#I really had to include this idea somewhere

[dalliancekay]

Aziraphale and Religion and his Bibles

It has come to my attention that some people call Aziraphale Christian and/or religious, and I have seen posts alluding to him collecting bibles out of some sort of ... piety.

He is however, none of these things. He doesn't need to believe in God and especially not in a book or what's written in it.

Now, I get that not everyone read the Good Omens book, so here are two of my favourite passages (emphasis mine):

Aziraphale collected books. If he were totally honest with himself he would have to have admitted that his bookshop was simply somewhere to store them. He was not unusual in this. In order to maintain his cover as a typical second-hand book seller, he used every means short of actual physical violence to prevent customers from making a purchase. Unpleasant damp smells, glowering looks, erratic opening hours - he was incredibly good at it. He had been collecting for a long time, and, like all collectors, he specialized. He had more than sixty books of predictions concerning developments in the last handful of centuries of the second millennium. He had a penchant for Wilde first editions. And he had a complete set of the Infamous Bibles, individually named from error's in typesetting. These Bibles included the Unrzghteous Bible, so called from a printer's error which caused it to proclaim, in I Corinthians, "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the Kingdom of God?"; and the Wicked Bible, printed by Barker and Lucas in 1632, in which the word not was omitted from the seventh commandment:, making it "Thou shaft commit Adultery." There were the Discharge bible, the Treacle Bible, the Standing Fishes Bible, the Charing Cross Bible and the rest. Aziraphale had them all. Even the very rarest, a Bible published in 1651 by the London publishing firm of Bilton and Scaggs. It had been the first of their three great publishing disasters. The book was commonly known as the Buggre Alle This Bible.

This to me - sounds like Aziraphale collected these bibles because it was a funny and interesting and a specialised thing to do.

Not because he thought it was some holy sort of book he had to guard.

"When the Rapture comes, brothers and sisters, all the True Believers will be swept up in the air-it don't mind what you're doin', you could be in the bath, you could be at work, you could be drivin' your car, or just sittin' at home readin' your Bible. Suddenly you'll be up there in the air, in perfect and incorruptible bodies. And you'll be up in the air, lookin' down at the world as the years of destruction arrive. Only the faithful will be saved, only those of you who have been born again will avoid the pain and the death and the horror and the burnin'. Then will come the great war between Heaven and Hell, and Heaven will destroy the forces of Hell, and God shall wipe away the tears of the sufferin', and there shall be no more death, or sorrow, or cryin', or pain, and he shall rayon in glory for ever and ever-" He stopped, suddenly. "Well, nice try," he said, in a completely different voice, "only it won't be like that at all. Not really. I mean, you're right about the fire and war, all that. But that Rapture stuff well, if you could see them all in Heaven-serried ranks of them as far as the mind can follow and beyond, league after league of us, flaming swords, all that, well, what I'm trying to say is who has time to go round picking people out and popping them up in the air to sneer at the people dying of radiation sickness on the parched and burning earth below them? If that's your idea of a morally acceptable time, I might add. And as for that stuff about Heaven inevitably winning . . . Well, to be honest, if it were that cut and dried, there wouldn't be a Celestial War in the first place, would there? It's propaganda. Pure and simple. We've got no more than a fifty percent chance of coming out on top. You might just as well send money to a Satanist hotline to cover your bets, although to be frank when the fire falls and the seas of blood rise you lot are all going to be civilian casualties either way. Between our war and your war, they're going to kill everyone and let God sort it out-right? Anyway, sorry to stand here wittering, I've just a quick question where am I?" Marvin O. Bagman was gradually going purple. "It's the devil! Lord protect me! The devil is speakin' through me!" he erupted, and interrupted himself, "Oh no, quite the opposite in fact. I'm an angel. Ah. This has to be America, doesn't it? So sorry, can't stay . . . " There was a pause. Marvin tried to open his mouth, but nothing happened. Whatever was in his head looked around. He looked at the studio crew, those who weren't phoning the police, or sobbing in corners. He looked at the grey-faced cameramen. "Gosh, " he said, "am I on television?"

Please note - Aziraphale is a bit of bastard. He's definitely not catholic or Christian or any kind of religious. He's an angel, and he's not an angel because of his belief or something. That's what he was made as. By GOD. This God made the Universe and told them all She has a Plan for it, ineffable as it maybe be; they were told Earth was to be around for 6000 years. Give or take.

Aziraphale doesn't believe in God. He knows She exists. And clearly (as per above) he doesn't think the way Christianity understood things are exactly - uh, correct.

[ambiguous-avery]

Waves and Waistbands

Sam Winchester x fem!Reader/You | WC: 808

Summary: It was the perfect moment of silence, sun, and an indecent amount of Sam Winchester on display. You’re trying your best not to ogle him. And failing miserably. Dean’s no help. And Sam? Sam’s got no idea what he’s doing to you.

Tags/Warnings: Fluff, thirsting over Sam, oblivious and adorable Sam, no use of Y/N, no beta we die like men

A/N: This is my first piece for my Summer Snapshot Challenge! Inspired by @voodoochildthings’ snapshot with Dean in short shorts, I had to put Sam in his own pair. Come join in on the challenge! We’re having all sorts of fun with it! 💜 (Also, I know I've been on a Sam kick for forever, but I swear I've got Dean content soon!!)

You didn’t mean to stare. Really, you didn’t.

But when the universe just handed you a golden gift wrapped in sea spray and sand, it would’ve been an absolute insult not to admire it. Sam Winchester, six-foot-something of broad-shouldered brilliance emerging from the ocean like some sort of sun-kissed Adonis.

And he was wearing Dean’s swim trunks. Which had to be at least one – you were willing to wager that it was two – size too small. They clung to him in ways that should’ve been illegal. They rode high on his thighs like they were trying to break up with the idea of modesty and sat low – dangerously low – on his hips, teasing at the sharp V of muscle that disappeared below the waistband.

You swore you could hear a choir of angels singing somewhere off in the distance.

“Holy shit...” you murmured, half to yourself and half to Chuck (wherever he fucked off to). “Thank you for this gift. I’m sorry for any shit I gave you before this.” Dean, who was sprawled out on a towel next to you, followed your gaze then snorted with laughter.

“Oh yeah,” he said with absolutely no remorse. “I told him they’d be too small. Didn’t listen to me.”

You weren’t listening to Dean either. Your brain was short circuiting and currently only had enough processing power to take in sensory information from one input. And you were dedicating all of that to the sight in front of you. Sam pushed his hair back, water dripping down his chest in rivulets. The swim trunks stuck to his thighs, molding to them and showcasing everything.

“He’s gonna kill you when he sees the tan line those things leave,” you said, trying very hard not to drool. In your peripheral, Dean shrugged.

“Worth it.”

Sam jogged up the sand towards you both, completely oblivious to the visual war crime he’s committing. You cleared your throat and composed yourself just in time for him to plop down next to you on your towel, breathing just a little heavy and water dripping from his hair and beading on his shoulders. He gave you a smile – one of those easy, soft ones that went straight to your spine.

“Wanna go in?” he asked. Your mouth was dry. Your brain was soup. You were barely holding it together.

“I– I can’t right now,” you said, blinking rapidly and trying desperately to not let your eyes follow the trail of the water droplet that slid down over the plane of his chest. “I might drown.” Sam’s brows furrowed in confusion, that adorable little crease forming between them.

“What? The water’s pretty calm.”

“No, but my coordination is…” you mumbled, forcing yourself to focus on his face. Just his face. Nothing below the neck existed right now. Nope. Not at all. Not the miles of tanned skin. Not the slutty V-cut in his hips. Definitely not the bulge in his too-small swim trunks. Dean snickered beside you like the traitor he was.

“She’s just afraid of getting wet.”

You shot the elder Winchester a death glare that promised him vengeance later, but Sam just smiled wider, completely missing the innuendo. Then, he shook his head like a dog, sending droplets of water everywhere, including all over you.

“Sam!” you squealed, throwing your hands up too late to shield yourself.

“There,” he said triumphantly. “Now you’re already wet. No excuses.”

Dean howled with laughter, and you were going to murder him. Slowly. With a rusty spoon. Sam was still grinning at you with that innocent, puppy-dog expression that made your heart do acrobatics in your chest, unaware that his choice of words had completely diminished what little brain function you had left.

“I hate both of you,” you grumbled, but there was no venom in it. You pushed yourself up from the towel. “Fine, but if I drown, I’m haunting you both.”

“Come on,” Sam said, standing up and extending his hand to you. “I promise I won’t let you drown.”

You took his hand, and that was your first mistake. The second was looking up at him as he pulled you towards the water because the angle gave you the perfect view of his chest. The way those tiny droplets of water caught the sunlight like he was some sort of mythical creature designed specifically to ruin your composure.

“You okay?” he asked, and you realized that you’d just been standing there holding his hand for an inappropriately long amount of time, just staring.

“Yup! Great. Perfect. Let’s go get murdered by the ocean,” you said finally, dropping his hand before you did something stupid like bring it to your mouth or press it against your cheek.

“Look out for sea snakes!” Dean’s taunting laughter followed you down the beach, and you flipped him off without looking back.

---

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[holoska]

the london undertale concert was one of the best days of my life and I need to yell about how good it was in excessive detail ❤️

BEFORE THE SHOW:

just getting to see people of all ages in utdr shirts and cosplays everywhere made me so so happy ;_; seeing how many people brought plushies made me wish I'd brought one of mine too aaaa

while queuing and waiting for the doors to open a couple people started playing instruments! sadly I wasn't close enough to hear them too well but I'm pretty sure I heard spider dance and bonetrousle

at one point someone further in the queue held up a plush of the annoying dog sprite and everyone cheered

after we got in I saw a spamton a. spamton cosplayer on the lower audience level. from the upper level their long white nose really stood out in the dark jghdskjf

while the orchestra didn't play any deltarune music, I did hear acid tunnel of love playing before the show! (plus music from minecraft and I think stardew valley?)

they had merch!! not a lot, literally just a bag and a small poster (which unfortunately seems kind of easy to damage 💔) but I was so happy they had anything for the occasion:

ACT 1:

they showed gameplay on the screen above the orchestra, while the lights behind them would change colour to match! purple for the ruins, blue for snowdin etc

I immediately started crying at once upon a time

heartache was so beautiful

the crowd cheered when sans started playing/appeared onscreen

the gameplay skipped around snowdin a lot and at greater dog I think they just straight up played dogsong through the speakers?? dog music too complex to be replicated by human orchestra...

while playing the shop theme the gameplay initially showed QC's snowdin shop, but halfway through changed to show gerson's shop and the crowd cheered specifically for him

we went from snowdin to undyne (the ominous theme) with no papyrus songs. suspicious...

after waterfall they played bird that carries you across a disproportionately small gap and the crowd went wild cheering for the bird not once but Twice, as the gameplay showed it carry frisk back and forth. deserved

the bird was immediately followed by an insane rendition of dummy!! the conductor was practically dancing around, my favourite from act 1 for sure it was SO good

spear of justice was also incredible

another medium!! the 5th anniversary concert (which I also still love forever) didn't include it so I was so glad to hear it here :']

spider dance was amazing

not only was it's raining somewhere else so pretty but some of the crowd were laughing at sans and toriel's jokes onscreen. cute...

I have no idea how I managed to not fully cry at undertale (the song) but I was definitely teary-eyed by the end

act 1 ended with asgore and holy moly the electric guitar went so hard

ACT 2:

beginning with start menu and gradually building up to the full version was so fun!!

they made us wait for papyrus but my god did they deliver. after the much-awaited bonetrousle they played sans' trombone bit, immediately followed by all the date themes and everyone cheered when papyrus' date outfit was onscreen

alphys got some applause too!! (admittedly less but I'm just glad she got some!!!)

mettaton though... biggest applause yet, rainbow lights on the stage to match the gameplay before the quiz, everyone clapping to the beat of it's showtime. incredible

metal crusher and core were amazing but I don't think anything in my life will ever match the experience of hearing the "OHHHH YES" line at a volume so loud you feel it through your feet and the crowd immediately going wild again for mettaton ex's appearance and death by glamour

I don't know how your best nightmare Didn't give me a headache with how fittingly loud it was but the lights going red and the horns as the warning alarms between phases was so cool

fallen down reprise was lovely and the crowd laughing at the dialogue from that scene made my heart feel full

hopes and dreams!! admittedly my one disappointment is that they didn't play the second half and skipped to his theme, which was wonderful too but save the world would've made me sob

also they named the human 'You' and hyperdeath asriel's dialogue onscreen being "I'm so afraid, You..." was probably funny only to me

loved good night playing along with the final scene of toriel bringing frisk a slice of pie

the end...?

no. Sans Time

they played song that might play when you fight sans!! never heard an orchestra version of it which was so cool, especially loved the bonetrousle section

obviously they had to end on megalovania and OBVIOUSLY they went as hard as possible with it. incredible rendition that only kept getting better, the conductor literally jumped in the air for the big final beat

the end 👏👏👏👏👏

I so so desperately hope an official recording of the concert is released on youtube someday. the memory will stick with me forever but I wanna listen to it again and again and for everyone else to be able to hear it too :'] this was literally one of my dreams come true 🌟

[marlynnofmany]

Aiming the Machismo

I’m on the tall end of our ship’s lineup. Not the biggest by any means, but with half the crew short enough to elbow in the head accidentally, and the others only that tall when they stand on tentacle-tip, it’s easy to think of myself as one of the big ones.

Sometimes we make deliveries to people who enforce that impression. Today was not one of those times.

