#the line art took forever oh my GOD

[majorblinks]

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)

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!!!!!!!!!!!

#kpop smut #kpop fanfiction #kpop fanfic #idol x reader #idol x male reader #reader insert #karina smut #karina fanfic #aespa karina smut

[cieloclercs]

what would you say (if i told you i love you)? — charles leclerc

PART: 1/?

summary. in which childhood best friends blur the lines between what they’ve always known, and something more

warnings. swearing, reader and charles are oblivious idiots but they’re cute so it’s ok, ending is annoyingly abrupt (sorry)

pairings. charles leclerc x artsy!reader

face claim. tara michelle

author’s note: so this is a multi-part social media fic inspired by this ask that i’ve been working on for a while. as always, all media and pictures used in this belongs to the original creators. hope you guys enjoy! ps, all i really know about art is what i learned in my gcse class (and my teacher was awful) so if i use any incorrect terminology at any point in this series i’m so sorry! i’m trying my best 🫶

liked by pierregasly and 11,386 others

yourusername monaco summer 🐚🌊🦋☁️

view all comments…

yourfriend prettiest ever 🥹

yourusername oh hush you 🤭

username girl your figure 😮

username she literally has my dream body 😭

charles_leclerc no photo credits? 😃

yourusername 🙄🙄 photo creds to char ig

arthur_leclerc looking a little windswept there

yourusername do you want me to block you again

arthur_leclerc no thanks u look very pretty !!!!

yourusername aww thank you arth 🥰

username wait who tf is this girl and how does she know charles??

username she’s his childhood best friend! they’ve known each other since they were five 🫶

username i firmly believe y/n y/l/n is a goddess not a human being

*charles_leclerc liked this comment

username CHARLES WHAT THE FUCK???

liked by carlossainz55 and 2,376,926 others

tagged: yourusername

charles_leclerc opening day for y/n’s latest exhibition, ‘flow’! je suis très fière de toi, mon artiste. ne jamais cesser de rêver 🌊 / beyond proud of you, my artist. never stop dreaming

view all comments…

username now if this isn’t obsessed boyfriend behaviour then i don’t know what is

yourusername aww charlie 🥹 merci de m'avoir soutenu, je vous en serai toujours reconnaissant / thank you for supporting me, i’m forever grateful

charles_leclerc toujours

username and they say they’re just friends?? THIS IS NOT FRIEND BEHAVIOUR

username omg these paintings are so beautiful! what’s the exhibition about?

charles_leclerc it’s a study of water and the ocean!

username they way he’s answering questions about y/n’s own exhibition for her 😭 babes ur not subtle x

username she’s so talented wtf

*charles_leclerc liked this comment

leclerc_pascale Incroyable 😍

yourusername merci, maman 🥰

username SHE CALLS PASCALE MAMAN OH MY GOD???

liked by joris_trouche and 17,936 others

yourusername summer break, week one ✅

view all comments…

username everyone say ‘thank you y/n’ for feeding us the soft charles content 🥹

username thank you y/n 🙏

joris_trouche elvis is the star of this dump

yourusername i’ll let him claw you again

joris_trouche PLEASE DONT

charles_leclerc woah who’s that handsome guy in slide 2? 😏

yourusername you wouldn’t know him he’s kind of annoying x

charles_leclerc ouch

username charles featuring twice?? we’re losing her 😔

username three guesses who took the pictures of y/n

username hmm…joris? 🤔

username try again

username elvis 🤨

username close!! but not quite

username is it maybe…charles?!

*charles_leclerc liked this comment

username bingo!!

username trade lives with me please 😫

charles_leclerc i hope summer never ends

yourusername you and me both

username he doesn’t want to go back to the sf-23 and ferrari fucking up his race every week 😔

*yourusername liked this comment

username LMAO Y/N LIKED

username she’s just as sick of ferrari’s shit as we are

joris_trouche everyone ignoring the fact that i’m also in this dump as well !!!

charles_leclerc mate you’re not even looking at the camera

username GAHAHAHA CHARLES

➜ part 2

#request #charles leclerc #charles leclerc imagine #charles leclerc fic #charles leclerc fanfic #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc x you #charles leclerc x oc #charles leclerc x fem!reader #charles leclerc x fem!oc #charles leclerc au #charles leclerc social media au #charles leclerc instagram au #charles leclerc twitter au #charles leclerc smut #charles leclerc angst #charles leclerc fluff #charles leclerc drabble #charles leclerc blurb #formula 1 imagine #f1 imagine #formula 1 imagines #f1 imagines #formula 1 x reader #f1 x reader #formula 1 x you #f1 x you #formula 1 x female reader #f1 x female reader #formula 1 social media au

[gooselycharm]

hi there! i'd just like to say that your kris and noelle "something else" comic has been driving me insane /pos and i'd love to hear more of your thoughts on those two!! their relationship is one of my favorite things in deltarune and your comic just got everything about them so right 🙏

thank you for reading "something else"! oh man, [more of] my thoughts on kris+noelle.... i sure got some of those.

this was one of the first tweets i made after finishing chapter 2 nearly... freaking 2 years ago. and basically i've just been saying that over and over again in different ways because i'm still not tired of the concept yet and probably wont ever be LOL. i'm obsessed with how badly the narrative wants to force them into an easily categorizable dynamic, especially the romantic one in snowgrave. the literal THORN RING, the more possessive dialogue options, spamton calling noelle a side chick LOL... it all creates this unnerving visual novel bad end atmosphere that feels manufactured by someone who's only ever learned about romance through secondhand sources. they're two queer teens trying to navigate their changing relationship with the only role models they know being their parents' own failed heterosexual marriages. they're so divorced² (divorced children of divorce).

i also like that for being so tragically doomed coded they can be funny! both in a dark humor way and also like, genuinely funny, like the stories of them as kids with kris covering themselves in ketchup and hiding under noelle's bed lmao. i mean there's even something funny about the romantic trappings of the snowgrave route, like trying to put wedding cake embellishments on a crime scene... you know, funny like kids trying on their parents clothes but they're too big and for some reason they're also crying and covered in blood? um.

i'm also SOOOO interested to see how snowgrave will continue in chapter 3! i really liked the hopeful note chapter 2 ended on (well. i took it as hopeful anyway). there's that bit where noelle is talking to herself and she says something like "recently kris has been acting so strange and no one else has noticed... i have to figure out why" and then kris jumpscares her LOL but i think i took that one line and really ran with it. noelle really is the one who knows kris best and despite how scared she is, she's still determined to help them... i like the little subversion of victim/hero going on, the implication that kris might be the one who needs rescuing.

the additional story/lore that came with the spamton sweepstakes made me CRAAAZYYYYY like my GOD... it's cute that noelle likes glitches/creepypasta when kris is kinda a walking creepypasta <3 also, god, noelle falling asleep listening to kris playing piano in the other room... there's so much like. wistfulness and nostalgia and this like... distant/detached intimacy packed into how noelle narrates that scene. it's kind of funny how much there is to dig into when like on a surface level they're just fairly regular childhood friends who grew apart LMAO they're extremely deep to me okay...

on another note i guess i do ship them? i like their dynamic whether it's platonic or romantic (the best is a weird mix of both 👍). it just can't be boring LOL like... this is one ship where trying to apply cookie cutter tropes to them really falls flat and the game is ahead of you on that anyway. in terms of romantically shipping them, i honestly don't think they're doomed to repeat patterns forever... i think they could actually be good for each other! but that's not really the aspect of their relationship that interests me akldjf;alk;sdg maybe i will make 60 page comic of kriselle going to couples counseling some other time

ANYWAY i'm going to cut myself off here, because i really could go on forever lol. i'll give you some links for further reading though

hellspawnmotel's deltarune art

lula pillowbug99's deltarune art

this art by raspbearis which features prominently in my internal kriselle bible

my own unfinished kriselle playlist

my own essay on gender & allegory in deltarune if for some reason u are not tired of hearing me talk yet

okay bye now & thanks again for reading my comic!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#deltarune #kriselle #im post #im really posting now. i be talking.

