#and promptly lost my goddamn mind

[one-httyd-a-day]

Your art is so cute :D Could you do a baby Bewilderbeast?

Of course I can, but the real question is;

Are YOU prepared to see THE most muppet looking baby dragon I've ever drawn??

Dragon #65 - (Baby) Bewilderbeast

"STOP LOOKIN AT ME WITH THEM BIG OLE EYES"

[eliecasa]

summary: reader see’s a man spank a box on tiktok & it awakens a monster

warnings: minors i know I said I wouldn’t but we all lie as humans. this is one of those times where you mustn’t interact, plss ( contains these mentions: asphyxiation, verbal, and spanking kinks ) the reader is mentioned to have a vagina.

wrdcnt: 2K

inspo

A small huff of frustration pushed from your nostrils as you’re once again opening your eyes to stare out into the rainy darkness of the night. The sight is usually lovely and heart-warming as it was Simon’s wish to live somewhere with nature all the while staying a generous 20 minutes away from the city. It’s quiet here but there’s a memory that echoes loud and vibrantly in the back of your mind.

Simon sat still, sleeping as quiet as a mouse as you squeezed your eyes shut and subtly rubbed your thighs together. If you’d never downloaded tiktok, you’ll probably be sound asleep and dreaming of a dog handing you something as strange as a sweater with your own face sewn into it. Soap suggested that it be a good idea to keep a good balance of humor and seriousness since Simon would be left alone to tease you without anyone else jumping in to defend you, and the only way to do that was to give in and download the god-forsaken TikTok app.

Oh how you wish you’d never listened to him.

The first thing you’re greeted with is a video of a buff man underhand smacking a box to fit evenly with the others atop and below it. It came immensely loud from your headphones and caused a barely-audible yelp to part your lips. Your first thought was to get out of there so, you did… by scrolling one video down as Simon came over from the kitchen and asked what was wrong. And of course, having lacked a good answer, you merely waved him off and cleared your throat, saying that your headphones were accidentally turned to maximum volume.

He squinted those dark and suspicious eyes before humming and going back to make dinner- which was the deal for an old bet that he lost. Anyway, you’re instantly back on the video and fluttering with little butterflies of heat and embarrassment… that was until you opened the comments and saw that everyone else was thinking the same. Even married people were saying things such as “I try to get my husband to do this but he doesn’t know manual labor too well” which tickled you a little bit.

Though you were laughing at the time, you found yourself staring at Simon’s hands a bit longer than usual as the two of you ate dinner together. Don’t be mistaken, Simon had done nearly everything you desired with those strong pair of hands but still, that new seed planted in your head was quickly taking over and growing vines up and down the walls of your busy mind.

“What’s on your mind?” He said after watching you daydream for five minutes. It almost seems deliberate as he moved to hide his hands underneath the table. Classic Mr. RIley.

“...Nothin’,” you shrugged, connecting your gaze before promptly taking a good chunk of spanish rice.

Simon paused and did that empty stare where he kinda just assessed you before going back to whatever business he was originally doing. The judgemental gaze causes the slightest of shame to boil your skin as you roll your eyes. He’s your husband and has seen and touched every nook and cranny of your body and for some reason, you don’t want to tell him what’s bothering you.

Fast forward back into the present. The fluffy white comforter seems to get unbearably hot just as the heat radiating from Simon does. Sex and experiment is no taboo between the two of you and your coyness was just overall pitiful, however, that small little angel in your head keeps saying “Well, you have to really ask yourself if he’s the type to wound his loving spouse” while the devil said “Tell him to throw you over his lap and spank you like that goddamn cardboard!”

Again, you rub your thighs together. Maybe your mind was turning into one of those awful hormone monsters from a show that shall not be named. A small sound of anger escaped your mouth as you try to clear your mind, knowing that Simon would get woken–

“Having a strop, are ya’?” His heavy voice felt heavy and trapping as you knew that this was the most reasonable time to just get it over with.

Almost too quickly, you flip in his arms and lock eyes with him. Well, he was still waking up but your patience led you to gently pinch various areas of his face before he’s basically stretching his neck to be freed.

“Fuckin’ stop will ya?”

“Why haven’t you ever gotten rough with me?”

In the moonlight that shows through your windows, you can see the way that Simon’s face bunches into one handsome twist of confusion and tiredness. His eyes slowly open to look at the ceiling before he turns his head and stares dead into your eyes.

“What do you mean?”

Your right hand moved back a couple of inches and came back to gently slap him as his face remained cradled in your hands. A small chuckle escapes him before he pinches your thigh.

“Why’re you kicking my ass instead of explaining–”

“I obviously mean- like during sex,” you spoke with the tiniest amount of annoyance in your voice as the sexual frustration was beginning to plague.

The hand on your thigh rested as his face relaxed.

“I do… it was your idea to get into the choking thing-”

“No! I mean- yes that but why don’t you ever hit me?”

He seems to relax into the pillows a bit more as his eyes darted back to the white and plain ceiling. Simon was taking a moment to actually think if he’s never done such since it seems like a problem that could have been bothering you for who knows how long. Maybe you were doing that classic tactic of trying to alter his memory for your own benefit. There’s been multiple times where you’d lay on top of him and ask when was the last time he’d give you proper praise despite him clearly remembering it happening two days ago. He tilts his head, thinking of the past five months. The two of you had gotten into a couple new positions, areas to have sex, as well as experimenting with verbal kinks. Not to mention that asphyxiation kink that appeared to stay and make an appearance during each session.

“Simon!”

“I know, I know… just making sure you aren’t lying,” he said, casually sitting up to turn on the blinding light next to the bed. You try not to grab him as he moves from over you to settle back and rub his eyes.

“What needs to be done to get you sound, eh?”

A lightning bolt strikes as you pretend to think as if Apollo was saying “Don’t you dare waste that man's time, Y/N.”

So, instead of pissing anyone off, you decide you sit on your knees and face Simon with your chin up and your shirt covering your sweaty palms that were hidden underneath the oversized fabric. You’re ex-military and you’re especially all but a coward. Simon Riley will not stop you from reaching your dreams.

“I want you to start…” your lips twist in the slightest as you try to find the right words just to settle on “spanking me…”

He tries not to seem surprised but the smallest raise of his eyebrows gave it all away.

“Today,” you finish, almost coming off stern and unmovable.

Many would disagree with this but you could say that Simon had very telling eyes and right now, he was not only questioning just how freaky you were as well as how much of a possible masochist you were underneath that loving and soothing base of your personality. The asphyxiation thing was brought up during sex so he couldn’t really so no to you in the heat of the moment but now you’ve caught him fresh out of an innocent sleep.

“Are you… sure?--”

“Simon,” you dare, looking away for a second before shaking your head at his timidness.

He wasn’t following the script; you’d admit that you wanted to be spanked and he would pat his lap and get to work. That’s how it was supposed to go! However, Simon wanted to play the long game and see how long he could drag this until the sun began to rise.

“Why didn’t you say this instead of staring at my hands the entire meal?”

“Who the hell would just come out and say ‘Hey, mind hitting my ass when we fuck’?”

A small smile spreads his pink lips as his shoulders momentarily hunch.

“You’re not shy any other time.”

For the 800th time, your pupils roll to the back of your head. As you’re shaking your disappointed little head, you pause to see that the storm seems to calm down a bit, instead turning into a windless pour that wouldn’t wake anyone if they were sleeping. The silence left you no choice as Simon indeed began to follow the script written in your head.

“Guess we’d better get to trying before you’re all snappy then,” his heavy mancunian accent coming loudly as he stood up and stretched.

The movement caught your attention and glued it onto his strong thighs. Simon was a brief type of guy— which was honestly a bit surprising when you first discovered it. The soft fabric remained comfortably on his strong thighs that would soon have you stretched across them.

There’s a couple of heavy steps across the bedroom floor before he settled on the front of the bed and in front of the black screen of the television.

“Are you serious?” you purse your lips, crawling towards him as he looks at you from over his shoulder.

Instead of being verbal, he jerks his head to coax you over as a barely-noticeable smile squints his eyes.

And be damned; you were over there in no time. But instead of instantly giving you what you wanted, Simon couldn’t help but tease you a while longer. Only now do you wish he was a quick mover that despised roleplay. Your hips jump a little as two of his slightly-calloused fingers slid down the smooth and silk skin and dew of your cunt.

“Why the long face, doll?” He laughed, taking a glance at the way your lips and eyes were tightly closed shut.

“Do your thing, Simon,” you spoke quickly to muffle a sound of pleasure by covering your mouth and turning away from his eyes-view.

“I just wanted to feel you a little bit, no harm done,” he gently slapped your soppy cunt before lifting your shirt to bunch around the waist. Tonight, you were just wearing a normal pair of lace panties without the partner of a bra. Bras are vibe killers and the world could do without. Plus– it gives your lover easier access to rest or warm his hands when he’s bored.

Anticipation made the fabric become nearly insufferable as the room seemed to double in heat.

“Keep these on?”

You thought, looking at the shiny oak of your bedroom floor before giving him a muffled response.

“I don’t mind them staying on.”

As so, his ring finger released your panty and turned into a palm that smooths over the entirety of your plump ass. The feeling of Simon’s hands on your bum had often aroused you more than it probably should have. He’s never spanked you but he's grabbed it and caressed it as often as you allowed. The way he’d squeeze long enough to make it hurt had always brought out the bedroom hormones even though sometimes he would do it somewhere other than the comfort of your home. anything that made you feel like his was enough to keep it wet for hours.

“What are you waiting fo-AH!” you nearly turn into a flailing mess before your hands quickly resettled onto Simon’s strong thigh which was trembling with amusement.

For someone who was wary of hitting you, he’d come down really heavy handed. You’re a first-timer, it wouldn’t have killed him to at least warn you. However, the hot and stinging feeling is an arousal-multiplying sensation that has your mouth feeling a little numb and your adrenaline flowing.

Your eyes nearly comically blow wide as the two of you make eye-contact, Simon’s face being one of subdued delight as you gently pant out.

“Do. That. Again.”

[hanibalistic]

#FFFAFA | GHOST.

genre | angst, fluff, platonic relationship au, grumpy dad x eager child dynamic

word count | 2754

warning | mention of death, mention of pain, mention of human trafficking, mention of kidnapping / i know absolutely nothing about this game and this man. ​

note | i just thought his appearance and the little personality i can tell from tiktok fit the description of this scenario. also i like this trope. i apologize in advance but this thought just had to go somewhere other than my head.

“Where’s the kid.”

A stoic voice matched with an even more intimidating stance—the medic did not need to turn around to know it was Simon Riley (or Ghost, as he liked to be called) talking behind him. He calmly turned around to face the sudden speaker, and his brows raised. Despite barely healing from severe unattended injuries and dehydration, Ghost remained tall and demanding; nobody should expect anything less from him.

“Where’s the kid.” Ghost said again when he did not receive an answer promptly enough. He enunciated every word with gruff but no grit. It could be the hazy brain taking a small toll on him. He did remember the other medic recommending a timely rest that he had no plan to take. Until he could find you, that was.

The medic looked around the area, massively confused. Kid? What kid? Has Simon Riley finally lost his goddamn mind after being stranded in the desert for weeks without the proper nourishment? He was almost killed, after all! The only reason he managed to make it back was that whoever tried to kill him foolishly thought he died. Could this possibly be the side effect of the recent traumatic experience? Having hallucinations?

“Fucking hell, where’s my kid?” That sounded like a question this time around. His voice had more restlessness in it, if one couldn’t fathom him ever being frantic about anything. Ghost had taken a step forward, his hands curled into fists, and his gaze hardened to scare the answer out of an unassuming medic. “The kid that came here with me. They are about this tall. Dirty hair, really fucking chatty? You could not have missed them.”

The medic cowered a step back. Ghost has finally lost his mind this time because he has no idea what nonsense that was. Humming in thoughts in hopes to fill the silent air, the medic glanced to the side just outside the tent, hoping to see someone pass by that could help him with the delusional lunatic asking him such an unfathomable question. A child? Everyone would have known if there was a child running around this place!

Ghost could see the altered glance immediately, and for a moment, he was about to lose his temper. But, he found that his question was answered as soon as he gave the medic a chance and turned around to look over his shoulder. There you were, just standing outside the tent in your dirty clothes and bare feet, staring at the helicopter with genuine fascination. Ghost furrowed his brows in disdain after he scanned your appearance. How come nobody gave you a change of clothes?

