cherryjuiceblues - Tumblr blog

[cherryjuiceblues]

Hi miss Cherry idk how to start this but I need to vent this cause maybe that way I'll find people that feel the same way (????)

I'm 22 yo and I never ever have had a boyfriend, I know what somebody else's touch feels like but that also wasn't a great experience and I don't know how it feels to be chosen. I live in a "university city" (here there's a bunch of different universities) so there's like a bunch of people my age everywhere and I try to put myself out there, I go out to the club with my friends and they always end up at least kissing someone and the last time that I try to flirt with someone and he said something like "can you introduce me to some of you friends?" And I thought that introducing myself was like a smooth move and he said to me "someone pretty" wtf do you mean? I'M FUCKING GORGEOUS I really like the way that I look and that fucks me up because I don't understand why I don't get the same approval from an outside perspective.

I'm nobody's crush, I'm never talking with someone, I don't get asked for my number or my ig, I don't get flirt with, I'm just there while all of my friends get into relationships and don't get me wrong I love to watch them fall in love but I always wonder why not me? What am I lacking?

I'm lost, at first this really broke me and made me cry myself to sleep but now I'm just numb I hate that.

Idk this is literally how I feel

Sorry for the trauma dump and my english, spanish is my first language

hi lovely. you're not alone, i know exactly how you feel. i wish i had advice for you but i'm afraid i'm in the same boat. all i can say is that you are deserving of so much love and you will be lucky enough to experience it one day.

i know it's hard to watch your friends be in love and feel like the odd one out. sometimes i feel resentment, which is just silly because i adore my friends and i'm happy that they're happy. but it still makes me sad to watch everyone around me living and experiencing what i yearn so deeply for. all i can tell myself is that i'll find my person when the time is right, and hope that it's the truth. lots of love <3

[cherryjuiceblues]

I would love nothing more than for vanilla lime y/n to ask harry to use his magic on her and do whatever he wants and him teasing her 🤌🏻

this idea is definitely on my list lovely. very on brand for those two <3

[cherryjuiceblues]

people from this country are so slay and amazing and sexy fr

[cherryjuiceblues]

Im obSESSED with rugbyrry, when do you think part two will be coming? Hes constantly on my mind

thank you lovely 🩷 it's in the works :)

[cherryjuiceblues]

HI BESTIES. This is the first part of Shibari man/Shibari Asshole/Rigger!Harry x Rope bunny!Reader ((the one I teased here))

The one where Harry runs shibari classes and Y/N thinks he should smile more

WC: 2.4K

This is part one of a patreon exclusive series— the rest will only be accessible through my patreon. You can already find part 2 up on my patreon (✿◠‿◠) 

When she was a little kid, her brother had an ant farm. 

An acrylic formicarium that’d started out as two boxes with a set of tubes and, over time, morphed into a staggering, caged cityscape of twisting, pellucid hoses and burrows that spanned the entire length of the desk in his bedroom. 

She’d watch them scatter the tunnels as a little girl, lugging cracker crumbs and bits of malus, weaving along the chutes connecting the boroughs of their curated city.

Her brother did what any nasty, older brother would do — those harvester ants were the torment of her childhood. They’d bicker, and he’d threaten to spill them into her bed when she was sleeping. Told her that the colony would eat her toes, that she’d wake up to wiggle nothing but little stumps.  

Still, she’d press her nose to the screen barring the insects and smudge her fingerprints over, fascinated as they congregated to the wet cotton ball in the depths of their home. 

She thinks it's like that now, wandering the swarming alcoves in the underbelly of New York. She’s a little Pogonomyrmex plodding through a network of crystalline, vinyl tubing. Swimming against the swathing current of the colony seeping past her in their beanies and their coats, deadpanned on their dog-eat-dog pursuit of errands. 

During the evening rush hour, it’s teeming under the city that never sleeps. It’s a stunning exhibit, maybe, for a tourist whose hometown flickers every porch light off by nine and has one tributary of a road that seeps away from the community, but it doesn’t help the headache thrumming behind her temples. Instead, it kindles the narked throb in her limbs until it feels like an itch in her bloodstream. The day’s chewed her up with its sharp, little teeth and spit her out. Left something tired and empty. The dregs are grounds of mucky ire. 

She mingles through the horde, slinking the gaps she can manage to squeeze past. Anti-seize lubricant. Cherry cleaners and old concrete. Musk and brake dust. Ground up, heated steel from the wheels burning — metal on metal. Grease. It smells like asphalt and strife. 

The car is packed. A lumbering throng that weaves and scatters, either casting indignant looks over their shoulders when they’re nudged as she politely shoulders her way through, or soul-sucked into their phones altogether, scrolling in detachment. 

There’s one tawny seat, empty and tucked against the back wall. She inches for it on aching ankles, burning knees; the bits of a long day left sewn into her joints. It gnaws into her marrow. She twists—

Marimba blares from her bag. Someone casts an irrationally exasperated side-eye over their shoulder. Y/N straightens out, and rummages through the contents. A battered lanyard. A spare stick of deodorant. A hair tie coated in lint and a sparse handful of change—

Drink water. She thumbs the alarm off. 

When Y/N sits back, it’s rigid. Firm and uneven. Warm, like a breathing furnace. It takes her all of a split second to recognize that she’s managed to perch on a splayed thigh, clad in denim that’s shredded at the knees, rather than the grooved, ochre plastic of a hovering seat.  