“Move aside,” said the deepest voice, echoing from the opaque helmet of a Smasher in an armored suit. “Official business goes first.” His companion was just as hulking, with shoulders that looked like they wrestled buffalo for fun and hands that could crush a coconut.

I was glad he wasn’t talking to me.

“Official, huh?” demanded an Armorlite, sticking his dinosaurian face in close to bare teeth at the helmet. His voice sounded normal by comparison. “We’re official too, and we were here first. Get in line.” He was backed up by a half dozen similarly beefy individuals — a surprising collection, really: big Frillians and a couple extremely jacked humans. They made a wall of sneers worthy of any gym bro turf war.

The Smashers weren’t impressed. But at least they weren’t taking out any weapons. “Rule violators who are wanted in several systems have been spotted nearby. We’re here to capture them for the greater good. Move aside.”

The Armorlite laughed in his face, saying that they were bounty hunters too, and they weren’t about to let anyone get ship fuel before they did. The air was full of jeers and testosterone, or the alien equivalent. Some of the macho individuals were female. It made no difference.

It was unfortunate, though, since this mess was between us and the front counter, where a single put-upon Heatseeker stood behind a sign about repairs. I saw why none of the bounty hunters had gotten their fuel yet; apparently the dispensing nozzle for midsize ships was broken.

Good news. That’s what we were here to deliver, among other things.

I looked past the hoversled full of heavy machinery at the two most muscle-bound members of our crew, whose body language was currently more timid than usual. I guess they knew their place in the macho pecking order. Blip was glancing from one face to another as if trying to predict a winner, while Blop stood at attention and stared into the middle distance. All of their many frills were slicked back as if trying not to draw attention.

Well, I was a slender breakable twig compared to everybody except the little Heatseeker, and none of that was my problem. “Guys,” I said. “Let’s yell ‘delivery’ on three.”

They both looked at me instead of the nonsense. Blip nodded, standing taller and relaxing her frills into a more normal position. Blop took a deep breath that it sounded like he needed.

“One, two, three. DELIVERY!”

The argument stopped, and multiple dangerous faces turned in our direction.

I tugged the hoversled forward and spoke into the brief silence. “Repairs, so everybody can get their fuel faster!”

What do you know, the sea of biceps and teeth parted to let us through. With Blip and Blop pushing from behind even though the sled didn’t need it, I led the way past everybody taller than me to where the green-scaled Heatseeker waited.

“Thank you,” he said in relief. “That nozzle broke right after our regular supply ship left. Do you have time to stop by our sister colony on the fourth planet? We ordered extra of one of those other parts, and it sounds like they need it.”

“I think we can manage that,” I said with a glance at Blip and Blop. “Let me just check with the captain. Are the same rates okay?” Behind me, the arguing was getting loud again.

The Heatseeker agreed readily over the noise, and called somebody else up to the front to confirm everything. Instead of shouting into my phone or trying to get past all the competing pectorals twice more, I sent texts and invoices to whoever was in the cockpit.

Surprisingly enough, the boisterous voices moved their debate outside while we worked. By the time we got the delivery unloaded except for the part going to the sister colony, the room was quiet. I was glad for that, though worried about what we’d find when we left.

I asked the Heatseeker at the counter, “Have those bounty hunters been here before?”

He shook his scaly head. “No. I hope they finish their business soon and move on.”

I agreed. We said our goodbyes, then the twins and I maneuvered the nearly-empty hoversled back to the door. The only thing left on it was a bundle of cables for some sort of electronics. Thoroughly packaged to keep out dust, and tied down in case of unexpected jostles to the sled. I hoped there wouldn’t be any of those on the way to the ship. With a glance at Blip and Blop, I moved forward to open the door.

Cheers, grunts, and thuds greeted me. After one cautious step out onto the rural spaceport, I saw how the meatheads had decided to resolve their differences. It wasn’t by fighting. It also wasn’t a dance-off, which I’d seen once before. No, they were taking turns picking up empty fuel tanks and seeing how far they could throw them. It was very far.

“Let’s take the long way around,” I suggested.

“No kidding,” Blip agreed, pushing the sled faster. “Before they decide to throw us.”

I stepped quickly. “That’s an option to them?”

“Probably.”

Blop said, “I hope the sister colony is quieter.”

“Me too,” I agreed as we hurried to our ship with roars of triumph filling the air.

Surprisingly enough, the three of us got to see that sister colony ourselves shortly after. Usually our crew trades off in who hands over the deliveries, so it should have been Paint and Mur doing this second dropoff, but this was an unplanned one and they were busy helping deep clean the medical bay. So I went again with the Blip and Blop, and we got to appreciate a similar reception area with no slabs of beef causing trouble.

“This is a lovely place,” I told the Heatseeker with deep blue scales at the desk. Windows lined every wall here, giving us a view of rolling hills where cloud shadows drifted over bushy trees and equally bushy sheeplike things. The scent of spicy flowers wafted through.

“It is,” she replied, looking tired. “The aromatic moss on the trees is particularly beautiful.”

The other Heatseeker checking over the cables said, “Too bad the locals weren't making up their monster stories. If those were actually fake, I’d be a lot happier.”

“What monster stories?” I asked. Blip and Blop got more alert behind me.

At the same time, the first Heatseeker asked, “They’re not? Are we sure?”

The guy with lighter blue scales straightened up. “We’re sure. Another set of their livestock got killed last night, and more personal accounts of missing people have turned up now that we’re actually looking into it.” He gave me a glance. “We don’t know what kind of monster we’re talking about, but I have theories.”

I looked out the windows again. The scenery didn’t seem quite as welcoming now. “Is there a local predator eating people?”

The receptionist hurried to clarify, “Nothing gets eaten. The people always turn up again, and the animals are damaged but not taken away.”

Blip asked, “Have you put up security cameras?”

“Yes, that’s what this cable is for. We’re putting up more, and making sure they’re connected to a proper power supply.”

“But did the first ones see anything?” Blip insisted.

“Not the culprits,” said the darker Heatseeker. “We need to aim higher, I think. And adjust for light fluctuations. Whoever is doing this brings spotlights to upset the cameras. Or else it’s some sort of natural bioluminescence on a grand scale.”

The pale guy shook his head. “It’s definitely somebody in a ship. Creatures on foot wouldn’t be able to make those patterns in the plants, at least not that quickly.”

I whipped my head around. “Crop circles?”

“They are circular, yes.”

“So people are being taken,” I repeated. “Abducted, then returned, while livestock is getting mutilated and there are circles in their crops?”

“That’s about the size of it.” The guy gave me a sharp look. “You’ve seen this before?”

“Not personally,” I said with a frown. “But my planet sure has.”

“Oh!” said Blop. “It’s those little gray guys, right? I’ve heard about them. No morals at all.”

“Yes, them.” I felt my frown turning into a proper scowl. “They harassed my planet for generations, and never answered for it. They only left when we made contact with the broader galaxy. The frill-tearing mud eggs.” I made sure to insult them in both Frillian and Heatseeker terminology, to make sure we were all on the same page.

The darker Heatseeker looked appropriately scandalized. “That would fit with the way only the locals have seen them here. They must be avoiding us.”

“But maybe they’re about to leave soon, right?” asked the paler one. “Since they only like uncontacted prey who can’t report them?”

