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#this was originally supposed to be a lot longer and more involved
sparkle-fiend · 1 year
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Here is my entry for the Spicy Six Winter Fic Challenge hosted by @thefreakandthehair (thanks so much to you and @unclewaynemunson for the awesome events this month!) My prompt was “kiss in the snow”.
Eddie is ladling a mixture of brown sugar, cinnamon, and mashed sweet potatoes into a baking dish when the phone rings. He nearly drops the bowl, hastily wiping the sticky orange mixture off his fingers before answering.
“Munson’s House of Holiday Horrors, Eddie speaking,” he intones cheerfully. Steve snorts with laughter on the other end of the line.
“What if it hadn’t been me calling?”
“It’s Christmas Eve Stevie, and everyone we know is out of town. Who else would be calling?” He knows the exact expression that will be on Steve’s face right now. He’ll be trying not to smile, which will twist his lips into a crooked little smirk instead. It’s one of Eddie’s favorite expressions. “How was work today?”
“Awful. Remind me never to agree to a holiday shift again. The Christmas movies were out of stock by 9, so I’ve had people screaming at me all day. Like I’m personally responsible for the fact that they waited till the last minute to try and rent the Grinch that Stole Christmas.”
“Mmm,” Eddie hums sympathetically. “Poor baby. What time are you coming over?”
“The pie needs to cool another 30 minutes, then I’m leaving.”
They’d argued about the pie for days. Eddie insisted that he had enough dishes planned to feed a small army, while Steve insisted that he just had to bring a pecan pie (which, coincidentally, is Wayne’s favorite).
“You know – you don’t have to work so hard to impress him. Wayne already likes you.”
“Shut up,” Steve says. “I’ll see you at 5:30.”
“See ya.”
They’re not quite to the point of exchanging I love you’s yet, even though it sits on the edge of his tongue every time they say goodbye.
Eddie hangs up the phone and turns to survey the chaos strewn across the kitchen. He’s got half an hour – 45 minutes with driving time. The sweet potato casserole has to be baked, and he still needs to finish two more dishes after that.
“Shit,” he mutters.
***
When Wayne ventures into the kitchen twenty minutes later to check on him, Eddie is frantically stirring sour cream and shredded cheese into the mashed potatoes.
“Christ almighty it’s hot in here. You’re sweatin’ like a hog.”
Eddie scowls and swipes at the hair sticking to his forehead. “Thanks Uncle Wayne.”
Unfortunately, his uncle’s not wrong. The kitchen is sweltering – not surprising, considering the stove and oven have been going all day – and Eddie’s shirt is soaked through. He desperately needs a shower, but he’s running way behind.
“Alright… what can I do to help?”
Eddie pauses long enough to fix his uncle with a skeptical look. “Are you forgetting the famous incident of the frozen turkey? Your cooking privileges have been permanently revoked.”
Wayne looks unimpressed. “Don’t you sass me. I can pull a goddamn casserole out of the oven.”
Eddie snickers and allows himself to be chased out of the kitchen. “I’ll be back in ten minutes. Don’t let that casserole burn!”
He takes the stairs up two at a time. It’s still a novelty, living in a house with a second floor – even after half a year. The water pressure is pretty awesome too, although he doesn’t take the time to enjoy it today. He rushes through a lukewarm shower, just enough to cool down and rinse the sweat off; throwing a clean shirt on when he gets out.
With hair still dripping, he thunders back down the stairs in time to see Wayne pull the casserole out, marshmallows browned to a perfect crust on top. His uncle watches in bemusement as Eddie covers the dish with aluminum foil and then hastens to dump frozen rolls onto a pan.
“What time is Steve supposed to get here?” Wayne asks.
Eddie doesn’t even dare look at the clock. “Any minute,” he says distractedly. He adjusts the oven temperature and shoves the pan in. He had a checklist, which is buried somewhere in the pile of used dishes and discarded packaging on the counter. He starts searching for it, shoving things aside in frustration, until he feels his uncle’s hands land heavy on his shoulders.
“Calm down, okay? Everything looks amazing. You’ve done a real good job Ed.”
The old man’s expression is unbearably soft when he turns around. Wayne looks at him like that all the time these days – ever since March, and that tense week in the hospital, when they weren’t sure if infection would finish the job the demobats had started.
It makes Eddie feel warm and awkward at the same time. He darts forward for a quick hug, pressing his face into the smoky flannel of his uncle’s shoulder, before stepping back and shoving the old man toward the door.
“Go on. Let me know when Steve gets here. And turn on the lights!”
***
Eddie loses track of time as he scrambles to finish – last minute tasks keep popping up every time he turns around. When he’s finally ready to call it done, he heads for the living room, expecting to find Steve and Wayne watching something on tv while they wait.
But it’s six o’clock, and there’s no sign of Steve. Wayne is standing against the big picture window, curtains shoved aside so he can look out.
“Hate to break it to ya Ed, but I’m not sure your boy is gonna make it. Snow’s really coming down out there.”
Eddie takes his uncle's place against the window, pressing his nose against the cold glass as he cups his hands to shield the glare. It's dark out, and the only thing illuminated by the porch light is a swirling wall of snowflakes. Judging by the snow already piled on the railing, it's collecting thick and fast.
"Shit," he mutters.
Concern immediately churns his stomach. If Steve left the house when he planned to, he should have arrived over half an hour ago.
Eddie goes to the phone on the end table by Wayne’s recliner, dialing the familiar number, hoping Steve decided to wait out the weather. The Christmas tree twinkles merrily in the corner; red, green, blue, and yellow lights reflecting off the silver tinsel while Eddie listens to the phone ring and ring - until the click of the answering machine picks up.
He hits the switch hook to end the call, re-dialing immediately. Ring, ring, ring and the click of the answering machine again.
He stays on the line long enough to hear the recorded voice of Steve’s father announce: “You’ve reached the Harrington residence. Leave a name, number, and brief message…” Eddie hangs up again with a frustrated growl.
Wayne watches with a worried frown. “You don’t think he would try to drive in this mess, do you? Not in that fancy car of his.”
Only someone who didn’t know Steve very well would ask that question. If Robin or Dustin were here, they’d already be suiting up for a search party.
Apparently, the expression on Eddie’s face is answer enough, because Wayne’s lips press into a thin line before he nods. “Right then. We’ll put the snow chains on the truck – as long as you go slow, you should be okay.”
They throw on coats and boots and a hat for Wayne, before trooping out into the whirling snow. Working in tandem, it only takes a few minutes to get the chains wrapped around the front tires of Wayne’s truck, latched and tensioned tight.
They agree that Wayne should stay behind in case Steve ends up calling after all, and then Eddie is off, pulling slowly down the drive.
The little house (part of a generous government settlement in exchange for their silence) is on the outskirts of town, surrounded by trees and cornfields – and no neighbors for at least ten miles. Which means the only light comes from the feeble beam of the truck’s headlights, struggling to penetrate the wall of snow. It’s like driving into a tunnel.
Eddie holds his foot tense above the gas pedal, giving it just enough juice to keep the old truck bumping along at a snail’s pace, listening to the chained tires grip and grind over the snow.
I never said ,‘I love you’, he thinks. I never said it. Steve could be dead or dying somewhere along the road, and the last thing Eddie ever said to him was, “See ya.”
It’s unbearable.
After a nerve-wracking 15 minutes, scanning and straining his eyes nearly to tears – Eddie finally spots a faint shape in the distance. Just the silhouette of a person, no car in sight.
It’s Steve. It’s gotta be.
He slams on the brakes – too hard. Even with the chains on, the old truck slides a few terrifying feet farther than intended. Heart pounding, Eddie throws it into park and wrenches the door open.
He hits the ground ready to run and nearly busts his ass as he sinks into snow over his ankles; staggering like a drunk toward the huddled figure of his boyfriend.
Eddie grips the other boy by the shoulders, eyes raking over him head to toe, searching for injuries. It’s hard to see – the headlights cast everything in sharp relief, full of shadow.
“Shit Steve… are you okay? I was so fucking worried, Jesus Christ.”
Steve pats his chest and laughs through the audible chattering of his teeth. “I’m f-fine Ed, I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to make you worry.”
“What happened?”
“Deer ran out in front of me. T-tried to miss it and the Beemer spun off the road. Car’s fine, but it’s stuck in a ditch.”
Eddie huffs out a relieved laugh and squeezes his boyfriend tight. Just stuck in a ditch – thank god. They’re so lucky the accident wasn’t serious; and lucky that Eddie came looking before Steve froze to death trying to make the long, cold walk to the house.
He pulls back to gaze into those beloved brown eyes, brushing aside a swoop of hair stiff with ice.
“I love you,” Eddie says abruptly. His breath hangs like dragon-smoke between them. It’s not how he intended this moment to go, but he can’t keep it in any longer. “I was afraid to say it, but then… when I thought something might have happened to you, all I could I think was that I never told you how I felt.”
“Eddie,” Steve whispers. “Eddie, I love you too.”
He laughs, giddy with relief, and cradles Steve’s jaw as he leans into a kiss. The world falls away - there’s nothing but Steve’s slightly chapped lips, warming slowly against his own, and the soft whisper of the snowflakes.
It’s perfect - until Steve shifts awkwardly and winces in pain.
“What the hell Steve, I thought you said you weren’t hurt?”
Steve grins sheepishly and leans against Eddie, trying to take the weight off his left leg. “I said the car was fine. I twisted my knee trying to climb out of that damn ditch.”
“Goddamnit… is there anything else I should know?”
His boyfriend unzips his jacket, revealing a towel-wrapped disc tucked securely against his chest. “I saved the pie,” he says proudly.
“Jesus Christ.” Overwhelmed by affection, Eddie kisses Steve again; it’s either that or shake the mad bastard. “Come on… let’s get you and your stupid pie home before you both freeze.”
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endlessthxxghts · 2 months
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Bend Over
Javier Peña x afab!reader || W/C: 4.8k
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Summary: Your dresser craps out on you. Your boyfriend, Javier, comes with you to IKEA to buy a new one. Then, he fucks you on it.
Content/Warnings: I think you know what you guys are getting into based on the summary😗. Reader is able-bodied. Slight implied physical descriptors Javi is taller than reader, and the IKEA dresser is slightly bigger/taller than you (everything else is neutral - no size descriptions - ex. "your form", etc.). Pet names (good girl, querida, cariño, baby, baby girl, mama, mi amor). Implied that reader knows Spanish. A little allusion to our favorite contractor, Joel Miller (blink and you’ll miss it). SMUT 18+ MDNI. Public sexual activity (exhibitionism). Finger fucking. Edging. Slight undertones of BDSM dynamics. Javi’s filthy mouth. Thigh riding. Hickey/marking. P in V unprotected sex. Choking. Breeding kink (I’m not sorry). Cum play. Anal play. Brief pussy licking + rimming. Allusion to further sexual activity. I thiiiink that’s it… let me know if I missed anything!
A/N: HIII I’M BACK! I went to ikea to buy a new dresser. And the thots between @javierpena-inatacvest and I ran wild. So, this was born.👹 Also, I no longer have a tag list, but I teased this story TWICE in some WIP tag games, and a few of you were giving me so much love and wanting me to let you know when this story was posted, so I’m adopting the tag list (at da bottom) one last time to say how much I love you all. 🥹 I’m sorry this took me so long. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoy, please let me know what you think!!!!
MASTERLIST || NOTIF BLOG
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It was supposed to be just a trip to IKEA. It was supposed to be a productive day of building your dresser and rearranging your room. That is what it was supposed to be. 
How it ended up with you getting your guts rearranged on top of said dresser—you’re not so sure. But, considering this is Javier Peña you’re talking about, maybe you have a slight indication of why your day ended up the way it did. 
It was early this morning when your dresser decided to shit on you; all you did was slide the door open, and it completely pulled off of its hinge. Now, you don’t mind a doorless dresser, it’s modern, you tried to convince yourself, but when you pulled out the second drawer and the wood snapped in half, scattering your panties all over the ground—yeah, okay, it was definitely time for a new one. 
You called your boyfriend after you cleaned up your clothes, and asked if he wanted to come with you on your hunt for the new piece of furniture. Why are you even asking? he scolded as he saddled up into his Jeep and made his way to your place. 
He stepped out of his seat in the driver side, rounding the hood to pull you in for a lengthy kiss as he pulled the passenger side door open for you. “Well, hello to you, too, baby,” you giggle as you break the kiss for a breath of air. He leaves a slap to your ass as he guides you by your hips into the passenger seat. He even buckles you in, stealing one more kiss before you two head off. 
You thought shopping for a new dresser would be simple: get in, choose a sizable one that could fit everything your previous dresser could, and also make sure it matches the rest of your room’s theme. Simple, right? Wrong. As long as Javier was involved, he took his sweet time really studying each option you were pointing out—analyzing it to ensure it wouldn’t crap out on you like your original one did. 
“How long did you have this dresser?” He asked as he was pulling into the IKEA parking lot. 
“Mmm, I don’t know,” you thought, “maybe a few years?”
“A few years?!” Javier asked, exasperated. “Where the hell did you find that fucking thing?”
You let a beat of silence pass before you answered. “...I thrifted it,” you admit weakly. 
Javier puts the car in park, his face in utter shock at what just came out of your mouth. “Querida, what-” he starts. 
You pull him in immediately, shutting him up with your lips against his. It works, of course. “Let’s go?” you ask. 
“Y-yeah, vamos (let’s go),” he says, flustered. 
“Javi, c’mon,” you whine, feeling exhausted after his analysis on your third option since the first two didn’t pass the Peña inspection. “Since when were you a contractor? The first two were perfectly fine, baby, it’s IKEA for crying out loud.”
He scoffs. “Living on the ranch with Pop,” he replies to your sarcastic remark. “You and I are both aware I know my way around some handiwork,” he adds as he looks back to you, a shit-eating grin creeping on his face. 
You want to roll your eyes, but you can’t help the way your body ignites to the suggestion laced in his words. “Pendejo,” you mutter to yourself, fighting the heat from making it to your face. 
You walk around some more while your boyfriend opens every nook and cranny of the wooden frame, but then right as you turn your body, you find it. The dresser. HEMNES. You quickly make your way to it, running your hands along the dark brown surface, crouching down to open up and see how much space is in the drawers—which, it’s very spacious. The drawer itself is taller than your waistline, probably reaching just at your belly button. It’s perfect. “Baby, wait, come here! I think I found one!” You call out. 
Javier follows your voice, intrigued by your excitement—you didn’t show this much enthusiasm with the other ones he was looking at. He rounds the corner and is met with quite a view. You are bending over the top of the dresser, on your tippy toes, trying to feel for the depth of the dresser. He sees you settle your hands at the edges of the top and shake it a little, testing out its durability while also unknowingly wiggling your ass. Fuck me, he thinks. Quickly adjusting his pants, he makes his way to you, situating his body directly against yours as he cages you in. 
“Jav-” you softly gasp, not expecting to feel him. Immediately you’re pulling yourself up, still on your tippy toes, but your back is now flush against his chest. 
“Ay, Dios mío,” he grunts as he whispers in your ear, “Querida, please get up.” His hands are on your hips, pulling you away from the dresser. You turn in his hold, a giggle leaving your throat as you look at his stressed out expression, realizing why his reaction was so pained. 
“What’s wrong, baby?” You ask him quietly. “Saw something you like, huh?” You pull him in by his neck, kissing the side of his mouth before you pull away from him completely. Gesturing to the dresser, you ask, “Does this one pass the inspection, sir?” 
He glares at you before he replies. “Yeah, let’s get this one.”
Your eyebrow quirks up. “You didn’t even look at it.” 
“I saw enough, cariño,” he says gruff, looking at the tag on the display and taking note of which aisle the box will be at. 
You know your man well enough to know when he’s turned on, and that little unintentional stunt you pulled when making sure HEMNES was the right dresser for you—oh, it absolutely sent him over the edge. You decided to let him brew in his own arousal until you checked out your purchase, but the moment you set foot in his car again, you were set on starting something you wanted him to finish. 
“Thank you again for coming with me, baby,” you say as he settles back into the driver seat, your hand taking its seat on his upper thigh. 
The muscle twitches underneath your palm. “Mhm,” he mutters, voice wavering at your contact. Just as Javier puts the car in drive, he’s immediately pushing it back to park because your hand slides higher, closer, to the hardening bulge between his legs. His hips softly buck into your grasp; you take one look at him, and you can see the veins in his neck popping. A victory smile graces your face as his turns into a scowl. “What are you doing?”
You feign as much innocence as possible. “What am I doing? I’m just saying thank you, baby, I can’t tell you thank you?” 
“Right,” he says unconvinced. Your fingers continue to draw little shapes across the strained material of his pants. You go to cup him entirely, but the strength of his hand stops you. 
He releases your hand and gets out of the car, the car still running. He is at your side faster than you can take your own seatbelt off. He’s pulling your door open and giving you no chance for debate, his hand wraps around your jaw and pulls you into a bruising kiss—a messy yet calculated dance of teeth and tongue, and in pulling away he’s biting your bottom lip, pulling the sweetest little desperate whimper from your throat. He clocks the way your hips softly grind into his seat. 
“J-jav,” your voice shakes, “w-what are you doing-”
His grip on your jaw tightens, giving you a little shake as he speaks. “You had your fun, cariño,” he breathes. “My turn now.” 
His hand leaves your face and snakes down the front of your body, unzipping your jeans as you just stare wildly at the sight below you, your breathing erratic as your body anticipates his next move. 
“We- we’re in the fucking parking lot still, Javi!” You whisper yell at him, pissed, even though your body is doing absolutely nothing to stop him. He smirks at that fact. You want this. 
“Guess you’ll just have to keep quiet for me, yeah?” His fingers slip past your jeans, past your underwear, and you’re fucking soaked. His middle and ring finger bypass your clit, circling your entrance to gather the wetness accumulating before he comes back up to circle your throbbing bud. 