Y/N had thought there was little emotion she could have summoned beyond something drained and miffed. The day surprises her, yet, in its dying breaths. Like a mortified buoy, embarrassment bobs from the cesspool when she startles up and twists. There’s a man in her seat. 

He looks oddly comfortable, almost as if he’d been there all along. As if Y/N had just conjured a mirage of an empty seat. The only acknowledgement he gives her, blinking up from the phone cradled in his enormous, right hand, is a stoically disgruntled glance from behind the squared, pitch-framed lenses resting on the bridge of his nose. 

“Um. Excuse me—” Y/N blinks, lash line frenzied with an uncomfortable tic — something that she used to fuss over in chagrin as a kid. Her brows crease, “I was sitting there.” 

He spares her a glance. There’s gems in his sockets. Emeralds. Dewy and dulled from the same, shitty day of skyscraper-morphed incisors gnawing. He looks away, and they coruscate in the near blinding glare of his LED, cast in a faint echo over his glasses.

“No, you weren’t.”

Y/N blinks. He doesn’t even spare her a glance as he denies it. She’s forced to stare at the part in his hair; the way a curl sweeps over his temple. He scrolls over his screen, instead, with a neatly saffron-lacquered thumb. 

She swallows a flattering epithet that (his obvious disinterest) nearly wrests from her mouth. A flimsy facsimile of a smile sculpts over. Appalled. Nearly seeping into the beginnings of borderline deranged as her threadbare composure gets toyed at by a prick with a clandestine pair of scissors. Almost, almost, almost. 

“Well. I was going to.” 

“That’s unfortunate,” he murmurs, brows kinked, “because this seat is taken.”

A little noise clambers from the back of her throat. She swallows it down and scoffs. “Are you serious?” 

“Deadly.” 

It’s dry, derisive, disinterested. The three D’s that are going to get his glasses plucked off and tossed to the floor to be crushed under someone’s heel. 

“Unbelievable.”

Mossy eyes sweep up. He’s quiet. Stony. For the first time, Y/N really gets a good look, and decides, instantly, that if he weren’t such an apparent dickhead, maybe his specs and his voguish jumper would make him look sophisticated. Handsome, with his even slope of a nose, full, pink lips, and the dusting of stubble along his cheeks and jawline. 

There’s a sharp contrast to him, like inverted colors. Patchwork of seams that don’t fit. It’s off, his cozy sweater and his soft hair. He looks like a warm, barbed hug. 

Prickly — saguaro, in a Marc Jacobs pullover, with stinging spines sticking through the stitching. 

“What’s the matter with you?” It’s softer that she’d intended. 

She quivers — everything. Her bottom lip, her mandible sets, her fingers wring at the strap of her tote. They twitch and stretch at her side with this provoked, goopy slurry of cortisol and adrenaline. It permeates her pericardium. Snakes the tubing with an incensed warmth — embers kindled.

“Do you realize how rude that is?” 

Asphalt and strife. Someone to her side glances over their shoulder and then turns back. The man blinks up at her from his phone with soft features chiseled apathetic. Vetiver and musk. 

“M’not sure what you mean.” 

“Are you joking? You stole my seat, dude,” she waves out with her hand. 

He blinks again. 

“I don’t think it ever belonged to you, to be fair—“ then, “Is your name on it?” 

It’s a childish retort to spall her argument into flinders. Her eyes narrow into anticipatory slits. 

“No—“

“Then I suppose it’s not your seat, is it?” he responds sharply — chiaroscuro to the lax, impassive shape of his visage, “S’first come, first serve …dude.”

A stranger grazes her shoulderblade in passing — something she’s become accustomed to. People finding walkways in strait gaps on a train that’s packed like a can of sardines. 

“Oh my God. You are such an asshole— I could be pregnant.” 

He raises his eyebrows. His eyes trail. A slow once-over, wry and disbelieving. Sage and owlish. A stray curl stemming from the forefront of his crown meddles to coil over his forehead. The corner of his otherwise indurated mouth twitches.

“Are you pregnant?” 

No.

“Yes,” Y/N glowers. 

It slinks from the back of her throat, unbidden— this lie. Rides up the back up of her tongue and slips through the cracks of her teeth. It’s curdled and twisted, miasmic pulp in tar — who the fuck lies about being pregnant for a subway seat?

She’s never going to see him again. 

She’s never, ever going to see him again. 

She palms over the underside of her tummy. Sells it, now that she has to. Soft flesh under the button of her jeggings, shrouded under the boxy shaping of her fleece turtleneck — where a baby (that definitely doesn’t exist, last she checked), the size of a citrus limon, would curl up. She holds over the phantom at her underbelly. 

She’s had a shitty day, and now she’s been backed into a corner, offering the universe shitty manifestations with her palms cupped out. 

The seat stealer ogles. Meanders from her strategic hand placement to her ireful scowl. Back. His mouth purses. 

“So, it’s not that you could be,” he clarifies, slowly, “It’s that you are.”

Languid. Unrushed, like an overflowing, murky lake lapping at a berm. Someone brushes the back of her arm. 

“Yes.” 

“Are you lying?” 

She scoffs. He’s fully transfixed on her now, the glow from his smartphone dimmed on its pending shut-off timer. 

“Are you kidding? Who—“ Y/N hikes her tote up, “lies about being pregnant for a subway seat?” 

He purses his lips again. Ruddy pillows bordering the sharp chasm of his mouth where the tools to dissect her claims are stowed. Bobs his head. 

“How far along are you, then?” 