“Probably,” I said. I turned back to tap a finger on the payment tablet. “Let’s finish up quickly. I know just who to tell about this, and these little gray bastards are exactly the kind of rule-breaker they’ll outdo each other trying to catch.”

~~~

These are the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book.

Shared early on Patreon! There’s even a free tier to get them on the same day as the rest of the world.

The sequel novel is in progress (and will include characters from these stories. I hadn’t thought all of them up when I wrote the first book, but they’re too much fun to leave out of the second).

[quinn-pop]

i realized it was father’s day and suddenly remembered metadad is like my thing. so

[nordsea-horizons]

grizzly’s home and fishing deck🐟🌱

[lesbianslovenamari]

I was reading DunMeshi and was so confused by this phrase that I decided to look it up

(Do correct me if you think this isn’t accurate cuz I just used google)

But I find it frankly hilarious that Chilchuck is using slang from various parts of the British Isles out of nowhere in the last volume??

(I’ve now had someone explain to me that apparently it’s not uncommon for certain uncommon types of informal Japanese to be translated as slang from specific areas, typically around Britain, in English)

First of all I’d alr seen people jokingly headcanoning him as Irish on here (which was an idea I absolutely love)

ALSO I come from a part of the UK where I’m very familiar with the term ‘git’ but had never heard of a version with an e and I also had no idea it meant the same as ‘bastard’

(I have considered that this could just be the regular meaning of the word ‘get’ but I thought it wouldn’t grammatically make sense here so I assumed it was slang esp cuz he would totally call someone a git)

Anyways I’ve checked other translations and it’s not the same so I find it so funny that this one (which I’m pretty sure is the official English translation) included it

(^ another version I found online)

Anyways this is the translation I have and used as an example for this post, which I’m pretty sure is the official English translation:

Edit: Btw also check tags I kinda wrote this when I was drunk on sleep deprivation

[esosage]

Saw a post about a sonic venom au that inspired me to to post about my own stobotnik venom au, so here it is:

(Also fair warning, i dont know shit about venom, so if anything doesnt make sense for the venom cannon, blame that.)

So for the au, robotnik is going to be the symbiote, and stone is going to be the host. (Maybe like carnage and his host, but only for the fact that carnages host is a criminal.)

Stone is a serial killer in this au, but is very charasmatic. Allowing him to gain a a very die hard following of people who think he's innocent, despite being thrown in jail. (Something that will come in later.)

Maybe he got caught by sonic and shadow, which are bassically the eddie and venom of this universe. (Shadow being venom, and sonic being eddie) maybe he was a past government agent, or someone famous, doesnt matter. Hes in jail regardless.

Now this is where robotnik comes in, and where my lack of knowledge of venom might bite me in the ass. So, robotniks backstory is that he's sent down from the symbiote planet to terreform earth into something they can conquer. (The person that sent him being black doom, since robotnik and shadow are both symbiotes in this, and since black doom is already an alien.) Since he's sent down to terreform it ive come up with some symbiote abilities for him that i think fit into that nicely (and because i dont know shit about symbiotes, lol.) Since robotnik useses, well, robotics in the cannon universe, in this one he has kinda a similar ability. He can make his harden into a kind of crystal like substance, and sprout crystals out of himself. He can plant his crystals into other things to take them over, but he can only transform so many things, and, since hes a lot more solid than the other symbiotes, once he is in a host completly hes stuck in them. Meaning no leaving to posses other stuff. He has to use his crystals if he wants to posses something.

How he terriforms a planet, is by takeing off some of the crystals he sprouts and turning them into a fine dust. He sprinkles this dust around an area, and repeatedly does this until eventually the area has been completly transformed. Once its transformed, it will grow its own crystals and he can harvest those to make more dust. Which speeds up the terriforming process. So when he starts the process, he's easy to stop, since its so slow, but once hes gotten a solid foothold its a lot harder since hes much more quicker with it.

Im thinking how the symbiotes found earth is from humans takeing and reaserching symbiotes that they found in space. (Which is how i think they found them in the first venom movie, though i could be wrong.) Regardless, because of this, robotnik was sent down with a main host already in mind. Due to some shennanigens involving sonic, robotnik doesnt get that main host, and instead, posseses stone by accident.

The two bicker a bit at first, (with stone being reasonablly alarmed that some weird ah alien entered his body,) but, they eventually decide that they both could benefit from this. Stone thinking robotnik could help him get out of jail, and make killing people far easier. And robotnik thinking that stone's charisma could be put to good use in hiding his plans to terriform earth.

I think at first the two reluctently work together, planning to betray eachother by the end of their partnership, but eventually go attached to one another. Realising that they actually like eachother quite a bit.

For stone, this manifests as him slowly becomeing more devoted to robotnik as time goes on. Before he met robotnik, the only person be served was really himself. Yes, he followed orders and didnt go too out of line, but all of it really was for his own self interests.

But, now that stones met robotnik, he cant help but be ennamored by how brilliant the alien is. He is unlike anything stone has ever seen before, litterally. So naturally, his ennamourment and aw eventually turns into blind loyalty. Sure, he agreed with the alien that the world would be better teraformed so that robotnik would be none the wiser when he betrays him, but now he's genuinlly starting to concider it. And in the future, he genuinlly belives it.

Essentially, as he continues to work with robotnik over time, he goes from a self serving, charasmatic serial killer, to the stone we see in the movies. Loyal to a defult.

So, obviously, he doesnt like how robotniks home world treats him. He doesnt like how robotniks home world treats ivo like a tool, because in his mind, robotnik is far better than them. So this leads him to slowly start to convince robotnik to break off from his home world, saying that the doctor could do far better than them. Infact, he could probobly rule the world on his own. And while robotnik initially shuts stone down on it, the seeds are planted, and with the amount of attention and adoration stone is giving him, its hard not to belive.

On his symbiote planet, hes a weapon with a purpose, a cog in the machine.. but with stone? Oh with stone he feels like much, much more. And that feeling is intoxicating.

Leading the two to shift goals a bit.

But before i get to that, i wanna cover how they are in the beggining when they first team up.

So, stone and robotnik are obviously the villains in this story, but, where they differ is that their not viewed as villains. This is where stone's charisma comes in. Useing very adept trickery, stone manages to find a way to paint himself as the goodguy at the end of every fight with sonic and shadow. Wether thats by tricking them into harming civilians, saving people, pretending to be stopping them from hurting people in public, or doing all his dustruction away from watchfull eyes while leading sonic and shadow to destroy things while people are watching, he manages to convince people that he and robotnik are the good guys here regardless.

Robotnik hates it obviously, hates helping people, hates dealing with them in general, and would much rather eat them, but he puts up with it. Mainly, because it helps a LOT in disguising his plan to terreform the world. That, and stone does all the talking most of the time.

This creates a dynamic between the two of them where stone is the face, and robotniks the brains/brawn. The two of them collaborating to plan out their moves very carefully.

Obviously enlisting some fall back plans for themselves so they can eventually betray the other in the end, but on the surface their working together regardless.

I think they would go for as big of plans as they will later. Their mainly trying to throw suspition off of robotniks plan at this moment. And they dont enlist help from others too often, since they dont want other people to ruin the image they have carefully cultivated up until now, and because robotnik has trust issues.

But, things begin to shake up a bit when stone starts to slowly be ennamored by robotnik, with it really kicking in when they have their first area teraformed. Because thats when stone goes from useing robotniks plan as a temporary means to an end, to actually beliving in the plan and wanting to help.

This starts out with stone makeing connections, and renewing old ones. Leading him to gain more power outside of his subtle manipulation of sonic and shadows image in the public eye.

Hes expanding his roots into different industrys, so he can funnel more resources to robotnik, so the doctor can expand their plan.

Meanwhile, robotnik, while getting absolutely bored from things takeing so long, starts to look into more human customs. He deems most as dumb and stupid, until he stumbles upon robotics. He's absolutely taken by it, and his mind goes absolutely wild. He learns everything he can about it, whenever he can. Eventually, stone notices his obssession with it, and starts buying books about mechanics, mathmatics, and robotics in bulk. At first as little gifts, but eventually it becomes due to robotniks incesent demand for more. Though, since the symbiote soends every second he has learning about his new favorite subject, eventually, he runs out of things to read about, and turns to experimenting with things himself. Something stone also supports financially.

I feel like this change would make fights with stone and robotnik a lot more interesting, since not only do sonic and shadow have to deal with stones growing connections, but also the new weapons robotniks makeing and deploying. The weapons shakeing up fights a bit more, since there can be a new gimic weapon that either compliments robotniks powers, are inhibits sonic and shadow.

Plus, ontop of it all, robotnik can also use his crystals to possess the things he makes. Sure, he had a taste of possesing non-organic stuff when he put his crystals into cars and the like, but now hes fully delving into the concept. Though, in order to balance it out, id say that he stops possessing organic stuff all together. Not because he cant, but out of the sheer princible of the matter. After all, why would he posses a stupid, inferior, organic animal, when he could use his crystals to posses some cool giant robot? Plus, robotnik never really liked to possess organic things in the first place, only really useing it as a means to an end. (This is based on how he perfers his machines much more than humans in the first sonic movie.)

Anyhow, stone eventually convinces robotnik to sever ties with his home planet, leading the two to try and conquer the world for themselves. This new found ambition to conquer the world leads robotnik to take full advantage of the connections stone has firmly cemented, now going full super villain mode on sonic and shadow. This shift being very evident by the change in scale of their fights. Before, when the four first started fighting, it was mini brawls that stone used to make the hero's look evil, now, shadow and sonic are fighting up against giant robots that rival even skyscrapers in height, or have to deal with whole industries of manifacturing being infested by stones influence. And while yes, they have defeated them in the past and have shown the public a glimpses of what stone and robotnik are really like. By now its far too late, as while some people are rallying against the two, they have far more allies than enemys due to stone's efforts in makeing connections. Of course, they still experience major setbacks delt to them by sonic and shadow, but nothing that will stop them completly. Cementing them as the hero's main villains that they have to fight, among others.

Also, they becomes lovers at some point, because serial killer/the weird alien symbiote that posseses them goes hard.

Anyhow, i have more thoughts, but their not revolving around the main plot of this. So ill end it here. Sorry it was so long, feel free to expand on this if you want. Id absolutely love to hear other ideas.

[wakeupthemembersofbylernation]

It’s wild how so many people are fundamentally incapable of recognizing queer characters unless they explicitly say the words, “I’m gay” on screen

[gingerbreadmonsters]

skimming through all of the dead text at the end of an old fic is so strange but weirdly satisfying and i could not even begin to explain why

[the-punforgiven]

I wish game design was as easy as just mentally willing assets into existence and then they just do what you want automatically

[morelikesin]

The amount of ideas I have that I'm too embarrassed by so I never post them. Sliving 🩷

[dcxdpdabbles]

Danny wakes up in a cage in the Batcave as a human and thinks to himself “well that’s not a good sign.”

Big bad bat encountered him in the caves near the Batcave by finding him half dunked in the Lazarus pits under Gotham during a routine check. He put the boy in a cage as a precaution, but was otherwise planning on investigating then returning him to his rightful place.

Danny does not know that.

He proceeds to search his pockets (phase his hand into his body disguised as reaching into his pockets) and pulls out a tool kit, systematically disassembles, exits, then reassembles the cage.

And walks out.

Now the bats are hunting the streets for this engineering escape artist while Danny is just hanging out at a newsstand reading up on the universe Clockwork had sent him to check out.

"Woah! What happened here?" Duke gasps from the staircase. He is wearing his school uniform, but upon checking his backpack, he realizes his chemistry textbook is missing, likely somewhere in the Batcave after his latest monitor duty.

He had been multitasking by shooting out questions to the rest of the bats as they patrolled. Due to an injured wrist, Duke had been benched from his regular day shift (Jason offered to cover for him), and watching screens had been the only way Bruce had been willing to let him participate.

That quickly became boring, however, since Oracle was much faster than he was, and Duke had a tough time focusing on screens. He's never been one to enjoy too much screen time - he didn't have the attention span for it.

This meant that Duke had not been in the cave for the past three nights, after he struck a deal with Bruce to let him catch up on some much-needed rest instead, provided he could continue his civilian work during the day.

Imagine his surprise to find the Batcave in disarray, with almost everything taken apart, piece by piece, including the Batcomputer and the dinosaur. Bruce, Damian, Dick, Jason, Tim, and Cass were currently attempting to gather the pieces and reassemble everything, which seemed hard given all the little pieces that had shattered about.

"Some kid with a screwdriver," Jason grunted, holding up various nails towards the light. In front of the anti-hero were five distinct piles of nails and bolts, each separated by type and size, which he carefully sorted from a large bucket.

"What?"

Tim looked up from a mountain of wires, some of which were dropped over his shoulders, around his head, and a few were entangled with his leg, as he tried to untangle everything. He looked as crazed as he did the year he decided he was going to put up all the Christmas lights by himself, only to realize how large Wayne Manor really was. "Two nights ago, we found a civilian unconscious in cave sector T-Y13. He was practically radioactive with Lazarus pits water, so Bruce had the bright idea to put him in a cage as a precaution. The civillain woke up while Bruce was away so he couldn't explain that he was not kidnapped, realized he was in a cage, and deassimbled it with a tool set he pulled from his ass-"

"Tim. Laugauge" Dick scolds, leanign over metal tubes to cover Damian's ears. The twelve-year-old huffs, but doesn't shake off Dick's hands as he stares at a different buckets of lightbults, sorting them like Jason was doing to the nails.

It was a little darker than what Duke was used to.

"-And then, he decided to reassemble the cage once he was out." Tim continued as if he weren't interrupted, nodding his head to the only part of the cave that looked normal. The contamination unit seemed to shine in the untouched spotlights. "Then the civilian had the bright idea to take apart everything in the cave. He systematically disassembled everything and mixed up the pieces. The only things he left alone were the railings!"