“Oh, fuck,” you yelp out, your eyes rolling back and your hips pushing into his hand as you hiss out in the pleasure. At your volume, Javi’s quick to stop his ministrations, cupping your mound and squeezing you as a warning. If the space allowed, you know he would’ve slapped your cunt. This alternative is equally as dizzying. 
“Open your eyes, baby,” he rasps. Your eyes flutter open. “You see all these people, huh? You want them to see you? See my good girl getting finger fucked in broad fucking daylight?”
“F-fuck, Jav” you whimper, much quieter this time, as your eyes land back on your man’s as you try and grind yourself on him. Javi’s fingers find your entrance then, sliding in with ease as a new wave of arousal pours out of you. 
“Oh, you like that idea, don’t you?” His fingers speed up their momentum as he adds his thumb into the mix, hurtling you much closer to your finish line than you anticipated. 
“Baby, I’m c-close, I’m- fuck- I’m gonna cum, Javi, I-” you bring your hand up over your mouth to stifle the sobs that are about to leave your mouth.
“Yeah, baby? Gonna give us a show?” He asks, his breathing just as erratic as yours. All you need is one more little push from his thumb on your clit, and then-
“No!” you cry.
Right as you were about to fall over the edge, Javier completely pulls his fingers out of you, standing up straight as he licks his fingers off. Your hips don’t realize he left you as they buck a few more times, chasing the feeling of what could have been. 
“Baby, please, I was so close,” you heave, your heart rate equivalent to that of a hummingbird. 
Javier leans down into the car, slotting his lips against yours terribly slow; your taste lingers on his tongue. He pulls away. “Sorry, mama,” he whispers. “Only I get to see you fall apart like that.” 
He zips and buttons your pants up, leaving you a stunned, aroused, wet mess as he makes his way back to the driver seat and pulls out of the parking spot, driving back to your place as if nothing even happened. 
The drive home is short, but it feels like the longest drive you’ve ever had to endure. He rests his hand on your thigh the entire time, squeezing you every now and then as his pinky leaves featherlight touches where you need him most. He talks to you during the drive—about what, you honestly have no clue, but it seemed the conversation was enough for him to sustain alone. 
You’re brought out of your daze when his hand grabs your jaw, turning you to look at him. “You okay, baby?” He asks, knowing damn well what’s got your head in the clouds. 
The throbbing between your legs remained consistent—worse, even—on the drive home, so no you’re not fucking okay. You don’t tell him that, though. “Mhm,” you hum, not trusting your vocal cords to string together something coherent. 
He pulls your lips to his—a lingering one, one that has your mind slipping further. Breaking the embrace, he says softly, “Go unlock the door, amor, while I carry the box in, yeah?” 
On wobbly legs, you make your way to your door, missing the hole a few times but eventually the key slides in with ease. You toss them into the bowl on the entryway table, making your way to the kitchen to grab yourself a glass of water to contain yourself until Javier comes inside. 
Apparently, you’re way more distracted than you thought, because one gulp down and he’s behind you—hands on your waist, mouth on your neck. You set the glass down a little harshly, its weight suddenly increasing tenfold with the way he’s on you. 
“Baby,” you whine, your head falling back onto his shoulder. “Please.”
Your boyfriend is turning you around then, turning you to face him, and his mouth is on yours, licking and sucking as his body pushes you up against the fridge, your head landing with a soft thud as his mouth starts to descend down your neck while his fingers work your buttons and zipper for the second time today. 
He’s pulling your bottoms down to your ankles—they’re loose on your form, so they don’t restrict you too much from opening your legs when he slots his thigh in between you, hitting right against your core. 
His lips never leave you, biting and kissing every inch he can reach while his hands find their home at the globe of your asscheeks, securing his grip as he begins a steady pace of your crying pussy back and forth on his clothed thigh. 
“Just like that, cariño, I can feel you fluttering on me already, holy fuck,” he groans as he continues his assault on your chest, leaving pretty bruises all over the valley of your breasts. “Making such a mess, pretty girl,” he mutters into your skin. 
Your hands snake to the curls at the back of his head, yanking them as he brings you back closer and closer to the finish line. He brings his lips back to yours sloppily, one hand leaving your ass to paw at your chest, his fingers rubbing and twisting at your nipples; they harden in his touch.
Your eyes struggle to stay open, his tight jeans providing the yummiest friction against your clit. “I- I’m gonna- please, Jav, I- I need to cum,” you sob. 
His hand at your chest snakes down your body, following the path to your sex. Just as you think he’s about to slip his hands between your legs, his hand changes direction, both hands going up to grip your waist to stop you from moving. His thigh leaves your core, and you’re fighting—your hips chase his muscle, your fingers scrambling to pull him flush against you, but he doesn’t budge. It’s no use. Your high is gone again, painfully forced back to the start line as Javier bends down to grab your panties and work their way back up your legs. 
You’re a heaving mess, tears falling from your eyes as pathetic little protests fall from your lips. 
Exhausted, you sigh and finally blurt out, “Javier Peña, what the fuck are you doing?” 
You can see the faintest shit-eating smirk fall on his face before he mirrors what you did earlier: feign innocence. “Gotta go build your dresser, mi amor.” 
“I can fucking build it later.” 
“But I’m already here. I’ll do it.” 
“Yeah, but your presence is needed elsewhere,” you say, annoyed. You faintly gesture to your sobbing cunt, silenced by your soaked underwear. 
“But if I’m here, I’ll do it, so you don’t have to,” he says, placing a chaste kiss to the side of your mouth. 
“Javi,” you whine, hoping a thousand different ways of are you fucking serious right now translates to him in the tone of your sexual frustration. 
“Just sit pretty for me while I go do it real quick, okay, cariño?” 
Not giving you the chance to respond, he drags you by the wrist to your bedroom, forcing you to get settled in the reading chair you have in there—a prime spot to watch him get all sweaty as he works. Great. 
You wouldn’t have riled him up if you had known this was the kind of torturous game he had in mind. 
Twenty minutes in, and Javier is sweating alright, but it’s not for the reasons you’re thinking. Yeah, it’s a physical strain building this dresser, but this is fucking light work for him. 
No, he’s sweaty, sticky, and disgustingly hot because his dick is at his full potential, throbbing and leaking at everything you put him through—and everything he put himself through, pulling you to the brink of orgasm twice without letting you fully submit to it. He damn near always gets off when you do, and teasing you like this teases him just as much, if not more. 
He’s almost done, he just has one more drawer to put together and slide into place, but he takes a step back and uses his arm to wipe the sweat across his forehead, his breathing heavy during the action. It takes everything in you not to completely melt at what he’s forcing you to witness, a faint whimper escaping you at the sight of him. 
It takes him barely a minute to get the last drawer assembled before he attempts sliding it into place. It goes in with ease at first, but before it can fully shut, the drawer gets stuck, unable to close by an inch. What the fuck, he mutters under his breath, lifting it up and wiggling to see if it’s just a kink inside the railing. Your jaw falls a little open at the vulgarity of his mouth; you are way too wound up and everything he’s doing right now has your pussy doing backflips, somersaults, cartwheels—you name it. She’s very eager. 
Fed up with the drawer, Javier completely opens the drawer and then slams it shut, using his hips to give the drawer a full-force push. The slam of the wood is deafening, but it does nothing to hide the sweet little gasp that comes out of you, his cock twitching at the sound. 
A high-pitched, breathy squeak of an oh fuck leaves your mouth, and Javier turns to check on you. He sees your fingers skating down your front, running your middle and ring finger over your soaked center, your clit’s fire immediately reigniting at the contact. 
“¿Cariño?” He calls, a sternness evident in his tone. You know not to test that tone. Your fingers’ movements pause, your eyes meet his and they’re dark. “What do you think you’re doing?” Jesus fuck, he doesn’t even know if he has the strength to fuck you like he was planning on, the sight of you touching yourself has a fire igniting through every vein in his body. 
Your eyebrows are furrowed, nervousness written all over your face. “I…um, I-” you start. 
“Get up,” he cuts you off. 
“What?” You say softly, your brain already scrambled eggs and unable to register what he just asked of you. 
His singular eyebrow raises as he stalks closer to you, his hard gaze looking down at you as your pussy cries even more at the attention. Now his command registers, and you’ll be damned if you have to make him repeat himself. 
You remove your hand from your center, lifting yourself off your chair. He snags you by your waist, pulling your body flush against his front as he steals the breath from your lungs, your tongues meeting hungrily. You moan into his mouth, your hands slowly wrapping around his neck, but before you can grip his sweet curls, he’s pulling away from you, your surprised gasps blessing his ears as he flips you roughly but with ease towards the direction of your new dresser, already in its place secured against the wall. 
“Javi,” you whimper again for what feels like the millionth time already. 
“Dime qué quieres, cariño,” (tell me what you want) he rasps in your ear, his hands skating down your front and resuming what you so desperately started.
“F-fuck-” you start, “fuck me, Javi, please, please fuck me,” you beg, your heart stuttering as he dips his middle finger into your entrance.
He kisses your temple as your eyes fall shut, a contrastingly sweet gesture for the way he’s about to ruin you right now. 
“Then bend over.” 
Now that sobers you up a little. You start to crane your neck in his direction. “W-what?” But he’s quick to grab your jaw, bringing your eyes back to your dresser. “Go do what you were doing earlier, baby. Bend over that dresser for me,” he says, soft but stern, then he’s taking a step back, letting you get there on your own. 
So hooked on his body heat, you can’t help the shudder that leaves you, but ultimately you’re making your way to your new dresser—picking yourself up on your tippy toes to lean over the top, just like you were doing with the store’s floor model. “L-like this?” You ask, voice trembling in anticipation. You stick your ass out a little extra for good measure. 
You hear his belt buckle before you register his deep grumble. “Yeah, baby,” he tells you, slowly making his way to your backside. “So good for me,” he breathes, his fingers hooking into the hem of your underwear and letting them fall to the ground. You step out of them, knowing his next step is gonna be to nudge your legs further open—and he does, using his foot to nudge both of yours outwards. 
He runs his middle finger through your slick as he lets his jeans fall, your hips push further into his touch, chasing the pleasure you’ve been buzzing for all morning. 
“Baby, please,” he hears escaping your mouth. 
“Nuh uh, baby,” he tuts, “I told you. You had your fun already, it’s my turn.” 
He runs his fingers through your wet seam, properly soaking his digits before he brings his hand to his own arousal, covering himself in your slick. He groans at the feeling. Javier crowds himself behind you, his tip immediately mirroring the path of his fingers. He catches himself against your clit, and he smirks at the wrecked sounds of your heavy breathing. 
He pushes himself into you, slow and steady, getting you comfortable in his size. His fingertips are digging little bruises into your hips—his way of grounding himself from absolutely pummeling into you from the get go. 
You two have been together for quite some while, but Javi knows he’s big. It’s evident in the way you mewl and convulse every time he’s inside of you. Too big to get used to, yet perfect for the slight tinge of pain he knows you love. 
“Baby, please move,” you pant. 
“You sure, cariño?” He says softly, his dominant demeanor fading to make sure you’re alright. 
You reach back to grab onto his hand and drag it up your own body, settling his long digits around the base of your neck. With a squeeze of your hand over his: “Fuck me, Jav, please.” 
At your queue, he’s pushing himself into you entirely. “Yeah, baby?” He snarls. “Want me to fuck you like this?” His hips form a hard pace, your hips digging into the ledge of the dresser. “This what your pretty little pussy wants, huh? What she’s been fucking crying for, baby?”
“Fuck-” you gasp. “Fuck, yes- Javi, yesyesyes! Amor, please,” you wail, your eyes rolling back as the pressure of his fingers on your neck restrict your blood flow, filling your body with a euphoria only he can give you. 
His eyes scan down your body, taking in every inch of you with nothing but pure adoration. The sweetness fades when his eyes zone in on where your two centers meet. He lets out an audible moan at the sight, sending your pussy fluttering at the sound. “Look at you, bebita, fucking creaming on me, holy fuck,” he groans, his cock sliding in and out of you with ease.
“I- I’m close, baby, fuck-” your breath stutters. “Touch me, Jav, I- I need you,” you moan. 
“Shh, I’ve got you, mi amor.” Javi’s hand on your throat leaves you and coasts down your spine, his grip fixing itself on the globe of your ass. 
He reaches down with his thumb to gather some of your slick, dragging it up to your tight, more inexperienced hole. You gasp when you feel it, your ass bucking further into his touch. “Oh, my baby girl likes that? You like your ass being played with, cariño?” He taunts, hooking his thumb inside. “Want to me to fuck you there next time?”
“Fuck- yes- please,” you whimper, your pussy fluttering around him at his words. His other hand snakes to your front and reaches for your clit, drawing tight, calculated circles on you. “Oh, fuck-!” you yell out.
“That’s it, baby, fucking- dámelo, fucking soak me, querida” he forces out between his teeth. Your body twitches in his grasp, knuckles stark white against your dresser, eyes clamped shut as you cry out in the overwhelming pleasure consuming every inch of your body. “Fuck,” he groans, your sounds forcing his balls to pull taut. Javi’s fingers speed up along with his thrusts, hurtling you towards your long-awaited climax. 
It’s overstimulating, him fucking into you so harshly as every nerve ending in your body pops off like fireworks. Yet, you feel the way his cock twitches inside of you, the way his pace stutters for barely a second, and you know he’s close. It’s overstimulating, yes, but you want, no, need him to continue, you need him to chase his own finish line—you need him to root himself so deep inside you, you’ll feel traces of him for months on end. 
“You’re close, I can feel it,” you gasp, building your own rhythm of your hips to help him along. “Need it, baby, need you inside of me,” you pant, your voice desperate. You pull yourself off the dresser and push your back into his chest, both his hands leaving your body to grip onto the darkwood, caging you in. 
“Yeah?” you feel his heavy breath fan across your cheek. “Tell me how fucking’ bad, querida, wanna hear it,” he says, voice strained.
You look back at him as best you can in this angle, your lips ghosting his jaw as the slick sounds of you grow louder. “Need you so bad even plan B can’t help us- God- please cum inside of me, Javier Peña, fucking give it to me,” you beg, your moans echoing the walls and rattling every fibre of his being, pushing his body into a state of pure ecstasy as he begins to empty himself into you. 
“Oh…fuck,” he grunts, his hips coming to a halt as he nearly wheezes through his orgasm. Once the sensitivity calms down, Javi pumps himself in and out of you a few more times for good measure, pushing his load deep inside of you. You can feel the way he slides in with a wet ease, and it makes butterflies in your belly erupt, a small gasp of a giggle, knowing that the soaked sensation isn’t because of solely your own product. 
“Fucking perfect,” he grumbles, slowly pulling himself out of you. He takes a small step back to get a look at your used cunt, puffy and glistening. His mouth literally waters. 
Javi drops to his knees, settling his broad palms on each of your ass cheeks to keep the view of you open for him. Slowly, he leans in, the flat of his tongue running over your delicate pearl through your cum-soaked folds, a mix of you and him blessing each taste bud on his tongue. He hears your breath hitch. 
He brings his tongue back in, collecting up the salty combination, before he’s on you again, mapping out the ring of your puckered muscle before he softly peppers the area in sweet kisses, your rear slightly irritated with his repeated slamming into you. 
He pulls himself away, giving you a moment to turn around; your back is to the dresser now. He places several kisses on your thighs, giving a few more kitten licks to your center before he’s rising to his feet and pulling you in for a deep yet gentle kiss. You can taste both you and him, and it makes your heart want to burst at the seams with warmth. 
“You okay?” He asks softly as his lips break away from yours. 
“Always with you,” you offer bashfully. 
“Good,” he says firmly, kissing the tip of your nose. You hear his hand smack the top of your dresser a few times. “I guess this thing is pretty fucking durable, huh?” 
“Mmmm, maybe. I think it needs to pass one more test,” you tell him. 
His eyebrow quirks up, you can see his mustache twitch, fighting his smirk. “And what test would that be, mi amor?” 
Taking a step back out of his hold, you back up into the dresser again, grabbing onto the ledge and you jump, spreading your legs wide open for him to fit in between. 
You can see the way his eyes flash impossibly darker. He stalks up to you again, his hands squeezing your thighs before he’s back on his knees, his head immediately burying himself in your core. 
Oh, yeah, this dresser passes the test, alright. 
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Tagging those who showed interest when I posted the WIP !! @honeyedmiller , @punkshort , @joels-shitty-puns , @bearsbeetsbeskar , @janaispunk , @starry-eyes-love
If you enjoyed this, come check out my masterlist for more or follow my notifs blog @endlessthxxghtsnotifs to get updated on when I post new stories! Much love💚
@pedrostories
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kimdokjas · 11 months
Note
wait wait, what’s the change tumblr did to the reblog chains ? 🥲🥲🥲 I’m so lost
okay so basically, let's say you see a post on your dash
before the update, if you clicked on a url, you could do 3 things:
view that specific reblog on the blog you follow (A)
view the previous reblog on the blog A reblogged it from (B)
view the original post on op's blog (C)
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however, staff recently implemented an update where clicking on a url no longer takes you to that specific post. now, clicking on a url just takes you to the blog itself.
this means that you now get 5 things:
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view ONLY that specific reblog on the blog you follow (A) -> changed location near header. also, you will now ONLY see that post and nothing else
view ONLY the original post on op's blog (C) -> changed location near header. you will only see that post and nothing else. and ONLY if the op hasn't deleted it, otherwise it just shows an error
view the blog of the person you follow (D)
view the blog of the person D reblogged it from (F) -> option B no longer exists
view the blog of the op (E)
you might be thinking: "cool! i get more options so that's good, right?" well, no.
there are SEVERAL things wrong with this and it goes beyond the prev tags issue
1) first of all, it's counterintuitive that A and C changed locations to the area near the header, especially if your userbase was already used to the previous functions. it just seems like horrible UX design to me but let's put that aside for now.
