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rae-gar-targaryen · 2 years

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only smile in the dark [matt murdock x fem!reader]

A/N: Written for my darling Pheebs for our Discord’s Dicked-Down-December event.

Summary: You and your sometimes-antagonist, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, are snowed in together – in his apartment of all places – after he gets you out of a jam. Will the two of you survive the night? Or will you find some common ground?

Pairing: Matt Murdock x fem!black cat!reader (reader is a cat burglar and a minor antagonist to Matt Murdock, based on Felicia Hardy)

Word Count: 5.9k of the warm blanket of being snowed-in with your vigilante nemesis, of traded quips and loose lips.

Warnings: p-in-v sex, so 18+ ONLY, unprotected sex, sensory overload, dirty talk, oral (fem!receiving) not-so-hateful hatefucking, mild enemies to lovers, mild bondage, sacrilegious dialogue.

“We have got to stop meeting like this.”

You rolled your eyes beneath your Domino mask as you braced yourself for the approaching footsteps that carried the object of your annoyance from behind you and into your view, bent over the safe as you were, hand poised to deliver the final crack.

Sure enough, onto your field of view came the crimson boots (and everything else attached to them) of your – was arch-nemesis too dramatic? – your whatever he was… Erstwhile annoyance. Masked menace. Devastating devil. – No, not devastating. Stop it.

You spun on your heel, flipping the long hair of the silver wig over your shoulder.

“Hi, Devil-Boy,” you curled your fingers in a flirtatious little wave. “Fancy seeing you here.”

He scoffed, stopping in front of you and crossing his arms over his chest. You could just imagine the disapproval in his eyes behind the foggy cherry glass of the mask.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he gestured to the grandiose room. Here. The study in Fisk’s Hell’s Kitchen-based secondary office. Where you had made your mark to pick up some valuable information for a client (and maybe some valuable stones in the safe – call it a finder’s fee – for yourself). You'd certainly made a name for yourself as one of the most proficient cat burglars – ugh, you'd hated that phrase … try proficient diamond thief – in the city.

You prided yourself on remaining undetected. On the quick inside time for your deliverables. But, well, sometimes… unfortunate incidents occurred.

“And you should?” you raised an eyebrow at your current unfortunate incident, replete with horned mask. You propped a hip against the desk of this ostentatious office, pretending to examine your manicured nails through the black leather of your gloves. “Tell me, Red-Dead, what’s the going rate for your oh-so-noble vigilantism? I guarantee it isn't as high as for my services. So let's not waste my time. Is this the part where you ask me, ‘What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?’”

The devil from your dreams, whom you'd had the unfortunate misfortune to run into on several nights just like this one stepped toward you. Head slightly inclined, as though he were a bull gearing up to charge. And if you had been one of those arms-dealing goons he beat up on the regular, or perhaps a Russian mobster, or a Fisk goon, you might have felt intimidated.

No. Your run-ins with the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen had been much more – could you call them pleasant? He had broken up a few of your smaller-time heists, letting you off with a slap on the wrist after a tussle that had left you weak in the knees. And who wouldn’t be? After trading quips and blows – don’t think about ‘blows’ – with a man whose firm thighs between your own felt as though they could crack walnuts when you had rolled on top of him during a prior fight. Whose suit made his chest look that much more expansive.

No, your exchanges were coy and cloying. And they ended much the same: in a half-hearted tease of a fight that left you with an ache between your legs and his sinful, syrupy voice warning you that he "wouldn't let you off so easy next time" reverberating through your ears for the rest of the night. That left you with the lingering temptation to slide your hands beneath your expensive covers when you were safely back in your lush apartment, imagining his hands instead of yours gliding through your glistening folds. Imagining his voice, still in your ear.

Wondering if he was imagining you. If he dreamt of the way you teasingly left a trail of crimson lipstick smeared up the cheek of his mask as you dragged your lips there, murmuring that this was no way to treat a lady. If he imagined the way you flexed your fingers, like a cat's claws, up the expanse of his chest when you bested him in a fight, wishing you could feel the drag of your nails along his skin instead of his armoured suit. If the click of your heeled boots as you sauntered through an open window – tossing him a wink before slipping away into the night – reverberated in his mind.

You supposed you would never know.

The energy between the two of you had always been thick, like dusky clouds impregnated with rain in a summer storm – waiting to fall, waiting to devastate. Stuffed with the smell of sagebrush and cleansing promise.

And if you’d managed a successful little robbery? Well, were you disappointed if he didn’t show up to chase you off with pulled punches and heaving chest? –

“Oh no, sweetheart,” He smiled, snapping you from your risqué reveries with a sardonic grin of bared teeth beneath his mask. “I know what kind of girl you are. And I know what you’re doing in a place like this. No need to ask.”

“That's disappointing. Of all the so-called heroes running around this city in Spandex, like a bunch of moral high ground losers, I don't know why I ended up with you. And I don’t know why you insist on trying to get in my way,” you hissed through the bared teeth of a forced grin. “I’m a perfectly reasonable girl, Devil. I don’t get in your way. You shouldn’t get in mine.”

“Honey, this isn’t Spandex.” He half-heartedly made to reach for you with an outstretched hand – which you swatted in kind, procuring a small blade with your other hand and bringing it to his throat.

He swallowed, the edge of your blade snicking against the skin of his throat as he swallowed.

“I can’t just,” he began, swallowing once more before swatting at your wrist with a gloved hand, knocking the blade away from his throat, and boxing you into the desk, “I can’t just let you take shit that doesn’t belong to you. And girls like you don’t play nice.”

“You could, Devil. And so could I,” you shrugged, meeting the glass eyepieces of his mask with wide, doe eyes of your own, fluttering your lashes. “I’d be ever-so-grateful if you just let this one slide?” You glanced out the window, inclining your head at the thick, fluttering flakes that were starting to fall in the New York chill. “I’ve gotta get home, and, baby, it’s cold outside.”

"You –" the Devil stopped himself, tilting his head like a dog listening to a whistle only he could hear, full lips parting as he took in whatever it was he was hearing.

"D-" you began, curious about his sudden pause, trying not to prickle like a skittish cat.

"Shut. Up.," he hissed, snatching your wrist and tugging you from your spot by the desk, marching you past the exposed face of the safe you had been stopped from cracking, and toward the wide window of the office. "They're here."

"Who's here?" You questioned, attempting to tug your wrist free from his tightening hold, to no avail.

The Daredevil appraised you, the tilt of his mask indicating a sweeping survey of your person before continuing,

"Fisk's men. All of them. And they're looking for you. I think you've been set up, sweetheart… Yeah, that's," he swallowed. "That's a lot of heartbeats downstairs. And outside." More to himself than you.

You raised a brow at him again, sardonic. Heartbeats? Doing your best to bite down the panic currently climbing within you with the thin veneer of a sneering grin.

"Then let go of me and let me get out of here," you tugged at your wrist in his grip.

"That's not gonna work, kitten," he responded, wryly. "We've only got a few seconds. I can get you outta here, but you've gotta trust me."

"Trust you?" You hissed, "The guy who tries to turn me in after every little tango? How about …" you tapped a spare finger to your chin, as though deep in thought, "hell no."

"We don't have time for this," he pleaded. "I'm not gonna sell you out to Fisk," he sneered the name through a curled lip. "I'd rather rot."

You studied him for the barest moment, the tenseness in his shoulders at the approaching threat. The warmth of his grip around you, even though the gloves. The clear, demonstrable distaste for Fisk evident in his voice, in the exposed lower-half of his face, the set of his jaw. How he’d always let you go before.

"Fine," you whispered. "I'm trusting you. On a probationary basis. Get me somewhere safe."

Which was how you found yourself stealing away on snow-covered rooftops, the packed powder muffling your steps, and all traces of your journey wiped away in the weather. As you shivered in your bodysuit behind the man leading you through a rooftop window and into an expansive loft space. An apartment.

You strode into the open space of a living room, eyeing the wide windows and exposed brick.

“Nice digs, Devil,” you whistled. “This, like, your safe-house?”

“No,” his voice echoed not-so-distantly behind you as he also made his way down the stairs and into the common area. “Though that would have been much smarter.”

“Don’t tell me you live here?” You whirled around as you watched the Devil remove his gloves, tossing them into a trunk and exposing fine-boned, long-fingered hands, shrugging his shoulders at you, turning his head as if to gesture to the now-storm outside.

“Not up to your standards?” He mocked. “Sorry. It’s not exactly the Plaza. But it was close by. And no one will know you’re here.”

You perched yourself on the edge of his couch, feeling distinctly out of place in a lived-in place with your catsuit, wig, and mask. A clash of ideals. Not unlike you and the man before you.