"It's pretty impressive," Bruce praises. He was checking over technology boards with a critical eye. A headlight strapped to his forehead shines brightly on the pieces as he smiles. "I wonder where he is now."

"If he has any brains, he's probably applying for a position with a pit crew in NASCAR," Cass laughs, picking up different boards of metal. "He took the whole place apart in less than twenty minutes."

"He even got the Batpens" Dick sighs. "Why was he so passive-aggressive about pulling out the pen's springs?"

"If I woke up in a cage, after unfair imprisonment, I would also cause my captors as much grief as possible," Damain comments casually. "We are lucky he decided to leave nothing harmful behind."

"He just took everything else!" Steph's voice calls out from a dark patch of the cave. Duke knows it's in the direction of the showers and the changing room. "Does anyone see any shower heads over there? The kid took them off every shower!

"I have one!" Cass calls back, holding up an item in her hand. "Are any pipes missing? There are five long metal cylinders that I can't figure out what they are for."

"No, he left the pipes along, but I think he took the mirrors and the door."

"Which door?" Bruce yells back. There is a moment of silence before Steph replies.

"All of them! "

"Of course. That's what these ones are for." Jason says in an Ah-ha voice, holding up a few black bolts. "They're the ones from the shower heads!"

Duke stares, then sighs. He lets his backpack slide off his shoulders, landing on the stairs with a thump. Looks like he's calling in sick to school again.

Rolling up his sleeves, he moves over to Cass and helps her lift the long cylinders she had mentioned. "Do we know anything about this civilian?"

"Before he took the Batcomputer apart, we were able to get that he wasn't in any of the local government records. He isn't from Gotham or this state." Bruce says while carefully placing pieces back on a large computer board with a pair of tweezers. "My guess, he's not going to be in any system, either."

"Why?"

Bruce looks up, his eyes shining. "His DNA matched eighty-five percent with Themyscira's genetic make-up. No proof of cloning either. We may just have a genius male Themysciran on our hands."

Duke didn't like how excited Bruce sounded when he made that statement. He opens his mouth to snap, "You can't adopt him, Bruce!"

It's validating that his voice wasn't the only one that said it, but that it echoed by literally everyone else in the cave. Bruce purses his lips but doesn't agree or disagree with the accusation as he turns back to his computer board.

Duke hears him mutter under his breath, but he's too far away to figure out what he said.

"How long do you think this will take us to put back together?" He asks Cass as they compare metal pieces- he's holding a triangle-looking thing that he can't figure out where it came from.

She kicks aside a circular metal slate, raising a brow at him, then nodding her head toward the left side of the cave. Duke turns to look in the direction of the third Robin, who was wiggling around.

"What are you!?" Tim screams at a blue wire, shaking it like he was strangling someone's neck. Somehow, in the time Duke looked away from him, Tim had his right arm tied to his left knee, with a red wire thread running through his shirt, and his right leg was no longer visible because the rest of the wire pile had consumed it.

"Oh, so it's going to be a few hours," Duke sighs as Cass nods sadly.

"Does anyone have any eyes on the light switches?" Dick yells out. "Damian and I almost have all the pieces to turn the lights back on."

"Oh gods -He took the lockers!" Steph screams in angst. "I had a snack stash in there!"

[ghost-proofbaby]

the hat rule. (e.m. x fem!reader)

the hat rule (n.): you wear the hat, you ride the cowboy.

summary: when eddie dresses up as a cowboy to a night out with friends, you decide to steal his hat.

pairings: eddie munson x fem!reader

warnings: reader is described to be wearing a dress. reader is also dressed up as a black cat. premise is everyone is wearing 'slutty' costumes. overuse of pet names. public teasing, unprotected sex, choking kink, oral (f receiving), ass slapping. 18+.

wc: 13.3k+

happy early valentine's day, babes. shout out to @hellfire--cult for beta reading, as well as @andvys for giving me this idea to begin with.

If someone had told you last week that you’d be attending a slutty costume themed night at a club tonight, you would have laughed in their face.

And yet here you were, at Steve Harrington’s apartment, donned in a black cat costume that shows more skin than you have in years.

The elaborate plan had sparked on a random day after Steve encountered a flyer for the event. It was a nightclub your group had attended before, and one look at the line free drinks for participants had Steve running down your entire group to insist that you all needed to dress up, to participate in this, for the luxury of free Tito’s. 

He’d never considered that the ad might not be targeted towards the male population. And now, you were all gathering at his apartment to pregame, ‘slutted out’ as Robin had so kindly put it – men included.

Nancy pulled out some sort of angel costume she claims she had bought but certainly not worn a few years back, Robin had conglomerated an alluring pirate attire from items you hadn’t even been aware were in her closet. Jonathan arrived in his erotic yet pensive writer’s costume (you’d hardly understood it, but he seemed confident, so you all went with it), Argyle in tow donning some sort of seductive surfer costume, in which you certainly recognized the unbuttoned shirt and cargo shorts that had had a pocket knife taken to them to disregard a few inches. Steve even stuck to his own demands, going all out – a sensual bunny costume.

And then, there was Eddie.

Eddie fuckin’ Munson. 

“Pick your jaw up off the ground, sweetheart,” he teases as he shuffles around you in the kitchen to grab a drink, “Gonna start catching flies otherwise.” 

“There’s a joke in there somewhere about how sweet I am, right?” you blandly reply, keeping your eyes on your room temp cocktail that Steve had so graciously mixed for you upon your arrival, “Something where you call me honey or sugar, yeah?” 

Eddie pauses, bottle of vodka in hand, looking at you with big eyes lined in coal, “Oh, baby, you know me so well.” 

“Cut the pet names, Munson.”

You try to scowl. You really do. But you don’t mean a damn word you say. 

Sweetheart. Baby. Hell, even honey would have done it for you when he was wearing that costume. 

Tight leather pants, flared at the ankle. Worn leather boots that certainly had to have been thrifted, clicking with each of his steps. A cow print vest, and just a vest, over what looked to be an oiled chest. 

And that fucking hat smashing down his curls, adding a shadow across his face that only built into the illusion. 

You hate him. You hate this stupid party. You hate Steve for ever suggesting this. 

“You don’t mean that,” he sing-songs as he pours his own drink into a red solo cup. The vodka mixes with cranberry juice, you think, before he’s dropping a few ice cubes out of the freezer. “Or maybe you do, and I should try saying them with a southern drawl,” Fuck, he does a good southern accent. Slow and syrupy sweet, molasses down the throat as he flutters his lashes at you, “That better, darlin’?” 

You pluck the thin black straw that had been added to your cup for flare, probably stolen from a hotel at some point by Steve and positively meant for drinks of the coffee variety, and flick it in his direction without hesitation. 

“Terrible,” you flatly lie, “Cowboys aren’t even from the south, idiot. They’re from the West.” 

You have no desire to hear Eddie’s Western accent. No desire to hear Texan twang on those lips, putting on his best John Wayne impression. In fact, the faster you can get away from him, the quicker you can get yourself under control. 

It had always been this way between you and Eddie. Push and pull. Will they, won’t they. A game of cosmic shores as the two of you toed at each other’s orbits and bantered effortlessly. Flirtatious threats, inappropriate compliments, lewd innuendos – you had done it all, specifically with Eddie.

That’s just how the friendship worked. 

The friendship. 

Friend. Nothing more, nothing less. 

Eddie won’t leave you alone, though, choosing to lean up against the counter beside you, forcing his way into your peripherals, “Damn. You’re right. Wayne would kill me if he knew I mixed that up.” 

“Oh, I think he has plenty of reasons to knock some sense into you.” 

“Yeah?” he leans forward, tauntingly, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth, “Why don’t you do it for him? I think I’d like a slap more coming from you, honestly.”

He’s acting like he always does. This is normal. The fact that his entire torso is on show and you can’t stop staring at the way his tattoo on his peck is shimmering doesn’t change that. 

You play the role, knowing your part well as you lean in as well, forcing a smile right back at him, “Wanna kiss my knuckles before I do it, or am I gonna have to do all the hard work here?” 

“Oh, trust me, you’d never have to do all the work with me, ba-”

“Can you two get a fucking room?” Robin interrupts as she enters the room, clearly coming in for a refill but getting more than she bargained for. 

You’re aflame with the shame and embarrassment, feeling it lick from your ankles up to your throat, as Eddie only chuckles lowly. 

“Sorry, Robs,” Eddie chirps, not sounding apologetic at all, “I promise I’ll behave myself the rest of the night.” 

And yet, despite the words you’re hearing him say out loud, he does the exact opposite. 

There’s no real need for him to do it. There’s plenty of space amongst the kitchen for him to maneuver his way out without laying a single hand on you – and yet he still fucking does. 

His palm is shockingly warm when it curls around your hip, his other hand occupied with a drink, encouraging you to move a step forward so that he can brush behind you far too close for comfort. You nearly stumble over himself as he does it. The feeling of his barren chest barely bumping your bare shoulder blades sends your mind reeling, and his staple rings that have incorporated into his costume press right through the thin fabric of your dress.

Your breathing stops entirely as he pauses, the slightest bit of skin still brushing against yours, and leans in with a boyish grin, “We’ll both be on our best behavior tonight – right, kitty?” 

Something clicks in your mind. The way the nickname rolls off his tongue as he’s looking at you with eyes flaming with mischief, hand lingering on your hip for far too long. 

Your eyes flicker up to the hat on his head, and you smile slowly, meeting his toying gaze, “Right, cowboy.”

Best behavior, your ass. Tonight, you have decided, ends the will they, won’t they of it all. 

It’s about to either be the best night of your life, or the worst. 

—

Another shot with Nancy. Another smoke with Argyle. Another adjusting of Steve’s corset when he complains he can’t breathe (he certainly can, but you’re starting to think he just likes the attention). The pregaming continues on as more of Steve’s friends from work show up, the apartment slowly beginning to buzz with the chatter of more strangers than you can count on one hand.

You’re not even at the club yet and you’re already regretting your revealing attire.

Eddie stays mostly preoccupied with his own devices, and only gets scolded a handful of times by Nancy. You can hear every lewd joke he makes, of course. At some point, you make a private drinking game out of it; a sip for every time he makes the stereotypical joke of ‘save a horse, ride a cowboy’. 

Well, it was a sip the first time. A slightly larger gulp the second time. A chugging of half your drink the third time. 

“There’s no fucking way,” Steve laments at the table the boys as well as a few guests you don’t recognize have taken over for a game of strip poker, “Jonathan is cheating. Or counting cards.”

“I concur,” Eddie mutters around his cigarette, scowling at his losing hand. 

“You’re also cheating, asshole. This is the first round you’ve lost the entire game.”

“Or maybe I’m just really good at cards, Harrington.” 

“Oh, yeah? Well, maybe I’m really good at-”

“He’s not cheating,” Nancy interrupts with a sigh from the couch, lounging as she’s served as a referee of sorts for the group. Her entire body weight is draped against Robin, and you’re certainly not going to comment on Robin’s hands toying with her permed locks, “Stop being a sore loser and just strip.” 

You get why Steve was the most upset. He was down to his underwear and socks, corset tossed somewhere far behind him and bunny ears placed on Robin’s head in place of her pirate hat that she had claimed became too warm. 

“I think Steve should trade both socks and put back on the bunny ears,” she quips as she reaches up for the headband, flicking at one of the floppy ears, “He’d look cuter that way.” 

“Fuck off,” he snaps, throwing up a middle finger as Argyle finally loses his shirt. 

When your attention has drifted, you know he did exactly that, though. 

The game had been boring you half to death, honestly. Watching Steve strip without fail every round, hearing the loud cheers from Argyle when he managed to win a few rounds in a row and exclaimed it was a turkey (it had taken a ten minute intermission to explain to him that was bowling, not poker), watching a few of the girls that Steve had invited fawn over him as they carefully removed boots and gloves when they lost – none of it sparked your interest. The only saving grace had been every smug look Eddie offered as he’d win, time and time again. So far, he’d only lost his boots. 

He was hot when he was cocky. There was no way around it.

And now, as he carefully pondered as to which part of his precious costume to part with, you were on the edge of your seat. He was lovely and enticing when he was excited, when he was jubilant with victory, but as a sore loser? 

Dear God, Eddie Munson was a gorgeous specimen with a pout on his lips. 

“Trying to decide what to take off, Munson?” Jonathan notices the way Eddie is hesitating, even through the offset of conversations that had sparked up in the brief pause amongst the growing group.

You lean forward on the couch, almost subconsciously. 

You don’t care what Stacy from Steve’s job thinks of their manager or the latest drama ongoing there, and Steve would probably agree with you if it weren’t for Stacy’s all-red, latex Devil costume.

Eddie scoffs, waving a hand over his attire, “Obviously. You know, it’s not easy to choose when you have a costume as damn good as mine.” 

“What? Don’t think you’ll be as pretty without your hat?” you decide to contribute to the teasing, shocking yourself in the process. 

The last thing you should do when you’re staring him down in this way, is bring attention to yourself. And yet you were, like some fucking idiot with a death wish. 

“You think I’m pretty?”

It’s the fluttering of his lashes as he says it that gives you the courage. They match all that fluttering in your stomach, all that buzzing across your nerves. Because – yeah, you thought he was real fucking pretty. You’d spent the last half hour imagining how pretty he’d look in all sorts of places, too, especially between your sheets and between your thighs. 

You’re up off the couch, taking confident steps towards where he’s seated at the ground on the other side of the coffee table. It’s a little inconvenient now, but it had been a blessing in disguise for most of the game as you’d had a front row seat to the sight of him. 

“Oh, don’t get ahead of yourself,” you tease, entirely ignoring that lightheaded feeling you get anytime Eddie looks up at you this way. Half-lidded eyes, crooked grin. He’s dangerous and he doesn’t even know it, “I only meant you were pretty with the hat.” 

“You wound me,” he gasps, dropping back on his hands dramatically, his pout now for dramatics rather than genuine, “Gonna stand there and tell me I’m not pretty when I dressed up just for you?”

You have to take a deep breath to compose yourself, cross your arms to steady your guard, “Just for me?” 

He was playing that same old, tired game of yours. The same dance the two of you had memorized the steps to – and something inside of you has grown restless of it. You don’t want to keep skirting around each other with double-meaning jokes, you don’t want to keep painting humor over your flirtatious remarks. You want a damn answer to the age old question of will they, won’t they?

And you want that answer to be will they – terribly, terribly so.

His eyes trail along the room slowly, not avoiding you but trying to draw out the anticipation in you as he sucks in a breath, “Okay, and maybe for Steve. And Nancy. And Argyle. And Jonathan. And- Well, I’d say Robin, but I don’t think she’s looked twice in my direction all night.” 

“I haven’t,” the brunette chirps happily from the couch, still letting the weight of Nancy comfortably dig into her. 

You have no idea how she’s tuned into the conversation, given the way most of everyone else around the room was entirely ignoring the two of you. 

“So,” you all but purr, leaning down to be more level with Eddie. You already know where his focus wanders when his eyes don’t meet yours, “Not just for me, cowboy.” 