She grits, “Thirteen weeks—“

And a stranger prods past with enough force to nudge her forward. Enough for her shin to brush against the bespectacled man’s own. Enough to step into his space, nearly between his parted thighs. He frowns. 

He does another slow sweep with his gaze. Furrowed brows, glimmering viridian dancing from behind limped lenses. Gleaning pieces like cattail and twine for a nest. Deciding; are they worthy? A grip over her underbelly, the little frown on her own lips that mirrors his own, the way she suddenly crowds his atoms. He’s unconvinced, almost. Apathetic. 

Y/N fully expects him to tell her to fuck off, but then he nudges with his stubbly chin. She shuffles back as much as she can with about three, broad strangers at all sides. 

He bleeds out into her, for a moment, when he clambers up and steps in to make their cycle — this game of musical chairs to the tune of white noise, flitting on a screeching rail through a tunnel — smoother. He’s broad. Tapered. Thick in the shoulders, a carnegiea of a man towering when he nearly presses his firm chest to her, wrapped in french terry. He’s much softer to the touch than the spikes bristling from his mien implicate. Woodsy and clean, like smoke, and cedarwood, and soap. It flushes the miasmic undertone of grease the subway always has. 

He cocks his head. Sit down. 

“Congratulations,” he tells her when she nooks into the spot, splaying her tote over her lap. 

He’s kept her seat warm. 

Whether the statement is in reference to her unborn pseudo-baby, or her victory, she’s unsure. 

                         ──── ⋆⋅•⋅⋆ ────

KNOTS resembles a yoga studio, with its clean, tall walls, its french oak flooring, and its bone-white bulbs, linearly tiled into the ceiling. It smells like an amalgam of grapefruit cleaning products and spritzes of an air freshener that vaguely echoes the lapping sea. 

Salt, an airy ozone, muguet. Something pretentious that doesn’t fit into the city. 

If it weren’t for the myriad of ropes, lubricants, and toy cleaners stacking the shelving units by the front, she would have felt as if she was here to attend a pilates class. Cycling, maybe. Something sweaty and less …abrasive.

She’s late for her seven-to-nine open level, beginner’s course — two soporific hours of rope and knot tying that she’ll never get back.

(Slaphappy and fecklessly inept at knot-tying are two traits that don’t work well to take up shibari as a hobby. 

“Please— she’s been begging for months and none of those online tutorials make any fucking sense.” 

“So— why don’t you take her with you?” 

“Because I want it to be a surprise,” Niall had opposed. Puffed his chest, “I wanna surprise her. Like a proper ropes guy, you know. And she’s so flexible, too, I could tie her in loads of positions—“

Y/N raised her palm. “Spare me.” 

Niall’s always been a glass half-full. Crystalline, something tall with orange juice, or liquidated fizz. 

She couldn’t bear to ruffle his plume when, two autumns ago, he spent a Wednesday afternoon standing outside a women’s handicapped stall in an auto shop for pure, courageous moral support as she took an actual pregnancy test, (not even by his doing, and he was a very good sport). Even if he’s absolute shit at knots beyond tying his own shoes.

She didn’t have the heart to tell him that if he struggled with twine and a palomar, it wasn’t going to matter how bendy his girlfriend was.)

They’re fourteen minutes late. Eight-hundred-forty seconds and change for every two steps, by the time they find the right door in the balmy corridor of boundless doorways. A portly, alder ingress squeals on its hinges when they shuffle, as quietly as they can manage, into what vaguely resembles a dance studio. 

The attendees look the part, too, perched over their yoga mats in contemporary dancer garb, turning their chins over their shoulders at the disturbance. Dress casual and comfortable. There’s only about eight of them, and they coil in a piqued coterie ahead of the instructor, who has about six varying ropes, diverse in their tint and structure, and then he peers up—

It’s him. Saguaro, with the frames and the eyes like beds of flinty malachite. 

He’s holding a furled, plaited cord, the head of the class, and he pauses, blinking up. Briefly. He clears his throat—

”—Jute, on the other hand, has great knot stability. You can see here, the braided texture— that makes it less slippery.”

Compunction crinkles the valley of skin between her eyebrows as she trudges in alongside Niall — he’s much more amicable about it, mouthing apologies and raising his hand in friendly hello’s that don’t receive much beyond awkwardly indifferent glances. They sink to their knees toward the back, which isn’t all that far from the front, all things considered. It’s a small class. The wood burrows into her tailbone — were the yoga mats a complementary notion? Was she supposed to bring a yoga mat?

“It’s great for floor bondage, but it’s water sensitive. So if you want to work it into suspension, don’t wash it too often. Otherwise, you’re losing carrying capacity.”

The city of New York is a metaphorical hayrick. It’s a paradox, since the big apple is the furthest thing from watery mud, fir-constructed barns, and scythes sweeping through crops. 

Theoretically, though, Y/N should have never seen this man again. 

He should have become swept into the mound of straw — got lost in it. Mortification strums at her muscles, tensing every sinew. It scars deep— scrapes at her cartilage. If she’d known this needle would prick her thumb again, maybe she wouldn’t have waged war for the seat on the subway. 

And yet, here he is.

[cherryjuiceblues]

Okay besties, I feel that I’m usually very nice on here, and I never, ever post negative anons (firstly because I’m blessed that very few people who stumble into my corner of the internet feel the need to send something nasty, and secondly because that simply defeats the purpose of the space I try to cultivate), but I have to make a lil announcement and it might come off a little stern.