“Is it wise,” you arched your brow at him, voice acerbic, “to bring someone like me into your home …?”

You leaned forward on the couch, eyeing a stack of mail and papers on the coffee table. And though the Devil seemed to be observing your plain-sight snooping, he made no move to stop you. You leaned forward,

“Matt Murdock,” you finished, reading the name off of the envelopes. Why was that name familiar to you?

The Devil – Matt Murdock – removed his helmet, allowing you to take in the man behind the mask. Pretty dark hair, matted by the helmet, a strong jaw, full lips. Fringed lashes framing hazel eyes that seemed to … look right past you.

Oh.

“Well I suppose my identity remains intact,” you tried to gently tease, removing your Domino mask and your wig, settling yourself into his couch, as he made to remove the rest of his stiff armour.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that, kitten,” he turned to face you again, breezing past you through the space and clattering with a tea kettle, of all things.

While the kettle brewed, he scooped a Braille paper from the countertop, slapping it down in front of you, and reading your father’s last name from the headline.

“And here you are,” he finished, “the daughter of a tycoon who likes to get her rocks off stealing Upper East Siders’ jewelry. Moonlighting as a cat burglar. I’ve known since we met.”

Your breath hitched, your eyes trailing over Matt’s form. The evenness of his voice. He was confident, assured. No question in his assessment of you. You’d balk at it, at the fear that should prickle through you at knowing who you were. But… he hadn’t done anything with that information til now, had he?

“In that alleyway behind that stuffy old coot’s apartment?” You queried.

“Oh, sure,” he eased. “Girl like you doesn’t often go to that part of town. I recognized your perfume. And the way you sound walking in heels. Like I said, we’ve met before.”

You lifted yourself from the couch easily, swooping past Matt to kick off your heeled boots by the door. You may as well make yourself comfortable, follow his lead, if he wasn’t going to kick you out into the snow or otherwise turn you in. Easing into his kitchen to remove the now-whistling kettle from the heat, processing where you might know Matt Murdock from.

“We didn’t go on a date, surely? I might have remembered. You’re certainly handsome, though I’m sure you hear that all the time.”

Matt chuckled at that, a dry, wry rumble from his throat, as he scruffed the back of his sweaty neck with his palm, using his other hand to unstick the clinging fabric of his undersuit from his skin.

“No,” he snorted. “We didn’t go out. I’d definitely remember if we had,” he accepted the cup of tea you now passed him.

“Then …” you eyed him over the rim of your own mug, which boasted, in loud text “World’s Best Lawyer.”

It clicked.

“Matt Murdock,” you breathed, “the attorney with a hard-on for bringing down Wilson Fisk. Yeah, you were –”

“At the gala. That political event for bigwigs who wanted to raise money for their campaigns to sweep crime out of Hell’s Kitchen. We met,” his sentences were punctuated. “Briefly. Your dress was killer, by the way.”

“How…?” You made to ask just how the blind, humble pro bono lawyer from the nighttime news could exactly tell that you looked killer in your Yves Saint Laurent gown. Or how he could pull off that ninja shit night after night.

“Devil’s gotta have his secrets, sweetheart,” he eased, fixing you with a cheeky wink.

Trying to figure the Devil – Matt Murdock – was like trying to catch light in your fingertips as though it were a tangible thing. Toying with dust motes that appeared when you opened the blinds in a dark room. Impossible, devastating, however pretty it may be. And Matt was a do-gooder. Trying to make the city better.

Whereas, you…

A bored little rich girl whose job wasn’t exactly above-board. No, the light seemed to be ever out of your reach – dooming you to a life of shadow. Of secrecy. So, you could respect that he wanted to keep his.

“Fine,” you rolled your eyes. “Don’t tell me. I can take the couch, then. I’ll be outta your hair by morning”

You made to settle yourself into the cushions, as though you were queuing him to leave.

“Please, sweetheart,” Matt urged, coming to stand before you now, his hands making their way to your hips.

And it was different from the ways in which he had touched you before – different from your traded blows and quips. Different from the way he would swat at your ass playfully during a fight. Different from the playful tension laden in his voice when he encountered you before. And yet – it was the same. As though all of those run-ins were building to something.

And yeah, it was no secret you enjoyed teasing the Devil. Enjoyed taunting him, toying with him, allowing your touch to linger too long when you departed from him on any given evening. But Matt?

You eyed the crucifix peeking its way from his tight undershirt.

What an altar boy, you thought. No way he would actually want someone like you. Someone who toyed with people with bored, careless fingertips. Someone who broke things because she wanted to.

You allowed yourself to be brought into Matt’s arms,

“At least take the bed,” he urged, finally. “I’ll find you some sweats.”

You snorted at that.

“You just wanna get me out of my suit,” you teased. Eager to restore the balance to what you knew – the quipping banter of antagonists, and not this … blooming flush between the two of you, reflected on the apples of his cheeks at your quip. At the thought of getting you naked.

“I mean,” he recovered. “You say that like it’d be a bad thing.”

“I suspect,” you murmured, trailing your fingers over the peaks of Matt’s face, while his hands tightened on your waist, “that you’re smoother than you let on, Matthew Murdock.”

Matt’s lips met yours then, causing your eyes to flutter shut and snatching the breath from your lungs. He kissed you as though you were sacrosanct. As though the movement of his lips over yours was a prayer he had recited hundreds of times, and would recite hundreds more. At your gasp, he slid his tongue into your mouth, his hands coming to cup your face as he kissed you.

You allowed your hands to roam his body, to feel the firmness of his chest unencumbered by the Devil suit, to appreciate the warmth, the realness of his beating heart beneath the skin of your palms through his thin shirt.

You could barely contain yourself, as the storm raged outside, it building inside of you with every pass of Matt’s hands along your form, with every press of his lips to yours. And it seemed the same was true for Matt.

His hands found his way to the front of your catsuit, easing the zipper down with a smooth, zinging slide, allowing his fingertips to ease in to trail along the skin as it became exposed.

Oh. And if the heat of the room hadn’t been building before, you could certainly feel it now, as you allowed yourself to explore Matt in kind, whimpering at the touch of his hands along the curves of your breasts, the ridges of your ribs. Pulling your lips from his and allowing your eyes to wander as your hands trailed to his waist and to the front of his pants, stroking the outline of his hardness there with tentative touch.

"Not here," Matt's lips left your skin from where they had since been working on your neck, murmuring into your throat. At your quizzical groan, he continued. "Don't be petulant, sweetheart. I'm going to fuck you. Just not here."

In a flurry of feverish movement and stripped layers, Matt had ushered you into his bedroom, urging you down onto his mattress, his lips never leaving yours as he guided you on top of him, with nothing but your panties and a feverish grin as you rolled your hips over Matt’s, relishing in the feel of him, as you knew he was doing to you.

You scratched along his skin with your nails, kissing and sucking his neck as you continued to grind yourself on Matt’s clothed cock.

Quick as a flash, Matt flipped the two of you, a groan catching in his throat at the feel of the weight of you beneath him now, pulling your lips from him and allowing himself to appreciate you, in his bed, in his home …

Matt's fingers stroke along the peak of your cheekbone in a reverent way, a way befitting of a devout man. But the silken touch is also wrong -- it doesn't bely that he's not the sort of man who wraps a hand around your throat when he fucks you (he would), or like he's not the sort of man who gets down on his knees to unravel you with his clever, silver tongue (he is).

But the clean baritone of his voice an ever- pleasant rumble that caressed and ensnared you. Every time you meet. But especially now.

“I’m going to fuck you, sweetheart.”

You could melt. That's the Devil you were expecting.

Matt had removed his shirt, arms crossed as he lifted the fabric from his delightfully muscled torso. Your fingers keen to follow as you trace the planes of his chest.

Your nails caught along the edge of his nipples as your palms skated their way upward, reveling in the choked gasp that ripped its way through his throat at the feeling.

Matt cupped your face with firm hands, guiding you down into his plush, satin-y comforter as his mouth devoured yours. The fabric sang along your skin as you allowed yourself to sink beneath his spell – a servant to the Devil’s whims, as Matt’s hands trailed along your body.With clever tongue – which really could only benefit him as an attorney, right? – and teasing touch, he seemed intent on unraveling you without so much as posing a question. Matt’s heated fingers made their way along your own bare chest, exposed to the wintery-coolness of the room, your nipples pebbling.

You choked on gasps as he made his way down your body, his mouth trailing from yours, to your neck, pressing kisses to your breasts and laving his tongue around your nipple before rendering one with a particularly cruel suck, departing with lips more swollen than before, the popping noise echoing in both of your ears.