2) as you can see, option B which allowed you to see the previous reblog of a post no longer exists.
now, if you click on the previous url, you will just be taken to their entire blog. you can no longer view the post itself.
someone asked staff about this, and they replied in this post that the change was INTENTIONAL and if you want to view the previous reblog you would have to "go through the notes view".
to borrow what someone else said:
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basically, this update just killed the prev tags culture in one fell swoop.
(sure, you can still use it to reply directly to the person you're reblogging from, but it's now literally useless to use "prev tags" for everyone else involved. sure, you can choose to copy tags or peer review them, but again, if people will have to copy them then the less people are likely to use them, and not every prev lends itself to peer-reviewing imo)
now, listen. i know not everyone likes the prev tags culture, but it just seems like such a poorly-thought decision to kill a culture that like... half of your entire userbase uses (see this poll as a quick reference) and that's UNIQUE to your site and sets you apart from other social media.
but it's also not even just prev tags. let's say you want to remove an annoying addition on a post's reblog chain? you can no longer do that.
however, i feel like this is the most important point:
regardless of how you may feel about the prev tags culture, the pure UI aspect of it should remain
what i mean by this is: even if you don't like prev tags, simply 1) being able to access the reblog chain, and 2) clicking on a post and actually have it take you to their BLOG (and not just a page with that one single post) is literally essential navigation.
this update threatens to drive down user engagement (which is already critically low) by making it harder to navigate. which is actually another point:
3) even if you click on A and C now to view those specific posts, it's NOT the same as it used to be.
before, you could view the reblog directly on the blog. so you could just scroll down and see the other posts leading up to it. now, you will be taken to a page where you will ONLY see that post and nothing else.
but also, you can no longer easily navigate other people's blogs.
you know how sometimes you would see like 50 notifications of someone going through an entire tag on your blog? that's going to happen a lot less, i'm afraid.
let's suppose you want to go to op's blog because they're an artist and you want to see more of their art. so you click on C and see that the tag they use for posts with their art is "#my art"
cool! before, you could just click on that tag and immediately view ALL of their art as long as the posts have that tag.
but now, if you click on that tag, it will take you to the ENTIRE tumblr tag with literally all the posts that everyone in the history of time has tagged with that specific tag.
now, to do the same thing that just took 2 clicks before, you would have to: click on C to view the post -> look for the tag you want to navigate -> click E to view their whole blog -> scroll and look for a post that just so happens to have that tag (the search function is literally useless) and hope to god that there's a recent one or you'll have to scroll for ages or simply give up -> if you happen to find it, click on that tag to navigate their posts.
you see how this is counterproductive, right? you see how this can literally drive down engagement with content creators, right?
if you make people's blogs harder to navigate, you will literally drive down the number of likes and reblogs on their posts, which have already been steadily declining for years now.
4) options D and E to view the blogs and not the posts are literally useless because you could already access other people's blogs before. you just had to click on their url to view their blogs starting from that specific post AND you could choose to just refresh it to view their newest posts.
either way, the change just seems completely unnecessary. and again, it's not just about the prev tags culture but about basic UI.
so what can we do about it?
i normally don't advocate for flooding staff with messages but i do feel like this is one of the worst updates staff has ever done (and that's saying something) and something needs to change.
even if they don't retcon the entire update, that's fine, but staff could at least add the option to view the reblog chain as a different feature (maybe even opt-in) for example. there are better ways to go about this than just axing an entire existing feature.
also, this same issue that makes it harder to navigate blogs needs to change. i feel like content creators will be especially affected by this unless this changes because you can no longer easily navigate their tags, so it will inevitably drive down engagement.
so please, contact staff and let them know we want a change.
you can contact support here!
here's a template for a possible message you could send, but feel free to edit it. (under category you can choose "Feedback")
Hi, I would like to politely request a change to the recent update that affects the reblog chain of posts. Regardless of the "prev tags" culture itself, the UI aspect of being able to view the reblog chain of a post is essential for navigation on this website. Even adding it as a separate, opt-in feature would be a huge help. Additionally, clicking on a post and then on one of the tags now takes you to the entire tumblr tag instead of the tag on that blog, which makes it harder to navigate blogs. Both of these issues have the potential to drive down user engagement by actively making it harder to navigate Tumblr, but especially for content creators. I hope you can do something to address these issues as soon as possible. Thanks in advance and have a nice day.
also, if you can and/or want, reblogs are appreciated to help spread the word!
that's pretty much the gist of the issue from what i've seen, but if anyone else has anything to add or a different way we could contact staff to make ourselves heard, please feel free to let me know!
TLDR: it's not just about prev tags, this update affects basic functionality and content creators as well
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lycheeloving · 1 month
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a concept I've been rotating in my head for a really long time now is an AU where the entire Justice League is yandere... with multiverse stuff, because I'm still me <3
They have some sort of machine in the Watchtower that can be used to contact and monitor other universes and even open portals, they've been in contact with a bunch of other Justice Leagues and help each other out in case of extreme emergencies.
However, they all spend a lot of time at the machine doing things unrelated to what it's supposed to be used for. They each watch a different civilian in a different universe, are basically obsessed with them, you could even say they're stalking them... They all try to do this secretly, as they're aware that this isn't exactly behavior that's seen as normal and healthy (and morally sound). Some of them are more successful at hiding it than others.
I imagine Batman would be the first to connect the dots that they're all obsessed with someone, gather evidence of everyone doing this, call everyone to a meeting and confront them with said evidence, only to then reveal that he's been doing the same thing...
And then he suggests bringing their obsessions here, as this behavior has caused them all to be distracted and get worse at their Justice League business, but if their darlings were here, they would no longer have to worry if they were safe or not! Additionally, as they're all from different universes, nobody would think to accuse the Justice League of this universe to be responsible for the kidnappings, nobody would be able to even connect the dots that the kidnappings are related! Batman tries to make it seem like he's suggesting this because he's worried about their performance, and not because he wants to get his darling closer to him, close enough to finally touch.
Everyone eagerly agrees, of course (after getting over the embarrassment of "Oh shit, Batman saw me stalking someone"). After some preparations, like choosing and remodeling rooms so the objects of their affections will hopefully feel comfortable being kept there (well, as comfortable as possible, considering the circumstances), they all work together to discreetly relocate all of their darlings from their original universes to their new home, the Watchtower in this universe.
Each darling gets their own room (that they share with their yandere, of course), but there's also rooms that are accessible to all of them, like a living room, a kitchen, etc, so they don't have to be alone when their yandere is out on patrol.
Everyone in the League tries to justify it to themselves by repeating how they're helping so many people, they've never asked for anything in return, they deserve this, but subconsciously they're all aware that what they're doing is not ok, they just don't care enough about that to stop. It's too late for that now anyways, their darlings are already here, they can't just return them!
I want to write something about what it's like to be the darling of the different members of the league at some point (and about the darlings escaping], but that might take a while, we'll see. Feel free to suggest Justice League members I should include though, I haven't quite decided about who exactly I want to be involved in this AU (other than the obvious Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. and probably Flash)
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Okay so I took some notes during the Hatchetfield Halloween party stream
This doesn't include spoilers for Working Boys (which was actually fucking excellent) and also doesn't include the proposed NMT3 episode descriptions just because I didn't screenshot and I've seen a billion posts of them going around.
Steph's mum's dead, Matt Lang says it's likely something to do with when Solomon Lauter says about the black book 'I'm never touching that book again'.
Nora is the owner of beanies
Melissa is a serial killer in every reality
The black alters constructed by the church of the starry children: Lakeside mall, Waylon place, the highschool, the starlight theatre, CCRP (formerly the site of the Hatchetfield Gazette)
Greenpeace girl's real name is Harmony Jones
Duke's dad was the sheriff of Hatchetfield and was murdered in October 2005 by Wilber Cross
Linda auditioned for Working Boys but was the only person not to make the cut.
Working boys was originally going to be much longer and more complicated and the black book prop was originally commissioned for it. In the end most of that content ended up getting lifted and pulled into nightmare time episodes. The song 'The Summoning' was originally written for Working Boys as the goal was to trick the cast into performing the ritual. This also originally wasn't supposed to happen in Nerdy Prudes.
They're keen to put the brakes on Hatchetfield at some point soon and the next musical definitely won't be Hatchetfield.
NMT2 ends on a cliffhanger because they originally intended to do NMT3 very shortly after to wrap up some of the loose ends.
Doing NMT3 will depend on demand. Writing a season of NMT takes about 4 times the amount of time as writing a musical and If they did NMT3 they'd want to make it even less zoom cally than NMT2 (i.e. have characters talking to each other) which also takes a lot of time and money. They are very keen to do it on a personal level as the arc from NMT2 currently feels unfinished but doing it will depend on demand.
They're keen to do more film style things akin to Working Boys.
Proposed NMT3 episode 'Bottle Imp' was originally planned to be part of NMT S1 E2.
NMT3 would revolve around Halloween.
They originally thought the musical trilogy would start with nerdy prudes must die and have the sequel be 'horny campers must die' (which became absintence camp), the third in the trilogy would have followed a similar plot to proposed NMT3 episode 'Devils night'.
The soldier referenced in the description for proposed NMT3 episode 'Orbweaver' is General MacNamara.
If they ever did another Hatchetfield musical at some point in the future it would be about Miss Holloway and her origins story.
They want to do a Hatchetfield movie at some point, and Working Boys was a test for how well Hatchetfield transfers over to that medium. This would have to be isolated in location and character list to be feasible. Their current thoughts for this would be 'Cast Party Massacre' which would involve a lot of the new characters we met in Working Boys.
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radioactive-earthshine · 10 months
Note
Hi, I know you already addressed a lot of the mischaracterization of Kon and Clark's relationship, but I was under the impression that Kon actually means 'abomination' in Kryptonian, and that Clark giving him that name was a rejection in itself. I am not very well versed in comics, so I apologize if this is just a fanon concept.
Hello!
You're not alone in being misled, as this concept has stretched far and wide and it is a very common theme in fandom works like fanfic.
The concept of Kon-El meaning "abomination" is canon, not fanon, but its source is from the New 52 reboot.
Some fans have in an attempt to create more angst for Kon adopted the concept that Clark gave Kon this name knowing full well what it meant as a way of rejecting him - this is incorrect - and it is blending versions together to make something that just never actually happened with Clark.
There are two versions of Kon getting his name in a main continuity - one in the 1994 comics, and the other in the New 52 Superboy comics.
To best answer your question, I am going to talk about the New 52 version first where "Kon-El" means abomination.
Also, it is important to remember that this Kon-El, isn't even actually Conner Kent (that's another post for another day comics are weird).
Anyway, in the New 52 reboot Superboy is 'called' Kon-El not by Clark, but by Kara!
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Superboy v.6 (2011-2014) #6
In this iteration, Kara has some extreme prejudiced bigotry towards "Kon" for being a clone due to the disastrous history Krypton had involving clones. It prompted her to attempt to kill "Kon" the moment she found out he was a clone after more or less calling him a slur.
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Superboy v.6 (2011-2014) #6
You can blame Scott Lobdell for this particular evisceration of Kara's character and for the name Kon-El warping into 'abomination' henceforth.
This particular run and story is no longer relevant to main continuity and it is not attached to Conner Kent because this did not happen to Conner Kent, but it did in fact happen and Krypton's disastrous history involving clones is still canon as well. Kon is still facing varying degrees of discrimination from Kryptonian-based ideology (Eradicator) because he is a clone.
Now let's talk about Clark and Kon and where Kon-El first came from and put a stop to the slander.
Where the name "Kon-El" originally came from was from Conner's 1994 solo series where Clark offered it to him from a place of affection.
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Superboy (1994) #59
The original moment of Kon obtaining his name from Clark was profound because up until this point he did not have a proper name. He was just "Superboy" or "Kid" or "Pup" (derogatory) so when Clark offers this Kon is so happy he starts crying.
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Superboy (1994) #59
At this point in time in comic history Kon-El did not mean abomination, "Kon" was a real Kryptonian name, and in the original run Clark did not even have any resentment towards Kon or negative feelings about his existence at all. He trusted him, felt he was worthy of the S-shield as a representative of hope, and at this point he wanted him to be part of his family.
This is Clark adopting Kon into his family right here in this moment - because Superman is the tale of the immigrant, the refugee and of love in family where blood does not equal family. That is what he is saying right here in this issue.
It is also important to note that at this point Geoff Johns' making Kon a 'clone' of Lex AND Clark is not canon and Kon is not even supposed to be blood related to Clark.
In closing...
Clark's relationship to Kon/Conner Kent in the main comic continuity is not hostile or rejection-based.
In their comic origins they had a nebulous relationship which over time evolved to being firmly brothers with a huge age gap and now in current continuity they are again brothers but with a different perspective.
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Action Comics #1028
Current continuity Clark who doesn't remember Kon at all knows him for less than a week and claims him and he is actually distraught he doesn't remember him.
Fandom is transformative and angst/hostility/rejection will always be a major theme people will love to create and consume - but it is also important to recognize that some details are simply not canon and should be regarded as transformative works to tell a story.
I hope this clears some things up from the comics side of DC.
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elvisabutler · 1 year
Text
spark ( chapter two: prayer )
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fandom: elvis presley | elvis ( 2022 ) rating: m pairing: elvis presley ( fameless big daddy electrician/handyman ) x female original character word count: 10570ish so just shy of 11k this time. warnings: talk of children. a bit of negative self talk. infidelity in some form. elvis in glasses. religion playing an at least faintly important part. use of a washcloth in inventive ways. faint naivety regarding come and precome and pleasurable parts of sex, i suppose. fingering. implied/referenced masturbation ( m and f ). pining. talk of female reproductive issues. author’s note: so before you read anything involving this. i need you all to either go into this chapter blind other than my note about female reproductive issues or i need you to scroll all the way down to the bottom of this past the tag list for a bit of an explanation for that warning. i'm fine either way but i didn't want to spoil it in the warnings considering i left what happened fairly nebulous. all that being said hi y'all, welcome to the second chapter of spark! there is not a lot i can say other than telling you all i am so very thankful for every single one of you who read it and especially those of you who left comments in the notes or reblogged because hearing what feelings i invoked or what i did to y'all was a highlight and truly makes me want to interact with all of you more and makes me just want to hear more from all of you. this chapter and the next are a doozy but this one specifically has the nearly 6k bath scene as i've called it so you're in for a treat. special thank you to my southern gothic/southern sticky romance soulmate @precious-little-scoundrel because y'all know this wouldn't exist without her little whispers. additional thanks to my discord wives @ab4eva and @butlersxbirdy, my princess and my peach y'all know how much hearing y'all scream about my snippets made me know i was heading in the right direction. @blurredcolour thank you for also reassuring me that the one bit i showed you worked and wasn't just completely a mess. and last but not least @powerofelvis and @prompted-wordsmith thank you both for the edit job and smitty specifically for a few choice lines. i still am never gonna not laugh about you trying to sneak weepy in there though. and now before this author's not gets much longer, i present the second chapter of spark, titled prayer.
It's so quiet in the room. It's too quiet in the kitchen. It's too quiet even as Lilly hears Elvis's deep breaths against her back, hears her own softer breaths mixed with something that sounds almost like a whimper—a soft cry of elation with every other breath and shift of her body against his. Her vagina—her pussy—oh, she doesn't know what to call it now—aches in a way she's never felt before, not even when her husband took her for the first time in their bed. It aches but it doesn't hurt, it burns but in the way her legs burned after she would go running with Melly or how her arms burned after lifting up a basket of Nathan's clothes. Her—what had Elvis called it?—her clit, her button throbs as she feels his soft cock brush up against it as he moves forward just a bit, causing a noise that sounds so obscene Lilly can't help the way her cheeks darken even as another noise leaves her. Another whimper, this time lower in pitch, a keen leaves her mouth as Elvis stills his attempt to separate them.
"Lilly, darlin' I gotta—you gotta let me let ya down. Ya leg's startin' to hurt, ain't it?" Elvis murmurs, his hand moving down her flank, watching how her body starts to shiver, their shared sweat starting to cool on her body as the fan–the fan he just fixed whirrs above them. "Don't… it's gonna start hurtin' the more we stay here, darlin'. Let—" His hand moves to her thigh, feels how it's so sticky and slick with God knows what fluid, his or hers or both, and he's not sure how he's going to take his hand off of her if it starts to stick. Her shivers are starting to strengthen, be it from nervousness or the cool air or a combination and Elvis can't help the way a singular one flows through him, causing him to tighten his hold on her thigh and bury his face against her shoulder, a groan leaving his lips as he feels her clench at it. "It's—come on, Lilly, I gotcha, let me help ya."
It's those words, that mild parroting of words he had just whispered against the shell of her ear not even 15 minutes ago that has her head falling forward just a little, has her body going lax completely, a rag doll for him to maneuver how he sees fit. She doesn't trust herself to help him, doesn't trust the thoughts in her head that tell her to make him keep her this way, to keep him inside of her and keep her filled and aching all at once. Doesn't trust the traitorous thought that tells her Nathan would have never done this, would never be this gentle and calming with her. She'd already be standing on shaky legs with him tucking himself in his pants before telling her that was good. Elvis's arm catches her, holds her tight against him still as he helps her pull her leg down off the counter even as she hears that noise again that—squelch of her arousal and the sheer amount of come he had released in her. If this is how he sounded inside of her, what would happen when he pulled out of her? What would happen as he left her stretched and satisfied? Would—perhaps some would take. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. 
"Lil." His whisper is gentle, almost as if he's scared she'll bolt. "You hold onto me. Gonna get outta ya now. Gonna pull out of ya."