He’s distracted, staring at your chest as you notice him slip up in his brave facade for a second. Almost as though you’ve gone too far, pushed the limits a bit too hard. Good. You want to break this. You want to shatter whatever cage the two of you have built.

In one smooth movement, your hand reaches out and snatches the hat right off his head. 

He lets out a yelp and tries to grab it away from you, but you have the advantage as you stand up straight once more. Your free hand reaches up and tears off the cat ears you had donned, and in their place, the hat is deposited. 

It fits you a little big, and you nearly make a joke about the size of Eddie’s head. 

“Hey!” he argues, moving as though he might stand up and put up more of a fight, “I didn’t say the hat is what I wanted to take off.” 

“Took too long,” you shrug innocently. 

“Yeah, well, just carefully add it to the pile,” he jabs his thumb over his shoulder, towards his boots, as he relaxes back into his recline.

You should probably behave yourself. 

“No.”

But this is more fun. 

Eddie’s eyebrows shoot up in shot, disappearing behind the bangs that are flattened far more than usual. The entire crown of his head is absolutely crushed. No sign of his usual frizzy roots and unruly volume, “No?”

“No,” you confirm a second time. 

And you’re done with this game of back and forth. 

The hat’s staying on your head. It smells ever so faintly of his shampoo, the slightest whiff of his cologne even, and it’s staying on your head for the exact reason he believes is about to be a gotcha! moment.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he’s just tipsy enough that he’s not putting on any specific accent. Instead, his natural Appalachian accent inherited from his uncle begins to break the surface, “Surely you know about the hat rule.” 

Damn right, you know about the hat rule.

You cross your arms, huff a little, tilt the hat for effect, “The hat rule? Please, enlighten me.” 

“You wear the hat, you ride the cowboy.” 

Perfect. 

You don’t even attempt any sort of surprised act. No exaggerated gasps, no fumbling to remove the hat. You knew all about this rule, and it had been one of the first things to come to mind when you’d seen him enter this damn party with the hat on. 

“Yeah?” you question, mocking raising your eyebrows at best, “Hm. What a shame.”

And then you turn on your heel, not awaiting a single response from Eddie as you escape to the kitchen.

You almost wish you would have stayed an extra second to properly witness his reaction. There’s no doubt in your mind that he’s gone pretty and pink, a flustered mess for at least a second as low laughter sounds from the rest of your friends. A tell-tale snort from Robin, and a silent cackle from Nancy. You swear you even pick up on one of the extra guests muttering a confused what just happened? that goes entirely unanswered.

Strip poker doesn’t continue on for long after that.

You refill your drink, this time sans the alcohol, and return to find Steve has officially begun to call for cabs to the club. He busies away on his phone as everyone debates who’s riding with who, the entire party slowly coming to life as everyone stands to prepare to leave for the main attraction. 

When you meet Eddie’s gaze from across the room, the shadow of the brim of his hat cutting into your vision a little, his cheeks match the cranberry juice in your cup. 

Good. 

—

The ride to the club is a blur, and all that really stands out to you is that Eddie makes sure he does not ride in the same cab as you.

Which is fine. Really. It doesn’t cause a single spark of panic in your chest. Not one. 

You’re definitely not working yourself up over the thought that your plan is crumbling right before your eyes, that you’ve gone too far and entirely misinterpreted everything Eddie has ever done during your entire friendship. You’re not mulling over every dirty joke, not dissecting every single line that felt like he was flirting with you and attempting to look at it with fresh eyes. No, the entire ride to the club, you are definitely not beating a dead horse dead. 

Maybe you should have set off to ride the dead horse and not the cowboy. Maybe, then, Eddie would have gotten into the fucking cab with you. 

Your anxieties only worsen once you get inside the club. Pulsing beneath your skin, right in rhythm with the music. Your entire group had each been handed a drink ticket on your way in, and you had noted the fact that the girls of the group were slipped extra tickets. 

Nancy had given all her tickets to Robin, and Steve had given his singular ticket to Stacy. 

“So,” Robin runs up to your side, Nancy not far behind, “Do we waste our drink tickets on shots or real drinks?” 

“Real drinks,” you immediately reply, eyes scanning the bouncing crowd for a certain head of curly hair, “Shots are… well, they can be cheap. We can just avoid the top-shelf shit.”

Was Eddie really going to ignore you the entire night? 

He needed his hat. He couldn’t ignore you the entire night. 

“You’re right,” Robin shuffles the drink tickets in her hands, turning to Nancy, “On a scale of one to ten, how bad would it be me to ask you to flirt with men to get me-”

“Give me ten minutes and I’ll have us a round.” 

Nancy’s smile is sweet, courteous, as she gives Robin’s shoulder a squeeze on her way past her. 

Where the fuck is Eddie? 

“Did you see where the guys ran off to?” you blurt out. Most of the guys, aside from Steve, took the same cab. 

Robin also joins you in a quick survey of the club, lifting onto her tippy toes to squint over the current light show, “Honestly? I have no idea.” 

Fuck. 

As she drops back down onto her heels, Robin looks at you knowingly, eyes flicking up between your twisted expression and the hat on your head. 

“Trying to find a certain cowboy?” 

“What?” you look at her, already defensive, even if it was stupid at this point. Who cares if everyone knows you have a crush on Eddie? Who cares if everyone finds out the very foundations of your friendship with him were built upon quite a bit of truth? “I mean- yeah, he kind of needs his hat to complete his outfit.” 

“Should have just given him your ears for an even trade,” Robin shrugs, clinging to your elbow to avoid getting separated as a few bodies push past the two of you, “I’m sure he’ll pop up soon enough, though. Besides, I don’t think anyone’s too focused on what everyone’s costumes are as long as they’re… well…”

“Slutted out,” you finish for her flatly, trying to not get jealous as your eyes look across the sweaty crowd, stomach churning as you wonder how many other sexy black cats in the crowd would be approaching your cowboy. 

You fucked up. You shouldn’t have taken his hat. 

“Exactly!” she’s excited, unaware of your crisis, already moving along from the topic as she spots Nancy somewhere near the bar top, “Look, free shots!” 

The free shots don’t do much to quell your unease, but free alcohol is always nice.

You take the liquid down, burn and all, more than willingly. And then again, not even five minutes later when Nancy has caught the attention of another random man at the end of the bar. You almost partake in a third, but you finally hear a familiar voice saying a far too familiar joke. 

“You know what they say,” he’s flirting – he’s using a tone of voice that he has never used with you, and it’s clear he’s fucking flirting, “Save a horse, ride a cowboy.” 

Instead of continuing your drinking game from Steve’s apartment, you slam the shot back down and mutter some sorry excuse of being right back to Robin and Nancy before taking off in the direction of Eddie.

He’s stood a few stools down at the bar, hands leaning against the worn wood as his arms bracket a pretty blonde. It almost looks as if the line might be working on her. 

“If you’re a cowboy,” she giggles, and you almost stop dead in your tracks, “Then where’s your hat?” 

Well, that’s as good of a queue for your arrival if any. 

“Good question,” you pipe up as you take a few brave steps towards him, “Where is your hat, cowboy?” 

You’d expected him to be angry, or startled, or possibly even immediately take off running in the opposite direction of you. He doesn’t. 

He slowly turns, and his flirtatious smile has turned into more of a salacious grin as he faces you, “Well, well, well. Nice of you to join us, Kitty.” 

The blonde looks between you two a few times before shimmying down off her stool, “I think…. I’m gonna go. Nice to meet you, cowboy.”

You expect Eddie to react, but he hardly does. A quick glance in her direction, a pathetic wave. 

You’ve just trampled over one of his chances of getting properly lucky tonight, and he isn’t even phased. 

“Been lookin’ for you,” you mumble, looking over him. His hair seems to have been unstuck from his scalp a little, at least. As though he may have been running his hands through it repeatedly, “Thought you might have gone home without your hat.” 

“Not a chance. I haven’t forgotten about the rule, you know.” 

Something twists in you, deep in your gut, between your hips. 

“No?” you hold your breath as he leans in a bit closer to you to be able to hear over the music, “Good thing I haven’t either.” 

He tilts his head, eyes glittering in the multi-colored lights, “You haven’t? Then that means you’ll be giving it back, right?” 

Over my dead body. 

You’re on a mission tonight. You’ll either be ending this night in sore disappointment, drinking away your sorrows of rejection, or you’ll be ending up in a bed with Eddie. It’s up to him. 

You lift a hand to the worn rim, tugging it a bit more securely onto your head, “Not a chance, Munson. You know where to find me once you’re done playing around.”

As soon as your fingers leave the rim, holding tense eye contact with him, his own hand is coming up. You tense, worried he’s about to steal the hat back now, but he doesn’t. Instead, his fingers pinch the same spot yours just had, slow tracing over the rim as his tongue darts out to carefully wet his bottom lip. 

From the front point, around to the side. When he reaches the bit above your ear, his touch drops to your cheek and tucks back some of the baby hairs sticking to your skin with sweat. 

“I do, don’t I?” he hums, voice dropping a bit lower, focused entirely on you. “I don’t think I’m the one playing around right now, though, Kitty.” 

Does he think you’re joking? Does he actually, genuinely think this is all a game to you? 

You nearly make the decision to grab him right there, right at this moment, and shatter all the tension. Get his lips on yours and drag him into the darkest corner just to prove to him how serious you truly were. 

Suddenly, his hand drops away from you entirely, and you almost want to whine. You miss that warmth, that feathery caress, until it aches. “It’s okay, though. Always knew cats were playful things.” 

Is there a dark corner somewhere near you two? Is there a dark hallway to drag him into? Just enough shadow to cover all the sins you’re desperate to commit, just enough light to see that blush rise across his cheeks again. 

“I’m not playing,” you whisper, eyes drifting down to his hand cradling a glass. Something deep and russet, just like his eyes. Likely whiskey. You wonder if you’d be able to taste it all over his tongue before you had him putting it to work where you need him most right now. “Whenever you get that through your big head, come find me.” 

“Big head?” he throws his head back in a laugh, and the tension mists away in seconds. “Who says I have a big head?” 

“I do, as the one wearing your hat,” you readjust it for emphasis. 

You thought the tension had misted away until he’s smirking, tsking a little, “Oh, thought you meant the other one.” 

It’s a replay of the scene in Steve’s apartment, but this time, the roles are reversed. You’re the one left in shock, mouth agape, as Eddie spins around and walks away, leaving you to sit with what he’s just said. 

“Bastard,” you breathe out as you watch him disappear in the crowd, eyes locked on his broad shoulders until one too many bodies separate the two of you. 

A bastard you want awfully, terribly, bad. 

—

You wish you could say you threw back drink, after drink, after drink. You wish you could say you danced with a hundred different beautiful strangers, and each one strayed your mind farther from Eddie. 

You wish you could say you did anything but what the reality of your night had been.

A few men had approached you, only to be turned down repeatedly. Most of your night was spent all but moping at the bar, eyes diligently scanning the bouncing crowd for a certain curly haired figure that seemed to escape you. One moment, you’d catch him pressed against a flirty stranger, hands holding onto whatever bare skin was available to him. And then, his eyes would find yours, and there would be a spark; a wink, a smile, a whisper across a bustling room daring you to come out and play with him. 

You never did. You’d look away, take a sip of your plain coke, and wait a few seconds until it was safe to look back and find him seemingly vanished. 

That in itself had started to become a game. Just like the hat, weighing heavy on your head. 

You’re starting to accept that maybe you had just been a bit too brave. You’d jumped the gun, flown feet first into cold and ragged waters you weren’t prepared to navigate. You knew you wanted a change with Eddie, but were you ready? If you had been, you would have accepted one of his various invites. Would have strode across the room, shoved away whatever man or woman he was dancing with, and slotted yourself into their place. You would have been swaying your hips in rhythm with his rather than allowing him to cycle through strangers, and you’d be reminding him that you wore his hat. 

You’d be the one bringing up the hat rule to him consistently, not him to you. 

When the night begins to wane, you’ve already talked yourself out of it all. 

“I’m heading out,” you announce to Robin when she finally returns back to where you’ve sat at the bar to babysit their drinks, hopping down from the stool before she could argue, “I’m getting way too tired.” 

“What?” your friend gasps, face pink from the heat of being in the crowd, a shimmering sheen of sweat across her forehead, “No! Stay! We can take turns watching the drinks, or just-”

“Robs,” you smile as sweetly as possible, patting yourself down to make sure you have all your belongings. A whistle sounds from a group down the way at the bar, and you ignore them, “It’s seriously okay. You’re having fun! I’m just a senior citizen who needs some sleep. My bedtime was like…. An hour ago.” 

You highly doubt you’ll be getting any rest when you return to your apartment. Maybe some confidence can be built out of fantasies, letting your hands wander and sheets catch fire with all that could have been if you hadn’t talked yourself out of your perfect plan. 

Maybe, imagining Eddie’s hot hands on you rather than getting to properly feel them will light a damn fire under your ass for the next opportunity that arises. 

“I…” she sighs, glancing over her shoulder in the general direction of Nancy, “Okay, fine. But do we want to do brunch or something tomorrow?” 

Not a chance, you think rather quickly, eyes scanning once more for the metal-head-turned-cowboy. Not if Eddie’s going to be there.

“Sure,” you lie, already knowing he will be there, “Just text me.” 

With that, you make your grand escape. 

Borrowed hat on head, phone in hand, you push your way out of the club with a newfound determination. You want to get home and take off this uncomfortable dress, finally do away with the thigh highs that have been rolling down at the most inconvenient of times, driving you insane the entire night. Trade the sexy attire for something comfy – stay true to the cat essence as you curl up beneath your blankets for the night. Hang that damn cowboy hat on your door as a cursed reminder-

“Where do you think you’re going, Kitty?” 

You stop a few feet short of the curb, a cab ordered as you turn to find that bastard leaning against the wall. Cigarette smoke is still clinging to the air around him as he looks at you curiously. 

“Home,” you shrug, trying to ignore your pounding heart. You’d figured you wouldn’t see him again tonight, that your fate had been sealed. “What are you doing out here?” 

“Smoke break,” he lifts his hand with the cigarette pinched between two fingers casually, pushing off the wall to come closer, “It’s hard work, keeping you entertained all night.” 

You scoff, falling back into what’s almost a normal rhythm for you two, “You were not the one keeping me entertained all night.” 

“I hardly saw you dance with anyone at all.” 

“I did!” you try to defend yourself, deciding this could be fine. Some casual conversation as you wait for your ride, a way to pass the time. This is fine. “Robin dragged me out into the crowd at least twice.” 

“I watched you swat a guy’s hands away not once, but three times.” 

“Unsolicited touching isn’t a compliment. He should have taken the hint the first time.” 

Eddie nods in eager agreement, taking another drag of his cigarette, “Damn right. If he had gone in for a fourth try, I was considering dragging him out here for an early smoke break.” 

“Why do I highly doubt it would just be a smoke break?” you question, glancing at him with a smile. Scandalous plans aside for the night, embarrassment swallowed down whole, it’s nice to remember that Eddie is a friend. Albeit a bit flirty, and capable of driving you fucking insane, but he’s a friend.

And maybe that isn’t the worst thing in the world. 