And you wondered if the heaving of your chest, the headiness of your breath, was overwhelming to him. In the way that he was overwhelming to you.

Overwhelming was a good word for it. As thick fingers drew their way across the seam of lace adorning your clothed slit, causing you to wriggle in his grasp, the reciprocal shudder from Matt’s body was all the confirmation you needed. He was just as turned on as you.

Turned on by the feel of your skin beneath his fingertips. Wrecked by the sound of your gasps in his ears. Besotted with the taste of you beneath his tongue. Intoxicated by the feeling of your mouth on his.

He had been afraid this would happen with you. Had he learned nothing from before? With Ele– not the time.

And Matt felt everything to an impossible degree, he knew. But if only he knew how it was almost flattering to have it confirmed for you ... if the way he was now slowly bucking his hips into the bedspread when you threaded your fingers through his hair and tugged was any indication. Seeking friction that would feel far rougher, far better, than it had any business feeling, thanks to his heightened senses.

“I’ll give you what you want,” he murmured, keening into your tugging touch while he worked his way down the planes and curves of your body.

Grinding himself into the bed as he went, as he buried himself in the cleft of your thighs, the flash of his hot tongue like cracking summer lightning, jolting through you from the very center as he licked a long, sweet stripe along the seam of your clothed cunt.

And it seemed reciprocal, you noted, as he rolled his hips into his bedspread in kind – taking in the feel of you beneath his fingertips as your hips and thighs rolled and writhed beneath his attentions as he continued to lick you. The song of your whimpers sweetly ringing through your ears as he felt himself harden in his boxers.

Thick fingers traced the slick, heated flesh of your center as you felt Matt draw the lace away from you, your arousal clinging to your panties in glistening strands as he pulled them to the side with something like reverence. Fully baring you to him.

And if you’d thought the first hinting taste of his mouth on you, your clothed cunt, was heavenly – saintlike and sweet, you had never imagined he could make you feel like this – The lavish, attention with which he was now devouring you, your bared slit. Matt's mouth worked your pussy, like singing a hymn, like an apostle breaking his fast – a man of singular focus. Possessed by the scent of your arousal, the taste of your slick on his tongue as he continued to work you.

It was enough to make you infatuated. Obsessed with the devil you longed to know.

The feel of him was like the slow drip and drizzle of honey, the snap of cinnamon – warm, sweet, and tingling. Swirling tongue and sickly heat.

"Come on, devil, give it to me bad," you purred, teasing the man beneath you with a buck of your hips, reveling in the sensation and rolling them up, seeking the friction you craved, your hands still in his hair. Losing yourself in the repetitive feel of heady, sweet attentions of his tongue.

A particularly clever lick-and-suck tore a moan from your throat, prompting Matt to part from you, to pause the moment to allow himself to savor all of his senses – his own chest heaving and cheeks flushed with the attention he had wrought on you.

“I’ll give it to you, sweetheart,” he pressed a kiss to your thigh, chasing it with a nip of teeth. “Only if you’ll be sweet.”

You rolled your eyes, head lolling against the feathery plush of the Devil – Matthew’s – pillow, “I said I would, didn’t I?” You puffed, exasperation coloring your voice, rolling your hips again.

You made to tug Matthew up to you, urging his hips with the legs you had wrapped around him, trying to tug him with willing arms and wanton fingertips.

It punched the air from your lungs when Matthew struck – like a coiled viper wrapping its body around its prey – warm, dangerously snug, as he rolled his body up and over yours, gripping your wrists in one of his firm hands, bringing them up and over your head, rendering you helpless to him.

And the feel of him above you, heated and firm, a wall of muscle leaving you immobile beneath him – reciprocal to him, as he relished in your softness, your pliance. Like a curving crescent moon bends for the sky.

“Close your eyes, kitten,” he purred, his lips gracing the shell of your ear, a tempest rumbling in his chest, urging its way through his voice.

And you had no choice to obey.

Allowing your eyelids to flutter shut as you acquiesced to your other senses overtaking you, the silken feel of one of Matthew’s – was it a tie? Something he’d wear to court? – traipsing over the bare skin of your arms. Up, up, up as it closed around the wrists still held over your head. Matthew was tying you to his headboard. And you were letting him.

You were sure Matt didn't mind. You could just imagine the sharp half-grin that quirked onto his face at the feel of you tied to his bed, his skin beneath yours. His smile was cold, quick, assured. Devilish.

You had accepted earlier in the night that you would never truly know all of Matt Murdock. Whether he was the Devil, or not. That there were parts of his personhood he wouldn't deign to share. Those things weren't for you, after all. But you couldn't quite bring yourself to care at this moment, when he shared what was simultaneously everything and enough, as he held you on the edge after licking your pussy like a man starved, his hardness pressing to your center through his boxers as he loomed over you now.

The rasp of his hands trailing up the smooth skin of your torso sang beneath his palms; the faintest of whispers to you, but a chorus of amorous intention to Matt Murdock's perfect ears.

"Tell me everything you feel," Matt whispered, snugly affixing the knot to your wrists, pressing a kiss to the tender skin there and affirming they weren’t bound too tightly.

“And what do you feel Matt?" you couldn't resist the urge to sass back as you indulged in the sight of your now-paramour peeling his boxers from his body, taking his length into his own hand and stroking himself to the sight of you tied to his bed.

"I feel … Everything. But I wanna hear it from you,” Matt took your sass as acquiescence, allowing his free hand to rove the planes and curves of your stomach and waist, to drag themselves through the wetness gathered at your center –retreating with your slick on his fingers. “I won't give you what you want until you tell me what I want to know," he paused, allowing your eyes to linger on him before he sucked his own finger into his full lips to taste you once more.

“You’re like honey, honey.”

Your residual whimper at the sinful sight before you was something Matt was sure he would re-play in his mind over and over on the nights he had trouble sleeping – he had a lot of those.

“I’ll tell you, baby,” you assured. “Please, just fuck me.”

And who was Matt to refuse such a polite request? Your legs spread for him, the crotch of your panties tugged to the side, the sound of your heaving chest, your blood thrumming beneath your veins, heated and singing for him. Of your wrists straining against his necktie – how much more could a man take?

Matt took himself into his hand once more, spreading the glistening lips of your pussy and guiding himself into your heat, rolling his hips to allow himself to be seated fully inside of your tightness – a broken groan shattering its way through his throat, his lashes fluttering.

You whimpered at the fullness of him inside of you.

“You feel…,” Matt trailed off, his breath hitching, as you rolled your hips to meet his, cunning and keyed.

“Like heaven?” You teased, voice full of mirth, and perhaps a bit of pride at rendering the man above you speechless.

“That’s sacrilegious,” Matt breathed, as he began to thrust into you in earnest.

“What’s a little light sacrilege between sinners, Devil?” You hiccupped, your wrists straining as you urged to grasp any part of the man above you, the drag of him inside of you more than you could bear, the heat between the two of you, the tingling pleasure inside of you, building – ever-building…

“Yeah?” Matt breathed, “You want me to make you see God?”

“Forget it.” You would have been embarrassed at the keening whine that Matt’s attentions were wringing from you, but you couldn’t bring yourself to give any semblance of a damn, so long as he kept doing that. “Fuuuuuck,” you whined, “who wants that when I have the devil in my bed?"

"You like that," Matt murmured in your ear, as he thrummed at your clit in time with his trusts.

It wasn't a question.

Mesmerized, stupefied, you stuttered a cracked, “Y-yes.” You tugged your wrists against where they’re tied to the bed, your senses leaving you as you longed to touch him, to push, to give back to him as good as you were getting. You weren’t used to being in the passenger seat.

"You like that I'm bad, as long as I'm good to you, that how it works?" Matt crooned.

“Fuck, Matt,” you whined, “stop toying with me and make me come,” you pleaded.

“Yeah?” he parroted, “You mean like you toy with me? Can you be a good girl? You're supposed to tell me what you feel." Clearly referencing the way you were still straining your wrists at your bonds, raising an eyebrow at your defiance. Nevertheless, he would acquiesce.

Matt’s thumb was circling your clit in time with his thrusts before breaking from you, skating his heated palm up your body to your heaving tits, pinching your nipple as he continued to fuck you toward your peak.

“Mhmm,” you whined, your head tilting back, pressed into Matt’s pillows. Pressed into his sheets – the scent of you, the essence of you, embedding itself there – certain, Matt thought, to haunt him for many nights after this one.

"You feel …" your breath hitched at the ferocity of his thrusts, doing your best to keep your voice even, the edge of a whine skirting it. Though you were sure Matt could tell. "You feel so good, baby. You're so good. I l-love the way your cock feels inside of me. M-make me come, Matty, please?"