Wordlessly, Ghost turned around and left the medic’s tent. He marched over to where you stood, coming up behind you silently until he was finally within arm’s reach. He grabbed a fistful of the collar of your shirt and pulled you off the ground, causing you to struggle with a yelp of surprise. He turned you around slowly to face him, and his deadpan eyes did not change when you smiled sheepishly upon recognizing him.

“Oh…” you rubbed your hands together apologetically and placed them near your chin in a prayer gesture, “I didn’t know you were awake.”

“I barely slept, you idiot,” he said as he carefully dropped you on the ground. “I told you not to run around by yourself.”

You scoffed at him, dusting off your clothes as if you had fallen and gotten back up without his help. “I thought this was supposed to be a safe place!”

“It is,” he clarified calmly. “But safe places can get invaded.”

“So it’s not safe,” you pointed out smugly, poking his arm as if you’ve made a point he cannot defend himself against. The only response you got was a flick on your forehead. His fingers sounded against your skull, the force strong enough to make you stumble back before he watched you gather yourself together again.

Ghost did not once tear his eyes off you. His cold heart froze over again with paranoia when his brain even raised the idea of looking elsewhere during the topic of potential danger.

This was supposed to be a safe place where the medics and his comrades were. This was where his most trusted fighters are. If an invasion was to happen, things could not go nearly as bad as if he was anywhere else. But, unfortunately, you were neither a medic who knew the risks of staying at a place like this, nor were you a trained soldier who knew how to protect yourself in a blazing war.

You were just a kid he found along the way, who had latched onto him for survival, and he had no reason to kill. Fortunately for you, he did not have to choose between you and himself during the early days of you following him in his travels. By the time danger did welcome you both in its arms, Ghost had, surprisingly, knocked down the impenetrable walls of putting himself above orders and logic. Or perhaps it was you who brought a hammer and knocked them down for him.

Who knew? Simon Riley was not an expert in human emotions; he feels them, he just never thinks about them. He knew things could go as wrong as Hell would allow it if an invasion did happen. He knew that it would have been over the second you were captured. But Ghost had no plan to let it happen ever again.

After that night, on the twentieth day of traveling. It was right after you both were offered some food by a suspicious group of travelers, whom Ghost later found out had sold information of your existence to a group of recruiters of a human trafficking ring. You were snatched away in his line of sight after you had strayed too far from him, and he has never been more enraged. Becaise you disobeyed him, and because people underestimated his ability to kill absolutely everyone in sight with his bare hands who even dared to take you from him.

Ghost had no plan to let something like that happen ever again. So, if an invasion happens, this will remain a safe place for you. Any perimeter where he exists will be a safe place for you as long as he can guarantee it.

“Hmph!” You pulled a face at him when he remained silent at your words. Crossing your arms before you, you looked up at him and scoffed, “All adults do is lie.”

“Do not frame me for something I never did,” Ghost retorted, his hands awkwardly placed at his hips because he did not know what else to do with them now that he wasn’t holding a weapon. He let them drop to his sides immediately, a dissatisfied groan leaving his lips. “I have never lied to you.”

You pursed your lips together into a knowing smirk, but your eyes spoke a story of annoyance. You clicked your tongue, giving him a mischievous shake of your head, then you began to hop on your spot to prepare yourself for landing. Ghost immediately rolled his eyes, mentally exhausted from your antics. He knew what you planned to do, and he remembered the ‘lie’ you implied he told you. He had no plans to indulge you in your self-assigned mission to take his mask off.

“Incoming!”

“Damn it–you cannot shout that here–hey!”

You jumped and immediately grabbed onto his strong arm. Your feet kicked against his shin for momentum, which barely gave you any, but you stepped on his leg to use as leverage to climb up his body, so all was well. He struggled against you as you grabbed onto his shoulders and hoisted yourself over one side of it, letting yourself dangle and threatening to fall face-first onto the ground. He clumsily—ha! as if!—placed a hand forward to catch your reckless self just in case, while his other hand pressed against your middle back to keep you on his shoulder.

This was not the first time you have climbed him like a tree, paying his physical boundaries no respect as you stepped and kicked against his body to reach his shoulders. But he found himself catching you whenever you decided to fling yourself to the ground like a carcass, and he found himself holding onto your ankles when you thought it would be fun to fling upside down on his back as he walked. It was never a good idea; you always ended up feeling nauseated, and you liked to blame the heinous smell of his sweat.

And you had made a habit of stacking your body atop his when you slept so you could feel all of his movements, and you would know if he ever tried to abandon you again. He had a sickening realization that he had not felt that familiar body weight in several nights.

“Hey! Listen to me!” Ghost whisper-yelled at you, but you paid no attention to him. “You cannot be yelling stupid things like that!”

You scoffed with a childish smile. “Don’t worry, Ghost! Nobody can hear me but you!”

“With that high-pitched screech, they can hear you all the way from the moon,” he said.

“Oh, that’s where I’m going next! To the moon!” You giggled as you raised your torso and slapped a hand to his face. However, interestingly, you did not attempt to peel his mask off. You only looked at the helicopter in front of you and pointed at it. “Maybe I can get there in a helicopter!”

“You need a rocket ship for that,” Ghost said as he slowly helped your sliding body off his shoulder and onto the ground.

“A helicopter can be a rocket ship if I wanted it to. This is my world now,” you mused as you looked up at him. Your smile shifted a little when you saw how he looked at you—stoic, cold, but not without kindness and, hidden somewhere, remorse he was unwilling to process. You frowned gently at him; Ghost was still delusional. “Do you remember what you promised me about your mask?”

“That I will take it off so you can see my face,” he replied.

You tilted your head and widened your smile slightly. Your brows furrowed with a sorrowful tint as you whispered, “That’s not all.”

Ghost could remember. He didn’t think he had ever forgotten anything important, and a promise with a child he had unknowingly bound himself to would never be abandoned by him. He just had a hard time acknowledging it—thinking about it was unsettling for him, almost like an eerie itch along his body he could not scratch off. He was being avoidant because he was so helpless about it.

“I promised you that I would take off my mask and let you see my face…” he repeated, and choking down the knot in his throat, he continued, “if that is the last thing you’ll ever see of me.”

You smiled. You knew he would remember.

“But that will not be until years later, so there is no bloody reason why you are bringing it up now,” he added urgently, even though his voice didn’t show it.

You played with your fingers, unsure of what you could say.

There was no way that could happen years later because you were already dead. And Ghost knew that because you died in his arms.

“You cannot dream for years, Ghost,” you whispered. “You have to wake up.”

Just like that, suddenly, everything was gone. The tents, the sky, the helicopter, the clouds, the guns and ammo, the wind—everything surrounding you were gone. You looked around at the scenery change; the dream was re-wiring itself according to Ghost’s memories and control, including yourself. The bloodied spot on your chest grew big and wet, and the sky was dark with visible stars, and there was the knife he had pulled out of you after someone threw it toward you as a last desperate attempt at revenge.

“I don’t like the blood stain.” You frowned at yourself.

“Okay.” It was gone.

Ghost stared at you, his emotions thoroughly mixed up. He has been through this before. He has undergone trauma before. This was nothing extraordinary, and it should not be. He understood it. Death, dying, trauma, killing, blood. He understood it all. He has been hurt, pierced, shot, tortured. He understood it all. His father’s cruelty, his father’s abusive hands, his father’s degeneracy. He understood it all.

But did he truly understand this?

Pain comes in various forms. Pain can stem from different causes. The explosion of a bullet inside his body or the blade across his flesh. He knew what it felt like to be hurt by the names in red, to be hurt by a father. But did he know how to fathom it when his pain landed on somebody else’s skin? Did he know what it was when his pain choked through him in the form of another’s lifeless body? Did he understand the agony that happens when a child that has bound themself to a parent, abandons them by death?

He experienced it, but he did not understand it.

“Please don’t be mad at me,” you muttered. “I tried to hold on, I did. But my chest hurt.”

“I am not mad at you. I won’t get mad over something you can’t control,” he said. “I should have protected you better.”

You jumped faintly, standing on your tip-toes and rocking your heels back and forth. “You did!” You cheered quietly. “You kept me safe all this time.”

“You died.”

“I did.” You frowned in feigning sorrow. “Bummer.”

Oh, but he did understand it. He understood it very well. The consequence of your death blatantly presented itself to him in this dream. You were a dream. Your being safe was a dream. Your being alive was a dream. You climbing him like a tree, you talking about getting on a helicopter and flying to the moon, you sleeping on him so he would not leave you, you talking back to him, you shouting in his ears—it was all a dream he struggled not to wake up from.

In here, he gets to keep the kid.

In here, he gets to keep you.

And he gets to take you to the moon on a helicopter that functions as a rocket ship. Because he wires his dream according to your childish desires. Because he will give you whatever you want. Because he had given himself the role of a father he never thought he would fill.

How did it feel when you died? Agonizing and staggering. Like he failed at a job he knew nothing about but was doing his best in. Like he was full of nothing but anger and guilt because everything that could ever happen to you directly links back to him, because you were his responsibility. Like someone reached between your ribs and found his heart there, and they ripped it to pieces and left the shards lying inside of you.

How did it feel when you died? Like a dad just lost his baby, and he remembered once again how cruel this world could be when innocent children cannot be above adult hatred and violence.

“I’m sorry,” he uttered. “I did all I could.”

You grinned as you approached him and took his hand. You took off his glove, pressed his palm to your face, and nuzzled against it, feeling the callousness of his skin that has held more death than life, more blood than skin. “You did for me. Thank you.”

He wished to caress your cheek, but his joints remained frozen. He wished to smile, but he found it hard to quirk his lips when he realized the dimming of his consciousness. Beneath the skull mask, he managed a light-hearted smirk, and, if one could fathom it, his gaze softened with unswayable care, curated by the one thing greater than human tragedy—love, supposed. But that would be too cliché, would it not? Besides, this is Simon Riley!

“Do you still wish to see my face?” Ghost asked, “I’m giving you a positive.”

You squinted your eyes joyfully at him, willing that he not be defined by the tragedies he endured and that his heart could remain soft. Perhaps if you put a little bit of yourself in him, he would.

“You made me a promise!” You said with a nod.

That he did.

[atinylittlepain]

Dancing in the Dark

no outbreak!joel miller x fem!reader

Hungry Hearts masterlist

The summer of '86, a season of love, record-breaking heat, and evening softball games in one Austin neighborhood. What happens when seventeen years later, that lost love comes back around?

warnings | 18+ cursing, smut, young joel is a goddamn menace, angst, references to bad home life, gin making random things canon

wordcount | 9.8K

a/n | welcome back to Hungry Hearts, y'all. i have to thank @northernbluess for beta-reading this bad boy. love you, cousin. as always, I'd love to hear what you think of the chapter!

.......................................

“Hey, Cher, you ready to go?”

“Does it look like I’m ready to go?”

“You look ready to me.”

“Joel, I’m not wearing a shirt.”

“It’s hot out, Cherry. I’m just thinking about your well-being here.”

“How considerate of you. Just give me a minute, and be quiet before my parents hear you.” 

“Bossy, bossy.” She leaves him at her window, shuffling back over to her closet to finish getting dressed. Joel, however, doesn’t stay put for long, swinging one leg, then the other over the sill and into her room before promptly banging his forehead on the opened pane of her window, a low curse leaving his mouth before she can shush him. 

“Very smooth.”

“Yeah, well, you know me. Now c’mere.” He hooks a finger into the belt loop of her jean shorts, a little tug that she resists, and then a bigger, more impatient tug that she can’t help but shuffle into. He’s actually wearing pants tonight, tight, tight blue jeans with a t-shirt that’s had the sleeves and sides cut out, a perfect space for her palms to splay along the bare sides of his ribs when he draws her in for a kiss by the hinge of her jaw. 

“If you start now, we’re never gonna make it to the fair.” He hums at that, his eyes still intently focused on her lips.

“Hmm, would that be such a bad thing?” 

“Uh, yes, I want to see the fireworks.” She’s not sure if he really heard that, his mind seeming to go a bit one-track as he looks at her bra, his fingers brushing over the top of the cups, catching on the lace there.

“This is new.”

“No, I just haven’t worn it around you before.” 

“Well, shit, Cher, you been holding out on me?” 

“Joel.”

“Alright, alright, hands off, I’ll let you get dressed.” As she pulls a tank top over her head, she realizes that he’s never been in her room before. Not even when they were kids. She steals a glance at him as she’s tying her sneakers, and he seems to be stealing glances of his own, subtly leaning over the small desk across from her bed, his eyes trailing over the stack of books sitting there, the photos she had pinned to the wall from her last year of college. He doesn’t say anything though, a quiet collecting, so she doesn’t say anything about it either, simply clearing her throat to grab his attention when she’s ready to go.