I’m not sure why I have to make this announcement, but I guess it’s time to remind people of that little rule we all learned when we were kids; “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

I’ve gotten two asks this like now and I’m going to assume that they’re from the same person (in good faith of the people who browse my blog) because I didn’t block the first time (I would hope numerous people aren’t taking it upon themselves to anonymously send in messages like this) but going forward: sending in an ask like this will get you blocked. You are gaining absolutely nothing by sending something like this in, because you are not going to get your desired outcome. Whether that be to make me feel some type of way about my own writing, or get me to change my writing style. It’s just a really weird thing to do. It doesn’t make me want to simplify my writing for you. It just makes me want to stop sharing it with tumblr.

Absolutely no offense to the book-tok lovers, because I know that the type of prose that’s been blowing up has been really simple, non-descriptive stuff. If your goal is to have an easy read and just consume, that’s okay, but you’re probably not going to vibe with my writing style. Prose is supposed to make you analyze. It’s supposed to be poetic and full of metaphors. A story is supposed to enthrall you with it’s worldbuilding and immerse you. Make you think, make you learn new words. I read a lot of classics, and one of my favorite things about reading those is analyzing the structure and learning new words. If you’re not into reading, that’s all good, but don’t read my stuff and take it upon yourself to make an unwelcome criticism (when writing styles all differ because enjoyment is subjective). It makes me feel super weird that someone who reads my stuff thinks it’s okay to send things like that.

It’s okay not to like something. Just keep it to yourself and don’t read. If it’s not for you, it’s not for you! Just scroll :)

[cherryjuiceblues]

currently housesitting and i have never once struggled to do absolutely nothing but why does it feel so impossible in someone else’s home? 😭

[cherryjuiceblues]

i think the note fluctuation is partially just because so many authors have begun making patreons and making more and more works patreon exclusives. obviously we as readers understand that you put real work into fics and deserve to be compensated but it’s also sort of selfishly frustrating, as most people including myself can’t afford to pay that kind of money to authors - it doesn’t seem like a lot from your end i’m sure but when there’s 10 different authors you want to support and it feels upsetting to choose just one or two, it’s difficult!

i think readers specifically in this fandom are sort of turning away from tumblr and authors that rely heavily on patreon exclusives (obviously not you and not meant to be a personal attack). it just feels less like what tumblr fanfiction used to feel like, you know?

i don’t know i could be full of shit. i’d love to know your and other authors on here opinions on this because it’s so not a black and white issue…. like i completely understand your guys’ want to be compensated but idk i think notes are waning bc it feels less like a fun little reading app and more like that inner thought process of guilt and like if i want to enjoy all these authors works i have to pay half my rent LOL

this was meant for @1800titz i think! our pfps are confusing 😄 i’ll let her reblog with a response :)

[cherryjuiceblues]

this one is sick and twisted and wonderfully fluffy all at once 🤧

for patreon blurb night… elaborate on any of the TDIAG concepts you’ve posted before (please i beg)

Hi bestie!! I did 4.2K for the cold shower concept :O

You can find it on patreon :)

preview

And it begins. He trails to the bathroom, lugging her behind with his hand fisted over her wrist. Flicks the light on. Shuts the door. Doesn’t say much, until—

“What’s your safeword?” as he tugs her close by her belt loops (maneuvering— he always moves her so easy, stuttering on her toes, lugged along, and she just goes). 

“…Red.”

And that’s all, with careful eye contact, before he begins to discard.

“What if I get hypothermia—“

The pads of his nimble digits pop the button of her jeans through its slit. It’s a doomy rustle of fabric in the lull.

“You’re not going to.” 

Isla’s face creases.

“How would you know? I take scalding showers,” (his little dolly) she lets him pry her denim apart and yank, limbs loose, “This is gonna be, like, so bad for my body.”

Harry sighs. Cocks his head. (The paradigm of insouciance— it makes her teeth catch on her bottom lip until the flesh teems white). 

“They’re actually really good for you.”

It makes her marrow itch; the way his thumbs wriggle down under the sides of her panties and so unceremoniously denude. All in one fatal sweep (she turns her chin and stares at the door, with her face spuming heat). He lugs her jeans over the swell of her thighs until he’s kneeling her ankles. A periphery where he cocks his visage up in an inclination for her to step out. 

Isla murmurs, “Not for me.” 

—Until her legs are bare, and her cunt, and her denim (along with her panties— Harry traces the sticky, wet spot with his thumb and it makes her innards spume heat), gets wadded and scraped aside. 

She doesn’t have time to flush harder before his fingers are at the sliver of skin under her tank where underbelly turns to pelvis to mons, beckoning, “Arms up, please.”

It’s humiliating. Shameful— because he’s seen her naked loads, and loads, and loads of times, but sex is different, sex is—

Not this. Not being softly touched over and disrobed for a punishment, like a twisted anomaly that muddles everything behind her skull.

[cherryjuiceblues]

feeling very depressed and i have today off so im gonna snuggle up in bed and reread every one of your fics😇🌟

oh my love :( i hope you feel better. my bed definitely soothes some wounds. this is so kind of you to say 🥹 sending u alllllll the love and hugs 🩷

[cherryjuiceblues]

bad news: it takes me forever to open the google doc

good news: i opened the google doc today!