And who was he to refuse such a request? Your praises flooded Matt's ears, prickling in his blood, as he turned his attention back to your clit then, reveling in the feel of you tightening around him as he fucked you to your approaching climax.

“C’mon, kitten,” he urged, “c’mon then,” relinquishing your hip from his bruising grip, he brought his hand up, gripping your throat to feel the reverberation of your release through the song of your skin, melting into his. The clever fingers of his other hand stroking your clit as you shattered beneath him, your release soaking his cock, your pussy like a vice around him as you worked your way through the blinding heat of your orgasm. Matthew’s release following at the overwhelming sensation of you, the wet heat of constricting his every sense as he allowed himself to let go. Discipline melding to desire as he filled you. Fucking himself into you through his own orgasm.

“Whoa,” you exhaled, as Matthew allowed himself to slump over you as his pulsing release gently subsided, the flutter of your lashes along his skin as he shuffled his now heavy and tired arms up to release you from his headboard.

He rolled to the side of you, skin sliding against satin sheets as he pulled you to him.

“And to think,” you murmured, massaging the skin of your wrists and pressing a kiss to Matthew’s temple, settling in beside him, “we could have been doing that the entire time.

He hmm’d into your skin in agreement, nuzzling your neck with his nose, pressing a kiss to the tender skin beneath your ear.

“Getting here was fun,” he acquiesced, allowing you to feel the curve of his smiling lips against the skin of your neck. "There's a fine line between –"

"Don't you dare say 'love and hate,'" you groaned.

Matthew smiled again, rolling to press his lips to yours in a teasing kiss.

"I was going to say 'between fucking and fighting,' but if you love me…"

"Shut up," you shoved his shoulder, knowing he could appreciate a little extra force behind your touch. "I hate you, Matthew."

He stilled, and you worried for the briefest moment that you had gone too far. You didn't actually hate him, after all. Surely, he had to know that…

"Say it again," his hands cupped your face gently as his mossy eyes glimmered in the low light of his room. "My name, sweetheart. Say it again?"

"Matthew," you sighed, trailing your hands through his hair, pleased with the silken feel of his strands between delicate fingers, as though he was always meant to be touched by you. You eased up to press a kiss to his lips. "Mystifying, magnificent, magnanimous Matthew."

He sighed in contentment, before quirking his lips at you, tilting his head into your touch, "And what does that make you?"

"Murderous," you quipped, flashing a toothy grin that he could hear through the falling darkness in his bedroom, through the heated drip in your voice. "And what'll you do about it, devil-boy?"

“You know I’ll catch you,” he breathed, allowing himself to ease beside you, the heavy weight of his limbs, of the feeling of you, soothing him. Your collective easy breathing allowing him to begin to lull…

The last thing Matthew heard was your sardonic singsong, “Promises, promises…” toying in his ears as he drifted off to sleep, the weighted heat of you in his arms – real, full, and flush.

And when Matt awoke, in the early hours of the morning, to the frigid, crisp smell of fresh-fallen snow, he felt it, singing in his nose through the glass of the windows in his apartment. Untouched, unblemished. And he felt – emptiness. His apartment was devoid of heat, of pulse – other than his own. As Matt realized that you had gone sometime in the night. The fresh-fallen snow covering your tracks from the fire escape as you had slipped away. Through his fingers, yet again.

He scrubbed his face with his hand, his phone pinging with a notification as he urged his software to read the text,

“See you real soon, Devil. Next time I tie you up.”

Oh, Foggy was never going to believe this.

tagging: @withahappyrefrain @drew-garfi @p3mybeloved @spidervee @maxmayfield @xbamboowishesx @wicked-blathers @jadore-andor @mrshipsmcgee @abibliophobiaa @friendly-neighborhood-blondie @mortwig @squiddtheekidd @lilacvine @liz-allyn @renaroo123 @blooming-violets @inklore @clints-lucky-arrow @lucy-sky @flightlessangelwings @vaxxildan @ouralcohol @thatredheadwriter @moonlight-prose @zombieaurora @andrewrussgarfield @aphrogeneias @luxuryberzatto @ifimayhaveaword @phoenixhalliwell @wvndasmaximoff @deskofninak @levylovegood @holyheadharpies99 @papaya-047 @alexxavicry

#matt murdock x reader #my writing #only smile in the dark #matt murdock #charlie cox #matt murdock x you #daredevil x reader #daredevil x you #daredevil smut #matt murdock smut #marvel fic #daredevil fic #matt murdock x fem!reader

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prying-pandora666 · 6 months

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You highly dislike Netflix because of the hostile work environments and the crunch time, that's fine. But then why did you accept their invite to attend the NATLA premier? Just curious.

No worries! I can answer.

I didn’t know the extent of it yet and thought to go so I could honestly report on the first episode. Which I did.

I am a creator but I’m also a diehard fan. I wanted to give it a fair shot and was hoping for the best.

I had my misgivings (Bryke’s statements and Netflix’s bizarre radio silence on the Ousley controversy), but I didn’t know the extent of the problems.

After watching the show and seeing the telltale signs for myself, as well as several other people in these fields coming forward saying they saw the same signs (wig makers, costumers, make up artists, VFX artists, set designers, choreographers, cinematographers, editors, translators, etc) it became clear that what I was seeing about the parts of production *I* am more experienced in (writing, directing, and acting) was a problem across the production.

Reports about streaming service crunch times and the pressure to shove in as many references and plot points as possible painted a clearer picture.

I had hoped the poor quality of the product would speak for itself and audiences would reject it and send a message to these companies. Tragically, it found a fanbase starved for any content and with standards lowered by the Shyamalan film. So here we are.

I don’t know how we even begin to solve the problems in this industry. It’s natural to want to engage with entertainment. But as long as a handful of studios monopolize every IP—our collective creative culture—then there’s no incentive for them to actually improve.

It’s a loss for workers and a loss for audiences.

I can only hope that Avatar Studios will give us fantastic content and bring the franchise back on track, while treating their production staff better!

#lucia says

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doctors-journal · 4 months

Text

5 June

There was no word from the detective until late yesterday afternoon, or maybe early evening, when there was a knock at the door to the flat. I answered it to find a balding, middle aged man—in good health. I guessed he was some sort of businessman. He said he had come to see the detective about the case.

“He’s out,” I replied. “I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

“He told me to come and wait for him,” the man insisted, quickly becoming agitated. “He said he would come.”

“Fine.” I let the man inside.

He sat restlessly in the detective’s usual chair in the living room. He looked like he was ready to jump up at any moment.

I had just begun to ask what it was exactly he had come to talk to the detective about. I must have glanced away from him, though I don’t think it was for more than a moment, because the next time I looked over, the balding middle-aged man was gone and the detective was sitting in his place. He was still wearing the businessman’s featureless suit and he still looked healthier, less undernourished, but his short, dark hair was back, wild from being kept underneath a wig, and his face was unmistakable.

He gave another little bow at my obvious astonishment.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

I think I caught another grin, though he quickly suppressed it. “The case deepens, my dear Doctor.”

With that, he disappeared into his room and soon reemerged in one of his usual tightly fitted suits that showed off his collarbone and suggested at the rest. Liza was right; he isn’t bad looking, but the haggard lines of malnourishment in his face also seemed all the sharper for their previous absence.

“A brief supper and then it is time to bring this case to a resolution,” he declared.

I joined him at the table.

As we both picked at the other day’s leftovers, he elaborated, gesturing widely with his fork. “A plaster bust is not the only object of apparent inconsequence which has been done away with—all within the same block of flats. It suggests madness, does it not, Doctor, but I fear there is a more sinister method behind it. There must be something of great value indeed, and craftily hidden, by a former resident perhaps, for someone to go to such trouble to find it. I intend to catch them in the act tonight, and if it is amenable to you, your assistance would be invaluable.”

I couldn’t have said what assistance he had in mind, but with nothing else I can do, I agreed to come along.

“Excellent!” he exclaimed, pushing away from the table and onto his feet. “Your present costume should suffice, but bring your old service revolver; there may be some danger.”

“What?” I demanded, standing up after him to take our dishes to the sink. “I don’t have a revolver.”

“Then we will just have to rely upon our wits.”

I left the dishes in the sink for later, shrugged on my coat, and followed him out into the cool night.

There was a thick blanket of clouds overhead, tinged orange with the lights of the city. The detective steered me to the bus stop where we waited in silence, his hand still lingering on my shoulder. The bus was empty for most of the trip; what people there were staring at their phones or out into the dark evening—even the orange street lights a stark contrast with the bright inside of the bus.

I could only wonder what I was getting myself into, but the detective was among those lost in his phone and said nothing more.

