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albatmobile · 1 year

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romance and return policies pt. 2

part two of this ask!

[1] [2] next: [3] [4] [5] [6] || ao3

𓅪 Rated: M | TW: weed, harassment | 5.1k includes: alternate universe no powers, modern au, eventual polyamory, eventual relationships, eventual smut, gamestop au

𓅪 established roy harper x koriand'r eventual: jason todd x reader, Roy Harper x reader, koriand'r x reader endgame: Jason Todd x reader x Roy Harper x koriand'r

Roy texts you an address not even an hour after you leave the store.

Eager ass puppy.

You roll your eyes, then scold yourself when you realize how excited you are at the prospect of friends and hanging out. It’s been so long since you hadn’t come home from a shift at the diner and not just cooked, cleaned and watched TV.

You’re lonely.

You show up in under an hour and work up the courage to knock on the door, but it opens suddenly. Smoke spills out from behind Roy and billows out into the hallway like a fog machine from some tacky 80's horror film. You cough and bat half-heartedly at the offending haze.

“We have Ring,” Roy says as if it explains his sixth sense.

You look with confusion at the untouched doorbell, “But I didn’t ring anything.”

“Well, aren’t you just cute as shit?” You blush and duck under his arm, immediately fanning a clear path through the heavy smoke that hung dankly in the air. “Yeah, me ’n Jay got started early.”

“Kori isn’t here?” You attempt to peek around for her but quickly realize it’s in vain.

Jay snorts from close by in the smog-sunken room, though you’re honestly unable to see much of anything aside from the floor in front of your feet.

“Jeez, you tryin’ to steal my girl or some shit?” Roy places a gentle hand on the small of your waist and guides you towards a couch. “Star doesn’t really smoke, so she’s just chilling in our room,” He nods in the direction of a hallway. “Go say hi. I’ll roll one for you, babe.”

You know he’s about to wink at you, so you turn on your heel before you can give him the satisfaction of blushing.

Beyond the dank haze, you’re able to make out a door that’s been slightly left ajar. You pad over and knock quietly on the wooden frame, only to be jump scared by the speed at which the redhead answers.

“Kori!” You yelp as your hand comes to cover your pounding heart. The sight in front of you does nothing to calm it further. Kori’s wearing one of Roy’s band tees as a crop top, complete with a bright, lacy violet thong. “Holy shit, dude,” You cover your mouth before you can help it and force your eyes from her tan hip dips upward to the intensity of her glowing green eyes.

“You are here!” She wastes no time in scooping you up from the floor and into a giant hug that leaves you heaving within the tight confines of her embrace, “How wonderful!” She exclaims with a tiny hand clap and looks around the room. “Let me get dressed and I’ll be right out, friend!” She doesn’t bother to wait for you to leave before she turns around and bends down to pick up sweatpants from off the floor.

Your eyes are as wide as a deer’s in headlights as you come face to face with her… well.

You clear your throat, feeling your cheeks heating up unfairly. You spin around and make your way back over to the spot Roy had previously ushered you to.

It’s only as you sink into the comfortable couch that the situation dawns on you: you’re alone with a whole bunch of people you really don’t know. You feel your throat tighten and attempt to swallow to loosen the tension, but it only serves to further restrict your breathing.

Now is not the fucking time for your social anxiety.

In the background of your mind, you hear Roy amicably chatting with Jay, but all you’re focused on is pondering a topic you all have in common. Why'd you even come? Sure, Kori called you her friend, but she just seems like a genuinely nice person who probably puts no actual weight to the word.

Even as Kori joins you, you take a more quiet approach as you better figure out who they are outside work hours. It feels like after hours, there's so much more pressure, though pressure for what, you have no idea.

While you don’t exactly feel like an outsider, you definitely feel out of place in the wake of their intimate relationship- wait, friendship?

From what you’ve gathered, Roy and Kori are dating. Jay, on the other hand and how he plays into their dynamic is still up in the air. He obviously lives with them, but when Roy said ‘their room,’ did he just mean his and Kori’s or all three of theirs?

Why does it matter if Jason’s dating them or not? You find yourself wondering as you pluck the blunt from Jay’s calloused hands. What was at GameStop that could cause these callouses, you didn’t know.

“So you all work together and live together? Don’t you guys want to murder each other?”

“All the time,” Jay says at the same time Kori and Roy respond, “Of course not!”

You can’t help but giggle at their ridiculousness as you let yourself sink backward with your hit.

Some HBO zombie show drones on in the background as you feel the edge of your anxiety ebb away and by the second blunt, you’re more talkative and comfortable.

Jay humors you by discussing some of the books littered around on the coffee table, but namely remains quiet, too. You can’t tell if it’s because he’s picking up on your awkwardness or if this is just how he is, but it only makes you more anxious.

You hope you’re not intruding on anything. That’s the last thing you want to do after he did you the favor of returning that shit earlier today. Hell, maybe he’s anxious, too, though you seriously doubt that a man who looks like he does could ever feel something as frivolous as social anxiety.

The dude’s a total Adonis. Yes, even with his ever-present RBF. If anything, it only adds to his prickly charm.

It’s when you get to the topic of Little Women that you truly get going.

“The whole thing is a slight paradox, but like, on purpose, you know?” His dark hair shifts as he repositions himself on the couch to face you. “Jo thinks her talents aren’t good enough, yet within the book, she’s able to sell her original work. It reveals Alcott’s own self-deprecation for the craft and how, yet, she uses the very thing that hinders her, you know, writing, to overcome it. Pretty inspiring to know that even if you think so little of your craft, so long as you give it the light of day, others can see the worth in and enjoy the elements that you, yourself, tirelessly doubted and lamented over,” His eyes move back and forth as if reading the tones of your eyes like a page from a book.

“The way you just went off,” Roy’s voice startles you away from the stormy green of Jay’s eyes. “First of all, hot as fuck. Second of all, total Wally behavior, am I right, ladies?”

Kori giggles lightly while the raven-haired man next to you merely rolls his eyes before focusing back on you.

“I like that interpretation,” Is all he says. “Do you write?”

Throughout your dedicated years of hopping from fandom to fandom, of course you’d written shit. However, none of it was ever good enough to complete, let alone post. After your whole spiel, though, you’re a fucking hypocrite and only you know it.

“Doesn’t everyone?” You say instead.

Roy checks out of the conversation to fiddle around with a can of coke for Kori. The top cracks open and Roy attempts to steal the first sip, much to Kori's chagrin.

Time to break the ice, or at least try to.

His thin lips hike into a smirk, “What do you write?”

Social anxiety be damned, “Alien porn.”

Roy never stood a chance.

Kori’s an unfortunate casualty as, from beside her, Roy spews coke from holes you never thought possible and, honestly, never want to think about again. The tall woman, oddly enough, seems unphased by the sticky liquid as she squeals at your admission

“Really?!” Kori exclaims and wastes no time in dragging you back into her room. She comes to a halt directly in front of a bookshelf you’d conveniently missed when you were in here earlier, but now, the lewd display of tentacle-like dildos is clear as day.

“Oh, Kor,” Her face instantly quirks upward at your nickname, “I was just messing aroun-” You see her face start to fall and pivot. You aren't going to be the reason this ethereal woman frowns, but you're not holding anything that resembles a dick or vibrates. Even you have your limits. “Alright, scoot over. Let me see.”

She beams and excitedly pats the unmade bed before becoming distracted by the snot and soda that covered her shirt. You sit down at the same time she bounces up to strip off the sopping cotton tee.

Your eyes drift back to the bookcase again as you take in the plethora of manga, tentacles, eggs (?) and just straight-up alien porn that adorn it. Well, that plus a trucker hat with a little alien on it that’s undoubtedly Roy’s. You blush, realizing that, technically, all of this is his too.

After she changes into an oversized teal hoodie, Kori seemingly forgets she's going to show you her books. She ends up plopping down nearly on top of you and the pile of stuffed animals that surrounds the expanse of the bed, thoroughly explaining the premise behind Voltron and flips through a few of her vintage comics she’d snatched from a far less X-Rated bookshelf.

From this close to her, it almost feels intimate. You know, aside from the hundreds of beady eyes from her plushie collection staring you down.

Well, that and the alien dildos.

Or, wait, do those make it more intimate?

You shift uncomfortably, trying to inhale to calm yourself, but it only serves to punch you in the face with her saccharine perfume.

You give a hum of approval and your mouth opens before you can stop it, “You smell really good.”

She turns toward you enthusiastically, “Really? It’s Prada.” Her light voice always seems to carry a certain air of excitement to it, as if every moment she experiences holds some element of mysticism just beyond everyone else’s sight.

Speaking of stopping, your heart seems to stall when the beautiful woman in front of you leans in with slightly parted lips. You nearly pucker your own in preparation, but her head bends slightly and instead of your lips meeting hers, her nose bumps lightly against your neck. Her eyes never leave yours even when she slowly, no, deliberately takes your scent in.

She inhales and fucking moans in your ear, then leans back like she hasn’t just ruined your panties, “You smell absolutely divine.” Though you wish you could tell her that your name trickling from her tongue in a rasp like that is the actual paragon of divine.

Instead, an embarrassing noise escapes from your throat, drawing attention to your crimson cheeks.

She ducks her head in just a way that has her green eyes meeting your own head on. You think she absolutely knows what she’s doing. There’s no way she can’t know.

Can she?

Your name sounds slightly different coming from her, somehow better than what you’re used to hearing though you’re not quite sure why. “Are you alright?” Her head tilts cutely as she analyzes your body language, which you’re sure is betraying how you actually feel. “Have I upset you?”

“No,” You sputter quickly. “No, not at all.”

There’s the signature Kori smile you’re used to seeing. You shoot her a significantly smaller one that falters when her tanned hand moves to cover your own.

“Do you like the Wii?”

Well, this is a complete 180.

You clear your throat and your voice deepens unwittingly, “Yeah, sure.”

She giggles as she twirls a piece of her fiery hair around her long, manicured fingers, “We can stay here too if you want.” It’s your turn to tilt your head in confusion. Your mouth forms a question, but she cuts you off before anything manages to come out, “Let’s play Wii Sports Resort!”

Your eyes take her in wildly, trying to figure out what the fuck she’s laying down. Had she been hitting on you or just messing around in a friendly way?

Ah, bisexual confusion and female friendship.

She’s looking at you expectantly when you remember Wii Sports Resort. You nod, allowing her to lead you out of the room with her hand clasped securely in your slightly sweaty one. What kind of dick would you be to say no to those other-worldly puppy-dog eyes?

As soon as the two of you reappear, Roy’s wiggling his brows, “What’d we miss, ladies?”

Kori’s hand leaves yours in favor of clasping them together, “Oh, Roy! She is the kindest.”

She goes back over all the Voltron information she taught you, something Roy and Jay seem to already know about, while she hooks up the system. Even though it’s obvious she’s already talked their ears off on the topic, they kindly listen with enough head nods and interest, even going so far as to add tidbits of lore that she’s forgotten to quell Kori’s nerd rant.

They’re… cute.

You play nice until she kicks your ass at frisbee, golf and the jet ski race. Even when you’re not playing nice, Kori’s still kicking your ass to the curb. Roy steps in with reassurances that he’ll let you win, only to immediately put you in your place with archery.

Not cute, never mind.

Fucking assholes.

“What’s your accent from?” You ask her after losing the third game of archery, though you realize accent isn’t the most accurate word. With Kori, it’s not necessarily an accent so much as it is the way she speaks.

You’d barely ever noticed it in the store because she's usually just pointing out new arrivals or cashing you out. However, on the off chance she did chat with you for a bit, her speech pattern became more evident.

“She’s European,” Roy states proudly as he takes aim, only to land a bullseye seconds later.

For some reason, the image of Kori’s ass and the song Gay or European plays on repeat in your mind as you take in the new information.

“That’s cool.”

She beams at you, “I think you’re really cool, too.”

You give an embarrassed, somewhat sheepish smile in return, “Me? Pff,” You wave her off as she sets about inserting a different Wii game.

If you can’t beat one of these GameStop fuckers at Wii tanks, you're going to lose your shit.

Jay steps up to take the controller and…

Beats you at tanks.

You’re losing your shit.

“I don’t know how, no, I’m not sure I want to know how, but somehow,” You point at all three of them with your Wii nunchuk menacingly. “You’re all Wii Wizards and I’m fucking pissed.”

When you sit back down, you’re completely worn out. You’d forgotten the whole purpose of the Wii was to trick kids into exercising until you're already feeling the burn.

Roy brings out the bong and you know you’re fucked.

“Wee Wizards,” Roy snorts before his high-ass realizes you’d been talking about the system. “Oh, Wii. Wee Wii Wizards.”

Roy’s still over in the corner, chuckling to himself while Jay sinks down closer on the couch than he’d been before.

“Roy, you can shut up now,” Jay chimes from beside you, shooting him a pleased smirk when Kori giggles. “Fuckin’ stoner.”

“I resent that,” Roy says as he heats up the dab. “Besides, she smokes too. Right?” He tilts his head in your direction and says your name. “With your ex?”

Yikes.

Your stomach sinks.

“Why would I smoke with my ex?” You tilt your head questioningly at his thinly veiled attempt to get information on your love life. Hopefully, if you don’t reveal too much, the topic can just be dropped altogether. “The whole reason you invited me over here was because I told you I don’t know how to roll.”

“Which would insinuate you still find some way to smoke,” He points out with a pleased grin. “So, ex, right?”

You scoff, “Did you ever stop and think that I was just batting my eyes for some free weed?”

Roy puts an offended hand over his heart with a dramatic gasp. “After these past few months, is that all I am to you? Free weed and a sucker who holds the good merch for you?”

“Kori holds merch for me too,” You point out, producing a magnetic tray from your bag before throwing a decent-sized nug into the middle of their stash. “I was going to contribute, obviously. I’m not that much of an asshole,” You pause after putting a pack of shells down onto the table. “Rolling sucks, but my ex sucks harder.”

“Don’t I know it, beautiful,” Roy winks at Jay as he reaches over the coffee table to fist bump you.

You eye his fist warily before giving in with a sigh, “You’re incorrigible, you know that?”

“But babe,” He flashes you a smirk before busying himself with an effortless hand through his choppy locks, “I thought I was a Wii Wizard.”

You look at Jay, who snorts, “Roy, she’s mentally telling me to tell you to shut the fuck up.”

Your stomach flips as his slitted eyes meet yours with a glint of something you hope is interest for obvious reasons.

You tell yourself just one hit because, you know, responsible adult shit, you still have to drive back to your apartment. That good intention was approximately three hits ago.

Here’s the thing: when you’re high, you seek out people, craving any sort of affection or touch that the dabs only serve to amplify. It’s not until Roy’s huffs and sighs can no longer be ignored that you’re brought back to the present moment.

You don’t notice anything until Roy finally voices his issue.

“No fair, Kori,” Roy whines, gesturing to and effectively startling you and Jay. “I want pets, too.”

Kori looks down to where you’ve been absentmindedly rubbing circles into Jay’s thigh. Your hand stills as soon as you notice the contact.

Kori wastes no time in gathering Roy into her lap to mess with his orange locks. Her plump lips scatter tiny kisses across his neck and shoulders.

You startle backward from Jay when he shifts. He gives you a questioning glance, then raises his shoulder as an open invitation. You curl back toward him, reveling in his body heat as your head comes to rest on his shoulder. You allow your head to nuzzle the cushion in the spot right beside Jason’s shoulder.

If you’d been more sober, your stomach would probably be beating you up from the inside with anxieties, self-doubt and all the other shit you've dealt with since your first and only relationship.

Before you met your ex, you were free-spirited and could walk up to anyone and strike up a conversation with ease. You never tirelessly questioned your outfit choices or whether you’d tweezed your eyebrows evenly. You never stood in the mirror analyzing your features as if they’d somehow morph into something you deemed beautiful. Hell, you never laid in bed kept awake analyzing your every word, but now you did. You worry if your breathing’s too loud, if your hands are too sweaty. You worry what people think about you.

The change in scenery, moving halfway across the states-

All of your problems may as well have been packed in the U-Haul because they’ve obviously arrived in Arizona right alongside your desk and dildo.

If you hadn’t been so in your head, maybe you’d notice the way Jay seems to lean into you or how his leg had stopped bouncing since your ticklish caress on his thigh. What you can’t miss is the way his arm drapes tantalizingly close to your back. Moments later, tentative, calloused fingers pad against the nape of your neck.

You manage to bite your lip in time to prevent an embarrassing moan, which, thank fuck, because, hey, you’re still planning on seeing these fuckers tomorrow for the Animal Crossing Switch drop.

His fingers have yet to move, though their weight is unmistakable as he hesitates, seemingly waiting for your approval.

Yes, you’ve been single for a couple of months now, but you’d like to think you’d be able to wait a bit more time before trying something new.

Under the pleasant haze of the weed, you don’t notice you’ve relaxed into his touch until his fingers lightly drag upward into your hair. You inadvertently arch when his nails catch and scratch lightly at your scalp and turn to survey the room with eyes wild with shame, but Jay seems to be the only one who’s noticed.

He stops briefly, fingers hovering as he raises a slight brow, silently asking for permission. After a moment's hesitation, you settle back and butt at his hand to continue. He obliges easily with a barely concealed smile.

By the time you’re heading out, you’re already promising to return.

“Not that you won’t be at the fucking store tomorrow,” Jay chimes as he gets up from the couch to also see you out.

You nod with a slight blush, “Not that I won’t be at the fucking store tomorrow.”

🎮 🎮 🎮 🎮

“It’s Animal Crossing day!” You sing in greeting as you swing through the front doors.

Roy’s inside wearing his usual jean and graphic tee combo, while Jay’s in and out of the backroom restocking shelves in his business casual. They both greet you, Jay’s more mumbled and distracted as he fiddles with boxes.

Without hesitation, you make your way over and share the weight of a particularly heavy one. However, not before taking in the way the muscles in his arms flex deliciously around the rolled-up sleeves of his button-up shirt.

God bless the lax GameStop dress code.

He glances at you from over the top of the box with slight surprise. It's quickly suppressed as he looks back toward the display shelves in front of you, muttering a barely audible thanks. You think you've done something wrong until he speaks next, eyes still focused ahead, “A position just opened up.”

“Sweet,” Roy winks at you. “You can cover my morning shift tomorrow.”

“Roy, you’re fired.”

“Hey!” Roy protests as you help set the box down, but you’re already shaking your head.

“Roy, you can keep your job. Besides,” You wipe imaginary dust off of your clothes, “the employee discount is complete shit, anyway.”

They both snort in agreement as the bell dings and welcomes in- great.

Roy greets him with his usual lack of enthusiasm while the creep meanders around, picking things out with swift precision. Jason hesitates only slightly, giving Roy a look you’re unable to read before turning back to his work.

“So,” The creep prowls from behind as he addresses you. “Do you just pick out random stuff every time, or do you actually know your shit?”

“Hey!” Jason tones from the back corner of the store, “Thin ice, buddy. Remember?”

You feel his eyes on the back of your neck and barely contain yourself from shivering under the unwanted attention.

You’ve dealt with annoying pricks like this in the city, but a rundown desert town really has numbskulls like this too? God, a girl really can’t catch a break anywhere.

Sure, the comments bother you, but they’re all things you’ve heard before. Hello, Xbox Live is not for the faint of heart. It’s the repeated run-ins with targeted comments that are really starting to make your skin crawl. You also know giving him a reaction will only make it worse.

He’s still watching you as if he deserves a response.

“I like Animal Crossing,” You say, gesturing to the stack of merch behind the counter saved for you.

He scoffs and goes to say something with his index finger held high in the air, but Roy intervenes, “No need for any hostility, bro.”

The man rolls his eyes, “So, you do it to impress men, then.”

The unmistakable weight of his eyes fall on you, but you refuse to look away from Roy’s ‘Skate Fast, Eat Ass’ shirt. How it passed Jay’s dress code, you still have no idea.

“Yup,” You pop the ‘p’ and tap your fingers against the counter, debating on whether or not to leave and come back later. At this point, you’re in too deep. “You caught me.”

He keeps his distance but stalks from behind like a shark. “Shame you turned out to be a fake gamer girl,” He tuts. “Nice guys really do finish last.”

Roy smacks his hand down, apparently having heard enough. “Dude, do you even hear yourself right now?” He cracks his pink, freckled knuckles as he steps around the register, causing Jay to step in.

“Do we have an issue?” There’s no room to misinterpret his thinly veiled threat.

“No issue,” He flashes his expensive pile of goodies and brushes past you to the counter with a wolfish smirk.

Jay crosses his arms and motions for Roy to hurry the fuck up.

Roy grumbles and begrudgingly cashes him out, albeit careless with the merchandise, something he’d never usually do, or, well, at least not to you. Meanwhile, Jay’s positioned himself between the two of you with crossed arms that beg the dude to fuck around and find out.

“Fuckin’ creep,” Roy mutters as the man’s form sulks out of the store. He drags his hands down his face tiredly, “Yo, when’s my break, bossman? I need to smoke or something after that shit.”

You release a breath you don't realize you’ve been holding, “Weed sounds good right about now.”

Roy shoots a pointed brow Jay’s way, “And the lady needs someone to roll for her.” His eyebrows bounce up and down while he attempts to convince a very unconvinced Jason.

“No,” He says sternly, then catches you muttering ‘Pam behavior’ under your breath. “What was that?”

You turn around and face him sheepishly, “I said, ‘thanks for holding all the stuff I wanted.’”

He rolls his eyes, knowing you’re lying, but he humors you anyway. “That was Kori. Well, technically, Roy,” You glance around the store, but the other redhead is noticeably absent. “Food poisoning," Jason answers before you can open your lipgloss-coated mouth to ask. "She insisted we get Arby’s for some godforsaken reason and ended up puking all night.”

“Oh, ew,” You crinkle your nose up, then look back over to the stack she’d set you up with. “So, what did you have to do with this then?”

Roy winks as he reaches into the front pocket of his jeans and produces a list written in neat cursive, “Star made sure I knew what to stockpile for our favorite customer.”

Your heart thrums at the information, but you try to hide it.

“Where does that nickname even come from?” You ask, switching the topic. You’d meant to ask yesterday but had totally forgotten after one, read: six, too many hits.

“She looks like a pornstar,” Roy shrugs and, like, yeah, she totally did, but you kinda imagined there was some sweeter meaning behind it all.

Maybe he’s fucking with you?

“Oh, for real?”

Roy quirks an amused brow, “I mean, have you seen her?”

You blush, “You got me there.”

In true Roy fashion, you reach across the counter and give him a fist bump in lieu of a response, causing him to burst out laughing.

“Jesus christ, bro,” He mutters, shaking his head at you but fist bumps you nonetheless. “You’re fuckin’ weird. You know that?”

“So,” You ignore him, looking down with barely contained drool at the pile. “Are you going to check me out, or should I just get Jay to do it?”

Jay sputters at the same time Roy throws his head back and laughs.

“I think I can handle ya,” Roy says once he’s calmed down. “That work for you, Jay?”

“Just peachy,” He mutters before disappearing back into the break room he’d come from. “Take your break when you’re done.”

“Sweeeet,” Roy sings as he scans your items. “What are you up to after this?” You give him an unimpressed look as you motion to the goodies in front of you. “Sick.”

Speaking of sick.

“Will you tell Kori thank you? And that I hope she feels better?” You sign your receipt and wait for him to clock out before heading toward the door.

“Course,” Roy follows you out to the parking lot but not before producing a half-smoked blunt from thin air, tucking it in the tresses of his orange hair. “She really wanted to see you today. She really likes you,” He looks at you, seeming to gauge your reaction for some reason.

Kori’s one of the sweetest people you’ve met in general and definitely one of the coolest people in this town. It helps that her weird matches your weird in the most perfect yin and yang way.

“I like her a lot too.”

He nods and walks with you to your car, “You should come over more.”

“For sure,” A smile flits across your face. “I’d like that.”

You set about putting your bags in the trunk while Roy fiddles with his lighter and looks up the desolate stretch of Main Street.

The town lacks life.

Main Street’s six miles long and surrounded by businesses hidden in run-down houses- well, that and actual run-down houses. Hell, the busiest part of town seems to be the DMV next door or the church right smack in the middle. Anything fun requires a 40+ mile drive and your vision blurs if you stare too long at the landscape littered with red sand and cacti.

Arizona lacks life.

It’s a desert, after all, but for some reason, life blooms in groves around this god-forsaken GameStop. It’s at the very edge of town, closer to the mountains than the post office and yet bushes and flowers bloom across every corner of the lot.

“You sure you don’t wanna stick around and hit this?”

You shake your head, “I have work in a few hours.”

“Oh, worm?”

“What?”

“Never mind,” Roy waves you off quickly. “S’just something Kori says sometimes,” He clears his throat and shuffles around awkwardly before busying himself by lighting up the joint. “Where do you work? I assume somewhere down there,” He motions down the road that’s hidden in a dusty red cloud of sand.

“Pam’s Diner,” You wait with him as he leans up against your car as he finishes, hitting it once because why not? “That’s not an invitation to come annoy the shit out of me, by the way.”

“Yeah, yeah,” He snorts and opens your car door for you, helping you inside with a gentle yet sturdy hand. “We’ll see.”

“Roy,” You warn, but he’s already shutting your door with a wolfish grin spread wide across his freckled cheeks.