Her arm and her hand grip his own tightly, her shivers increasing as she feels Elvis start to pull out. The more he inches out bit by bit the more empty she feels, the more she feels as if there's a wound there that won't heal caused by him leaving. It's never felt like this with Nathan and she knows, she knows so deep in her bones and soul that should worry her. But her mind, her body, her everything has narrowed down to her and Elvis as he finally breaks free of her vagina and she feels a wetness like she's never felt before slide down her legs. Unbidden and unrestrained, a sob is wrenched from her throat as she's set down, her feet finally touching the floor once more. A sudden shift back to reality she wasn't prepared for.
Elvis's arm tightens around her even as her shivers worsen and as he feels and hears the sob that comes from her. He doesn't think he hurt her—not physically, at least—but he can't… he can't check her like this. Not when he looks down at her legs and sees his release sliding down her leg.
A realization hits him in that exact moment as his arm tightens around where—where a child would grow if any of his release caught. Where their child would grow if it caught. He hadn't worn protection. He allowed himself to enter her bare and come not once, but twice. Right in this very moment he could be sealing both of their fates. Her to have the child of a man who is not her husband and him—him, to see another man raise his child. To see his child grow up through pictures instead of being there for every waking moment. His thoughts are interrupted by another of Lilly's sobs and he shakes his head. She–she needs a bath, he can't let Nathan come home and see her like this. Even if he had been neglecting her, leaving her to wilt and leaving her to be watered and in the worst of cases fertilized by another man, Elvis couldn't be sure of his reaction to seeing the proof leaking out of his wife.
The fan creaks as it spins, unused to spinning after the break it had been given from being broken. Elvis's brain settles on the noise even as the air circulating causes even his body to let out a shiver. His own natural heat feels like it isn't enough in this one moment, as if it's too busy trying to keep Lilly warm to remember to keep him fully warm and yet he thinks he can handle it. It's nothing compared to winter in France. Nothing compared to the bite of the cold against his skin then. And yet—and yet it cuts far more to the bone, through his muscles and fat and everything that should protect him. Straight to the heart of him.
His arm finally falls from around Lilly’s waist as she moves to stand on her own, her legs a little shaky like a newborn deer. He hastily tucks himself back into his jumpsuit—she can't see what he put inside her, can't see his uncut cock even if it brought her pleasure he wonders if she's never had before. When she finally looks at him he has to stop himself from pulling her into his arms to kiss her. She looks… she looks like an angel and he's corrupted her like a devil. He's touched something that might not have been pure and innocent but was as close as he’s seen in such a long time and sullied it. Touched it with hands that have seen war and have seen death and threatened to cause death even in peacetime. What sort of person did that, what sort of man who believes in God with all his being now would do this to another man’s wife? Breaking not one, but two sins, and for what? To try and fix something that it isn’t his place to fix, that will never be his place to fix? To try and fix something only to potentially cause more things to break inside and out. He hopes she doesn’t see how his hand clenches into a fist, hopes she doesn’t see how he can’t look her in the eye right at this moment. He hopes—he hopes—he hopes she can forgive him, he hopes God can forgive him. 
Lilly can’t help the way her legs shake slightly and how her body trembles just a little bit. She’s not cold, not in a way that would cause this much shivering and yet here she was acting as if she had been dunked in a bath filled with cold water and shoved into a Yankee winter. Elvis was—is warm in a way she knows would help. Or at least she feels as if it would help because it would just be an extension of taking care of her, wouldn’t it? It would be him continuing the duty he’s given himself despite not… not being the man who promised to love and to hold and to take care of her in every conceivable way. He is just a man. He is just a man who she has grown quite fond of but a man nonetheless. A man who is not her husband and yet—no, this was just both of them being tempted and falling for temptation. In her mind, she thinks of never having Elvis speak to her again, thinks of a world where this act has ruined their relationship. No, their friendship, and she bites her lip to keep from crying out in anguish. He had been such good company. He is such good company and to lose that would have her all alone once again with nothing to show for it except… perhaps. Perhaps his release could catch inside her. Perhaps it could catch and form a child, their child and she would have someone to be with. She would have the child she longed for to spend her days doting on and mothering. She would have her company and she could be so much less angry—despondent over her friends and she could enjoy Melly’s pregnancy and any other ones that would come after because she’d at least have her own child. Too preoccupied with her thoughts, she nearly misses Elvis speaking to her and grabbing ahold of her hand. 
“Lil darlin’, ya shakin’ like a leaf. Ya got a robe or somethin’ in that bedroom of yourn?” He asks all while walking them ever so slowly to the bathroom near the other bedroom. It has a bathtub, that much he knows from using it but he knows it’s likely not anything compared to the one in the main bathroom adjacent to her bedroom. Lilly can only nod as an answer. “Ya good to go grab it? Don’t wanna—it’s not my place to see ya bedroom.”
He’s right and she knows he is but a part of her, the part of her that’s clinging onto his hand for dear life and doesn’t trust her legs to carry her into the bedroom and back to him shakes her head. “I’m—I don’t—walk me to it?”
“Lilly,” he starts before he looks up and sees her face pleading with him, begging silently in almost the same way it was up against the sink and he stops himself before nodding. “Just keep holdin’ my hand. I’ll walk wit’ ya.”
Between the walls and Elvis’s hand, Lilly’s steps are a little more certain by the time she makes it to the doorway of her bedroom where just on the inside there’s a hook that has her robe. She creaks the door open just slightly to grab it before pulling it on. It smells faintly of Nathan’s cologne and she can’t help but crinkle her nose in distaste, wishing it smelt different. The walk over to the other bathroom is just as slow and just as measured but the moment they reach it, Elvis moves to set her on the toilet after shutting the lid. His knees crack audibly as he gets down on the floor with a groan. Lilly winces as she hears the water turn on. “Warmer than you think I should have it.” 
He hadn’t asked what temperature she wanted the water but she figured it was best to tell him ahead of time, just in case he thought she needed it only lukewarm. His response is a chuckle before he turns the hot knob just a bit more. 
Her mind wanders as she sits there feeling more of his release sticking to her leg. Her mind wanders as she looks at Elvis in his jumpsuit still half open but done up so she can’t see what was between his legs, what had given her such pleasure that her vagina clenches 
involuntarily at the memory. Clenches at the memory of how full it felt, how it felt like it was catching, how it felt different than Nathan’s penis. Surely—oh surely with how full she feels even now with his release inside her it would take. It would catch and take and her belly would swell with new life. Her child would grow inside her and kick and roll and make her so happy even as she pushed them out, painful as everyone had told her it was. Her child would look like her if it was a daughter or perhaps a healthy mix of her and Elvis if it was a boy. Her breath catches at the image and she finds herself leaning against the toilet and clutching her hands to her stomach with her eyes shut. Her eyes shut so that the lord could hear her prayer because she’s only focusing on Him and the words she was praying up into the heavens. Please, Lord, please let it catch. Bless me with just this one baby.
Elvis looks over at Lilly over the rims of his glasses and is struck by how she looks so serene in the moment. How her robe covers her and how her head is tilted up as if she’s praying for something. His eyes drift down and notice her hands on her belly. Her hands that seem small compared to his on her belly and briefly, in a flash he berates himself for later, he pictures her growing round with his baby after the release he's just left in her has taken root. Pictures her blossoming and blooming right before his eyes as she thanks him with his favorite dinner with their child rolling inside of her under an apron. The word please leaves her lips, though, and it shatters that image quicker than anything else. She is married to an idiotic child, yes, but he is still her husband and is still a strapping young man. Perhaps still more suited for her than him. More suited to give her those children to help her bloom. He has to shut his eyes and pray for forgiveness and for God to dissolve his come before it reaches those parts of her that can bear fruit. She’s pleading with God that it doesn’t take—that they aren’t caught with their indiscretion and his mind is being selfish with the desires it has for her.
It doesn’t take long for the tub to fill and Elvis turns off the water before it gets to be too much. He can’t look at Lilly, hasn’t looked at her since he heard the word please fall from her lips and yet he knows he has to. He knows to help her into the bathtub he has to but he stares at the water, watching it ripple just a little until he hears Lilly’s voice. 
“Are you—? You can… can you stay?” Her skin flushes at her own question, as if it’s the worst possible thing for her to say, as if it’s mortifying to have it leave her lips. He is not her husband. He is, at best, a new friend—and she wants him to see her completely bare. “You don’t—”
Elvis cuts off her words with a shake of his head. “I’ll stay for ya. Since ya want me to.” He pauses, his eyes finally looking at her: specifically looking at her legs where his release is still sliding down onto the floor of the bathroom. Had he honestly come that much? “Ya—e need to—I came in ya, Mrs. H—Lilly. It’s gonna need to be washed outta ya,” his hand twitches as his eyes drift to her stomach and he has to stop himself from placing his hand on it with his next words. “Don’t want ya bein’... Don’t wanna cause ya any issues.”
Don’t want to have my child growin’ inside of ya, is what he means, Lilly thinks. Her traitorous mind wants to be that mean woman Nathan’s accused of her of being and spit that she wants to swell with his baby. She wants to grow round with his baby because she wants a baby and Nathan won’t give her one. She wants a child to love and dote on and to cherish. She bites her tongue though, because it’s not right to say it, it’s not proper to admit she might do anything for a baby. Instead she nods and moves to take off the robe, motioning for Elvis to help her with the rest of her clothes as she stands up. Ever the gentleman, he obliges, and Lilly can’t help the goosebumps and shivers that dot her in his hands’ wake as his fingertips glide across her skin. Her body hunches over just slightly to protect her modesty as if he hadn’t just had her against her kitchen sink not once, but twice. Elvis frowns slightly when he sees this, the frown only deepening as she moves to step into the tub on her own. It doesn’t take him but a second to scoop her into his arms.
Lilly squeaks slightly at the unexpected touch before she leans against him, her hand moving to play with his chest hair until he sets her down softly into the tub. A whine escapes her lips as her vagina hits the water, the temperature difference reminding her of their actions. A moment passes before Elvis opens his mouth to ask something and Lilly tilts her head to the cabinet above the toilet. “Middle shelf.”
A nod is his only response to her direction until she hears the crack of his knees signaling how he’s back down on the ground. Her eyes haven’t left the water, watching how there’s little bits of white, stringy and almost clear swirling around the water. It was all going to waste. It was all going to be going down the drain and she was going to remain barren, a woman with no fruit of her loins to call her own when there should be no reason for that. Elvis eyes her before setting the washcloth in the water and humming, his hand moving to touch her shoulder, a strangely domestic touch that she doesn’t shy away from.
“There’s so much of it.” Lilly whispers absentmindedly, her head tilting just so as Elvis hums and chuckles slightly because she’s not wrong. 
“It’s just—that’s my—that’s what I produce before I actually release inside ya. Hell, I think most of it might be that ‘cause I ain’t ever produced this much.” A truth if he’s honest with himself, even in his younger days he doesn’t remember this much being in a condom and yet he had filled her with so much it’s just leaking out of her. He had filled her like he was her husband and they were trying for a child. He had done the unthinkable and yet there’s a small part of him that wonders how much of his release is inside of her. That small part has his cock twitching just slightly against his leg, ready to give her more if she asks, to fill her up and replace what’s being lost in the water. He shakes his head to clear it, to direct the blood flow back to his thinking self and not the desirous snake in his pants.
“This ain’t the part we gotta worry ‘bout anyway. It’s the thicker stuff,” he points to a small bit that’s floating from her vagina as he speaks, “like that right there that we gotta worry ‘bout. But the rest? Ya see how it's slidin’ right out? We don't gotta worry bout those parts.”
Lilly has to stop herself from perking up at that knowledge. That there’s more where this came from and that this? She can lose as much of this as she is right now while still perhaps having his seed catch. This was just the initial bit, the majority of it is still inside of her and she clenches, tightens her vagina even as it feels to be an insurmountable task as it throbs and pulses from the effort. She can't tilt her hips up like her mother had told her but later, perhaps, later she could lay in bed and tilt her hips to help whatever is left behind reach where it needs to be. 
Elvis can't put it off any longer as he stares at rippling water, he needs to help this along, other than those small bits not much of his release is coloring the water. If too much stayed within her—her body would change soon, her body would change and it would be all his fault. He would be responsible for her blooming and blossoming but with a child that wouldn't be, couldn't be taken care of the way he'd want them to. He leans closer to Lilly and finds his hand holding the washcloth sliding up her leg. 
"Don't—I gotcha Lilly. Gonna help clean ya out, alright? Gonna be as gentle as I can." He waits to see her acknowledgement of a nod before he finally moves his hand up to between her legs, the heel of his hand against her mound and his hand covering everything else.
Her body—her vagina feels as if he's shocked her, as if there's a live wire from his hand to her. A gasp leaves her lips even as she inadvertently grinds down on his hand, chasing a feeling she can't quite put her finger on. It’s almost instinctual the way she reacts, the way her eyes shut as she hisses, the pressure too much while at the same time too little. At her hiss Elvis pulls back his hand as if it’s been burned. It’s not his job to take care of her, it’s not his job to make sure she’s alright after their intercourse against the sink and yet he doesn’t think he could live with himself if he hurt her. He knows how to take care of a woman after sex and he’d be damned if he didn’t treat Lilly with all the respect—and love, his mind traitorously whispers—she deserves.
“Lil, ya alright? Did I…” he starts before his words are cut off with a violent shake of her head. Words are failing her and his eyes search her face for a clue as if that will explain her actions and finds it in the way she shifts in the bath slightly. “Ya sensitive down there?” 
Lilly nods and breathes slowly through her nose. “I think so? It’s—It feels like it’s throbbing, Mr. Pre—Elvis.” 
In the back of his mind he knows that means she took him well and that he pleasured her thoroughly. It means that her body is overwhelmed with the sensation. It means that it’ll be like that for days to come. A small, sick bit of joy shoots through him at the thought of her aching for him and his stomach roils as soon as the thought comes to him. He would be no better than her husband who ignores her if he took pleasure in the idea. If he took pleasure in knowing he left her aching for him while she is married to her husband. 
His words are measured when he speaks, a low murmur as he leans closer, taking the washcloth back in his hands. “Ya ain’t—I’m a lil bigger than most, should have prepped ya better. Jus’. We both got a lil’ overwhelmed, didn’t we? ‘S’alright, ‘m gonna make it better, darlin’. Gonna be gentle as I can. Gonna help ya get all this out of ya. Keep ya from having my baby.”
Lilly’s face falls at his words even though he doesn’t notice, too preoccupied with shifting his focus downward to her vagina. Her breath is slow and measured as she watches him, trying to give this a clinical air, trying to make her body realize there’s nothing arousing about this. This is him just trying to clean his release out of her to keep from being tied to her in some way permanent. Her hand drifts to her belly as she curls into him, her head leaning onto his shoulder. He’s methodical with the outside of her and using the cloth he tries to reach between her folds, tries to open her up only to feel as she tenses just that little bit harder. Forcing her open isn’t an option, not one he wants to seriously consider, at least, and he pauses. His fingers through the rough washcloth threaten to ignite another fire low in her belly as they rub slightly against her skin—at least, if the way she whimpers softly is any indication. Perhaps if he brushed against her clit, perhaps that could open her up. It’s helped in other times when he’s wanted to pleasure another woman. His thumb is already near it and without dwelling on his thought his thumb swipes against it, the wash cloth adding friction that has her unclenching faster than he thought was possible, the shock of it ricocheting through her system. A gasp escapes her lips. A gasp that sounds like his name. He refuses to dwell on what that means as he brushes his thumb against her clit once more. 
“Elvis,” she whimpers his name as his thumb swipes a third and a fourth time and she can feel her vagina clenching and unclenching at the feeling, at the sensation as finally she relaxes fully, allowing his fingers to enter her without a question. “Sensitive.” 
Her mind is narrowing to single words, the swirl of arousal curling tighter and tighter in her abdomen with each brush of his thumb and each press of his fingers inside of her. The washcloth shouldn’t help the feeling, it shouldn’t make her eyes want to roll in the back of her head from the friction and the slight roughness. The splashes of his arm and hand hitting the water as his fingers move in and out of her ground her and yet have her floating away. Her brain registers him speaking through her whimpers of pleasure. Pleasure that she doesn’t know what to—to do with, having been denied it for so long. 
“I know it’s a lot but gotta be thorough, Lilly. Gotta make sure it's all out,” he whispers softly to her, his fingers never stopping their task. “That's it, unclench for me, Lil darlin. Let—ya gotta help me, we gotta make sure there isn't anything left up there."
Faintly she can hear him and feel herself nodding, too busy trying not to rock against his fingers. That’s not what he’s doing this for, he’s trying to prevent—he’s trying to prevent a child. He’s trying to protect her marriage and yet her body wants to move on instinct. She wants to be beholden to her instincts just this once. Just this once she wants to have pleasure and happiness she doesn’t have to beg and plead for. It’s nice, this haze that overwhelms her senses, and she can’t truly recall the cold, distant figure of her husband leaving each and every day for work without so much as a kiss on the cheek as it has been recently. Instead she is nestled into the crook of Mr. Presley’s neck, lips tasting of the salt of his sweat. She wants to feel like he made her feel against the sink. Her body cants itself just so in order to earn another swipe of his thumb and she feels herself dangling on the precipice of something—of her orgasm, maybe? Was she about to find release on his fingers as he cleaned her body out with a washcloth? As he cleaned his release so a child didn’t form inside her, giving away their actions from tonight? A miniscule part of her feels as if she ought to be mortified but it doesn’t drown out her sighs and whines as she feels his fingers curl just so—trying to make sure she’s clean. It doesn’t drown out how her hips move once in another attempt to grind before he puts his hand on the back of her neck. A comforting gesture, yes, but when paired with his next words seals her fate.