“Try not to knock your head into the window on the way out this time.” He doesn’t, though he grumbles through the close contortion he has to manage to pop back outside, panting a little when he holds his hand out for her through the window. It’s not like they had an actual conversation about the necessity of sneaking around with each other. It was an unspoken understanding. Her parents like Joel enough, she grew up with him after all, but she’s certain they would both have aneurysms if they found out what they’ve been getting up to. And anyways, it’s just for the summer, nothing serious, a bit of fun, and Joel seems just as content with that as she is. 

“Tell me about your classes.”

“I’m pretty sure I’d bore you if I did.” 

“We’ve got a half-hour drive, Cher, try me.” The sun is just starting to set, turning the inside of his truck a hazy orange as they drive down the highway away from the suburbs and toward the Austin city limits.

“Okay, in most of them we read books, then we talk about the books, then we write papers about the books.”

“That’s it?”

“I told you it’s boring.” 

“You’re taking writing classes too though, right?” 

“Yeah, I actually won an award for a short story I did in one of them.” She feels a bit stupid sharing that with him, a bit stupid for even wanting to in the first place. But he smiles, big and bright, his eyebrows lifting up with a quick glance over to her.

“No shit, Cher, that’s awesome. I’m not surprised though.” 

“Thanks, yeah, you wanna know what my mom said when I showed her the photo of me receiving the award?” 

“What’d she say?”

“She asked if I had really been wearing my hair like that at school.” For a moment, he’s silent, and her stomach twists up, worried that she shouldn’t have shared that because, obviously, why the hell would he want to hear her bitch about her mom? 

“That’s fucking bullshit, she seriously said that?”

“Yeah.”

“Your mom was always kind of a square.”

“I’m inclined to agree.” 

“You remember when I got gum stuck to your skirt in Sunday school?”

“Oh my god, she was so mad.” 

“She’s got that vein, right down the middle of her forehead, you know?”

“Oh yeah, I’m very familiar with that vein.”

“I swear, Cherry, I thought it was gonna burst she was yelling at me so good.”

“I remember watching that from the car. Your little mouth was just hanging open, I didn’t know if you were gonna bolt or barf.”

“I was scared shitless. She yell at you when y’all got home then?” 

“No, I got the silent treatment and no dinner for a week.”

“Shit, Cher, really?” Suddenly, the laugh buoying his words is gone, a little quieter, a little more tempered. And she realizes, oh, one of those things that isn’t normal. Oh, one of those things that doesn’t happen in other families. Since starting college, she’s gotten good at recognizing these moments, when the laughs die out right after something she said. Oh, your parents? Well, get a load of my parents. No, not funny. Not funny at all. A whole lot of not funny going on in her household. 

“Yeah, I guess that’s why I stopped sitting next to you in Sunday school.” Said with a weak laugh to make it okay, though Joel’s smile has still faltered into something closer to a grimace, his eyes staying still and squinted down the stretch of the highway. 

“Can I read the story sometime?” 

“Oh, um, yeah, okay, if you want.” He keeps his eyes on the road, but his hand that isn’t hanging over the steering wheel slips down to rest on the center console, palm face up, a wordless invitation that she finds herself taking with her own hand. A small comfort to press her palm into his.

“Of course I do, Cher.”

…

It’s the same thing every year. The same rides that always have a few screws loose, the same smell of food sizzling in oil that his doctor would definitely not want him eating, the same throngs of sunburned people shuffling from booth to booth down the drag of streets that have been closed off for the fair. For a while, he didn’t go, but since Sarah got old enough to be interested in all the fourth of July festivities, they’ve made the drive into Austin every year for it, though as of late, the night usually entails her meeting up with her friends and yes, dadding, him into leaving her alone until the fireworks are over. But he isn’t all alone this year, Tommy tagging along at the last minute when whatever his plans were, Joel shudders to think of what they were, fell through. So no, not pathetic at all, just two grown men wandering through the crowd and waiting until they can go home. 

“I saw we got a new appointment on the books for next week. Someone on Cascade Street?”

“Uh-huh.”

“New client?”

“Yep, yeah, they just moved in.”

“Why are you being weird about it?” Tommy stops in his tracks, scrunching his face up at Joel who would really like this topic of conversation to get dropped. 

“I’m not, Tommy, why are you so concerned about this new client?” 

“What are they getting done?” 

“New porch.” 

“Who’s taking the job?” 

“I am.”

“You?” 

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” Tommy shrugs, scoffing when Joel starts walking again without him, quick to catch up and step into stride with him.

“Seems like a pretty rinky-dink job for you to take on, especially when we’re in the middle of that new build on Cypress.”

“I thought you said you have Cypress under control?” He’s being a touch too snappy about it, he knows it, and judging by the weird look Tommy is giving him, his hands up as if in surrender, he knows it too. 

“I do, I’m just surprised that you aren’t letting one of the other guys take that job on, is all. What, is it a pretty lady or something?” Before Joel can figure out how to answer that question, Tommy’s eyes are widening and slipping right over his shoulder, and then–

“Holy shit, holy shit.”

“What?” 

“See for yourself, brother.” Tommy shuffles him around by his shoulders, Joel’s protests dying in his throat when he sees her. Mercifully, she hasn’t seen them yet, standing in line at a frozen lemonade stand with her phone at her ear, having what looks to be a heated conversation. He doesn’t see Ellie with her, though, and figures to himself that she’s gotten the same treatment he has from Sarah. And suddenly, frozen lemonade seems like a very good idea because his throat has gotten quite dry looking at her. Those same jean shorts he saw her in the last time, and a sliver of skin between the waistband and the hem of her t-shirt. Her very tight t-shirt that rides up a little more when she raises her hand to push those sunglasses of hers back into her hair. And, well, he’s not trying to be a perv, but it doesn’t take much more than a glance to tell that she isn’t wearing a bra beneath her very, very tight t-shirt. 

“Cherry!” 

“Tommy, what the fuck?” Too late, her head has already whipped around, her phone still pressed to her ear, though the scowl that had been on her face melts into a small smile, her eyes widening in recognition. Meanwhile, Joel is considering how hard he would have to punch his brother to rattle his pea-sized brain into some sense. Cherry seems to finish her phone call with a quick flurry, already walking over to them as she hangs up.

“Tommy Miller, look at you!” Tommy pulls her into a tight hug, a small oof leaving her as he hoists her up until only her toes are on the ground before setting her back down with a slap to her arm. Joel decidedly does not give her such a greeting. 

“Cher, of all the people I don’t think I’d ever expect to see you around here, goddamn!”

“Wait, Joel didn’t tell you I moved back?” They both turn their attention to Joel, who only manages to open and close his mouth a few times before Tommy lets out a scoff. 

“You knew that she was back and you didn’t tell me?” 

“Uh, well–”

“I thought for sure he would have told you. He’s coming out to look at my porch next week. Very impressive by the way, Tom, Miller’s Construction.” At that, something smug slides down Tommy’s face as he looks over at Joel.

“Oh, is he now? Say, Cher, you didn’t happen to move in on Cascade Street, did you?”

“Yeah, that’s right, so Joel did tell you then?” Joel contorts his face in the best expression of please no, Tommy, I will kill you if you do that he can muster over Cherry’s shoulder, but Tommy just grins at him, and then at Cherry. 

“No, nope, I just saw in our books that there was an appointment on Cascade next week with a very important person. Just putting two and two together for myself since it looks like no one tells me anything around here.” With that, Tommy claps Joel on the shoulder, who still hasn’t managed to get a word in edgewise between the two of them. Cherry has a smile on her face like she knows exactly what’s going on.

“Well, anyways, it’s so good to see you, Cher. Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

“It’s good to see you too, Tommy. I’m really glad to see you looking so well.” 

“I try, now if you two kids will excuse me, I have a date with something deep fried and covered in sugar.” Tommy is off in a flash, leaving Joel to flounder beneath Cherry’s simpering gaze. 

“You didn’t tell Tommy that I was back?”

“I didn’t think it was mine to tell.” She nods, squinting at him through the bleary haze of the sunset.

“So this hasn’t changed much at all.”

“No, I reckon these are the same rides we went on as kids.”

“Don’t remind me, I’m already worried that Ellie’s off getting kidnapped right now. I don’t need tetanus and loss of limb added to the list.”

“So you got dumped too then?” They make their way back over to the line in front of the frozen lemonade stand, a bit longer than it was before, but he’s happy to wait with her. 

“Afraid so, apparently when you turn fourteen you no longer want to be seen in public with your mom.”

“That applies to dads too.” They both share a tired smile and a small shrug, and once again he can’t believe he’s standing here with her, talking about parenthood of all things. 

“Ellie’s on a date, but don’t tell her I told you that.” Said with a slanted smile and a bump of her shoulder into his.

“Oh yeah?” 

“Mmhmm, she’s been harboring quite the crush on her team’s center outfielder.” The gears in his mind spin for a moment, and then it clicks. 

“Oh, oh, huh.” 

“Nice save, Joel.” 

“No, I mean, that’s great, Cher. Good for her for, uh, knowing herself.” He palms the back of his neck, trying to cool the quick heat creeping there as she laughs at him. It’s a heat he hasn’t felt in a long time, though she was always quick to draw it out of him, always quick to catch him.

“Yeah, it is. I do worry though. Austin is definitely not New York.”

“That it ain’t, though I don’t think she’s gonna have to worry with you for her mom. You always did know how to give people the what for.” 

“You’re damn right about that.” That’s a smile he’d like to remember, a grin really, her eyes crinkling up at him, a little wry and a little fierce. That heat just keeps creeping. 

When they get to the front of the line, she starts to argue with him when he tries to pay for her drink, though he manages to sneak it by her when she gets distracted by another phone call buzzing through her back pocket. She checks the caller ID, sighs, and immediately shoves the phone back into her pocket, letting out another sigh when she sees that he’s already paid for her lemonade. 

“For the record, I’m getting the next one.” 

“Sure, Cher.” His mind gets a little stuck on next one, though he manages to follow her over to a bench and sit down with her, when once again, her phone starts ringing. She doesn’t check it, simply takes a long swig through the straw of her drink as it continues to buzz and ring.

“Not gonna take that call?” 

“Nope, do you want some of this?” Maybe it’s childish, but the thought of drinking from the same straw as her makes his brain start to fry, so he shakes his head no and grips the edge of the bench a little tighter. 

“Is that who you were on the phone with earlier?”

“Oh, you saw that, huh?” It makes him feel sheepish, admitting that he had, nodding to her question. Her shoulders slacken with a long sigh, another pull from her lemonade before she continues speaking. 

“It’s my agent, poking around for my next draft.”

“So you weren’t kidding about the big leagues? Got an agent and everything.”

“I wish I didn’t have one, honestly. But I kinda have to when I’m dealing with all these big publishers.” She pinches the bridge of her nose as she says it, her eyes dropping shut, and he finally sees that she is actually very tired. A little drawn, heavy circles under her eyes, a little thin, sharp around the edges in a way he doesn’t remember. How he missed it before he isn’t sure, but now that he sees it, something slight and sharp slips between his ribs and curls around his heart. 

“You’re working on another book then?” How quickly she hides away that weariness, looking at him with her cheek tilted over her shoulder and a bright smile.

“I’m trying to. You probably don’t care to hear about this–”

“I do, Cher, always wanted to hear about your stories.” It comes out before he can think much about it, and her expression does a strange thing. A quick fall, a scrunch of her brows, and then a slight frown before she shakes her head as if to clear the whole thing away. 

“Have you really not read a single one of my books, Joel?” 

“Uh, I–”

“No, don’t answer that. Wasn’t a fair question, sorry. Anyways, there’s nothing much to tell about this one because I am completely stuck with it.” 

“Stuck?” 

“I’m about this close to scrapping the whole thing. I don’t know, I guess part of me thought the move would shake something loose, but I still got nothing.” It’s not like he could offer her any advice on it, and it’s not like she’s looking for it either, another sigh around her straw and a shrug of her shoulders, always quick to make nothing out of something. 

“You eaten anything for dinner yet?”

“Does this thirty-two ounce frozen lemonade count?” He’s already getting up and holding out his hand for her, and while it seems like the simplest movement, his mind instantly questions if it’s too much, though he fights against that with a foolish hope. 

“C’mon, Cher, I think I can do you one better than a frozen lemonade.” No big deal, she takes his hand. No big deal, he tells himself. No big deal when she lets go either, because that’s normal too. That’s friendly. And friendly is good. 

“If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, then it is definitely going to be better than this frozen lemonade.” 

