the blood is rare & sweet as cherry wine
another commission of my absolute favourite toxic milf and dilf mari and rian for @chuckhansen from @queennymeria !!! thank you gabby for commissioning me and i’m so glad you enjoy this one, i hope you enjoy it as well airika 🥺❤️ it was such a pleasure to work with these two again !!! i love them so much !!!
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Mari shouldn’t have expected Rian to behave.
For the first little while, she doesn’t see much of him in Jackson. Of course, he’s a lot busier than she is – even though she started working at the clinic, she spends a lot of time at Joel’s with Ally and Xavier. Still, she didn’t expect to see so little of him now that they live in the same settlement again. She passes by him on the street when she’s heading to work or getting supplies from the store before she heads home at the end of the night, but he never stops to talk to her, and she doesn’t see him when she’s out with Ally even once. She doesn’t know whether he’s avoiding them to be an asshole or giving her space to be nice and make things easier for them. Maybe both.
Then, once she starts going out with Tommy, everything changes.
She didn’t even expect to find someone here to go out with, but she deserves it. After Rian, after giving birth to Ally by herself, she deserves it. It doesn’t hurt that Tommy’s handsome, too, and he goes out of his way to be nice to her when he doesn’t have to be (and when most other people in Jackson aren’t). He takes her out to the restaurant, makes her dinner while Xavier watches the baby, walks her home from the clinic when he’s not on a guard shift or tending to chores (or dealing with the fallout of his break from Maria), and is just… around. A lot. Since Rian isn’t, Mari figures he won’t notice.
At least not as quickly as he does.
All of a sudden, though, he’s turning up more and more. Coming to Joel’s to drop something off even though everyone knows that Joel doesn’t like him and asking if Mari’s home; sitting down for dinner at the restaurant at the same time that Mari and Tommy are there, leaning close to Teagan with an arm around her shoulder and smiling as he whispers something into her ear. Mari doesn’t know what he could be saying – he’s probably just telling her how hot he is. God knows he’s full of himself enough for that to be true. Whatever it is that he’s saying, though, Teagan is smiling, and Mari hates it. She tries not to, but she hates it.
“Mari?”
She glances over at Tommy. “Sorry,” she says, smiling at him. “I was just thinking.”
Tommy places a hand on her leg and squeezes. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to notice her looking at Rian. “That’s alright,” he replies. “Anything you wanna share?”
She leans closer to him, tilting her head. “I don’t know,” she answers quietly. “I don’t really think this is an appropriate place to talk about it.”
His mouth falls open a little, breath catching in his throat. Mari tries not to feel too much pride over it. Tommy’s an older man – not old, but older than her. Maria probably wasn’t giving it up very often before they broke it off, so it’s no surprise that it takes Mari very little to rile him up. The fact that she’s hot helps, too. “Oh yeah?” he murmurs. His grip on her knee gets a little tighter. “Like what?”
Mari shrugs. “Maybe I’ll tell you later,” she responds with fake nonchalance. “If you’re good.”
Tommy chuckles. “Okay, okay. I’ll be good, then.”
When she glances around the room, trying not to be too obvious about it, she can see Rian watching her from his seat while Teagan plays with his jacket and talks to herself.
Good. If he wants to play games, then Mari’s going to play, too.
After that, he keeps popping up more and more. Mari catches him walking past the clinic with Teagan even though he’s probably going out of his way to do it. When Tommy takes Mari and Ally for a walk, Rian is sitting on a park bench with one of the few people in Jackson who can actually tolerate him. And almost every time Tommy and Mari are at the restaurant, sitting in their usual booth, Rian is there, too. He’s almost always with Teagan, but he shows up a few times just to keep an eye on them, and it’s starting to piss her off.
He left Shady Pines. Yes, she told him to, but he didn’t fight back or tell her to fuck off the way a grown man like him easily could’ve if he wanted to. Instead, he came to Jackson with his tail between his legs, fucked Teagan, and now that Mari is here too, he keeps flaunting her in Mari’s face. He hasn’t tried to talk to her, of course, or tried to reach out and talk about Ally. He just follows her around and tries to make her jealous, and it’s not working.
It’s not.
She’s pushing Ally in a stroller and walking beside Tommy in the graveyard one night when she spots Rian again. He’s not loitering as shamelessly as he usually does – she’s not even sure he was trying to catch them, since he’s standing on the other side of the gate with a bag of supplies slung over his shoulder. But still, even though she’s sure he was probably heading home for the night, he stops to watch them for a couple seconds. Tommy is telling a story that Mari is definitely not listening to, but he trails off when Rian heads up the path towards them.
“Hey,” Rian says.
“Hey,” Tommy replies. He sounds more gruff than usual, which isn’t a surprise. Both of the Miller brothers seem to get like that around Rian. “You need something, McCormick?”
“Nope.” Rian slows to a stop in front of Ally’s stroller, and Mari tightens her grip on the handle. “Just wanted to say hi.”
“Well, you said it.”