A/N: as always, feral for roy

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#reader x jason todd #reader x jason todd x roy harper #reader x jason todd x roy harper x koriand'r #reader x roy harper #reader x koriand'r #albatmobile prompts #my fic: romance and return policies

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karatekels · 8 months

Text

Fresh Start - Day 12 (Part 1)

I had to break Day 12 into 2 parts for my own sanity; I hope you don't mind!

Days 4 & 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Days 8 & 9 | Days 10 & 11 (Future updates will be added below!)

---

Day 12 - Afternoon

You are running late the next day as you drive up to Terry’s house. You hear your phone vibrate a second time from within your bag, and you just know that it’s him. Ignoring it, you listen to the car’s GPS, making the last few turns through the glamorous neighbourhood before approaching the gate outside of Terry’s home. Reaching through your window, you hit the buzzer.

“Mr. Silver’s residence. Please state your name and business.”

“Hi Victor! It’s Y/N, your favourite trespasser! I’m here to see Terry,” you announce cheerily. There is no response, but after a moment the gate swings open. Bothering Victor wasn’t as fun when you couldn’t see his reaction.

Driving through the gate, you head up the winding driveway, parking beside Terry’s Ferrari. Hoping that was alright – maybe Victor would get his revenge and have it towed – you hop out of the car with your bag, walking up to the front door.

Before you can knock, it swings open, revealing Terry with a scowl that doesn’t meet his eyes.

“I know I know, I’m late, I’m sorry!” you say apologetically as you walk past him into the front entrance, your voice echoing through the halls. This place was huge; you’d known it would be, but seeing it with your own eyes was another thing entirely. “This place is incredible,” you breathe.

“I’m glad it lives up to your standards,” comes Terry’s reply behind you. You spin around to face him, grinning at him sheepishly, giving him the thumbs up with both hands. He snatches one of your wrists up suddenly, making you flinch reflexively, but all he does is inspect your hand.

“What on earth have you done to your hands, Y/N?” he asks, looking over the collection of bandages decorating your fingers with mild concern.

“Well, you’re to blame for that, actually,” you say, laughing as you tug your arm out of his grip, giving him a brief hug. “They’re from getting your present together.”

“You got me a present?” Terry asks, a slight smile curving his lips that you find incredibly sweet. “What is it, a rabid cat you found on the street?” he jokes, reaching out once again to brush over one of the band-aids with his thumb. You can’t help but squeeze his finger lightly in response.

“Of course you’re getting a present,” you say exasperatedly, rolling your eyes playfully at him. “Granted, it was difficult to come up with something for the man who has everything. What did you think I was doing yesterday?”

“I thought you were buying gifts for people back home,” he says, raising an eyebrow at you.

You smile sheepishly up at him. “I lied,” you announced proudly. “It’s why I was late today too, but hopefully it will all be worth it.”

“Well, what is it?”

“So impatient, Mr. Silver,” you tease, clutching your bag to you protectively. “I believe I was promised the grand tour; you hold up your end of the bargain, and then I’ll see if I even want to give you your present.”

“Well, I’d better put on one hell of a show then, hmm?” he replies, wrapping an arm around your shoulders and guiding you into his home.

---

The “grand tour” had gone on for well over two hours; not only was Terry’s home absolutely massive, but he had so much within these walls to show you. You had spent twenty minutes in the library alone, and would have been content to spend the day there, poring over his collection.

“You’ve been holding out on me,” you had said at the time, perhaps a bit more flirtatiously than was wise.

“Of course,” Terry had replied, his eyes twinkling down at you. “If I revealed everything all at once, it would be a lot more difficult to convince you to come back for a visit, now wouldn’t it?”

You hadn’t been able to stop the wide smile that broke out across your face, or the blush in your cheeks, feeling more pleased at his interest in having you back in town than upset at the thought of leaving in the first place.

After managing to get you out of the library, he had led you past the grand staircase that ran through the home – “just bedrooms and bathrooms on the third floor, nothing special” – to show you his office, a solarium filled with plants that took your breath away, and the wing of the house dedicated to his personal dojo and collection of Japanese artifacts. You had tried to convince him to show you some karate, but he refused, saying he drew the line at making a spectacle of himself. Like he wasn’t already a wonder to behold…

The first floor had also been a surprise; while obviously very opulent, it was also very warm and comfortable, including a beautiful kitchen, living room with a home theatre system (he had made sure to point out the original painting he had told you about in the museum, sending you both into a spirited debate about the value of owning originals again), and dining room. It felt lived in and happy, and you were glad for that – this was such a big space to live in alone (aside from the staff); you were grateful that it felt cozy for him.

Finally, he led you outside, through his expansive gardens which you immediately loved more than the ones you had visited with him the other day, his outdoor pool and hot tub, and then around the corner, to the path that led to the beachfront; the place where you had first met, not even ten days ago. You can hear the waves crashing against the sand in the distance as you turn to face him, his expression telling you that he was likely thinking the same thing as you were.

“It seems like so much longer than nine days since we were here last,” you comment quietly, looking up at him with a shy smile. You can’t think of another time in your life when you had gotten so close to someone so fast, but with Terry the pacing just felt natural.

“I still haven’t thanked Victor for his persistence,” Terry quips, chuckling softly. “If he hadn’t bothered reading you the Riot Act, we never would have met.”

“We truly owe him a lifetime of gratitude for manhandling me,” you giggle, before biting your lip nervously. “Well, I guess it’s appropriate to give you your gift here, then.”

Reaching into your bag, you pull out a large square of canvas folded in half, and hand it to him.

“TA-DA!” you exclaim with a flourish, and he gives you an amused quirk of his lips.

“What’s this?” he asks, looking down at the fabric.

“Your present,” you answer him patiently, trying not to bounce on your toes in anticipation. You really hope he likes it…

Terry unfolds the fabric, revealing an embroidery of two white flowers, their stems twined around one another. Across the top, the scientific name, yerba mansa, is written in thread, while below, its common name, lizard’s tail, is scrawled to match.

“I took apart my already-ruined tote bag, a hotel linen napkin, and three articles of clothing!” you announce, oddly proud of your own creativity and resourcefulness. “It took a long time to get it just right – I tried to copy it exactly from the book you gave me, so it’s kind of something we can share even when I’m back home!”

Terry is frozen in place, staring at the embroidery without blinking. You feel nervous, and keep explaining.

“I was looking through the book yesterday, and this is one of the plants that they had around the Teahouse. The common name is lizard’s tail, which made me think of you telling me about Cobra Kai – I know it’s not exactly the same, but I didn’t find any plants named after snakes that seemed as symbolic as this one…” you joke, trailing off when Terry still hasn’t moved.

You try to let the silence stretch, hoping he’ll be the one to break it, but he doesn’t, still seemingly transfixed. You bite your lip.

“Okay look, you don’t like it. I get it, it’s silly. It would look better if I’d had more time, and supplies, and –”

“It’s the most perfect gift anyone has ever given me,” he interrupts you in an oddly hoarse voice.

And then his lips are on yours.

--- Terry’s POV ---

He had thought he had planned everything out to the letter, but once again he had underestimated your tendency to throw a wrench in his plans. As the clock kept ticking after noon, he became more and more nervous; he knew you hadn’t blown him off or forgotten – you were too kind and loyal for that – which made him worry that something had happened to you. He fires off a couple of texts to you to check in, but they go unread and unanswered until finally he gets the notification through the security app on his phone that someone has been let through the gate, and lets out a relieved sigh, knowing that you are here and safe. He immediately notices the bandages covering your hands, checking them over with concern and a deep desire to finally touch you again. Your explanation of the injuries being from working on a gift for him entertains him, his curiosity piqued at what sort of thing you had acquired for him. At your bratty insistence, figuratively holding his gift over your head, he takes you through his home, taking you in at every opportunity. You looked at home here, like you belonged, like he had lived his life and built up this house with you in mind years before he ever met you.

Eventually you make your way outside, through the garden and to the path to the beachfront where he had first spotted you, only days ago. This was where he would make his confession, and do everything in his power to persuade you to stay here with him, just for eternity, please.

Before he can, you insist on giving him your gift. Of course, he acquiesces; he didn’t think he could refrain from giving you anything you wanted. You hand him a piece of fabric, clearly excited about it, and he recognizes it as being the same material from your old bag. Unfolding it, he takes in the image you have made, and your words about how it would tie the two of you together, and finds it difficult to remember how to breathe.

You had made this with your own hands, using your own clothing (something Terry found incredibly intimate), pricking yourself countless times (if the number of bandages decorating your fingers was any indication) with a needle in your haste to give him a token to remember you by, stitching together a memory of your time with him… stitching your story together into a beautiful image that he knew he would cherish until the end of his days.

Something primal burns fiercely within Terry as he takes in your gift, his heart thudding painfully from the emotions raging within him. He had planned on confessing to you here, the place where you had met, but once again you had gotten the jump on him, pouring your own heart out first through the presentation of your gift. It was clear to him that you shared his feelings; there was no need for words now.

Distantly, he recognizes that you are feeling anxious and self-conscious, hearing you mumble some nonsense about him not liking your gift (as if that were a possibility), and his eyes dart over to you, taking in your concave form as your shoulders hunch in on themselves. You silly, silly girl.

“It’s the most perfect gift anyone has ever given me,” Terry admits to you, for once letting the depth of his devotion carry over into his voice; you have him completely at your mercy, at you don’t even seem to recognize it. Your head lifts, seemingly startled by his tone, or his words, or both; it didn’t matter. It was finally time.

He turns to you, reaching down to caress the side of your face and bends to claim your lips with his own. You gasp against his mouth before he feels your dainty hands grab fistfuls of his shirt and pull him down closer to you, kissing him back in a way that has his heart soaring. The fire and passion that you regularly let burst out of you on a whim flows through your lips into the kiss, making him wonder if you loved him as much as he adored you.

Eagerly, he slides his hand from the side of your face to tangle in your hair at the back of your head, the way he had been aching to for what seemed like forever, his other hand coming around your waist, clutching you to him and lifting you onto your toes. You let out a whimper that nearly has him throwing you over his shoulder to take you inside, but he resists, wanting to savour the moment he had been hoping for since he had met you.

He runs his tongue along your lower lip, teasing the spot that you liked to bite when you were nervous or worried about something, and you deepen the kiss, stroking his tongue with your own and sliding your hands up his chest to twine around his neck.

As always, you seem incapable of going without teasing him, testing his control, and he sees no need to restrain himself any further. Sliding his hands down to your hips, Terry lifts you up easily, his hands supporting you with a firm grip on your thighs. You cling to him for support, your legs coming around his waist like they were made to be there, and he growls possessively, walking you both towards the stairs, kissing you desperately without pausing for breath.

“No, wait,” you say, breaking the kiss and squirming out of his grip, your feet back on the ground once more as you throw your arms out towards him. Terry allows you to move back a couple of steps, though he isn’t sure how long he can keep himself from grabbing hold of you again as he observes the way that you’re panting for breath through your kiss-swollen lips. Christ, you were beautiful.

“It’s alright, sweetheart, we don’t need to rush this,” he purrs soothingly, stepping towards you.

“Terry, no. We can’t do this,” you insist, your body turning in on itself again, like you were trying to shrink yourself down to escape his gaze. As if it was possible for him to overlook you.

“We can, we should, we will,” he croons passionately, trying to close the distance between you while you back away from him until your back hits a tree. He takes the opportunity to cage you against it with his arms, his forehead resting on yours. “I don’t know why we waited so long, but there’s still time to make up for it,” he says softly, gently taking your chin in one hand and tilting your face up to look at him. You shudder.

“We don’t have time, Terry!” you cry out, though your voice is still soft. “I leave in two days!”

“So stay,” he murmurs, looking deeply into your eyes. It would be no problem; on the contrary, it would be the ideal situation. He would keep you here in his home until it was your home as well. He would take care of everything.

“I can’t!” Your breathing is becoming frantic, like you’re starting to hyperventilate. But what could you possibly be scared of?

“Of course you can, my dear. We were meant to be.”

“I can’t just up and leave home, Terry, it’s crazy. We barely know each other.”

Well, that was hardly true. He was still trying to understand all of your strange, unpredictable eccentricities, but that was what the future was for. And you already knew him better than anyone else did.

“We know enough,” he insists, his thumbs wiping away your tears as they spill over. He understands that this must be overwhelming for you and tries his best to console you. “I’ve known enough for awhile now, and I think you have too. I know it’s crazy, Y/N, and scary, and fast, but you know this is right. I know you do.”

“I have to go,” you say decisively, your voice suddenly clear and determined as you slip under his arm and make for the stairs. He catches your hand before you can get away, keeping you in place. You couldn’t leave; it wasn’t part of the plan, Terry thinks, his heart somehow sinking into his stomach and rising to catch in his throat all at once as he starts to panic.

“We can figure this out together,” he whispers, desperation evident in his voice. His eyes scan your body, looking for any sign of your faltering resolve that he could cling to.

“Please let me go, Terry,” you breathe brokenly through your tears. “I can’t do this right now. I’m sorry.”

He releases your hand as if you’ve burned him; something about you crying and begging him to let you go has sent a jolt through his system. You back up to the stairs, your expression pained and surprised, as if you thought he was going to keep you prisoner here or something. And why wasn’t he? You were clearly confused, you just needed some time to sit with the situation and think things over, clearly…

He watches you scramble up the stairs and out of sight, unsure of why he can’t seem to force his body to move, to go after you.

You don’t come back, and Victor finds him sitting on the stairs some time later, holding onto a scrap of embroidered fabric for dear life.

---

(I'm so sorry; this hurt me more than it hurt you)

#terry silver #thomas ian griffith #terry silver x reader #cobra kai #eventual smut #heartbreak #heartache #fresh start

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blackjack-15 · 4 months

Text

episode 6 WHY IS IT AN HOUR. WHAT ARE WE IN FOR.

i fear episodes of the bear that are different in time than normal -- whether S1E7's 20 min run time or this whopping hour. we're in for chaos and hardship i'm sure. oh dear

anxiety pillow, i need your power once more

warm lighting? flashback?

oh nat's brunette and smoking. def flashback

mikey!! mikey doesn't seem like the best guy in the world, but i do love his actor so much

"don't do that to yourself" good advice! "when you do it just does it to all of us" oh. oh this is going to be a berzatto family episode isn't it. oh noooo

the way they're outside screams family dinner? christmas? XD carmy did say his house was a "dysfunctional hellhole"...time to see how much of an understatement that was

"With her, not handling it is the best way to handle it" ah. okay. i know exactly what we're gonna get with Mrs. Berzatto (they're def talking about her). it's not going to be good.

"did you guys call me?" oh he wishes

"mikey, can you come inside and be you? i don't know how to deal with these people" yeah i thought mikey was the pseudo-father-figure, and i've never been more unhappy to be proven right. being the oldest and a parental substitute is a hard road to go even if you're 100% mentally and physically well. and since mikey isn't...

"happy you're home, bear" "would it kill you to pick up the phone?" "carm...i'm happy you're home, kay?" oh. yeah. this isn't healthy, this is a brother+father relationship and it's currently going downhill

and carmy's doing what we in my house call the Anxiety Dance, nat's hair associates her more with mikey than with carmy, and he's standing perpendicular to the shot rather than his siblings' parallel. not good.

christmas! nothing like a family holiday to bring out the absolutely insane episodes of shows, and the bear does insane better than most

okay so about 5 years ago. wonderful.

john mulaney???? i guess we're going for chicago after all XD

carmy's physical "not getting involved in this" is beautiful. i would have left the house and not come back.

drawings! carmy's?

unless i'm very much remembering wrong, that's not carmy's current number, which means he changed it. good these people are psychos.

carmy's back to cleaning floors, banished to help the Problem. this is a dysfunctional family dinner alright. no wonder he took to being abused in the kitchen so easily.

second mention of forks this season. once is an incident, twice a coincidence....

"why don't you let him help you? it's all he ever does" "what, was that a shot?" yes. yes it was. ouch.

"this is why i didn't wanna come home" "OH F//K YOU" "what??" well, if there was any doubt as to why carmen represses his negative feeling so much that they come out only when he breaks and shouts? this is why. this kind of environment. no emotion is allowed other than positivity if that's Your Job, if you're the Helper. anything else is beat out of you so fast it'll make your head spin.

and being yelled at until he says "i love you"??? there's very little wonder 1) he has trouble saying it and 2) he's almost never the first to say it. land sakes.

and all he can do is open the trash bag angrily...baby boy...

"he's too fancy for us!" my. gosh.

carmy just got back from copenhagen! nice tie-in there

having seen the effect -- not personally, but having seen it up close -- that this kind of treatment (even if not at this particular extreme) has on a person? this is hard to watch.

ah. that's richie's ex wife (current wife rn?). i'm not impressed.

mrs. berzatto is drunk. mikey is a little drunk, if i'm reading it correctly. richie's definitely a few sheets to the wind. i'm predicting....mass chaos. merry christmas.

#THIS IS HELL I'M IN HELL AND I'M 10 MIN IN #the bear #liveblogging #2X06 #GET CARMY OUT OF THERE OH MY LAND #'the more people i cut out the quieter my life got' yeah there was Room for it to get quieter #this is absolute hell. no wonder he can handle everyone shouting at the bear so well it's peace compared to this

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mayakern · 1 year

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idk when you might take more model photos next, but would you ever be interested in sharing some photos where the models of all the skirt sizes are sitting? i’m in a wheelchair and i saw a few people on your blog looking awesome in skirts in their chairs, but i have a different body shape & idk how they would look on me. picking clothes that look good while sitting down is so tricky, but i absolutely adore ur designs and would love to buy one if it might fit me! the miniskirt longer back is super cute btw and i think might actually make me able to wear miniskirts sitting, i had only been looking at maxis or midis before

i have sitting photos of the sycamore and raspberry midis for both me and ariel, with and without petticoats, plus there are the banner shots on the front page that we shot with madi.

we’ll defs do sitting shots of me and ariel in at least one of the miniskirt designs when we have them, but we can’t do sitting shots for every single design because it’s just a LOT to get through. our last photoshoot, where we shot 8 designs with just me and ariel modeling and lindsy on camera, it took about 5-6 hours (minus a lunch break) and while that may not sound like a lot of time, when the whole thing is posing (something neither me nor ariel are particularly skilled at) under a lot of very bright and hot lights, and then doing a lot of spins, it just gets to be very overwhelming and a lot.

when it feels like we have the spoons for it (our entire team is neurodivergent) i’ve been trying to add in sitting shots for exactly this reason, but i can’t guarantee it’ll happen with every design.

we also do not have a size D model on staff and are not in a place right now where we’re comfortable hiring outside models outside of specialized shoots (like the one for the images on the front page). partly this is a COVID issue, partly it’s a living-in-upstate-NY issue, partly it’s an issue of me not having time to interview more models, partly it’s a financial thing, and partly it’s our own internal disorganization that i don’t really want to bring outsiders into. none of us are professional photographers and models and as we’ve been working out the kinks in our new set up, there have been a LOT of changes and mistakes and things we’ve had to reshoot because we’re trying new things. and me, ariel and lindsy work at this full time so we’re all bought into this. so if we waste time, yeah that sucks, but we need to learn this shit anyway. but bringing someone else into that? i would feel SO bad.

anyway here are pics from the sycamore/raspberry skirts and you can see more sitting pics on the front page

#ask #store #faq

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eddieheart · 2 years

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HOME

(Part 6)

Fandom: Stranger Things

Pairings: Steve x Billy

Words: 671

Description: Billy can’t sleep

Part 5:

Billy had spent the whole of his life taking care of his mother. Before she left she was his everything and vice versa. He spent his entire childhood watching over his mother, making sure she was okay.

Fandom: Stranger Things

When the voices got too loud, he knew the right song to calm her down, when she was convinced they were out to get her, he knew just the words to say and when she needed a shoulder to cry on, Billy offered his.

Billy never had time to be a child, maybe that's why Max is just so infuriating, because he doesn't understand how to be a child. Maybe that's why he hated Susan so much, because she just reminded him of the amazing woman he'd lost.

No matter what Neil said, Billy would always see his mother as amazing, as the lovely, wonderful woman she was.

Sometimes when he went for a drive, the radio would play that song, the song he'd sing to his mother as she laid in bed unmoving. What he'd sing when she screamed at the wall for hours or when she scratched relentlessly at her leg, convinced there was a micro chip in there.

She loved Aretha Franklin, Elvis and Johnny Cash, but her favorite was Paul Anka's 'lay your head on my shoulder'. Billy sang it to her almost every night.

Lay your head on my shoulder hold me in your arms, baby

The music played softly in the background as Billy's eyes fluttered open he turned onto his side and blew a strand of hair from his face. His eyes welled up as he blinked back tears, standing up from his bed Billy peaked his head out the door.

A soft giggle interrupted the music, Hopper and Joyce stood alone in the room. He was spinning the younger woman around in his arms and bringing her back into his chest.

Billy watched with sad eyes, was his father ever like this, before everything. If he ever danced just for the sake of dancing, if he ever made his mother laugh like Joyce did.

Hopper noticed movement in the corner of his eye and stopped spinning Joyce.

"Billy, hey, what are you doing up?" He asked gently.

"Jus' heard the song, s'one my mom... she loved." The older man's face fell.

"Oh, I'm sorry Billy. You need help gettin' back to bed?" Joyce asked softly.

He shook his head in response and motion towards the kitchen.

"I'm just gonna get a drink." He wandered off, glancing out the kitchen window as he poured himself a glass of water.

A large mop of brown hair sat unmoving on the porch, Billy slipped outside and sat down beside the boy. He bit his lip, timidly bumping his knee into Steve's gently. The other boys head jerked up quickly.

"Billy? What are you doing up, I thought you needed some rest?" Steve gently placed a hand on his shoulder and leaned his shoulder onto the other boy's.

"Yeah I just... woke up. Look about last night... I don't want you to be like... you don't have to... you didn't have to just do that cus you pity me y'know. You can just turn me down, I can deal with it. I'm not gonna break or anything." His eyes glistened as he stared at the ground.

A soft hand brushed the side of Billy's face and the rough boy's eyes slipped shut. With a soft exhale he swallowed thickly and shuttered softly.

"I didn't do it cus I pity you." Billy's eyes roamed over and made contact with Steve's, they held each others gaze intently.

"C'mere." Steve gently pushed Billy down until he was laying sideways, head resting softly in Steve's lap.

Steve gently pet through Billy's hair, whispering sweet nothings until he fell asleep again.

Billy had spent most of his life taking care of other people, of another person. He'd never been taken care of. It was nice to have someone take care of him for a change.

@buggylad

#fanfiction #fanfic #stranger things #billy hargrove #hurt billy hargrove #billy hargove imagine #haringrove #steve harrington #jim hopper x joyce byers #jim hopper #joyce byers

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fallen-mist · 1 year

Text

I posted 294 times in 2022

That's 216 more posts than 2021!

89 posts created (30%)

205 posts reblogged (70%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@araccoonthatlikesmurder

@froggy-with-a-hat

@nina-phaedra

@amaristm

@ar1-thecat

I tagged 260 of my posts in 2022

Only 12% of my posts had no tags

#not writing - 238 posts

#writing - 11 posts

#sdra2 - 11 posts

#x reader - 7 posts

#request - 6 posts

#headcannons - 6 posts

#x reader insert - 5 posts

#setsuka chiebukuro - 4 posts

#sdra2 setsuka - 4 posts

#not a request - 2 posts

Longest Tag: 128 characters

#also fic idea where reader is uta’s gf and basically fights shanks for some reason then reader says “aye i f—ked your daughter”

My Top Posts in 2022:

hiya! if it’s not too troublesome could you do syobai x male!reader? if your uncomfortable with a male reader you can do g/n !! ^o^ tysm !

Yay third request! :D (I couldn’t find my mist gif used in the other 2 requests :( *sadness noises*). I will also use Shobai and Syobai here since people put it differently

edit 2/11/22: I should not have taken this long to make it-

edit 3/12/22: I have forgotten this then all of a sudden gotten ideas. Im sorry :(

Context: Syobai with a male reader

+ You can interpret the relation however you want

+ Slight TW

+ Second person

Syobai/Shobai Hashimoto

Meeting

-You did not meet this man in the best way

-You probably met him in the killing game, while you were exploring

-No but the only way I can imagine you meeting him is smelling smoke from a cigarette

- 3/10 meeting imo

———

You had woken up a few hours ago, everything was spinning in your head. You were stuck on a island, and You don’t even know where!

You snapped out of your thoughts as you smelt smoke. Was something on fire?! But you followed it just incase. But instead you found a man (that looks like he sells some ”bad powder“).

You stood there, not knowing what to say (heheheh introvert) but he soon noticed you. “You want one? It’ll cost ya,” He said.

You accepted/declined

——

Cuddling

-Like most say, He smells like cigarettes

-Wait is that slight scent of blood I smell?

-If your sensitive to smells, you probably got nausea

- 2/10 smells

——

You were gathering some money knowing how Syobai/Shobai is. You have wanted to cuddle him for a bit now but you knew you had to pay up. It was perfect timing and Shobai/Syobai wasn’t busy. How rare.

”Hey sho/syo, how would it be if you were to let me hug you?,” You asked. He ended up chucking a bit, “Listen here, if you want too, pay up.”