[spectres-fulcrum]

ALSO! I started Duty and Inclination, a published Alexander Hamilton/John Laurens romance novel that is wonderfully historically accurate and is feat. the Washington military family and I love it to bits. The only complaints I have is I've noticed a couple grammar issues but legit everything else is fantastic

The romance is fantastic. Like every bit one up the last scene. I think I really have to love the earliest parts the most though

Hamilton spending days/weeks wondering Lauren's true hair color and is so shocked-even though it was SO coming- the night after they discussed that Laurens cannot keep powdering his hair forever Laurens comes down with unpowdered hair and is just like. Amazed by the color. Honey hair.

Honestly I had never considered the romantic possibility of unpowdered hair but it was amazing pre feelings realization tension and I just. Top 5 romantic things

Also Hamilton finding John's art and not realizing it and the way it leads to their first kiss and it's all okay. God I loved it. \

The dance lessons!

Stolen moments and kisses and touches and wait Dress fits them

John telling Alexander to call him Jack when Alexander is sick and they're talking about St Croix! Alexander saying all his struggles back there was preferable to losing "My Sweet" when John had the musket wound!

The final birthday gift!

I just love them

Also also also also when Laurens first arrives to the encampment the sentries tell him Washington's tent is very French at the current moment... I grinned cause, yeah, we know he loves Lafayette(And sure enough Lafayette was in the tent)

The family though!!!! Horsegirlie Meade! Teasing Tilghman for destroying stuff! The way everyone hates Reed but loves and adores and supports each other! Washington insisting they do dinner together almost every night for a family activity! He and Lafayette worrying over how worried John was for Hamilton!

The morning Hamilton changed tried to change Laurens bandages but Meade took over for him babying John and being too slow and then Fitzgerald was awake and Tilghman slept on and Hammie was just like Oh, good morning :D to John and Tilghman groans, like that woke him and Meade laughed, Fitz scolded him, and John just looks at the sunlight in Hammie's hair and it's all golden.

Favorite Fitzgerald line: "Happy Birthday, Laurens. Have a war." Truer words were never spoken

I'm about to start Ch 10, Lady Washington Comes To Valley Forge and I'm super excited cause in this house we ship George Washington/Lafayette AND love Martha(and cry over her daughter and love the fact that she and George didn't hide their disabled daughter(Well technically his stepdaughter but the marriage happened when Patsy was two so she was basically his daughter) away when her seizures started or at any point, encouraging her to live a normal life until she died during a seizure.) So I hope that Martha brings a lot of fun.

#Duty and inclination #lams #alexander hamilton #john laurens #I really adore this book #washington's military family are so important to me #Also the time when lafayette walks in and everyone is so happy and then Washington walks in and they snap to attention #It gives Marquis! Hi how are you doing we missed you-Hi dad

[heartorbit]

!!! You saw my ask! I’m v glad you liked the question and since you asked for ppl to share their takes on the charas I’ll give mine:

Rui as the fox was what started it all for me. Like “great shows can’t be made alone” and the fox talking about all the wonderful things that would happen if he were to be tamed… Rui’s craving for connection just fit the fox so well.

The other three I mostly chose for like, scenes/dynamics I wanted to see with them. So Tsukasa and Emu are the little prince and the rose respectively bc of their back-and-forth of *wild statement* *exaggerated frustration* but ultimately Tsukasa does want to take care of her (thinking of him calling her “our stubborn little princess” in his Smile of a Dreamer card story). And like the prince’s arc from running away from the rose because he can’t keep up with her requests before he realizes he needs to go back to her and Tsukasa’s begrudging assistance in the main story to swearing to help Emu save the stage.

And Nene’s the aviator for largely the same reasons: her and Tsukasa’s bickering just makes me think Nene would absolutely get fed up with Tsukasa insulting her sheep and just draw him a box instead. And her role as the “normal” one in the group also lends to it (emphasis on the quotes). She calls everyone in the troupe crazy for accepting a robot while she’s the one piloting the robot. She’s grown up, let go of being childish, but she’s still listening intently to the little prince’s story.

But like your casting is so so good! The longer I think abt it the more I love it. Like little prince Emu’s asteroid hopping is so perfect; she’s meeting all these grownups who care only about sums and wealth and other pointless things and it’s all just very odd to her. And Rui drawing the boa constrictor is heartbreaking. He’s trying to convey something through his art that nobody around him can understand… And Emunene being the little prince and the fox. They’re absolutely this quote from the fox: “Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow.” And the slow, deliberate process it takes to tame a fox, and how long it took to get Nene to come out of her shell while Emu constantly reached out to her; they’re adorable. And Tsukasa will cry and throw up if he isn’t special ur so right. Tysm for responding to my ask!

OOOOOOOOH MYJTJ IT'S SO CUTE I CRIED FOREVER I LOVE THESE SOMUCH THANK YOU FOR SENDING YOUR DRAWINGS I T____T emu rose is the cutest ever ever ever. i love YOUR CASTING SO MUCH. here i throw this before i go under a readmore to scream

YOURS FIT SO DAMN WELL. SO WELL

THE STUBBORN LITTLE PRINCESS LINE KILLLLLS ME IT KILLS ME YOURE SO RIGHT OAKYT AUUUUUUUWUUWU i take 800 years to respond to this both because i absolutely had to draw again for your cast and also i look at your beautiful drawings and i scream and kick my feet and grip my phone so hard it breaks into a million pieces

i;m so normal Your drawings are so lovely they feel right from a storybook ooouh nene as the aviator is really getting me. with how nene had to look back at her child self to rediscover what was so important to her passion for singing and it fits so well. waugh. """normal""" one for sure. but her loyalty is really fitting of both the aviator and the fox.. her and rui really are alike in the most dastardly heart crushing ways

rui as the fox. AH. I SHALL CRY. brother does he ever run the risk of weeping.. and just the abject boredom of the fox in its loneliness fits rui really well. after their fight in the main story how they approach rui more and more.. but you will sit a little closer to me every day..

your emu rose is so cute i can't get over it but i love this casting so much. i love how you connected the princes responsibility to the rose with the main story and their promise to save the wonderstage. Oh my god their stubborn little princess. THEIR STUBBORN LITTLE PRINCESS

i acknowledged that i just have emu favoritism severely when i gave them a casting but when i thought of her as the prince beyond whimsy i was thinking a lot of the ending, how the prince doesn't want the aviator to see him look to be in suffering and when says he can't return home and his body is too heavy.. the wonderstage being emus home where she wants everyone to always smile but also the place she's convinced she can't leave .. something something im not good at this. but with tsukasa i think that works equally as well because of how he shunned and ran away from it at first but at the end the wonderstage is where his heart really was and how he lets go of his old self. auuugh.

and for tsukasa as the rose and how emu finds his shows so dazzling even though he sees himself as one of hundreds of thousands of actors that he's not yet on the level of. but to emu he IS one of a kind. also because it is for her that i have killed the caterpillars (except she grabbed a caterpillar and shoved it into his face that one time but) sniffle. SNIFFLE. because it is she that i have listened to when she grumbled or boasted...

ok your little prince tsukasa is starting to kill me i AHGBHH you're singlehandedly making me want and need to reread the little prince again but ooh my god. my star will be just be one of the stars for you and so you will love to watch all the stars in the heavens (falls over) i shall look as if i were suffering i shall look a little as if i were dying do not come to see that (FALLS OVER)

#WAAA W💕💕💕💕💕EEWWUAUUWUA T__T🥹🥹🥹😭😭😭😭😭😭💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕 #How many times can i say the rose emu is fakeing cute AUEHAUHWUSHWUWHWUE WAAAAAAAH UE UE UE UE UEE #thank you cakercanart for my life #ask #cakercanart

[a-hobit]

The amount of prep for my watch party for WaD maybe a little insane (I took off work and am doing a Kings Tide, TtT and FtF rewatch which I CALCULATED the amount of time I’d need before to do — ordering food + snacks and have literally nothing else to do the day of than prepare to watch) but BABES I am so excited oh my god! I am praying they can stick the landing here and leave me at least feeling satisfied so here’s my hopes for WaD to feel satisfying for me!