…

“You got a little, right there–” Before she can wipe away whatever he’s referring to with a napkin, Joel has already licked his thumb and swiped it along the corner of her mouth, promptly sucking what she assumes is barbecue sauce off the pad of his finger. 

“That was so gross.”

“What? I’m saving paper.”

“Lovely.”

“Always, Cherry baby.” The sun had set a while ago, the streets lit up in a syrupy wash of neon from all the rides and games lining the several blocks. They ran the whole circuit of the booths, her constantly pulling Joel away to keep him from spending any more money on trying to win her something, and inevitably failing at whatever rigged game he stepped up to. She can already see his eyes dragging over the remaining booths as they finish their meal at one of the picnic tables set up next to all the food vendors, planning his attack, no doubt.

“You know I really don’t care about getting a stuffed animal, right?” 

“It’s the principle of the thing, Cher.”

“Those games are literally designed for people to lose at them. Seriously, I don’t want you to waste any more money on it.” She quickly realizes that was the exact wrong thing to say, Joel’s eyes flashing back to her, hard and steeled, on the defense. 

“You don’t gotta worry about what I do with my money, okay?” His words come out rushed and loud, with a quick shake of his head, enough to startle her back from where her thigh had been pressed close to his, something that immediately washes the edge out of his expression, his eyebrows slackening and his lips parting.

“Okay, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it, Joel.” Her mouth feels dry, a cool prickle in her scalp, regret swirling up her meal in her stomach. He gets enough of that from everyone else, the money, the job, the what is the plan. He doesn’t need it from her too. 

“No, I’m sorry, it’s just– forget it, I shouldn’t have gone after you like that.” She’s not quite ready to look at him, keeping her eyes focused on the red and white checkered napkin that she’s twisting in her hands. But of course, Joel doesn’t abide by that for long, ducking his head and leaning over to place a smacking kiss on the corner of her mouth before angling back again to get one planted square on her lips. 

“You– taste– like– smoked– brisket–” Each of his words is punctuated with another peck until she can no longer stave off the smile threatening at the corners of her lips, shoving him back with a palm pressed in the middle of his chest. 

“Oh shit, Miller, is that you?” Her stomach turns over, because she’s pretty sure she knows whose voice that is, and she wishes that she didn’t. She isn’t sure what the next best move is, though Joel seems to make the decision for her, slinging his arm over her shoulder to tuck her into his side just as Mikey Donahue comes sauntering over to where they’re sitting. 

“Hey, Mike, you out with the guys tonight?” Joel offers his hand out for a hard shake, apparently still chummy with Mikey after the little scene at his party. Though she supposes water flows under the bridge a little faster for boys anyways. 

“Nah, decided to finally bite the bullet and take Maureen out, she ducked into the bathrooms but she should be wandering over soon.” Though the answer is directed at Joel, Mikey’s eyes stay steady on her, a smile that she doesn’t like the curl of crooking his mouth. 

“Y’all are quite the couple. Does your daddy know you’re out with this menace, big city?” It’s so small, so subtle, but she can still feel it, the way Joel’s hand curls closely and tenses around her forearm from where his arm had been draped around her.

“Ha, ha, Mikey, that’s very funny. I’m a big girl though, don’t really need my daddy or you to be concerned with my business.” Joel snorts over her shoulder, and she has to resist the urge to elbow him for it. 

“Whatever you say, big city. Oh, here comes Maureen. Do y’all mind if we join you?” She’s quick to cut Joel off before he can answer, squeezing his thigh hard to shut him up as she offers Mikey a tight-lipped smile. 

“Actually, we were just heading off to get a few rides in before the fireworks, but y’all have fun.” Not another word, though she’s pretty sure she hears Mikey let out a laugh as she pulls Joel up and along behind her before Maureen can even get anywhere near them. 

“Cher, you know I don’t like rides.” Said very lowly, a bit bashful, she thinks, his head ducking down to speak the words right into her ear. Yeah, she knows, and has known since they were nine and Tommy and her forced him onto the Gravitron, which ended with Joel in tears and a puddle of what had been his dinner next to the trash can that he missed by only a hair. 

“I know, I just needed an excuse to get away from those two. But, really, Joel? Not even the ferris wheel?” He stops walking for a moment, his eyes scanning over the arc of the ride as if to give it his full consideration. Finally, he looks at her again, his lips pressed in a thin line.

“How bad do you wanna go on it?” 

“I think it could be nice, but not if you’re going to be all weird about it.” She swears she sees his chest puff a little, and with that, he takes her hand with all the conviction of a man going off to war. 

“I’m not going to be weird about it, let’s go.” Famous last words. He’s the picture of ease all while they’re standing in line, but the instant they cram into one of the cars, his whole body tenses up, his knuckles going white where they’re gripping onto the side railing. She doesn’t say anything at first, just puts her hand on his bouncing knee when the ride cranks into motion. Though when they crest the top of the ride and it stops again, Joel’s poorly contained panic becomes impossible to ignore.

“Oh, what the fuck–”

“It’s okay, they’re just letting more people on.” She doesn’t think that he hears her, too busy craning his neck over the side of the car before skittering back into place when the lean of his body makes the whole thing rock. 

“This is so fucked–”

“Joel.”

“Why do people enjoy this? That’s–”

“Joel.” 

“What?” He finally looks at her, eyes a bit frantic and jaw slack. She can’t help but reach out and brush his hair back from his face. 

“Is it– are you afraid of heights?” Calling it what it is seems to calm him, his shoulders finally coming down from his ears and his eyes softening. She lets her hand dip down to curl behind his neck, her fingers scratching lightly into the back of his hair.

“Maybe, but I’d say that’s a pretty rational fear, Cher.” 

“Yeah, it is, and you’re also totally safe right now.” Her words are undermined just a bit when the ride screeches back into motion just as she finishes saying them, Joel’s eyes going wide again as he whips his head around to look over the edge of the car. Right, drastic measures then. 

“Hey.” First, she shrugs her thigh over top of his to stop the anxious bounce in his knee, already drawing his attention back onto her. Then, she leans in a little closer so she can keep her eyes steady with his, her hand firm along the side of his neck to hold him in place. 

“Just look right here and it’ll be over before you know it.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“Well, I’m not the one freaking out on a ferris wheel right now.”

“Hey.” She shouldn’t, like giving a child what they want just because they’re having a tantrum. But she does, pressing one kiss, then another to his lips, small, swift little pecks that he eventually starts to lean into, his hand that had been gripping onto the railing coming up to settle along the line of her jaw when she swipes her tongue across his bottom lip. They’ve gotten a little better at this, at making compromises with each other, giving and taking almost equally, opening up for each other. And, not that his ego needs to hear it, but she really likes kissing him. 

His panic seems to be all forgotten as he licks into her mouth, his nose brushing along the side of hers. Always a little greedy though, crowding her into the side of the car and making a soft sound skitter up her throat when his teeth graze along her lip. 

“Uh, excuse me?” It startles them both, Joel very slowly pulling away from her and turning his head to look at the ride attendant, the very unamused looking ride attendant. 

“Y’all can get off now, thanks.” 

…

“Goddamn.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“They don’t have barbecue up north?” 

“Not like this they don’t, Jesus.” He tries not to smile too big at the satisfied hum that leaves her throat as she takes another bite. And he’s also trying hard not to watch her too closely, because, no, it’s probably not normal to just stare at someone while they’re eating brisket and potato salad. 

“Do I have something on my face?” Busted, and, well, actually, he motions to the side of his own mouth, words getting caught in his throat. She gets the hint though, grabbing a napkin and dabbing at the same spot on her face.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize how hungry I actually was. I probably look a little crazy right now.” 

“Are you eating proper while you’re working?” Sheepish, the flicker of her eyes from beneath her lashes is enough of an answer to his question. Some things never change, he supposes. 

“I may get a little distracted.”

“Uh-huh.” A quick, quiet smile shared, a knowing. He likes knowing. 

“Mom?” No, he is still not used to that, both of them whipping their heads around where they’re sitting at a picnic bench to see her daughter with a very furrowed look on her face. 

“Hey, babe, everything okay?” Ellie is looking at Joel. Sizing him up is more like it, her lips pursed and her arms crossed, her hip cocked to the side, just like he knows her mom does when she’s not pleased with something. 

“Uh, yeah, we were just gonna– wait, are you eating meat?” He glances back to Cherry, who now has the guiltiest little smile on her face, her eyebrows pulled together in a quiet cringe as she tries to inconspicuously swallow another bite of food.

“I am, Els, I’m sorry. I gotta be honest, I don’t think I’m gonna keep up the vegetarian thing all the time, but you know I’ll support you if you still want to.” Ellie gives her an eye roll that looks like it’s going to get stuck in the back of her head, a little huff and a few shuffled steps in place like she can’t believe this.

“Okay, well, fine, I guess. I was gonna ask if you had found something to eat that didn’t have dead animal in it, but obviously you’re not gonna be much help with that so I’ll see you later.” With that, Ellie turns heel back into the crowd, Joel still unsure exactly what he just watched.

“They have fried pickles, babe, those should be fine! Be safe, please!” Ellie only acknowledges her shout with a glance spared over her shoulder, Cherry immediately deflating when her daughter gets swallowed up by the crowd, bringing her thumb and forefinger to pinch the bridge of her nose again.

“Oh my god, I can’t believe that just happened.” Said with a dejected little laugh that only grows when she takes another bite of brisket, his chest loosening up when she shakes her head and offers him a smile.

“So vegetarian, huh?” Cherry shrugs.

“New York.” 

“Sarah had a phase with it too. Only lasted three days before Tommy took her to KFC and she swayed.” 

“Ellie is a little more, uh, zealous about it. It’s going on two years now since she watched some documentary and came into my room in complete tears over, and mind you that a twelve-year-old said this, the horrors of animal agriculture.” 

“Well shit.” 

“Right?” 

“You’re telling me you’ve been vegetarian for two years?”

“Don’t laugh, Joel.” It only makes him laugh harder, Cherry shoving him in the arm as she tries to scrunch her mouth out of a smile. But beneath that laugh, there’s something else, something warm and a little giddy. He’s noticed it every time she has said his name. 

“No wonder you were so hungry, Cher, damn.”

“This may surprise you, but meat isn’t the only food group. And I’ll have you know I make some damn good tofu enchiladas.” 

“Well that’s just sacreligious.”

“Oh please.” Back and forth, slipping into that easy volley without either of them noticing that their faces have started inching closer and closer, though when they do there’s a quick flush of heat that has them both clearing their throats and widening that space again. 

“I’ve been meaning to ask, where did Will end up?” 

“Oregon, he’s a really great photographer these days.” 

“Y’all keep in touch?”

“A little, yeah. I think for a while, we were both just happy to have gotten out, you know? It made us keep our distance from each other. But he came and visited last year, got to meet Ellie for the first time.” 

“That’s great, Cher.”

“Yeah, it is. He’s turning thirty-three this year, if you can believe it.” 

“Jesus.”

“I know, how’d that happen, huh?” Joel just shakes his head, a memory already floating up to the surface. Will was a freshman when they were seniors, tall but slight for his age, quieter, kept more to himself, though Joel made a point of saying hi to him in the hallways, clapping him on the back in the lunch line. There was a day, maybe a week after winter break, and Joel was loitering in the halls during a class he didn’t have any patience for when he saw Will at his locker. All smiles, all loud and brash greetings that all faded when he saw the shiner mottling under Will’s right eye. He remembers being ready to go on the warpath for the kid, asking him over and over, who did this, man, just tell me, who did this? He figured, one of the guys from the football team, someone he could set straight, and that he of course would set straight for Cherry’s little brother. But Will just kept saying nobody, it’s nobody, Joel, please don’t. It was probably two months later when he finally figured out who nobody was, a slow realization, something clicking into place. 

But he knows better than to share that memory with her, the same way he knows better than to ask her if she has kept in touch with her parents. He already knows the answer to that question. 

“Joel?”

“Hmm?”

“Where’d you go?” Her head tilted at him, a suggestion of a smile. 

“Sorry, just thinking.”

“That’s dangerous.”

“And that’s mean.” Back to the present, sitting next to her on a picnic bench, he has to shake his head of it. A strange feeling, how carefully they’re stepping around the past, sharing pieces in scraps, in unsure palms, always quick to make it light, make a joke of it. He’s not sure how long he can keep dancing like this. 

“Are you sticking around for the fireworks?”

“I was informed by Sarah to meet her at the car after the fireworks, so yeah, I guess I am.” 

“Oh, how funny, I was given the same instructions by my own little tyrant.” 