See the full post

12 notes - Posted March 12, 2022

Hello pal can I get Hajime with an S/O that has difficulty walking/a mobility aid? take all the time you need pal

Thanks pal! :D

also first time writing for hajime :)

Hajime M. With a s/o who has a hard time walking

+Second POV

+No pronouns used

•~•~•~•

Hajime Makunouchi

-He helps you around (a ton)

•Even if you do have a mobility aid

-You still have to eat healthy

-(If you don’t have a mobility aid) To encourage you, he’ll say “If you eat healthy, you’ll be able to walk better soon”

-(if that can happen)

-If you do or don’t have a mobility aid; he’ll bring you out on walks and stuff so you can be outside

-Will stand up for you-

-wait

-Will “protect” you from people who think your faking

-and those people who decide to make fun of you

-he feels like he shouldn’t let you work out because the weights might give you a hard time picking it up

•(I’m sorry if this is damaging to ppl by the way)

-sometimes will pick you up (with permission of course)-

17 notes - Posted April 17, 2022

hi may I request Yandere! Kanade x reader Headcanons?

Thank you!

Your welcome!

also there will be spoilers but I’ll put that on the end, a warning but I can’t do two read mores so not that

also this was postponed bc I was sick

DNI WITH THIS POST IF YOU ARE TRIGGERED BY YANDERES OR KANADE/HIBIKI

Yandere!Kanade Otonokoji with a s/o

+Second POV

+TW

+Spoilers at the end

+Implied M*rd3r

•~•~•~•~•

Kanade

-You probably was drawn in by her sweet and shy personality

-She started to like you after you keep standing up for her

-She was confused over all of how she feels about you

-When she started getting some certain tendencies.. You were traumatized

-She took it in and pretended to comfort you knowing it’s because of her

-If her sister gets mad at you or something, it gets very confusing

-If you distanced from Kanade, she will still know your every action and move some way and somehow

*SPOILERS WARNING!!*

-Not much different from chapter 3 personality-wise -She probably was confused about you because she loved hibiki too

•(I do not support this btw)

-It would’ve been a very hard choice if she had to kill one of you.

-She’ll most likely kill you because She knew hibiki longer

-Your family is gone. Hibiki and Kanade is your family now.

-You we’re good friends with setsuka too

-You wish you weren’t

-You wish you never met them because you wouldn’t be in this scenario anymore

21 notes - Posted April 30, 2022

I’m back and I’m living for your writing! May I please request Syobai and Setsuka jealousy Headcanons?

Thank you!

Your welcome and thank you for the compliments aswell :D

edit: I came back from my moms house so-

Syobai and Setsuka jealousy headcanons

+Second POV

+No pronouns used

•~•~•

Syobai/Shobai H.

-Very rarely gets jealous

-Who will he even get jealous of? You guys are probably mostly inside bc of him doing illegal stuff and all-

-Anyways, scenarios. He kinda gives the person he’s jealous of a death stare or whatever.

-and probably pull you awAy

-If it’s an ally of him then he’ll just pull you away slightly or grab your hand.

-If you’re lucky; then he just lets you be (unless they get a bit too touchy)

-if they do, don’t ask why when they go missing

~_~

Setsuka C.

-She puts a lot of trust in you for you to not cheat (not like you would tho-)

-She still gets jealous but more subtle

-She’ll join In on the conversation to make sure there isn’t anything wrong

-She holds you hand :)

-If there is something wrong, she’ll kind of attempt to move the conversation between the both of y’all

22 notes - Posted April 17, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

You have a hot singer gf and show it off to her dad

+Fem reader

•sorry my dudes, uta needs a hot gf too ok

+Uta (one piece)

+One piece film red spoilers

+Warnings: Cursing, slightly suggestive? I’m a minor so no people actually doing the deed

+Short but I don’t write one piece So NO ONE PIECE REQUESTS (this is the only exception)

•-•••••••••••••••-•

First off, you are one lucky girl. Will you be spared from the concert? Maybe if you convince her too with sweet flirts and enough kisses. Yeah, she loves you a lot but she wants you to have a special paradise too! Well, just don’t explicitly say that you don’t think this is a good idea. Because you might end up like the strawhats (besides luffy) but not with the humiliation. You’re her girlfriend! Not a pirate!

You trying to convince her is probably one of the hardest things to do..

• “Babe, can I not go into your paradise?”

• “Huh? Why?”

• “Aha.. well.”

• “Is it because my concert is not going to be fun enough?!”

• “No! I just want to.. protect you from marines!”

• “Oh y/n, you know at my concert, everyone is equal!”

• “Yes but that won’t stop me from loving you”

Something like that but when Uta is about to stab the Strawhat and luffy in the real world, you’re there. You will support your girlfriend! No matter how insane she is and subtly trying to inch her back to sanity. But thats how you met shanks.

Not a good start because of how much trauma Uta holds and tells you. So when she’s stopped, you’re kinda just staring. Yes you might be tall but 6”6 tall? No. But when your girlfriend starts making the sleeping people attack, you join in. Mainly aiming for shanks.

I mean, wasn’t he the reason for her trauma? Like he exploded Elegia and left uta while partying. She needed so many kisses and cuddles after she told you! But you didn’t expect him to be quite strong to hold like multiple people..

But yes he noticed you were awake so you decided to spill the beans.

• “I fucked your daughter”

Wwhiiiich caught him off guard. It was sudden and now he knows his daughter has a girlfriend whom she loves a lot…

So what do you do? Brag about it!

• “Yeah she’s so pretty!”

• “She’s like supperrr good at you know what”

• “I kissed her before you came here

• “She sang a song ab-“

you were interrupted by someone saying “WE GET IT!-“

26 notes - Posted November 23, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #Not writing

2 notes · View notes

casicroaks · 5 months

Text

Tiffany Valentine has two things in her mind: love and murder. The origins of the brains behind the infamous Lakeshore Strangler and the string of broken hearts she left along her way to Chicago, interwoven with the development of the tempestuous relationship between her and a certain Charles Lee Ray.

CHAPTER 9

[ CHAPTER 1 // CHAPTER 2 // CHAPTER 3 // CHAPTER 4 // CHAPTER 5 // CHAPTER 6 // CHAPTER 7 // CHAPTER 8 // CHAPTER 9 // CHAPTER 10 // CHAPTER 11 // CHAPTER 12 // CHAPTER 13 // CHAPTER 14 // CHAPTER 15 // CHAPTER 16 ]

NEW YORK, 1976

I wiped my nose, sniffing and licking my upper lip, and had a long sip of my cherry coke, enjoying the funny tickling of the bubbles in my throat. Time was passing far too slowly. I still had a couple hours before I could punch in to my night job. I bounced my leg, staring at the clock on the little diner’s wall, hoping that would make it move faster.

“Hey, can you change the channel?” I asked, turning to the sweaty guy behind the bar.

He shot me a glare and shook his head no. A bunch of people had congregated around the TV, silently watching the Memphis procession of sobbing fans. I had already checked the couple magazines and newspapers by the bathroom door for any update on the current news I was following, the one of a serial killer in Los Angeles and the one about Paul Michael Glaser and Cher’s possible affair. Everyone else was too busy with the king’s funeral. As if he hadn’t been dying for the last few years already.

Having nothing better to do, I went over an interview with Lynda Carter about her recent marriage. ‘She thought of herself as a loner –till love freed her’ , I read under a photo of her, with her piercing blue eyes staring straight at me. Good for her, I thought. Not that I was ever a big fan of Wonder Woman anyway.

When I arrived in New York, back when I was fourteen, I was mostly surprised with how dirty and noisy and stinky it was –not at all like in Love Story or in An Affair To Remember. Despite that, I wasn’t daunted. A city is just a city, and it wasn’t like I had never been to Newark before. I had to admit, though, I had been way out of my depth. I was so entranced by the sights and the movement of the crowds that I wasted quite a few hours just walking around. By the time the sun was setting, I was still out and had nowhere to stay. I tried at a couple of hotels, but they all either told me to scram or asked me where my parents were. And there I was, thinking I looked so grown up. Not wanting to risk it, I just said they were waiting for me right outside, and I simply left for the next hotel, trusting that they would ask fewer questions. Regardless, most of the nicer hotels were pretty damn expensive, too much for what I had brought, and it was already pitch-black outside when the city lights were turned on, a dazzling sight that I had to force myself to ignore to focus on getting somewhere I could sleep for the night.

Two hours till seven. I stirred the straw in my glass, the ice cubes spinning and tinkling, trying my best to drown the depressing sounds of the crying from the TV.

It hadn’t gone as I had expected. After hours of walking, I had finally found a smaller hotel, a grimy little place a few blocks away from the chaos of Times Square, and there they didn’t ask any questions. Nobody seemed surprised by the sight of me, the only teenager there; even better, I thought, once I got in my tiny room and sat on the lumpy cot, and counted my money yet again just to make sure how many days I had to stay there. I wasn’t gonna get comfy there or anything. All I needed was a good steady job, and then I could leave and find somewhere nicer.

Next day, after some breakfast and a visit to Central Park, I looked for a job. I tried asking at a couple bars, at a laundromat, at a hair salon, at a tobacconist. I was hoping the 'take-no-for-an-answer' approach would help me. They all either rejected me and threatened to call the cops if I didn’t scram, or told me they could give me a try, but that I wouldn’t be getting any payment until the beginning of next month. I was needing some cash fast, but I wasn’t that desperate yet. I went back to the hotel, counted my money again, and wondered if I should avoid eating for a while.

The following day I didn’t have breakfast, but I did have a consolation strawberry milkshake after hours of asking if there was an open position for me at any shop I passed by, including the store where I had bought the milkshake. On my way back to the hotel, I was mugged. I was too startled to do anything –it all happened so fast I didn’t even have time to take my switchblade from my bra. The mugger ran off with my backpack and everything I had stuffed in my pockets. I was left with the clothes on my back and a couple dollars I had saved in my underwear along with my switchblade. The money wasn’t enough for another night at the cheap hotel. It was barely enough for a bus ride back to Hackensack.

I had considered going back home. I quickly changed my mind. Then I considered calling my mother. I didn’t. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

And after that, it’s all a haze. I remember some scattered things, like walking up and down the avenues all night, and sleeping very little, if at all. Trying to make the little money I had last longer, looking for places with cheaper food. Asking for jobs, and getting one, and then being cheated out of my pay, and smashing things at the workplace out of sheer rage, and being taught that that way I would get caught by the police very, very soon. I was still underage. If I was caught, if someone found out I had run away from home, I would be taken back. Or, what might be worse, nobody would claim me and I would be thrown into an orphanage, or wherever else unclaimed children were dropped.

And the noise of sirens –God, all the damn time, but especially at night. If the cops were really doing their job, they wouldn’t need to be lighting up the roof every single night the entire night, you know. Not that I slept much anyways, of course, but there was a point in which I was living with headaches from the sheer racket these sirens made.

Yes, New York wasn’t what I had expected. I sighed, finishing my glass of coke and leaving the mourners at the diner to their pathetic little endeavor. Maybe I should have really reigned my expectations, back then. But hell, I was fourteen, for crying out loud! I was barely more than a kid. Beyond what I had told myself back then, and how well it had turned out, I did take a big fucking risk. I forced a smile, sticking my chin in the air, letting the little evening sunlight hit my face as the sky began to clear.

The past was the past. And, right then and there, I was happy enough.

Backstage, girls with glitter all over their faces, with lashes as long as my fingers, were dressing up, zipping up, shaving armpits, ironing ponytails, spraying hair, mending rips and hiding holes in stockings. There were also stockings hanging from wires from where little lightbulbs flickered, and piles of used brushes able to supply any wig store, and piles of dirty Q-tips next to lipstick-stained cigarettes, and fallen sequins covering the concrete floor. Men came in to talk with a few of them. I had to assume they were friends or family of the girls.

“Don’t they ever knock?”

“Good thing we’re decent.”

“Hi, Sal.”

Sally turned to me over her bony shoulder, flashing a million-watt smile. She was easily the prettiest of all of us, with her glittering eyes, long swan neck and graceful movements, like a ballerina.

“Hey there, Val.”

I smiled back at her, shimmying behind her to move to the other side of the dressing room’s narrow hallway.

Val. Right, that was what I was called now. Val. Short for Valerie, for Valentine, or maybe just for Val, I hadn’t decided yet. Whatever it was, when I decided I was really gonna stay in New York and as far away from Hackensack as possible, it felt appropriate to give myself a new name.

And part of that new identity was to stay a blonde, as I realized the color was becoming too dull in a nearby mirror. I ran my fingers through my hair, forgetting I was holding my cigarette, dropping ashes on my head before it jumped away and onto the floor. Before I could even bend over and pick it up, a couple rookie goody girls hurried in and stomped on it, almost stepping on my hand.

“Watch out!”

“What’re you doing on the floor anyways?”

Their heels destroyed the cigarette, reducing it to ashes and crumpled paper.

“You owe me a cigarette,” I grumbled at the new girls. I didn’t know their names, and they probably didn’t know mine. Every three months or so there was a changing of the guard, and a batch of fresh meat to replace the old. Only three or so were older than a year, and that included me. Me, I had had this job for about two years, give or take. In comparison, I was practically a veteran.

A goody girl’s job is not particularly demanding: you just wander around with your tray of treats, waiting for someone to call you over for a purchase. Most of the time, people knew the price of the goods already; some, the famous or rich ones, would put the bill to their name, and eventually pay it directly to whoever it was that supplied us. I’m not gonna pretend I had any deep knowledge of how it worked, but as far as mule work was concerned, it wasn’t bad. Biggest downside, beyond the wandering hands of customers, was the pay: barely enough to make a living, paid every Monday morning, meant to last you a week. Thing is, for most goody girls, this was just a side hustle. They had other jobs, usually, and better paying. I had only that measly wage to pay for meals; my other job was solely to pay for the ghastly room back at Hotel Broslin.

“Anyone got a cig?” I asked, pushing my pin curls away from my face.

When I had first arrived in New York, I had to stay over at churches a few times, to have somewhere to sleep a bit before the job hunt continued. Eventually, luck would have it that I found a bar in Hell’s Kitchen that would not pay me immediately, but that at least would give me a place to stay till I found somewhere else. There, in the little crummy hotel beside the corner bar, I lived next door to the scum of the Earth: junkies and hopheads, cripples and veterans, washed-up failed artists, and a wide assortment of whores, like big-city versions of Dee and the girls of Hackensack. They worked where they lived, to my dismay. Not that my own living situation was particularly better. It was always messy, dirty, with magazines and newspapers and underwear and makeup and all sorts of junk left around. I did my best to tidy up every Thursday or so, but it never lasted. No wonder I was rarely there. It was only marginally better than sleeping in the bathroom stalls at the Playhouse.

“Hey!” I turned around and raised my voice. “Does anyone have a goddamn cigarette?”

Working at the Playhouse is better than most bars, or so I’ve heard from the other employees. It was a rather notorious nightclub in Manhattan at the time, one of the best, the kinda places where you could rub elbows with celebrities. By that time, I already recognized several usual customers; big names, the types that were surrounded by groupies, but also smaller-scale ones, the local heavy-hitters, the names on the marquees on Broadway. The people I envied the most. They dripped glamour, strutting through the front doors, wearing the latest designer fashion, glitter all over their faces, flashing bright smiles and fat wads of cash. They were showgirls, big-name groupies, models, muses, all of them living in close proximity to the stars. Back when I had taken the job, I had thought it would bring me closer to them. But, being quite honest, after all this time, it only made me notice even more just how worlds apart we really were. After all, the clubbers always seemed to have so much fun. Even if they weren’t, they certainly looked like it. Me, I was working, and this was the best chance I got at meeting someone who might just pluck me out of obscurity. That job was my life. It was my hope.

Two years later, and it was as if I had popped out of my mother’s womb fully formed and wearing the sparkly halter top and hot pants uniform, balancing the tray on the tip of my fingers. At the end of the shift, a glamorous dead-end job is still a dead-end job.

“Hey, baby,” said one of Roy’s friends, pulling me closer by the strap of my tray. Roy was one of those regulars I already knew to avoid. This guy, though, I didn’t have quite figured out yet. “What’d you got for me today?”

“The menu doesn’t change,” I said with a little shrug. Jess had told me I had to stop being so cold to the patrons. It was easier said than done when most of the time they seemed less interested in what they could buy and more interested in what they could get. “Ludes, grams, pills, angel dust… Whatever you like, I got it.”

“I can see that,” he grinned, pushing his crotch against my thigh. I went into autopilot, giving him the same old poker-faced, closed-mouth smile I had down to an art. “What do you recommend?”

“It depends on what you’re in the mood for,” I said, looking down at the cellophane bags in my tray, avoiding his stare. “What mood you’re chasing.”

“I want a nice high,” he said, and the hand he had safely placed on the strip of skin between my shorts and my top went down, down to grab my ass.

I grit my teeth, my smile faltering, hoping he didn’t notice. “Speed’s the thing,” I said, quickly selecting a bag.

“Is it good?”

“Oh, yes, it’s very good.”

“If I buy a couple,” he said, squeezing harder. “Would you take it with me?”

“Well, I’m on the job—”

“Don’t worry about that, pretty,” he insisted, taking out a few dollars. “I can make it up for you.”

“Thank you, mister, for your interest,” I said, grinning wider, feeling the strain on my cheeks, and finally trying to pull myself away. “But I’m afraid I can’t—”

“Why not?” he said, pulling me back in. “Just a taste, what’s so wrong with that?”

“I’ve already told you, I’m on the job—”

“Don’t be such a stuck-up, it’ll only be a few minutes,” he said, losing his smile. “You’ll have fun—”

“I’m sure I will,” I nodded, and I broke away from him. “But I’m afraid I can’t, not during work hours—”

“You lying bitch,” he called, raising his voice while I scurried away. “You fucking tease!”

I exhaled, wondering if Jess could hear him, whether I would have to go through another of her lectures. Easy for her to boss the rest of us around, when she wasn’t the one on the dance floor, getting felt up and shouted vulgarities at.

“God, Val, what did you tell him to get him all worked up?” Suzy asked me with a frown. Her tray was almost empty already.

“I didn’t tell him anything,” I replied. “Though I should have…”

“Don’t give me that shit. You should be used to it by now,” she huffed. “Did you at least get a sale?”

“How could I, with his hand down my pants?” I said. “Besides, what do you even care? You just want me to deal with the worst.”

“It’s not my fault they seek you out,” she said, raising her nose up high, plastering the smile back to her face and going towards a group that was calling her. Suzy always got the nicer customers, the ones that would tip the best and ask about her family’s health. Nobody gave a shit about how I was doing. If I was lucky, they just paid me for the dope and went on their merry way.

After wandering around for a while, making myself available, I managed to make a few sales to some models who were celebrating a birthday. Out the corner of my eye I saw one of the freshly hired goody girls, looking uncomfortable, sitting on the knee of Roy’s handsy friend, firmly restrained by his arm around her waist, forcing a smile as he said something in her ear.

If it had been up to me, the guy could have already said goodbye to his hand.

A couple hours passed. The Playhouse became more crowded, the music louder, the lights brighter. The nightclub operated between six in the afternoon to six in the morning, unless there was a particular holiday being celebrated or the place booked up for some rich patron’s party. Around eleven to one was when it was the most packed. We had around three or four birthdays, which meant some nice big groups, all wanting an extra something to make the most of the night. The grams were the best-sellers, along with the ludes –or the ‘biscuits’, funnily enough, as some people had called them when asking me for it. The dance floor was where people chased the high, and on the seats around it was where they would drink, make deals, make up, make out, do whatever they felt comfortable with doing in public, all peppered with a few downers. The mezzanine I tried to avoid, as well as the basement, where the private parties were had. I had only been down there a few times in my two years working the Playhouse, but the stories I heard weren’t too pretty. Most people just came for a good time, though, so I couldn’t really blame them, I suppose. Everyone’s got their own definition of a good time, after all.

I looked back down at the tray. The cellophane bags shimmered and glowed under the colorful lights of the dance floor. I picked one and pocketed it, knowing I was shielded from Jess and the other goody girl snitches, among all the patrons dancing and having fun. Even as an employee, one could manage to have a good time at the Playhouse if you knew how.

I gulped some ludes, and wished I had something to down them with. As a goody girl, drugs were both your business and your helpers. Taking too many got you a paycheck cut and a scolding, but if you could get away with it, it was really worth it. Apart from feeling closer to my Cesar there, that might have been part of the reason why I stayed so long at my job at the Playhouse. Where else would I get that sort of perks?

Despite everything, that job was the highlight of my day. The rest of the day I was either working the corner bar or just killing time, walking around the city, window shopping and people watching, day dreaming and making up scenarios in my mind of what I’d do once I managed to settle down. It had been quite a few years since I had arrived in New York, but to me my situation was still temporary. It had to be. There had to be something better than what I had –and I was getting tired of being patient.

Laurie laughed out loud, loud enough for me to hear above the thumping disco music. She was stroking the blond curls of a handsome young sports star that had come for a bachelor party. I stared at them out the corner of my eye. I knew why Laurie did that –how she made her extra money. There were so many regulars there making out, dancing close to their partners, barely waiting to get to the mezzanine where other patrons were just straight-up fucking, openly and without any shame. At first, I had told myself I had no right to judge others. Then, after a while of working here, I had to admit to myself that it bothered me –it really did. These customers, and these employees, the other goody girls and the busboys who worked as waiters, they all hooked up with whoever, without even knowing their names. From where I was standing, I could see Laurie’s little golden cross hanging from a chain on her neck. It was almost funny: surely her mother wouldn’t like a nice Christian girl like Laurie to get into these kinds of situations. And I had a feeling that no guy would really date someone like Laurie, behaving like some piece of cheap goods, if she kept that up.

I know how that sounds. I had been called a prude more times than I can count. It’s not that I don’t like sex (Cesar knew I had no hang-ups regarding that), it’s just that I just can’t understand why someone would willingly do it with someone they knew nothing about. Where was the actual love? Did these people really think that little about their futures, about what others would say about them, having sex with a whole bunch of people at once? Did not one of them wish they had a steady partner, someone they cared enough about to want to remain faithful? I imagined it must become pretty lonely after a while, jumping from bed to bed with someone new each time. You never really connect with someone. It’s just like a game they played to pass the time.

I made my way to the bar, needing a drink. Even in my own thoughts I was sounding like my mother.

Regardless of the open display of debauchery at the Playhouse, I much preferred to be there than anywhere else. Anywhere but Hotel Broslin. Any day now, I told myself, any day now I would have the chance to move out of Hell’s Kitchen and have a better spot to lay my head. A few months ago, I had finally told Cesar my living state, after a while of refusing to grovel for his pity, hoping he would do something about it –welcome me in his home, share his space, at the very least rent me a room at some ritzy hotel where I could feel comfortable. But he didn’t even seem to listen to me. Maybe I just wasn’t clear enough, maybe I didn’t fully convey what the situation was. There were cracks on the dirty white paint that covered the walls and the moldings of the musty little room, as if the whole place was gonna come crumbling down. The walls of the tiny shared bathroom were covered in rotting mold. There was a bricked and blocked fireplace, dooming us to chronic colds during the winter, since the damn little window was broken and nobody did anything to fix it. You could barely own anything, since the tenants lived by the concept of what’s-yours-is-mine, so any time I had anything of value, next day it would go missing. Arguing with them would inevitably end with petty revenge gestures, like even more theft, at best, and full-on aggravated assault at worst. And the days went on and on, and they don’t end. I got to looking forward to the occasional fights breaking out at the bar. At least that gave life some excitement.

I had to fall in love, I had told myself back then, sitting on the steps of the building and watching the old women smoking and watching their kids. I had to think about someone else, so I could stop feeling sorry for myself. If I fell in love with someone, I reasoned, then that might give me a chance to get away from that shithole.

I could picture it oh so clearly. I’d stumble on the street with a handsome accountant, or a desk jockey would accidentally drop his coffee on me during his lunch break, and he’d kindly offer to buy me a meal and a new shirt as an apology. We would make small talk, and he’d tell me all about his humdrum life, and how disappointed he was with modern dating, and how much he just wanted to settle down and find a nice girl he could care for. I would make up some story so he would think I was just another small-town girl in a big pond, or however the saying went. Then, he would give me his phone number and we would fix to meet again. We would go dancing, and he’d pay for my drink. We would have dinner, and I’d laugh at his jokes. He’d kiss my cheek and we would make plans to meet again soon. We would have our first kiss on the little bridge over the stream at Central Park. We would walk hand in hand, my head on his shoulder, and we would talk and talk till night came. He would be good looking, but not too much so other girls would try to take a bite at him. He would be nice, but not a pushover. He’d be protective and a bit on the jealous side, which would mean that he truly loved me. He would never ask about my life back at Hackensack. If he wanted to, I’d never ask him about his life before we met. Of course, I would have loved to meet his parents, maybe have Christmas and Thanksgiving at their place. But it wasn’t necessary. I just needed him, whoever he was. These fantasies kept me sane.

Jack was the closest thing I had available, back then –so I clinged to him like he was my lifeline. We met once I finally had saved up some money for myself, and I decided I would celebrate by visiting Coney Island, which I had been wanting to do for a really long time. I had gone to an amusement park back once, when I was barely more than a baby, before Bri had been born. I don’t have any memory of it, but we had a couple photos at home that proved it had happened. Anyways –I had to choose carefully which rides I would go on at the Astroland amusement park, since I obviously didn’t have enough money to try them all. And, out of all of them, the one which seemed like I would get the most out of my couple of bucks was the bumper cars.