Hunter to have a significant and emotional part to play in this episode/learning he’s related to Eda in at least a small way.

Luz and/or Hunter to see or play out the death of Caleb.

Caleb to have some speaking lines or I really might cry. Like truly the disappointment might make me hate the episode without that.

EVELYN DESIGN. I STG I would be so upset without anything.

Luz to tell Amity and Hex squad that she’s been feeling really shitty and “wants” to stay in the human realm.

Eda and rain KISS PLEASE MAKE THEM KISS MAKE THEM KISSS I WILL DIE!!

OH GUS AND WILLOW WITH THEIR PARENTS PLEASE!!

I need a reunion scene with all the kids and parents hugging and Hunter left alone until pulled into the Noceda Clawthorne group hug IM CORNY I KNOW

Luz and King “meet” his dad — he’s dead yeah but I want some ghost action from him AND Caleb/Evelyn!!!

Just Luz to be happy in the demon realm obvs.

Hooty LORE!!! I will be so sad otherwise!

I want to see them all in some heartbreakingly beautiful timeskip end art!! MAKE ME CRY!!!

I need Hunter to acknowledge his remaining care for Bellos as he dies — I wanna see Hunter get some closure.

Also I want Hunter and Raine to at least have a small chat about possession baby!!

…now this is just me being a crazy person but my WISH my HOPE OF HOPES is Luz calling Hunter Hermano and that Hunter and Camilla will be stuck together for more of the episode even if not fully speaking to each other the whole time I WANT NOCEDA SIBLINGS AND HUNTER NEEDS A MOM.

And really hitting like 8 of those at least will keep my brainworms going forever guys 😅😅

#toh #the owl house

[throughtrialbyfire]

WIP Wfriday time!!

didn't mean for this to be so late, but i hope you're all having a great week/weekend!! thank you so much to the lovely @thequeenofthewinter @skyrim-forever @boethiahspillowbook @mareenavee and @v1ctory-or-sovngarde for tagging me!!

i'm gonna tag @umbracirrus @orfeoarte @caliblorn @thana-topsy @dirty-bosmer @aphocryphas @argisthebulwark @gilgamish @viss-and-pinegar @totally-not-deacon and anyone who wants to hop in!! no pressure as always!!

this week, i'm bringing the current progress of the chapter art for chapter 2 of Cycle of the Serpent! i'm very new to drawing landscapes, but i think it's turning out pretty good. most of what you're seeing is just my very rough sketch, but the road and the stone wall are technically finished! i just laid down the greenery along them, so i'm going to be working on that a good bit.

and i'm bringing an excerpt of Chapter 19! i'm still going to edit it here and there, but it's mostly ready. this scene takes place on the road to Solitude. i love how it turned out, and i hope you enjoy reading it, as well. <3

"Gods," came that same, pain-hard squeak from somewhere near the stone ruins. Emeros gingerly pulled away from the younger Mers grasp. "You don't have to follow me, but I'm going to see what's happened," He replied, rushing to the fort. He pressed a hand to the side of his mouth, calling, "are you injured?" "Oh no, just- gah- being a little dramatic, 'tis all!" Snarked back the voice, nervous chittering behind every syllable as though he were trying to be comedic. Carrion birds slowed their even strides in the skies above, lumps of fabric and armor forming the figures of corpses along the ground. Athenath tried not to focus too hard on their surroundings. He locked his gaze ahead. Wyndrelis clasped his fingers, magicka pooling into swirls of purple smoke, thinning out into lines as he scanned the ruins. Behind a bale of hay, a glowing outline formed. He gestured. "There."

The trio stepped closer, Emeros producing a potion from his knapsack as they neared the battered and bleeding form. Into their sights prodded the scrawny visage of a young Altmer, ears arching high away from his shaggy, light blond hair, lengths of which stuck out from his head like the feathers of a canary. "By Syrabane-" the boy cut himself off, swallowing hard, adams apple bobbing in his throat as he spoke. The shadows of the three standing Mer towered over him, his pulse shivering in his veins violently as he craned his neck to finally gaze upon them. "I'm- I'm fine! I'll be fine, certainly, I know my way around-" "You're absolutely not fine, and I won't have you insist a bold-faced lie like that," Emeros handed over a glass bottle as he spoke, the red potion inside swirling with the motion, kneeling down beside the younger elf. "Drink some of this, and tell me what happened." The man graciously swallowed down a large swig of the healing potion, a warmth settling in him that made him shudder. It cleared through his abdomen, mitigating most of the worst damage, it seemed. For now, his internal organs were knitting back together, and whatever deathly pallor had been in his features before slowly slipped away. He swallowed another long drink of the potion before Emeros gingerly took the bottle back, setting it aside. "You know," the young Mer heaved an anxious laugh, the sound skipping the air, stone tossed along water's rippling surface, "from the sound of your voice, I thought you were…" he trailed off, swallowed, and looked down, "…I mean-"

"Certainly not Thalmor, I hope." "Uh- no, no! Certainly, simply, I presumed you were-" Emeros raked his fingers through his chestnut hair with a heavy sigh. "Tell us what happened, if you don't mind." "There were these-" the young man grimaced, inhaling sharply. He darted his gaze around the courtyard of the ruined fort, formulating something in his muted green eyes, "these warriors. We tried to rob them, I know it was-" he turned to face Wyndrelis, the Dunmer gingerly removing the elf's arm from where it clutched his abdomen, applying Restoration magic skillfully as the other continued on his story, "I knew it was stupid, but these men, they weren't like ordinary men, they carried these-" he sucked in another sharp breath as the sound of a rib snapping back into place whipped the air, dizziness sliding his eyes up for a moment, "they carried these curved swords, and fought like sabre cats. Not even our leader could- that's him over there," he pointed to a corpse laying face-down on the stones, "brilliant soldiers, the both of them, but petrifying, and I mean- I knew it was a bad idea, horrible idea, gods, it was…"

He trailed off, breaths haggard, thick, his dark clothing soaked darker by the blood. His spectacles hung around his neck from a chain, lenses cracked and stained, his pock-marked face wearing a nervy grin as he tried to keep his wits together. Emeros, grave-faced, knelt there in the silence. He leaned back on his knee, tapping the pads of his fingers together. "And did these warriors happen to say where they were heading?" The blond Altmer shook his head. "No, sir." Turning to Wyndrelis, his eyes lightened. "Are you a healer?" When the Dunmer shook his head, the blond tapped his tongue to the roof of his mouth. "Oh, a shame, your… Your work is good, I hardly feel like I've been injured at all now!" "Good for you." Wyndrelis spoke through grit teeth. He'd need to sip a magicka potion before too long in order to regain what he'd lost here, his eyes darting to the bodies surrounding the courtyard. "I think you'll survive if I stop. Shall I?" "Um-" the blond swallowed hard, knitting his brow, eyes wide, "well, I mean, if you insist! I mean, you probably know more- I'm more of a, uh, Illusion mage, myself-" "Oh, you're a mage?" Wyndrelis pulled his palms away, staggering to his feet, brow coated in a thin layer of sweat. "Um, well, kind of."