[cherryjuiceblues]

Not you reblogging the period sex post lmao I'm currently on my period fighting for my life I need a rugbyrry in my life 😩

lmao me and u both baby 😭

[cherryjuiceblues]

Hear me out... Period sex with rugbyrry. She'd hesitate bc it would be messy and she feels like it's kinda gross and harry would answer that he literally rolls on the ground and he often sees blood bc himself and his team mates are sometimes bruised and so on so a little period blood does not scare him one bit

oh bestie soooo true he is entirely unbothered by mess! tells y/n that she deals with his muddy, sweaty, bleeding self all the time so why should she feel embarrassed?

“it’s just a little blood, peaches. y’think i can’t handle it? still gorgeous, aren’t ya?”

she ignores the compliment. “really? you don’t mind?”

“not even a little bit. just look how pretty you are.”

[cherryjuiceblues]

Hey besties! Are any other writers out there experiencing pretty significant fluctuations in notes? I'm seeing a trend with the last 3 works I've posted (not counting Trivia fic since I fully disclosed that it's a patreon exclusive so that some readers could purposely avoid it), and the notes are just... not noting LOL? I fully expect for some pieces to not do as well as others, but the fact that it's become a trend at this point implies that there's a reason

SIDENOTE FOR READERS: If you're getting confused in any way between patreon teasers and tumblr uploads PLEASE let me know, and I can attach specific headers maybe? Or something that would make the distinction more obvious if it isn't already

[cherryjuiceblues]

Heeey pretty lady I'm just wondering if you have something on rugby Harry because my fyp today has been just rugby videos and I'm yearning 😩😩😩

you’re so sweet thank you! ily 🩷 i literally sent this video to miss titz earlier HFJSJSJ 😭 he plays on my mind too……. and that tiktok is so from y/n’s perspective. she’s a lucky girl. i’m always happy to discuss concepts if u have anything particular in mind :’)

[cherryjuiceblues]

Hi! are there gonna be more vanilla lime extras or parts? I really love that tropeee

there’ll probably be some more extras at some point :)

[cherryjuiceblues]

my FAAAVEEEE 😓❤️‍🩹

HI BESTIES. Trivia!Harry x Shy!Reader part 1 ((based on THIS post))

The one where Harry hosts trivia at a small town bar every Thursday and Y/N just can’t seem to shut up.

WC: 3.6K

This is part one of a patreon exclusive series — the rest will only be accessible through my patreon. You can already find part 2 up on my patreon (✿◠‿◠)

She takes a long drink. It tastes like kismet and carbonated nothingness.

“Alright, alright, alright.”

Smooth baritone into the bulbous head of a microphone, hovering millimeters from pink, plush borders of a mouth. It seeps through the meshed grill caging it like molasses slinking the gaps. The lively chatter dulls as heads turn, and then swells in eager increments. 

“Alright,” he says, a set of green eyes flickering from the monitor he’s settled over a rejigged high top, and bounding sharply to whoever’s just given an overly enthusiastic cry of yes from the horde surrounding the portable four-by-eight platform.  

A peal of sparse, scattered laughter. His mouth quirks.

“Very enthusiastic today. Hello to you, as well. I’m well. How are you?” 

His cresting eyes bound from the glowy screen, casting light and carving shadow over the sultry features of his visage; an evenly straight slope of a nose, cheekbones feathered by long lashes, a bit of curl that traipses over his forehead. 

His chin swivels to his left, somewhere closer to the platform where a woman leans over the high top — her designated team — the corners of his lips curling in response to whatever he’s said. Face alive, he nods. He tips his chin. Makes a creased face like something playful. Says something else, laughs softly, and turns back, shaking his head. 

Y/N tucks the straw in and takes another slow sip.  

He brings the mic back to the ruddy stain of his lips. 

“Hope everyone’s having a lovely Thursday. M’Harry, I’ll be leading the trivia— as I do— so if you’re sitting there going, who is this obnoxious cock, talking into the mic the whole night? Hi, Hello. That’s me— I do trivia.”

Harry is fit. 

At first, Y/N had been dubious to desert her romcom reruns and her cross-stitch project mid-way (despite the fact that her thumb now resembles a pin cushion) when her friends had swept her off into their regularly scheduled, mysteriously niche Thursday night schemes. Now, she gets it. 

The destination — The Black Horse — is a fuggy little space that smells like spilt Michelob and fusty, weathered oak. There’s a no smoking sign pasted in a spare crevice of the backbar, but someone in the far right corner exhales a plume of vapor like they’ve hit their elfbar in the most clandestine manner imaginable. Shamelessly. It’s a small town — an islet in the heart of an archipelago — and she thinks she can make out her seventh grade swim team rival perched somewhere off in the front row. 

The Black Horse is nothing special. It sells cheap draughts by the pitcher and parallels a barbershop in the crux of the town, two blocks off the boardwalk, which is arguably the chiseled, shiny musgravite of Treah’s core — a roaring green sea that eats away at the borders of the isle, shrouding vibrantly hued cays, glimmering under the beam of the sun. The majority of the holm’s economy is dependent on tourism (a simultaneous bane — said tourists enjoy uprooting foliage, building infrastructures, and partaking in chunks of housing buyouts), but Y/N can tell that The Black Horse has been …preserved to say the least. It’s four stone walls sewn into a plaza with three other natively owned businesses and looks like something straight out of a cinematic piece set in a rural village, planted into Treah long before Y/N had her first wiggly tooth. 

The Black Horse isn’t what makes attendance worth it. It’s him—

“We’ve got a crowd tonight. If you haven’t played trivia with me here at The Black Horse before, welcome. S’a little different than your typical trivia, though, because it’s…”

The throng hollers back, as if scripted, “Dirty trivia!” 