There, I literally bumped into him. He was this tall, scraggly kid around my age, who kept crashing me and pushing me around. Once I realized it was definitely not an accident or at random, I pushed back –and Jack seemed to find that pretty fun –so we spent a good while chasing the other among the crowd, bumping the other and laughing and flipping the other off. When he was told he had to leave, I got off as well, and followed him around for a while. Turned out he was a runaway like me, and made some money of his own by playing guitar and singing in a street corner. I liked him well enough: he wasn’t very handsome, but he was fun enough to hang around with, and he liked me back. I’m not an idiot, though. I knew he didn’t really just like me as a friend, and on some level, I knew it would do me well to give in to his flirting… But I just wasn’t sure he was the sort of guy I wanted to commit to. Jack had no long-term plans, no steady job, and it seemed to be pretty clear he just wanted me as a quick one-time fling. Me, I never believed in random hookups and one-night stands, unlike everyone else around me. Still, I held some hope that Jack wouldn’t be like that, and that he would understand that what I wanted was real love. So I humored him, and went on dates with him, and tried to convince myself that he was actually a pretty sweet guy, and that he cared for me. I didn’t want to call him my boyfriend, though. I made a huge effort to fall in love with him, but until it actually worked, I didn’t want to give either of us false hope. Not like he cared. All he was really interested in was making out in the back row of the movie theater, taking advantage of the fact that I felt devastatingly lonely. But we never went any further than that. All over-the-clothes stuff: the one time Jack got a bit too bold, and tried to get his hand under my skirt, after I had clearly told him not to try any shit like that, I pulled out my switchblade and chopped one of his fingers off as a warning. He screamed, and panicked, and ran away, and didn’t want to see me for a whole week. Next Monday he showed up at our usual spot, and we went to watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre .

I thought Jack was pretty lonely, too. It had given me some hope: a guy must either like you a lot or be, indeed, pretty fucking lonely to keep going out on dates with a girl who hacked a finger off his hand.

It had been a long time since I last saw Jack, I thought, back to the present, as I downed my rum and coke. As far as I knew, he could very well still be cawing and howling for pennies in some street corner. A part of me was still curious to know whether we could have had something real, beyond just some teenage canoodling. I knew I had been willing to give him a chance. But it was stupid to keep my mind in the past. What had happened happened, and there was nothing I could do to change that.

“Would you look at that. Kenny and Leanne are making quite a scene…”

It appeared like Jamie had thought the same as I had, flanked by Ernie and Colin, as usual. The three of them were busboys, a pretty fancy title for the male waiters at the Playhouse. Most of them were gay, young, handsome and shrewd, and apart from their official jobs they also worked as either secret lovers of closeted celebrities, or boy toys of unhappily married rich women. He made a gesture to the bartender, and soon enough they were all having quick tequila shots.

“Let them have their fun,” Colin said. “I heard Leanne just had an abortion.”

“Did she, now?” Jamie said with a snort.

“Yeah, let’s just hope she doesn’t start leaking blood all over the dance floor.”

“Which one is it?” Ernie asked. “Her third one already?”

“Now I’m no doctor,” Colin said, raising his eyebrows. “But I don’t think her innards must be in good shape after all that scrambling around.”

“Come on, give us your professional opinion, mama,” Jamie said to me with a smile, leaning against the bar. “You ever had an abortion, Val?”

I made a gesture to the bartender for another rum and coke. No more than three –otherwise my pay would really feel it. “No, not as of yet.”

“Would you?” Colin asked me. “Or would you keep it?”

“I don’t know,” I huffed, tossing them each a little packet of ludes. The bartender knew by this point not to tell, and so it was a good spot to do business among employees. “It depends on whether their father wanted to raise the baby with me.”

“Oh, so you think of yourself as a family woman, Val?”

The three of them laughed.

“Hey, you’re sort of a film buff,” Ernie said, turning to face me. “Aren’t you, Val?”

“Depends on the sort of film,” I replied.

“You seen the latest Bond flick?”

“No, hadn’t had the time,” I lied.

“Pity. Well, me and the girls went to watch it last Friday,” Jamie began explaining. “And it’s, you know, what you’d come to expect—”

“But we did have so much fun…!” Ernie said.

“Yeah—”

“I mean, it was better than the previous one,” Jamie said.

“Roger Moore looks much better here, to boot,” Colin added.

“I really liked Live And Let Live ,” Ernie butted in. “I thought he looked his best there. You seen that one, Val?”

I shook my head, giving in and smiling a bit. They had noticed me being rather down lately, and even though they could get on my nerves from time to time, I was thankful for their efforts to distract me, at least for a few minutes.

“ Golden Gun was better, though,” Colin said with a smirk. “Christopher Lee… Good God, he could give Moore a run for his money.”

“Yes, but you know, it gets a bit tiresome after a while, all these movies. Bondy Goes To Africa , Bondy Goes To Russia , Bondy Does Debbie , Bondy’s Family Reunion , you know, it’s –it’s just too much,” Jamie said. “One of these days they’re gonna send him to space and fight aliens for queen and country.”

“Oh, I’d love that,” Colin admitted.

“They would do it. I don’t know how anyone can take that man seriously, he’s a clown.”

“A scrumptious clown,” Colin pointed out.

“A sharp-dressed clown—” Ernie said dreamily.

“—Stays a clown regardless,” Jamie insisted. “It’s a lot, I can’t keep up, it’s too much for me. You know I’m slow. Give me simple pleasures.”

“If clowns looked like that,” Ernie sighed. “You know I’d run away with the circus in a heartbeat.”

“Well, you’re in luck,” Jamie said, waving at Elliot, one of the patrons I knew he liked the least, and shoving the tray in Ernie’s hands. “Your turn on the trapeze, honey.”

Cesar never took me to the movies. We didn’t really go anywhere. I had suggested going to the cinema many times, but he always said he’d rather do something else. Me and Jack, we did use to mostly watch horror movies, like those I managed to sneak in on theaters back in Jersey, the ones I rarely got to catch on TV –my parents never allowed me to stay up late to watch a scary movie. I also had the chance to finally watch the Marilyn Monroe movies that TV wouldn’t play, especially Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Prince And The Showgirl , my favorite one of hers. I hated The Seven Year Itch , though, despite how striking Marilyn looks in it. Got to say, her movies are much tamer than what I had expected, especially thinking about what my mother often said about her. Jack always said he wouldn’t even think of going to see these chick flicks if it wasn’t for me. I like to think that, deep down, he found them as fun as I did.

“You just got to watch it, Val,” Ernie said, giving me a hand squeeze. “There was this one guy with metal teeth, fighting sharks—”

“Duty calls,” Jamie said, giving Ernie a little kick in the butt. “Get moving!”

“Would you give it to Mr Bond, James Bond, Val?” Colin asked me.

I’d only watched one of the Bond movies, so I knew I wasn’t particularly wild about Roger Moore. “… I do like a man who can make me laugh.”

Needing a stronger pick-me-up, and some stability to do it without dropping the precious grams, I went backstage for a moment. I saw Gin rubbing the shoulders of a sobbing newbie, a curly-haired, freckled teen about my age, with a red slap-mark on her cheek. Another of the many girls that come to New York, bask in the lights, and get lost in the dark. I know, because I’ve seen them, holding these types of temporary jobs at the Playhouse. Me, I was with Cesar; that helped me not to get kicked out. Without him, I would have become just like them.

The Sunday shift was done, my tray had been returned to Jess, and I changed back into my civilian clothes. It was time to ring Cesar’s bell. He had his office on the third floor, above the club’s mezzanine. He had these big one-way windows from which he could oversee everything that went on down, like a warden at the grooviest jail imaginable. And his office was just like an extension of him: dark and moody, but tasteful and rich. Black wood walls, big silver mirrors, dead animal rugs, and a few stuffed parrots thrown in for good measure, all which I had affectionately nicknamed. And, on the tiger-print chair behind a massive old desk, you could find Cesar himself, on a good day. Most days I wasn’t so lucky.

“Hey,” I called his secretary who guarded the big double-doors to his office. She was this skinny, mousy lady whose name I always forgot. “Is he in?”

“Just missed it, blondie,” she said, without looking up from her thick Russian novel. “He just left.”

Again. Missed it again. It just couldn’t be, I thought. Since the secretary wasn’t very interested in my snooping, I pressed my ear against the office doors, and listened carefully. He usually liked to play music while he worked on whatever he worked, as one of the owners of the place. But it was dead silent on the other side.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” the secretary asked me.

“You’re gonna wreck your eyesight with those bricks, y’know.”

“Yeah, you just worry about the neon lights below, why don’t you,” she grumbled, licking a finger and passing a page.

I huffed and leaned against the iron-wrought stair railing, counting my change down to the pennies. Barely enough for a taxi. And I was starving…

Luckily, I was always great at improvising.

“Ricky, sweetface!” I called the valet, with a big friendly grin, once I got back down to the parking lot, hopping my way over the concrete ramp to where he was standing. When I finished my shift early, I could share a smoking break with him, watching the rich folks coming out and climbing into long, shiny, expensive cars. I so wished I had a car of my own, my own freedom to go anywhere I wanted.

“Oh, no—”

“Hey, why the long face? Are you not happy to see me?”

“Listen, Val, you’re pushing your luck…” he said, stepping back. “And I’m not gonna keep putting my neck in the line for your little joyrides.”

I raised my eyebrows. “And I was just coming here to say hello to you… Golly, I didn’t know that was how you really felt about me.”

Ricky sighed. I sniffed, wondering if I should deploy the waterworks so early in the conversation, or if it would be a better bet to just play it safe with the usual.

“I like you, Val, it’s just that…” Ricky just stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I’ve already got a mean big cut in my pay because of last time’s accident, and… You know, I can’t afford to lose this job.”

“Who says you’re gonna?”

“Who do you think they’re gonna blame, if they find another car’s been missing?”

“Don’t they got security ‘round here?”

Ricky laughed. “You think that you’d be able to keep it up as you’ve been doing, if there was any security ‘round here?”

I shrugged. “They can only blame me.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’ve told my boss,” he grumbled, looking away. “And he’s not buying it, believe it or not.”

I grit my teeth: I’d wish it didn’t come to this, but his sympathy had dried out and it seemed it was the only thing that would make him give up the keys. I fumbled in the tiny pocket of my jean shorts and fished out a purple cellophane bag, my last one. At the sound of it Ricky immediately perked up.

“You think your boss would understand, if you shared a treat with him?”

He didn’t say yes right away, like he usually did. Maybe Ricky really did feel that strongly about his crappy valet job. In the end, though, he couldn’t refuse me. He huffed but relented, and grabbed the four-gram bag, and tossed me a ring of keys he selected at random.

“Hey, I wanna pick the one!”

“Beggars can’t be choosers, Val,” he replied, opening the bag, licking the tip of his finger and giving it a taste. “And you gotta bring it back before two.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know—”

“And you better not get in any trouble, young lady.”

What a fucking killjoy. I kindly smuggled him some, and that was how he treated me? As if I was some sort of idiot?

“Not a scratch,” I smiled. “Thanks, Ricky dear.”

I had my eyes set on a beautiful blue Eldorado, but the keys ended up belonging to a black Cadillac Fleetwood. Good enough. I got in, felt the shape and give of the wheel, got comfortable in the driver’s seat, adjusted the rearview mirror to my height, and smiled at my little pleased reflection. Once that was done with, I raided the glovebox, where I always found either chewing gum or a few bucks I could pocket. This time, the loot was a half-finished packet of Chiclets, fourteen bucks with sixty-five cents, and a beautiful little collection of tapes. Half of them, I didn’t know, but I did recognize a few names.

“ Dreamboat Annie ,” I read out loud with a smile, having made my choice. “Isn’t that a lovely surprise.”

One of the good things I had discovered in New York was the music: back in Hackensack, my music tastes were dictated either by Heath or by the radio we had at home. Back home, at the mall, I would look at the record sleeves and wonder what they sounded like, sometimes listening to a couple if the clerk felt like allowing it. Now, I could pay my own concert tickets, and expand my musical palate a lot more, picking what I wanted to listen to, finding out about great new bands –even if I always ended up going to these gigs on my own. At the Playhouse, of course, there was a constant stream of the latest top-charting dancing music. Out of it, there were buskers like Jack singing in the street, and radio being played constantly in hotels and apartments, and nobody really cared if you or others complained about the noise. It was a lot –very loud, all the time –but every once in a while you found little gems, like a good tape of music in the car you were going to take for a spin.

I popped a square of gum in my mouth, checked the gas, and drove the Cadillac out the parking lot. As soon as I hit the streets, I started the music and turned it all the way up.

“ Cold late night, so long ago, ” I hummed along, tapping my hand on the steering wheel. “ When I was not so strong, you know— ”

Downtown was always a bit less busy around that hour. That allowed me to get out of Manhattan and away from the nightlife bustle, beyond the bridges and the tunnels and onto the quieter areas. I stepped on the gas. The humming of the Cadillac’s engine became a roar.

I wanted, so badly, to have a car of my own. Preferably a brand-new one I could put miles and miles in, memories and adventures and that could feel mine. You got a car of your own, and you can go anywhere, do anything you want to do. You could do anything and, at the first sign of things going south, you could escape somewhere new. And, if life got you down, if the routine was draining the life out of you, you could take a trip far away and have a nice change of pace. Sometimes I fantasized about it, during my daydreams: I’d hotwire a nice sturdy ride, take all my money, leave New York and go west, in search of better fortune. But then the limits of my imagination caught up with me, and I remembered that I didn’t know how to do much of anything, and that a successful life in New York had been just as much a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream as any wish of finding anything on the opposite coast. Besides, I knew I didn’t want to go through it all again on my own. If I was gonna leave everything behind, at the very least I wanted someone else to leave everything else behind with. Making new friends had always been difficult; finding someone I could really trust almost always felt like a matter of sheer luck.

And, besides, I had the strong suspicion Cesar wouldn’t leave everything for me.

A new song began. I went slow for a while at first, as slow as I could without going below the limit, just to make sure I found the right, perfect moment in which the green lights lined up, and I could race through the streets, for as long as possible. If I could run at once without braking, going faster and faster and catching, out the corner of my eye, that little needle moving right on the dashboard, without losing the beat on the stereo, pressing my heel harder against the accelerator, feeling the rumbling of the engine strain –I could reach an exhilaration so real, so pure, no coke rush had managed to replicate yet.

It was a sense of true freedom, only comparable to that long breath of relief I gave after killing Heath, back at Hackensack.

“ But I go crazy on you… Crazy on you, ” I sang at the top of my lungs, the wind in my hair, my heart beating faster. “ Let me go crazy, crazy on you, oh— ”

Every now and then, I gave in to my curiosity and counted how long it had been since I last spent any time with Cesar. It was always far too long, especially with how slowly time passed between my work shifts. And I would get stupidly scared, and spiral down a rabbit hole of fears about him not loving me anymore. On the empty streets by the docks, going south along the Hudson, I never had to think about that. There was never any fear for me behind a steering wheel.

It had been eighteen days since we last had a date. Eighteen days without seeing him at all.

I dug my heel in. The car wasn’t used to these speeds: it shook and rumbled my seat, and I rocked my head, adrenaline pumping faster, my heart climbing up my throat. The flash of a red light quickly trailed over the windshield. It was a tiny distraction –I didn’t let it bother me. The green lights turned red, one by one, warning me that the fun was running out. I still had plenty gas. I grit my teeth and told myself that I could stop whenever I wanted to, and that if I wanted to keep going, I might just do that. Depending on where I drove, it could take up to half an hour, sometimes even longer, before I got a patrol blaring behind me. Guess they had bigger fish to fry.

I closed my eyes and counted to ten –taking in a deep breath –focusing on the speed and the metallic rumble in my palms. The adrenaline was pumping –the engine was going higher –and the music was louder, sharper, becoming louder than my thoughts…

The sirens were louder, though. Eventually they caught up with me, like they always did. I played a bit, stopping and going when the cop got too close, then stopping and going again, just to mess with them. Finally, the guy got to the Cadillac window, knocked on it, and tried to talk to me. I shrugged. The music was still too loud for me to listen to him anyways. He knocked louder on the window, losing his patience. I rolled it down with a sigh. Those were the rules of the game. Once the cops got a real look at me, the fun was over.

I got out, he sat me in the back of his car, and drove us off to the station.

“Hey, Val.”

“Hey, Jimmy,” I greeted the man at the reception.

“Got caught again?” he said, looking up from his crosswords and clicking his tongue. “Better luck next time.”

“Aren’t you a joker,” I grumbled as I was dragged into the deputy’s little office. “You know,” I said, pulling at the cop’s shirt collar. “You should really have some magazines around—”

“You think?” the guy sighed. I nodded, still chewing my gum. “Thanks for the suggestion. Did you find your license?”

I shut my eyes, tilted my head back, and thought for a minute. “Oh, right. It’s in the pocket of my other jacket…”

“You don’t say—”

“Would you look at the hour,” I exclaimed, turning to the clock on the wall. “I think it’s time I make that phone call I’m entitled to by law.”

The cop sighed again, but let go of my arm. I blew him a little kiss, sat on his desk and picked up the phone, quickly punching in the number. Meanwhile, he watched me, leaning against the doorframe, smoking his cigarette and probably wondering why he didn’t get any more exciting cases than my silly little speeding incidents. They all knew by that point that I was completely harmless, just another kid with a taste for speed, so they didn’t worry much about me. Not that they would let me scot-free without paying the fine, it goes without saying. Thankfully, I had a loving benefactor who had my bail covered.

Silence on the wire. I took a deep breath, drumming my chipped red nails against the desk, wondering if I had maybe caught him while in the bathroom. Wouldn’t that be unfortunate. I let it ring for a little while longer, then hang up, and dialed the same number, chewing faster on the gum that had already become rather flavorless.

“I never noticed it before,” I said to the cop, pointing at a plushie that was haphazardly sat on top of a file cabinet beside the desk. “But what’s the teddy bear for?”

The cop looked up at me. “For children who’ve been in traumatic situations. It helps them open up.”

I picked it up with my free hand, and gave it a hug. It was pretty battered and worn down. Still, it felt comforting to hold something soft for a while. I pressed the side of my face against the phone, as hard as I could, until all I could hear was the beeping of the machine.

“Please, please, please…”

I had to be patient. Cesar had always replied before, no matter how long I had to wait. He wouldn’t let me down.

He knew why I did these sorts of things. I smiled to myself, holding the teddy a little tighter. Cesar was surely playing with me, like I did with him.

He wouldn’t leave me hanging like that. Not him.

Once upon a time, in the winter of nineteen-seventy-four, Jack and I had arranged to go to a late-night showing of old horror movies. It was an actual reputable movie theater for once, not far from a cute little French restaurant I’ve always wanted to go with him, but that we could never really afford. It was a nicer neighborhood than our usual, so I had made an effort to doll myself up this one time, wearing the best dress I owned, a recent purchase I had found at a thrift shop and which I was really proud to have managed to fit to my body with just a little travel sewing kit. I waited for him in the dark lobby, for as long as I could stay, before I was kicked out by one of the employees who yelled at me for loitering. Some minutes passed, during which I began wondering if I had gotten to the right place and time. And there was this awful freezing wind outside, that made my teeth rattle and my knees shake like Jello…

But I had decided to wait for Jack a little longer. There was no way of knowing what had happened to him, if he was alright, if the cold had made it difficult for him to be there on time… I was making up excuses, of course, but he had been avoiding me so much lately, I just had to tell myself that I needed to wait it out for a little longer. Jack had promised me he would meet me there, and I believed him. I had to believe that he still felt something for me. If Jack had had enough with our chaste relationship, then it would stand to reason that we would have split back when he got a little too bold and I stabbed his hand, right? If he had kept seeing me after that, it surely meant he still felt something for me, right?

Time passed, and my fingers, nose and chin were turning into ice. My coat was barely enough to keep me warm while walking, let alone standing still in the middle of the street. I was thinking about sneaking back inside the lobby, maybe buying something so they wouldn’t kick me out so quickly, when an elegantly-dressed couple came out of the nearby restaurant.

“Ursula, stop acting like a child—”

For a while I couldn’t do anything but just had to stare at her. Ursula was this tall, statuesque lady, with long blond hair, a perfect tan and big blue eyes. She stood perfectly still, all dressed in white, with this white fur coat on her shoulders. The man in a matching white suit, covered in a black overcoat, was yelling something, but the woman was so striking I could barely tear my eyes off her. When I finally did, though, it was when she disappeared inside a taxi, and the man was left with a cigar between his teeth, struggling to light it while chewing on his rage. Didn’t I know what that was like… I took my lighter out my coat pocket and helped him out.

“Thanks,” he grumbled. Then, he shot me a look.

I must have seemed to him like a little bird lost in the cold, skinny-legged and shivering. I lit my own cigarette, truly hoping I didn’t look as upset as I felt. A moment passed. A long black car braked in front of us, obviously the sharp-dressed man’s ride.

“Are you busy right now?” he asked me suddenly.

I blinked back to reality. “Uh… I was about to head home.”

“Got something to do, back home?”

His interest was sorta nice. I simply shrugged. “Not really—”

“Then you’re not busy,” he said, opening the door and climbing inside. He looked back at me and made a gesture. “Get in.”

I frowned. “What? Why?”

“Would you rather do nothing, back home?”

It was a good argument. And I was not looking forward to going back to the hotel and cry myself to sleep after being stood up by Jack. In the end, having no better options, I got in the car.

“I’m warning you now, no funny business,” I told him immediately. I was bored, but I wasn’t stupid. “I got a switchblade, and I’m not afraid to use it.”

He laughed. He had a nice, warm, well-rehearsed laugh. I smiled along, just a bit, and finally got a good look at him. Apart from the nice laugh, he had a nice movie-star smile, polite and charming. When he didn’t smile, though, and glanced at me just out the corner of his eye, that was when he looked like a real dreamboat: with his high cheekbones and his heavy-lidded eyes and perfectly arched brows, and the old-fashioned, carefully neat hair and mustache of a classic heartthrob, a sort of Clark Gable type. It didn’t really give him a youthful air, that must be said, but I sorta liked that in him. He wore that outdatedness better than anyone else I knew before or since.

I had a feeling he was famous. By the look of his tailored clothes and silver watch, he was definitely rich. Still, until I found out his name, it would do me good to pretend I knew who I had the pleasure of sharing a car ride with.

“Where are we going?” I asked him once the car was already crossing the avenue. “A royal ball?”

He smiled. “You’ll see.”

The man in the white suit gazed out the window thoughtfully, apparently no longer interested in me for the moment. I imitated him, pretending I didn’t care much about him either. That was my first time I was in such an expensive-looking car, with custom leather seats and tinted windows. It was nice and warm in there, and quite honestly, if the man just had the driver take us around for a few blocks for the next hour, I would have considered that a successful outing. Especially when, after a few minutes, we went through the streets where my hotel was, and I remembered where I was supposed to go after this little date.

He looked away from the window then, shifting his focus to his cigar, brushing off some nonexistent ashes from his lapels. I saw what he was avoiding. There were the whores, dupers, junkies, all the creatures of the night living on the last link of the food chain, walking the streets, fighting for scraps. It felt sorta sickening to know I was there, too. I thought about how I used to have a home, and a family, and a place where I was comfortable, at the very least. But then I had to come here, so convinced that there were only good things ahead of me, and saw no way out, only night after night of working to make enough to earn some extra money… But now I was looking at it all from the perspective of a rich man’s car. Through the tinted windows, New York looked so different. Faces became blurry, dark, while the lights became dimmer and the colors, no longer blinding, were easier to appreciate. It really was beautiful, in its own special way. At the very least, it wasn’t the bore that was Hackensack. At the very least, the city was alive.

I hadn’t gone to a club before. First of all, I didn’t have the money; second of all, I didn’t have the intel; third of all, and most importantly, I didn’t think I had anything to wear. But if this sharp-dressed man thought otherwise, then I was clearly wrong. And, whatever I had in mind about what a real club was like, it was nothing like what I encountered that night.

We got out of the car and onto what almost seemed like another movie theater entrance, with a long line of people wrapped in their trendy coats, waiting to be let in. He, he was allowed to come in without waiting in line. The doorman smiled at him nervously –oh, he was a famous guy alright –and the man in the white suit gave him some bucks. When the big heavy double doors opened to you, and you went through a dark hall with walls covered in curtains, already hearing the thumping bass notes of the music being played just a few feet ahead, you were coming into another world entirely. He handed his overcoat to another man standing on a booth on the side of the hall, and I followed suit.

It was as if Coney Island had moved upstate. There was music, and lights, and gorgeous people laughing and dancing half-naked and having a good time… Working at the Playhouse was hell, in a certain way, as I learned later on. But damn if it wasn’t a dazzling place. Red, purple and pink dyed everyone’s bodies in the most glamorous way, and everyone was so beautiful it was unreal. And the music, it was unlike anything I had heard before –well, almost. Closest thing I could imagine was the music in the background of the porn movies being played in the theaters around that same block, in the trashiest part of Manhattan, where I had tried for a job selling tickets and candy a couple times. It excited those rich folks, Jamie had told me, to find a little shimmering pearl in that dump. Still, what was sleazy and in bad taste in those movies, there, at the Playhouse, was just another part of the bigger picture. Yeah, it was sleazy, it was more than a little skeevy, how people were just dancing all over each other on the mezzanine, going further than just making out, watching over the regular people on the dance floor; but nobody batted an eye at it, nobody seemed to even care. It was just something in the background, like the potted palm trees and the faux marble columns.