#skyrim fic #tes v fanfic #skyrim fanfiction #tes v #tesblr #wip wednesday #oc ; athenath #oc ; wyndrelis #oc ; emeros #cycle of the serpent #bishop.txt #my writing #my art #not to spoil it but . his ass is very much not a bandit and the alik'r warriors had a damn good reason to attack his little group <3

[harlstark]

What are some of your harley family headcanons? (His mum, sister, dad??)

oh my god okay okay this is such a loaded question and would probably take me forever to answer in full so i will try to keep this as abridged as possible

mother:

-i usually use the common name in fics for her “Macy” but to me her maiden name is Merriweather for no reason in particular

-i think she works as a waitress/bartender which is alluded to canon but yknow

-i imagine her blonde haired as straw, a young mother but her smile lines show

-loving but definitely distant. she tries, but being a single, low income mother to two, who struggles with undiagnosed mental health issues of her own and mild alcoholism has made her rather uninvolved. while i believe she’s unconditional in her love, she’s not very present in showing it. harley was raised mostly on his own because of this

-she’s not the biggest fan of tony stark, and certainly doesn’t get star struck, but she doesn’t hate the man

father:

-deadbeat asshole who was 100% an alcoholic/addict

-i don’t have a name preference for him, it kind of changes if i mention him by name in a fic. but i never call him james and never will

-probably fucked off to nevada or something

-definitely gave harley a rough time for being different than the other kids

sister

-i use the name abbie/abby from peachy, but also sometimes abigail kennedy “AK”. once or twice mentally ive used the name piper too but usual just stick to abbie

-i think she cut her own bangs when she was in middle school and fucked up so harley tried to help her by watching youtube video tutorials and ever since he has just been the one that cuts her bangs for her in their cramped bathroom

-she’s got lots of freckles and a little gap between her two front teeth

-had a bit of a rebellious phase in high school and liked to casually flirt with boys and girls, following in her brothers footsteps a bit by becoming the latest gossip topic. this was her form of grieving once harley moved away to NY. she had a genuine summer-time romance with a traveling hippie family’s daughter one year, and mellowed out after that. eventually i think she decided to go to community college but hated it and dropped out, then took a gap year just traveling. eventually she ended up in new york too, either doing something in the arts, or continuing her education and working at SI in design. she meets a muslim woman, and eventually they get married, and have two kids through IVF. they take frequent trips to rose hill and eventually move back to tennessee in a kinder rural town, and they have their own garden and chickens

-she once took in a stray tabby cat

-she knows harley‘s gay before he tells anyone. even if she didn’t know the word to it, she just knew the concept of harley with a girlfriend just didn’t make sense

-she likes y’allternative music

-has a tendency to lay on sun spots on the carpet

-master at checkers, domino train, and any card game in the books

-collected my little pony dolls as a kid

-smoked cigarettes for a couple years before stopping

-prefers red wine over white

-very into denims, plaids, florals, and country bumpkin mud-stained clothes as a kid, darker alternative y2k inspired clothes as a teen, and modern french/classy vintage style clothing as an adult

-grew up running wild, barefoot, and free. her favorite place to hang out in rosehill is a old drive inn theatre, which is where she met that girl one summer

#harley keener #mcu #marvel #parkner #peter parker #ironman

[sakebytheriver]

What did you like most about everything everywhere all at once?

Oh god 😭😭😭

How can I even begin to answer that question? I mean there are just so many aspects in that movie that are absolutely incredible, from the cast to the costumes to the special effects it's all a bunch of exceptional pieces of a puzzle put together to make a work of art that is possibly one of the best films we've ever seen

But if I was forced to pick just One Thing about the movie I like the most, I would definitely have to say the writing

The script and the writing behind it are the main reason this movie is as good as it is, without it this movie would have been nothing, I mean there's a reason why it took the Daniels almost a decade to write this thing. They started coming up with the premise and doing research all the way back in 2010 and there is no doubt in my mind that those years taken to perfect the script before ever starting production are completely responsible for this movie being so incredible.

They didn't put their first draft on the screen. They put their 50th draft on the screen

How many movies can you think of with great premises that have absolutely shit execution? And it all begins in the writer's room. The writing process is so important to making a film or TV show successful and the reason why Everything Everywhere All At Once is so good is because the Daniels took that process seriously and took their vision seriously, unwilling to press record on the camera until the script was as perfect as they could possibly get it and be proud of their work

It took the Daniels 8 years to write this script, and then they filmed everything within a production schedule of only like 30 days (before reshoots) and then about a year of editing and post production before the film was in theaters. That is a ridiculously fast turn around for a movie and without those 8 years of perfecting the script there's no way on earth the production schedule would have been as easy and as fast as it was

I could wax poetic about basically every aspect of this movie till I'm blue in the face, but the writing is the framework and the solid foundation that allows every other bit of the production to stand as tall as it does and I will forever be chasing that kind of brilliance in all of my own writing for the rest of my time on this planet for sure.

I mean there's a reason why this movie doesn't have just one singular overly famous quote, but in fact has like 20, from "In another life I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you" to "No one is unloveable there is always something to love" and "You think because l'm kind that it means I'm naive, and maybe I am. It's strategic and necessary. This is how I fight." and "Please be kind, escpecially when we don't know what's going on" and "We can do whatever we want. Nothing matters" and "Right is a small box invented by people who are afraid. And I know what it's like being stuck in that box" and "I'm useless alone. We're all useless alone, it's a good thing you're not alone" and so on and so forth, there is line after line of dialogue that reaches straight into your chest to physically touch your heart with their words. How many movie quotes can do that without the actor's inflection and performance backing it up? How many lines can break you just from reading them the way half the quotes from this movie do? How many movies even have a singular line that can hit you the way ALL of these lines in EEAAO hit you? The cast and their deliveries are absolutely incredible and 100% aid and elevate the source material, but these quotes were already powerhouses when they were just print on a page, putting them into the talented mouths of the movie's cast only elevates them even further

Actors are taught how to make shit writing sound like good writing, the amount of actors I've seen having to fight an uphill battle to make garbage dialogue work is basically every film put out these days, but the writing in EEAAO isn't forcing these actors to fight with reality to make their lines sound like words a real human being would say, it's already so incredible that the actors can play and discover a different kind of truth within every word instead of forcing themselves to find the truth within words no real human has ever passed through their lips

Bottom line, I suppose to me, the best part of EEAAO is the writing behind it, because without good writing, you would have absolutely nothing

#ignore me #everything everywhere all at one #eeaao #anon #ask #answered #anonymous

[leecherish]

2., 7. and 14.!

thank you so much 🥺💖

2. what is your favorite quote from any part of revue starlight (anime, game, stageplays, movie, 4koma, credit card, etc.)?

credit card lol

I was going to say i'll pick one from every single one but then we'd be here forever so I'll just go from the line that caused me the most pain from the movie:

"Hikari-chan is so pretty... Hikari-chan is so pretty, but... she's terrifying. Hikari-chan is terrifying, but... Hikari-chan makes me envious, Hikari-chan makes me frustrated, and I can't take my eyes off of her. I know, now. The reason why I'm standing on stage."

7. what is one thing you wish could have been handled differently storywise?

more development for Frontier... their arc in AA was fantastic but very flaaaawed and outside of that they kinda just exist and ever since it was pointed out to me that Misora has the most stage experience out of All the stage girls but 0 main roles (as far as public performances go) I've been so sad for her. they deserve better. also I have iiiiissues about Aruru's AA arc but that would be a longer story...

14. if you had to pitch revue starlight to someone, how would you do it?

I'm really bad at pitching things to others lol and I think revstar is not a super easy sell bc it took me a while to grow on me but when it did. oh god when it did. and the anime barely scratches the surface of the franchise... but I think it would go as such: it's a story about passion, persistence, boundless love for telling stories as told by someone with boundless love for telling stories, how stories and the audience sustain each other, how to sustain your passion for something that is about performing: be that something creative like writing, music, art or theater, how to see the beauty in the unavoidable burnout and how to be reborn after it again and again. and see I told all of that and you learned nothing of the characters or the story. which is why im telling you im bad at pitching things lol

#revstar #answered

[callsign-joyride]

Don't Fear The Reaper - Chapter One

Description: You start getting things set up at the camp with everyone else.

Content warnings: For the fic; violence with a knife, blood, death, gore, sexual themes, drug use. For this chapter; a crazy old man, drug use, drinking.