We got off in what may as well have been another city entirely; the brick townhouses replaced by old, concrete mid-rises, with each balcony telling a different life’s story. I caught a whiff of something cooking: a barbecue rich with spices that almost smelled like it could have drifted in through the door of the field hospital as I worked through the night.

Unfortunately, the scent couldn’t follow us through the insulated door, into the fluorescent-lit lobby—somehow, the detective knew the code to get in. There was no one there; it was just a narrow space between the doors and the stairs. The only sound was the whirr of the air system and the echoing squeak of our shoes against the linoleum. The musty smell of age was half-heartedly covered up with a lemony antiseptic.

The detective led the way up the white-washed stairwell. We padded along each floor, trying to walk as quietly as we could across the thin, grey carpeting, and pausing to listen for any sound of a disturbance. We heard snatches of conversation and the noise of life as we passed by a hundred-some flats but nothing that sounded worth breaking a door in.

When we had gone all the way up, we returned back down, checking again in each hall, until finally we were back in the lobby where we had started. Silently, the detective motioned me over to a door next to the stairwell. He took out a pin and worked it into the lock, and a moment later, the door was open.

Inside was another staircase leading down into the dark. A much stronger dank, musty smell emanated from within, accompanied by the low rattling of machinery. Rows of small metal pipes ran along the walls, down into the dark and up into the wall to carry essential fluids into the flats above.

The detective grabbed tightly onto my wrist with a cold hand as we slowly descended. The door closed with a clink behind us, and his torch flickered on, forming a small pool of light around us that held the darkness at bay at the same time as it made the dark that remained that much more impenetrable. It wasn’t so different from the power outages at the hospital, but I could still hear the machinery—all essential functions still operable.

At the bottom of the stairs, the small pipes along the walls joined with a handful of larger ones, each almost a foot wide. The orange torch light glided across a row of cylinders, each almost as tall as the low ceiling and wider than the detective and I put together. In the middle of the room were several large metal boxes with faded yellow warning signs. All of the labels on everything were torn and faded, and everything was buried underneath a layer of dust, including the cobwebs draped across the corners and between the humming machinery.

The detective’s hand stayed firmly around my wrist and we kept close together so that we wouldn’t get separated in the dark. His quick breathing sounded in my ear and when we bumped together, his breath ghosted across my cheek, making the fine hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

Our slow, shuffling footsteps echoed against the metal equipment and concrete walls. Every few paces, we stopped, our ears straining as the detective swung his torch around the room, throwing tall, stark shadows against the walls.

“Aha!” the detective breathed, turning the torch upon the ground at our feet.

There were muddy scuff marks on the floor.

He briefly knelt down to examine them more closely. “Still fresh.”

We took another couple of steps forward into the dark, lingering on gaps in the thick dust that covered everything. I don’t know if I heard the sound first or saw the sudden jerk of the torchlight.

Something scraped against metal. The detective jerked the torch around again. But the only thing standing there were more cylinders and pipes, draped in cobwebs. It was like a labyrinth with infinitely many dark corners in which to hide.

The detective had just started to pull me forward, toward the source of the sound, when we heard another scuffling motion coming from the other side. The detective took a slow, quiet step toward it, and then another. The sound of movement came again, faster, echoing around the room.

The detective bolted for it and there was a cacophony of shuffling footsteps echoing around the room punctuated with half-human silhouettes dancing in flashes of torchlight. Someone gave a loud yelp. I tried to follow the light and sound but only ended up adding to the noise as I stumbled around hard metal corners in the dark. I jolted against something hard as the echoes rose to a crescendo.

“Stop right there!” the detective shouted.

The searing light caught me in the eyes as I fumbled to steady myself against a dusty old pipe.

“Doctor! Did you see where he went?”

I shook my head mutely.

Any need for subtlety gone, the detective switched on the lights. They hummed to life, casting the basement in a flickering, orange glow that cast long, dark shadows across the room. I didn’t see anyone and the only sound was the detective catching his breath—though I wondered if there wasn’t just an echo, but someone else panting in the recesses of the room.

Slowly, we traced our way back around, stopping at the slightest sound or flicker of movement in the corner of our eyes. But that was all we heard or saw of him. We stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

“He must still be down here,” the detective whispered into my ear. “We would have heard him if he came out through the door. We just have to wait. He’ll have to come out eventually.”

The detective turned off the lights, and we inched back up the stairs by torchlight, keeping an eye on the bottom just in case. At the top, the detective tugged me with him to sit down on the top step, our backs against the door, pressed shoulder to shoulder. The detective turned off his torch too, so the only light came in through the dusty window, barely illuminating the rest of the short staircase.

“What will you do if you catch him?” I breathed, when it was clear we hadn’t been followed.

“We will have a little talk,” the detective replied cryptically, and that was that.

It was impossible to tell how long we were sitting there. Below, I heard the rattle of machinery and scuffling movement, but no one came to the foot of the stairs. Eventually, the detective’s rigid back relaxed, until his head fell on my shoulder in a deep sleep. I expect he needed the rest.

It was morning by the time he woke up, muttering expletives under his breath.

“No one has come up,” I said as the detective glanced at his phone.

“You were awake?”

I nodded. “I’m used to long nights at the hospital.” But I wasn’t able to stifle a yawn.

The detective turned back on the lights, and we did another turn around down stairs, but we didn’t find anyone, not that there weren’t plenty of places to hide. Finally, we went back upstairs into the blindingly bright lobby.

“There is no use in waiting all day for a man who is plainly not coming up,” the detective said bitterly. “He may very well have another means of egress unknown to us, and now that he has been caught once, I expect he will be all the more careful in the future. We will have to find another way to corner him.”

#journaling #at least it's not the stupidest all nighter I've ever pulled by far #but now I'm due for some sleep

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rhianna · 4 months

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François Dumont - Portrait of Mademoiselle Marie-Anne Adelaide Le Normand - 1921.911 - Cleveland Museum of Art

Mademoiselle Marie-Anne Adelaide Le Normand, a famous Parisian fortune teller, was born in Alençon, France, between 1768 and 1772. Little is known of her early years, but by 1790 she had already established a strong following in Paris. Fortune telling was a highly lucrative field perhaps due to the extreme political unrest that permeated Paris in the 1790s. Although the practice of fortune telling was illegal at the time, people from the highest social classes sought Le Normand's services. She prophesied the bloody deaths of the French revolutionaries Maximilien Robespierre, Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, and Jean-Paul Marat when they visited her salon. Additionally, Alexandre Dumas was one of many to describe Le Normand's prediction of the monumental rise and fall of both Napoleon and his wife Josephine, who visited Le Normand's studio frequently. The fortune teller managed to retain her popularity through the Napoleonic era and the reign of King Charles X before retiring from Parisian life after correctly foretelling the outcome of the July Revolution in 1830. She moved back to Alençon and continued writing books of predictions until her death in 1843. Her greatest tangible legacy is a set of tarot cards known as the Blue Owl deck or Le Grand Jeu de Mlle. Le Normand. Grimaud, a self-proclaimed pupil of Le Normand, published the deck two years after her death. The accounts of Le Normand's physical appearance and her studio are almost as colorful as her predictions, and perhaps equally disputable. A description published in the late 1850s reported how "some thirty or forty volumes were arranged on the shelf against the wall, chiefly consisting of the works of the lady herself . . . Mademoiselle soon made her appearance-a short, fat little woman, with a ruddy face, overshadowed by the abundant curls of a flaxen wig, and surmounted by a semi-oriental turban, the rest of her attire being much in the style of a butter woman." Captain Rees Howell Gronow visited Le Normand between 1814 and 1830 and published his account in a book of recollections in 1865: "It was impossible for imagination to conceive a more hideous being. She looked like a monstrous toad, bloated and venomous. She had one walleye, but the other was a piercer. She wore a fur cap upon her head, from beneath which she glared out upon her horrified visitors. The walls of the room were covered with huge bats, nailed by their wings to the ceiling, stuffed owls, cabalistic signs, skeletons-in short, everything that was likely to impress a weak or superstitious mind." In "The Court of Napoleon," Frank Boot Goodrich noted that Le Normand's studio featured miniature portraits of the various rulers she patronized as well as a miniature of herself painted by Jean-Baptiste Isabey, court painter to Napoleon. The Cleveland Museum of Art's miniature does not reflect Le Normand's mythically monstrous appearance. She was in her early twenties when this miniature was painted. Perhaps the fortune teller chose François Dumont as the artist because he had recently produced several portraits of Marie-Antoinette, whom Le Normand admired greatly. Her dress and hairstyle here are reminiscent of the queen's in Dumont's 1792 portrait of her. A student of Jean Girardet, Dumont was one of the most exclusive French miniature painters of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and rendered many of the elite subjects of Le Normand's predictions; even if Dumont himself found no use for the prophetess's services, they certainly relied on similar clientele for their prosperity. The artist's inclusion of an owl eating a moth makes the CMA's miniature unusual. The owl often represents wisdom and was the companion of the ancient Greek goddess Athena. The ancient Romans were among many cultures to associate the nocturnal owl with the ability to predict death; even William Shakespeare called the bird of prey a "fatal bellman" in his play "Macbeth". These darker aspects of the owl make it an appropriate companion for Le Normand, who foretold the deaths of so many. Ashley Bartman (May 2014)

This all is from Wikimedia Commons

#portrait #fortune teller #france #wikimedia commons

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forlornmelody · 2 years

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Shepard as a Companion

I was tagged by the amazing @alyssalenko

I will tag: @bardofheartdive and @swaps55, if you want to play.