“Not to you.” He looks at Mari expectantly, and she lets out a sigh.
“Hey,” she says, trying not to sound effected.
Satisfied, Rian nods at her and then waits a couple seconds to lean down and hold his hand out for Ally. “Hi, baby girl,” he murmurs. Ally babbles, reaching up to grab him.
Tommy gives Mari a questioning look. She knows that if she told him to beat Rian’s ass – or just get him to piss off – that he’d do it, but she shakes her head. As much as she hates it, and him, and everything about the situation, Ally is Rian’s baby too. He’s already not allowed to be a part of her life the rest of the time. She might as well let him say hi. It doesn’t make him anything more than the stranger they both pretend he is.
“She looks good,” he comments. He sounds like he did the first time he saw Ally – thoughtful. No confidence or cockiness or anything. “Healthy. Happy.”
“She is,” Mari agrees. “We both are.”
She can see Tommy smile at that out of the corner of her eye, but it quickly disappears the second that Rian opens his mouth.
“Well, if you need someone to watch her while you guys go out on a date or something, then Teagan and I can do it.” He jerks his head towards Tommy. “Probably hard to get your rocks off with a kid in the house all the time, huh?”
Tommy takes a step towards him, but Rian puts his hands up defensively. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” he says with an expression that tells them otherwise. “But hey. I’m serious.” He looks at Mari, then, the emotion in his eyes unreadable. “You let me know if she needs anything, alright?”
“I can take care of them just fine,” Tommy tells him. “Don’t you got somewhere to be?”
Rian smiles at Tommy. “Yeah. I do. See you later.”
He nods at Mari before turning on his heel and heading the other direction, out of the graveyard and back into town. Tommy reaches over and places a hand on the small of Mari’s back. “You alright?” he asks.
She looks at him and nods. “I’m fine,” she replies. “Let’s just finish our walk. You were telling a story, weren’t you?”
Even when he starts telling it again, she still isn’t paying attention. She’s been waiting for Rian to approach her for weeks now and the first time he does, he barely has anything to say. After this, she’s tired of playing games with him. She’s sick of him pretending like he doesn’t care about her and then turning around to make her jealous whenever he has the chance. Next time he tries to approach her, she’ll tell him to leave her alone for good.
Then again, Joel and Tommy have a lot of sway in Jackson. If they wanted Rian gone, he would be gone. They could probably send Teagan packing, too, if Mari gave them a good enough reason. She doesn’t know why it hasn’t happened yet, considering how little both of the Miller brothers seem to like Rian. Maybe she should suggest it to Tommy. He’d probably do it, especially if he wants to be Ally’s dad down the line and needs Rian out of the picture.
But thinking about that makes her feel sick, so she puts that idea to bed for now.
She doesn’t see Rian for a few days after that. Not even when she and Tommy are out for dinner again – him and Teagan’s usual seat is taken up by another couple, and they’re nowhere to be found in the rest of the restaurant. She doesn’t see him when they walk home, but she does see Teagan getting friendly with one of the forward scouts. Later that night, after Tommy’s dropped her off and helped her put Ally to bed, Mari’s just put on the record player and sat down on the couch when someone knocks at the door.
It's Rian. Of course. He wasn’t giving her space – he was just biding his time.
“Joel’s not here,” she says, wrapping her robe tighter around her chest. Thank God Xavier isn’t here, either – he’d have a lot to say. “Even if he was, we both know he wouldn’t invite you inside.”
“I don’t wanna talk to Joel.” Rian looks uncharacteristically nervous. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him look like this in his life. “I want to talk to you.”
“You’re already talking to me.”
He lets out a sharp breath like he wants to snap back at her but instead glances at the front door, pulling a hand out of his pocket to gesture toward it. “Can I come inside?”
“If you want to see Ally –“
“I don’t,” he interrupts. “Well, I do. Of course I do. But I want to talk to you first. Can I come in?”
Mari stares at him for a moment and then steps out onto the porch, closing the door behind her. It’s too cold outside for this, but she doesn’t feel like they have much to say to each other anyway.
“Okay.” She looks up at him expectantly. “Talk.”
He looks down at her, swallowing hard. “I came to see you,” he begins softly. “The morning I was supposed to leave Shady Pines. After I had packed up and was ready to go, I came by so I could… I wanted to… I don’t know.” He reaches up to run a hand through his hair. “I was going to tell you that I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave you. I didn’t want that. I… I just…” His eyes flick away from her. “Fuck, this is hard.”
Mari should tell him to leave her alone like she was thinking about. She should tell him that she doesn’t want him in Ally’s life, remind him that whatever happened between them was too complicated and that it never would’ve worked out, but she doesn’t. When she pictures him standing at her door in Shady Pines, waiting to talk to her, and thinks about how he left feeling like she didn’t even care that he did… she feels guilty. Maybe she’s been feeling guilty for a while and just wouldn’t let herself admit it.