“Take what ya need right now. Jus' takin’ care of ya. It’ll help get more outta ya. That’s it, Lil darlin, Elvis’s gotcha.”
A keen, high pitched and pained, leaves her mouth as she feels herself fluttering around—no, clenching around—his fingers before becoming practically boneless against him, the aftershocks from the orgasm causing a new round of shivers and goosebumps to happen. Her face burrows into his shoulder as he works her through them gently before her hand moves to grab his wrist, the sensitivity finally becoming too much. 
“Elvis it’s, o-oh—” Lily struggles to articulate her words and breathe and exist in this moment, the sensation drowning out any thoughts other than the pulse of her own heartbeat she feels between her legs. “It—”
Elvis shushes her, trying his hand on her neck, rubbing it and tightening over and over as he finishes cleaning her out, knowing that whatever is left is too high up for him to reach. He’d have to just pray to god for that to be done away with. "Shhhh, Lilly… Darlin', I'm sorry, bein' as gentle as I can.”
Lilly should object to how his hand at her neck feels almost as if she's a kitten being dragged along by their mother but she can't find it in her to do such a thing. She can't find it in her to since objecting would mean he'd remove something that truthfully is keeping her tenuous grip on reality and the Earth there. She figures she'd float away without it. There's a part of her that doesn't think she'd mind in that moment, that she'd understand floating away after what's happened because it almost doesn't feel real, especially as he takes care to wash her body despite her being fully capable of doing it herself. His grip loosens for the last time as she watches him lean over and unplug the drain. The water swirls slowly at first, gaining speed the longer she stares at it and the more of his release slides down the drain. She hears the crack of Elvis's knees as he stands up and winces for him even as his shadow towers over her. She should get up out of the tub, she knows this and yet her legs feel just shaky enough that she finds the task impossible until she feels his arms underneath hers.
Getting out with his support allows her to fully catch her bearings as he hands her a towel that she wraps around her body, drying herself off as he grabs another and assists with her legs, his knees cracking once again at him getting back down. She makes the mistake of looking down at him and seeing him look up at her with a surprising sense of worship she only ever usually associates with church and God. A shiver makes its way through her at the realization. 
Her voice sounds like it's going through a tunnel as she says something about how she's fine from here. She swears she hears herself say Mr. Presley and hears him say Mrs. Harris like he hadn't seen her naked and like he hadn't just helped her to clean out his release. Their formalities would make her laugh in any other situation, especially if she thinks of his seed catching inside of her. It wouldn't do to call her that when she was carrying his child, now would it? Wouldn't do for her to call him that as her belly rounded out with his baby, would it? Would it?
He leaves and she waits until she hears a goodbye burst forth loud enough to break through the tunnel her ears are in to finish drying off and getting ready.
She barely finishes making dinner as Nathan walks through the door.
Elvis… Elvis finds himself under his shower cursing his actions even as he remembers her face and her pleasure. He dreams of a life. He dreams of a life with her. He dreams of their life together. It feels worse than any nightmare.
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Charlie notices something is up the moment he walks in the diner and sees Elvis already sitting down at their table, a plate with just bacon in front of him in addition to eggs and what looks like toast, or at least he hopes it’s toast. It looks like a plate for him and Elvis and yet he sees the man he's willing to call one of his truest friends eating it all as if it's just for him. He ought to be gentle about the whole thing, ask Elvis a question calmly and innocently. 
Instead, as any sensible friend who’s seen you naked and bleeding and cryin’ for your mama does, he steals two pieces of bacon and sits down in the chair across from his best friend and chomps on said bacon before asking one, singular question: "What are you doing?"
Elvis's hand darts out with a speed that betrays his army training to grab the other piece of bacon only to be rebuffed with a frown. "Eating bacon, Charlie. Ya suddenly blind now? Short and blind, what a catch for ya wife."
Charlie visibly recoils and waits for Elvis to apologize or give him some clue that the statement was just his normal, playful ribbing. The crunch of the bacon disabuses him of that notion as the minutes tick by. "We got a family so she must've seen something in me. Just thankful she didn't see you first."
"Ain't that everyone's damn thanks. Thankful I didn't see their wives back then but if I see 'em now they ain't gotta worry. Women don't go for this body like they did back in the day." Elvis stabs at his eggs and Charlie—Charlie thinks he knows what's going on and he can't help but roll his eyes internally. 
"Did some woman turn you down and now you're moping? Over a plate of bacon after church?" He tries to keep the judgment out of his voice but there's still a hint there that he can't do away with. 
If looks could kill as well as every gun both he and Elvis have ever used, Charlie's certain in this moment he would be preparing to go to sleep in his eternal resting place. As it stands he once again realizes that perhaps he ought to not poke his absolute bear of a best friend. Elvis's next words punctuated by another crunch of bacon and a laugh so bitter Charlie's never heard it come from him seals that idea.
"Oh. Charlie, my boy, my boy, that would have been better. I would have handled that like a champ," he shakes his head, "ya 'member Mrs. Harris? The—the woman I told ya 'bout?"
“Yeah, the one with the niece and the husband who can’t work his way ‘round a wrench. What about—?” Charlie stops mid sentence and stares long and hard at Elvis trying to school his face into something normal and something less like he looks about ready to murder him before realizing it’s impossible and saying the first words that come to mind in the most hushed tone he can manage. “Wasn’t one of your rules you wouldn’t sleep with a married woman?”
Elvis can’t help but curse the fact that Charlie has seen him through some of, if not the worst, parts of his life and can regrettably read him like an open book sometimes. He doesn’t answer with words. Instead he allows himself to eat a piece of toast that is both soggy and crispy all at once. His silence is practically deafening before Charlie exhales. 
“You—ou got me thinking your daddy died or something and all this is because you slept with another man’s wife? A man who’s practically ignoring her despite how she looks like a—” Elvis swallows and holds up his pointer finger before practically growling. 
“Not other fuckin’ word, Hodge. Not a single fuckin’ word. Lilly ain’t some fuckin’ European floozy we forgot ‘bout the next day. Don’t ya say ‘nother fuckin’ word.”
A chuckle leaves Charlie’s mouth despite his best efforts to stop it. Elvis is moping about a woman alright, just not the way Charlie thought he was. He wouldn’t have—He loves Elvis, he does but he would have never predicted him managing to charm a woman like that if she didn’t know who he was beforehand. If she didn’t know him as he was when they both came back from the war, both struggling with things they had seen yet pared down to a lean type of beauty: the scraggly pines that grew on Italian mountaintops. Yet maybe, just maybe, there was hope. Very stupid and unwise hope, but hope nonetheless that Elvis might be able to enjoy the same sort of life he has. 
"Cursing on the Lord's day. At me. She's got you—pass me your whole pig's worth of bacon and tell me what happened, E."
Elvis stares at the plate and lets out a heavy sigh as he scoots the plate over. “It ain’t a whole pig’s worth of bacon.”
“It’s as big as my head.” Charlie states, motioning to get the attention of one of the waitresses in an attempt to get a plate and different food even as he eats a piece of bacon.
“Ya have a tiny head, Hodge. Like a damn lil hedgehog.” 
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Meanwhile across town Lilly finds herself in her sister’s kitchen, sitting at her dining room table with the light of the sun shining on her through the window. Her sister Melly busies herself with the finishing touches of a lunch for the two of them and Jerry. Lilly had tried to help only to be waved off with an ease that had her sitting down in the chair watching, her hands settling on her stomach as they had been since that fateful afternoon. It’s too soon to know, she reasons, too soon to know if Elvis’s seed took and has filled her empty womb with a child she’s craved for years. Yet her hands gravitate there anyway, almost trying to provide a cradle as if to tell the child she hopes is forming inside her that it’s okay to stay, it’s alright and that she’ll be their mother. She’ll take such good care of them and they’ll get to meet their cousins. They’ll get to meet their cousins and grow up with the one swelling underneath Melly’s apron. 
Melly notices this, of course, notices how her sister is cradling her belly and yet she doesn’t dare ask. She doesn’t dare ask if Nathan’s finally done right by her sister and given her the baby she so desperately wants. Her chest hasn’t changed and she hasn’t felt a firmness when she’s brushed against her but perhaps it’s just too early.
“You’re looking happier,” Melly comments as she sets down the plates of food. She leaves Jerry’s on the counter, knowing her husband will grab it when he comes back inside from dealing with the yard.
Lilly can’t help the way she smiles slightly and practically preens at the acknowledgment that she seems happier. Elvis might not be—Elvis might not have been by since that afternoon but there was something so beautiful about his actions, so gentle and nourishing about him that it stuck with her. The throbbing in her vagina’s finally stopped after days of her cupping it and playing with it next to Nathan’s snoring body, wishing her fingers were thicker and longer and wishing it was Elvis’s cock sliding in and out of her. That he was keeping her full and telling her he’s got her, he’s always got her while filling her with so much of his release that there’d be no other choice but to swell with his child. 
She doesn’t dwell on the fact that it’s taken another man to make her feel a way she hasn't for years. She can’t dwell on that because it’s improper and she’d like to just bask in the glow of everything for now. She’d like to bask in the glow of things before a different glow would overtake her. 
“I feel happier.” Lilly answers, still continuing to grin as she digs into the food. There’s a hint of nausea at some of it but she chalks it up to being hungry. “I feel different.”
Melly’s eyebrows both move upward as she settles into her chair and takes a bite of her toast first, knowing how her stomach reacts to food without a bland base to start off with. “Different. Does that have anything to do with Nathan and you? Anything you want to tell me?”
Lilly’s hand stills in its subconscious rubbing as her eyes widen. “No. Not—not yet.”
There’s something that shifts in Melly, a brightness that shines through as she looks at Lilly. If she is pregnant it's too soon to tell but the idea that she'd be carrying her second while Lilly is finally carrying her first delights her in ways she can't put into words. It's perhaps a secret dream she's always had. The scrape of her chair against the linoleum is harsh to both their ears and yet it’s a small price to pay for the feel of Melly’s hand against her stomach. 
“You’ll tell me as soon as you know?” Melly’s voice comes out as a whisper, as if she’s scared to speak it any louder. “You’ll tell me I’ll have a niece or nephew on the way?”
Lilly nods quickly as she hears the door open and hears Jerry’s voice carry into the kitchen. Melly’s hand moves off of her stomach as quick as can be before Jerry pops his head in and smiles. “Won’t ask what you two were doing before I got here.”
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Life doesn't stop that Sunday and instead continues on and on with one week passing by and then another and another until Lilly knows she's due for her cycle and yet it doesn't appear. Her underwear remains pristine and white with not a drop of blood in sight. She doesn't dare tell Melly or anyone yet, knowing it could be a fluke, a stress induced issue but she swears she feels her womb hardening. She swears she feels it bloating in a way that feels different than what comes before her cycle. Perhaps, perhaps Elvis had done it. Perhaps Elvis had filled her and their child was forming unbeknownst to either of them. It occurs to her that she should try and reach out to him and see if he can come by her home. There's nothing that's broken for him to be fixed and yet he deserves to know what's happening inside her. That soon her stomach will round outward and their child will kick and roll and grow inside of her. That she is still married but it would be cruel to deprive him of ever knowing of their child. 
It's too soon for him to know, she'll tell him when she's sure, when there's no mistaking what has happened to her because of their actions that afternoon. She'll tell him then, she'll convince him to come by and press his hand against her stomach so he can feel what he's—what she wished and prayed to have happen even as he washed himself out of her. He ought to be able to be in their life somehow because he's their father and he'd make such a brilliant one. He'd make such a brilliant one and her mind traitorously tells her it's a shame she wouldn't be raising the child with him. 
Six weeks is a long time for him to be avoiding Lilly and he knows that. He knows that she didn't deserve to be left out in the cold like that—to be left without company and companionship like that but he can't help it. He can't help how his mind drifts when his exhaustion sets in remembering how her body felt against his when they danced and when she sagged against him. It’s a sin to covet a man’s wife as much as he covets Lilly. It’s a sin to want to be in another man’s home taking care of his wife in any way she’ll let him. It’s a sin and yet it feels so right, it feels like he’d be doing what he’s meant to be doing. Elvis is not her husband and yet his mind—his traitorous mind and soul tells him he should be and tells him she needs him in some way. She’s been happier, he thinks, since that afternoon—and his mind tells him that he had something to do with that. There’s a glow about her and it draws him in like a moth to a flame before he pulls himself away every Sunday when she passes off her niece. A nagging thought crosses his mind as the weeks go by and he swears that glow is stronger every time he sees her, that perhaps it wasn’t just happiness and joy causing her to glow that way. He ought to ask her and yet the idea feels invasive in a way that makes him think he has to find the right time for it. If his suspicions prove to be correct, he figures they both will need time to process it. 
Six weeks is a long time for him to avoid her and it makes it so that when he gets a call that sounds like Lilly crying there isn’t a moment of hesitation before he finds himself jumping into his truck and driving to her house she shares with her husband. Her door is unlocked and he wants to admonish her for it, tell her that she shouldn’t leave the door unlocked because you never know who might come in but then he sees her. He sees her tear stained face and her rumpled dress and fears the worst. A flash of pure anger courses through his veins as his mind swirls with possibilities of why she’s crying. Why her face and body betray such anguish that it twists his gut and has his mouth opening to speak before her voice sounding so small in a way he’s never heard interrupts him. 
“I was waiting. I was being careful!” Her words don’t make sense to Elvis even as his eyes trace over her form and around the house where they’re standing as if either thing holds the clue for what’s going on. As if some part of the way she’s carrying herself—hunched over—or the way things seem out of place—her lunch was sitting on the table only half eaten—would explain what’s happening, why she had called him crying, muttering about needing to fix things. 
His tone is soft and comforting as he moves to touch her shoulder, to pull her into some form of a hug. “Darlin’—” The word slips out before he can stop himself but he continues. “What’s… what’s wrong?”
Her eyes look up at him and he’s struck by how bloodshot they look. How long had she been crying? How long had her body been wracked by sobs that no one was there to comfort her from? Elvis watches as her mouth opens and closes several times before she shakes her head. “I—the oven is broke again.”
“Lil—Mrs. Harris, things I fix don’t break like that. Not this quick.” He tries to defend his work, knowing there’s no Earthly way that it was broken already. He had made sure to fix it, he had made sure that her oven wouldn’t need his touch for quite a long time after he was inside of it that day. In the back of his mind he thinks he’s missing something.
“It’s broken, Mr. Presley. It’s broken and can’t keep heat and bake anything and I’ll call someone else over if you won’t fix it. Just please take a look at it. Just make it work like I thought it was.” Lilly’s voice shakes but doesn’t waver when she speaks. If anything it seems to get stronger the longer she speaks. It seems she’s more insistent with every word that comes from her mouth. Something is broken—the oven he was supposed to fix is broken and she wants him to check it again. That nagging feeling grows as he looks at her in confusion. He prides himself on being a smart enough man, but… maybe it’s because she clouds his judgment. He can’t tell what she’s talking about.
“Lil—Lilly, why did you call me here?” He manages to almost stutter out the words, wincing he hears it. She has to answer him when he asks point blank, doesn’t she? 
Lilly is silent for the longest while and Elvis thinks he pushed too hard, thinks that he’s overstepped for once—twice—in their friendship and opens his mouth to apologize before she grabs his hand and places it on her stomach. In a rush everything clicks into place for Elvis and swears his heart stops. He should move his hand and yet he can’t, it’s almost as if there’s a magnet keeping his hand attached to her stomach. The oven is broken, her oven is broken and empty and can’t keep heat. 
The night before, when his body gave out and had him sleep he tossed and turned over images of him and Lilly together. Images of her swollen with a child and laughing next to him. He remembers being on his knees kissing her still-flat stomach and laughing with her hand over his and telling her how she’s made him the happiest man alive. He could still hear her giggles ringing in his ears when he woke up. That was fantasy, a dream dreamed up by an old man who shouldn’t be dreaming of a life with a woman he isn’t married to and who is married to another. They’re brilliant company for each other but—but she is not his wife and he is not her husband. 
“I’m sorry.” Elvis whispers the words and they feel so insubstantial, so insignificant to what he feels in this moment. The sorrow he feels for her being fed by her tears and the way her silence just drags on and on. Perhaps this was his doing, perhaps there was something there and he had broken it. Perhaps—perhaps he should have been selfish and not cleaned his release from her. Or perhaps—he can’t dwell on it. It threatens to drive him mad if he does. 
And yet his mind can't shake another time and place where his hand is there for another reason, with her hand over his, a smile on her face instead of tears rolling down her cheeks and onto his suit as she curls into a hug he offers. She looks so young and yet like she's been crushed by the world all at once. A flower run over on the side of the road, soaked in the gutter. The attempt he finally makes to move his hand is thwarted by her own grasping his wrist, forcing him to press down to feel that she's bloated but still very empty.
It was supposed to be different. Things were supposed to go well, she had prayed and begged and cradled her womb and for what? For her cycle to be off and there to be blood mocking her in her underwear? For there to be cramping that feels like it might threaten to tear her in two. No one she’s known has lost a baby, there’s no one she can ask to see if that’s what’s happening. If the child she swore was growing from the moment Elvis released inside of her not once but twice was gone. Or if there just wasn’t one at all and she had been deluding herself. Either option feels almost unbearable and feels like a lead weight in her stomach.
Elvis doesn’t speak and Lilly’s thankful for it. Her dream of telling him and them figuring out how he would be involved has been flushed down the toilet multiple times today and is currently flowing between her legs. Her hand finally loosens its grip on his wrist and her chest tightens as she looks into his eyes. Those blue eyes shouldn’t be so caring, they shouldn’t look so caring when looking at her. There shouldn’t be sympathy in those eyes directed toward her or her empty womb. Yet there is and Lilly is struck not for the first time at how different Elvis is from Nathan. She’s struck by how she’s been in this sort of position before with her husband and she doesn’t recall there being nearly as much care and—dare she even pretend?—-anguish in his gaze. She remembers frustration at himself or, or her? She doesn’t know. She can’t recall just now.
