single item seems to burn his fingers.
He doesn't know how long it takes before he gives up: it hurts so much, he feels the pain on a physical level. 
Your shirt falls on the edge of the box. He brushes his fingers against your blanket and pillow. König kneels, then curls up right on the floor, ignoring the dust.
“Meine… meine…*” He can't even say your name - it gets stuck right in his throat, choking him. He never had enough words, when you were around, and he hates himself for that. But now, he loses even your name.
Sometimes I just think about words. Yesterday I looked at you and thought of the beautiful word you taught me: “die Hingabe” or "devotion". What is it in essence? Persistence and immutability in ones feelings, right? I was bored, so I googled this word. The search engine told me that it has approximately 195 million pages in its database that mention this word. Things were better with the word "honor" - almost 2 billion pages. With "love" - 11 billion pages. So love is 56 times more popular than devotion... Although it is clear that only a deeply devoted person can truly love, right?
Sometimes he hates it: his devotion to you does not weaken with time. A few years pass, and he learns to live in constant pain. Learns to wake up every morning, knowing well, he won't see your face. Grows accustomed to all-consuming silence and cold around him.
But what drives him to the limit is a constant urge to finish yet another mission, just to come back to the base, bury his face in your shirt and disappear completely in a slumber without thoughts.
Nothing helps: alcohol tastes like water, training doesn't leave him breathless and too weak to even think of you, no matter how hard he tries.
At some point, he even finds himself talking to another woman. She even takes his number, and sometimes they exchange warm and kind messages. He answers her automatically. 
Returning from their third meeting (he cant even call it a date), he realizes with horror that he does not remember her face.
There are no faces left in his life, except for one - that which he can neither see nor touch anymore. Your face.
My love, I see the scars, your traumas left on your body and in your mind. I know, it hurts. Every time, I ask you about them - I mean no further harm. You don't have to tell unless you are not ready. But I want you to see, that all those things didn't break you: you have not become the monster, you are scared of. There is still so much love, so much light in your hands. I want you to know, that the only reason, I'm asking you about your past traumas is that I want to fight them for you, to help you to heal. I'll fight for that love and light, you bear. Not to get them from you, never. But only for you to feel it all inside your heart.
König doesn't notice anything different. He just needed a new veil and didn't have any old black tshirts on hands.
So first he puts on a dark scarlet veil. It is still convenient. Then his old gloves are torn and he orders new ones... To match the color of the top.
It's just some gear, it doesn't affect anything. But rumors are spreading around the base.
"He's off the chain." 
"Did you see what he did to the hostiles on the last mission?" 
"That animal is unleashed." 
"We no longer have König - there is only the bloody beast under that veil" 
"I'm terrified by those red clothes whenever they flash somewhere on the battlefield. Fucking omen."
König ignores the whispers. He doesn't care. Is he more productive now? Well, maybe it's for better.
I keep writing you these silly letters, but I will never send them. I don't want to embarrass you with my chatter. I'll stack them in my drawer:  letter after letter, confession after confession. I told you the most important words a long time ago, but all this ... I don't want to think about the circumstances under which you could find these letters and read them. But if something does happen, remember: I am yours, from head to toe, completely yours. Even if I'm not next to you now - my body, my mind and my heart - yours. Love you.
His commanders tend not to send him on missions where he would have to interact with civilians. His approach to combat really becomes so brutal that bystanders and hostages run the risk of getting too severe moral trauma.
But when it comes to cleaning up an entire village, where people from all over the world are brought for human trafficking, they simply have no choice. They need the best of the best soldiers, and König tops the list.
And he justifies the title of the best: he sweeps through the village like a tornado, cleaning one room after another.
König is somehow merciful enough to rip the padlocks off the doors where the hostages were being held, make sure there are only civilians in the room, and move on to the next door and the next building.
He unleashes a wave of fury on his enemies, alternating quick kills with slow and painful ones. None of his team dares to speak to him.
When they report to him that the last building is cleared, and they can move back, he turns around with a predatory look.
The building where he stopped is immersed in silence. One of his people says something, but König only raises his finger to his lips and gestures that he is going to check the second floor.
He doesn't hear anything suspicious, doesn't see anything... But some inhuman instinct tells him that he's not alone here.
König tries to step quietly, but the old withered boards crackle treacherously under his feet.
He walks up to the back room on the second floor and pushes the door open. He remembers very well how he himself knocked out the lock some 15 minutes ago, but there was no one in the room ...
This time he comes in and takes a closer look. His eyes linger on the pile of dusty rags, carpets and gutted cushions on the floor.
It appears suspicious. He slowly approaches, pulls out a knife, and throws back several pillows at once.
What he sees makes him freeze in horror. Your face... He saw your face - emaciated, covered with cuts and bruises of all colors. You covered your mouth in horror with your hand, the faded skin tight around every bone, every joint. It seemed that even your eyes had lost almost all color: two dark gray abysses stared back at Koenig in fear of death.