Gonna go a bit AWOL here and do my Clone Shep instead. Cause I can. :P

THE BASICS:

Shepard’s full name: She has many names, including: Ana Fields, Jane Shepard, Jane Doe, and Alison Gunn.

Class: Vanguard

Pre-service history: Uh, she didn’t exist yet. :P

Psychological profile: Initially a blank slate, The Shepard Clone was conditioned by Cerberus defector Hope Lilium.

MASS EFFECT 1: Clone Shep isn’t available as a companion until ME2 :P

When/how are they recruited:

Where are they on the Normandy:

Are they romanceable:

Personal quest:

Who are their friends:

MASS EFFECT 2:

Trained with remedial Asari in New Serrice, co-lead the Cat6 merc squad on Pragia.

What does their dossier say: “The CLONE.

Project Gemini

Genetic Duplicate of Shepard. Programmed with Shepard’s memories and likely trained to match Shepard’s abilities. Inexperienced and volatile.

Highly dangerous. Recruit or destroy. Marked for potential sale to the Collectors. Do not allow asset to fall into the Shadowbroker’s hands. Known associate: rogue agent Hope Lilium. Current status unknown.

When/how are they recruited: “Ana” is first spotted in Eternity, near the Nos Astra exchange. Matriarch Atheyta remarks “that one isn’t all that she seems. Mark my words.” Ms. Fields provides intel that helps locate Miranda’s sister, and then Shepard invites her to join the crew, seeing her as a potential ally against the Illusive Man.

Where are they on the Normandy: Shuttle bay. Probably looking for weak points. And yes, you can get the shutle bay via the elevator once the Clone is recruited.

Are they romanceable: Absolutely, by either Shepard, but you gotta unlock the romance with a hard to reach dialogue tree.

How do they react to the PC returning: Oh, she’s real upset about it, for obvious reasons. But Hope Lilium tells her to join the Normandy crew at all costs. And to kill Shepard before she goes on the Suicide Mission (to stop it from happening.)

Personal quest: One of her old classmates in biotic training, Dreya T’Vasi, has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom. Travel to Hyetiana and free the hostage.

The tricky bit is Dreya is being held by a Justicar. Cause Dreya is an ardaht yakshi. So Shepard has to choose between saving Dreya for the clone’s loyalty or siding with the justicar for Samara’s.

Do they fight with any other companions: Just Shepard. She corners them in the Normandy cabin on the eve of the suicide mission. Pulls off her wig and demands Shepard argue why she should be allowed to live.

What files does the Shadow Broker have on them: Training footage on Hyetiana. The Illusive Man’s plans for the Clone should Shepard fail. Her journal entries about Shepard and Dreya.

Can they die in the suicide mission, and how: You absolutely do not want to select the Clone as team leader. She does not command loyalty and the B team will end up being taken out by the Collectors.

MASS EFFECT 3:

When/how are they recruited: Being a ME2 character, The Clone only shows up in the Citadel DLC. The DLC runs as normal, but you can choose to save her from falling. As you should. (But you only get to save her if you earned her loyalty in ME2)

Where are they on the Normandy: Right in front of the galaxy map. Oh you mean after her and Shep make up. She doesn’t tend to stay in one spot. But she’s most often found in the lounge, staring out the window as if the stars have the answer to her questions.

Are they romanceable: Yup, but only if you started the romance in ME2.

Citadel meetup (during the game, where do you meet them on the Citadel and what do you talk about): The Clone is naturally cleaning the mess in the Archives. She’s surprised that Shep accepted her invitation, but definitely doesn’t begrudge the help. It quickly devolves into a contest of who can clean the fastest, with a few dialogue options that turn flirty if you romanced her in ME2.

How does the PC relax with them in the Citadel DLC (ie, buying gifts with EDI, watching the game with James and Vega, etc.): The Clone will suggest a Paint Your Own Pottery place, where they can get to know each other better. It quickly devolves into a rivalry of who can paint better/faster. The finished plate ware will show up in the kitchen of Shepard’s apartment upon their return. If romanced, the cut scene ends with a kiss that lands clay on Shepard’s face.

What do they say to the PC before the final battle: “If you’re expecting me to take your place, you’re full of shit, Shepard. But thank you, for everything. I owe you my life three times over. Crazy, huh? But don’t you dare get yourself KO’d, alright? Or I’m gonna come Lazarus your ass just so I can kill you myself. So don’t get any crazy ideas.”

#FINALLY FINISHED THIS #clone shep #my oc's #tag meme #hey look I'm still doing these #I'm just waaaaay behind

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lilgrimmapple · 2 years

Photo

This was it! Basil held the bloodied shirt before him. This was the evidence he needed! Saddler was Bloody Bill! But then a cold metal pressed against the side of his throat and the detective froze in place. His eyes moved to the side and saw that it was a rapier blade. But the coldness of the metal did not nearly match the bone-chilling voice of its wielder. “Were I an impulsive man, I would have run you through before asking questions…” It was Saddler as he stood in the light of the doorway, his front completely in shadow. With one hand he had the door shut. It was like he was a completely different person. Not only was he no longer smiling, but his his voice had changed as well. It was not light and airy with sweet pleasantries. It was deep and angry. Basil was stunned. He did not hear him come in. He swallowed heavily and felt beads of sweat trickling down the nape of his neck. “But since I am not, I will allow you to explain why you have broken into my home. Now, turn around,” Saddler commanded. His tone held no room for debate. Basil did as he was told and turned to face Saddler. Seeing his face, Saddler furrowed his brows in confusion before using the blade to remove the wig from Basil’s head. Confusion turned into clarity. “Mr. Basil… this is a surprise…” Saddler lowered the sword. “I do not recall extending an invitation.” “No invitation was needed, you fiend,” Basil growled as he took off his fake glasses and showed Saddler the shirt. “Look! This is the shirt you wore when you murdered Miss Burns!” He threw it to viscount's feet. “I see,” Saddler sighed and sheathed the blade, revealing that his cane was a sword this entire time. Saddler looked at Basil emotionlessly. “You’re accusing me of being Bloody Bill, am I right? I am sad to disappoint you, detective. The blood belongs to one Mr. Smith who is currently on the road to recovery.” “What? I don’t…” Basil lowered the shirt, starting to grow confused. “Of course you don’t understand,” sneered Saddler. “Had you but asked, I would have long explained to you that I volunteer my services to the local hospital whenever they are short on surgical staff. I used to study in the medical field before I inherited this estate. If you don’t believe me, you may ask Doctor Dawson.” “Dawson?” Basil felt his heart sink further and further. This was bad. Was…was he wrong this entire time? Was William Saddler actually innocent and Basil had simply let his emotions get the better of him? If this was a mistake…it would be a major one. Saddler was no regular citizen. He was a lord. This could destroy Basil’s entire career. It would ruin him… and Anna, she would…oh god. How would he face her? “Yes, Mr. Basil. He was my teacher before he went away to fight in Afghanistan.” Saddler tilted his head and said, “now, how about you give me a good reason as to why I shouldn’t call Scotland Yard to have you arrested for breaking and entering?” ________ Basil © "The Great Mouse Detective" William Saddler © Lilgrimmapple Art © Lilgrimmapple

#My art #Bloody Bill #Silver and Gold #The Great Mouse Detective #Basil of Baker Street #jack the ripper #OC #fanfic #fanart #digitalart #disney #Basil #TGMD

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veronicahairreplacmentsolution · 1 year

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Veronica Wig House is not a business for us, it's a dream. Dream towards a baldness-free country. We take a guarantee for providing satisfying services. What if you lost your natural hair? We can still give you a look that is 10X better than your natural hair look. Learning is a never-ending process. our experts prove that by updating themselves with the newest technologies in the field of Non- Surgical Hair Replacement. We serve you the best because we understand you and your problems. We had satisfied thousands of our clients for years, now it's your turn. We at VHRS offer you a combo of satisfaction, happiness, and the lowest prices. our team will provide you a free demo along with a consultation. This will enable you to know about the process and ideation of non-surgical Replacement solutions.