“I—I was late,” She starts, and shakes her head, sniffling. “I was late for my cycle and I didn’t—I don’t know why I called you.”
Elvis doesn’t dare say the first thoughts that come to mind. Doesn’t dare tell her that he thinks she knows exactly why she called him because the mere idea shouldn’t be put into words. He’s already damned himself and her anguish, her pain is perhaps a consequence of it. Had he not given in to his baser urges perhaps Nathan would have given her a child that she could tell him she was growing inside of her. If he hadn’t given into his baser urges she wouldn’t have thought his child was growing inside of her. He shuts his eyes, trying to not think of the image of her swollen with his child once again. 
“Comfort?” The word as an answer feels safe and from the look on Lilly’s face, how it relaxes just a little bit and how her hunched over position straightens out even as she grimaces in pain he was right. However, that urge to fix that had caused so many problems rears its ugly head again and Elvis knows he should ignore it but the grimace on her face reminds him that she’s in pain and to leave her in pain without attempting to help her feels cruel. It feels cruel to just allow her to deal with this on her own. Perhaps that’s why she had called him, taken the chance that he wouldn’t want her to be alone in this situation. Taken the chance to assume he missed her and just wants what he's craved from her more than anything else: her company. 
A nod is the only thing she manages before her body is wracked with another flare of pain as Elvis watches. He’s never—he’s never been here when she’s on her cycle so he doesn’t know if this is normal or not but he remembers June and remembers the other girls and knows, in this moment, he can’t leave her like this. Especially after she had called him. His mind tries to think back on what other women would do before he remembers how some would curl up in bed and ask for heat and any number of other things. The flash of memory at her in the bath after their activities and a flash of a fantasy of her in the bath with him runs through his thoughts until he shakes his head to clear it. 
“Missus—Lilly. Darlin’, I—wouldn’t it be better to be laying down? For your pain?” His words are chosen as carefully as he can and yet he still feels like he might have said the wrong thing until he sees her move to lean and sag against him as if he’s the only thing that’s going to keep her standing in this exact moment. 
“My—oh, just help me to my bedroom, you don’t—” The words are lost as Elvis picks her up, earning a bit of a shocked gasp from her. “You don’t have to pick me up, I can w-walk.”
Elvis stays silent for a moment or so as he walks, ignoring the ache in his knees that tell him he should have prepared more for this. That he should have known better than to pick Lilly up like this and yet he finds that it’s easy to ignore the ache as her protest grows a little quieter and she practically burrows into his hold. He is not her husband and yet he wonders if her husband’s ever done this for her. Ever treated her with care when she’s like this. 
Nathan had noticed her pain that morning and brushed it off, much to Lilly’s frustration. It’s not that she wanted him to know she had engaged in a transgression but she was his wife and she was in pain. Jerry had made sure Melly was taken care of after Lizzie and Nathan couldn’t even be bothered to call her sister or anyone. The neglect is what feels like an even worse knife than the one she swears she feels in her lower stomach. The neglect is why she called Mr—Elvis. Even in the short time she’s at least partially known him—the actual him, not the image she had of the man who taught her niece’s Sunday school—has taken care of her and hasn’t left her to rot and wallow in her pain and loneliness. He’s kept her company and fixed so many things around her house that at this point she’s thinking she’s going to have to break things just to have an excuse to get him to visit under the guise of working. 
She knows she shouldn’t relax in his hold, she shouldn’t burrow into his arms like he’s her husband and he’s just carrying her to their bed but she can’t help it, the sheer joy and calmness that settles over her from the care he shows overwhelming her. His arms allow her to feel safe in the moment, help her to forget how much pain she’s in physically and mentally. They are a balm to her aches even as she potentially causes some for him. It doesn’t take too long for him to reach her bedroom, using his body to open the door the entire way from its cracked open position. Lilly hears him sigh and feels his head move to try and avoid looking around before she feels him shift her in his arms.There’s a difference, she thinks, in knowing that he would have to eventually set her down on her bed and him actually doing it. 
A shiver runs through her body that has Elvis’s grip tightening as he moves his hands away. It’s not cold and yet here she was shivering like she was that fateful night.
“You alright?” he murmurs, low and questioning in a way that he shouldn’t be.
“You’re warm,” she whispers back at him, looking into his eyes and trying to pretend that answers everything. Pretend that telling him he’s warm will get him to stay and comfort her until it’s time for Nathan, cold, icily indifferent Nathan to be home. “I feel—it felt good.”
Elvis opens his mouth to speak before his breath catches in his throat at the sheer intensity of the look she’s giving him. He can’t put a name to what he sees in her eyes, only that it threatens to overwhelm him if he stares at her for too much longer. He has to leave, he needs to go back to work or home or just somewhere where her eyes aren’t burning holes into his soul. He finally starts to step away only for Lilly’s arm to find its way in front of him, stopping him in his tracks. Her hand moves to grab his and grasps it so tightly he can’t wrench it from her. 
“Can you—can you stay?” She asks, quiet as a church mouse and looking as if she expects him to say no. As if she expects to be left alone to deal with things once again. It makes his stomach roil and twist and he feels almost like throwing up before he moves to sit down on the bed. 
“Not for too long, Lilly,” he answers, as he watches her move to the other side of the bed, letting go of his hand as she does. He sits down, groaning slightly as he does at the feel of her bed underneath him. It dips more than it did when she was occupying the same spot, his weight causing the springs to creak just a bit more. Lilly waits until he gets comfortable to move closer to him. He stays sitting, his body leaning against the headboard, not even daring to try and lay down in her marriage bed. It makes trying to cuddle with him harder than it should be but after a moment of a deliberation she settles on laying her head in his lap. The warmth of his belly seeps into her head, soothing any headache she’s gained from crying and the vantage point allows her to feel encased in what feels like a protective shell. Elvis tries to keep his hands to himself but as he feels Lilly settle against him and sees every wince and shift his hands move to her hair, running his fingers through it. Scratching ever so softly against her scalp. Lilly’s sigh tells him it was the right thing to do and emboldens him to sing, breathe out into the world the first song that comes to mind when he thinks of her. 
Lilly hears Elvis’s voice singing Jo Stafford to her, a song she’s only heard once or twice before but it feels so romantic that something inside her chest feels warm and feels almost like it’s blossoming the more she hears his voice singing in that low tone, his hands flowing through her hair. 
“But just remember, darling, all the while, you belong to me,” he sings, watching as Lilly’s eyes start to flutter shut, the pain and the emotions of today getting the best of her. The more he sings the more he realizes he wishes those words were true. The more he wishes he wouldn’t have to leave in a few hours. But she is not his wife and he is not her husband and he’ll leave in a few hours as he should. He’ll leave after he shakes her awake lightly, grimacing as she winces in pain and as her eyes practically beg him to stay once again. He'll leave watching her curl back into her sheets but won't see her head move to where he had been sitting or see her hands grab at the pillow that had been behind his back.
She will wake up alone right before Nathan comes home. She will wake up to a simple dinner made with two plates on the table. 
She calls him back over the next day.
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taglist: @ab4eva, @blurredcolour, @butlersxbirdy, @precious-little-scoundrel, @eliseinmemphis, @prompted-wordsmith, @missmaywemeetagain, @lookingforrainbows, @thatbanditqueen, @ellie-24, @be-my-ally,  @austinbutlersgirl67, @heartbrake-hotel, @ccab, @18lkpeters, @slutforsomegoodlettuce, @dkayfixates, @kendralavon7, @chasingwildflowers, @notstefaniepresley, @wanderingelvis, @kxnnxy, @powerofelvis, @stylespresleyhearted, @marriedtopresley, @memphis-menace, @steph-speaks, @coolgirl462, @vintageshanny, @memphisflash1935-1977, @j-v-9-2, @sexystarfish, @duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, @jessicarcates, @chirssycrumble9456789, @shantellescrivener, @yomammalolha, @honey6578, @urmom11111111111119, @myradiaz, @elvispresleyxoxo, @tryingtogettoelvis, @joegramoe, @rainblue-art, @fav-fanficssss, @moodyblueriver, @misspresley, @fallinlovewithurlove, @ash-omalley, @yynneessmons good heavens, i think that's everyone. those of you who didn't get the tag, know i'm gonna head to the messages within the day. also i including those of you who reblogged the first chapter. i would have done likes as well but there- there was a hefty chunk and i didn't know for sure if you all wanted to be tagged.
additional explanation: so if you haven't just read the fic instead of just scrolling down to the bottom to see what's up, hello. but even if you did just read the fic, let the record show that i myself did write this with the idea that lilly had a very early miscarriage. and it's why i added a tag just in case for it since i know some people avoid the subject matter for their own mental health. however i purposefully left it nebulous because she herself wouldn't know for sure and it's- the same result occurs either way, she is not pregnant and that wrecks her emotionally because she had put so much stock in the possibility that she would be. no matter what if she wasn't pregnant she was going to be sad and depressed and generally in a state of anguish. so, you can read this whichever way you want, it does not really change the intent/what happens afterward in this. but i didn't want to directly spoil all of you in the warnings especially since it causes a turning point of sorts, but i also don't want anyone to be in duress because of me. also i promise honestly these two have a happy ending, just trust me like y'all trusted me with professor presley, okay?
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badass-at-fandoming · 4 months
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Is Beckett meant to be a poc (in vtmb)? I think so based on his facial features and his skin being a light shade of brown. But he was born in Britain during the 1700s-1600s which makes being non-white a lot less likely (though there were poc even back then).
This is an interesting question, @chinesegal! Thank you for your patience with me answering it. I was traveling, but now I'm back!
When I look at Beckett in Bloodlines, I interpret him as a white British man. But a lot can change depending on what mods one uses to make the game work. For example, this Beckett...
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...looks much less pale than this Beckett:
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One must also factor in Bloodlines' poor lighting. As any visual artist trying to figure out Sebastian LaCroix's hair color will tell you, the lighting in VTMB is a terrible, mercurial beast. The dingy lighting certainly aides the grimy, uncertain atmosphere, but poor fan artists struggle.
The last sticky point I can think of is how all the Kindred characters are supposed to have a "deathly pallor," especially if they have lower Humanity. Deathly pallor can muck up skin tone wonderfully. I think Strauss would be the best example. He's an older Kindred (LA by Night states he was at the Convention of Thorns in 1493) and made a gargoyle (which involves torture), so he's definitely on the lower end of the Humanity scale. According to VtM's lore, Strauss has trouble maintaining a lively, human appearance. Some fans interpret him as white and often point to his white voice actor, Jim Ward. Others remark on Strauss' resemblance to Morpheus from The Matrix Trilogy, cite the deathly pallor lore, and interpret him as a Black man with graying skin. As in, Strauss looks closer to what a Black man's corpse would look like. The deathly pallor factor allows for this interpretation, and in the gap can nicely fit Cuthbert Beckett. He's an Elder Kindred and has had periods of low Humanity. Maybe he's brown and has been through the wringer.
VtM has a tenuous relationship with history, but if you want to check in with it, real life history doesn't obstruct an interpretation of Beckett as Black or brown. British people have had black or brown skin since forever, as you referenced. The oldest Englishman, Mesolithic era Cheddar man's skin is possibly darker than the reconstruction suggests. Ya gotta remember that white skin came to be because people weren't getting enough Vitamin D. If Beckett is descended from the indigenous Celtic Britons (unlikely but possible), his ancestors might not have been malnourished and lived somewhere the sun could penetrate the mists of Avalon.
So like, given all the above, you can definitely argue that Beckett's a Black or brown British guy. Whatever floats your boat.
That wasn't exactly your question, however. You asked if Beckett's meant to be a person of color or white. This implies you want to know the devs' original intention with the game, which I guess at being Beckett as a white man.
Beckett has been described as white in past White Wolf publications. Or rather, not described, because white is default skin tone in so many works, very unfortunately. In the Victorian Trilogy, much is made of Halim Bey, Theo Bell, and Hesha Ruhadze's black skin, but Beckett's skin tone gets no comment. He's "a long-haired man" with a "wolfish grin one might imagine on a privateer from a past age," (The Wounded King, pg 123-125). Someone describes him as "a pauper's version of Buffalo Bill Cody," (197). When his lover Emma disrobes him, the text notes "his feline pupil slits [and] amber irises," (pg 204). Special attention is paid to Beckett's hands: "dark hair, slick like sable covered the back of his hand, fading to a more human-seeming growth on his forearms" and "His fingers were longer than a man's should be, and the nails were hard and thick like a dog's," (ibid). In Year of the Scarab Trilogy's Land of the Dead, he describes himself with "lean, muscular physique [with] round smoked glasses [hinting] at a pretty boy slumming," (pg 101). By the absence of skin tone description, by the unfortunate reality that white skin is seen as default and therefore unworthy of comment, we can infer that Beckett is white. That's to say nothing of the Vampire: the Masquerade - Beckett comic, which depicts him as white. I wouldn't give the VTMB developers the grace or credit to suddenly deter from this character history.
After all, these are the same devs that failed to come up with a story with Chinese people that wasn't Yellow Peril drivel, created a white PC with "locs," declined to brown Nines' skin, and made Skelter imply that Black Americans make up their own oppression. Just like, all of Chinatown is hard for Chinese and Japanese players to get through. Even by 2004 standards, it's real shitty. With these other missteps, it's hard to imagine they'd have the creativity to re-design Beckett as brown or Black. I think they meant him to be interpreted as white.
But you don't have to! Death to the authors! In your fan art, fan casts, picrew, fanfic, chronicles etc, he can be brown, Black, indigenous, or whatever ethnicity bees your knees. You create the Beckett reality in your Beckett-loving head.
Thank you again for the ask, and I hope the essay made the wait worth it!
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fanfaron · 2 months
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Adam: A Reflection
(This is a copy and paste of a Twitter thread, so my thoughts aren't especially articulate or in depth, and I'm sure there are far better, full reviews from autistic people about this movie)
Tonight I watched the 2009 movie 'Adam', which stars Hugh Dancy as a man with "Aspergers'" (an appropriate term for the time, given the diagnosis was still used and enthusiastically embraced by many diagnosed with that term*) My feelings on it are... complicated?
I believe that it is one of the most authentically intelligent and empathetic movies about autism of the time. It's clear the creator and Hugh Dancy both researched and spoke to people with autism (this was confirmed by Dancy.)
However, it has a lot of hallmarks of being outdated, and some of the pitfalls of a self-identified neurotypical person playing an autistic person.
Almost quite frustratingly, I personally identify more with Dancy's portrayal of Will Graham in Hannibal when it comes to autism, specifically.
I know that Dancy considers Will to be on the 'opposite' end of the autism spectrum, that he exhibits traits but is not necessarily autistic, despite what is said in the first episode (which implies canon autism.)
So you could argue that some of Will's traits, such as not giving eye contact, are a conscious decision rather than an innate autistic behaviour.
But for me, I find his portrayal of intelligent but awkward and honest in a way others perceive as rudeness to be relatable.
In comparison, as Adam he is overtly autistic, and some of his traits are ones I don't personally experience but I know others who do.
One is resorting to aggression when upset and overstimulated, not to a horrifically violent extent but some scenes are jarring.
I am aggression-averse, so watching these scenes was legitimately distressing for me, and one of the reasons for that is that I have been in volatile relationships with other autistic people who are authentically like that.
They have little control over their emotions, and that's an environment I cannot be in.
However another issue I had with the film was the relentless implication that Adam's autism was a burden on others. It ends in a way that suggests he can overcome his reliance on others, and I personally have experienced that.
But.
His love interest never has to face any sort of consequences for treating him as if his special interests are unimportant, and that his behaviours are inappropriate when they're ones that simply aren't.
So, it was a hard watch.
Definitely a product of its time, and I think I'd actually really love to see a reimagining of it, with more direct autistic input and involvement.
But that was an experience.
Sometimes a quite unpleasant one.
*To be clear, I personally reject the term Asperger's, it's no longer supposed to be used in diagnosing autism spectrum conditions, and the term is problematic in origin in so many ways
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romanarose · 1 year
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Darkness on the Edge of Town: Chapter 1
Joel Miller X Reader
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Chapter 2
Masterlist
Summary: While heading home for a mandatory lockdown, Joel stumbles on something he wasn't supposed to see with FEDRA guards and steps in. This, unfortunately, lands with him spending unexpected time with a young woman. Oh, and there's only one bed.
warnings!: attempted gang rape, physical hard with a gun, mentions of blood, canon typical violence, lmk if I missed anything! EVENTUAL SMUT
A/N: This was supposed to be a one shot. Now I'm not sure how many chapters we're looking at. Three minimum. Also, I KNOOOOWWWWW this follows the biggest Romana trope: Protective! Man protecting a woman. I will not apologize.
EDIT: This was originally posted as an OC fic, because I had bigger plans for it, but I honestly lost a lot of steam on it. I was going to give up on it tbh but someone sent an ask asking about a chapter 2, and I hate to disappoint! So I'll be condencing the story and making it a reader fic. hoping you guys like it! ****************************
As the sun was setting, Joel walked to his home, trying to savor the last of the outside he’ll have for the next couple days. The local government had made a mandatory few day quarantine for no discernible reason other than to exercise control, remind the citizens who was in charge. A week, give or take, without work wouldn’t be great by any means, but Joel and Tess at least had a partnership, so they weren’t completely on their own. This week, however, Tess was gone. She was making a trade with Bill and Frank when the lockdown announcement came out, and Joel had to radio over for her to stay there until it ended. This meant that he had a week alone in his tiny apartment room without Tess knocking on his door for one reason or another.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” A woman shouted from the alley he was passing.