“Imagine that.” 

“You wouldn’t want to watch them with me, would you?” 

“I’d love to, Cher.”

…

“You do realize you’re driving us in the opposite direction of where the fireworks are being set off, right?” 

“Do you trust me or not?”

“Do you want me to answer that honestly or not?” 

“You know I could kick you out of my car if I wanted to.” 

“Oh yeah? I’d like to see you try.” 

“Cherry, just– quiet for a minute–”

“Don’t tell me to be quiet, Joel!”

“I’m trying to concentrate, goddamnit! You’re gonna make me miss the turn.”

“What turn? We’re literally on the highway and there isn’t another exit for–” Her thought gets lost behind a gasp when Joel mutters a quiet shit under his breath and suddenly veers completely off the road and into what she thinks is a corn field, though she’s a little too busy shouting whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck over and over again as the car bounces and bumps over uneven ground. And seemingly just as suddenly, he stops the car altogether, putting it in park and killing the engine in what, yes, is the middle of a cornfield, the stalks unusually high and proud for this early in the season. It’s already dark out, deep blue and bruising shadows, she can only barely see his face in what light the lamp post about fifty yards away offers.

“What the fuck?”

“You already asked that about a thousand times, Cher.” 

“Yeah, and you haven’t answered, so again, what the fuck?” He’s still not answering, shouldering into his door to get it open against the close crush of the tightly planted corn stalks, letting out a satisfied grunt when it finally gives way.

“Joel–”

“Cherry, just shut up and give me your hand.” 

“If you ever tell me to shut up again I’m going to make sure you regret it.” 

“Noted, now come here.” Albeit reluctantly, she takes his hand from where he’s now leaning out of the driver’s side door, managing an awkward shimmy over the center console and into the driver’s seat as Joel swings his body out along the side of the car, one leg hitching into the truck bed. The soft silk of corn stalks brushes against her legs and arms as she follows after him, holding on tight to his hand to hoist herself up and into the truck bed alongside him, a quick tumble over each other, all tangled up. Though not for long, Joel already getting to work shaking out what she sees is a stack of moving blankets in the back of the truck bed. She takes a moment to look around, a thick line of trees surrounding the field on the side opposite to the road, so late that she doesn’t think a single car has passed by since they’ve driven out here. And, she hates to admit it, a perfect view down the stretch of the highway of the stadium where they’re setting off the fireworks from. 

“You good?” His question startles her out of her slow scan of the surroundings, finally looking back at him to see that he’s spread the blankets out in the bed of the truck, his back resting against the cab and his legs stretched out in front of him. 

“Y-yeah.” It comes out small and shaky, and while she thinks she knows why, she tamps that down tight as she crawls over to sit beside him. Even though it’s oppressively hot, she still tucks down into his side when he lets his arm fall over her shoulders. Perfect spot and perfect timing too, but she doesn’t watch the sky when she hears that familiar whistle and pop of rockets, choosing instead to see the light burst and shatter over his face, the slow fall of it in his eyes. And there’s no tamping it down now, that feeling starting to fizz and lift in her chest, and as she continues to watch each succession of color and sound wash over Joel’s parted lips and wide eyes, she knows that she is absolutely, irreparably, fucked. 

“You’re not even watching.” 

“Yes I am.” He’s not watching anymore either, looking at her down the length of his nose, all shadow between the quick fractures of light. Their chins bump first before they get it right, seeking each other out by feel. His hands finding her hips, squeezing and coaxing her into his lap, though he pulls away when the next resonant crack of fireworks splits the sky and her whole body tenses. 

“You don’t like the sound?” 

“It’s not my favorite thing.” No, she doesn’t like that sound. That sound that reminds her of the whole lot of not funny going on in her household, but she’s already leaning in to forget all that with her mouth pressed to his. Though Joel holds her back, firm palm, big palm, steady and curled at the nape of her neck. 

“Is it okay though? You’re okay?” It doesn’t help her case when another stream of fireworks sets off just as he asks it, her body jolting in his hold again, but she tries to pass it off with a breathy laugh. 

“It’s fine, Joel. I’m fine. Just come here, please.” He relents, his hand slipping down along her spine to press her closer as she opens his mouth with hers, a shared sigh and the quiet scrape of teeth, her palm splayed over his chest feeling the thrum of his moan when she licks into his mouth. He’s being careful, she can tell, and she doesn’t think it’s only because they can just barely see each other in the dim light and the punctuated bursts of brightness from the fireworks, his hands splaying wide along the span of her back, holding her so close that every time her muscles tense and jump at the sounds it just sends her closer into his arms. He’s steady, perfectly, his thumbs stroking back and forth along her spine, constant and lulling until she knows that the fireworks are still going on, the pinpricks of light in the periphery, but she can no longer hear them over the rushing in her ears and the way she’s trying to collect every breath of his with her own. 

And she just wants more, however she can get it, his stomach tensing up when her fingers slip beneath the hem of his shirt, only pulling away enough that he can help her tug it over his head. Always so warm beneath her hands, she keeps one palm in the center of his chest, finding that pulse, that beat that always seems so strong to her, as Joel’s hands begin to wander. Ever predictable, the first stop of his circuit is her ass, both palms splayed and squeezing, making a weak noise fizzle out in her throat as he rocks her forward into the hardness in his jeans. From there, his palms slip down to the meat of her thighs, another squeeze, his fingers flickering under the hem of her shorts. Their kiss breaks with a quiet click, lips shined and swollen with it as she leans back to peel her tank top off, though before she can unclasp her bra, Joel grabs both her wrists, his eyes wide and pleading.

“What’s wrong?” The fireworks have stopped, so she must squint in the shadows to see the way his eyes are drooping down, the dip and bob of his throat as he swallows.

“Nothing, I just– s’pretty.” He lets go of her wrists, his fingers coming up to ghost over the tops of her breasts, that slight spill of flesh over the top of her bra, a small sigh that she can see leave his chest as he watches her own inhale and exhale. 

“Do you want me to leave it on, baby?” She’s never called him that before, though judging by the broken groan that crackles in his chest, he liked it, a new warmth curling deep in her stomach at the sound. 

“Please, Cher.” She can’t help the grin that slips across her face, circling one of his wrists with her palm to draw it up to her lips, pressing a kiss to the pad of each finger before guiding his hand down to the waistband of her shorts. Quick to flicker through the button and zipper, it’s all slow moves as he surges forward and she leans back until she’s laying out in the bed of the truck with Joel between her legs and nothing on but that bra he seems to like so much. It doesn’t surprise her that he wastes no time in ducking his head down to mouth over the fabric of her bra, her spine arching up into the wet heat with a sigh. Though he’s gone just as fast, drifting further down over the fluttering rise and fall of her stomach, his lips catching below her navel before he settles between her legs with her thighs resting over his shoulders. 

He learned fast what she likes, with her hand in his hair and her words so quick to correct or to praise, he learned very fast. So she doesn’t have to say a thing now, a silent cry crackling in her jaw when he drags his tongue through the heat of her cunt. She can already feel a perfect bead of arousal dripping from between her thighs down the cleft of her ass as his mouth rests over her clit and he sucks, sharp, quick, before dipping back down and doing it again. He’s gotten more confident, more brazen about it, a little rough in the way his fingers dig into the swell of her thighs, demanding everything, open and willing and waiting for whatever he will give her. And she gives it to him, fingers threaded through his hair to tug when his teeth graze too tender, her spine strung tight and taut as her cunt clenches around nothing. The sound is obscene, a salacious secret amidst the hum of crickets and the close quiet of the night, the little hums he can’t seem to stop rising in his throat as he eats at her, the slick slip of it, and the gentle, but still there, rock of the truck from how he’s grinding his hips down, seeking out more just the same as her. 

His one palm slips under the curve of her ass, tilting her hips up toward his mouth as he continues to lick and suck at her cunt, all that pleasure starting to hurt, starting to snap and snarl as she tugs a little harder at his hair. 

“I– more– something more, please.” He lifts his gaze from its hazy drop, the whites of his eyes still hooded and shining up to her as he rests his cheek against the soft inside of her thigh, the little pants of his breath washing over her cunt and making her hips twitch. 

“You want more?” She would smack him for looking so smug if she didn’t need it so bad, settling instead for another tug in his hair that makes him puff out a laugh. He doesn’t wait for any more of an answer, happy to oblige with two of his fingers dragging down through her swollen cunt before dipping inside, heat shooting up her spine when he curls them just so, that small stretch, that ache, that want. He presses a kiss to the inside of her thigh before his teeth sink into the flesh, his fingers already finding a steady rhythm that’s making her buck up into his hand. 

“Yes– just like that– I want– I want–”

“You want it?’

“Uh-huh.”

“You need it?” 

“So bad, Joel, please.”

“I know, Cherry, look at you, huh? So perfect like this.” He continues to coo at her in that low hum when it finally catches up with her, that pleasure pulling taut fraying all at once, her whole body curling in tight and tense and then releasing with a languid moan. My girl, my fucking girl, so good, my good fucking girl. She hears it somewhere in the back of her mind, tucking it away behind the wall of sound and sense still coursing through her as her hips jolt in his grasp, so sensitive that tears start to pearl along her lashes. She thinks her heart might actually stop when he finally pulls his fingers away and up to his mouth, sucking each one with a hum and an absurd pop before he crawls up her body to give her a taste. 

Her hands are already tugging at his jeans, only a bit surprised when she manages to ruck them down and finds that he isn’t wearing underwear. 

“You are such a freak.” He laughs, leaving a harsh nip to the hinge of her jaw.

“I don’t see why you’re complaining, it’s easy access, Cher.” She only manages to get his jeans down over the curve of his ass, but it’s enough so she can slip her palms down and dig her fingernails into the flesh in retaliation, Joel groaning and dropping his forehead down to her sternum. 

“Be nice.”

“You be nice.”

“You’re the one that called me a freak.” 

“And it stands.”

“If I’m a freak then you’re a–”

“Careful, baby.” 

“You’re a menace.” He hisses out the word as he spreads her open on his cock in one slow drag, the both of them sighing as he stills inside her. For a moment the only sound is their ragged breaths. Slow movements, his hand curling around the back of her knee to draw it up against his hip, another small rock that makes her preen with how full she feels. Her mouth stays stamped at his hairline, words murmured there as she curls her arm around his shoulder blades. 

“I’m a menace?” 

“Uh-huh, you d-drive me insane.” His words come out breathless as he finally pulls his hips back, a little more force in his next thrust that makes a whine tear through her chest. He’s so deep, grinding his hips into hers even deeper and all she can do is take it, her heel digging into his low back as he does it again and again and again. 

“Well you drive me in-insane too– oh.” The words slip out in stilted stutters, tears dripping cool and sticky down her flushed cheeks as he finds a different movement, one that’s harder and meaner, rucking her up the bed of the truck with every shunt of his hips against hers, his chest pressed tight against hers, sweat beading and dripping between her breasts.

“Oh yeah?”

“Uh-huh.” Pitchy and high in her throat, she can’t help it when he slips a hand between the humid stick of their bodies to drag his fingers against her clit. 

“Good.” It isn’t long before they’re both unraveling around each other, his forehead pressed hard into hers, the weight of him heaving and draped over her, stifling and sweaty and perfect. Her whole body shakes with the panting laugh he lets out, finally resting his chin between her breasts to look up at her. 

“My little menace.” She can’t help but laugh too, his cheeks splitting into a grin at the sound. 

“My big freak.”

“Hey.”

…

“Oh my god.”

“What, what is it?”

“I think that’s Ellie and her date.” 

“Where?”

“Don’t be so obvious about it, two rows down, across the aisle.” Her hand is on his shoulder, her finger pointed right next to his face to guide his gaze toward where she’s looking. Sure enough, it’s Ellie, sitting very close to another girl on the bleachers, oblivious to the crush of the crowd around them, smiling and laughing to each other as they wait for the fireworks to start. He never liked watching from inside the stadium, thinking that all the bright lights sort of defeated the purpose, but now he’s grateful for them so he can get a better look to confirm that yes, that is definitely Ellie who is now putting her arm around her date, getting even cozier. 

“Oh my god.” He finally looks away to see Cherry hanging on his shoulder, perfectly mortified at the sight in front of her.

“You got a regular Casanova on your hands, Cher.” 

“I feel like I’m going to cry, or maybe scream, or maybe throw up.” He’s watching her watching them, her brow crumpled and her jaw completely slack, pure shock. He’d laugh, but he’s pretty sure he’d be in a far worse state if he saw Sarah in a similar position. 