“Dirty Trivia,” Harry parrots, all cheeky dimples, “Right, Dirty Trivia. This one’s rated R, so if you’re not old enough to be here, I dunno how you got here, but this is going to be your cue to head out. Any— any children in here tonight? …No? Wonderful.” 

He huffs into the mic, shaking his head and jostling his halo of curls. A jaundiced, warm beam catches on them. “I know that sounds ridiculous, but m’not even joking— a couple of weeks ago someone was sitting in here with, like, a little kid.” 

It’s Harry, with the divots burrowing into his cheeks, the croon into the mic, lighting the crowd alive on an introduction. 

Y/N crosses her legs. Her friend raises her eyebrows from across the teak table top and says it with her eyes. Told you so; Trivia Man is a cream dream. 

“Yeah,” Harry confirms over the scattered, appalled eruption of laughter, nodding down at someone seated at a table closer to the stage, “I was, like, …shit,” he blinks back up and motions out, a slow sweep with his free hand, “Friendly reminder, this is not a form of sex ed.” 

Pausing, mouth twitchy over the sown mirth, he brings the microphone back with a newfound seriousness and tacks on, nodding slowly, “…That kid won it for the whole team.” 

The seam of his mouth lopsidedly spalls, “No, m’joking,” and he clears his throat. “M’gonna pass out a sheet and some little note pads for your answers,” Harry explains, “You’re gonna use one of those little notes to jot down a clever team name, do the same in that team name spot of the sheet, and then pass the note up to me.”

Pussy Posse. A pre-established moniker Y/N has had no jurisdiction over, merely perched as an addition to a settled cadre. Still, she gnaws into her cheek when she watches a friend beside her scribble in the title with a ballpoint. 

“I’ll be coming around between questions to pick those answers up, have a chat, whatever. We’re all here to have fun, yes?” 

She swears he sweeps her with his eyes, like a passing tide gliding the sea. Probably just the way the green in his sockets meets everyone else in the throng, but the moment it happens her molars chew in harder.

“On the topic of fun, let’s keep it nice and fair, yeah? Phones put away— no cheating— you’ll have plenty of time to check those when we have our break midway.”

It feels ignoble to eye-fuck him from behind the sheathes of her empty irises as he paces the stage — after all, this is just a wholesomely clad, virtuously upstanding guy leading trivia, but. The gears behind her skull are mottled with cerebrospinal fluid and sticky in a goop of thoughtless ogling that renders her head empty. Even when he makes his way to the bar-height table her team curls around, when his eyes linger on her — “A new face.” — Y/N just mindlessly stares. 

Dirty trivia, she learns, is dirty.

It hits her when Harry quips (dare she note, mischievously), “Hoo-hoo-hoo. Starting off strong with the first one.” 

He states, talc flickering from the LED display ahead to the bevy of trivia-players, “What country,” and pauses for emphasis, “has—“ pits grub at the smooth of his cheeks beside the upturned corners of a pink-bordered mouth splintering, “the highest average, in the world, for penis size?” 

There’s no source of entertainment like that of trivia held, on a Thursday, on a remote islet, in a poky bar that smells like stale beer and dust-coated, chipping leather. Evidently. 

“I actually don’t know this one,” Harry chimes, raising a wry shoulder, “So it’s trivia for me, as well.” 

“England,” Marina stamps a blow that the teak hasn’t warranted, whisper-shouting over the staggering peals of guffaw and chatter, “He’s hung, I bet you.”

“He’s not going to fuck you for writing in England,” Beth’s chortles clash with Y/N’s scorned, “Marina.”

“That’s not even an answer,” Bee waves towards the flatscreen framed over the man’s head

Senegal, Haiti, Ecuador, and Gambia. 

“Where the fuck is Gambia—”

They settle on Gambia. 

Y/N watches Beth scribble it in and dot the i with an open sphere whose edges don’t meet. When Harry winds the rows of tables, plucking answer cards and making small-talk, Y/N stares into her mug ruddy-faced, brain-rotted with the insinuation of him being …hung.

“Lots of Haiti, lots of Senegal,” Harry states, mouth twitchy once he’s smoothed the cards out with his colossal, ringed paws, and looked them over. 

She stares at the bob of his throat as he swallows, directing the mic back to his lips.

“Big reveal?” He pauses, as if for cataclysmic emphasis, riling the crowd enough for Y/N to note restive shoulders and juddering feet. 

“Patience,” Harry says softly into the microphone, raising his eyebrows. 

Y/N squishes the plush of her thighs together. 

Then, with paltry warning, he reveals, “Ecuador! At,” squinting at the blue-toned LED, “—a whopping 6-point-nine-three. Solid for the average. Do we have any Ecuadorian men in the audience tonight? Anybody who’s added to that average? Congratulations. You beat us. You beat everyone.” 

There’s an amalgamation of responses, some ripostes flung amongst tables, some bouts of clapping, hollering over the rows, sloshing mugs raised in triumph. 

Harry’s deltoids climb in a shrug, and his head wags from side to side, “Some valiant contenders, those Ecuadorians.” 

“I told you it wasn’t Gambia—“

Y/N ogles the way Harry tilts over the platform towards a table, brows kinked as if trying to pick up something audible he’d missed. In her peripherals, Marina prods into Beth’s direction with a palmful of something claret in a pellucid martini glass. 