Pairing: Daisy Jones & The Six x OC Donna Smith

Series Masterlist Playlist Taglist Previous Chapter

June 1, 1978 One week until campers arrive

Everyone whooped and cheered as you rolled into the gravel parking lot with your windows down. You chuckled and spit your piece of bubblegum into an old receipt and shoved it into your pocket before pulling the key out of the ignition and getting out of the car. Daisy practically tackled you for a hug and you couldn’t help but laugh.

“Oh my God, it’s been forever! How was college?” She asked.

“It was great. I just graduated with a BA in fine arts and I already have a job lined up at one of the high schools.”

“You’ll be a great art teacher,” Camila said.

The group continued to catch up in the parking lot before Teddy walked out of the mess hall and greeted them.

“It’s great to see all of you here this year. We’ve got a week to get everything ready for when the kids get here. I’ve already got your rosters and cabin assignments prepared. Camila, the nurse’s cabin should have everything that you need. Donna, the craft cabin should have everything that you need. The two of you will share the Cherry Lane house.”

“That’s hot,” Graham said. Daisy didn’t hesitate to give him a well-deserved smack on the back of the head.

“As for the rest of you, you’ll be with the campers. I’ll leave you guys to unpack your things and we’ll meet at the mess hall for lunch at around one. Does that sound good?” 

Everyone said yes and you went back over to your car to grab your things. As you closed the trunk, you could’ve sworn that you saw a tall figure in the woods. You hadn’t realized that you had been in a trance with your keys in your hand and your bag on the ground next to you until Camila put her hands on your shoulders and asked if you were okay. It made you jump a little.

“Yeah, just thought I saw something. I’m good, I promise.”

“Uh, okay. Let’s get going.”

The two of you talked on your way to the house. You were the first one in, putting your bags in one of the bedrooms and immediately going to open the windows. The place felt stuffy and you knew that a few fans weren’t going to do the trick. The alarm clock on the nightstand doubled as a radio so you got that going. Silence tended to freak you out. Time seemed to pass by slowly as you put your clothes away and arranged the room in the way that you’d like it. 

Everyone laughed over ham and cheese sandwiches and coleslaw. Teddy started telling everyone what to do when you grabbed a bag of chips and opened your second can of Sprite. 

“Billy and Graham, make sure that the trail behind the scout cabins is still closed. And make sure that those cabins are clean. We’ve got a group of scouts coming in the middle of July. Daisy, Karen, and Donna, you’re on pool duty. We might need more pool toys and floaties. Warren, Camila, and Eddie, you’re on bathroom duty. I want all of those bathrooms cleaned by the end of the day. I’ll be doing yard maintenance around the cabins if anyone has any questions.”

Warren complained that he was getting bathroom duty, which made everyone laugh. Everyone split up to get their tasks done and you went to the pool. Daisy and Karen followed you to the shed to get the cleaning supplies. It took a few hours to get everything turned around, but it went by quickly. You all looked up when the gate opened. In walked Billy and Graham, who looked sweaty and tired.

“Looks like you did more than go out to the scout cabins,” Daisy said.

“Actually, that’s pretty much all we did. It’s hotter than hell’s front porch and we thought we saw someone.”

“Huh,” you said.

“What? Have you seen someone?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Earlier when I was getting my stuff out of my car, I thought there was someone in the woods. It was probably nothing, though.”

“Well, I wanna know why Teddy wants that trail blocked off.”

“Probably because it’s too far from the mess hall? Having a bunch of kids walk that far in the heat could be dangerous. I don’t see why it matters, anyways. Let’s head back to the mess hall.”

It had started to cool down a lot by the time the group got back to the mess hall. Everyone enjoyed tacos that Teddy went to pick up before you went to the arts and crafts cabin. There were certainly enough supplies for basic activities but you wanted to do more. Teddy handed you his credit card and told you to get whatever you needed. Camila volunteered to go with you in case you needed help, and Warren asked you to bring back a few cases of beer if you could. The shops were in town, so it was about a fifteen-minute drive. You decided that you were going to go to the grocery store last since you were also going to get popsicles and ice cream.

“Okay, don’t tell anyone, but Billy and I are getting married when we get home. We’ve been together for four years but we just can’t wait.”

“Woah, you can’t just drop that on me. I mean, congratulations, but woah. Do you have a plan for a ceremony?”

“Yeah, we’re just gonna run off to the courthouse and fill out the papers. It’s cheap and fast. And then we’re going to Vegas for our honeymoon.”

“Camila, that sounds amazing. I should make you a cake. Or cupcakes and we can celebrate with the kids. But only if you want me to, of course.”

“That’s very kind of you, but we want it to be a secret. Maybe you could wait until the last night? It’d be a nice surprise for the kids.”

You got everything that you needed before stopping at a local Dairy Barn and getting a Fanta float for yourself and a Coke float for Camila. You also stopped to fill your tank on the way back and pick up a few snacks from the small gas station. Camila was behind you and talked to the cashier while you paid for your things.

“We’re counselors at Camp Solstice, actually.”

“Really? I haven’t been there since my kids were little. They’re 18 and 20 now. My youngest is getting ready to move away for college soon.”

A rugged-looking elderly man rushed up when you picked up the snacks. His nonsensical rambling startled you and Camila.

“You shouldn’t be there! He’ll come back and kill you! All of you!” He exclaimed.

“All right, calm down, Ed. They reopened the camp a little over a decade ago, remember? And there haven’t been any incidents. Let me call your daughter so that she can pick you up,” the cashier said. 

“Sorry about that, ladies. My son was one of the counselors thirty years back. He didn’t get the worst of it but it was all an awful, bloody mess. I about killed myself trying to find the guy. I still don’t know how he got away with it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. We gotta get going but we’ll be careful,” you said as you and Camila walked out of the store. 

“That was weird,” she said.

“I know. I don’t like making assumptions but it sounded like he had something wrong with him. Having someone that you care about get horrifically murdered is traumatizing, no doubt about it, but he seemed whacked out.”

“Like he was on drugs.”

“Yeah, but I’ve never seen drugs do that to a person. I’m not particularly worried about it, though. The killings happened thirty years ago so I’m pretty sure the guy who did all of that would be on death’s door. We’ll be fine.”

You got back to the camp and everyone helped you unload your car. Warren and Camila put the beers and ice cream in the house and you put the art supplies in the craft cabin before handing Teddy his card back. You spent hours at the pottery wheel making little flower pots for the kids. You were so in the zone that Eddie knocking on the screen door made you jump and you almost screamed.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. We’re all going to the pool for a swim if you wanted to join us.”

“Cool. You don’t have to wait up for me. I gotta get all of this cleaned up but I’ll be there.”

“No, it’s okay. We’ll wait.”

You nodded and quickly cleaned up before grabbing your water bottle and heading out. The sun was starting to set so mostly everyone had flashlights. You all stripped down to your underwear and jumped into the deep end of the pool. Warren got out of the pool and walked over to his clothes before going through the pockets of his shorts.

“Anyone wanna do some acid?” He asked. Billy muttered something under his breath about how bad of an idea this was going to become, but you, Daisy, and Graham all seemed down. The high that the acid gave you combined with the buzz from the alcohol turned you into a giggly mess. You all got out of the pool when your fingers got started to get wrinkly from being in the water for so long. Warren and Billy walked you and Camila to the house and got you to your rooms.

“We should do that again,” you said as Warren tucked you in. He chuckled and sat next to you.

“We’ve only got a few days until the kids get here. Maybe I could come and visit you sometime after this is over, though.”

“Why didn’t I think of that? And my apartment complex has a pool so we could recreate this if we wanted to. That’d be fun.”

“It’s getting late and I gotta go, but I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

“Okay. Goodnight, Warren.”

“Goodnight, Donna.”

Billy and Warren’s cabins were right next to each other so they were able to walk and talk for a bit. 

“Admit it, man. You like her,” Billy said.

“Who? Donna? I mean, she’s cool and all but I don’t like her like that.”

“Keep telling yourself that. I could see how antsy you were until she showed up. You’ve kind of been doting after her for years. I’m actually surprised that she hasn’t noticed. You gotta say something, man. Only a month or so before we go our separate ways again. All I’m saying is that you should give it a shot.”