“Oh, no, yeah. You’d be posting my bail.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’ve got my hat, ” he reaches out and flicks the brim with his free hand, and you freeze up a little. You had hoped he wouldn’t mention it again, “Kind of makes me your problem until the end of the night. Speaking of….” 

You already know what he’s about to request as he trails off. This is it. You either give up the bit, hand the hat back over, and go home for the night – or you make one final attempt to get what you had wanted.

Eddie. You wanted Eddie, as more than a friend. 

“I’m gonna need that back, sweetheart.”

At least he’s asking politely, you consider, before it hits you why he’s asking rather than taking. 

The looks across the room. The way he’d been unbothered by the girl he’d been flirting with running off at your appearance. The way he never just took back that fucking hat when he’d been provided ample opportunity. 

He thinks it’s a game for you, and keeps bringing it up, because it isn’t for him. He’s giving you one last chance to back out, or to stand your ground. To say you really want this. 

And fuck, you really want this. 

“Nope,” you lean into his space, pressing closer, fully committed. Your phone dings with the notification of your ride approaching, and you fully ignore it. “My hat now, cowboy.” 

He quirks an eyebrow, and you hear the crunch of gravel behind you. Your ride. “Is that so?” 

“Yep.”

Another ding, another buzz of your phone.

Go ahead. Bring up the hat rule. 

“That your ride?” he asks, tilting his chin in the direction of the car. 

You glance over your shoulder, “Pretty sure it is, yeah.” 

“And you remember the hat rule?” 

Your stomach twists with excitement. Your previous pity party is long forgotten – you’re still hoping to get out of this dress, but you highly doubt you’ll be slipping anything on after it. “I do.”

“Great,” those hot hands you’d been fantasizing about the entire night suddenly reach out to you, gripping your hips tightly as he tugs you into his body. You collide with his chest as he leans down and whispers in your ear, “In that case, that’s my pussy now.” 

His lips linger against the shell of your ear an extra second, warm breath sending chills up your spine before he’s keeping an arm around your shoulders as he guides you to the car. His cologne and the scent of tobacco is suffocating, and you crave to drown in it. You want him to consume you; you want him to take over every breath you breathe, every move you make, to finally get those hot hands and lips everywhere you’ve only dreamt of. 

You barely hear him confirm with the driver that it is in fact your ride – you can only focus on that hand on your lower back, palm heavy on you as his thumb traces arcs that nearly spend you spiraling. 

“After you, kitty,” he murmurs, motioning for you to slide into the backseat first. 

In that case, that’s my pussy now.

You hope he ruins you. 

In the backseat of the ride, it’s all polite distance and hands to yourself. You can’t even make eye contact with the driver, terrified he might be able to mindread and see all the filthy thoughts racing through your head. 

Eddie between your thighs, mouthing at your hips. 

Eddie hovering over you, pulling your knees to your chest as he stretches you out. 

Eddie, proving that your pussy is in fact his for the night. That it was made for him, sculpted out to fit the curvature and every single vein of him. 

Eddie simply fucking your brains out. 

Some polite conversation is exchanged, mostly between Eddie and the driver. The classic questioning of how the night has gone, small talk that buzzes in your ears mindlessly. 

The entire time, you can see Eddie’s hand in the space between you two, fingers tapping away at dark leather incessantly. His rings shimmer like a siren calling to you. 

It’s a small movement, when your own hand drops near his. You keep your eyes trained forward once you begin your mission, inching your pinky closer and closer until it finally collides with his. You swear, you feel him fully jump out of his seat. 

Slowly warming the water, you start off simple – playing with his fingers. Gentle caresses over his knuckles, little pricks to the pads of his fingers. He tries to capture your hand in his, but you have bigger plans at play here. 

You’ve spent the entire fucking night waiting for this. You’re going to have fun with it. 

He huffs after you deter his second attempt at properly holding hands, his knees falling apart a little further. You twist at the ring on his middle finger, a clunky skull you’ve always admired. It has minimal signs of wear, probably pure silver if you had to guess, and you can only imagine how cold it’s going to feel against your skin. 

You can only imagine the imprints it’ll leave if he grabs your hips just right. 

“You know,” the driver hums mindlessly over the low volume of the radio, “You guys are my first ride of the night, surprisingly. Thought it might be busier with all the parties and clubs, but I think it’s just barely picking up now.”

“Yeah?” Eddie asks politely, nodding as he looks out his window. Perfect, “I think you’re right. It is getting pretty late-”

He’s entirely distracted, your hand out of his line of sight as it moves in on its target. 

His thigh. 

Just a few inches above his knee, your hand grips at what is clearly sensitive flesh. You watch his entire body turn to stone when you do it, and he moves his head quickly to look in your direction. 

You’re looking straight ahead. 

There had been a time, a few weeks ago, where you’d learned Eddie had… sensitive knees. You’d been joking around about one thing or another, and when your palms had gripped at them through the torn fabric of ripped jeans, he’d nearly launched himself across the room. He just kept insisting they were ticklish, that that skin was just delicate.

You’d seen the tent in his jeans then. You’d just been a bit more polite, a bit better behaved that day. 

“What are you doing?” he hisses in a whisper, reaching for your hand, but you’re quick to slide it even higher. 

His hips jump a little, and the driver is none the wiser. 

“Nothing,” you innocently say, still looking ahead, watching the passing streetlights with intense interest. “Absolutely nothing at all.” 

The entire ride, at every red light, your hand inches higher. 

And every time, you relish the way he squirms in your peripherals.

By the time you’re five minutes out from your place, you’ve riled him up to impossible heights. Every little noise has him on edge, constant twitching and shifting in his seat as he tries to get you to just look at him. You know he’s catching every sly smile that attempts to creep up on your lips – you’re pathetically failing at every turn to cover them up. 

You think you have him like putty in your palms as you give yet another squeeze to his thigh, fingers starting to dance up even higher. When your eyes flicker to his crotch for just a second, you see him straining against that tight leather. 

And then he flips the script. 

You’re so focused on your own goals, you never see that ringed hand creep to your own thigh. It’s not until cool metal nips at you, briefly, before you feel the warmth of his hand overtake, that you realize the predicament you’ve gotten into. 

Just as your hand was beginning to skim over his crotch, Eddie’s hand found solace between the meat of your thighs. Even as you try to clench them together, deny him the access he was seeking out, he finds his way in. Scandalous fingers dipping under the hem of your dress, fighting fire with fire when he lets his middle finger brush across the fabric of your underwear. 

Your touch from him nearly retracts entirely. 

“What?” he leans in closer to you, the driver still focused on the road, “Don’t like a taste of your own medicine?”

As he says it, his fingers dip lower. Hovering right over your protected clit, making your entire abdomen clench. 

You swallow hard, a bit of your jagged pride somewhere amongst the spit as you turn your head to look at him, “I don’t know what you mean.” 

“Still playing games I see.” 

In sync, the two of you lock eyes as you continue to test waters. You apply pressure with your palm and note the way his breathing hitches, and he draws a feather-light circle around the wet patch forming in your underwear. You can feel your bottom lip quiver as you try to refuse to give him any satisfaction, but when he’s this close, it’s a hopeless battle.

When had he gotten so near you? What happened to all that static distance from when you’d first crawled into the backseat?

You’re trying to only focus on your own hand. Eyes darting to guarantee the driver is still oblivious as you roll the heel of your hand harder against the seam of his pants, and biting your lip to hold back a successful grin when he has to cover a gasp with a cough. It’s all fun and games until the action is rewarded with his payback; his knuckle curling up against your cunt through your panties, pressing in hard before slowly sliding his way up, up, up. 

He deliberately stops when he catches on your clit, and you’re the one coughing now. 

“Had enough?” he mutters under his breath, looking at you with half-lidded eyes. He looks good in this lighting, flashes of the streetlights bathing him in soft yellow, headlights of other cars fluttering in through the windshield as they hit his brown eyes just right to bronze them. 

“Never.”

You almost think you’ve won when his knuckle pulls back. 

But suddenly, his entire hand is cupping your cunt, two fingers pressing against your fluttering hole as another drags up your slit slowly once more. This time, when he reaches your clit, he continues moving in small circles. 

You have to bite your lip to hold back any noises, eyes closing for just a second as you hear him huff out a laugh. 

The final damnation is when he brings his lips to your bare shoulder, merely grazing your skin with them as he mumbles, “You sure about that, Kitty?” 

You clench around nothing, and you know when he feels it from where his fingers remain pressed against you. His own hand twitches as the finger circling your clit stutters for a moment. 

“I-”

“We’re here!” the driver says, not having looked into the backseat yet as he finds a safe place to pull the car into. In an instant, you and Eddie remove your hands from each other. You’re both visibly flustered – you can feel how warm your cheeks have gotten, and you can see clouds of pink splattering over Eddie’s chest and neck. 

“Thanks,” Eddie is the one to speak up as the car comes to a halt, not even waiting for the driver to put the vehicle in park as he throws the door open. 

A bit rushed, but still polite as ever before he’s grabbing you by your bicep to pull you out of the cramped space right along with him. 

You can hardly muster a weak wave to the man as Eddie is dragging you towards your apartment building, knees still a bit weak and mind still blank after getting a taste of your own medicine, as Eddie had put it. 

He doesn’t let go of you until you’re at your front door, those cursed shaking hands of yours fumbling with your key ring. 

“Here, let me-” he starts to offer, reaching for the keys that continue to clank together, just as you find the one you’re looking for. 

“I’ve got it-” you try to cut him off, just as you drop the fucking keys in your haste. “Shit.” 

You quickly drop to the ground to grab them, pausing once you have the metal digging into your palms once more. There’s no real reason for you to do it, but you do – you take a second to look up at Eddie from this position, and nearly drool at the sight of it.

Him, standing over you, still a bit flushed and still visibly uncomfortable in his pants. Pretty curls a mess and lips darkening from how much he’s been biting them. 

You want him to ruin you. You want him to absolutely, entirely and utterly destroy you.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he laughs, chest heaving a bit as he watches you carefully, pupils slowly growing in the dim light of your building’s hallway. 

You can see his bare torso clenching, the twitch of his hands at his sides – the same fingers that had just been caressing you over your underwear in the backseat of a stranger’s car. 

“Like what?” you’re dragging out the moment, taking time to appreciate the sight of him. 

“Like you want me to just press you up against the wall and fuck you out here, for everyone to see.” 

That’s a new one. That’s a vision that hadn’t come to you in all your dirtiest dreams of the night. 

It sends your clit throbbing. 

You rise slowly, pushing the hat back a bit to see him better, keeping your voice quiet so your neighbors won’t hear as you ask, “Would you? If I asked nicely?” 

He doesn’t let out a laugh, but a breath of air, like you’ve just sucked all of the oxygen out of his lungs. 

No need to say it – you know he would. You probably wouldn’t even have to ask nicely. 

You’re staring at him when he finally moves, one hand snatching your keys out of your hand and the other gripping you around the waist. Back to pulling you, man-handling you to get you right where he wants you – where he needs you. 

One second, you’re pressed against his body in the hallway. The next, he’s managed to unlock your front door and throw you both into the safety of your apartment. 

Hidden from the world, and you’re still reeling as you wonder what it’d be like for the entire building to witness you calling out his name. Or him calling out your name. 

Here within these four walls, Eddie has put some space between the two of you, staring with blown out eyes and a shaking chest as he breathes out, “Sweetheart.”

A few seconds pass, the two of you just standing there, the click of the front door’s lock being the only thing echoing in the silence. If you focused over the roar of the blood pounding in your ears, you might catch every single gasp of his as he stares in awe – but your focus is elsewhere. Far away and out of grasp for the time being. You can only think of one thing, and one thing only. 

Your body isn’t your own as you move to get exactly what you want; you drop to your knees hard enough that you should cringe at the thought of the pain that will linger, possibly for days, but it doesn’t even cross your mind as your hands begin to fumble with Eddie’s pants. The oversized, gaudy belt buckle is in your way, glinting at you as if mocking the way your shaking hands can’t undo it fast enough. You’re about to give up and just start unzipping the leather pants, desperate to get your hands, and your mouth, and your eyes on him properly, when he stops you. 

“Hey,” he sounds breathless - he is breathless - as his own hands quiver a bit and grab onto yours, “Hey, hey, hey. Slow down.”

Those hands let go of your wrists and reach for the hat, and you’re quick to try and swat them away only for him to grab at you, surprisingly gentle, as he drags you back up to your feet. 

“Wear the hat, ride the cowboy – right?” you insist, chin held high, your gaze refusing to waver from his. 

His slow and buttery grin makes you lightheaded, his low chuckle sends shakes through every nerve and bone. “That’s right, but maybe the cowboy wants to take his time. Ever think of that, hm?” 

Were you moving too fast? Were you going to scare him off? 

Small, baby steps are taken by Eddie, the click of his heels shattering against your wooden floors until his hips are flush with yours. 

And - oh.

Oh. 

That surely didn’t feel like you were scaring him off. 

You could feel the outline of his cock, hard against your hip, as he gives a little roll. He catches his bottom lip between his teeth, nostrils flaring with a hard breath, and the fear leaves as quickly as it had arrived. 

He wants this. You want him. 

“I’m not a very patient person,” you murmur, eyes glued to his lips now as his head leans in closer, and his hands begin to explore your body. Taking their time as they travel down your arms from where he’d held onto your biceps, slowing as they reach your wrists. Even the press of his thumb against the sensitive inner skin there sends jolts up your spine, little gasps attempting to escape your mouth. 

His fingers tangle loosely with your own for a few moments before his palms find your hips, and he continues his journey. 

“That’s okay,” he whispers back, close enough now that his lips have begun to brush against your own. His nose bumps yours as his hands skate up over your ribcage, thumb sweeping out over the hill of your breast and intentionally avoiding your nipple, “I can teach you, baby.”

Your mouth finally collides with him at the words, nearly going limp in his arms at the words. 

You’ve thought about kissing Eddie for a while now. Every time a snarky remark fell from his lips, you’d wonder how his tongue might taste afterwards. Every time he’d pout his lips at one of your comebacks, or blow a kiss teasingly in your direction from across a room, you’d wonder how hard you might have to bite down to make him bleed. Every drag of a cigarette you’d witnessed, every hard gasp in faux offense, every breathless chuckle at a joke he didn’t want to find funny but did – you had spent a lot of time wondering what it might be like to steal all the air from his lungs, to kiss him until the two of you were both blue in the face. 

“Can’t the lesson wait until tomorrow?” you mumble against him as his mouth, your own fists now gripping onto the lapels of his vest. His hands have reached your shoulders, memorizing the outlines of the curve of your neck where it meets your collarbones, the slope of your chest as you take hot and heavy breaths. 