Whatever discomfort I felt at first was soon washed away with the first drink. The man in the white suit asked for two rum and cokes at the bar, and we laughed as we ducked the kicks of the two tipsy women gyrating on the counter.

“Come,” he said, leaning towards me, his mustache tickling my ear, so I could hear him over the music. “Let’s dance.”

I gave him a panicked look –I didn’t know how to dance, especially not how these people did; best I knew what to do was the watusi. Still, I couldn’t say no. I made an effort to remember all the teachings of Dee and the girls at Heath’s house parties, all their tips on how to at least pretend you knew what you were doing, while observing the dancers around us, trying to get an idea of how to copy them. Luckily, the beat was more than clear, serving as a sort of metronome to help me stay in the groove. And, even more luckily, the man in the white suit was a really good dancer, good enough for the both of us.

While we danced, as I let my body move along to the music, swaying and imitating the rest of the dancers, I found myself unable to stop staring at him. Everyone looked gorgeous, everyone was dressed so glamorous, and the place was glittering and enchanting… But none came close to him, dressed so sharp, looking like a million bucks. He shot me a wink every once in a while, making me giggle. What I was wanting most was to move closer to him, lay my head against his shoulder, like the girls used to do with their dance partners at Heath’s house parties. We knew so little about each other, though. As entranced as he had me, I had to remind myself I wasn’t a random floozy desperate to throw herself at the first man who gave her a drop of attention. I had to have some self-respect, for God’s sake, I told myself, looking away, feeling my face becoming warm.

And yet… Just as I thought that, he rested his hand on my hip –and I didn’t hate it –and I smiled to myself, allowing him to pull me just a tiny bit closer, enough so I could feel his breath against my nape again, if only for a second. His hand held me tighter. For a moment I felt a tightness on my chest as well, as if I had trouble breathing. All the while I kept dancing, feeling his body dancing behind mine, with much more planned movements. You don’t get that good at dancing unless you practice. I looked up, over my shoulder, at him, backlit by the colorful shifting lights. I couldn’t quite see his face, but I was sure he was smiling. He already had me clinging to him, after all. If this had all been a game, he had won without me even noticing.

Soon I forgot all about Jack, and the movie date, and the cold of winter. Right then and there, I was dancing with a beautiful man, in a heavenly place, where everyone was happy. And I was happy too.

“You’re good at this,” I told him, leaning towards him with a smile.

“And you’re better than I thought,” he smiled back.

I wondered if I was dreaming. Maybe I had passed out on the street outside the cinema, and I was having one last dream before dying, buried in the snow, like that one tale about the matchstick girl. But everything felt so real. I had another drink, then another, and we kept dancing for hours, and after a certain point I didn’t feel so out of place anymore. Maybe we were all weirdos who had found this one place, where we could be free. There were no places like that in my little suburb in Hackensack, as far as I knew. If my mother even knew what I was doing, the way the man in the white suit was looking at me, as if he wanted to eat me whole…

But I was too happy to feel guilty. It was a delight to be desired. I wouldn’t have stayed with Jack for the last few months if he didn’t give me something back, for all that tongue-kissing and light petting. And this guy, clearly a man of wealth and taste –he saw something in me. He wasn’t like the drunkards at the corner bar next to the hotel. He wasn’t a creep on the street. He didn’t try to cop a feel, he didn’t yell unwelcome catcalls, he kept his distance, but he didn’t stay too far away. For the time being, he just wanted to dance with me. Time would tell if we did anything else, later on.

“Another drink?” he offered me, when we made our way back to the bar.

“I think I’ve had quite enough for the night,” I said, feeling wonderfully exhausted. “Especially with how empty my stomach is…”

He looked me up and down. I wiped my brow, and wondered if I was too sweaty.

“You haven’t had dinner yet, have you?”

I shook my head.

“Well, what would you say if we go back to my place?”

My first instinct was to laugh, probably out of sheer giddiness from all that drinking and dancing. Immediately after, my reaction was to get serious.

“Oh –I’m not that type of girl, mister,” I said.

And yet I second-guessed myself, wondering if it wouldn’t do me good to give in, just this once –to accept his advances, even though I was still, technically, dating Jack… Well, we never actually defined our relationship, though, right? We had kissed, we had gone on some dates, but he never really liked me calling him my ‘boyfriend’… We were, as Heath would have called it, ‘messing around’. Would I be a cheater if I went along with this other man, an obviously better option? Wouldn’t Jack do the exact same thing? Most importantly, was I doing something wrong, if I gave in for such shallow reasons?

“Alright. I can respect that,” the man in the white suit said with a little smile, leaning back in his seat. “What type of girl are you, then?”

“A hungry one.”

“You can get something to eat here,” he said, pointing at the bar. “You can get anything you want, anything you need, at the Playhouse.”

“Even a job?” I asked tentatively.

He laughed. “Even a job.”

The man in the white suit took out a little card from the inner pocket of his jacket, and handed it to me between two manicured fingers. I took it, and pressed it against my cheek. It was still warm.

We sat down at one of the booths around the dancefloor. A very handsome shirtless guy in glittery hot pants approached us, and gave the man in the white suit a smile. He barely seemed to notice I was there. They exchanged a couple words, and in a matter of minutes the Stretch Armstrong lookalike was back with a little dish of deviled quail eggs. I devoured them whole, to the man in the white suit’s amusement.

“Feeling better?”

I nodded. He laughed, snapped his fingers, and soon the dish was refilled –as if by magic. I laughed, wondering if I was high on something.

“Is it so wrong that I don’t know your name?” I asked him with my mouth full. “I’m guessing you’re some sort of big shot celebrity…”

“Not at all,” he said, lighting a new cigar. “I’m the owner of the place, actually.”

“You own this club?”

“Co-own,” he corrected himself. “But yes, everyone here knows me.”

“Everyone except me,” I corrected him.

He chuckled. “You’re right. Name’s Cesar. What’s yours?”

“Val.” It was the nickname Jack had given me. I had only told them I was Valentine, since I didn’t want to give them my first name –just in case he sold me to the cops or something. So, Val it was.

“Short for Valerie?” he asked.

I smiled for a moment, about to say, yeah, whatever. But I thought it would be better to keep him guessing. “… I haven’t decided yet.”

Cesar quirked his eyebrows. “Intriguing. Who are you, apart from Val?”

“I’m a waitress,” I admitted. “But I’m not gonna be that for much longer.”

“Really? You got a better job offer?”

“Let’s say things are looking up,” I said with a little shimmy of my shoulders, waving the little card he had handed me.

Cesar laughed. “You’re probably going to start as a waitress here at the Playhouse, though, realistically speaking.”

“Will I have to wear that uniform?” I asked him, pointing at the guy who had brought me the deviled eggs.

“No,” Cesar said, holding my hand and turning it to point at a girl carrying a little cardboard tray around, like the people who sell candy and cigarettes at old-timey theaters in movies. “That uniform.”

It was sorta revealing, but it showed off the girl’s curves quite well. That was, most likely, its main purpose. “I think it’ll look pretty nice on me.”

“I know it will.”

“Do I have to sign anything?” I asked. “Fill a card with my personal info, and all that stuff?”

“Not at all. It doesn’t matter who you are,” he said, stretching his arms over the sides of the booth. “Who do you want to be?”

I considered his question for a brief moment. “I wanna be like… Like Marilyn Monroe. I want to be wanted, and loved. You knew it when you saw her, that she was something special. She was never super respected by the other big, famous stars… But people, the actual people who saw her and watched her movies and paid attention to her, they always adored her. She was always adored.”

“So, you want to be adored?”

“Yes. More than anything,” I said, bringing my hands together, as if in a prayer. “I want to be loved.”

I had only discovered Marilyn once her death made the news. Up to that point I thought only old and sick people died, not beautiful young starlets like her. I remembered perfectly this color picture of her in a magazine at the dentist, with her blue eyes, a white fur coat, platinum blonde hair perfectly curled in a way that seemed almost natural, and a beauty mark just beside her gorgeous red lips. I had ripped the page from the magazine, and took it home with me. I think that was the first time I truly fell in love.

“After all,” I said, picking some sticky stray hairs off my face. “What else is the purpose of life, but loving?”

Cesar raised his perfectly groomed eyebrows. “You really believe that?”

“Sure!” I replied. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“Some people believe life is for living, actually.”

“But just living is such a bore,” I frowned. “Have you ever been kissed, like, a really good kiss? The sort of kiss that knocks the air right out of you?”

He smiled that gentle smile of his. “No, not in a while.”

“Well, that’s the sort of stuff that makes life worth living, I say. Anything can go wrong, you can have a shitty life, but if you got someone back home at the end of the day who can make you feel loved, then…” I smiled back at him. “Then I think that really makes life worth living.”

Cesar gazed at me for a while, all of his focus centered on me. It was as if he was inviting me to fall in love with him.

“You’re something,” he said finally. “You’re really something.”

“I am?”

He smiled and leaned forward, and gave me a little kiss on the forehead. It burned like a cigarette stub. It felt like being marked. I wished it would leave a mark. Then, I would be able to see it every time I looked in the mirror, and remind myself it had all been real.

From there on, with the card he had given me, I was redirected to Jess, the woman in charge of the busboys and the goody girls. She asked me a few questions, to which I lied all my answers, of which she seemed to be fully aware. With the more formal matters out of the way, she told me the work hours, what the pay would be for my first couple months, and then she took me aside and showed me a sample of the tray. Then, it was just a matter of being there on time, and bearing the harassment of a certain type of regular, and staying on Jess’ good side when I accidentally lost a cellophane bag…

“ Who is it? ”

I gasped and left the teddy bear on my lap. “Cesar, sweetface! It’s me—”

“ Val? ” his familiar voice asked. “ Don’t tell me— ”

“Yes, I’m afraid I’m in a bit of a pickle,” I chuckled, twirling the telephone cord around my finger. “Same station as always.”

“ Good Lord, Val… ”

“I’m sorry.”

“ No, you’re not, ” he said. “ Val, right now I’m… God… ”

I kept silent, pushing the chewed gum against the back of my teeth with the tip of my tongue. The cop at the office, still standing by the door, coughed and scratched his stubbly cheek. A telephone ringed somewhere at the station, and someone called for someone else to answer. Some perp behind bars yelled something in a drunken slur. I had spent a couple nights at a police station before, back when I hadn’t met Cesar yet. I wasn’t looking forward to repeating that experience.

“ … I’ll be there in ten, ” he finally said. “ And we’re going to have a serious conversation, you and me. ”

With that, Cesar hung up. I hung up too. Bringing the teddy closer to my chest, sinking my chin on its soft head, I clicked my wedges against the metal legs of the desk. I just had to wait for him to pick me up. He was really angry, angrier than usual. But it was alright, I thought with a smile. At least it had worked. I had managed to get in touch with him, and I was gonna see him again.

I waved at Cesar when I saw him, coming through the doors of the cophouse, but he just glared at me, not even trying to mask how pissed he was. I said hello to him –and he grabbed my arm, pulling me out of the building, out on the grimy streets and into his car.

“Tell me, Val,” Cesar said to me, with a deep sigh. “Are you proud of yourself?”

I crossed my arms. “I was just having a little fun—”

“Is that what you call this desperate plea for attention?”

“What else is there for me to do?” I said, raising my voice. “You’re never at your office when I try to get to you! When was the last time we actually went on a date?”

Cesar just sighed again and rubbed his temples. “It’s only been two weeks—”

“Eighteen days, actually,” I corrected him.

“Oh, so now you’re counting…”

There was a tense silence. Cesar was always annoyed with having to pick me up from the station, for some reason. By this point, I would have assumed he’d take it in stride.

“Only two weeks…” I repeated, clicking my tongue, and turned to look at him. “You really didn’t miss me, huh?”

His expression softened. “Of course I did.” He circled my shoulders with his arm, and planted a kiss on the top of my head. “Of course I do. I love you. Why else would I come and pick you up every single time you pull this nonsense?”

“Then why do we never meet up?” I insisted. “Why do I have to do this, to get a moment alone with you?”

We arrived at his East-side penthouse in a matter of minutes. Cesar’s apartment was like a movie set. With the exception of the bathroom and the kitchen, the whole place was covered with a light purple carpet. It was full of beautiful, extravagant plants, all in gigantic pots that you could stub your toe in if you weren’t careful. There were huge paintings hanging from the tall walls, all with thick elaborate frames. It was such a pity that it was always so dark in there, the curtains permanently drawn over the large windows that overlooked the city. It was much like being in a museum, I guessed: the lamps had sculptures underneath, there were exotic stuffed birds decorating the top surfaces of various cabinets and dressers, and every piece of furniture seemed like a work of art.

The bedroom was the most beautiful room of the penthouse. His king-sized bed rested on a platform, also carpeted, surrounded by a semicircle of wardrobe doors covered in mirrors, flanked by black lacquered side tables; and there were more shiny brass lamps, and an amazing fur bedspread, and inside all those hidden closets there were little lights so he could see which tie he was picking out. It was state-of-the-art, and it was the perfect mix of eccentric and tasteful –or so I had to imagine. I didn’t have much experience with modern, expensive homes, beyond what I saw in décor magazines.

“Have you had dinner yet?” I asked him, taking off my heels. “We could have dinner together.”

Cesar had an enormous kitchen in his penthouse, but it was completely empty. It was the only thing that I honestly truly hated from his place: an empty kitchen was unnatural, unsettling. All the food we had at his apartment was delivered by fine restaurants, but it didn’t change the fact that we never had an actual homecooked meal. Rich people just don’t need that, I assumed.

“I’ll order something from Dorsia,” he said, taking off his jacket and reaching for the phone.

“Alright,” I said quietly, running my hands over the soft fur bedspread, wondering how you washed something like that. You’d have to probably send it to a dry-cleaners. That made me realize that he didn’t have a washing machine in his apartment, either. It truly was just somewhere to sleep, fuck, smoke and drink. I liked Cesar’s penthouse, of course, but it would hardly be somewhere you could call a home.

Once he hung up the phone, he let out a deep breath and laid on his back over the bed, rubbing his eyes. I leaned back against the headboard, feeling pretty hungry already, hoping the delivery was quick.

“You’re not wearing the clothes I got you,” he said rather sadly, glancing up at me. “What was wrong with them?”

I looked down at my outfit –my red sailor shorts and my denim top. “Nothing was wrong… I just feel more comfortable in these,” I answered with a shrug.

Cesar often gave me lots of gifts. A few of our outings recently had been shopping trips, where he took me along with him to Columbus Circle, letting me choose some things too. Most of the time he preferred to pick my clothes himself. When I tried to argue, he said that he knew what fashionable girls wore, and that he had a friend who worked in Paris who told him what the latest trends were, so I should value his opinion. I always ended up letting him –that seemed to make him happy.

“One of the other goody girls, Nancy, has these totally groovy pink sunglasses…” I said, taking the white-framed ones I was wearing, all scratched and smudged, and spinning them in my hand. “I’m thinking that maybe I’m feeling down lately ‘cause of these stupid, blue-tinted glasses I got.”

He chuckled. I always liked to make him laugh.

“I could get you something better than pink sunglasses,” he said, stroking my arm. “I could get you Oscar de la Renta.”

I smiled at him in agreement, though I had no idea what those would look like. It wasn’t like it mattered, anyway. Ever since Cesar started wooing me and giving me things, I had to be creative and find ways to ‘repurpose’ them, shall we say. I couldn’t exactly have them lying around in the room I shared at Hotel Broslin: the couple times I did, they disappeared without a trace the moment I took my eyes off them. For a while, without any place of my own to store his increasingly expensive little tokens of affection, I found myself forced to resell some of these gifts at a pawn shop at Hell’s Kitchen. With the money I got, I bought clothes I would actually wear, and since I had a little extra, I could also pay for my movie theater trips, concert tickets, and eventually my small doll collection –which, thankfully, none of my roommates ever seemed interested in stealing from me. After a while, whatever he gave me and I didn’t quite like (which, truth be told, was a good amount of the clothes he gave me, since apparently the fashionable women in Paris hated miniskirts and t-shirts) I quickly resold. For some time I’d considered storing the gifts in my little rusty locker at the changing room of the Playhouse –until I remembered that I couldn’t quite trust my coworkers to not try and pick the lock. Later on, I discovered that a roof panel of one of the bathroom stalls at the Playhouse could be pushed up and removed, and that it could serve as a pretty good hiding place. For lack of a safe, I kept my gifts and my valuables there, where only I would know where to find them. It was a rather sad thing, of course, that most of Cesar’s presents were too bulky or precious for me to keep; since he didn’t ask about them afterwards, however, I thought that he might suspect, on some level, what I was doing with the stuff. Sometimes I wondered if Cesar knew about it. He rarely mentioned these gifts again –but now that he did, he seemed genuinely disappointed.

One time, I did wear the jewelry he gifted me: a gorgeous golden chain necklace. I got mugged as soon as I set foot on the street. So, it only made sense to make such decisions.

“You know, Sally’s just told us she’s now a live-in girlfriend, meaning, she’s living at her boyfriend’s place,” I said. Her boyfriend once came over to the changing room, and she had us meet him. He was a nerdy type, with thick glasses and a couple nervous ticks. Once both of them were out of sight, Laurie joked that he must be filthy rich for a knockout like Sally to even look his way –and I had to agree. “Isn’t that nice? That way they can keep in touch, maybe even have breakfast together, spend more time in each other’s company—”

“You can be straightforward, Val, and just say what you want.”

“Alright,” I said, getting off my back and standing over him on the bed. “I want to move in with you.” At the very least that way I could put that beautiful kitchen to good use.

Cesar nodded, still smiling, though he didn’t seem very happy.

I pouted. “What? What is it?”

“I don’t know, darling. I think we’re good just as we are.”

That wasn’t the first time I had heard that. Heath and Cesar were like night and day, but still I managed to find ways in which they were exactly alike.

He must have noticed my pouting, because he laughed and stroked my hair.

“You’d get tired of me,” he said. “If you saw me every day.”

“I don’t think I could ever get tired of you.”

Cesar kissed me. I sighed, and kissed him back, finally comforted in his embrace, losing the tension I had been building up during the day.

“But wouldn’t it be great?” I asked him. “If we could go back to each other, by the end of every day?”

Cesar let out a deep sigh. “I wish you understood, Val, my darling… Life is so easy for you. That’s what I like about you. You are who you are, you just… Do what comes naturally,” he said with a chuckle. “Even if what comes naturally is getting a speeding ticket every couple of weeks.”

I giggled. He pinched my chin.

“You don’t know how important you are to me,” he said softly. “How alive you make me feel.”

I stroked his smoothly-shaven cheek, and leaned forward for another kiss. “I wish I could see myself through your eyes.”

Cesar smiled gently, cupping my head in his hands, and turned my face to the mirrors around the bed. I smiled, too. We made a handsome couple. He was a lot more elegant than I was –he fit his surroundings perfectly, as if Cesar himself came included with the penthouse –while I looked more like the sort of girl you’d find walking back from a cheap club in the early hours of the morning –but in the dim light of his bedroom, my badly-chopped, clumsily-bleached hair seemed intentional, almost high-fashion, and my makeup was dramatic enough to sell the illusion that I was some sort of actress, waiting for the next shot.

“I have something for you, Val,” he said, and planted a little kiss on my shoulder. It had turned into a familiar enough sentence for me to know what came next.

“Is it an apology gift?” I joked. “For the eighteen days without a word?”

“Sure,” he laughed, standing up and opening one of the mirrored walls of his wardrobe. “Take it however you’d like.”

I grinned, even though I knew he didn’t like it when I grinned that big. Cesar told me I shouldn’t grin too big and show my teeth –he said I look rather threatening like that. When I smiled with my mouth closed, lips shut, he said, I seemed mysterious and seductive. So that’s what I did. But, looking at his present, I couldn’t really help myself. Even if I didn’t have a chance to keep the gift, the fact that Cesar thought of me at some point during these two weeks without seeing each other, and that he took the trouble to find a present he believed I would like, told me all about how, despite not having the time for me, I was still in his mind.

“Close your eyes,” he told me. “And don’t peek.”

I laughed, and covered my face with one hand. He took the other, running his fingers through my palm, and left it on top of what felt like a cardboard box.

“Can I see?”

“No, not yet,” he said. “I want you to guess.”

The cardboard surface was pulled away, and my hand was left hovering for a moment, before he gently pushed it down a few inches, for it to land on something smooth and silky.

“A scarf?” I suggested.

“No…”

I bit my lower lip, now grabbing the gift with both hands, feeling a sleeve, a line of seams, a fold…

“Oh –a dress!”

I opened my eyes and let out a loud gasp. It was this shimmering silver dress, made out of some unusual metallic fabric. Standing up on the bed, I picked it by the shoulders, taking it out of the box, and pressed it against me, waving the long skirt in the air, marveled at the soft billowing movement it had.

“Cesar, it’s… It’s divine!”

“And it’s the genuine thing,” he commented, showing me the little label on the neck. “It definitely wasn’t cheap.”

I jumped to him, hugging him and pushing him down on the bed, covering his face with kisses.

“Be careful –don’t want to rip it on accident—”

“It’s absolutely gorgeous… I’m gonna care for it with my life.”

Where I would wear it, I wasn’t sure; how I was gonna smuggle it into the bathroom stall at the Playhouse, I knew even less, but I wasn’t gonna worry about that right then. Cesar rarely managed to really get me and what I liked. Anything he gave me was, of course, very much welcome; and, especially when we went out shopping, once in a blue moon, it really made my week to see his glad little smile as I twirled around for him. That didn’t change the fact that I neither had any good excuse to wear these, nor that I didn’t quite feel like myself in these long flowing dresses or high-buttoned blouses. That silver dress was something else. It wasn’t precisely in my wheelhouse either, but it was close enough for me to want to try. Most importantly, I could see myself in it. I could go out to dinner with Cesar in it, look truly head-turning gorgeous, for once. And it was clear that, judging by the way it was wrapped and by how he presented it to me, he did find it to be some special thing. I hugged the dress, feeling the smooth fabric under my fingers, before I handed it back to Cesar for him to fold it back carefully into the box.

The buzzer ringed. The food had arrived. He put on one of his old beloved Tom Jones records while I served portions of Waldorf salad and broiled broccoli into silver dishes, and we sat in the conversation pit in his living room, eating by the small coffee table.

“Cesar… I don’t want you to think I’m not thankful for everything you’ve done for me, because I am,” I said, after a few minutes during which I just stuffed my face with slices of rare Porterhouse steak. “But I’ve been thinking… And I’d like another job.”

“What’s wrong with the Playhouse?”

“Nothing, nothing! It’s just wonderful, working there, it’s just that…” I bit my lip and shrugged. “I’ve been just a waitress for so long, I had hoped I’d be something else by now.”

“Oh… Right,” Cesar said with a smile. “The next Marilyn.”

I let out a little squeal, bouncing on the sofa. “You remembered!”

“Of course I did,” he said, and kissed my temple. “But aren’t you adored enough by now?”

“I am… It’s just that I really wish I could do something else, you know. I just want something more out of life. My mother used to say, ambition can move mountains.”

It wasn’t exactly what she used to say, but it never hurt to appeal to her authority to make a point.

“You think you’re ambitious enough?” he asked me. “It’s a pretty cutthroat industry, my dear.”

“I’m ready,” I said, turning serious for a moment. “For anything.”

He glanced at me and laughed. “So, what’s stopping you, then?”

I looked down at my chipped nail polish. “I’ve been going to auditions for a while now… With no results. Not even one little call. So, I thought, you know, maybe what I need is a little help. Everyone could do with a little help every once in a while, right?”

Cesar nodded. “Aha… What sort of help are you needing?”

“Acting classes, maybe?” I suggested, bringing my knees against my chest. “That could be a good start.”

“I’ll get you some acting classes, then.”

“And an agent?”

He laughed again. “Sure, Val. I know a dozen that would love to work with you.”

“You’re the best there ever was, is and will be,” I declared, giving him a tight hug and a kiss. “You’ll see, I’ll be a star. And you’ll be credited as the brilliant man who gave me my first chance.”

He patted my arm, still chuckling. The music kept playing. I gave him another kiss and sighed, still hugging him. We were so different, Cesar and I. And still, somehow, we made it work.

“Come on. Let’s go dancing,” I said, standing up and doing a twirl. “Let’s dance the night away.”

“I’m tired.”

“Then don’t be,” I shrugged. It wasn’t like he didn’t have ways to shake the exhaustion off. “Where can we go, where we can be seen and envied?”

“Please, darling, not tonight. Tomorrow night, we’ll go anywhere you like.”

I plopped down on the couch, giving a long deep sigh. Cesar circled my legs with his arm and kissed my knee, his own little way of apologizing.

“Then, what’re we gonna do?” I grumbled. “I always want to see you, but you just want to spend the night in. Why can’t we go out, have fun, do stuff?”

“Don’t you work two jobs?” he asked me back. “How come you aren’t all beat by now?”

I shrugged again with a smile. “A waitress’ life is dull, you know… I just want a change of pace.”

“You’re that bored?” Cesar chuckled, resting his chin on my knees. “I think I might have some board games lying around.”

I laughed. “Yes, I’m very much bored. And I don’t know how you’re not bored either! Working all day, with all your business stuff—”

“That business stuff is what keeps the lights on, darling.”

My smile wavered. “Is that really it? Just that you’re tired?”

“I promise you, Val, once this deal I’m making is done with, we will do whatever you want.”