“Hey, it’s okay, they’re just–”

“Oh my fucking god, look!” His eyes dart back just in time to see what he’s pretty sure is the end of a kiss, the young pair shyly pulling away from each other with small smiles.

“Oh, Jesus Christ.”

“Do you think that was her first kiss?” It’s such an absurd question. He’s only just met the kid, after all. But when he looks back at Cherry and sees the pleading tilt of her eyes, how could he not try his best?

“Well, I don’t know, Cher, do you?” Maybe his best wasn’t very good.

“I don’t know. Oh fuck, I shouldn’t have seen that. I should not have seen that. She’s too young for that, right? I should go get her, yeah, that’s what I should do.” She’s already starting to get up out of her seat, and all Joel can think to do is grab her hand to keep her where she is.

“Woah, woah, hey, I think they’re fine, Cher. Look, they’re just talking now.” She squeezes his hand, still looking at Ellie with a deep frown on her face, but she does sit back down. She’s still holding onto his hand while she worries her bottom lip between her teeth.

“You think so?”

“Tell me this, how old were you when you had your first kiss?” Suddenly, the worry in her face slackens, something a bit more bashful slipping into place. She’s still holding onto his hand.

“Well, I was thirteen.” 

“There you go, it’s normal then.” She’s still holding onto his hand.

“How old were you when you had yours?” She’s still holding onto his hand.

“I don’t know, probably thirteen like you.” She’s still holding onto his hand.

“You mean you don’t remember?” She’s still holding onto his hand.

“Not really.” 

“How can you not remember your first kiss?” She finally lets go of his hand, only so that she can talk with her own, a bit of flailing and exasperation at him before her hands settle in her lap. He rests his on his knee, a hard squeeze to stop any lingering want.

“I just don’t. It was a long time ago, and it obviously wasn’t very important.” 

“Do you at least remember who it was with?” He does, but she’s not going to like the answer, and suddenly the toes of his boots are very interesting as he scratches the back of his neck. 

“Uh, Maureen.” He says it as he drags his hand down his jaw, the name getting muffled beneath his palm. Cherry’s face scrunches up.

“Come again?” He really doesn’t want to say it again, but he knows she’s not going to give this up now, her chin tilted down and her eyes narrowed at him.

“Maureen? Maureen Henderson, yep.” As if a yep might make it better, but her brows have already done that thing, that familiar thing where they shoot up her forehead, then scrunch down again, then slacken.

“Huh, so Maureen wasn’t very memorable then?”

“Nope, not at all.” She purses her lips and nods, her eyes squinting out across the stadium for a moment. But before whatever is simmering below the surface can bubble over, the first booming firework goes off, and her whole body recoils. 

“Oh, motherfucker.” It happens again, another fizzle and crack, and as the crowd oohs and ahhs, she digs her fingernails into her thighs and grits her jaw. 

“That never got any better, huh?”

“Afraid not.” He wants to reach out for her, to curl his arm around her shoulders and pull her tight into his side, to absorb the shock that keeps resounding through her body. He knows how to, after all. 

“Is– is there something I can do, Cher?” Her eyes are a little unfocused, even when he ducks his head down to try to get her attention.

“You’d think that by now I’d have figured out that every loud sound isn’t–” Almost like a hiccup when the next rocket goes off. The only thing that’s different is that now, each time, first her eyes dart over to where Ellie is sitting, checking, making sure. He feels his heart ripping apart watching her. 

“Hey.” It comes out quieter than he meant it to, but her eyes still turn onto him when he puts his hand on her knee.

“You wanna go wait at your car?” She nods, and that’s enough for him to go into action, not thinking twice about taking her hand again and shepherding them both down one of the aisles further away from where Ellie is sitting. Back and forth, back and forth, his thumb stays steady and smoothing along her hand the whole way out of the stadium and into the massive parking lot.

“My car or yours, Cher?” 

“I don’t– I don’t– Ellie– uh, I–” She’s still holding tight to his hand, her eyes darting around the lot, clearly working herself into a state, the continued onslaught of fireworks not helping at all. 

“That’s alright. Cher? It’s alright, okay? Let’s sit in my car and I’ll drive you to yours when this is over.” He thinks she says okay, but he’s already focused on pulling her along to his car. And when they get in, him in the driver’s seat and her in the passenger’s, he realizes that, no, he’s not going to crack the windows, trying to keep as much of the sound out as possible. So he lets the car idle and cranks the AC up as high as it will go, and it’s probably going to burn up his tank of gas, but he doesn’t care, because it seems to muffle the noise of the fireworks just enough for her to start coming back down. He’s still holding her hand over the center console.

“Oh fuck, I’m sorry, Joel.” She takes her hand out of his, pressing her palm to her chest, letting out a long breath through her nose. 

“Don’t, Cherry. It’s okay.” She keeps her eyes closed and her palm against her chest, long inhales and exhales, and he realizes that she’s doing a breathing exercise. He only knows it because the shrinks at the VA started Tommy in on it when he kept having panic attacks after coming home. And something like anger settles in his stomach, slithering up and seeping out between his ribs, sickening and slick. Anger that no, this hasn’t gotten any better. Anger that no, this probably won’t get better. And no, no one deserves it, but he selfishly thinks to himself that she especially doesn’t deserve it. 

“Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me, Cher.” Her eyes finally slip open, head tilting onto her shoulder to look at him. Mercy, it’s passing. Mercy, he could help her through its passing. 

“So, Maureen Henderson, huh?” 

“Oh, you’re still on that?” Small smile, he’ll take it.

“You could have done better, that’s all.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Mmhmm.” 

“Well since you remember it so well, who was your first?” 

“You’re not gonna like my answer.” 

“Try me.” 

“It was Mikey Donahue.”

“No.” She was right, he didn’t like that answer, not one bit.

“Yeah, I think his friends dared him to do it, honestly.” 

“That little shit.” 

“Uh-huh.”

“You could have done better.” That gets a full smile from her, her nose scrunching up at the same time something takes off in his chest. 

“I guess we both could have.”

“Yeah, Cher, I guess so.”

...................................................

taglist: @casa-boiardi @tieronecrush @swiftispunk @beskarandblasters @trulybetty @amanitacowboy @pr0ximamidnight @wannab-urs @jksprincess10 @suzmagine @everything-isfucked @lanabobana @kittenlittle24 @sarap-77 @officerrrfriendly @val-srz @bitchwitch1981 @redwoodsanddaffodils @themothersmercy @romanarose @lost-inhawkins @youcancallmeelle @hollywoodcaligirl @

[hdhdgsgs]

i know u are probably tired of writing for karma, but predator/prey dynamic of him hunting down his small, meek little mouse in the woods, catching her n putting her in his car to take home and claim as his <3 also could u include the fsct that the reader is a squirter bc i need more representation smh ^_^

“Little mouse~” his voice rang through the forest as you hid behind a tree to gain back long lost breath. “We both know I’m gonna find you, and when I do- hahahaha- I’m going to break your adorable fucking mind, got that?” Shivers erupted up your spine as footsteps revealed where he was, only problem was he was heading towards your general area.

“You can run, but you can’t hide~” the steps went to the left of where you were so the logical next step was to run while you still could, the only thing was, obviously he heard it and immediately started jogging towards you, making sure you had a twinkle of hope left before he devoured the sweet soul he was aching for.

“I’m going to get you, little mousie. And when I do I’m going to make you squirt so much it will drain your slutty goddamn body. You don’t know how much-“ strong hands wrapped around your waist. A squeak made its way up your throat and into his ears which made his groan and bite the top of his little mouses ear. “-I’ve been waiting for his, my special, little, bitch.”

Weightlessness enveloped you as he picked you up and put you over his shoulder like a sack of flour. “I love this ass.” ‘Smack’ “Soon its going to be mine as you squirt all over my face baby.” He moved his hand up to where he knew the sensitive bundle of nerves was, ripping a moan from your throat. “Hahaha, such a sensitive mousie.”

The sound of a car door opening interrupted your thoughts as he threw you in without a care, reaching over you to get a vibrator, “open your legs slut.” At that he opened your legs forcefully and put the pink bunny into your panties. “While we ride home you’re going to let me hear those precious little moans-” He shows you the remote presumably for the ‘toy’. “-and I get to edge you as much as I want, slut.”

Slamming the door he walked around any got in himself, starting up the engine as he started the vibrator up sending shivers up your spine. Small moans you try to hide echo through his brain, loving every second of it, it’s a long car ride, but that made it so much better, he even stopped once in a secluded area to watch you squirt and eat you out before continuing like nothing happened.

When you finally got home he grabbed a collar and leash put it around your throat and forced you on all fours, walking up the driveway into the house and up the stairs on your knees as he smiled and compliment how absolutely gorgeous’ you were and how well you were being for him. “Mhm, such a slutty mouse for your master, do you like being paraded around like the whore you are?”

“This is your fault after all, flirting with someone in front of me, for the sole purpose of making me jealous, well congratulations, it worked and now you have to face the consequences of your actions little pet~” he cooed tugging on the leash as you entered the bedroom, to which he promptly picked you up, threw you on the bed and closed/locked the door.

“You’ve been such a bad little mousie, come here baby.” He walked towards you, lifting your legs swiftly and pushing you down onto the plush bed. “Now to claim what is rightfully mine~”

Note: He would definitely say, “Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!” as he rams his cock into you.

———————————————————————

Gotta be honest I have a huge predator/prey kink so I had to do this request, not sure if I like how I wrote it but it’s done now. Hope you enjoy :D

[possumphobic]

For me

— pairings: eddie munson x fem!reader

— a.n.: a bit of smut i wrote for a friend. i didn't like it tbh, but they did so i'm posting it anyway. this is so bad but give me a discount, it was about 4am when i wrote it and i did not proof read it

— warnings: penetration, (poorly written) smut, praise kink, maybe a ooc eddie but who cares.( minors dni )

"Mhmm... Such a good girl, taking me so well, isn't she?" The praise leaves Eddie's lip with a smirk as he pounds into you, his hand firm on your hips, his eyes mesmerized by the way you get lost in pleasure, aching with every touch he gives you. "So good..." He groans, again and again as the thrusts on you, hitting just the spot.

He knows you well. Well enough to know just how to work you up, well enough to know every place he has to touch to turn you on. He knows exactly what he's doing to you, as his lips run hotly, leaving marks on your skin in shades of red and pink. He knows what he's doing as his fingers travel down your body with lust, his thumb massaging your clit as your body trembles with the stimulation.

"Eds..." The way his name fall off your lips make he questions how long he can take this. You say it like it's something holy, like a prayer, and at the same time, something profane.

He thinks he might be addicted to it.

"You like that?" He grins widely as he casts his gaze upon you. "You like that, pretty girl?"

"Y-yeah..." The word stutters to leave your mouth as you feel him speeding up.

"Now tell me what do you want." He orders.

"I want you to let me cum... Please, Eds."

There again. Eds. If anybody else were to give him a nickname as silly as this one, he would promptly disagree to it, maybe even go an extra mile and make the whole scene. But when the name rolled out of your lips for the first time, he knew it was the end of him. The way your teeth sunk into your bottom lip, covered with slick and glistening at him when you called him, he couldn't find it on him to go against you.

And god, he wanted to let you cum all over him.

"Not yet, sweetheart. Just hold it for me, can you do it?" He touched your face softly, your big eyes looking at him, lips parted as you let out a dozen dirty sounds that made him go crazy.

You looked at him, displeasure written all over your face.

"Please, Eds, I've been so good for you..." You whined to him.

"I know, darling, and I love that about you. But not just yet. We're not done playing."

You frowned at him. Or better saying, attempted to. It was hard to do anything when your mind couldn't think about anything else but Eddie. His hips thrusting faster and faster each time, his hands steadying you in place with enough strength to leave the marks of them on your skin, his messy curls tickling the crook of your neck each time he would lower himself to give you a love bite.

"P-Please, Eds..." You cannot think of another words as you feel your walls clenching around of him, the same thing playing again and again on your mind as you feel a familiar hotness gathering on your lower belly.

"Is that all you can think about, love? Cumming? Cumming for me?" He asks you, his voice deep and filled with lust. You nod to him, mindlessly. "Good girl..." He says, stocking deeply inside of you. "Come for me, uhm darling? Be a good little girl and cum all over my cock."

And just like you were perfectly synchronized, you snap, letting yourself go of the denied orgasm and coating him with your slick, his name over and over leaving your lips amongst curse words and dirty moans, your mouth opened wide and Eddie's gaze upon you, same goddamn expression on his face.

[asshlyyyy]

Pregnancy (Elvis Headcanons)

Descriptions: Headcanons for how a relatively young Elvis would react to his significant other being pregnant with his child.