“Nope,” he insists, pulling back from the kiss, a little bit of spit on his pink lips, “But it’s nice to know you’re thinking about tomorrow.” 

A hand finally finds your chin and pinches it carefully between his thumb and fingers, a careful grip on you to angle you just right so he can all but devour you. Lips, tongues, teeth – it’s a messy ordeal, and you almost make a smart-ass remark that this kiss doesn’t feel very patient. 

But you can’t. Eddie’s taken away all your breaths, all your words, as he starts to guide you backwards. 

Your knees hit the cushions of your sofa, making you jump back from him with a gasp, palms going flat against his chest. 

He feels good. Tender skin soft to the touch beneath your hand, tattoos tempting to trace the outline of. Later. 

“Figured you might want a more comfortable ride,” he laughs against you, breath smelling ever so faintly of mint and whiskey washing over you, before he dips to mouth away at your neck.

You drop back onto the sofa, bite your tongue on a comment about how this cheap piece of furniture most definitely wasn’t the most comfortable option, simply eager at the fact he was letting this move along. 

You want him, you need him, and you have no time for patience. 

His exploration of touches have lit you aflame, and you’re growing a bit desperate at this point. It might be pathetic, it should be embarrassing, but you really don’t care. 

“By all means,” you break out of his hold entirely, catching the way his hand holding your chin lingers a few extra seconds, reluctant to let you go, “Take your seat, Cowboy.” 

He joins you on the couch, eyes never leaving yours even as he throws himself down. Knees spread wide, inviting lap on show, cock still straining against his pants. 

The best seat in the house, as far as you’re concerned. 

“You just gonna keep starin’,” he mocks lightly, looking you over slowly. Taking his time, you suppose, “Or you gonna get over here?” 

His words are all you need. You’re quick to climb onto his lap, swinging your legs so that each thigh brackets his hips, your cunt pressing down on crotch carelessly. You love the way it feels – the outline of him hard against you, the cooling effect of the leather, the sharp edges of the zipper catching just right. 

“There,” he huffs out, grabbing onto you when you give the slightest roll of your hips, “Now we’re both in our seats.” 

When you go to press down harder, guiding yourself over his lap, hands steadying you by gripping his shoulders, he surprises you by his hips jumping up to meet your slow rhythm.

“What happened to being patient?” you try to tease him right back as your forehead meets his, hat comically struggling to stay on between the two of you, “Thought you were gonna take your time with me-”

“Between you and me, I’m not gonna last,” he pants out, hands finding your hips. Those rings you’d been fantasizing of leaving an imprint on you are doing just that as he guides you, “Been dreaming of you too long, sweetheart. Wanted this for so long.” 

Your heart nearly stops. Your hips stutter, pausing as his words rush over you. 

“What?” 

Your head lifts away from his completely, grip on his shoulders tightening. 

He’s wanted this, too? This entire time? 

Eddie takes your pause as a bad thing, a terrible omen as his face pales, “I mean- I just-”

“Munson,” you say lowly, narrowing your eyes at him, “You’re telling me, this entire time, you’ve been flirting with me?” 

Had that tone he used with the girl at the bar been flirting as you’d thought, or simple for show? You’d so cluelessly assumed he’d never used that tone with you because he’d never genuinely flirted with you – and yet, it seems, he’d never used that tone because he’d been genuinely flirting with you. 

“I-” his cheeks are brilliant red, and the wide eyes are from something different than lust now, “Maybe?” 

“Maybe?” you almost laugh, throwing your head back. The hat falls off, but Eddie is quick to retrieve it, “My God, we’re fucking idiots.” 

“Hey, I’m not the one who stole my hat-”

“I like you, dumb ass,” you state plainly, “I wanted this for a while, too.” 

He pauses, one arm outstretched as his hand grips onto the hat, “What?” 

“Been thinking about this, too,” your voice drops a little, almost a whisper, even though you two are the only ones in the room. For all you know, you two might be the only two people left in the world with the way he’s looking at you, “Thinking about you and your lips. Thinking ‘bout your hands and the places they’d go,” as you point out every detail, his body seemingly reacts. A lick of his lips, a squeeze of his hand still on your hip, “Thought about your fingers and tongue a lot, too. How good they’d feel inside me.” 

His hips thrust up at that, and suddenly, he’s placing his hat back atop your head. 

That, it seems, was all the encouragement Eddie needed. 

He deals with that belt buckle that had given you hell, bouncing you a bit on his lap as he fumbles with yanking the entire belt off and tossing it to the side. One hand busies with undoing the button and zipper of his jeans, as the other starts to bunch your dress. 

“Nice and slow,” he insists, looking up at you, absolutely vibrant. Somewhere between the tightness between your hips, all the throbbing between your thighs and in your chest, you feel a sort of bubbly delight creeping up along your spine. “Got it, kitty?” 

You nod once. Twice. On the third nod, he cuts you off with a kiss. 

Your dress is up to your waist, and you don’t know how, but he manages to shimmy off his pants without throwing you off his lap entirely. It’s impressive, really. Probably a symptom of him having thought about this, dreamt about this. He’d probably thought up every scenario possible, and was prepared. 

“Oh, and these?” his fingers find the waistband of your panties, tsking a little as he pulls at the elastic and lets it slap back against your skin, “Those definitely have to come off.” 

“Whatever you say, cowboy.” 

You take your time sliding off his lap, making sure to grind against him before you properly lift away. He throws his head back in a groan, Adam’s apple bobbing as you stand up straight. You take that moment to just admire him, capturing the clench of his jaw to memory, the way his eyes screw shut in pleasure at your influence. 

He’s fucking perfect. You’re sure there’s others who disagree, but you’d pay them no mind. He’s perfect, and he’s all yours. 

You make a show of taking off your panties only once he’s properly looking at you once more, craving his eyes on you as you keep all your movements fluid and steady. No rush, exuding all that patience he’d prattled on about. 

You want to see his face when you gently toss the black lacey piece in his direction, watch him fumble with his own desperation to catch them. 

“Seems a bit unfair that I’m the only one undressing,” you hum as you go a step further and begin to shimmy out of the dress.

“Yeah, well,” he grins cheekily at you, fisting your panties, a hand trailing down to the waistband of his boxers as he eyes you, “One of us was showing a bit more skin than the other.”

“Take off the vest, Eddie.” 

Your command is velvet, and he’s quick to obey. His hand stubbornly refuses to let go of your panties as he rushes to shrug out of the thin fabric over his shoulders, tossing the vest to join his pants and your dress on the floor. 

“And the boxers.” 

You stand there, in nothing but his cowboy hat, as you wait pretty and patient for him to listen. And listen he does. 

The moment his boxers are discarded, his cock is standing at attention, leaking from the tip and deep shade of pink that matches his kiss-bitten lips. You think it might be the prettiest color you’ve ever laid eyes on as you watch a drop of  precum slip down his shaft. 

He’s pretty, even in the fucking pants. 

Girthy, thick enough you almost arch your back before you’ve even sunk down on him. All veins and soft skin, a sensitive tip that you’d trace your tongue over for hours if he let you. 

“Gonna just stand there, or are you going to ride your cowboy?” 

He surely meant to sound more cocky, but the words come out as more of a whine as you watch him twitch under your stare. 

He’s right though, and you’d rather get him inside you than spend another second gawking. There will be time to pay more attention to him and his pretty cock tomorrow. Right now, you need to finish this god-forsaken mission. 

Your thighs find his hips just as his hands find yours, choosing to grip the couch rather than his shoulders as you steady yourself. 

Nice and slow, his words echo in your mind. 

You could have prepared yourself more, but you’d already made it clear to Eddie that you are not a patient person. The fact that you even take your time as you sink down on him, going as far as to grab him by his base and guide his tip to smear precum across your clit, is impressive. 

The stretch is a bit painful. A bit much. A bit dizzying. But you refuse to stop as your jaw drops, eyes fluttering shut in ecstasy. 

“Fuck,” you breathe out softly as you feel him fill you, “Fuck, Eddie.” 

“Feel good, baby?” he questions, reaching up to grab your chin just as he had before. Forcing you closer to him, forcing you to look him in the eyes just as he bottoms out. 

You don’t answer him as you both moan out. 

You stay there for a second, unmoving as you swim in the feeling. Feeling him press into the depths of you, the overwhelming warmth and the coil in your abdomen tightening ever so slightly. 

It’s better than you had imagined it. No daydreams could compare to the feeling of Eddie’s cock finally, finally filling you. Stretching you out, making you his. 

“Go ahead,” he grits out, entire body tense, clearly holding out on you, “Ride your cowboy, kitty. Don’t make me ask twice.” 

Nice. And. Slow.

Three little words that ricochet through your mind as you start to slowly bounce on him. Lifting ever so slightly, dropping back down, aching to feel him even deeper inside of you. Feeling the quiver of his thighs to match yours as you repeat the action, gasps and whimpers falling from both your lips. You’re about to try and kiss him, try and swallow all those delicate noises from him, when he stops you. 

“No, no, no,” he’s chuckling, giving your hips a few squeezes before his palms rub down your thighs, the friction sending you on edge, “C’mon, now. We both know that’s not how you ride.” 

His hands rake over your skin, down to your knees, lighting scratching and squeezing along their entire pathway until they make their way back up to your waist and hips. 

“Do it like this, sweetheart.”

He guides you, no longer allowing you to lift up. You sink all the way down on his cock, whining out at the fullness, before he starts the pattern. 

Back and forth. Gentle circles amidst the rocking. Your clit grazes his pubes, and the coil in between your hips has never tightened more quickly. 

The motion feels familiar - like riding a bull. 

This feels right. You still press down, still clench down on him hard enough to make you both slip out obscenities, but it’s getting you there. 

At some point, Eddie’s grip on your hips slips, but it’s fine – you’ve got the rhythm down perfectly. Slow, intermittent figure eights between the rolls of your hips, his occasionally slamming upward to reward you with that deepness you need. You can feel him in your stomach, in your chest, in your throat. 

You get a bit daring, and take one hand to his shoulders, as the other reaches up for the top of the hat on your head. 

Just like a cowboy. 

“Like this?” you pant out between harsher rolls, eliciting curses that continue to grow louder from Eddie. 

“Fuck, baby, yes,” he groans out, head thrown back, mouth open in gratification, “Just like that. Keep- keep going just,” he thrusts up, “Like,” another thrust, “That.” 

You nearly lose balance, falling forward a bit, too stubborn to let go of the hat. There’s a grin glimmering at the corners of your mouth, and it fully blooms when Eddie throws up a hand to catch you .

A hand on your throat. 

He doesn’t squeeze, doesn’t cut off blood flow or breathing. He keeps that warm palm there at the base of your neck, cradling you, holding you. A reminder that he could squeeze if he wanted, that he held you in the palm of his hands currently, but he won’t. 

“You like that?” his eyes shine as he looks up at you, the sight of his rings decorating your neck. 

You nod.

“Tell me with your words,” he commands.

“I like it,” you whimper, looking up further, stretching more of your neck to be vulnerable to Eddie. “I like it so much, baby.” 

When the pet name falls from your lips, you can feel him twitch inside of you. The sudden jut of his hips, the sharp intake of breath. 

“You like that,” you laugh breathlessly, your hand atop the hat the only thing keeping it from falling as you lean your head fully back, eyes beginning to roll back into your head. “Wanna be my baby, Munson?” 

“Always have,” he grunts, the hand on your throat slipping up to cup your face to drag you towards him, “Since the fucking moment I met you, sweetheart.”

When he kisses you, it tastes like the closest to Heaven you might ever get. Soft, plump lips, and an eager tongue. All the wasted time hiding behind jokes and teasing, playing pretend like the flirting was never serious.

It was serious. And if you’d just come clean sooner, you would have had this long ago. 

Your hips are still rolling as your hands begin to roam. You’ve found your balance again, lips pressed to Eddie, and it’s your turn to explore all he has to give you. Your nails graze his stomach when your clit catches once more on that rough thatch of hair against the base of his cock. Your fingers dig into flesh wherever they can find it – his chest, his arms, his hips. At some point, you throw a hand out behind you, grasping for his knee. Learning every curve and every point of his body as he had done for you. 

You wanna memorize the roadmap of him. Take a snapshot in your mind so that next time, none of it is unfamiliar territory. 

Your touch is driving him insane; it doesn’t take a genius to pick up on the way his hips falter to meet your movements, or how he keeps breaking the kiss to gasp, letting his jaw fall slack when he hits a particular deep spot within you. 

It’s when your lips finally trail down the stubble sprouting across his jawline, mouth sucking on the soft skin below his ear, that he’s finally a goner. 

“‘M close,” he gasps out, almost sounding drunk as he slurs through his pants, “Ah, fuck, I’m gonna-”

“Cum for me, Eddie.” 

Maybe it’s the way you had been touching him, or the way your cunt had been fluttering around him, or the persistent rolling of your hips that had become so focused on his pleasure. Maybe it was the sight of you in his hat, looking at him like that. Maybe it was the way his name sounded on your tongue. 

Either way, when Eddie Munson comes undone, he’s beautiful. 

Your own movements slow involuntarily as you gaze starry eyed, watching the way his face scrunches and feeling his grip on you tighten impossibly. Leaving their mark, making you his in yet another way. Warmth fills your cunt and every curse word under the summer sun is falling from his lips. 

Your name, curses, prayers, gratitude – a jumbled mess, and it sounds fucking fantastic when it’s said in Eddie’s desperate tone. 

“Shit,” he gasps out, finally coming back down to Earth, “Shit.”

You sit still on his lap, skin sticky with sweat, lips spread thin in a cheeky grin, “Sounds like I get to keep your hat, cowboy.” 

His eyes shoot open, and for a second, you’re terrified.

Those aren’t the eyes of someone satisfied. 

“You didn’t cum.”

“What?”

“You,” he says, stressing the word as he shifts you off his lap. You don’t miss the way he winces, clearly a bit sensitive, “Did not cum.” 

You hadn’t really noticed, too wrapped up in him to notice your high slipping away from you. You’d been too focused on Eddie: on feeling him cum inside you, on watching him break apart, on tracing the outline of the blood rushing to his cheeks with your eyes and that fresh burst of violet on his neck in the shape of your lips. 

“It’s fine,” you start to argue, feeling the warmth of him leaking down your thighs. You should be a lot more worried about making a mess all over your sofa. You should be, but you aren’t. “I can-”

“You’re not keeping that fucking hat until you cum for me, sweetheart.” 

And, oh, maybe your own orgasm wasn’t racing as far away from you as you’d believed, because those words nearly push you over the edge for him. 

“Get on all fours for me, baby.” 

Yeah. You definitely could still be close. For him.

When you don’t move to follow his command immediately, he’s using those gentle hands to guide you. Encouraging a twist of your hips from how you’re reclining back across the couch, letting you press your cheek down against the cushion.

You open your mouth to argue, to insist it was fine, to say anything, but you’re cut silent when a sudden slap lands on your ass. 

A silent command this time, and you’re finally listening. 

You lift your ass up for him on shaky knees, elbows digging into the cushion now instead of your face. The hat on your head is lopsided, and you almost reach up to fix it when- 