You looked more like your own ghost, but that didn't matter. He very carefully lowered the knife to the ground.
"It's me." König unbuttoned his helmet and removed it and his veil. "It's me..."
You didn't answer. Only large tears glistened in the corners of your eyes.
“Meine Liebe*, it`s me.” He kept whispering, hoping to calm you down, while removing layer after layer of rags and pillows, covering your body.
He throws away tactical gloves and carefully inspects you to understand, if youre injured. His body trembles, his voice fails him and König proceeds to the only way, he can convince you, that you are safe at last: he takes you in his hands, carefully cradles your fragile body and presses kisses against tear stains on your cheeks. 
When his team finds him slowly rocking you in his hands, they step back, giving you two some privacy.
But they notice the bloody-red veil and gloves, laying on the floor as a cracked, broken and finally not needed shell.
*Meine - my *Meine Liebe - my love
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melyzard · 5 days
Text
The World is Amazing, Actually (Part 11 or 12, I lost count)
It's been awhile since I made a post about how fucking rad the world actually is, and amidst all the pandemics and climate change and economic troubles, I felt the need.
So:
Today’s Wild Place (The Earth is An Alien Planet):
The Danakil Depression, Ethiopia:
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The Danakil Depression is probably the closest you'll ever be able to come to standing on the surface of Venus (without the crushing atmosphere, of course). Choking sulphuric acid and chlorine gases fill the air, while acid ponds and geysers pepper the landscape. 
- Daisy Dobrijevic, published July 4, 2022
(BTW scientists recently discovered microbes capable of surviving in this toxic, extremely hot environment, which means...well, even if we kick the bucket, life will continue. There's something comforting in knowing that no matter how bad we screw up...life will go on.)
Today’s Incredible Feat of Engineering (look! at what! we made!):
Ouarzazate Solar Power Station in Morocco, which has gone solar in a big way.
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(Which means they are making a huge contribution to helping fight toxic pollution, noise pollution, water use, land destruction, and carbon emissions. No really, there are charts. Reducing carbon emissions charts. Reducing irresponsible land use charts. Charts! Graphs! Data samples!)
Today’s Cool Life Form (the rare, the weird, the beautiful):
The Hispaniolan Solenodon.
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A very rare, nocturnal, shrew-like creature that is one of the few mammals able to produce venom. Look at him! Look at his snout! He's just a little guy! He will bite you and run away on his back legs! He's rare, and endangered, but not gone! Not gone yet, bitches!
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(Bonus: 10 Fun Facts About the Solenodon)
Today’s Bizarre Mystery (no, seriously, wtf?):
The Great Unconformity.
Hey, remember the Grand Canyon? Remember how we can see the passage of time through each layer, going back hundreds of thousands of years?
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Did you know that apparently, on this massive record of earth's geological history, there's a chunk of time missing? Science has some hypotheses about how and why this happens (and yes, it's been found in more than one place), but they are really only hypotheses, and no one's really sure what happened to, oh, 1.6 billion years, give or take.
Today’s Act of Humanity (yes, we are worth the effort):
After fleeing a war, Ukrainians rush to help Mississippi tornado victims.
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"They made the 16-hour drive south to donate bottled water and volunteer with aid workers, buoyed by the idea that they could help a community facing a similar struggle to theirs.
“We had to leave our home,” Pavliuk told The Washington Post in Ukrainian, in an interview interpreted by Hrebenyk. “And they don’t have a place to go back, either.”"
NEW CATEGORY:
Today's Good News About The Future (No, It's Not Too Late and Anyone Who Says Otherwise is Selling Something):
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The Saiga Antelope, a species critical to the continued survival of huge swathes of grassland, that in 2003 was down to 6% of it's population and already extinct in it's natural habitat of China and Ukraine, has rebounded back to almost 2 million strong thanks to conservation efforts.
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ronearoundblindly · 3 months
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For your Valentine's ask game: #7 Jake Jensen x reader, idk why but it seems fitting 😂
Shut Up, Jensen, one of my Valentine's Fics for 2024!
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Oh, this poor, poor, awkward perv. He's pervy until there's a naked lady around and then 😳 "...when I was four, I shoved pennies up my nose..." Seriously, boi, shut up!
Warnings for spice, i.e. a setup to smutty times, but mostly suggestive. MINORS DNI, just to be safe. There's plenty for you to read on my Light Masterlist, but this one is not for you! WC 1042
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You’ve always had a soft spot for nerds, and now, that’s translating to a damp spot on your fanciest panties you wore for this date.
Jake Jensen goofy-grinned his way through the entire evening, making you almost snort a tequila sunrise through your nose, and he never let up. The humor made you comfortable. It’s endearing to see his nervousness right on his graphic-T sleeve as opposed to being ‘manly’ and aloof.