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hairtamerstudio · 1 year

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Wigs for Women with Hair Loss: How to Find the Right Option

Are you looking for a wig that is perfect, stylish and most importantly comfortable? If so, then it’s essential to understand how wigs can help women suffering from hair loss. In this blog post we will explore types of wigs available on the market today specifically designed for those who struggle with hair-loss or thinning. We'll also look at what factors women should consider when selecting a wig and provide top tips on finding an option that suits their specific needs.

When considering which type of wig may be best suited for your individual situation there are many different kinds to select from . These include human hair and synthetic options such as lace front, full traditional cap, special occasion or monofilament varieties . Human hair offers more comfort due its natural feel but tends to be much pricier than its artificial counterpart–great if cost isn't an issue! Synthetic hairs offer less expensive alternatives , although they do not have quite the same qualities in terms of style retention over time compared with real strands.

The fit of any chosen physical item must take into account both head size measurements – small (20 - 21 inches), average(22 – 23inches)or large (24+ ) - as well as personal taste preferences. Many shops offer customization services where clients can request trimming down excess amounts before wearing their selection out everyday too! Finally make sure maintenance instructions related necessary products like shampoos/conditioners etc used correctly during launder cycles won’t end up causing damage either directionally !!

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#wigs #medical wigs #wigs Clinic #lace wigs #wigs for women #women with hair loss #lace wig install #ready to wear wigs #sew in to go #Hair Tamers Studio

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portlandbeautyschool · 20 days

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Career Paths in Hair Styling: Unleash Your Creativity

Hair styling is more than just a job—it's a vibrant career filled with creativity, passion, and endless possibilities. Whether you're fascinated by the idea of creating the next viral hair trend or eager to help clients feel their best, a career in hair styling offers a path to fulfillment. But where do you start? Choosing the proper education and training is crucial, and that's where the best hair beauty schools come into play.

Why Hair Styling?

Hair styling is an ever-evolving field that allows you to express your creativity while making a real difference in people’s lives. Every client is unique, and every style is an opportunity to showcase your skills. As a hair stylist, you can work in various settings—from salons to fashion shows, television sets, and even your own business. The flexibility and variety in this career make it an appealing choice for those with a passion for beauty and an entrepreneurial spirit.

Choosing the Right Education

Before you can dive into this exciting career, proper education and certification are essential. Portland Beauty School offers a comprehensive Hair Design program that covers everything from foundational skills to the latest trends and techniques. The journey begins in the classroom, where you’ll build a solid foundation for 7-12 weeks. The curriculum includes essential subjects like:

Principles of Hair Design: Understand the fundamentals of balance, proportion, and form in hair design.

Hairstyling: Learning techniques for various hair textures and lengths.

Hair Cutting: Mastering precision and creativity with scissors, razors, and clippers.

Hair Coloring: Explores the art and science of color application, from subtle highlights to bold transformations.

Chemical Texture Services: Gaining proficiency in treatments like perms and relaxers.

Wigs and Hair Extensions: Working with alternative hair solutions for clients who seek variety or have special needs.

Salon Business and Career Development: This course prepares you for the business side of styling, including client management, marketing, and entrepreneurship.

Combining classroom theory and hands-on experience ensures you graduate with the confidence and skills needed to excel in the field. Portland Beauty School’s approach blends demonstrations, practical learning, and individual attention to create a well-rounded educational experience.

Real-World Experience

Education doesn’t stop in the classroom. After completing your initial training, you’ll move to the clinic floor, where the magic happens. Here, you’ll apply your skills to real clients under the guidance of experienced instructors. This hands-on experience is invaluable as it prepares you for the fast-paced environment of a professional salon. The more clients you work with, the more you refine your techniques, understand client needs, and build your portfolio.

Exploring Career Opportunities

With a hair styling certification, a world of opportunities opens up. Here are some of the exciting and diverse career paths you can explore:

Salon Stylist: Work in a bustling salon, creating styles that match your clients' personalities and preferences.

Color Specialist: Focus on the art of hair coloring, mastering techniques like balayage, ombre, and vivid color applications.

Editorial or Fashion Stylist: Collaborate with magazines, fashion designers, and photographers to create show-stopping looks for photo shoots and runway shows.

Bridal and Event Stylist: Specialize in creating stunning styles for weddings, proms, and other special occasions.

Salon Owner or Manager: Use your skills and business acumen to open and run your salon.

Educator or Trainer: Share your knowledge with future stylists by becoming an instructor at a beauty school.

No matter your path, ongoing education is key to staying ahead in the ever-evolving beauty industry. Portland Beauty School offers resources like the Pulp Riot TV Channel, where you can discover the latest trends, techniques, and innovations in hair styling.

Conclusion

Embarking on a career in hair styling is an exciting journey that starts with the right education. Portland Beauty School offers cutting-edge Hair Styling Certification Classes to help you succeed in this vibrant field. Whether you dream of working in a salon, owning your own business, or styling for the stars, your journey begins here. With the best hair beauty schools to guide you, the possibilities are endless. Ready to take the first step? Your future in hair design awaits!

#best hair beauty schools #Hair styling certification classes

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dankusner · 2 months

Text

Cole Escola’s Great Day on Broadway

“She never made this cake,” Cole Escola informed me, briskly whipping egg whites as I sifted flour.

It was early June, and we were baking at Joe’s Pub, the downtown performance venue, where the line cooks watched our efforts with mounting concern.

The cake was a white almond cake, and “she” was Mary Todd Lincoln, whom Escola portrays as an unhinged diva with a drinking problem in “Oh, Mary!,” their self-written Broadway début.

Escola boasts of having done zero research for the play—which just opened, to universal acclaim, at the Lyceum.

Yet they still saw fit to question my recipe.

“I feel like this is something they always did for First Ladies,” Escola said, affecting a treacly tour-guide voice.

“‘This is a cake that she made. This was her favorite drapery.’ ”

They whipped harder as I protested that Mary Todd was well-known to have made the cake, and, additionally, that I’d found the recipe on the Web site of the National Park Service.

Would they lie?

“Absolutely,” Escola replied.

“I’ve had it out for them for decades.”

Escola, in a two-toned polo and red leather boots, seemed at ease in the crowded space, sidling past kitchen staffers with a grace learned from a stint at a vegan bakery.

(They loved frosting cupcakes but hated working the register: “It was more degrading to fake that niceness than doing sex work.”)

At thirty-seven, they are slight yet striking, with big, powder-blue eyes, a pronounced chin dimple, and a silvery Caesar cut framing their cherubic features.

Their guileless good looks have an edge of the uncanny—sharp canines, a faraway expression—which they’ve played up in mesmerizing portrayals of deranged innocence.

Many know Escola as The Twink on “Search Party,” an inbred scion of a sticky-bun fortune who idolizes, then kidnaps the show’s femme fatale (Alia Shawkat), in a riff on Stephen King’s “Misery.”

Others are devotees of their cabaret routines and sketch comedy, often performed in drag, which put a surreal spin on morning shows, mom-oriented marketing, and other anodyne genres.

But their long-simmering celebrity has reached a boiling point with “Oh, Mary!,” which has transformed Escola from cult icon of the queer-comedy world into the It They of Broadway.

“At first it was just you and the other faggots,” they said of the show, which premièred in January, Off Broadway, at the Lucille Lortel.

Then came straight couples and Hollywood celebrities, like Pedro Pascal, Steven Spielberg, and Sally Field, who played Mary Todd in Spielberg’s “Lincoln.”

Before long, Escola was bantering in costume on late-night shows and attending the Met Gala in a white Thom Browne suit accessorized with a purse in the shape of a dachshund.

The demands of newfound fame have been relentless, and Escola has made a bit of their struggle to stay apace.

“It’s cold!” they exclaimed as we prepared to blend two sticks of butter into the mix.

“You’re setting me up to fail. You’re doing this on purpose—this is sabotage.”

I felt a bit like Louise, the hapless hired companion whom Mary torments throughout Escola’s play, once threatening to stab her in the eyes during a lesson in needlepoint.

“Oh, Mary!” revolves around the First Lady’s efforts to revive her career as a “niche cabaret legend,” despite the efforts of her husband—portrayed as a bitter, horny closet case by Conrad Ricamora—to confine her theatrics to the White House.

“How would it look for the First Lady of the United States to be flitting about a stage right now in the ruins of war!”

Abraham pleads in one exchange.