“I’ll be taking that,” For the first time since you’d stolen his hat, Eddie takes it back. Right off your head, too fast for you to protest. When you dig your chin into your shoulder to look back at him, he’s smiling, hat back in its rightful place atop his curls, “You can have it back after you cum for me, at least once.”

“At least once?” you mean to laugh, to sound cocky, but it comes out as more of a squeak. 

He shrugs, leaning forward, his bare chest pressing against the skin of your bare ass – right where an imprint of his hand still sings, “At least. By all means, if you feel the need, don’t hesitate to give me a few. God knows you’ve earned it.” 

You don’t have time to banter back; he retracts before bring his mouth down to your cunt, and your elbows quickly give out at the first long stride of his tongue. 

“Gotta get you cleaned up,” he murmurs, a bit muffled, against your cunt. 

Another stride, and this time, his tongue spends an extra second at your clit, circling it salaciously. 

“Oh, God,” you moan out into a mouthful of couch cushion, tempted to bite down to hide all the noises creeping up your throat when his tongue draws yet another circle, tip of his nose pressed to your sensitive hole.

He brings his tongue back to that space, that hole that feels gaping without him filling you now, and you try to bury your cheek only to earn another slap on the ass.

“Don’t be shy now, kitty. Let me hear you.” 

And let him hear you, you do. 

Each lick, short and timid or long and confident, is dredging up obscene mewls from you. When he enters you with it, curling it and pressing as deep as he can, truly cleaning you up as he had said, you’re chanting his name. 

“Fuck, Eddie,” you cry softly, rocking your body back against his mouth, “Your fingers. P-Please, use your fingers.” 

Your wish is his command as he brings his hand up between your legs, breaking from having his tongue buried inside of you and using a calloused pad of his finger to trace over your clit before he begs, “Say my name again.” 

You do. Over, and over, and over as his mouth and his fingers begin to work against you. Careful focus is placed on your clit, and his mouth runs amok between your cunt and thighs. You feel what will no doubt be hickies along the curve of your ass, nips of teeth against the sensitive skin of your inner thigh as he presses two fingers into you. With every thrust of his hand, your hips are rocking back to match his rhythm, wanting more. 

More, more, more. 

There’s nothing nice and slow about this. You’re chasing after a high, and Eddie is listening to you every step of the way. 

Your thighs begin to shake terribly right around the time your vision blurs, unable to contain the whines that have grown to echoing volumes. Surely, your neighbors can hear. Probably confused as to who Eddie is, probably considering how embarrassing it would be to knock down your door and complain about the noises. 

You really, really don’t give a fuck when white speckles flood your vision, even with your eyes screwed shut, and that tension between your hips threatens to snap. 

Right before your knees give out, your entire body trembling, Eddie pulls back and grabs your hips. You cry out, so close yet so far, until he’s flipping you back over. 

You get one glimpse of him before he goes to work to bring you over that edge – lips and chin slick with you, hair frizzing beneath his hat, a determined glint in his eyes that have your thighs clenching around his ears. 

You were right. Eddie Munson looks damn good between your thighs. 

He quickly returns to his mitigations, and this time, it’s all a bit more strategic. Lips suctioned around your clit and three fingers curling deep within you, a beckoning motion as he urges you to let go for him. 

The white returns behind your eyelids. Your back arches up off the sofa. Your ankles lock as they cross behind Eddie’s back, almost effectively trapping him in place.

You cum hard for him. 

You’re entirely unaware if you scream his name in the process, but you hope you do. As that relief, that ecstasy, floods your system, you hope you make sure everyone within a five mile radius knows who’s responsible. Your entire body continues to shake for far longer than you believe it ever has before. Your hips had lifted, begging for Eddie to keep going even as it all grew painful.

He does. He keeps going, sucking you dry for every drop you have to give him, until you’re physically having to shove him away. 

Your hands are weak as you sink down into the cushion, eyes still closed as you hear him chuckle before you feel him crawl his way back up your body. 

“There,” you don’t even need to see his face to see that smug satisfaction – his voice is dripping in it. “Now you can keep the hat.” 

One of your hands blindly throws itself through the air to smack him, missing entirely as you drift through the afterglow of it all. 

“I’m not sure I’ve earned it,” you mumble as he catches your wrist, limp in the air, “Pretty sure I didn’t break you when I made you cum.”

“Oh, you did,” he notes, hand curling around your wrist. You watch as he slowly brings it to his lips, peppering a few chaste kisses on the soft skin, “Just in a different way.” 

You raise your eyebrows, smiling at the tingling feeling left behind on your skin in the wake of his mouth, “Yeah?” 

“Yeah.” 

He tugs you to sit up despite your groan of protest, somehow smoothly maneuvering the two of you so that he’s now the one beneath you, letting the full weight of you bear down on his chest as you lay on top of him. The hand wrapped around your wrist brings it back up for more kisses, more repetitive gentle pecks of affection, as his other arm is quick to wrap around you. Holding you in place, as though he’s scared you might disappear. 

“Well,” you whisper against the bare skin of his chest, nearly shivering when his free hand starts to trail slowly up and down your spine, “Good.” 

Your cheek feels the vibrations of his chuckle, “That’s all you have to say?” 

“Give me a few minutes to recover,” you insist, all but nuzzling into him, “I’m sure I’ll have a smartass comeback for you once I’m…” you trail off, heavy eyes looking up at him, the words lost on your tongue and in the air. 

The gentle curve of his cupid’s bow. The roundness at the end of his nose, still a fading hue of pink. The freckle beneath his right eye. The way the phantom of the dimple of his left cheek never quite leaves his face.

All the things you’ve dreamt of seeing so up close, never knowing it could have been a reality. 

He lets go of your wrist, smiling softly with a shake of his head, “Can’t believe you’re gonna fall asleep on me.”

“Am not,” you nearly say under your breath, sighing in content. 

“Am too,” he mocks, a certain docility to all his teasing before he sighs as well, “It’s okay. You can. I’ll still be here when you wake up.”

You hum, eyes fluttering shut as you hear some rustling, “Promise, cowboy?” 

“Absolutely, kitty. You said something about tomorrow, remember?” 

You both laugh in sync as your couch suddenly becomes the most comfortable place in the world. 

Just before losing consciousness, right as you feel Eddie’s breathing even out along with your own, you decide to open your eyes one last time to catch sight of the cowboy hat perched carefully on your coffee table. 

Tomorrow. You hope for a thousand tomorrows as you decide that that hat is definitely yours now.

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

average United States contains 1000s of pet tigers in backyards" factoid actualy [sic] just statistical error. average person has 0 tigers on property. Activist Georg, who lives the U.S. Capitol & makes up over 10,000 each day, has purposefully been spreading disinformation adn [sic] should not have been counted

I have a big mad today, folks. It's a really frustrating one, because years worth of work has been validated... but the reason for that fucking sucks.

For almost a decade, I've been trying to fact-check the claim that there "are 10,000 to 20,000 pet tigers/big cats in backyards in the United States." I talked to zoo, sanctuary, and private cat people; I looked at legislation, regulation, attack/death/escape incident rates; I read everything I could get my hands on. None of it made sense. None of it lined up. I couldn't find data supporting anything like the population of pet cats being alleged to exist. Some of you might remember the series I published on those findings from 2018 or so under the hashtag #CrouchingTigerHiddenData. I've continued to work on it in the six years since, including publishing a peer reviewed study that counted all the non-pet big cats in the US (because even though they're regulated, apparently nobody bothered to keep track of those either).

I spent years of my life obsessing over that statistic because it was being used to push for new federal legislation that, while well intentioned, contained language that would, and has, created real problems for ethical facilities that have big cats. I wrote a comprehensive - 35 page! - analysis of the issues with the then-current version of the Big Cat Public Safety Act in 2020. When the bill was first introduced to Congress in 2013, a lot of groups promoted it by fear mongering: there's so many pet tigers! they could be hidden around every corner! they could escape and attack you! they could come out of nowhere and eat your children!! Tiger King exposed the masses to the idea of "thousands of abused backyard big cats": as a result the messaging around the bill shifted to being welfare-focused, and the law passed in 2022.

The Big Cat Public Safety Act created a registry, and anyone who owned a private cat and wanted to keep it had to join. If they did, they could keep the animal until it passed, as long as they followed certain strictures (no getting more, no public contact, etc). Don’t register and get caught? Cat is seized and major punishment for you. Registering is therefore highly incentivized. That registry closed in June of 2023, and you can now get that registration data via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Guess how many pet big cats were registered in the whole country?

97.

Not tens of thousands. Not thousands. Not even triple digits. 97.

And that isn't even the right number! Ten USDA licensed facilities registered erroneously. That accounts for 55 of 97 animals. Which leaves us with 42 pet big cats, of all species, in the entire country.

Now, I know that not everyone may have registered. There's probably someone living deep in the woods somewhere with their illegal pet cougar, and there's been at least one random person in Texas arrested for trying to sell a cub since the law passed. But - and here's the big thing - even if there are ten times as many hidden cats than people who registered them - that's nowhere near ten thousand animals. Obviously, I had some questions.

Guess what? Turns out, this is because it was never real. That huge number never had data behind it, wasn't likely to be accurate, and the advocacy groups using that statistic to fearmonger and drive their agenda knew it... and didn't see a problem with that.

Allow me to introduce you to an article published last week.

This article is good. (Full disclose, I'm quoted in it). It's comprehensive and fairly written, and they did their due diligence reporting and fact-checking the piece. They talked to a lot of people on all sides of the story.

But thing that really gets me?

Multiple representatives from major advocacy organizations who worked on the Big Cat Publix Safety Act told the reporter that they knew the statistics they were quoting weren't real. And that they don't care. The end justifies the means, the good guys won over the bad guys, that's just how lobbying works after all. They're so blase about it, it makes my stomach hurt. Let me pull some excerpts from the quotes.

"Whatever the true number, nearly everyone in the debate acknowledges a disparity between the actual census and the figures cited by lawmakers. “The 20,000 number is not real,” said Bill Nimmo, founder of Tigers in America. (...) For his part, Nimmo at Tigers in America sees the exaggerated figure as part of the political process. Prior to the passage of the bill, he said, businesses that exhibited and bred big cats juiced the numbers, too. (...) “I’m not justifying the hyperbolic 20,000,” Nimmo said. “In the world of comparing hyperbole, the good guys won this one.”

"Michelle Sinnott, director and counsel for captive animal law enforcement at the PETA Foundation, emphasized that the law accomplished what it was set out to do. (...) Specific numbers are not what really matter, she said: “Whether there’s one big cat in a private home or whether there’s 10,000 big cats in a private home, the underlying problem of industry is still there.”"

I have no problem with a law ending the private ownership of big cats, and with ending cub petting practices. What I do have a problem with is that these organizations purposefully spread disinformation for years in order to push for it. By their own admission, they repeatedly and intentionally promoted false statistics within Congress. For a decade.

No wonder it never made sense. No wonder no matter where I looked, I couldn't figure out how any of these groups got those numbers, why there was never any data to back any of the claims up, why everything I learned seemed to actively contradict it. It was never real. These people decided the truth didn't matter. They knew they had no proof, couldn't verify their shocking numbers... and they decided that was fine, if it achieved the end they wanted.

So members of the public - probably like you, reading this - and legislators who care about big cats and want to see legislation exist to protect them? They got played, got fed false information through a TV show designed to tug at heartstrings, and it got a law through Congress that's causing real problems for ethical captive big cat management. The 20,000 pet cat number was too sexy - too much of a crisis - for anyone to want to look past it and check that the language of the law wouldn't mess things up up for good zoos and sanctuaries. Whoops! At least the "bad guys" lost, right? (The problems are covered somewhat in the article linked, and I'll go into more details in a future post. You can also read my analysis from 2020, linked up top.)

Now, I know. Something something something facts don't matter this much in our post-truth era, stop caring so much, that's just how politics work, etc. I’m sorry, but no. Absolutely not.

Laws that will impact the welfare of living animals must be crafted carefully, thoughtfully, and precisely in order to ensure they achieve their goals without accidental negative impacts. We have a duty of care to ensure that. And in this case, the law also impacts reservoir populations for critically endangered species! We can't get those back if we mess them up. So maybe, just maybe, if legislators hadn't been so focused on all those alleged pet cats, the bill could have been written narrowly and precisely.

But the minutiae of regulatory impacts aren't sexy, and tiger abuse and TV shows about terrible people are. We all got misled, and now we're here, and the animals in good facilities are already paying for it.

I don't have a conclusion. I'm just mad. The public deserves to know the truth about animal legislation they're voting for, and I hope we all call on our legislators in the future to be far more critical of the data they get fed.

[faerygardenparty]

I really try not to be a conspiracy theorist but I’m seriously flip flopping on whether or not I believe Luigi Mangione actually did it, on one hand this guy’s digital footprint is too vast to not be a real person with real motive, but on the other hand the circumstances of how they caught him are so odd that it just doesn’t add up, like, he wore very nondescript clothing and a mask the day of the shooting, suggesting he doesn’t want to be identified, despite this they were somehow able to identify him at a hostel in different clothing without a mask, he not only fled the scene but allegedly fled New York with a fake ID that the police recovered, several days later they found him in Pennsylvania carrying around all of the evidence in his backpack, including a manifesto, gun, and fake ID, the police also claim he had somewhere between $8,000-$12,000 in his bag, yet when asked about it Luigi claims he had no idea where the money came from and suggests it was planted (which raises several more alarm bells because if this “evidence” was planted then what else could they have fabricated to “catch” this guy?)

this not mentioning the fact that I find it really odd that this guy didn’t digitally publish his manifesto and instead chose to carry a physical copy of it around for days

this all could mean that he wanted to get caught but if that’s the case why go to Pennsylvania at all? why not just stay in New York?

I will say, though, that I think some of this can also be explained by this comment on Reddit:

regardless, the circumstances are suspicious as hell

edit: I realized I forgot to mention this part but it’s also so suspicious how everyone, the police, the media, whatever, are all 100% certain that Luigi Mangione did it, I’ve seen so many high profile cases where cops do press conferences and say “this is America, the suspect is innocent until proven guilty!” yet they’re not even calling Luigi a suspect, they’re outright saying he is the shooter and that he did do it, that’s just weird to me