It’s so, so refreshing to hear someone say, “I’m having a great time,” “I don’t want the night to end,” and know deep down in your bones that they mean “spending this time with you has made me happy” instead of “I’ve done enough to get laid now, right?”
Unsurprisingly, it does mean Jake’s done enough to get laid.
You give him your address so he could park his Jeep outside your building. There are parking meters, but tomorrow is Sunday when they’re free. No big deal. You left the bar (which was after the restaurant, which was after the coffee shop) a minute or two before in order to meet him at one of the open spots and walk him in. He can’t meet you at your door because there is a locked gate to your courtyard, and then a keypad for your building, and then about three corridors to navigate. It’s just easier to show him the way.
You can hear that fucking car coming a mile away.
Jake smiles and waves as he parallel parks—with extreme precision, you note—then hops out, gesturing to the meter questioningly.
“Don’t worry about it,” you shrug, jumping to the edge of the curb before he steps up so you can use the height for a kiss on his cheek.
It’s adorable how flustered he gets at just that tiny bit of affection. Though it’s dark, it’s obvious he blushes ferociously, rubbing at the back of his cropped, short hair, racing to gather his thoughts.
“Did you know there are almost three hundred ways to make change for a dollar? Two hundred ninety-three to be ex—woah—“
You grab his hand to lead him inside.
At the gate, you have to pause for the magnetic lock.
“I’m surprised those things even take change anymore,” Jake muses quietly, courteous for the neighbors’ sake, “because physical money only makes up 8% today’s currency…in the whole world.” He slides past the thick steel grating. “Thank you, digital banking.”
He follows behind you in the maze of concrete paths to the next entry.
“People leave like half a million dollars worth of loose change at airport security. That’s a little shocking,” he whispers when you motion for him to take a left, “think you’d splurge for some decent toilet paper with that kind of dough, or maybe some more cup holders in those row-seats? They could, I don’t know, offset the cost of making pennies. Shit cost two cents. Is worth one. Wild…
“Meanwhile, a dime has 118 ridges on the rim of the smallest circumference.”
Doesn’t even matter what he’s saying, the more his plump pink lips move, the more insanely turned on you get. You have to crowd him through your own doorway before you start stripping in the middle of the hall.
You peel your blouse off the instant your keys clatter onto the dinette table. You spin around to grab him by the screen-printed emblem of his t-shirt.
“There are 1.4 billion $2 bills in circulation.”
He gives a little oof sound when his back hits one of your bedroom walls, and there’s a barely audible whimper as your hands snake up under soft, well-worn fabric.
Holy shit, is this boy cut!
Your thumbs actually catch on the deep ridge of his Adonis belt. Dimes got nothing on you, Jake Jensen…
His breathing has changed significantly. “Did you know they—“ he gasps and swallows “—still make those?”
Ok, why is it hotter when he’s not even trying?
“Fun fact: if you went to Zimbabwe, guess which currency you’d…use?” The neckline of his shirt has to pop over his glasses before he fixes them. “The U.S. Dollar. Seriously! Same damn mon—EH.”
His belt buckle is tricky to navigate from this angle and in the very low light of your bedside lamp. You give up on his pants to unzip your skirt at the hip and let it fall.
Jake stands perfectly still with his hands half-raised.
“You’re…really fucking pretty—sorry—really pret—sexy, not that I—but beautiful. You’re really—”
He sucks in a breath as you step within inches of him again, reaching up to carefully pull his glasses over his ears and place them by the lamp.
“Fuck…”
Your index finger tucks into the elastic of his boxers where they peek out above the belt.
“Yeah, so I’ve been—I’m—I don’t have a—what I’m trying to say is—“ he squeezes his eyes shut and wiggles his fingers higher in the air, searching for the right thought “—the most commonly printed bill is actually the one-hundr—“
“Jake,” you interrupt, gently smoothing your hands over his thick shoulders. He is so ripped, what the hell? You guess there are nerds and then there are nerds, wow…
“Do you want to continue?”
He nods super fast, eyes growing wide in panic.
“Good.”
You smash your lips to his, hauling him down and you up by the sturdy tower of muscle he is.
“Condoms are in the drawer,” you mutter between breaths.
He lets out a high, choked whine before clamping his huge, warm hands to your waist, melting into you and your touch.
You coax the both of you toward the bed, swatting at his belt as a signal for him to help, and he does, though he’s not the greatest multitasker. He huffs and smirks, breaking the kiss so he can unlatch, unbutton, and unzip.
Then he looks up at you. 
“So you like movies…?”
You cup his jaw in your hand and pinch, a gentle peck on his lips as encouragement to focus. “Less talking, more fucking, Jensen.”
He opens his mouth, clearly running through a series of replies, but thinks better of it and  pushes down his pants and boxers all at once.
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Lloyd Hansen and a kiss on a place of insecurity ⬅️ ➡️ Steve Rogers and a kiss on a scar
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