Joel’s survival instincts said to keep walking; wasn’t his business, wasn’t his problem, wasn’t him or Tess or any of their allies. He didn’t need to get involved. But Joel knew right from wrong, and as much as he liked to pretend to himself he wasn’t a good person, that he wasn’t the same person he was before Sarah died, he couldn’t keep walking. Plus, Tess would kill him if she knew he walked away from this. Turning down the alley, he saw you being pushed and pulled by some soldiers; all men. One pulled you by the shirt so you were flush against him, and you shoved him off yourself, making the young man hit the alley wall. This action earned you a pistol whip, causing blood to come out of you forehead as you cried out, stumbling backwards into the arms of another man, and Joel couldn’t stand back any longer.
“Hey!” He shouted, striding further into the alley. One of the soldiers grabbed your arm, keeping her to him and away from Joel. “What’s goin’ on here?” He said, eyeing the men. He was more or less familiar with them, some he knew their names, some he didn’t but recognized their faces.
One man he had dealt with, a trouble maker who liked to use his power to his benefit and was surround by rumors of his treatment of women. Nothing could be proven, and no real accusations were made; they wouldn’t go anywhere if there had been. His name was Ross, a younger man than Joel was by a few decades, one of those who had been teenagers when shit went south. That age had been terrible in the ‘before’, a time of confusion and soul searching for anyone, and all that had been interrupted by losing everything. This created a lot of inner turmoil that never settled for most. Some killed themselves, some managed it, some became god awful people.
Ross spoke, eyeing Joel with a smirk. “Curfew, Joel, you know the rules.”
“She’s still got ten minutes.” Joel spoke firmly, his stare intense on the younger man, letting him know he wasn’t backing down. His eyes connected with yours. Joel wasn’t an idiot, he knew there were different dangers in this world for women, something he’d likely never have to worry about outside of concern for Tess.
Not phased by Joel the way many others were, Ross continued his hold. “She lives on the other side of town, she’s not getting there on time. But don’t worry” He laughed lightly. “We’ll escort her”
If Joel wasn’t certain what they were planning, the way they laughed and smiled at each other told him. With a grunt, you kick your leg hard against his shin repeatedly, causing him to shout and push you off of him to stop the assault on his leg. Joel took the opportunity, grabbing your dirty shirt and yanking you back behind him. Surprisingly, you smack his arm in return. “Don’t fucking touch me!”
“I’m trying to help you” Joel grumbled to you.
“I don’t need it” But none the less you stood behind his broad body.
Ross was less pleased now. “Lockdown is in 5 minutes, how you gonna get her home before then, Joel?”
Joel hesitated. This was the last thing he wanted this week, a week where he had an excuse to stay home, be alone and wallow in his own misery, but there was no way he could live with himself if he just left you. “She’ll come with me”
Ross eyed him, obviously irritated that he’s losing. “You didn’t seem like the type to take in a charity case… or do you have some ulterior motives.”
Joel didn’t play games. Turning on a heel, you were now in front of him and he pushed you forward and out of the alley quickly. “Go”
You shoved him off you, whispering harshly. “Stop fucking touch me!”
“Go” But he kept his hands off you.
As they turned the corner, he heard Ross call out to them. “Four minutes Joel!” His voice echoed mockingly. “Better hurry!”
But Joel was already speed walking.
“Where are we going?” You scrambled after him.
“My place.”
You stopped in your tracks. “I’m not going with you.”
Turning around only briefly, he took one long stride towards her, pointing his finger. “You have two choices. Go with me to my shithole,” He pointed back towards the alley. “Or you can do with them. Up to you.” He saw you glare at him as he turned back around; he did his part and you were an adult, you could make her own stupid choices.
He heard you footsteps. You quickly followed him.
Joel and you barely made it in time.
The room was… a room.
One bed, a beat-up old lounge chair, a dresser, table and two chairs. The ‘kitchen’ was a small stove with a single burner, but it didn’t look very used; the microwave did. To the left there was a door, presumably to the bathroom. You stood in the doorway awkwardly, body tense and stiff.
Joel gestured vaguely around the apartment and grumbled something she didn’t quite understand, but she assumed it didn’t really matter what he said.
“Nice place” You said, looking around.
Looking slightly defensive, he replied. “No one’s making you be here”
You frowned at him. “I was trying to be polite, but fine, you live in a shithole.”
“Yeah, well, this shithole is where you’re stuck for the next few days, unless you wanna risk it with Ross” He said with a little bite, before feeling just a bit bad. When he glanced over at you, you were harshly glaring at him. “I’m Joel” He muttered under his breath.
“Yeah” You scoffed. “I picked up on that between you yanking me around”
Joel turned to face you, crossing his arms in annoyance. “You’re welcome” His voice was dripping with sarcasm.
Undeterred, you crossed your arms back, hips cocked as you stood in defiance, seeming to consider your next words. Then, as nervousness flickers around your face, you seemed to realize the position you were in. Looking away and to the floor, you spoke softer. “Thank you. I know this isn’t… ideal”
“Don’t worry about” He grabbed a flannel shirt and sweats from his drawers and tossed them abruptly at you, then motioned for the bathroom. “Showers o’er there. There's… um…” He hesitated. “Under the sink.”
You furrowed your brow, confused. “What’s under the sink?”
Running a hand through his hair, Joel turned away and pretended to be suddenly very interested in the lamp. “You’ll see.”
“Sounds like a threat, but okay.” You murmured as you shuffled into the bathroom before stopping and turning around, telling him your name.
He gave a nod, barely acknowledging you as you disappeared into the bathroom. This was going to be a long fucking week.
When you took in the dingy bathroom, you decided to see what he was talking about beneath the sink. When you opened up the small cabinet, you found possibly the last thing you were expecting to see in the bathroom of the world's grumpiest man. Pads. The initial surprise you felt was quickly overtaken with a swell of warmth. You wondered about the type of man he was before the outbreak. The last 20 years had broken some of the best people down, the need for survival tearing people apart… but you firmly believed good people remained good deep down, someone inside them, even if it only came out when necessary. And today, as you faced down a group of men with evil intentions, it was clear that this was a situation he couldn’t ignore. You’d seen a lot in your years, more than enough for several lifetimes.
The bath felt nice, even if it was cold, as did his clothes, as well worn as they were. When you padded out into the one room place, you saw him standing over what could barely be called a stove.
“It’s just shitty canned soup, you can have some. I don’t got a lot here, but enough to get us through.”
“Thank you. I can pay you back once I get home”
“Hm.” Was his non committal answer.
A pause.
“And thank you for stopping-”
“Don’t mention it.”
“I mean it-”
Joel whipped around, his eyes intense and alight. “I said, don’t mention it.”
You shut your mouth but glared at him, letting him know he was being a dick. And yet, you really weren’t in much of a position to complain, were you? He had saved you from an attempted gang rape, the act of which caused him to have to put you up in his home, share his clothes, his water, his food… All the while giving no indication he had any ill intentions of his own. How many people would do this for a stranger?
He got his food, sitting at the table and once again gesturing vaguely towards the ‘kitchen’, prompting you to get food for yourself. You didn’t feel you weren't exactly wanted at the diner table, so you looked around for another place to eat, moving over to the chair. It wasn’t the worst thing she’d sat on, but it wasn’t the best either. A new problem was glaring as they ate in silence.
There was only one bed.
You piped up. “I can sleep on this chair.”
“Yeah” Was all he responded.
Clearly, he meant for you to sleep there anyway. It was going to suck, but it was better than whatever was planned for her in the alleyway.
Wordlessly, he walked off and shut the door to the bathroom and it wasn’t long before she heard the water running to take his own cold bath. Amazing bedside manner, really. Top tier. You tried to remind yourself you were looking a gift horse in the mouth, and brushed off your bitterness. When Joel immerged, he didn’t look at her as he walked past.
“So,” You started.
“No.”
“How long have you-”
“No.”
“Do you at least-”
A loud groan as he scrubbed his face, signaling you to stop.
You sat there, staring at the wall while Joel went about his business before you heard him call to you. “Hey. C’mere”
You turned around, eyeing him suspiciously. “Why”
“If you want your fucking forehead infected, that’s on you”
“Wait!” You scrambled up, walking over towards him where he had some basic first aid. “Sorry, I-”
“Sit” He directed to the chair at the table, not making eye contact.
Doing as you were told, you sat down at the table, looking up at Joel as he bent over you. You winced as he applied the disinfectant. “You could sit-”
“No” Despite his harsh tone, his touch was gentle, careful, and moving away when you winced.
“So” You tried to start a conversation again. “Joel. That’s Hebrew, right? Are you J-”
“Stop.” Joel briefly put his hands down, standing straight up. From your view on the chair, you suddenly realized how tall he was. His eye contact, when focused on you as it was now, was all consuming. “We’re not friends, we’re not going to come out of this as friends, we’re gonna be lucky if we don’t rip each other's head off. So how about you stop talking, and I stop wondering if I can drown myself in the bathtub every time you ask me a question.” When you didn’t argue, he oh-so softly applied a bit of antibiotic ointment, careful not to waste the little he had.
“Well, that was a bit blunt” You commented as you studied his face. Handsome, older; graying but not falling apart. His accent was southern, but where? You could not place, but that would explain his sense of duty.
“You asked if I was Jewish an hour into knowing me, and out of nowhere. I don’t think I’m the blunt one here” Joel muttered again, but this time there was a hint of… something else. Not quite playful, there was nearly no change in his tone, he was just as gruff as before, but the way he spoke indicated it was almost a joke. Almost. But not quite. He stood up without another word and washed his hands of the antibiotic cream and remaining blood that had oozed out. Grabbing an extra blanket from the drawer, he tossed it at you aimlessly and hit the light.
“Go to bed”
“It’s 8pm”
“Go. To. Bed.”
“Old man”
This received no response from him, but you laughed to yourself.
“Good night Joel.”
A loud sigh was the only response you got.
**************************
I'VE NEVER WRITTEN FOR JOEL SO PLEASE BE NICE! I don't know a whole lot about this universe or the world building so I'm so sorry if this is wrong. But I love Pedro so so so so much and I love TLOU so far!!! Please leave a comment if you like what you see so I know people want more, and reblog if you are so inclined! It's the only way to spread my work on this sight!
Shocker. The fic is titled after a Springsteen song. Joel Miller Listens to Springsteen, Melloncamp and Petty and I will not be taking criticism at this time.
And! Be sure to check out my other Pedro character fic, Take Your Time with my boy Frankie Morales! Tagging some I think may be interested, if you aren't interested in Joel fics just comment to be removed!
My love, @welcometostayingawake @trinkets01 @my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction @luciannadraven33 @howaboutcastiel
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klausysworld · 1 year
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hello you can do a one-shot for yandere human klaus mikaelson from the 21st century, where klaus has an accident and ends up in the hospital quite serious and begins to fall in love with the nurse who takes care of him because she is very beautiful and kind.
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His little nurse
Klaus and his family family got into a lot of dangerous situations. They often got involved with a lot of death, each of them had blood on their hands but they had grown used to this as part of their day to day lives.
What was a shock however was when Niklaus was jumped. Barely walking out of it alive after being shot three times, the fourth one skimming past him, a broken hand from the amount of times he punched at the people attacking him, a fractured shin and significant bruising across back and abdomen. Thankfully the bullets hadn’t hit anything vital however that didn’t lessen the pain and he had to have a lot of blood given.
His elder brother hired a private nurse to tend to him in their home so he wasn’t stuck in your average hospital.
The nurse he hired was sweet and gentle, far too kind for their family but exactly what Niklaus needed when in so much pain. Y/n didn't complain about the vile language that they used toward each other around her, didn’t comment on the…disturbing conversations they had regarding the people who did this to Klaus and how they were dealt with.
She continued to smile and nurse his wounds as though he were an injured dear that may run away in fright at any second.
Klaus was growing rather fond of his little nurse, how her hands would touch his body gently to check how the bruises were coming along and checking there was no internal damage. Or when she would bring him meals and drinks and help him eat it despite him being perfectly capable with his uninjured hand.
Klaus lay in only his boxers under a thin blanket as he awaited his pretty nurse to check up on him. It took him far longer than he would admit to take his clothes off however it was summer and this way it was easier for her to check him over without having to shyly lift his shirt each time.
He shifted uncomfortably as he felt the bones in his leg scrape eachother, his eyes shutting as his teeth ground. He hated being so helpless.
He bit his tongue and put on a smirk as he heard the door opening, just the person he had been wanting walking on in.
“Hello Klaus, how are you today?” She asked with a smile on her lips as she came over to him
“Much better, my love” he told her with a grin
“How much pain on a scale of one-to-ten?” She questioned as she pulled the blanket off of him only to be shocked at his lack of clothing, a blush rushing over her face as she cleared her throat and tried to be professional.
“Mm maybe a four” he lied, he didn’t want to seem weak now did he?
She looked at him unsure, it had only been a little over a week and she knew there was no way he wasn’t in pain
“I suppose you won’t be needing me for much longer than” she muttered with a sad sigh and his heart stopped for a second
“No no love i was kidding, it very much hurts” he assured grabbing onto her hand with his working one
“Will you give me the real number you feel now please?” She asked softly and he felt his heart flutter at the tenderness in her eyes
“Probably an eight” he mumbled and she nodded
“Would you like some more medicine?” She offered and he accepted. She made sure he swallowed the pills before continuing to assess the bruises he had earned.
“I just want you to say where it hurts the most” she told him as her hands gently skimmed over his stomach. Some of the bruises were still a dark purple, some fading to a green. He winced every now and then as she pushed down a little, quickly apologising when she inflicted pain on him.
“I’m worried you have damaged your ribs more than we originally thought” she told him as she carefully felt the bone where she thought there may have been a snap.
“I’ll order an X-ray” he muttered before moaning out in pain.
“Forgive me” she whispered, her hand holding his cheek and stroking his stubble to make him feel better which it definitely did as his eyes flicked to her sad ones
“There is nothing to forgive, you have done nothing wrong” he reassured with a little smile which she returned
“Love?” He called while she was stood across the room filling his glass of water from the machine
“Yes?” She answered making her way back to him
“I was wondering, because of my leg, it’s rather difficult to wash myself even in a bath over a shower, is there any chance you would be willing to help me?” He asked innocently. He knew she couldn’t refuse him, her heart far too compassionate to let him suffer
“I suppose i should check with your brother if I’m allowed to…would um..would you be entirely uh naked?” She asked shyly
“Well…preferably yes so i am clean but i could keep my boxers on if need be” he compromised and she nodded
“I’ll check with Mr.Elijah” she confirmed and he smiled
It wasn’t long before he was lead in the back, her hands caressing his body gently after he said the sponge scratched at his wounds too much. Her hands were so soft and delicate against his skin. She would even massage his shoulders to help him feel more at ease. She was as close to heaven as he could ever imagine being.
After a few more baths over the next two weeks she had come accustomed to him being entirely nude. She was also told my a very Klaus that it was “okay to love sweetheart, do whatever you like with those magical hands of yours”
Her cheeks were bright red after that.
A few times she accidentally nudged his dick, immediately panicking and apologising only to see him with his head back and his mouth open. God it had been so long since he was able to fuck someone. He was always hard, especially with someone so beautiful as a nurse.
“Oh love, just a little more, i beg of you” he whispered almost expecting her to run away but a few seconds after he felt her perfect hand around his cock. He kept his eyes shut not wanting to scare her with an intimidating look. She pumped him slowly, unsure on what to do, not that he noticed, she did a fantastic job regardless of knowing what she was doing. Her thumb rolling over his tip so perfectly. He moaned loud and frequent to show her his appreciation as her body grew hotter. She worried what would happen if his brother knew she was being so inappropriate, what would happen if she were to be fired? She certainly couldn’t afford it.
Klaus figured out her worries and assured her it was okay. He spoke with his brother telling him the payment was out of his hands now and Klaus would deal with everything.
Klaus needed to keep his love with him for as long as possible. It got to a point where he purposely tried to walk on a broken leg, making it re-snap so she would have to stay with him.
He would do whatever it took to keep her with him, always and forever.
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tinylantern · 5 months
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It's interesting how some of the criticisms I've seen over on r/runefactory concerning RF4's writing--specifically those surrounding Act 3--are serving as inspiration for a potential AU to explore in fanart (and maybe fanfiction as well, if I ever get around to it.)
So, you know, even as someone who adores Rune Factory 4's cast of characters and the individual character arcs everyone goes through, I am not without my criticisms of the writing. One thing I am definitely not a fan of is the fact that all three acts of the main story are essentially "save Ventuswill: Parts 1, 2, and 3." It's not that "save the Divine Dragon" is a bad plot to have, but that it never really switches up the formula enough to keep it consistently interesting across the length of RF4's story. You can easily describe the three acts of RF4's story as "Ventuswill is secretly dying! You must save her! Oh, now she's dying again! Get the Rune Spheres back from Ethelberd and save her! Surprise! She's not actually dead! Let's save her for real this time!" And because of that lack of variation, the most interesting aspects of Act 2 and Act 3, at least for me, are not saving Ventuswill, but the stuff that happens with the other characters who are involved in the plot. Arthur, who cites frequently in his dialogue how much he dislikes having been born a prince, utilizes the resources he has at his disposal to get Selphia the support it needs from the capital because as much as he may complain about his position, he knows he has a responsibility as a member of Norad's royal family and the true prince who was supposed to run Selphia. Doug, who was revealed earlier in Act 1 to actually be a spy for the Sechs with a personal vendetta against Ventuswill, feels immense guilt for having believed in a lie that ultimately hurt the people he cares about, and he actively seeks to redeem himself to the point of getting injured multiple times across Act 2. And during Act 3, we finally learn that Frey/Lest is a surviving descendant of the Earthmates who have spent literal centuries trying to find a solution to the runes in the land dying out so that Ventuswill will no longer have to rely on the sacrifices of the Guardians in order to live.