“How would it look?!” Mary, lunging toward the audience, retorts. “Sensational!”

Onstage in a taffeta hoop skirt and a wig of “bratty” curls, Escola’s Mary is a tantrum personified, clutching her flounces and furbelows as she terrorizes the Oval Office.

The First Lady goes low at every opportunity, whether it’s smashing open a desk in search of whiskey or reading Shakespeare in the cadences of “a horny

snake.” Remarkably, for a play about the Presidency scheduled to close in November, “Oh, Mary!” thumbs its nose at questions of history and politics.

(When Abe complains that he’s hated in the South, Mary exclaims, “South of what?”)

It’s less of a dodge than a puckish gambit; in Escola’s anti-“Hamilton,” bawdy jokes fly without the safety net of “serious” themes.

“I am the stupidest person here, and I mean that as an insult to all of you,” Escola said while accepting a Drama Desk Award.

For them, “stupid” is a term of art, an assertion that killer comedy needs no alibi.

“Oh, Mary!,” directed by Sam Pinkleton, earned more than a million dollars in its first full week, breaking the Lyceum’s all-time box-office record; Escola celebrated its première by inviting audiences to a leather bar.

The show is not only proof of their comedic brilliance but a defense of their sensibility.

They are often classed as part of a wave of New Queer Comedy, alongside entertainers such as Bowen Yang, John Early, and Ayo Edebiri.

But Escola’s rigorous weirdness is singular, combining “low” humor with the stylized precision of a pre-Code Hollywood starlet.

Their work forgoes relatability to revel in delusion, with all its abjection and pathos—especially their own.

“Her arc is my arc,” Escola said of their First Lady. “Her wanting to do cabaret is me wanting to do the play about Mary Todd Lincoln.”

As the oven preheated, Escola and I walked down the hall to the performance space, where a dozen booths and tables clustered around a tiny quarter-circle of a stage.

“This is my favorite seat,” they said, leading me to a table behind a partition in the very back. “It’s just like you’re watching TV.”

Joe’s Pub, an annex of the Public Theatre, is where Escola honed their craft in the early two-thousands.

Like Mary, they were a cabaret singer, in a downtown scene that counted such offbeat performers as Murray Hill, Tonya Pinkins, and Bridget Everett, who once wrote a part for Escola as a singing fetus.

“I would watch other people’s numbers and I would be, like, Oh, fuck, that really killed,” they recalled. “I want to kill like that.”

Escola struggled for years to find their place in the world of performance.

Born in the tiny mill town of Clatskanie, Oregon, they took to acting almost immediately, appearing at eleven in a production of “The Grapes of Wrath.”

A local paper put Escola on the front page (the headline: “Give My Regards to Broadway”), though the cute quotes belie their childhood’s difficulty.

At the time, Escola was sleeping over, illicitly, at their grandmother’s nursing home, because it was in the same town as the production; their mother couldn’t afford to drive them to rehearsals.

(“The actress that played Rose of Sharon would buy me lunch and dinner every day,” they recalled.)

Several years earlier, Escola’s father, a Vietnam vet who suffered from alcoholism and P.T.S.D.-induced hallucinations, had forced them and their mother out of the family’s trailer home with a rifle.

“My mom was my dad and TV was my mom,” Escola has said.

youtube

Weaned on sitcoms like “Keeping Up Appearances,” they developed an aspirational affinity with “rich-white-lady humor.”

They were also deeply attached to their grandmother, who baked, sewed, crocheted doilies, and bought them Barbies without worrying about whether or not the dolls were gender-appropriate.

Escola adopted nonbinary pronouns two years ago, but their gayness was clear from the beginning.

“I would pray to God to make me bisexual,” Escola recalled. “I was willing to compromise.”

(“Oh, Mary!” gives this experience to Abraham Lincoln.)

They came out in their late teens, helped to the realization by a lesbian cousin and a video-store clerk who introduced them to “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

After graduating from high school—an occasion they marked by performing their first cabaret routine—Escola moved to New York and studied acting while at Marymount Manhattan College.

But the emphasis on naturalism taught them only that drama school wouldn’t be worth the loans.

“I always associated ‘theatre’ with pretending I’m straight,” they told me.

Escola dropped out and worked odd jobs as a typist, a kid’s-party entertainer, and a bookseller in Manhattan.

“There were nights I would walk from the Scholastic bookstore to my place in Bushwick to save two dollars, whatever subway fare was then,” they told me. “It was miserable.”

Dan Fishback, a singer-songwriter and playwright whom Escola briefly dated, has recalled Escola as “a very quiet alien,” prone to sudden creative outbursts.

He encouraged them to share their “secret genius” after seeing a video of their first original character, Joyce Conner, who emerged from a spell of suicidal rumination.

A childhood friend had mailed Escola a fake fur coat and a jewel-toned onesie, inspiring them to picture themselves as a despondent older lady living on the Upper East Side:

“What if there was this woman who was planning her suicide as if it were a brunch that she kept putting off?”

Fishback invited Conner to begin m.c.’ing anti-folk shows, where her antics were a surprise hit with the largely straight crowd.

One day, Joyce failed to appear, because Escola had been mugged; a man held a gun to their head as another kicked in their teeth.

They returned to Oregon to recuperate, taking a three-day bus because they couldn’t afford airfare.

“I just laid on the couch for three months,” Escola told me. “I would drink a two-litre of Diet Coke every day, and I remember that I was watching ‘Dancing with the Stars.’ That was the season Jane Seymour was on and her mother died and she did a gorgeous foxtrot.”

They laughed.

“That really got me through.”

The binge eventually proved formative for Escola’s comedy, but at the time a career in writing and performance still seemed beyond reach.

“The plan was for me to apply to community college,” they told me. “I didn’t understand that I was traumatized.”

Escola slid the cake pan into a multitiered industrial oven, which we operated with the help of Joe’s Pub staff members.

(Our plan to bake at their apartment in Cobble Hill—a den of porcelain dolls and Old Hollywood memorabilia that an Apartment Therapy showcase described as granny chic—had been foiled by ants.)

Recovering in Oregon, they had briefly considered pastry school, based solely on their enjoyment of the show “Barefoot Contessa.”

But the expense of tuition made them realize that becoming a tart might be easier than selling them.

They got in touch with Jeffery Self, an acquaintance who did sex work on Craigslist, and moved back to New York.

The two started sharing johns and collaborating on comedy, beginning with a workout-video parody called “Sweatin’ to Sondheim!”

Their YouTube sketches, which they also performed at Joe’s Pub, led to “Jeffery & Cole Casserole,” a show on the gay network Logo.

It ran for only two seasons, but kick-started a decade of creativity.

Escola developed a repertoire of absurd personae onstage and online, from an impersonation of the Broadway legend Bernadette Peters to characters like Jennifer Convertibles, a furniture impresario with the haughty mannerisms of a film-noir villainness.

(“Futons?” she snarls in a face-off with IKEA. “If I wanted to make something for dirty frat boys to piss all over, I’d have a gay son.”)

Yet the path from YouTube and cabaret to the main stage remained obscure.

In 2011, when Escola was struggling with alcoholism, a critic damned their work as too old-fashioned for the slick “Glee” era of gay culture.

“The message I was getting from the world was, ‘There’s no place for what you want to do,’ ” they told me. “ ‘It might be fine as a little segment in a variety show, but, come on, be real.’ ”

Escola found their footing in television, winning fans for their inspired petulance in supporting roles on “Difficult People” and “At Home with Amy Sedaris,” in addition to “Search Party.”

Even television, though, began to feel straitlaced.

“Every time I act in something filmed, the note I get is, ‘A little less,’ ” Escola told me.

“Which you don’t have to do onstage when you wrote it and it’s supposed to be big.”

The conceit of “Oh, Mary!” came to them fifteen years ago, but they put off writing it until the pandemic, afraid to ruin the idea by making it real.

The show’s unqualified success has been a dream come true, but also a trigger for “queer hypervigilance,” Escola told me.

“I think it means I’m on my way out.” During curtain call at “Oh, Mary!” ’s opening night at the Lyceum, they prankishly announced that the show was already closing;

last week on “The View,” they poked fun at its exuberant filth by saying that they “wanted to write something for families to enjoy.”

Escola was briefly tempted to tone the play down ahead of its Broadway transfer, but a memoir by the playwright and drag queen Charles Busch fortified their spirits.

“When ‘Vampire Lesbians of Sodom’ moved from being a bar show to Off Broadway, he stayed up for a couple days just being, like, ‘We’ve got to beef this up and make it more like theatre,’ ” they told me; ultimately, Busch decided to trust the show as it was, and Escola did likewise.

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