“What if she says no?”

“That’s probably the worst thing that could happen. It’ll be fine.”

That was far from the worst thing that could’ve happened.

Taglist:

@idontcare-11 @kmc1989

#daisy jones and the six #billy dunne #daisy jones #camila dunne #warren rojas #eddie roundtree #graham dunne #teddy price #karen sirko #reader insert #djats imagine #slasher au

[fauxbia]

you! i couldn't get to you yesterday cuz i had a killer headache but guess what shit has evaporated, i Get to you now.

SO HEY WHAT DO YOU MEAN "WHAT, WHY, HOW IS YOUR ART PRETTY"!!!! i'm actually so offended by that (/lh) that i'm slinkin outta my shell n into your inbox, whatta hell...

your shapes are to Die for. they are steady, they support and establish the characters presence on the canvas. your lineart is so clean but at the same time not at all linear, the fakt that the weight changes here and there is so pleasing to look at. your color choices i could probably most well compare to a lightly rainy, foggy spring morning. it's a respite. they feel confident. combined with the shapes and designs it feels like a lungful breath of air after rain- it's freeing, relaxing

the details you add to the iterators aren't too much, not too little- just right- i've got to say i'm lightly obsessed with the little U line u've been drawing between their eyes. it's so adorable it's bordering on not fair. how dare they be so cute. how dare you make them so cute. how the hell am i supposed to look at your slugcats if the calculators are giving me cuteness aggression, the math is not mathing. also also the red detailing on Moon's face- i'm fairly sure i came across your art of her in the main tag while i was talking with my sister and we both paused our conversation to quicky coo over those. makes me wamna squish her lil face

the shading you've done on that rot art with iterator!Hollow... oh my stars it's so soft, the glow of the rot is wonderful, shit looks like a pillow which is such a dangerous thing to compare the rot to but What am i supposed to do. the ancient!Hornet design is absolutely gorgeous as well, the colors absolutely slap and the wrapping around her limbs is scratching my brain just right but i've got to say, i think my favorite things from that picture are her eyes (absolutely AMAZING proportions you got going on there) and the slight bending of her snout downwards

also. -stares directly at you as i point at ur anthro Hunter and Moon- you're so much better at designing clothes than me. and like! i'm not saying this to put Myself down, i just legit believe you are really really high up there when it comes to it!!! i have yet to get there

I Am Silently Taking Notes, Chief, Believe It Or Not o7

this is the best compliment i've ever received about my art help i don't. i don't even know what to say. ., at least when it comes to clothing design i took inspo from you, so... so there!!!! collapses and dies forever bro your art is . such an inspiration to me .... i love how real everything feels. i look at your slugcats and go "oh my god that is such an animal i could totally see existing in real life it looks so real everything is drawn so correct" and i look at your iterators and go "wow i love how they really look like silly robots with realistic differences and similarities and i think i actually want to hug them all so hard actually" and ourghh.... aughuguh... i'm sorry you have killed me on tha spot with this i think i'm going to curl up and cry now (in the best way possible oh my god thank you so much)

#a #people #like my art???? #bro i thought. i genuinely thought it was mid #in comparison to Literally Every Other RW Artist #does not compute. #shutting down

[filet-o-feelings]

Ten Random Lines

Thank you @lizzie-bennetdarcy @hippolotamus @demora00 and @rosebrewerj for tagging me! ❤️

Rules: pick any 10 of your fics, scroll somewhere to the midpoint, pick a line (or three), and share it! Then tag 10 people.

1 - Is it a crush? Does he have a crush on his business partner? Or is it just a fleeting thought that he let get stuck in his brain for too long? He’s not sure, but when David opens the bathroom door and smiles at him, he feels a flutter in his stomach that feels like a lot more than a ‘fleeting thought.’ - Like They Handed Me My Life, For the First Time it Felt Right

2 - “Patrick. You are the most rational person I know. Or were, until this nugget of information came out. Ow,” she said as she dropped her head back down a little too fast this time.

“Oh no, Stevie, this isn’t the first irrational thought pattern my husband has revealed to me. He thinks crossing your fingers will make something work. And he makes wishes when he catches the clock at 11:11. It’s cute.” He grins, shoving a cold, soggy mozzarella stick in his mouth. - Good Luck Charm

3 - She watched them fall deeper and deeper in love, stealing kisses when they thought nobody was around. All the little ways they would find any excuse to touch each other. The way David gravitated toward Patrick’s shoulders. The look of desperation in Patrick’s eyes the day she so selflessly allowed them to use her apartment. - bound to happen

4 - Patrick is basically the walking definition of all business. Which is why David is taken aback when he starts to feel something about him. Some very non-business related feelings. - (not) all business

5 - Despite the fact that his parents paid off his gallery patrons, he does know art. He has worked hard to curate a look for himself, and for his store. Patrick’s whole… look was not a part of that plan. Patrick does not fit in to this aesthetic David has worked so hard at. - Master of Art

6 - He could live here, he thinks, in this feeling, live in this moment forever with nothing but the sensation of David’s lips on his, David’s hand wrapped around the back of his neck, pulling him closer and closer until he’s nowhere, he’s nothing, he’s everywhere, everything. - Further North

7 - They fall back into it so easily, cuddling up on the couch and laughing at the dumb jokes, that Patrick doesn’t even realize what he’s doing, the mistake he’s making, until it’s already too late. - Mistakes We Knew We Were Making

8 - Not that what they’re doing is kidnapping. It’s a rescue mission, plain and simple. It’s in Blue Shirt’s best interest, and he’s going to thank them for it. - Rescue Mission

9 - David smiles, but he’s not sure how convincing it is. Business partners. He loves being business partners with Patrick, but god, he wants to be so much more than that. - there are so many beds (how do I get you in mine?)

10 - “So what, we just talk?”

“Yes, David. Like people did before texting,” he pauses, glancing at something David can’t see in a dark corner of the room, “or, I could play my acoustic guitar.” - Everything's Too Cold... But You're So Hot

Okay that took forever, and I think this one has pretty much made the rounds, but if you haven't been tagged and want to do this, please consider this your tag!

#10 random lines #tag game

[chronometricals]

Mysterious girl! who art thou? by what right snatchest thou thus my deepest thoughts?

—Pierre by Herman Melville

Whence come you, Hawthorne? By what right do you drink from my flagon of life? And when I put it to my lips—lo, they are yours and not mine. I feel that the Godhead is broken up like the bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces. Hence this infinite fraternity of feeling.

—letter from Herman Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne, November 1851

Though but one day hath passed, my brother, since we first met in life, yet thou hast that heavenly magnet in thee, which draws all my soul's interior to thee.

—Pierre (Isabel speaking to Pierre)

The divine magnet is on you, and my magnet responds. Which is the biggest? A foolish question—they are One.

—the same letter

Not mere sounds of common words, but inmost tones of my heart’s deepest melodies should now be audible to thee. Thou speakest to a human thing, but something heavenly should answer thee;—some flute heard in the air should answer thee; for sure thy most undreamed-of accents, Pierre, sure they have not been unheard on high. Blessings that are imageless to all mortal fancyings, these shall be thine for this.

—Pierre (Isabel speaking to Pierre)

But I felt pantheistic then—your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God's.

—the same letter

Therefore, forever unsistered for him by the stroke of Fate, and apparently forever, and twice removed from the remotest possibility of that love which had drawn him to his Lucy; yet still the object of the ardentest and deepest emotions of his soul; therefore, to him, Isabel wholly soared out of the realms of mortalness, and for him became transfigured in the highest heaven of uncorrupted Love.

—Pierre (after Pierre has determined not to pry into Isabel's mystery, and did not "feel a pang at this")

This is a long letter, but you are not at all bound to answer it. Possibly, if you do answer it, and direct it to Herman Melville, you will missend it—for the very fingers that now guide this pen are not precisely the same that just took it up and put it on this paper. Lord, when shall we be done changing? Ah! it's a long stage, and no inn in sight, and night coming, and the body cold. But with you for a passenger, I am content and can be happy. I shall leave the world, I feel, with more satisfaction for having come to know you. Knowing you persuades me more than the Bible of our immortality.