However, a post by u/KamenRiderSekai, who I believe goes by @avenger-concerto here, highlights that Act 3 does, to an extent, potentially ruin the narrative themes of Rune Factory 4's story. Even as someone who generally prefers happy endings to sad or bittersweet ones (hell, the whole reason I originally bought Rune Factory 4 Special was because I needed a more lighthearted game after the literal rain of depression that was Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights), Act 3 does feel very... out of place. A lot of RF4's themes revolve around those of loss, grief, loneliness, and self-isolation, and how you need to make the most of the time you have with those you love instead of shoving them away because life is so short. Although it was upsetting to see Ventuswill die at the end of the Act 2 despite all the crap Lest/Frey went through trying to save her, it feels... fitting, especially since Frey/Lest's ending narration solidifies that although they and the rest of the town were in mourning for some time, they resolved to move forward with their lives because all Ventuswill wanted was a bright future for her friends and for Selphia, and she was absolutely tired of people sacrificing themselves for her sake.
But Act 3 comes along and you learn that Oh, not only was Ventuswill not ready to go just yet, but we still have a chance to save Ventuswill despite the fact that she's literally dead. I get that although it has its "dark" moments, Rune Factory is overall a fairly lighthearted series, but it just seems very shoehorned in for the sake of giving players a happy ending where Ventuswill is alive and well. And when you do complete Rune Prana and save Ventuswill, there is so very little fanfare to the point that there isn't even a credits roll like the first two acts; all you get is a commemorative illustration featuring Ventuswill in her human form down in the trophy room. It makes Act 3 almost feel like one big afterthought despite the important lore it contains, especially in regards to Frey/Lest.
With all that said, KamenRiderSekai did briefly bring up an interesting, alternate concept for Act 3, one that has been gnawing at my brain off and on again since I originally first read it. Taken directly from the original reddit thread:
"A more apt arc would have been maybe the birth or succession of a new "Ventuswill", which is something I've always thought of as an alternative for years on end."
This makes so much more sense to me on so many levels. First off: Ventuswill does state during Act 1 that, when she expires, the runes her body gives off will be enough to sustain the land for another 1000 years, during which a new Native Wind Dragon will be born to play their role as she did. A new "Ventuswill" being born, possibly as a result of the influences of the Rune Spheres as well as whatever efforts the protagonist and the Guardians put in, would 100% make sense from a lore standpoint. However, it also makes sense from a thematic standpoint in regards to the franchise as a whole.
A major theme prevalent in the Rune Factory series is the cycle of life, death and rebirth. In almost every game, the protagonist loses their memories, resulting in the "death" of their past self. They wake up in a new town that takes them in, where they create a new life for themselves; eventually, they fall in love with someone, get married, and start a family with their spouse. This lines up so well with the idea that even though the old Ventuswill is gone, she is not forgotten and her spirit will live on in the new Wind Dragon who will one day guide and protect the land like their predecessor.
If I were to make this into a full blown AU, there are other things I would like to explore as well. I highlighted in a post from August about how Arthur's Another Episode reveals that Selphia's relationship with the royal family is complicated because it is not actually ruled by the king, but by Ventuswill herself, and that her death should have had more implications in terms of Selphia's political status as well as in regards to Frey/Lest and Arthur's switch... which it doesn't because a major point of RF4's gameplay is that you're in charge of Selphia and even Arthur returning to his position briefly during Act 2 doesn't affect your ability to manage the town through the Order Symbol.
There is also the matter of the Guardians; although they willingly allowed themselves to have the Etherlink spell cast on them because they wanted to save Ventuswill, all four of them had lives prior to their centuries-long slumber and with her death, it seemingly renders the sacrifices they made pointless. So, you know, there is an incredibly great potential for angst as well as character development if this becomes a "Okay, we failed to save Ventuswill, but we can speedrun the birth of the new Ventuswill" plot.
I'm sorry for the massive ramble. It is just strangely satisfying knowing that some genuinely valid criticisms of a game I adore have the potential to result in some incredibly tasty fanwork scenarios.
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gospelofme · 6 months
Text
Across the Spider-Verse stuff
I really went all out on this one
I can 100% understand Miguel’s mission goals. I understand what he was trying to get through to Miles. That each and every Spider-Man has a journey they go through with hurdles that make them who they’re supposed to be. That’s what each and every one of us have in our lives too. The things that we encounter shape us into who we are supposed to be. Both good and bad. Without Uncle Ben (or an Uncle Ben figure), Peter doesn’t become Spider-Man.
That being said, of course Miles is going to try to stop his father’s death. Hell, Pavitr Prabhakar was moments away from his “Captain Stacy” moment and even he said “I can do both”. Miles would’ve tried to save his father even if he hadn’t known it was how the story was supposed to play out. Just like Pavitr was about to attempt. Miguel was trying to prevent the collapse of Miles’s universe. You can’t change what is fated to happen, which in a way is a callback to the What If episode with Dr. Strange where he was trying to save Christine repeatedly, but she ended up always dying (not always in the same fashion).
However, I do want to point out that Miguel doesn’t have the ability to see into the future. He doesn’t know exactly how Miles’s story is suppose to play out. He is going by how the pattern has worked out so far for other Spider-Men. Even LYLA says that his father’s death will occur in 2 days according to the model. But that model is obviously different for everyone as Gwen’s father was a Captain and was still alive (and since he is no longer a Captain, that Captain Stacy moment won’t happen to her). We have already seen slight variations in each Spider-verse story. It’s not always “Uncle Ben”, it’s Peni’s father, Gwen’s friend Peter, Miles’s Uncle Aaron. So who’s to say how the survival of Miles’s father will impact the canon. Gwen posited him that same question, if he knew what would happen if Miles saved his father. She knows what happened to Miguel, but what Miguel did was different. He slipped into the role of a version of himself who had died (which makes me wonder, what did Miguel do to his body? How easy was it to slip into that version’s role? Did he watch enough to know what’s happening in that universe?). He didn’t prevent something that was supposed to happen. If he had been able to see the future, he would’ve been able to see the consequences his actions would have.
Miguel claims that if the spider that bit Miles hadn’t been taken from Earth-42, then that Earth would have a Spider-Man. But how does he know that? He’s assuming it would because that’s “what the model shows”. He says that if Miles hadn’t been bitten, then his Earth’s original Spider-Man would’ve lived. But how does he know? Again he’s assuming because “that’s what the model shows”. What if Miles was fated to be there? What if that Peter was fated to die at that moment? Honestly I don’t think Spider-Man would’ve fared differently in that fight.
I have a feeling we’ll explore more of this in Beyond the Spider-Verse. I think Miguel is basing a lot of his beliefs off of what LYLA reports. I don’t know if LYLA takes into account the variations in each Spider-Man story. She goes by a baseline but doesn’t take into account the differences. Since Gwen’s “Captain Stacy” moment hadn’t yet happened (and now won’t happen), perhaps Miles’s Captain Stacy moment doesn’t involve his father. Just like how Peni’s father’s death was her Uncle Ben catalyst.
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emo-hermit · 5 months
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I’ve been having Thoughts recently and would like to share them. This time, they’re based off of a singular question:
What happens after Act 5?
And I don’t mean “Oh, what happens immediately after Act 5?”, I mean “Oh, what happens long after Act 5? What happens when people start recovering, and need to get discharged?”
In short: what’s the post-timeline story?
(this is a long post: my bad)
My answer to this is very Lucky-centric.
To summarise; after the baseball crew slowly begin to recover, getting discharged (this likely starts with the teenagers, whether it be because of Logan and Hailey finally getting together, or because they’ve reached a medical compromise so they can return to school) and moving on, Lucky decides to start training other new patients. He essentially becomes a physiotherapeutic coach for the patients to practice ball and get back into shape.
The main part of this story is the dynamics that result as people drop off. Namely, Lucky and Nicole end up quite close as they are eventually the last two remaining members of the baseball crew in the hospital, as they work there. While, obviously, they’re in contact with those that have left, they still grow close together.
That is; until Nicole tells Lucky she’s been offered a job somewhere else. Not even a barista job - something she actually wants to do.
That’s the core part of it. Other stuff includes:
The result of the teenagers being discharged. Namely, Logan and Hailey wanting to continue to visit, but still being forced to loosen the baseball meetings to twice, maybe once a week. The foreshadowing, I suppose.
The moment the baseball crew is finally so low (so more than just the teenagers have left now: supposedly the miner, Lucia and Cole go next) that Lucky has no choice but to either close it… or commit to what he now wants to do. He picks the later.
The gradual change of the original baseball crew now no longer being involved with baseball at all, returning to being regular patients or being discharged. Lucky is now better with people, while still harsh in his coaching, but has fully accepted where he’s at.
Not really placed anywhere in the timeline but the moment Lucky visits Miner and realises he’s packing his stuff, learning he’s being discharged soon. (Miner is a fun case as, seeing we meet him on the train, this leads me to assume that he lives quite far away from Middlesea, meaning regular visits are impossible. Also Lucky now has to start stretching himself).
The moment it’s just Nicole and Lucky left in the hospital at all. The conversations they have - the fact that THIS is when Nicole finally starts calling him coach (I imagine she refuses to while she’s actually part of the team) - so on so forth.
There’s a lot of ideas I have for this. I might develop it more, who knows?
Also obviously this weird post-timeline AU is not considering act 6+ but will do whenever we get more info on those. For now act 5 is just “the last act” in this scenario. Whoops.
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fetchmearum420 · 2 months
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MORE FUN FACTS ABOUT 1776 BECAUSE WHY NOT:
-William Duell stayed with the show the whole time it was on broadway and did not miss a single performance.
-previews were supposed to last longer on broadway, but it was cut short because on March 14th 1969 (55 years ago today) Howard Da Silva had a heart attack. The guys got him out of the theater and they revived him, they wanted to immediately take him to the hospital but he refused, and said he wanted to open the show, and then they could do with him as they pleased. So he opened the show with everybody, and then immediately as the curtain came down, an ambulance was waiting for him outside the theater and he got in, and he had surgery that night and was out of the show for MONTHS. Thank god they still had Rex Everhart from when the show was out of town because otherwise they would have been FUCKED. The cast did not have a party because of this whole incident. But unfortunately, the main three, Bill Daniels, Ken Howard and Howard da Silva, only did 5 shows together on broadway, Ken Howard would leave 3 months into the show, and the next time they’d all work together would be for the film.
-Howard Caine was “fired” by Jack Warner from the film because he kept complaining about the heat. When Peter Hunt found out about this, he went APE SHIT and got Caine back.
-there are many new actors for the 1776 film than original broadway cast themselves. Peter hunt got this all wrong. Yes, some of the original cast was there, but no everybody. The originals include David Ford, William Daniels, Howard Da Silva, Ken Howard, Ralston Hill, Emory Bass, Roy Poole, Ronald Holgate, William Duell, Virginia Vestoff, Jonathan Moore and Charles Rule. (John Cullum was in the Broadway production, but he didn’t originate Rutledge. Same with James Noble but he had been Hancock, not Witherspoon) the new actors include Donald Madden, Ray Middleton, Leo Leyden, William Hansen, Rex Robbins, Patrick Hines, Daniel Keyes, Howard Caine, John Myhers, Blythe Danner and Stephen Nathan. And also all the silent men in congress who don’t have any lines. So yeah, a LOT more new actors then OG cast members.
-when the broadway company went to do the show for Richard Nixon at the White House, the cast were persuaded to do it by the producers telling them they’d all get pay raises. That never ended up happening, and Bill Daniels was LIVID. They were lied to just to do a fucking show for Nixon, because 98% of the cast hated him. After that performance, Howard Da Silva joined an anti-war protest outside of the White House, still in full costume. He HATED Nixon with a PASSION because of his involvement of his blacklisting from Hollywood.
-Bill Daniels missed more performances than he thought he did. In his book, he mentions he only missed 2 shows out of his entire 2 year run. That isn’t true. Paul David-Richards, the OG Josiah Bartlett, understudied John Adams, and in his bio in the playbill, it says he went on at the very last second for Bill, and ended up doing 5 shows that week because Bill got sick. And Jonathan Moore also did one show as Adams.
-The cast referred to the song “Cool, Cool Considerate Men” as “Cool Conservative Men”
That’s it for now :)
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delta-orionis · 9 months
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i wanna hear about the simon aroace beam pls
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(Tumblr is apparently trying to silence me because this is the second time I'm writing out this answer. Anyway.)
I already made a post about my aroace Simon headcanons several years ago, but I'm more than happy to talk about it again. (Also I'm not sure if you specifically ever beat SOMA, so you're probably unfamiliar with some of the points I made in the aforementioned post. I'll do my best to explain.)
(Continued under the cut)
Simon is an interesting character because he's an everyman. I often joke about how he's Just Some Guy who's having the worst day ever. He's had a pretty average life (aside from the recent loss of his friend and traumatic brain injury), and it doesn't come up often in the text of the game. He brings it up sometimes, but it isn't the focus of his dialogue. He was thrust from an unremarkable life in 2015 into Undersea Robot Hell and is forced to make some serious decisions about the fate of the human race, so he has other priorities.
His characterization as an everyman combined with the fact that we don't actually know a lot about his life before the events of SOMA make Simon a very easy character to project your own experiences onto. This makes him a good fit for a video game protagonist because it makes it easy for the player to relate to him. It also means that it's easy to fill in the blanks of his characterization with your own ideas. I've personally seen lots of different interpretations of his gender and sexuality; I've seen people headcanon him as straight, gay, bisexual, etc etc. His gender is also an entire can of worms; I've seen people make compelling arguments that he's a trans man, a trans woman, and even nonbinary and agender.
Anyway... this was all preface for my thesis that Simon is aroace. The easy explanation is that I, an aroace person, find it easy to project my own experiences on to him in a way that makes sense to me. I've talked to a few other aroace SOMA fans about this, and they've agreed. (This is what I mean by the aroace beam. I simply enjoy headcanoning characters I like as aroace, because I, too, am aroace. I'm hitting them with my beam attack. Metaphorically. I've now rendered the joke unfunny by explaining it.)
(Side note- there's a running joke in the SOMA server I run that many SOMA fans are asexual. There certainly are a number of them in that specific server, however this also might be confirmation bias, because I haven't done a fandom-wide survey or anything like that. It also might be because I promote the server heavily on my blog, and as an openly aroace person, I probably have a statistically significant amount of aspec followers who are then compelled to join the server I help run. More research is required, I guess.)
The longer explanation for this headcanon is that, within the text of the game, Simon doesnt' appear to be very concerned with sex or romance.
In the dream sequence at the beginning of the game, Simon tells Ashley he wants to tell her something, and she responds with "please don't make this weird". A lot of people tend to interpret this as Simon working up the courage to tell Ashley he has a crush on her. The scene ends abruptly before this can be confirmed. However, there are a few unused voice lines in the game files that extend the scene a bit. Simon was originally supposed to say "I'm sorry" to Ashley before the dream ended. This implies that he wanted to apologize to her for involving her in the car accident that ended her life, not confess a crush.
There is another dream sequence later in the game, the context being that Simon is under the influence of the WAU and is being shown an idealized version of his life. He sees Ashley, alive and standing in his apartment, where she declares that the two of them are in love. Simon seems confused about this and wakes up shortly after.
I will admit that this scene implies he has romantic feelings for her. However, in the post I made a few years ago, I talked about how a common experience for a lot of aroace people is not being able to distinguish between different types of attraction and how this can lead to aces convincing themselves that they have a crush on someone when what they really desire is a platonic relationship:
I think what sells it the most for me is that, during the dream sequence with Ashley, when Ashley tells him that they’re a couple, he sounds confused. You could interpret this as general confusion (he doesn’t know how Ashley is suddenly alive again or why they’re suddenly in a relationship), but I like to think that he’s conflicted about his feelings for her. He knows he wants to be close to her, but he’s not sure if being a romantic couple is exactly what he wants. If the dream sequence is supposed to be an idealized scenario, then why is he conflicted about the thing he supposedly wants?
Simon strikes me as the type of guy who isn’t super informed about LGBT stuff. He probably knows a little bit about general LGBT stuff, but maybe hasn’t learned about asexuality, or he doubts that it could apply to him. He might think that, because he wants to be close with Ashley, that the next logical step would be a romantic relationship, even if his feelings are actually just platonic. (I know from personal experience growing up asexual that I would sometimes invent crushes on people, when in reality my feelings were just platonic and I actually just wanted to be their friend. From what I’ve heard, this is a common experience for a lot of aro and ace people from before they learned about asexuality/aromanticism.)
I recognize that this interpretation might be bending canon a bit. Occam's razor would imply that he simply has a romantic crush on Ashley, but that's no fun.
SOMA is a game that is, overall, pretty uninterested in exploring romantic or sexual relationships. It also features two main characters of different genders (Simon and Catherine) who develop a strong platonic relationship over the course of the game. I, personally, find it a breath of fresh air, especially when a lot of science fiction and cyberpunk stories have a heavy emphasis on sex. (I'm definitely not bitter about all the weird sexism present in cyberpunk novels like Neuromancer, for example...)
I suppose it makes sense, then, that the game would have a sizeable amount of aroace fans. I personally think there is something inherently queer about the game- although not explicit in the text, transhumanist stories like SOMA can be read as metaphors for queer experiences. Questioning one's identity and humanity is something that a lot of LGBT people do on a regular basis, so it makes perfect sense that they would relate to a character from a game exploring those topics, albeit through a science fiction lens.
Anyway. Very, very long story short, I hit Simon with my aroace beam attack because I think it's fun. He means a lot to me and I like thinking about him.
(Don't get me started on what I think about his gender. He's got so much going on in that department and absolutely no time to come to terms with it all. That's a post for another day.)
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk, I hope you enjoyed reading, etc etc. I'm going to go back to rotating Simon in my brain now.
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