“What was that?” Harry coaxes into the microphone. 

The corners of his mouth have caved up, and by the time the majority of the trivia-players sink into a piqued lull, he’s slanted over toward the table. A brunette with long, shiny hair arches up out of her seat into her directions, braced to the teak high-top with planted, elbow-locked arms. 

“Where do you fall?” is undeniable the second time. 

Harry blinks. His mouth paints over with a smile. 

“Where do I fall?”

He blatantly bridles a sputter when he winds toward the laptop he’s set up, culls his glass of a golden, pale straw beer that’s lost its layer of foam, and takes a long drink. 

Harry clears his throat. “Wouldn’t you like to know. Very forward. Take me out to dinner first.” 

Y/N discovers that, despite the ubiquitously crude sexualizing, Harry is sort of like a bird. Pavo cristatus, preening with its neatly arranged plume — he likes it. The flattery. His tongue peeks out and swipes over his lips as he stares down at the screen. Little dimples pit when it tucks back in — ones he blatantly can’t contain. 

He chuckles and states into the microphone, “…Below. Don’t worry about it.” 

Somehow, Y/N doubts it. 

Y/N plaits herself into the Thursday Fawn Sessions as a regular attendee, curling up at the same high top to ogle the same man pace a platform with a microphone to make jesting comments and ask things like, “Axillism is the act of using what strange body part during sex?” 

She finds herself learning a thing or two from each session, and she finds that the emeralds seated in his sockets linger on this absolute clam shell taking up a spot in the bar and chugging fizzy water (that ogles his frame in lull every time he approaches her table), too. Pussy Posse is no good at the trivia, more often than not wheedling in second-to-last, but they find themselves much too entertained to mind. 

Franks is a rather self-explanatory hot dog cart. It stands midway on the boardwalk and operates through sunny mizzles and borderline hurricane cloudbursts, when the green salt chuck is choppy. High tiding. Those are the days Y/N stands out in her jaundiced poncho, salty rain spittle beating at her cheeks, and watches the waves eat at the ipe in a nasty, wet hunger, no customers in sight. 

Midsummer afternoons, though, are good. Busy. When Treah morphs industrious and bustling — tourists like Franks on the boardwalk. 

It’s a slow coda for June. The sea is planate, swaying over steel supports mantled by barnacles. Gulls chortle, gliding low in the ether — it oozes yellow and something balmy like the goo of an egg yolk. She’s sold two hot dogs, tallied three joggers (one eager speedwalker), and noted one couple pushing a baby in a stroller, who offered tight-lipped smiles and veganism. She doesn’t entirely mind a slow day, because setting shop on the boardwalk means spending the day on the boardwalk. Breathing the sea until her lungs are full of salt and her eardrums reverberate the crash of the water behind her skull. She tastes it at the back of her throat — something like home as home could get.  

There’s another jogger loping — a moving blip of skin color in chiaroscuro against wood paneling. In the distance. Drawing closer. She imagines him passing the cart, the soles of his trainers padding over the row of planks until he’s just another form of lines and shading, faced away. She checks her phone. 

The jogger is still a good bit away. Y/N swipes open Wordle. She’s on her third attempt of elucidating something that goes blank, I, blank, E, blank (with a P that doesn’t quite fit where she’s slotted it)—

“Hi.”

Her eyes crest. 

Treah is a really small town. Not in a prudishly, bible-bashing form of a pastoral village, sheathed in a bosky, wooded moat of thicket and then plains of nothingness for hundreds of miles. But it is an island enveloped by the sea from all sides, sequestered without a boat or a little plane, whose wheels bumpily kiss the asphalt of anearly comically small airport. Even the tourists lodging up in their summer homes, all the same months like annual clockwork, make reappearances. The faces are, nearly always, the same, and she sees the same faces often. It was only a (limited) matter of time before they coalesced beyond the borders skirting The Black Horse. In hindsight, Y/N didn’t envisage that she’d be wearing a baseball cap emblematized with a weenie when it happened. Or that his tits would be out and about. 

“Have you got water?”

He’s panting. Casually slippery; coated in sweat that glimmers in the sun and carves the well-toned sinews of his torso, with sunglasses tucked up over his curls like a makeshift headband. He ogles expectantly with a set of jade that puts the hues of the lapping, green sea behind him to shame. A parted mouth, sculpted and cushiony, sucks in breaths from the liminal space divvying their atoms while her own become clogged, somewhere midway an esophageal prison, in limbo toward her lungs. A shaded lepidoptera scored over his tummy flutters, batting its wings in the swell and sink of his diaphragm expanding. 

His shorts are teeny. Tiny, little things. Cobalt. Mirroring laurels carving alongside his V-line peek from the waistband, and a happy trail climbs to kiss his navel. 

Y/N blinks. “Yes. Yeah. We do. Yes. …Is bottled okay?” 

“Bottled is perfect.”

He sticks a hand into his pocket, the emeralds in his sockets flickering to her face, and away, and back. Slow-like. She traces the wisps in the sky with her eyes, heat searing up her neck and pooling in the flesh of her face. It’s a sudden, unforeseen stuffiness sweltering for such a beautiful day. Y/N recognizes her horrid blunder in his next words. 

“Do I know you from somewhere?” 

She should have ducked her chin, tucked the visor lower, and hoped for the best. Instead, now, she blinks, dazed and wide-eyed like a Red brocket saturated by blinding headlights.  

“Oh. I’m not sure. Um. Small …town— maybe?” 