“That’s not what I’m asking… What I wanna know,” I said, leaning forwards, resting my arms on his shoulders. “Do you promise me you won’t get tired of me?”

“How could I be tired of you? The way you always keep me on my toes…”

I didn’t laugh. I just stared at him, waiting for him to answer.

“I’m going to tell you something, Val,” he finally said, holding my hands and pulling me closer. “In my line of work, you’ve got to spend a lot of time worrying. You know, who’s going to swindle you, who you can trust, that sort of stuff. It really drains you. But then I get a moment of peace –and you know the first thing my mind goes to?”

Slowly, a smile returned to my lips. He stroked my cheek with the back of his soft hands.

“It’s you, you and your beautiful, young face. You, fresh and bright and full of promise, you who hasn’t been brought down by the blows of life yet.”

Each time Cesar called me beautiful it was like it was the first time all over again. It always caught me by surprise, making me giggle like a schoolgirl, still finding it hard to believe that someone like him, who surely had met so many stunning actresses and models, somehow saw me as comparable to them. I held his hand, pressing it against my cheek, and kissed his knuckles.

“You say you’re afraid I’m going to get tired of you. You know what I say to that?” he smiled. “I say, I couldn’t quit you even if I wanted to. You’re addictive. You see, Val, that with you… I am a better man. I am what you want me to be, what you wish I was. I am who you see when you look at me.”

I furrowed my brow, not completely sure I followed, before chuckling and having a bite of carrot cake. Cesar seemed happy. That was what mattered.

“Stay over,” he said, after one more kiss, as he embraced me.

I hugged him back. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

We made out for a while. If it had been up to me, we would have kept cuddling right there in the living room –but I guess that, if you got a bedroom as stunning as he did, then it would no sense not to use it. Cesar picked me up –not hard at all for him to do so, with how tall he was –and I squealed and laughed, holding onto the back of his neck, all the way back to the bed.

Back when I had just started working at the Playhouse and learning the ropes, being a goody girl by night and waiting tables at the corner bar by day, I was unusually patient. I knew Cesar was the co-owner of the place, after all, so I told myself I shouldn’t worry too much. When I learned his office was in the same building, I decided to pay him a little visit, and once I was there it really dawned on me just how rich and successful he was. He told me we would go out for dinner that night, and when I told him I had work, he just laughed and told me to wait for him by the Playhouse’s bar around ten. So I did that, and he showed up in his best suit, and he took me out of the dancefloor and into his car, and we went to have an amazing lobster dinner. It was truly out of a dream. I had to keep pinching myself to believe it.

And what I liked the most about Cesar, beyond all the wining and dining, beyond all the gifts that began showing up at the changing room with a white rose and a little card with ‘for Val’ written on it, was how he always kept his distance. It was as if I had forgotten that guys can be able to be decent towards the girls they were interested in. The most he ever did was rest his hand on my hip, or place it gently on my back. Once he kissed my hand before we parted ways, and it was like a romance novel, like I was a princess. This sort of sweet courtship lasted about four whole months. By that point I was already head over heels for him, and absolutely convinced that Cesar was mad about me, too. It was just the sort of love I had been dreaming of, caring and tender, but he always left me wanting more –a deeper kiss, a tighter embrace.

One night, we had drinks and dinner in his office: he told me stories about his childhood, about his mother, about his first job managing the books of a club in Brooklyn, how he met the other owners of the Playhouse, how he amassed his wealth one penny at a time, and so on and so forth. I didn’t care much about any of that, but I liked watching Cesar talk, how his body became animated. I thought that, right there and then, it would be when he would tell me how much he wanted me, how much he loved me: but he didn’t. Instead, he wiped his lips with a napkin and asked me if I wanted to dance. We hadn’t danced together since that first night that he brought me here.

We walked down the stairs, hand in hand, onto the dance floor. I swear I couldn’t look away from him. From all my time watching customers dancing the latest moves to the most popular songs, I already had a better grasp on how to move to the music. And, similarly, I think Cesar knew that I was now much more comfortable with him, comfortable enough for him to hold me closer. When a slower song came on, I had leaned my head against his shoulder, feeling his warmth, the smell of his heady cologne, the silky smoothness of his clothes. Everything about him was enveloping and soft and welcoming, like a cocoon. I was as comfortable as I could ever be.

“ Will I have to wait forever…? ” I remember the singer crooning as I closed my eyes, allowing him to hold me closer. “ Will I have to suffer and cry the whole night through…? ”

Then, Cesar offered to drive me home, like he always did at the end of a date. I always refused, since that would mean telling him where I lived, and even though I knew he would still love me just the same, even if he saw my place at Eighth Avenue and my living conditions, I didn’t want our relationship to be tainted by something as ugly as pity. This time, however, I accepted; I did give him a fake address, but it wasn’t about that –it was just because I wanted to spend a little longer with him, before the spell was broken and I had to return to my dull old life.

It was there when my patience reached its breaking point. While in his car, I had asked him, straight-out, if he loved me. Taken by surprise, Cesar told me that he found me charming, that he had a lot of fun with me. I asked him if that meant that he loved me. He seemed uncomfortable at first, and for a moment I was afraid that I had it wrong, that I had thought I had seen something in him he never really felt. But then, then Cesar brought me closer and he kissed me, a real kiss, and I knew that I had been right all along. I asked him to make the night last a little longer –and he did. We went to his penthouse, which I visited for the first time.

We spent a beautiful night together. I only had Heath to compare it to, to his frantic grabbing and breathing. But Cesar was so, so different. He was gentle and tender, patient and careful, and when he ran his hands over me it was almost with a sense of awe. That was exactly what I had been wanting. It felt perfect. There, lying under the white satin sheets of his bed, I felt I had become perfect. Not a grubby teenage runaway, but the virtuous love of a true gentleman, like the protagonists of the Avon bodice-rippers and Harlequin romance paperbacks I used to skim over at Heath’s house parties and that I borrowed from my coworkers. Like it was the first step towards my happy ending. From then on, there would only be good things in my future, only love and devotion. Because, against all odds, Cesar loved me.

It was like vindication. Proof that it was worth it to wait so long for the right one to come along.

I had smiled to myself, back then, watching Cesar’s relaxed face, lost in dreams of his own, his spotless and somewhat hairy body moving ever so slightly with each breath he took, unbelievably real in front of me. He was at peace, with the trace of a smirk in his lips. Me, I felt about to burst into a joyful explosion of confetti and glitter. I couldn’t stop myself from leaning forward and smooching his head, like Cesar had done with me months ago. I got out of bed, jumping and shaking my arms in excitement, doing a little dance, silently celebrating my triumph. I explored the apartment, searching for something to make breakfast with, finding out that the place was as if he had just moved in. No matter, I had thought, sitting beside him on the bed, watching him sleep for a few minutes more. We’d have breakfast when he woke up. We’d have coffee, and maybe give it another go, and later I’d have a bath in the amazing bathroom of his penthouse and later, later we might have a walk in Central Park if the day was nice, and we’d have our first official kiss as a couple on the little bridge over the stream, and we would walk hand in hand, my head resting on his shoulder, and I’d say something funny and he’d laugh and give me a kiss. And he would never ask me about my life at Hackensack. And he’d fill any awkward silences with his own stories of success and achievements, and all the interesting things he did before meeting me, and all the interesting things we’d do together as a couple. I could picture our entire life together from my little warm spot in his bed. All my wishful fantasies were just a little bit closer to becoming real, close enough for me to reach out and feel them, just as I could feel his soft breathing on my face.

I didn’t want to wake Cesar up, but I couldn’t keep still either. I needed to move, to dance, to jump around, to sing. Finally, after some deliberation, I decided I’d take a quick walk to calm myself down, maybe even buy us some coffee and pastries, and then come back up to his apartment and surprise him with breakfast in bed. So I got dressed, shot him one last smile, and tiptoed my way out of the penthouse.

There was a buzzing feeling in my hands and feet. I smiled at everyone, waved at them like a madwoman, not caring what they thought of me. The world was a beautiful place that morning, and I was excited for what would come. And I was a little kid again, skipping through Central Park. Now that I had a new boyfriend, one that was crazy about me, who loved me just as much as I loved him, it was as if I was on top of the world. New York felt like my very own personal property. I had it all, and what I didn’t have, I’d soon get.

Twirling my switchblade, I could have chopped my fingers right off and still laugh it off like no big deal. Like El Zorro, I carved a little cross, the T for Tiffany, on every tree I saw. There was this one very, very old tree, near the lake by Cherry Hill, where many other couples had carved their initials. I ran the tip of my fingers over the grooves and dents on the wood, feeling the rough bark of the tree and the markings of the love of dozens and dozens of couples over the years. First time I had seen it, I was convinced that eventually me and Jack’s names would end up added to it. Luck had it other way. I spent a moment finding an empty spot on the trunk, and when I found a nice enough one, I carved my T, then a C, then another little cross between the two letters, and finished it off with one big heart around it.

Once I got out of the park, I found a nice place to buy some coffee and grab a bite. I was waiting in line when I caught a glimpse of the clock behind the clerk, and realized I was late for my shift at the bar. For a moment I was worried, but then I thought, I could miss one day at work. Not every day you found yourself such a catch. I wanted to celebrate.

When I left the café with my purchases, I realized I didn’t remember where Cesar’s apartment was. I was so happy, though, I could simply chuckle and told myself I would have many more chances to have breakfast with Cesar, my new boyfriend. Having a bite off the pastry I had chosen, I walked the streets that suddenly didn’t seem so grey and dour anymore –everything was bright in the morning sunshine, stretched in front of me under the big blue sky.

Wandering around in the smitten daze I was, I came across a payphone. I still had some spare change in my pocket. I would have called Cesar, and told him what had happened, just so he wouldn’t worry, just so he wouldn’t think I would love him and leave him, if I knew his number. But we would meet again later that day –so there was no need to waste my pennies on that. Instead, after finishing the pastry and gulping down the coffee, I decided there was a call I needed to make.

In retrospect, I should have thought it over. Normally, I know I would. But I was on cloud nine –nothing could touch me, nothing could hurt me from where I was. At the time, it sounded like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I pushed a couple quarters in, and dialed the number I still remembered by heart.

“Hi, mom… It’s me, Tiffany,” I said, almost calling myself Val again. “I hope everyone’s doing alright back at home. I know it’s been a while, and that I should have called sooner…”

I laughed, hoping she wouldn’t be too bothered by it. Just then I remembered this one time, a very long time ago, that I heard my mother laughing at something she heard on TV. It almost scared me, how similar my laugh sounded to my mother’s.

“… Anyway, you don’t have to worry about me anymore. I met this guy, Cesar, and he’s my boyfriend now. He’s a dream come true. He really loves me, and he cares for me. He’s a real gentleman… I wish you could meet him.”

A few seconds passed, in which I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Every now and then I had considered calling my mother back home, just to have someone to either complain about some bad luck or to gloat about some little triumph. I had always managed to reign that first impulse. Now that I had something I really, really wanted to tell her about, I had forgotten about everything else I had also been itching to tell her since I ran away to New York.

“I just wanted to tell you that. I’m doing well. I’m happy. And… Well, I… I hope you’re happy for me,” I said, lowering my voice. “I’m sending kisses to you and Bri. And to dad, too.”

I tried to think of something else, but it seemed like that was a good enough way to finish my call. I hung up. And, lighting my first cigarette of the day, I smiled, thinking about how relieved she would be when she learned that I was finally in good hands.

#childs play #tiffany valentine #chucky series #fanfiction

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milkweedman · 2 years

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Second round of seedlings so far ! I have no idea what any of the flowers coming up are (ran out of labels a few years ago and now i just like to guess until it's big enough to be obvious lol) but the beets (red shoots with green leaves) and spinach (no closeups but its the ones that look like little grass) are doing well, as is the singular melon that actually germinated. Not sure what happened there, maybe i planted the rest too deep. The sage, basil, amd parsley are all from the first round of seedlings and just growing slowly and steadily. Should probably thin them, i guess...

Also, the lavendar outside is doing that molting thing again which i love, and the Old Stump in the front yard is looking particularly nice today.

#gardening #im very nervous at the moment because i just sent a message to my surgeon asking for more pain meds #bc of how awful the last week has been #and im nervous that 1) she'll say no bc i rly dont know how i will get thru another week or so of that pain #but also 2) what if she labels it drug seeking behavior and it goes on my chart or something ??#like the thing is that it IS drug seeking behavior bc i want drugs so that i am in less pain #specifically do want drugs for pain control. and will want them in the future too ...#idk. yeah. nervous. also still in a lot of pain but took my very last two oxys a few minutes ago bc #if i am going to be this nervous it seems cruel to make myself also experience the fact that my right hip is dislocated again #which it is. and has been for a few days now.#chronic illness #hospital #i mean technically we are talking about surgery pain here but its not like all the chronic pain disappears for surgery #it doesnt take a nice little vacation #its still there its just that now youre trying to recover while every few hours someone dislocates a joint for fun #which doesnt help very much with recovery #anyway ! it is a nice day outside rn but im not sure if i should trust that it will stay that way for long #but i would love to spin...#considered yesterday that i could just put the alpaca on the backburner until the weather is actually good enough #to spin outside for 5-6 hours at a time so i can just get it done #and mix some fun scrap batts to spin in the meantime #but i had a box full of packing peanuts from the dulcimer that my moms girlfriend sent #which was sitting right underneath all my scrap yarn in my crafting area in my room #and then all of my scrap yarn fell into it. and i have not cleaned it up yet for reasons unknown to me #will try to do it today ? the oxy has kicked in (have to take double the dose for it to do anything so the latest refill was 2.5 doses)#and i am in Minimal Pain and feeling...dare i say .... functional ?#drugs

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ninja-knox-ur-sox-off · 3 years

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How are you able to write several thousand word chapters? Please, tell me your secrets. I require the power for my writing /genuine

ASLKDMFAOWE Buckle up everyone, it's time for never before seen back-stage content looking into the writing habits of KNOX *cracks knuckles*

1. Read a lot of books

Seriously, you'd be surprised at just how much reading alone can help you with writing. For me, it's like I inhale words, my brain absorbs them, and then I can type out a remix of those words to create something of my own. Any time I'd lose steam when writing I'll just pause to go read a specific writers work (inhaling the words) and then go right back to writing. It's kinda like a recharge for me. When I run out of words, I just gotta read to pick up new ones

2. Avoid interruptions

Getting interrupted is a huge problem when writing. With the specific fic you're probably thinking of, I had a lot of free time that week, which I spent most of writing that. I went outside, sat on the driveway and just... wrote (and read) for hours, uninterrupted because I removed myself from where people could interrupt me

Interruptions also include notifications from phone, (turn those off,) people coming up and talking to you, and bright colourful shiny things on the ground

3. Make sure you got food and water

Have a water bottle near you, eat something before you start. If you feel yourself slowing down or your brain getting fuzzy at all, or the words won't come up right, go eat something, a real meal, pause, inhale an apple. Get your brain off of survival mode so it can create better

4. TAKE BREAKS

Every hour or so just get up and move locations if you can. Or pause to just run from one area of the house and back. Movement makes your body have energy. Make sure you can breathe so your brain gets oxygen. Do a little dance wiggle, wave your hands, spin around, very calmly walk from room to room backwards if you feel like it, (watch out for tripping hazards,) just get moving for a bit

5. Start with a success

Do a little something, a project, make your bed, wash some dishes, do something that is a small success before writing so it gets your brain in a good mood, and makes you feel like you can accomplish things. Seriously, this helps HUGE

6. Write about something you like

Writing about an idea or character that fascinates your, or gets your brain working is a great way to get the words flowing honestly. That ones pretty obvious

7. Let the words Mcfreaking FLOW

Got a scene that's coming out as a jumble of nonsense? That's cool, just keep going. Got a part that doesn't make any sense? Whatever, keep moving. Keep that momentum, don't stop. FEEL FREE TO DART AROUND. Have an idea for the next scene suddenly? Make a couple paragraph breaks so you have some space between it and the current scene, viciously type that scene down

I can't tell you how many times I'll dart forward, then immmedeatly go back to the previous scene and keep writing like I'd never stopped. It's keeps the creative flow going and allows your brain to make connections and continue in success. Best way to tie scenes together when you're stuck is to just move onto the next one

8. Let your brain do what it wants

90% of what I write I basically just come up with on the fly. I have a general idea of what I want, and then I just start writing. Sometimes I'll outline, sometimes I don't, sometimes I just have a note that says "This person gets hugs" and all the between stuff just happens

Watch what your brain creates and write it down. I'm essentially a scribe for the scenes I watch take place in my head at this point honestly. I don't really ask myself "what would happen next" usually cause I'm just watching it happen rather than coming up with the stuff

Just write the dumbest craziest stuff. Get wild, get whacky, don't be afraid to

9. Give that sweet sweet inner monologue

If you want your stuff to be more wordy/have a higher word count, don't be afraid to show what the character is thinking! Have their thoughts racing, have them seeing a small candy wrapper on the ground, and being distracted by it for a moment as they think about the last couple of minutes or a conversation they had. Describe their thoughts and their expressions to get a feel for what they're feeling, give them things to interact with outside their own thoughts, describe the area around them as they notice it, change the weather so you have more things to describe

You could say

They were excited to go outside.

or you could say

A day outside! Finally! After two weeks indoors confined to bed, the cast was finally off and they couldn't wait to get back to climbing trees and racing through the forest and splashing through the river. They missed the cool water and the sunshine.

Being indoors wasn't all that bad, it hadn't been too incredibly dull with their friends there to help them, but nothing could really compare to the breeze on their skin and the grass on their feet.

They could barely stand still, practically dancing in place, hopping from one newly healed foot to the other, hands flapping and a smile on their face that they didn't even bother biting back, even as it stretched wider and wider into a grin.

The little bubble of excitement built in their chest until their heart was racing and they just wanted to jump up and down and take off outside--

And suddenly bOOM. TONS MORE WORDS!

10. Switch up locations

Your brain likes new things! Find a spot that is new, change things up a bit. Go outside and write, sit on the couch sideways, sit on the floor, write standing up, sit in a tree, lay down on the concrete driveway, (out of the way of cars,) sit on the stairs! Sometimes a change in scenery is all you need to get your brain working

I'll sometimes go through several locations per paragraph every time my brain stalls I'll move positions and then suddenly I can write again. Sometimes your body and brain just get restless! Especially if it's used to darting between writing, social media, texts, and back again

Sometimes it's also good to have a designated spot to do writing however, but if you have one of those, make sure when you're in that location all you do is write. That way, whenever you sit back down there, your brain will be hardwired and ready to write instantly. That only works if writing is the only thing you do while sitting there usually lol

11. Music/no music

Sometimes music is great, sometimes it's not. Don't be afraid to turn off your music to let your brain go, or turn on some hype music to get you excited. Sometimes I'll do study music, or I'll pull up a dubstep workout mix, and sometimes it'll be silence. Don't be afraid to mix it up, what works for you one day might not work another and that's okay!

AND THAT, MY FRIEND, IS WRITING WITH KNOX, THANKS FOR VIBIN WITH ME

Just take care of yourself! Remember to refuel both mentally and physically, take breaks and give yourself little rewards. Roll up them sleeves, find a place, get some snacks or candy to munch on to help you focus, and tappity type away, my dude!

#Writing tips #Writing advice #Knox rambles #asks #anon #long post #THIS WAS SUPER FUN TO WRITE ACTUALLY AKSDMFOWE #GOOD VIBES #HOPE THIS HELPS A LI'LL!! <333 #This reminds me of why I love writing so much honestly #SMDKFOAGHO;W WOOOOOOOO

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an-anxious-gay-mess · 3 years

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Here's my headcanons of what neurodivergencies the lab rats (and leo) would have if I had been allowed to write this show

Adam:

-ADHD and Dyslexia

-"What do you mean the letters aren't supposed to move around?"

"Uh"

"Are you telling me most people don't have to read the same paragraph six times???"

"Uh-"

- After he got diagnosed he actually became a bit more interested in learning! It helps that most people are actually working with him now instead of just reassuring him that he's dumb -Chase especially feels really bad for teasing him so much without realizing how hard Adam had to try and researches ways to help people like him study

-Adam still doesn't go out of his way to do well though, he's fine as long as he's passing his classes

- is almost never standing still. He loves swivel chairs and will spend hours just spinning back and forth completely zoned out before he realizes he should probably eat something that day

-the only time you'll see him completely still is when he's sleeping or super upset about something. He gets RSD pretty bad sometimes and will just shut down completely when upset

Chase

-Autism, baby!!

-Gets really bad sensory overload and has a lot of meltdowns if he gets too overwhelmed

-he gets frustrated with himself a lot when he gets sensory overload and will try to ignore it, which usually makes it worse

-He has a lot of stims but he typically will only do the more visual ones when he feels safe (mostly when he's alone or with his family if he knows they won't make fun of him)

-Just. Constant info dumping. If you're going to start a conversation with him make sure you have at least 15 spare minutes to learn about the history of needle work (or whatever he's been researching that week)

-hates eye contact but will force himself for the sake of being Professional, to the point where he makes himself do more destructive stims (like pulling at his hair) or even having a meltdown

-(his family yells at him for doing this A Lot "Chase please just put on the goddamn headphones why do you do this to yourself-")

-he was kind of embarrassed about being autistic at first and still tries to hide it most of the time to prevent people from bullying him about it, but after a while he learns to accept that it's not his fault people want to be dicks, and that autism isn't something to be ashamed of

Bree:

-dyslexia and anxiety

-She's the one I have the least amount of headcanons for whoops-

-i think unlike Adam she's really embarrassed about being dyslexic and goes out of her way to avoid talking about it

-this is partially because of her anxiety too: she doesn't want to bother her teachers or anyone so she never mentions anything about getting accommodations

-because of this she struggles a lot in some of her classes, but she spends a lot of time worrying about them and studying too

-she's had a lot of panic attacks at 3 am over trigonometry

-after a while of her grades getting worse the school guidance counselor probably pulls her aside and is like "you know we can give you extra time to do tests right?" And basically gets her all the accommodations she needs

-Bree is like "wow glad I spent 2 years building that 5 minute conversation up in my head and making myself worry so much I threw up multiple times"

-she generally tries to not let anxiety control her too much, and once she gets some help from her teachers she gets way fewer panic attacks over school work

-she even tries to over compensate by trying to appear like nothing worries her even though Everything does

-she hates when her brother's occasionally go on missions without her (like if she's sick or injured), and her anxiety will scream at her the whole time they're gone

-they're always willing to reassure her that they're okay, though, and will even update her over headsets when they can

-she also worried a lot that people around her are secretly mad at her or don't like her. Her family is usually willing to reassure her that they love her, but it does tend to put a strain on relationships she forms outside of them

-also I think part of the reason she latches onto texting so much (besides the stereotypical Teenage Girl thing) is because spell check is a godsend

Leo

-OCD and autism

-tasha: uh hey buddy what are you doing?

6 year old leo: idk stacking these blocks

Tasha: oh, okay, why don't we work together to make a big tower?

Leo: no. There must be Exactly Six blocks in each tower

Tasha: okay buddy that's great :)

-the lab rats are initially very confused by some of his rituals

-for example: when he turned the lights in a room on or off, he had to flick the switch 5 times. Or at night, he had to check to make sure the door was locked three times

-they asked him if that was something that most people did in the outside world, and he explained to them what OCD was, and eventually told them about a bunch of other neurodivergences

-"wait so you said you have something called autism too?"

"Yeah, it's what makes me do that thing where I flap my hands sometimes. A lot of people with autism will know a lot of stuff about a few specific topics and will hate eye contact and other people touching them, but everyone is different"

Chase: "tell me more right now."

-that's how they end up getting diagnosed too!

-Leo tells them about different disorders (including ones they don't have) and they immediately launch onto the feeling of Are You Telling Me Other People Do This?

-they go to Big D about it and he's pretty accepting right away

-they debate a lot at first whether they want to get professionally diagnosed, but then they decide that it would be a lot easier to get accommodations at school with a doctor backing them up

-where was I going with this I'm completely spiraling

#long post #lab rats #bree davenport #chase davenport #adam davenport #leo dooley #these are kind of ooc but i havent fully watched this show in a couple years lmao

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confessionsofacougar · 2 years

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OMG I Passed Out!!!!

One of my fwb’s is a gorgeous guy who I’ve now been seeing for 5 or 6 years. I started seeing him when he was 24. Was meant to be a one-off thing but we hit it off… and we keep going back for more. And over the years, it has just got better and better. We always had a good connection sexually and we’ve also had a good intellectual connection. We can talk for hours. We’ve tried getting into the swinging scene but haven’t had much luck. We met one couple (which was a disaster) and we’ve had one ffm threesome (also a disaster) … but those stories are for another day.

Today I want to talk about the time he made me pass out from orgasming. I didn’t think it was possible – but it is.

We were at his place. We had partaken in a little 420 which we find relaxes us, makes things last longer and enhances sensations. Not something we do every time, but sometimes… it’s good to mix things up.