The worst thing is that she can’t stand by any of the things she’s said. She said a relationship wouldn’t have worked and it’s clear, now that she’s with Tommy and he’s with Teagan, that that’s not true. Whether or not she likes Tommy, they’ve made it work so far. Whether or not Rian likes Teagan, they’ve been together for a lot longer than Mari and Tommy, and they’ve made it work so far, too.
And Mari knows that Tommy is nice and all, but he’s not Rian. He’s never been Rian.
“I know the world is a fucked-up place,” Rian continues. “I know as good as anyone that caring about people can be dangerous. But… Mari, I care about you.” He takes a step closer to her and she doesn’t back away. “I wish I never left.”
“Why did you?”
“I wanted you to regret pushing me away. I wanted you to realize that you cared about me, too.” His gaze flickers down to her lips and then back up to her eyes. “Do you?”
Mari looks at him, thinking hard. This is it. She can feel, right now, that this is her last chance. If she never wants to speak to Rian again, if she never wants to see him again, if she wants to be a happy family with Tommy and Ally and Xavier for the rest of her life, she can tell him ‘no’ and he will leave her alone, for his sake as well as hers. She knows that, deep down. She also knows that Rian cares about her. He probably loves her. And even though she’s been pretending that she doesn’t feel the same, she does. It’s not another Dominic situation. She’s not faking it for safety and security and comfort. Her feelings for Rian don’t give her any of that, and she still wants to tell him she cares about him.
Instead, she glances away and shrugs. He stares at her for a moment before letting out an amused huff.
“It’s like that, huh?” he asks.
Mari crosses her arms over her chest, trying not to smile. She basically just admitted that she cares about him – she can’t inflate his ego anymore by laughing, or even giving him a smile. That’d be too much. He still has to work for that. “Yeah.”
“Come on.” He grabs her biceps and tugs them. “You’re really going to tell me you don’t care about me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So you do care.”
“I didn’t say that either.”
Rian laughs. “You’re killing me, Mari.”
She rolls her eyes. “Go fuck yourself.”
He slides his hands up to her shoulders and squeezes. “So. Do you want to tell Tommy or should I?”
Sighing, Mari reaches up to push his hands off her shoulders. “There’s nothing to tell Tommy,” she answers airily. “Just because I might care about you doesn’t mean he and I are done. I care about a lot of things, and I’m not going to break up with Tommy just so I can fuck those things.”
“Yeah, but…” Rian smirks at her. “You wanna fuck me, though, right?”
She glares at him. “I didn’t say that.”
“You feel it, though. I can tell.”
She does want to fuck him, of course. No one has ever made her feel the way he has. Even though she’s sure Tommy would be fine in the bedroom, he would never compare to Rian. Still, she doesn’t really know where to go from here. She doesn’t know if she and Rian are ready for a real relationship yet. She doesn’t know if she remembers how to do a real relationship anymore – not just playing house like she’s been with Tommy. And there’s still Teagan and Ally to consider… and she knows that Xavier is going to have a hell of a lot to say…
“I’ll talk to Tommy when you break up with Teagan,” Mari says.
“I’ll break up with Teagan when you promise you’re going to break up with Tommy,” Rian shoots back. “I’m not going to break up with Teagan so I can sit around while Tommy breaks both his hips trying to fuck you.”
She’s dangerously close to laughing at that, but she holds out. Thankfully. “Joel will kill you if he hears you talking about Tommy like that.”
“Good thing he’s not home, then.”
Rian is so cocky, standing on Joel’s porch like he owns the place. “You should head home,” she says, even though she really doesn’t want him to. If she knew Xavier wouldn’t be coming home anytime soon, if there was no risk of Tommy showing up unannounced, she might be interested in inviting Rian in… but she can’t. Not until she talks to Tommy. Not until she deals with everything else, first. “We can talk more tomorrow.”
He blows a raspberry, tucking his hands into his back pocket. “Fine,” he says. “Can I get a goodnight kiss first, though?”
“You’re pushing your luck, McCormick.”
“I know. Just thought that it would never hurt to ask.”
She shoves his shoulder and turns to the door. “Get out of here,” she says. “Goodnight, Rian.”
“’Night, Mari.” She doesn’t need to be looking at him to know that he’s watching her. Before she shuts the door behind her, she turns around and shoots one last glare at him for good measure. Rian being Rian, he just smiles.
With a smile of her own, Mari heads to Ally’s room and creeps inside. It’s completely silent, so she tiptoes over to the crib as quietly as she can and peers over the edge to see whether or not Ally is still sleeping. She is, of course, completely sound asleep, just as Tommy and Mari had left her earlier. Mari leans down and scoops Ally up into her arms, trying not to disturb her, and pads over to the well-worn armchair in the corner of the room. This might be one of the last nights that she has the baby all to herself, but for the first time, she feels like sharing her – and sharing a future – with Rian might not be as scary as she thought.
Even if it is, for the first time, she feels like it might be worth it.
And if it’s not worth it, then Tommy and Joel can kick Rian out of Jackson, and Mari will have Ally all to herself again.
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