—the same letter

Oh, my dear brother—Pierre! Pierre!—could’st thou take out my heart, and look at it in thy hand, then thou would’st find it all over written, this way and that, and crossed again, and yet again, with continual lines of longings, that found no end but in suddenly calling thee.

—Pierre (Isabel speaking to Pierre about how she came to write to him)

I should have a paper-mill established at one end of the house, and so have an endless riband of foolscap rolling in upon my desk; and upon that endless riband I should write a thousand—a million—billion thoughts, all under the form of a letter to you.

—the same letter

#herman melville #pierre #my posts #this is what i mean 😭😭😭😭😭 #ALSO of all the letters from melville to hawthorne i've seen this is the first and only to be signed herman....... #first name only..............

[audi0med1c]

Chapter 1 of my new Modern AU idea I got from making a silly tik tok....this is a very angsty exes-to-lovers Modern Clexa AU...just a couple of stubborn idiots who can't get over their pride and ego's set to a backdrop of Taylor Swift references.

2,372 words

It's on both archive and wattpad, if you prefer to read it there

---------------------------------------------------

The absolute last thing Clarke wanted to see tonight on her rare chance to dine out was Lexa fucking Woods.

Lexa Woods, in her signature dark grey Armani suit.

On a date.

Before she could successfully grab her best friend's arm to duck out and choose another restaurant, those green eyes flick over and meet hers, as if she had been waiting on her to arrive.

"Shit you gotta be fucking kidding me." She hisses, earning a concerned look from the dark-haired girl just in front of her.

"What?" The girl says, looking Clarke up and down for something wrong.

"She's fucking HERE."

"Who is?" The girl says, turning to scan the dining room.

Clarke grabs her arm to stop her from turning, "No don't look don't-" but winces when it's clearly too late. Both of their eyes meet those green ones still locked onto them.

Lexa is holding a glass of red wine, and raises it slightly in their direction, shooting them her signature grin that Clarke would love to walk over and smack right off her annoyingly beautiful face.

"We can go somewhere else, Clarke, come on."

A flash goes off outside, as the first of what will eventually be many paparazzi snaps a picture through the restaurant's front window.

"No," Clarke says, "I'm not giving her that satisfaction."

They wait to be seated, and as the waitress is pouring their first glasses of wine the third member of their party arrives, fashionably late as always.

"Um since when do they seat VIPs off in the corner? Wasn't the reservation under Clarke Griffin? Your art is literally hanging in their lobby."

Clarke hates when Raven uses that term, as she never expects or cares about getting any sort of special treatment anywhere. Actually she'd prefer blending in and being invisible most of the time.  

"We aren't the only VIPs tonight." Clarke uses the term sarcastically, nodding her head in the direction over the girl's shoulder, "And I requested this table, so just sit Raven."

"Ohhhh damn what are the odds of that?" Raven chuckles, pulling out her seat and taking a long sip of wine, shooting a glance at the other girl with them.

"Octavia stop looking, Jesus." Clarke kicks the girl's shin under the table.

Clarke had asked for the table on the far side of the dining room, away from as much of the crowd as possible, and took the seat that kept Lexa mostly in her line of sight without having to turn her head and be obvious.

"She's still watching you." Octavia says, not even trying to hide looking over her shoulder at the pair behind them.

"Ugh ok maybe I can't fucking stay here." Clarke motions to their waitress.

Raven is typing on her phone under the table, which Octavia catches out of the corner of her eye.

Raven: You didn't think to tell me Lexa was coming here tonight???

The three dots hover in the bottom corner for what feels like forever.

Anya: How would I know that?!?! Wait who is she there with??

Raven: A blonde. A HOT blonde.

Anya: Oh god. Can't wait to hear about this when you get home.

Clarke catches Raven typing on her phone under the table, and then notices Lexa casually check her phone a few seconds later and shoot another grin in her direction.

"Really Rae?" Clarke says, annoyed, "Can you leave Anya out of this?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." The girl says not even trying to hide her smile. 

The waitress, a bubbly young girl with short bouncy auburn curls looks nervous when she approaches.

"Yes Ms. Griffin, are you ready to order?" Clarke is always sure to be overly nice to waitstaff, or any staff when she is out in public. She honestly hates most of the things that come with being so easily recognizable, particularly the stereotype of celebrities being entitled, petulant, or conceited. It's not something she intentionally sought, or even thought was possible when she pursued art full-time after college and found her own moderate success. Any level of celebrity status could never go to her head, as she will always be the small-town girl from the East Coast town of Polis, who grew up with next to nothing and never quite felt like she belonged in a place like L.A. to begin with.

But dating one of Hollywood's hottest A-listers will certainly put you on people's radar.

Clarke leans in towards the waitress, "Actually, we will take the check for the wine, I completely forgot about a previous commitment I need to get to, but can I order a bottle of Dom Perignon, for the table right over there before we go?" She motions with her head towards the table where Lexa is now very obviously pretending to laugh at whatever the bimbo across from her is saying.

"Of course, will that be all for you tonight?"

"Actually, if I give you an extra hundred dollars, will you relay a message when you bring over the bottle? A toast of sorts."

The two girls across from her are trying to keep a straight face, but watch wide-eyed as Clarke whispers something into the waitresses' ear, and hands over her Amex card.

The girl's face when she straightens up is a mix of nervous and giddy, understanding the context of the request.

The history of the two patrons was no secret – it had been front page of the tabloids for months after their very public, very messy breakup. Now it was just the simple annoyance of whatever bullshit spin came out of their occasional run-ins or when they attended the same events.

"I'll be right back." Clarke says, pushing back from the table to stand. 

"Wait where are you going?" Octavia calls after her.

"Bathroom." She replies over her shoulder, heading towards the hallway on the far end of the dining hall. She made sure to keep her eyes straight ahead as she walked past the brunette and her date nonchalantly, but the familiar aroma of Dior perfume crawled up her nostrils and she hated how good it smelled.

It reminded her of silk sheets and long nights, her hands sliding over hips and thighs and feeling the hot breath of whispered sighs.

Don't you dare. She thought to herself, shaking the memories from her head. 

She stared at herself a good long while in the bathroom, both expecting and dreading the door to open. When it doesn't, she touches up her red lipstick, adjusts herself in her skin-tight black cocktail dress so her already exposed cleavage is just a tad more on display, and heads back out to the dining room.

Her friends are already at the hostess stand, waiting for her before heading out past the now moderate amount of paparazzi that must have heard her and Lexa were spotted in public at the same place for the first time in months.

A small grin tugs at her lips as she passes the brunette's table, noting the new bottle of vintage champagne that sits opened with two glasses poured but not being touched, and a now slightly miffed date that shoots up an embarrassed look when she notices Clarke passing by.

Clarke bends over far more than necessary as she signs the bill left on the table, tipping an additional $50 on top of the $100 she promised because the look on the young girl's face was honestly better than she could have hoped for and collects her Amex card and heads to join her friends at the front when she hears a muffled voice from behind apologize and excuse themselves as they stand up from their table.

The warning looks on her friends' faces tell her to expect the hand that tugs her backwards as she reaches the hostess stand, pulling her to the side at the front of the restaurant.

The velvety scent of Dior wafts into her nose again, and those green eyes are much closer to her than they need to be, but she doesn't step back. At least not yet.

"Really Clarke?" Comes the expected reprimand, "Here's to the search for something greater? Classy."

"She's practically my clone." Clarke shrugs sharply.

Lexa remains unamused.

"Hardly, she's missing your signature....what is it..." Lexa dramatically gestures with her hand, searching for the right word... "Soul-sucking abrasiveness."

"Fuck off, Lexa."

"There's that mouth." Grinned the brunette.

"Bet you miss this mouth." Clarke shoots back.