Author’s Note: I have nothing finished, so enjoy these headcanons that I just randomly wrote up. I’m hoping to have a one shot or even just a new chapter tomorrow. I am working on so many things at once... You have no idea. Also please... ELVIS IS SO CUTE LOOK AT HIM. LOOK AT MY BOY.

Note: ALL MY ELVIS WORK CAN BE IMAGINED WITH ELVIS OR AUSTIN!ELVIS

Warnings: Bad spelling or even some grammatical errors

Masterlist

My Requests are opened

When you told Elvis you were pregnant he didn't know how to feel

He was obviously really scared

You two were very young...

You were only twenty and Elvis was Twenty-four

You remember the look in his eyes when the words fell off your tongue

He fell down on the couch and just froze

You didn't blame him, you didn't even know how to feel

It would take a couple of days before it really hit Elvis, and in a good way.

He would wake up and would be all over your stomach

He would want to hold onto it, rub it, talk to it, kiss it, everything really

It's because of his love for your unborn baby that makes you excited

He’s talking to your stomach at every moment he can

“I don’t think they have ears just yet, Elvis.”

“I don’ want to risk it, they need to know I’m always here for ‘em.”

When he has to leave for your he’s a nervous wreck

He’ll be calling you every free second he had

Checking on you and the baby

Talking to the baby through the phone

It made your heart melt by how much Elvis already loved his child

He was there for every appointment, and he made sure of it.

If he happened to be on tour he made sure to fly back just to be there.

You called him crazy, but he didn’t care, he was with the ones he loved

You could only imagine his reaction when he found out you were having twins

He lost his absolute mind

He picked you up and spun you around

He wouldn't stop talking about it the whole way home

When he did get home, he would tell everyone and talk their ear off

Everyone would be way over it, having to listen to Elvis constantly talk about his two kids on the way

He would try to keep you safe at all times

Wouldn't let you do anything that could potently harm you or the babies

Which does indeed include putting on your shoes

If Elvis saw you trying to even pick up your shoe... it was over for you

He would promptly yell but then would go all soft and whine

"It's not safe for the baby, darlin',"

"I'm literally putting on shoes..."

"So? What if you end up squeezing them to death?!"

"That's not- That's not how that works."

He would make sure you weren't around people who smoked or even drank

He would also make sure you were only eating healthy foods, no junk food, no... absolutely nothing that would be unhealthy for the babies

When you guys were putting together the nursery... the man didn't even let you in the room

Even when you tried to sneak in to do some work... Elvis would take you right back out

It got frustrating at some points, but your heart fluttered from how much Elvis cared

It didn't shock you too much... Elvis loved you and wanted to protect you and his babies at all costs

When it was time... oh boy

Elvis happened to be doing a concert in your guys' hometown

He immediately leave the stage with no explanation, to go be there with you

He would definitely make it up to everyone by rescheduling and giving them some free signed shirts, but goddamn it! HIS KIDS WERE ON THE WAY

He would be freaking out in the hospital room

He would be screaming, crying, just all over the place

"I should be freaking out,"

"Then why aren't you?????!!!"

"Elvis honey... you freak out enough for both of us."

You two had a very healthy baby boy and girl

You already knew that your little girl was going to be daddy's girl

Beaux and Avani Presley is what you two decided on

You didn't know if you were crying because of labor pains, or crying because Elvis was crying

You truly didn’t expect Elvis to act this way... but it just made you even more confident that he was going to be the best dad ever.

"They're so beautiful. They look just like you,"

"They also look like you, Elvis. They look like both of us."

He would then stick his tongue out at you.

Beaux is a definite shy kid while Avani would be much like her father

Elvis would definitely bring his kids out on stage for everyone to see

Avani would probably sing and Beaux would hide against you

Want to join my Taglist?

Taglist: @mirandastuckinthe80s​, @mommy-maia​, @yagirlalexx​, @slutforblueeyes​, @alligator-person​, @diorxmimi​, @anangelwhodidntfall​, @pumkiinpasties​, @starryhazee (I cannot tag you, this was the username left in the form, please message me to get this fixed!)

[ryttu3k]

for the ship game:

beckett/sascha

mina/jonathan

nines/lacroix

vykos/holzmann (aka Double Sascha)

[ship it or don't ship it meme]

Well that's a solid 'ship it' for all four. Let's go through 'em!

Beckett/Sascha

What made you ship it?

Literally, this exact passage.

Like yes okay funny haha 'hate fuck it out' and all but this passage is the bit that made me go, "Oh. They're parallels."

What are your favourite things about the ship?

They work so well together. Not just as a character dynamic, but in-universe. Once they stop trying to murder each other, they just click, and Drowning of Rasputin showcases that beautifully. They have shared passions but different approaches that coordinate extremely well, where Sascha gets Beckett to maybe act a little more analytically and Beckett gets Sascha to, um, not turn people inside out.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

Super not a fan of the like... pre-Dracon-extraction stuff where it's still extremely unhealthy, like I have seen some ship content that was still very much 'enemies' and not so much 'enemies to lovers'. Like I feel Beckett saw enough in Dracon!Sascha to save their unlife in Constantinople, but I can't see an actual relationship starting until they get through that.

Mina/Jonathan

What made you ship it?

Jonathan went from "I should get this recipe for Mina! :D" to "I would condemn myself to hell for Mina". Mina went from "My fiance wrote to me *dokis*" to "My husband is a goddamn beast *eyes emoji*". They protect each other, they look after each other, and they complement each other. They both have this really cool dichotomy of being both Very Victorian and also Very GNC And Also Sometimes Feral. They're both fantastic characters in how they're written and fantastic people in that I would 100% love to be friends with them. And they love each other and are devoted to each other with the force of a thousand suns and it'd be exceedingly hard not to super love both characters and also not come out of it loving their relationship, too.

tl;dr I took one look at how in love these dorks were and decided I was in love with their love.

What are your favourite things about the ship?

Oh, uh, I think I covered that above tbh XD

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

Don't think so! They're not a main ship so I'm not as hooked in to the fandom, though, so I'm not 100% sure what the unpopular opinions are.

Nines/LaCroix

What made you ship it?

Played Bloodlines. Nines was my favourite, LaCroix managed to worm his way into problematic favourite. Peered with interest at some fics on AO3 and realised I had promptly lost my mind and read basically everything on there and then I was just in way too deep.

IIRC it was We Don't Have To Like Each Other To Survive This by @iravaid that made me go, "Fuck it, I ship it."

What are your favourite things about the ship?

They're absolutely brilliant foils. Camarilla Ventrue Prince vs Anarch Brujah street prince. LaCroix has authority on paper but no respect. He's Prince of the city and he's so alone up there in his tower. Nines doesn't want on-paper authority, and so rejects the title of Baron. He wants to be a part of the community, and for the most part, he absolutely is. He has, quite naturally, the respect that LaCroix wants, just not the on-paper power to enact his desires. They each want or need what the other has. If they worked together? Damn, LA's enemies wouldn't stand a goddamn chance.

Ira has a really good post on how they work as foils here.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

Mmm not a fan of the non-consensual stuff but that's a disclaimer I have to give for any enemies-to-lovers ship, really XD;;

Vykos/Holzmann

Context: Sascha Holzmann is an OC based on a single sentence in Transylvania Chronicles II of Myca renaming themself after a fallen comrade who died fighting the Camarilla. You can read the bio I wrote for him here; the line from TCII is:

What made you ship it?

That little line from TCII. Myca is a walking clusterfuck of identity issues at that point. For them to take their entire name from someone means they must have been incredibly special to them, and that... stands out a lot. A lot of people must have died in that time. What makes this guy special?

What are your favourite things about the ship?

Rambled a fair bit on how I see them together in the bio/write-up linked above. With the caveat that lmao this is 100% a canon/OC ship... mostly it's the quiet support Sascha gives Myca? Myca has been Dracon!Myca for two and a half centuries at this point and I feel they no longer had much of a sense of identity of their own, and Sascha gave them the space to just... exist for a bit. No prying, no trying to Work Things Through, just being there.

Add on his values and what he stood for, wanting that freedom from manipulation, and I can see Myca seeing Sascha as... almost as an ideal? Someone who is free, who can act on their passions and values, who can advocate for themself as an individual, something Myca feels is no longer possible (based on @solivar's line in this phenomenal write-up: "I could not even pretend to be a self-willed child of Desire when my will was manifestly not nor could it ever again wholly be my own.") So the relationship they have, and taking his name afterwards, is a gesture of, "I'm intentionally and deliberately going to take his name as a way to represent his values, because those are values I want and need for myself."

I don't know, it's just a really interesting little tidbit from TCII that could spawn a whole lot of interesting stuff. The original Sascha had to have been so significant to Myca if they took his name, y'know?

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

lmao no because I made it up entirely.

[a-bisexual-dumbass]

Perfection

Read it on Ao3 here!

SUMMARY: 

Prompt “You’re gonna pretend like you have no idea how I’ve felt about you, since the first day we met?”

You have a massive crush on Donnie.

And he likes you back!

NOTES:

My first foray into writing with a Y/N

Generally SFW, needed something to relax with

It does go outside of my general HCs, but- it's for the story, yk??

1160 words, was a fun write!

April took you to meet her brothers, one day. Told you not to freak out, not to get scared.

Fear definitely wasn’t what you were feeling.

Your eyes were drawn to a certain purple-clad turtle who seemed not to notice that you were there.

Damn.

“Hm? Oh. Salutation!” he bowed dramatically, “I’m Hamato Donatello, AKA Donnie, Bootyyyshaker9000, or Othello Von Ryan. And you are..?”

You reddened slightly, “…[Y/N]”

~~~

Donnie didn’t get crushes.

He hadn’t since Leo made fun of him for liking Atomic Lass- at least nothing serious.

But… [Y/N]…

Goddamn, you were just… perfect. You were impossible.

You could never like him back, though.

He was so fucking emotionally ignorant. A useless piece of shit. A depressive asshole who could only provide tech to the team.

And you were just so much better than him. Absolutely superb. Entirely beyond compare. A piece of art, truly, no matter what you did.

“DON! Head in the game, por favor, we need your- your- your weird math-y stuff!” Leo snapped in his face, “Thinkin’ ‘bout someone? ¿Estás enamorado?”

You laughed in that way, the way that made his heart stutter, “Ts- maybe it’s moi?”

A look passed over your face that made Donatello think that… maybe you weren’t joking?

No. Just wishful thinking. You could never love him. Never.

Donnie blushed a deep green, and coughed into his hand, “Ehem. What do you require of me..?”

~~~

Donatello wouldn’t have admitted that he was in love. And actively stalking you. But- you caught him.

“I was just getting groceries, [Y/N]! De-hehefinitely not following you nailed it!” Donnie rubbed his arm, awkwardly, flushing as he stared at you.

Goddamn. You looked good in that.

You brush his stare off, though. He couldn’t love you. You’re just a writer. Just an artist, an emotionally vulnerable crybaby against his logic and reason. He couldn’t.

“…riiight. Well, I am too. Wanna walk with me?”

The two of you walked and laughed and talked about your favourite Jupiter Jim theories, and Donnie helped you unpack your groceries. Afterwards, you went back to the lair with him to watch him play with wires with artful, graceful hands while he info-dumped about things you couldn’t even hope to understand. You often found yourself lost in his heterochromatic blue-and-red eyes.

You really couldn’t help it.

He was just too… perfect…

~~~

Donatello noticed that you were wearing more purple, wearing revealing clothing around him, staring at him…

He noticed, took note in the back of his mind, and promptly ignored. He was reading too deep. It didn’t mean anything. You were just his friend, and he’d have to accept that.

Didn’t mean it didn’t get him all hot and bothered, though.

Fuck, man.

You invited him out to eat pizza together at Run-of-the-Mill one day.

It… it couldn’t be a date, right?

But he’d dress up nice anyways. You had said mint was your favourite colour, right?

He wore a soft green button-down and black dress pants. He made sure that his eyebrows were extra perfect. He painted his nails. He wanted to look his best for you, even if his love would say unrequited.

And you dressed in deep, royal purples, hair brushed back, simple, elegant, you looked perfect.

Hueso asked if the two of you were on a date.

Donnie watched you, watched you laugh.

He smiled as he drank lightly and you flirted and he flirted back, playing it as a joke, but truly meaning it.

“You look… wonderful, [Y/N],”

“Et tu, Donatello,”

~~~

You would admit that you had been dressing for Donnie’s eyes and his alone. You were in love, and you had to finally admit it.