“You come to, uh—“ a nudge with his chin in her direction as Y/N arduously regulates the stuttery pace of her respiration. The jitter in her digits, like a lovesick school girl. She caches them behind the cart and lets them judder. “—trivia nights. At The Black Horse, yeah? I couldn’t forget a face like yours.” 

Harry grins, the way he does. Lopsided, so the left corner turns up a little higher — dimpled with a long flash of teeth. Except now, he’s slippery and half-naked. 

Folie. Miscalculated gaffe in a weenie cap. She smiles all tight. 

“Oh—“ again, “…Yeah.” 

“Right,” Harry nods. Smiley. Lingering, looking her over. He buries an enormous hand back into his pocket then, brows creasing like he’s remembered something, and pulls out a little rectangle in cardboard paper. “Hey, actually. I’ve got this coupon here. S’what I do all the other days of the week, ah—“

He extends it out. 

Harve-y a free drink, on us! 

“M’a bartender over at Harvey’s. S’close to The Black Horse, if you’re in that area. Monday and Saturday mornings. Wednesday and Friday nights. If you come by, I’ll fix you up with a drink.” 

It feels impolite to leave him hanging, so she swipes out at the offering, cradling it with slow fingertips. 

“We can do some one on one trivia. Train you up,” Harry tacks on.

Y/N swallows. Harry is an attractive man. His allure is apodictic — a sort of conventional, objective quality that leaves her throat parched when it becomes paired with his unfaltering eye contact. She’s not a virgin, and she’s an adept swimmer, but his presence feels like viridian saltwater that’s waiting to swallow her whole. The nerves that bubble, a fizz of chagrin, remind her why exactly she enjoys fawning from a distance. Because he makes her feel nervous, and when she’s nervous, the dialogue spumes like miasmic word vomit. 

He’s got a thin sheathe of sweat that glimmers in the seat of his cupid’s bow, but it’s not in a gross way. In fact, it reminds her that the rest of him, his denuded skin, is slick, because he’s been jogging along the boardwalk. It reminds her how hard it is not to openly ogle the tattoos he’s got on show. She should have called out from her weenie gig, and she should have refilled her alprazolam prescription weeks ago. 

“Oh,” she tells him, slowly, face creasing, “I don’t— I don’t drink.”

Harry blinks. It’s a weird confession considering she’s a Thursday night regular at a bar that’s really only good for anything that has enough alcohol to shroud the stale taste. Still, nothing beyond open expectancy erupts along his features, and that’s worse. She feels them crawling up her throat, clambering up the back of her tongue like the words have knobby joints. They meet the backs of her teeth, waiting to spew. 

“—Not because I’m a recovering alcoholic or anything, I just don’t like the way it makes me feel. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Or drinking. I actually think it’s so admirable. You know? Like, to be brave… and… and a lot of times those people will attend support groups—“

Harry blinks again. 

“—And they talk about it. I can’t imagine sharing something like that— not that there’s anything wrong with it! But. Um. I always get virgin cocktails at The Black Horse. Or club soda. Or juice.”

Her lips seal over. She entraps the rest behind her traitorous teeth — a drawbridge that never should’ve sunk open. Despite her overly candid, overstated explanation, Y/N doesn’t stick the coupon back out in his direction. She harbors it in her hand, blinking slowly and gnawing into her cheek. 

“…S’okay. We do orange juice, too,” Harry tells her, entirely casual despite her discomfited speech, raising his brows. 

There’s the curbed efforts of a bemusedly mirthy grin at the corners of his mouth, and his nonchalant bearing only makes her face hotter. She feels like she’s broiling under the shade of the awning. 

“And club soda.” 

“…Cool,” Y/N settles on, tightly. 

“Sick.”

“…It’s, uh… two dollars,” she tells him, after a moment. 

Y/N is going to go home and ram her head through a window. 

“Oh,” Harry casts his gaze to the water (it has the average, entirely typical proportions of a water bottle, but in his hand, it’s nearly miniature), as if he’s forgotten the chilly source of condensation coating his palm. That he’s in arrears. He sticks his free hand into the same pocket that’d procured the coupon, “Right. I think I’ve got two dollars in here, somewhere.” 

Instead, when he stretches a bill out towards her, it’s worth ten. Circumventing eye contact, Y/N reaches for the cash box tucked below and pries the lid up to delegate his change. 

“Oh,” Harry echoes, raising his enormous hand in effort of halting her, “S’alright. S’yours.”  

“Oh. I… can’t take tips. It’s, like. Against the code of conduct.” 

“Code of conduct at a …hot dog stand?” 

As if she needed to be reminded that she’s donning a silly cap with an animated frank, standing on a boardwalk that’s practically empty of prospective patrons. The ignominy scores in her tummy and surfaces in the set line of her mouth. 

“…Yes.” 

Harry pauses, brows kinked like he’s ruminating, and then he inhales and decides, “Well. It’s not a tip, yeah? It’s just… you break it up, put two in the box, and then put the rest in your pocket.” 

“Oh. No. You— you’ve already given me the coupon—“ she argues, frenziedly waving out a mismatched wad of cash.

He raises his hands and ambles in one suavely lengthy step back. “I’m going now.” 

“No!” 

He’s three away that would fit five or six of her own gait when he declares, “Yes! I hope to see you for that orange juice. On the house. Have a good one.” 

This is a patreon exclusive series. If you'd like to read more, part 2 is already up on my patreon! <3