Anyway, this day we were in no hurry. Neither of us had work or study obligations. We sat on the couch and watched tv and chatted for a bit and then he stood up and took his pants and underwear off. He stood in front of me, and I could see he was already rock hard. He is a good 8 or 9 inches so there is plenty of him! I knew what he wanted. I took him in my mouth and started to suck. He moaned as soon as he felt my lips around him. He was already so hard. He put one foot up on the couch next to me and I continued to suck. He held my ponytail and guided me as to when to go faster or slower. He asked if I could take all of him. I looked up at him with a “You know damn well I can” look on my face. I opened my mouth wider, slid my mouth all the way down his shaft, opened my throat and felt his head slide right down. He moaned as he felt my throat close around him. Then he pulled out, took me by my hands, and pulled me to my feet. He kissed me. He can make my knees weak with his kisses. He bites my lip. My neck. It’s so good. Then he undressed me. He told me to lay on the couch. He spread my legs and positioned himself between them. He kissed my pussy, then ran his fingers between the lips before he slid his fingers deep inside me. By this time I was already dripping wet.

Now I don’t know what it is about this guy, but I swear, he barely has to touch me with his fingers and tongue, and I’m having an orgasm. Some guys – can’t make it happen no matter how they try. This guy – is a genius. And with the 420, I was feeling things more intensely anyway.

He slid his fingers inside me and then he licked me. Oh god, it felt amazing. And before I knew it… I was having my first orgasm. It was pretty intense!

He kept going. Fingers probing inside me – hitting the right spot every time. His tongue working wonders on my clit and the outside of my pussy. I had another orgasm. Even more intense than the first. Holy shit! I was trembling all over.

He didn’t stop. He kept going. He looked up at me as I orgasmed a third time and I could tell he was really enjoying torturing me. Because although it felt so damn good – it was torture!!!! One after the other. Each one getting more and more intense.

I thought he would stop then – but no. He kept going. Another orgasm.

And another.

Holy shit! By this time, the orgasms are sooooo intense that I can feel them roll through my entire body. I feel like I’m going to burst.

It’s hard to describe the sensation. My body would still be recovering from one orgasm when the next one would start. There was no relief in between, so it felt like each one was adding to the one before.

My head was spinning.

My heart was racing.

I was shaking all over.

It hurt. But oh god, it hurt so damn good.

And I was so sensitive. My clit was pounding so hard I thought he must be able to hear it.

Another one.

I was almost crying. The feelings were so intense by now. But still he didn’t stop.

I felt the next orgasm building. I squirmed. My body trembled. My heart raced. My head spun. I felt like I was going to explode….

... and then I’m coming to. My mind is fuzzy and my whole body is shaking uncontrollably.

I’m not exactly sure how long I was out for. He said it was less than a minute. But when I came to, he was still licking me. But this was different. He seemed to be lapping at me. after a few minutes, he sat up. His beard was dripping. The top of his t-shirt was soaked. I wanted to ask him if I had squirted, but honestly – I couldn’t make my mouth move. I don’t think I couldn’t even put a coherent thought together by that stage.

He smiled at me and asked me if I had enjoyed that. I smiled and tried to nod. My head was soooo fuzzy. He sat on the couch next to me, took off his t-shirt, and pulled me up onto my feet. Bad idea. My legs were in no way capable of holding me up at that stage and they buckled. He caught me and pulled me down on top of him. Straddling him, he slid his cock inside me. I moaned loudly. I was still so sensitive that even the feel of his cock inside me was enough to trigger yet another orgasm.

I didn’t ride him. I wasn’t capable of moving. We sat there, with his hard cock inside me for what felt like ages. Every now and then he’d lift my ass, and he’d fuck me a little, and we kissed a lot.

After a while, he lay me back on the couch. He got on top of me and again slid his cock inside me. Balls deep, he hits my cervix. He started off slow. Every time he went deep, he would hit my clit and I’d tremble. It was still so sensitive. He smiled at me, then started pounding me. Hard. Fast. I managed to wrap my arms around him, and I raked my fingers along his back.

He kissed me again. He bit my lip. I felt his cock thicken. I could feel it pulsating. He pushed deep inside me and I could feel the warm cum fill me. Just then, I had yet another orgasm. When he finished cumming, he lay on top of me. We just lay there, still joined together, catching our breath. Basking in the afterglow. For me, I was still trying to put a thought or two together. Eventually, he rolled off me and lay beside me. He put his arms around me and kissed my neck. He asked me if I had enjoyed it. I looked at him. I managed a little laugh and let out a deep sigh. I think I managed to say “wow” a few times.

We fell asleep. Woke up about two hours later. My head was still fuzzy, but not so much. I had definitely squirted. The couch was drenched.

Neither of us had encountered someone passing out during sex before. I’d had someone tell me that it happened to them, but I honestly didn’t believe it was possible. It is. I think I had something like 10-12 orgasms that day. They were in such quick succession that I didn’t have time to recover from one before the next one came. And my body couldn’t take it. Although it was an amazing experience, and I’m so glad I got to experience it, it is not something I’d want to do too often. Makes for one hell of a memory though.

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sxfik · 3 years

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Helloooo. Lemme start by saying how awesome fantastic amazing your fics are. I have a solhwi ask/prompt if it's not a problem. What would the study group's reaction be to established solhwi + bonus for prof kim and yangs reactions. Any headcanon or fic you can write about this please.

wicked love, leaves me blind

read on ao3 • masterlist

a/n: aaaa thank you so much for the kind words and the request! there's slight canon divergence in this and i decided on a more head canon format for this fic. this turned out kinda longer than expected but AAA my mind really ran with this prompt lmaooo. without much further adieu, i hope you like this <333

it's been 2 weeks since joon hwi confessed to her, running to her house in the middle of the night, panicked and afraid after the news of lee man ho hunting down professor yang

after the man had run from the scene, joon hwi was sure that he'd come back to his house, not afraid to hurt anyone on the way there. and in an instant, he started running, taking off towards her house without a second thought

by time he had reached her house, he was drenched in sweat, his heart thundering out of his chest in panic, in fear and in hope, that she was all right. he knocked frantically on the door of her house, hoping, praying that she was alright.

and to his relief, sol opened the door, her hair put up in the familiar messy bun. she yawned as she opened the door languidly, still wearing the hanguk law school sweatshirt he had once loaned her during a sleepless night of studying.

"han joon hwi? what are you doing here, it's lat-"

he lunged for her without a thought, gathering her in his arms and pressing her close to his body. she's alive, she's okay, chorused in his head as he shuddered out a breath of relief. she let out a soft oof but relaxed into him, her arms coming around his waist in a familiar way

he pulled away after what seemed like not long enough of a hug, and maybe it was the adrenaline, or the pure euphoria of finding her safe and in one piece that pushed him towards her lips, kissing her with fevor.

and after a shocked moment, she kissed him back, drinking him in, tugging him closer, desperate for more, more, more

and the rest was, well, history. it didn't take long after for the two of them to confess to each other, understanding that they needed each other in their life.

so it's been 2 weeks since han joon hwi confessed to her. really, they meant to keep their relationship secret. in the midst of their fight against assemblyman ko, the case against lee man ho and the mystery of what really happened the night of the hit-and-run case, they agreed that it was easier to keep it under wraps

after all, it was a new relationship to both of them. it wasn't like they hadn't dated other people, but what sol and joon hwi had was a carefully built friendship that was founded in trust and care for each other. and making it public, could only do them more damage as they become leverage against each other if their case goes south.

they only had one, very, very small, problem.

they were awful at keeping their hands off each other

alone time was very scarce for the both of them. with joon hwi being highly ranked, he was always pulled into every study session and every discussion in the school. not to mention, he had his own studies to maintain, alongside working at the legal clinic and helping professor yang with the mystery that had plagued the school.

kang sol's case was no different. she had to slave over her assignments, spending every spare moment at the school library, pouring over her text books. the moment not spent there was split between working to gather money for her mother and byeol, the legal clinic and assemblyman ko's case. not to mention her digging into kang dan's whereabouts as much as she could.

every single time they had together, there were too many people around for their tastes. during their busiest days, they had settled for subtle touches and stealing glances at each other whenever possible

so they spent their spare moments, huddled in the corridors, catching up on each other's days, making out and getting some time alone.

they'd make all kinds of excuses to leave early or walk each other to their dorm rooms, trying to maximize all their time with each other. every time they made to each other's rooms, they'd linger at the entrance, trying to see each other for just one more second.

and it was no wonder that when they first got caught, sol was pinned against the stairwell wall, joon hwi's lips buried in her neck. his fingers ghosted the hem of her shirt as she was pulled him closer to her and then...

clang!

the two broke apart, startled at the noise, their faces red. joon hwi's usual bangs were disheveled, sol's messy bun now loose and her hair cascading down her shoulders.

the two of them turned their head towards the noise only to find ye-beom and bok-gi, the latter's mouth gaping open like a fish. ye-beom on the other hand, stopped sucking on his lollypop, eyes wide as they looked at each other then looked back at the couple who were caught red handed.

bok-gi's hands were still frozen as the plate that fell from his hands lay at his feet and for what felt like eternity, there was absolute silence.

and then chaos.

"you two- when did you- how- what-" both of them started firing their questions rapid-fire.

the couple, who's faces were strawberry red, shushed them the best they could, looking around frantically to ensure no one else would here the commotion.

it took around 10 minutes for the boys to calm down, still reeling from what they witnessed

slowly, the couple explained that they were dating, and satisfying some of their curiosity before letting the boys go, with the stern warning of never repeating any of this information to anyone.

predictably, their whole study group knew about sol A and joon hwi the very next day.

of course, while ye-beom and bok-gi were huge gossips, they made sure the news didn't reach outside their sphere.

the next day, sol and joon hwi were the first ones to walk into the hideout, attempting to put up their "we're best friends! no relationship here!" facade up early, while the rest of the group quietly shuffled in.

they were good for the first 5 minutes (in reality they didn't last even 2 minutes) but joon hwi just can't keep his eyes off of her, especially when she's working through arguments for the case

the lovesick display lasts about... 10 minutes before Sol B stands up from her chair abruptly, causing everyone to jump in their seats.

as always, her face is neutral, but she spins to face ji ho, as the boy adjusted his glasses on his face so he could look up at her

"you own me 20 dollars" she simply stated at him, her hand outstretched

"what, no way i'm paying that" ji ho moved back, his face shocked that she even remembered

"you bet that they would take 3 months to confess, and i bet at 6 months— "

"it's been way longer than 6 months!"

"mine was closer"

"i think," ye-seul interjected as she took her seat at the table, heading back from her project work for professor kim's class, "that you both owe me 20 dollars. from what I remember, i bet that they would take longer!"

a chaotic clamber erupted as each member argued who owed who money, who bet on what,

"yah, ye-seul, how could you bet on me like that!" Sol interrupted the clamor, spinning to look at her best friend in shock and disbelief.

"sorry, unnie. it was too tempting of an offer for me to turn down" she replied, not looking the least bit apologetic.

joon hwi grinned at sol A as she looked around flabbergasted at their friends, before he grabbed her idle hand and held it up.

"just so we can fend off any confusion, sol is now my girlfriend. sorry we didn't get to tell you earlier, but to make up, we'll treat you to a dinner after all this mess is offered."

their group cheered at that, never being the one to turn down an offer for free food

it was bliss for the couple after that, and relief too. they could both agree that keeping a relationship under wraps was much harder than they could handle, with so much of this being new to them alongside the chaos of their lives

telling their friends took the pressure off, at least allowing themselves to indulge in each other without having to be extra careful of who was watching.

theirs was a blinding love. it was blinding bliss, it was peace.

bonus +1:

professor kim was a busy woman, but she always had the time for her students. taking the time to know each and every one of them was something she took pride in as a teacher.

but out of all her students, the study group lead by han joon hwi consisted of her favorite students that she taught. as a result of professor seo's unfortunate death and the reveal of everything that assemblyman ko had orchestrated, professor kim found herself around those kids more and more.

nevertheless, it was another day, another case to navigate at the legal clinic. it was a busy afternoon at hanguk law school, and professor kim's star students, sol and joon hwi huddled together trying to find the best way for the property case at hand

she had always had a soft spot for those two, ever since their class first semester when sol A blurted out a judgement and joon hwi, out of nowhere supported her. of all her years of teaching, she hadn't found a duo that was more hardworking, passionate and loyal than the two of them

Sol A was not her brightest student but she had tenacity and passion that more than made up for it. She could spot the hardworking girl, hunched over her textbooks hours after every other student had left.

Professor Kim had always found that some of the brightest students in her class would make for the worst in the field. because, being a lawyer wasn't about memorizing the codes or adhering to the rigid structure that many assumed the law to be. it was to offer kindness, compassion and understanding that they were humans first, before they could be judged by the law

and she knew that Sol A was one such girl who had that. She had watched as she defended Yang, even when the detectives and prosecutor were trying to close up the case and force him down as the perpetrator. even when joon hwi was accused, Sol stood by his side, pursing every route possible to prove his innocence. At every turn, she stood up for those who needed sympathy and kindness from the law; for those that the law would have hurt.

Joon Hwi was no different. the first time she saw him, she assumed him to be a cold, callous genius who had no time for anyone but himself. but oh, how wrong she was. Joon hwi was quiet the opposite. Even while being a generally reserved student, he had an inviting energy surrounding him that made every one like him, despite the intense competition at school

from the first day, it was clear he wasn't here for the marks or the validation of his teachers: it was passion and self motivation that drove him. it was clear that he was built to practice law, his mind was always sharp for legal terms and loopholes. but joon hwi always went the extra mile for his friends, always gave an extra hand to help, even when they didn't necessarily need it.

she could see it in him during Ye-Seul's case, eager to help her. she could see it when Ji Ho's father's suicide case came out, how eager he was to help and comfort his roommate.

but most of all, she could see it with Sol A. she wasn't sure when she had noticed their closeness, but she could see them walking the halls together, a smile spread across both their faces or them arguing across the table at the legal clinic, trying to work out the best method.

she could see it in the way Joon Hwi watched Sol, an almost lovesick smile on his face when she smiled or when she finally got the answers she was searching for. Professor Kim also knew, from her years of watching professor yang and prosecutor bae dance around each other, that it would be rare if they confessed to each other

so it was very odd when she looked across from her stack of papers to find joon hwi holding sol's hand as he flipped through the case file in front of him, both of them hyper focused into the details

maybe it was pure curiosity, maybe it was a taste for chaos that motivated her to call out "oh, are you two finally dating?" expecting their flustered and embarrassed reactions

but instead, she was met with a beaming smile from Joon Hwi that answered all the questions she had. Kang Sol on the other hand was left glaring and sputtering at her new boyfriend.

it was funny and gleeful, watching two of her favored students find a new life together, forging a new path.

and it was also pure relief for her, that she wouldn't have to deal with another professor yang and prosecutor bae situation

bonus +2:

the cold wind whipped around them as the couple accompanied professor yang back to campus. another night, another mystery, another trip to the police station to give witness statements

tonight was no different as the truth of the hit-and-run case started revealing itself, and the professor had accompanied the two students in silence, contemplative of all that has happened, the puzzle pieces slowly clicking together

professor yang was never meant to be a professor, in fact he hates the title itself. what he was meant for was to interrogate, to dig up clues and find out exactly who the culprit is and use the law to prove why they were guilty. for him, one's feelings did not matter, it was always about the evidence presented in front of him and how it could be interpreted.

it didn't mean he didn't care about his students, quite the opposite. it just meant that he wasn't the nurturing type as professor kim was. the one to always meddle in student affairs or keep track of how his students were doing outside of class

but with the two students walking beside him, they were the ones that he wanted to see succeed. they were the ones he was the most proud of as they presented their cases in public, finding their own ways to fight against injustice.

he was proud of them and in his heart, he knew it reminded him of a certain set of school mates, ones that were attached at the hip, a regret he has carried with him until he met her again on the court floor.

so maybe it was the deliriousness of all they had went through together or pure stupidity that made him pause in the tracks. his students continued on for a moment but then paused in their tracks, turning around to see what had stopped their professors.

"Kang Sol A." he nodded towards her.

"Han Joon Hwi." he nodded towards him.

"Congratulations on your new relationship"

he paused after, looking up at his students, both of them wide eyed that Professor Yang of all people, congratulated them on this.

and then, as if making it worse, he smiled.

Kang Sol's mouth dropped open, her hands reaching up to her eyes to rub them as if she was hallucinating what she saw.

Han Joon Hwi was incredulous, blurting out "Professor, have you been taking methamphetamines again?"

"Professor Yang has taken WHAT?" Sol whipped her head around, the sight of her professor expressing glee was already too much for her to handle but the news that he has taken meth just drove her head into overdrive.

the two were stuck in their positions, as their professor moved forward, brushing past them as if this event had never happened.

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soobadnoonecanstopher · 3 years

Text

Touch it for Real, Part 10

Genre: Humor / Fluff / Angst / (Eventual) Smut 18+

Warnings: OMG they were roommates / slice of life / slow burn / mutual pining / crude humor / cursing / virgin!baek / idiots to lovers / unresolved sexual tension

Characters: Baekhyun X You/Female Reader

Description: You teach Baekhyun how to date. (Basically the Get You Alone M/V)

A/N: I had to split this chapter due to length. Part 10.5 will follow tomorrow.

The song inspiration for this chapter is Eric Nam’s The Night

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 , Part 6 , Part 7 , Part 8 , Part 9 , Part 10 , FINAL Part 10.5

You hadn’t touched the app since you’d done it.

You hadn’t slept much either.

The guilt was eating you alive from the inside and you were pretty sure the ache you felt in your stomach was an ulcer from the stress of living with the horrible mistakes you had made.

Your room was the wrong temperature.

Your bed was uncomfortable.

The light that shone through your window from the moonlight was too bright. You couldn't hide away from it no matter how hard you tried.

No matter how tightly you closed your eyelids you could still see everything too clearly. Even hiding your head under your pillow didn't block it all.

The clock on the wall of your bedroom ticked rhythmically and the sound was counting down to your destruction.

You fought the useless battle against the bright moonlight for hours until you realized the reason why you could so clearly see the messy clothes on the floor in front of your closet and the overflowing wastebasket sitting beside your desk wasn’t because of a super moon occupying the sky outside, but that brightness was actually the sun shining through your window now; alerting you to the fact that you had once again spent an entire night wallowing in your own self pity or self hatred or self loathing or whatever self bullshit was on the docket this time.

It was Sunday morning.

You were sitting on a time bomb as you spread butter on your toast and kept your ears tuned in for the sounds of life inside his bedroom.

You hadn’t really expected him to, but Baekhyun hadn’t appeared since last night when he disappeared inside his bedroom to sleep. You hadn’t heard him playing games all night or even heard his shower running or playing loud music well into the sunrise.

Was he really sleeping?

All night?

Like a normal person?

Or maybe like someone who wasn’t too weighed down by the pressure of their own substantial sins might sleep.

You knew that Baekhyun liked to sleep in late on days when he had nothing pressing to attend to. You’d both gotten in late last night and he probably wouldn't make an appearance until late morning. Maybe not even until lunchtime.

Your toast was bland and floppy by the time you took a bite and you scowled down at the disappointing thing. Surely and somehow you could blame yourself for this breakfast failure. It wasn’t the toaster. That thing was perfect. It was you. You’d waited too long to eat it. You’d been wallowing for too long and now it was a waste.

It was all a waste.

You’d drive yourself crazy at this rate. You needed a distraction to get through it.

You would do laundry and clean your bathroom and tidy your room and maybe then you could think.

Think about what you had done to Mia, what you had done to Baekhyun; think about how low that was and how undoable it was. It wasn't like you could un-delete the messages.

You worked on your Sunday chores and you were thinking hard. The doubt was heavy and made the load of laundry you carried out of your bedroom feel this basket was full of bricks and you were walking on a sandy beach.

How would Baekhyun react? Would he know that you had been the one to delete the messages or would he blame it on a glitch in the system? What would he think of you when Mia told him that he’d agreed to meet her himself last night. Last night when he was asleep.

What would happen to Mia?

Would she sit alone at the cafe for an hour waiting for him or would she text him right away?

Would she quietly absorb her disappointment at being stood up or would she blame him for it. Had you just made him the bad guy? Your sweet Peanut — a villain?

You didn't want to hurt her. You had liked her. Your jealousy had just taken over last night. You’d never been stood up before but you imagined it felt awful. Baekhyun knew what it felt like. Would it hurt him terribly to believe that he had somehow played a part in causing someone else that kind of pain by making the mistake of associating with you; the mistake of trusting you?

You’d been watching your laundry spin around in a circle for a half an hour now and you looked up on top of the machine to see the carefully measured cup of soap sitting there. You’d been so lost in your thoughts that you forgot to put it in. The disappointment you felt in yourself was fitting it hardly even made a dent in the already deep down in the mud mood you were in.

You’d have to stop the cycle and restart it with soap. You’d wasted all of that water.

If Baekhyun knew about this he would be so disappointed in you. He would complain and nag about the irreparable damage you’d done to the Earth, to his Earth, his planet, his home. The only one he had to live on.

And you deserved to be nagged. You deserved to be scolded and yelled at and you deserved to be made to feel like the absolute scum of the earth because what you had just done to him was unforgivable.

Would he really never forgive you?

Was this what finally did it? Not your laziness or your pranks or your inability to pay rent on time, but this? You’d been given his trust and you’d trampled all over it. You’d taken what he’d given you, his friendship and his access to him, to his privacy that he valued above all else and you’d squandered it for selfish and jealous and disgusting reasons. You’d trampled all over it, all over him. Again and again you showed that you didn’t deserve someone like him. You’d sinned against him and for what?

To stop him from dating a girl who you’d pushed him toward in the first place.

You were an asshole. The worst kind. A jealous, petty, selfish asshole.

You felt it then. You’d paused your load of laundry and you reached for the soap after the water drained from the tub. You held the button down to cancel and reset the cycle and you watched the digital display blink angrily at you, telling you that what you were trying to do was not allowed, it was against the rules. You were supposed to just let the wash cycle happen, you were just supposed to let it happen, you had been the one to push the button, you started it, why were you pausing right now why were you stopping and reversing when this was what you wanted? What kind of asshole stops the cycle right in the middle?

The numbers on the screen blurred. It was a blinking fuzzy red tinted mess. You could feel the sting and then the relief of the tears that crested and fell and you exhaled through a mostly stuffed up nose.

You couldn't do this to him.

The tears on your face were warm and wet and they fell freely as the intense regret washed over you completely.

This wasn’t you. You weren’t this person. You weren’t underhanded and sneaky. You didn't have the stomach for it. You felt like you might be sick just imagining poor Mia sitting there waiting for him, thinking the worst of him, believing that he was that kind of selfish cruel man who would treat a woman this way. That wasn’t fair to Baekhyun and you’d been a real monster to try such a low down dirty trick like this.

You had to fix this.

You were out of any other options other than honesty. You had to tell him exactly what you had done last night in a moment of misguided weakness, in a moment of stupidity and you had to tell him that he still had time to go meet her, to talk about whatever it was she wanted to tell him.

You swallowed the lump in your throat and went into your bathroom to clean your face up. You would not let him be swayed by the selfish tears on your face. You had to control yourself and confess your crimes and you had to be straightforward and strong about it.

You gripped your cell phone and you inhaled a breath through your nose and exhaled it slowly through your mouth. Your exhale hiccuped once from the earlier upset and so you did it again; breathing in deeply, filling your lungs as full as you could and exhaling in one long continuous breath; until it was stable again, until you could feel your racing heartbeat relinquishing the manic control it had over you.

His door was closed and it was quiet behind the door.

You knocked twice, listening carefully over the thumping in your chest for the sound of his voice from inside.

Finally it came; a soft hum from within.

“Baekhyun—” You called through the door, “can I come in?”

His voice hummed again, low and sleepy, and you turned the knob, pushing the door open and then pushing yourself forward slowly.

He was in his bed, half under his covers with a leg sticking out and he rolled away from the wall he was facing as you came into the room, pulling his blanket down to uncover his face, his eyes peered at you as he squinted against the light in the room.

“Hmm?” He hummed again and his eyes closed back up.

You held your phone out toward him and you moved closer to his bed. He squinted one eye open and lifted a hand palm up which he quickly dropped back down onto the bed, clearly still half asleep.

“Did you break your phone?” His voice was thick with sleep and his eyes were still closed as he talked to you.

“No, I didn’t break it. I did something wrong.”

“Give it. I’ll fix it.” He was talking again, reaching again with more conviction now as the spell of sleep that he had been under began to break.

He was sitting up. He was looking at you with his warm brown eyes and he was blinking as he tried to focus on what you were saying to him.

“No. I didn't break it. I did something wrong,” you repeated for emphasis and continued for clarity, “I did something bad to you. Last night when you were asleep—”

Oh this was hard. His brows lifted and you had his attention. Your words, the seriousness of then sharpened his eyes on you as you spoke.

“Last night, Mia messaged you...after the date.”

Baekhyun’s eyebrows furrowed and he was watching you very closely as the words emerged. His eyes were focused on your face and his mind was processing what you were telling him. He was still sleepy but your words were pulling him out of it. His hands gripped the cellphone you’d pushed into his hands.

“I opened the app you made for me. I read a message that Mia sent you. She wanted to meet you for coffee t-today— this afternoon, in less than an hour.”

You could feel your control slipping as you spoke the truth about the awful thing you had done and you had to look down and away from his face as you continued your confession otherwise that thickness you felt in your throat would come through in your voice. Otherwise you might not make it through this without crying. You promised yourself already that you would not do that. You had to get this out and it had to be clear and controlled. You did not deserve his sympathy or even his forgiveness. This violation had been inexcusable.

Your own hands were empty. You’d given him your phone and he was holding it now.