Lexa's grin widens, "Actually yeah, just had a dream about it the other night."

"You dream of my mouth before or after it called you a lying traitor?"

Lexa takes a slight step closer to the blonde, ignoring the camera flashes going off outside the front window.

"You've called me worse." She utters smugly.

"I said fuck off Lex."

"Or you could fuck me yourself."

Clarke tries not to show how caught off-guard she is by the quick retort, and especially tries to hide how flustered she suddenly is. She leans into her annoyance at the brazen overconfidence.

"Pretty sure it's the only way you'd be getting fucked tonight...I know a pillow princess when I see one, and THAT," she nods her head back in the direction of Lexa's table and abandoned date, who's now anxiously sipping on her wine, trying not to be obvious at her constant glances towards the pair at the front of the restaurant, "That right there is a girl who is here for the free dinner, the free drinks, and the free orgasms after and that's it."

"Make me a better offer then." Lexa smiles as she tries to step even closer, but Clarke pushes back with a hand up at the girl's shoulder that was now inches away from her.

"There is no offer. I'm surprised you haven't run out of blonde models by now anyway, so enjoy however many you have left before you have to slum it with some brunettes."

"Heyyyyy!!" Raven and Octavia chime from the door, pretending to be offended. Both had been inching closer, shamelessly eavesdropping.

"You never run out of blonde models in LA." Lexa shrugs, "But I don't even know her. I'm just doing my agent a favor, and she's who suggested coming here. What was I supposed to do say 'no actually this was my ex's favorite place and she might possibly be here on this one random Wednesday night?'"

"Sure why not?"

Lexa rolls her eyes, "Are we jealous Clarkey?"

"WE...aren't anything." Clarke snaps motioning between the two of them.

"Well WE..." Lexa gestures back towards her table, "Aren't anything either...so can you drop the hostility?"

Clarke muses over the girl at the table, "Blue eyes, that's enough for at least a few dates by your standards."

"You're practically insulting yourself at this point you know..." Lexa huffs amusingly. She was having way too much fun getting a rise out of Clarke. The blonde purses her lips, her eyes dropping down to the plush lips in front of her quickly but not quick enough, because Lexa catches it and takes her bottom lip between her teeth, dropping her own eyes to Clarke's lips for a prolonged moment before bringing them back up to meet blue eyes.

"Can I go now?" Clarke says annoyed, "Your date is waiting."

"She can stay waiting." Lexa breathes as she dares reach a hand around Clarke's lower back, but the blonde is quick to swat her away and step backwards.

"This is not happening...."

"Again." Lexa adds with a smirk.

Clarke rolls her eyes.

"This is not happening again." She corrects. The last time she showed up at Lexa's penthouse she had convinced herself was only out of convenience. It had been a while since she'd gotten laid and the thought of meaningless small talk with a stranger or worse, someone she'd have to face again at work or in some overlapping social circle was too much of a headache. So when she ran into Lexa at a nightclub nearby and got a simple text at bar close saying "Damn Griffin, I know you wore that dress tonight just so I could take it off you.  Door is unlocked."  She figured it technically wasn't much different than any other one-night stand.

Right?

But in this moment she regrets having fed into the already overinflated ego that is Lexa Woods: Actress, musician, and professional flirt.

She will deal with the heat between her thighs and knot forming in her lower stomach later. If not with whatever name responds first when she leaves here, then with one of her many battery-powered friends in her nightstand.

"Whatever you say, Clarke." The brunette finally scoffs nonchalantly, and with one final lick of her lips, Lexa gives one more intentional glance down at Clarke's mouth before turning to head back into the dining hall, making a show of her return to her table by reaching for the waiting girl's hand and placing a quick kiss on the back of it before taking her seat again and lifting her champagne glass to cheers.

"Damn Clarke I'm impressed... I would have folded." Raven admits, opening the door as they rush out to a waiting town car, flashes immediately going off as soon as they are outside.

"Clarke! Clarke!" A few of the photographers try to get her attention, but she puts a hand up to try and block her face as Octavia gets the car door open.

"Clarke! How do you feel about Lexa bringing a date to your guys' spot?"

"Clarke what did Lexa say to you before you left?"

"Do you enjoy getting paid to harass people?" Raven harps at the small crowd as she follows Clarke and Octavia into the back seat.

Once the door is closed and they pull away, Clarke sighs, rubbing the space between her eyebrows.

"Well if you want her, have at it." She says almost dejectedly. "I told you, it's over between us."

Raven and Octavia exchange a quick glance before Raven squeaks out a response, cocking her head inquisitively.

"I mean.... is it really over now?" 

#clexa #clexa fanfic #clexa fic #clexa fandom #clexa fanfiction #ao3 fanfic #angsty #exes to lovers #these stubborn idiots #clexa au #fanfiction #the 100 clexa

[dalkyeom]

omg pls do talk abt Shua with me!! I've only been a carat for two months and there is so much i still get to discover!! Tell me about your favorite somewhat insane thing Shua has done? Tell me which Shua fit has had you in its clutches ever since you first saw it? Tell me about your favorie Shua smile? What's your favorite thing to draw abt Shua? I am here for anything you'll give me!!!! ✨🥰🌸

I hope you have a lovely day!!

a baby carat?! Welcome to Caratland, nonnie!! enjoy your time here!

How did you get into them? who’s your bias/bias line? 👀 also mood bc I remember when I became a carat last year and it was like 7 years of content to discover 😭 there’s always something new to learn about them also this might get long so—

BSBDD THE SHUA INDULGENCE! amg so out of all the insane things Shua has done, the one thing he did that made me laugh super hard was the suction prince, Shua! segment from One Fine Day 😭😭😭 it surprised me so much like I don’t think any Shua moment can top how funny that was. In the clip, I think it was their free time and some members were trying to make each other laugh. While they were going back and forth, Shua took a bottle and started inhaling it and it was so funny bc it was so random 😭

(it’s at the 37:00 minute mark like istg it’s so funny me describing it won’t do it justice)

other than that, tbh Shua is such a funny dude like his humor is top tier

As for Shua fit— amg nonnie idk what to tell uou bc that man can walk around in the most ridiculous outfit and I would still think he is the most handsome man to make the world his runway.

But if I have to choose it would be the 2021 KBS Song Festival fit like my brain goes insane! HE LIVES FOREVER IN MY HEART! He looks so good in the deep red and the gLOVES. OH MY GOD THE GLOVES THE EVERYTHING HE CAN MARRY ME RN! JSND&2$,!

Tbh Joshu in gloves…. is my kryptonite. It weakens me bc he looks good with gloves on.

My runner ups would be: Hanbok!Shua from Super mv, Groom!Shua from the FML (Carat ver), his BeTS prince fit (especially the white variant from their Japan leg! Tbh one of my fave looks for ot13)

🥺 shua’s smile is sooo cute tbh! Like especially when he goes nyorong bc I love eye smiles so much. He looks so soft and cute like I want to hold his face in my hands 😔 and we can ✨🌸(nvn)🌸✨ together

as for drawing amg— so tbh, Shua’s my ideal type to draw bc he has very gentle features. Like this man is not super angular (I have Dokey for that. Man is sculpted like a mortal god).

Shua’s facial features is very soft and ethereal so I love drawing and studying him the most. He is very compatible w/ my art style so overall I love drawing his face 🥺 but my favorite part to draw is his eyes bc his eyes are the most striking/key feature of his face. I find the shape unique!

Tysm for letting me indulge in Shua talks, nonnie!! Like tbh he is just so 🥺💖 I love talking about him (and svt in general lol they are my sun)

I hope you’ll have a great day too!

#😭 THIS IS LONG BUT I TOOK THE OPPORTUNITY #also nonnie if you want an anon emoji just let me know so I can tag your replies/you can sign with 🥺 #one fine day is a must like it’s so fun! #I rewatch it all the time aside from ITS #amg nonnie if you want svt recs or want to talk abt svt my asks are always open 😭👌🏻 #💌 you’ve got mail #re: anon