“I pretended to be you, told her you would meet her and then I deleted the messages so you would not see them. So that you would stand her up. It was wrong of me. It was a mistake. I’m sorry. You can delete the app, or change the permissions or do something. I’m sorry. I know you trusted me and I messed it all up — Baekhyun, you can still make it. You can get ready and go meet her for coffee. She had something she wanted to ask you. If you get ready now, you won't miss her. She wont get stood up because — because I fucked up and I acted like an asshole.”

Baekhyun’s sleepy face had changed as you spoke. You inhaled a deep breath and looked into his eyes and you found him watching you with a new hardness in his eyes that you hadn’t seen before and his hand gripped tight enough to snap around your cell phone.

You could feel the blood under your skin just at the surface, heating your flesh and flushing your cheeks. You pulled your lips tight to keep the tremble out of them and he was watching your face too closely for you to be able to keep up the eye contact.

“Bug, why would you do that?” He spoke through clenched teeth and all traces of his earlier sleep were gone.

“I’m sorry. It just felt so bad and I knew it was wrong but I did it anyway and I have no excuse.”

You felt the bed move when he shifted and he was pushing himself up into a full seated position with his legs hanging over the side of his bed.

The movement made you push back and away, clearing a path for him to get up. You knew he had to get ready quickly if he wanted to make it in time. What if there was traffic?

“You still have time to make it— if you go now,” you said with a quick glance up into his eyes and you noticed he’d abandoned your phone on his bed as he moved. “She’ll be waiting for you.”

Baekhyun wasn’t standing yet and he was still looking at you with that odd hardness in his eyes and a very slight back and forth head shake as his only significant movement.

Your mind was preoccupied with the ticking clock on the wall and he was still just sitting there on his bed looking at you.

Yes, you had disappointed him. Yes, you had fucked up. But you were trying here. You were trying to make this right and you knew it wasn’t fair to him to throw this surprise coffee date on him at the last second but you’d fucked up and you couldn't think of any other way to fix it other than to get that man to stand up and get dressed so he could go meet her right now.

You reached for his hand and you grabbed lightly around his wrist and you pulled.

“Baekhyun. You need to move. You’re not moving. Please.” Your pleas were growing desperate. How in the world would you fix it if he wouldn't let you fix it?

“Is it because you were upset about Ben?” When he finally moved it was not his body or his legs it was his mouth and you let your hand sag with his wrist still suspended in your grasp.

He moved then, Baekhyun stood up and you let your hand fall away from his arm, pulling your arms up awkwardly to cross them over your chest. You took another step away. The discomfort flowed through your entire body. You’d created this problem. This was all your fault. This atmosphere was unbearable and you could only blame yourself.

You were looking down at your feet and you wished he wasn’t watching your face as closely as he was as his eyes roamed over your pained expression. He was still shaking his head and you could tell that he was trying his hardest to make sense out of your terrible actions.

You were his friend. Surely his friend had to have a good and valid reason for doing this to him, right? Surely it wasn’t just because maybe she was a bad person and did bad things.

With your eyes on your feet though, it was easier to shake your head and deny that Ben had anything at all to do with why you’d attempted to sabotage his new relationship.

“Baekhyun, you can still make it,” your voice was a whisper. You could feel your careful resolve crumbling the longer you stood here under his watchful eyes. You could feel it in your chest. Your breathing pushed hard against your lungs that fought against the oxygen and your heart pounded so noisily inside of you that you began to wonder if that had been the clock you heard all along or your own rhythmic countdown forecasting your demise.

You had to shake your head. You had to squeeze your eyes tight and push with all of your might. You couldn't face this. It was too hard.

“If not Ben—” he was speaking again. Your eyes were closed.

“Then why?” you heard an inhale of breath from him and it was trembling. The sound of his pain, the sound of his suffering called to you and you opened your eyes to look at him. His eyes were closed and he had a hand raised with his fingers held up.

The agitation you heard in his breathing moved him and his body came to life as he shifted on his feet, spinning in a slow circle where he stood, he lifted both of his hands to run through his hair and his eyes were closed up tight enough for his vision to go white.

“You can’t do this to me. You can’t do this to me again. It’s not fair.” He was speaking under his breath and you were drawn to his words as confusion rushed over your thoughtful mind. The part of your mind that made sense of things was left in a cloud.

Again? Had you really hurt him this badly before? Your memory raced through the history you had with him and you looked over his features in worry.

When his eyes opened back up he was looking into your face with that same dark look, the look that made you want to shrink up and hide from it. The look that somehow saw you for exactly what you were and knew just how bad of a person you could be.

“I’m trying to fix it — I don't know what to do, Baekhyun. I don't know what I should do.”

Your feet had carried you toward his door. You could feel the overwhelming urge to escape this. To escape your own mistakes and problems and run from them. To leave this place and to hide from the way he was looking at you right now. He was still just shaking his head and staring at you. He wasn’t moving to get showered or dressed or changed even, he wasn’t grabbing his keys or his phone to leave to go meet her, why didn’t he do something?

He must have noticed your movement. Baekhyun took several large steps toward where you’d wandered near his door and you froze when he moved.

He was upset. You could see it in the way he carried his body through the space and you heard it in the rough way he pulled at the doorknob to his bedroom and swung it open.

You’d half expected him to head toward the front door. Maybe he’d forgotten that he needed to change out of his comfy sweats if he was going to meet a girl for coffee.

He left his door open and you followed his quick steps. You followed the path he took through the living room and you turned when he turned toward your bedroom. You stood back as you watched his hand turn your door knob and he disappeared through your doorway, into your bedroom. You heard your closet. Your heart felt like it was throbbing inside of your chest when you saw him emerge with a familiar bag; your big suitcase, the one that was still stuffed full with your coats from the last time you had been convinced you needed to pack up and leave this place you called home.

You felt like you might be sick.

Did he want you to leave? Was he packing your bag for you? The panic that grew in your belly was powerful and it threw you back against the wall of the hallway that led to your bedroom.

This was it. He’d finally had enough of your shit. This was it.

You’d done it.

You’d lost your best friend.

Baekhyun had disappeared with your bag and you heard a door shut somewhere within his room. You heard the sound of a set of keys. There was a ringing in your ears.

“Tell me why.” His voice was back. He was back. He was standing in front of you and you looked up into his eyes and the breath he inhaled trembled as it went in and filled his lungs with air. He lifted a hand and his fingers shook as he rubbed them over his mouth. “You can’t run away now. I have your bag. Tell me why. Why did you do that?”

He’d gone for your bag first. Just as you had always gone for the bag the minute something snapped in you and you’d convinced yourself that you could simply leave if things got too uncomfortable or too hard to bear. It felt significant. It felt like your reckoning. You couldn't run away this time. He knew you would try that first and Baekhyun wasn’t going to let you; not until he had the truth.

“You always have a good reason. You always make sense — to me. You always make sense to me. Everything you do, I understand why you do it. But...this, it doesn’t make any sense. You’re the one who picked her. You’re the one who started this. You’re the one pushing me to go to her. Why did you do this? Why are you doing this to me? It’s so unfair.”

Baekhyun’s voice was unstable. His hands were trembling and you could feel the deep frustration in his words. He was right. He was completely right.

No false explanation you could come up with would make any sense.

Only the truth made sense.

The humming in your ears and the burning in your eyes and the pounding in your chest had built up too much. It was too hard to control. It was too hard to contain.

The longer you sat in it; the longer you withstood it, the less you wanted of it.

You closed your eyes and you let it out.

It came out as a whisper.

“I told you, I was shameless.”

They hit you like a bomb. Those words that you spoke out loud to him; with your own mouth. Your own voice that betrayed you so completely.

The aftershocks echoed around inside of your head and you blinked fast and hard, trying to control the stinging wetness that pooled inside of your eyes.

Baekhyun had gone completely still.

You could no longer hear the unstable breathing from his lungs.

“What did you just say?” His voice had no strength left. You could not look at him.

Oh no.

You’d done it.

You had to inhale to live. You had to open your eyes and you rolled them around to keep the moisture at bay, looking everywhere except for him. You felt like crying. You felt like losing your flimsy control once and for all and screaming, sobbing, falling to the floor to deal with this incredible anxious feeling that was surging up inside of your body.

It was out. That secret of yours. It ripped you apart when it exited and you felt more unstable than you’d ever felt. You were about to cave in. Control was overrated anyway.

“I told you I act dumb and desperate and jealous, Baekhyun. I told you I make mistakes. I’m shameless.”

You heard the step he took. It was a stumble. Your words had thrown his balance off and he caught the step quickly. The sound of it pulled your focus.

Baekhyun looked at you, a stunned expression on his face and his eyes, his eyes which always held so much comfort and security for you, those eyes that were always so warm, they traveled over your entire face as his lips fell open.

“What does that mean?” His lips hardly moved when he spoke. You watched a hand lift and it landed squarely over his chest and there was a movement in his fingers; an involuntary shake in them. His fingers flexed and he clawed over his chest.

“Does that mean...do you mean...what I think you mean?”

You felt the first tear fall. It slipped out and ran down your face and you lifted a hand to wipe it quickly.

“It means I’m in love with you, Baekhyun. I’m sorry. I was jealous of her. I couldn't watch you and her like that. So I acted like that — I did that to her, to you both. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to stop loving you. I don't even know where to start.”

Your breathing was heavy. Your face was wet and whatever flimsy control you thought you had over yourself had shattered with your honest confession. More than just what you had done to him, this felt so much more damning. This was the truth about what was inside your heart.

This was the scariest thing you had ever told him. It felt so much worse than when you told him you’d lost your job and would start looking for a new place to live.

The silence that surrounded you amplified your labored breathing and you’d given up on catching the tears that slipped down your cheeks. There was no stopping it. You’d been a fool to think that you could hide this.

Baekhyun hadn’t moved. He stood frozen a few feet away from you and when he did move it was to lift a palm to cover over his face for a moment.

“Are you serious?” You heard him say. You swallowed hard and squeezed your eyes closed. “Bug, are you serious? You—”

“You’re in love with me?”

You wrapped your arms around your stomach tightly and with your eyes closed you nodded your head once.

Your ears caught movement.

Baekhyun was moving. Your fear and your shame flashed images into your mind, images of him vanishing; images of him closing himself up in his room; images of him telling you he just couldn't live with you any more.

Baekhyun was moving. You could hear him. Your eyes burned and begged to open and when you gave in you flinched to find him standing right in front of you. He was here. He stood in front of you and his eyes were wide on your face.

In those eyes you saw what you could only describe as a look of concern. Baekhyun was looking at your face and the warmth that arrived with his body heat coated you. Inside of your chest, something was building, something was burning, something was changing inside of you with the look in his eyes you could not pull your own eyes away from him when he was standing so close to you like this.

The wall behind your back was so cold and he was warm.

He was moving. His hands were moving. You felt the warmth of his palms land over your wet cheeks and he was wiping your tears, drying the wetness from your skin with the palms of his hands and with his soft fingertips. He moved so gently over you. He touched you so carefully. The pounding inside of your chest raged out of control. The ragged breathing that had ahold of you earlier seized up and you could feel the dizziness building upon itself, yet you could not make your lungs cooperate; not with him so close to you. Not with him looking at you up close with that look in his eyes and his hands still holding your face.

“LoveBug.” His whispered breath warmed your mouth. The soft name he called you coated the back of your tongue like some sweetened medicine. You swallowed down the moisture that pooled and he was close enough to you that his breathing fanned against your lips, over your tongue when your lips parted.

“Do you know that I belong to you?” It came out as a whisper. This tiny question that lit you on fire. Your lungs burned.

“Do you know that?”

You felt another tear escape and he leaned into you then. You felt too stunned to react. This did not feel real. Perhaps you had actually fallen asleep last night and you were dreaming. The warm brush of his thumb below your eye, wiping the wetness away again and again as the tears fell. The warm puff of his breath over your closed eyelid and the softness of his lips that pressed a kiss onto the softness of your cheek where your tears had just been dried.

“I belong to you. I’m yours. I’ve loved you for so long.”

These words he said pulled your eyes into his.

The discord in your brain echoed. How was this real? Nothing was making sense inside of your head, so you exhaled through it. You let your lungs deflate and the final bursts of air that left your lungs pulled your eyelids down halfway and you couldn’t stand the distance, you had to touch him. His hands were so warm and his eyes were so magnetic and what was he saying to you? He loved you.

He loved you.

Baekhyun loved you. He said so himself. He said he was yours and he’d gone still again, his breathing stopped puffing over your skin when your hands reached for his waist and you gripped around his shirt, bunching the fabric as you pulled. There was a step, to keep his balance and he moved closer to you.

Warmth. Heat. He was everywhere. That smell of him; the scent of the spaces within his bedsheets that smelled like him, his breath, his lungs, his heart inside of his body. With the contact of your hands around his waist you could feel so much of him. When your hands traveled up over the center of this back you felt the wild beating echoing inside of his chest.

It sounded a lot like what was happening inside of your own chest.

The distance evaporated with your hands on him. You felt the softness of his cheek against your own. You heard the quiet grunt from the back of his throat when the tip of his nose brushed over yours and his lips traveled over your entire face. Over the smoothness of your forehead and a path over your eyebrow; up the hill of your cheekbone and down through the softness of your cheek. He was exploring your face with his lips and the spell he put you under was deep. You would have floated away had it not been for the occasional labored puff of air from his parted lips. A mark of his struggle to keep his breathing under control. The man was magic.

His touch was so light and delicate you wondered how he could stand this with as fast as his heart was beating inside of his chest. His hands were moving away from the way he cupped your cheeks and caught stray tears, he moved a single hand to the back of your head, moving lower to cradle the back of your neck and his other hand traced the shape of your jaw with lightly touching fingertips until he reached your lips.

With his eyes half closed and with zero hesitation he moved then. You felt him move. Your eyes were already closed when you felt his lips cover yours.

It began with softness; that same uncertain, wary softness that led his movements. His kiss was gentle and his lips were asking.

The question was quiet.

Your response was not. Your hands pulled hard over his back. His chest was flush with yours already but the constriction of your hold on him sent a clear message.

When your lips parted to his you felt the wetness of his tongue brush against yours and you pulled against him, pulled him into your mouth and the hold of his hand behind your head changed as his grip tightened and his fingers threaded within your hair.

His other hand slipped around your waist and he pulled you tight against his firm warmth. Everything about the kiss was changing. There was an urgency that took over every cell of your body and you were feeling dizzy and when his lips pulled away for a second, you gasped for air from within his parted lips. You could not break the kiss. You could survive inside of his mouth forever. You didn’t even need air that badly.

Baekhyun did not break the contact either. Your desire for closeness was building further and your hands pushed the warm fleece of his sweater up and away from his skin. You felt the first smooth warm bits of the bare skin of his waist and your own skin erupted all over with goosebumps when you felt the tips of his fingers slip under the fabric of your shirt at the small of your back.

It was your own wandering hands that did it. You touched first, the small of his back, then your hand wandered around his waist, as you made your way around to the front of him you heard the low whine that erupted from deep within his body. It was a long frustrated sound and the sound of it pulled your lips into a smile.

Your fingertips were close. You know enough about human anatomy to know that slipping your hand along the waistband at the front of his sweatpants and hooking your index finger just inside the fabric as you moved; well, it was only a matter of time until you were brushing below his navel and you felt Baekhyun jolt back and away from you when you’d done it.

“Fuck,” he cursed with his lips flush against yours and you couldn’t help any of it. He’d put you well under his spell and you wanted every bit of the man. Clearly your hand had come too close and he wasn’t expecting it.

“This is like living out all of my fantasies at once multiplied by a hundred. I don’t think I can take this.”

Baekhyun pulled his face back and away from you then. You used the respite to finally breathe in a deep enough breath to touch that dizziness you’d been feeling. It didn't help much. Was it the desire? You had never felt quite so desperate for another human being to touch you before.

You ached for it. The attention he showed with his wandering fingertips over every bit of skin he could find and the way his eyes and his lips touched you. Nothing about the desire you were feeling felt normal.

Baekhyun dropped a hand from you. It was the hand that had held the back of your neck. He took another step back and placed his hand over his chest. He was looking at you again with a shell shocked expression on his face and lips very pink and swollen from the passion you’d felt in those kisses.

“I feel like my heart is going to explode.” He said and you saw his lips pull into a smile. He was still breathing hard and his gaze changed into something of wonder.

“You like me.” His eyes closed up and the smile pulled wider. You were blinded by it. It was contagious. You could not stop your own smile from mirroring his. “You love me. She fucking loves me.”

“I love you,” you agreed softly. It tasted like relief. It was sweet and satisfying and toothsome. You were wrecked. You probably looked like hell after the sleepless night and all of that crying. He watched you as if you were the most beautiful thing he’d ever laid eyes on. You could see it so clearly. Your eyes sharpened to so much the more you looked around, the clearer your focus became and your eyes were drawn to the wall behind his head.

There, a clock had just struck one.

“What do we do about Mia,” you were the one to say it and still hated the sour taste of the guilt that still sat on the back of your tongue when her name came up. You hadn’t quite considered this outcome. You hadn’t ever considered this.

“Oh god, Mia,” he said. “Oh no.” The smile on his face was gone and you could see the regret land over his features. “I — I think I need to go make a phone call.”

He spoke the words and you nodded your head. Of course he did. Of course you understood completely. Of course his body was still very close to you and of course you could feel the desire to pull him back into your arms and into your mouth.

Baekhyun hadn’t stepped back yet. His words said one thing yet his hands were moving again and he reached for you, wrapping both of his arms around your waist this time he pulled tight and you felt the strength in his arm muscles as he did it.

His face dipped and he kissed you again. You could not resist his lips despite the ticking clock. You craved him. You hadn’t been nearly satisfied enough yet and you wondered if you could ever get enough of him.

His soft lips; the pull of suction inside of his mouth; his tongue; his teeth all demanded and took from you and you wove your fingers into his hair and held him tight as you kissed him back.

You both pulled away at the same time and his labored breathing marked the significant struggle he was facing in letting go and walking away. You did not think it was possible to love this man any more than you already did, but this unrestrained side of him was making your stomach do flips.

“Do you want me to go with you? This is my fault after all.”

He rested his forehead against yours and both of his arms were still wrapped tightly around your waist. He’d been standing still with both of his eyes closed since he’d pulled his mouth away from yours.

You felt him shake his head back and forth and he hummed a no sound from the back of his throat.

“I think I can do it alone,” he said before inhaling a deep breath and exhaling it slowly as he pulled his face back, straightened his shoulders and dropped his arms.

He’d spun on his feet and taken two steps before he turned around and undid all of his progress with two more big steps back in your direction and a grimace of failure on his face.

His hands were up and he was reaching for you again, grabbing you roughly by the cheeks, ignoring the giggles that erupted from your chest as he leaned in and kissed you again. He was smiling too and the first seconds of the kiss was just teeth bumping teeth before you complied and relaxed enough to receive the quick succession of peppered kisses he pressed into your mouth.

“How can I walk away? Turn me around and push me. I can’t walk away from you.”

You were in big trouble. You knew he could be really cute if he wanted to be. You’d had trouble with it in the past.

But this time his intense level of adorableness was caused by his struggle to stop kissing you. You were pretty certain you were even more whipped than you’d ever been for anything ever. If faced with the choice of denying this man or throwing a bag full of puppies off a cliff, you were pretty certain you’d toss the damn dogs just to let this Baekhyun have his way.

How to be the strong one here? All you wanted to do was keep kissing him forever.

“Baekhyun, it’s after one already,” you said, doing your best impression of your serious voice.

“Yes ma’am.” His hands left your face and his lips pulled back into an O shape as he exhaled a breath with his eyes trained pointedly on the ceiling instead of on your face.

This time when he spun on his feet he didn’t look back and you fisted your hands tightly at your side to keep from reaching for him and pulling him back into you after he’d finally built up the strength to resist the incredible magnetism you both clearly had for each other.

His absence afforded you a moment of quiet; a moment of peaceful thought. The aftereffects of what had just happened still buzzed around inside of your chest, inside your belly, and lower; the lingering warmth purred, making it impossible to ignore the incredible effect even this much of his affection had on you.

You had to return to your bedroom to collect yourself. You’d never be able to face him again without throwing yourself at him in desperation and based on the way he’d flinched when you grazed your fingertip along the waistband of his sweatpants, something was telling you the man was simply not ready for such a huge step in such a short amount of time.

The last thing you wanted was to make him feel pressured to do anything he wasn't ready for.

You were an adult. You could be reasonable and you could control yourself.

With a cold shower and a cold drink of water you could survive this. Maybe you would slip and fall in the shower and bang your head and wake up to him giving you mouth to mouth with his hands on your chest giving you life saving chest compressions that would turn into a steamy make out session with some second base heavy petting in the middle of your bathroom floor. One thing could lead to another. You would already be naked and he’d have just saved your life. Surely the situation would make anyone emotional enough to pop their cherry with the girl of their fucking dreams. Really, he’d have just saved your life and you would be ever so grateful if he could also fuck you while he was at it.

The cold water didn’t help at all.

The cold shower at least helped with the absolute wreck you saw when you looked in the mirror. Had you really looked this bad? You hadn’t slept for shit. You hadn’t eaten your sad floppy toast or had any coffee on your upset stomach and your eyes were puffy from all the crying. You must have simply forgotten that you had any hair at all. It looked exactly like it must have looked when you crawled out from the depths of your bed. At this point you wouldn't be surprised to find some leaves or sticks tangled within the rat’s nest.

At least you hadn’t been wearing any makeup on your eyes to create dramatic black streaks down your cheeks, but a little lipstick or blush on your cheeks might have helped some. Anything would have helped. While you confessed your love to this beautiful man you looked like something scraped off the front grill of a semi truck after a 12 hour haul.

You took a few extra moments after your shower to fix whatever you could. It was a delicate balance. You didn't want to make it obvious that you’d gone through the trouble to make yourself super sexy and appealing looking, but you also couldn't just go back out there looking homeless and lost.

You settled for something in between. Something natural and clean looking on your face. Something pretty smelling on your freshly scrubbed skin and you made your way toward your closet wearing your favorite matching bra and panties set.

There was a little lace and just enough push to make your boobs look hot, but still in a neutral enough color that gave a cool and casual ‘oh this ol’ thing?’ feeling should the opportunity for him to actually see it somehow manifested.

Your real dilemma came as you stood in front of your closet.

Did you really need to wear pants? Couldn’t you just prance around your living room in your thinnest white t-shirt and pick things up off the floor that you’d clumsily knocked off the table or the bookshelf or the kitchen counter?

You compromised, picking out a short flouncy skirt and flowy top that liked to fall off the shoulder at inconvenient times and you practically ran out of your room hoping you hadn’t left him stewing in his post difficult phone call mood for too long.

On your way out of your room a familiar piece of paper stuck to the wood caught your eye and you took a step back to look up at the sign you’d hung there a few weeks ago. You tried to be casual about it. You tried your best to be quiet as you carefully lifted the tape that clung to the surface of the door and the paper rattled and crinkled noisily as you pulled. You heard the telltale sounds of paper ripping in half when you pulled. You’d forgotten to carefully lift the tape you put on the sides and the whole thing made quite a racket coming down. So much for discretion.

You were crumbling the whole mess into a tight ball inside your hands as you walked toward the living room and you caught movement on the sofa.

Baekhyun was sitting there it’s his eyes on your hallway, clearly looking up when he heard you coming. His hands were linked over his lap and he was leaning forward, resting on his forearms.

The instinct to hide it was strong and you saw the dip of Baekhyun’s eyes down to your hands and he looked at the ball of paper you hid inside your fist.

He’d just caught you. You’d ripped off your ‘No Boners’ sign from your door and Baekhyun had seen you do it. Now he was looking away from you and his eyes were wide as he stared across the room, looking anywhere that wasn’t at you. His face was tense. His lips were pulled tight and after a few seconds of blank staring he lifted his left hand to cover over his mouth a moment after you saw his white teeth flash with a wide smile and he closed his eyes up. A single snort of laughter escaped from him before he reeled it in and held his breath to stop it.

You had to save it. You had to be casual, dammit. You looked fucking cute right now and this man was in love with you and you loved him too and — God, his hair was wet. He was wearing a plain black t-shirt and jeans and everything about him looked casual and beautiful, you were staring. You were staring. You had to stop staring. You had to do something to save this.

You stuffed the paper ball into your pocket and took enough steps to reach the counter of the kitchen bar and you stuck an arm out and leaned against it.

You leaned because leaning was ultra casual and you also thought you might drop from the tension you were feeling inside your body right now if you relied only on your own two legs to hold you up.

How could absolutely none of the effects of your cooling shower have lasted the second you saw him again?

“Hi,” you said as you fought an embarrassed smile and the leaning felt so forced you closed your eyes to will your own face to un-flush.

Baekhyun dropped his hand from his face and his cheeks were pink to match his lips. He was smiling wide, clearly amused by your nonsense. You saw his chest shaking as he laughed and he lifted his hand and bit down on his closed fist. The laughter did not last long. He was looking at you though and his wide smile evened out when he dropped his hand. His eyes did not drop from your face. Not right away. You caught the drift when they did though and the heat you felt increased when you noticed the slow way he took you in from the glimpse of your bare shoulder down to the shortness of your skirt and down the length of your bare legs. His eyebrow danced once over his left eye and his tongue peaked out to moisten his lips before he bit down on the bottom one.

“Hi Bug,” he said.

Well, this was new.

...

[To Be Continued]

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 , Part 6 , Part 7 , Part 8 , Part 9 , Part 10 , FINAL Part 10.5

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