You painted Donatello, you sketched him, you almost started following him around. He was your muse. He’s just so perfect.

You could stay friends if you must.

But fuck, you were in love!

But as the months went by, you just fell into a pattern.

Friends, best friends, maybe even the love of your life, and you built up the confidence to just tell him, but you just… couldn’t. As you flirted, he laughed and joked and you just couldn’t tell.

Did he like you back?

Fuck, man, it’s so hard to tell. You could usually read him like a book (albeit a somewhat confusing one), but… are you… more than friends? Or does he only see you platonically?

~~~

The two of you had gotten into an argument.

And that was when your heart had decided it was enough.

Neither of you remembered what it was about. Maybe the tension had finally built up enough to tip the bucket.

You were both crying, yelling, wildly gesturing, and upset.

“Are you kidding me, [Y/N]? I-”

“Are you gonna pretend like you’ve had no fucking idea how I’ve felt about you, since the first day we met?” you sobbed, throwing yourself onto him, “Well, fuck it. I’m in love with you, Donnie! I’ve been trying to tell you! Given you signs! I’ve tried everything!”

The softshell stared, shocked, so you kept going.

“Gods, Don- I asked you on a date- we flirted- I- you just laughed me off,” you were melting underneath him, “-I’m sorry that I thought I had a chance with someone as fucking perfect as you are. I’m sorry, I’m so-rry, I-I’m fucking sorry. I thought we were something, but I should-”

He cut you off by cupping your face gently in his hands.

“Can I kiss you?”

It was your turn to stare, now.

It only took a second, though.

You threw yourself at him, intertwining your fingers, wrapping around his legs tightly, your tongues pushing together.

He pinned you to the wall, pulling away from your mouth.

You stared up at him, any anger forgotten in less than a second, “Are- are we doing this?”

Oh gods Donnie was hot like that, breathing heavily, slightly sweaty, looking down at you. You drape your arms around his neck, silently praying that he would say yes.

“Do you want this?” he worried at his lip, almost unpinning you.

“Yes,”

~~~

Donnie woke up to you spooning him.

He curled in on himself and began scrolling on his phone, waiting for you to wake up.

He listened to your steady breathing, tried to memorise the pattern of your heartbeat, thinking about how damn perfect you are, were, wil always be. Perfection couldn’t be impossible. He was looking at them, wrapped in them, surrounded by them.

You had tightened your grip on him as you woke up. He only squirmed a little in your arms, flipping over to look at you.

“Goodmorning, love…” you whispered, stretching and looking at his body, marked with small hickeys, artfully placed.

He looked beautiful.

He kissed you and tried to roll out of bed, but your quiet noise of complaint stopped him.

“Mmm… I need to make coffee…” he purred, cuddling closer, “We’ve things to do… probably…”

You huffed.

“…fine…”

[funeral-grayy]

if it means a lot to you

If you can wait till i get home, i swear we can make it last

this was a whole new world for bakugo, his first time on tour with his band. denki had booked a show for them in a hole in the wall venue, opening for some new and upcoming band that was pretty popular right now. sure they’ve played shows before but they were always in their hometown, never a foreign city. so far the turn out seemed to be decent, people filing in and crowding over to the merch tables. and thats when he spots you, you walk in with a girl and a guy. don’t get bakugo wrong, he doesn’t believe in love at first sight, but shit, this was close. 

“what did i tell you bakugo, don’t bother hooking up or getting attached on tour. you’ll never see them again.” jirou said from behind him, following his gaze to you.

“tch, i know, i’m not stupid” he retorted. little did he know, he was in fact very stupid. 

trying to ignore your deafening presence, he watches the opening band play their first song from the side lines, not wanting to be in the crowd. he tries so hard to concentrate on the music and lyrics but fuck, he can’t stop thinking about how cute you look in your little floral dress and vans. no, he couldn’t think about you. almost as if you could read his mind, he spots you from the corner of his eye. you’re heading in his direction with your friends, towards the exit. before he even has time to consider what the fuck he’s doing, he reaches out to grab your bicep, promptly stopping you in your tracks.

“If you leave now, you’ll miss my band” he grumbled out, trying not to sound too intimidating. any normal person would have been confused or even mad at him for grabbing you, but you just smiled up at him, slight confusion written on your face.

“don’t worry, we’re not leaving! he just wants to go out for a smoke before the next band comes on.” you tell bakugo, you head tilted to the side slightly making you look even more cute. he let go of your arm and looked away, a light dusting of pink on the tip of his ears now. he muttered a ’my bad’ and you continued on your way.

little did he know, your heart was about to pound out of your goddamn chest. you’d been staring at him for the majority of the night, not being able to get over how attractive he was. sure he always a had a scowl on his face but fuck, there was just something about him. once outside, you leaned against the wall and watched the traffic go by, completely lost in thought. you knew it was never a good idea to fall for a band guy. it was a disaster just waiting to happen. they were always on the road and barely ever home, that’s not something you wanted to get tangled up in. not to mention all the other fan girls you’re sure he has, that’s always dangerous too. you hadn’t realized how much time had passed until one of your friends said they were done and ready to head back in. oh god you were going to have to walk by him again, your nerves were going haywire. 

as you rounded the corner to where he was before, you held your breath. ah, he wasn’t there but rather on the stage setting up his drumkit. this was probably better for you anyways, you suddenly felt so shy and weren’t really sure what you’d say to him. you made your way to the back of the crowd, not wanting to put yourself in the way of anyone who was going to mosh. you watched as the other four band members got on stage and started setting up their instruments. you’d never seen this band before but you suddenly were very excited. soon enough, the venue lights dimmed and the lead singer started introducing everyone to the audience. once she got to the dummer, your eyes snapped to him, his already on you and a confident smirk plastered on his face.

bakugo listened as jirou started to introduce everyone to the crowd but tuned her out as he scanned the crowd for you. he had to make sure you kept your word and hadn’t left. finally spotting you, he smirked to himself, you didn’t actually leave and for some odd reason he was happy. jirou introduced him finally and your eyes locked. he maintained eye contact while jirou continued on. finally, she announced their first song and they began. the whole set felt like the flew by, the music was so good and the audience was vibing with them really well. this would easily go down as one of your favorite shows to date. eventually the show came to an end and the last act finished up. you hadn’t seen bakugo but maybe that was for the best. the crowd was starting to dwindle and head outside but you were standing near the back, talking to one of your friends and some other people you knew.

“hey, don’t look now but drummer boy is heading your way” she whispered to you. oh fuck, what were you suppose to say to him? you didn’t think he’d come seek you out, you’d assumed he‘d be busy packing up their van.

“does anyone have gum?” his gruff voice asked from behind you.

“thats one way to start the conversation” your friend muttered, grabbing some gum from her purse and handing it to him. she then turned to you and the look on her face was nothing short of evil. you knew what she was about to do and you hated her for it. “hey! we actually have to go talk to that opener band…we’ll be right back!” and with that, you and bakugo were alone.

“did you enjoy our set?”

“oh my gosh! you guys were so good. I’ve never seen a band with a keyboardist before. and your sounds was really unique and ugh that one song it was-” you rambled out. realizing you were basically gushing about his band, you quickly shut up.  

“no, please continue feeding my ego, i love it” he wanted you to keep talking, he wanted you to ramble forever. who the fuck were you and why were you making him feel…..feelings. this wasn’t like him, he didn’t go out of his way to talk to girls but there was just something about you. he wanted to be fucking soft and gentle with you, and that wasnt him. he didn’t get fucking mushy over some random girl he didn’t know. and he sure as shit never wanted to be sweet on one. yet here he was, listening to you continue your rambling and knowing he’d never get sick of your voice.

“hey bakubro! the vans all packed and we’re heading out, cmon” kirishima interrupted, not realizing what exactly was going on.

“Of course, perfect timing shitty hair.” he grumbled, not wanting to leave your side just yet. he knew he wasn’t going to see you again, not after tonight. no, he needed to find a way to see you again, he couldn't let this be the only time. 

“oh uh, no worries! im sure my friends are ready to go too! it was really nice meeting you, bakugo” you said as you gave him the sweetest smile. before anything else was said, you headed over to your friends and to the exit. fuck, this sucked. but you also knew how these things went and you knew you were probably dodging a bullet. getting involved with a band dude was always a big no no. you knew you were getting way ahead of yourself anyways, you literally just met. you needed to get a grip. so lost in your thoughts, you hadn’t even noticed bakugo was right behind you, following you outside.

“i’ll see you guys at tomorrow nights show.” he simply said, which you whipped your head around to. what ? you didn’t even have tickets to tomorrows show and it was almost two hours away. as if he had read your mind, he  continued. “i’ll put you guys on the guest list. yn plus two”.  your friends eagerly agreed and you were still blankly staring in shock. he sent you what seemed to be a genuine smile and passed by, heading outside.

what the fuck just happened?

[leofrith]

Luke/Din ask thing

oh hell yes it's been a while since i really truly screamed cried threw up about dinluke

What made you ship it?

i accidentally stumbled across this fic months before din and luke even met in canon and thought "oh, din and luke? that's inspired, actually." and then i read it and promptly lost my goddamn mind. and then the ship blew up after they met in the mando s2 finale and people got really weird about it so i kind of lost interest in them for a bit, but i'm still in love with them!! i promise.

What are your favourite things about the ship?

they are some of the last remaining members of their respective dying orders/cultures. and the jedi and mandalorians are ancient enemies and rather than continuing the path of their predecessors and continuing to be ancient enemies they... fall in love instead. vibrating at a frequency that could shatter glass.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

i don't really... think so? as far as the people whose opinions of dinluke i actually care about, i think we're all pretty much on the same page. love and light etc etc. ♥️

Send me a ship and I’ll answer three questions based on if I ship it or not.

[theteej]

Step by Step

In December of 2021, at the advice of a friend, I started walking as an off-gym day exercise, as promptly lost my goddamn mind.

Those first few walks weren’t very remarkable, just two to three mile jaunts down Adams Avenue, the street I live on.  I walked from Normal Heights to Kensington, past grocery stores, hipster cafes, aging apartments, and the like.  Nothing auspicious.

I seriously didn’t plan to walk so damn much, but it quickly became intoxicating.

There was suddenly for me, a project I could undertake with relative ease and lack of practice, and see relatively rapid results. Two miles could become three, which could become five.  And there was something particularly amazing about feeling your body just moving through space.  

As I walked, I felt keenly about what theorist Sara Ahmed first described about taking up space:

Each time I move, I stretch myself out, trying this door, looking here, looking there…It is a process of becoming intimate with where one is: an intimacy that feels like inhabiting a secret room that is concealed from the view of others.

Walking suddenly did this for me.  I could feel each step on the pavement, as I wandered down residential streets, and later across broad avenues and narrow lanes.  I could just exist for two, three, four hours. I just heard the music in my ears and the feel the sun on my face, and feel my body moving.  And yes, it was exercise, but ultimately it was this body taking up space, moving through places, figuring things out, that felt so right.  

As someone who is frequently anxious, I find that my mind gets tied up on a repeating track.  It’s like a computer virus scanning program that’s gone horribly awry; it will keep scanning for dangers, threats, analyzing, endlessly repeating. Everything is to be checked or underlined, or double-scanned.  My brain seeks so frequently to keep me safe, ever since I was a little kid dealing with a violent father and an uncertain day to day.  My anxiety has kept me safe, but more often than not, it keeps me tired.  I am always on the horizon, searching, checking, double checking.  Is this pimple actually monkeypox?  Is this a sniffle or covid? Do I have cancer? Are people mad at me? Have I fucked it up so badly that everyone thinks I’m a piece of shit?

Walking helps short circuit that.  I feel the soft impact of my feet on the ground as I push past each house or tree or concrete marker.  I hear music and feel air in my lungs and rejoice in my body’s responses.  I move and breathe and triumph. My lizard brain relaxes.  The scanning recedes into the background. I feel grounded.  When I was at my most overwhelmed and struggling in rural Virginia, my therapist would encourage me to go outside and feel my feet on the ground. “Feel how rooted you are,” she said softly. “Your body is connected. You’re not floating away, you’re not being sept along the current. You are here.”  Each step takes me a bit closer to that, and I love it.  

Of course, I couldn’t help but make it a competition. By late January and early February I was trying to walk as much as possible.  The long winter break combined with the omicron surge meant I had limited interactions, and my body yearned for more. I began walking six miles, eight miles, ten miles.  I planned my grocery or pharmacy or bank errands around them and left the car at home. I walked to restaurants five miles away---City Heights, Old Town, Little Italy. I walked at one point forty-seven miles in one week.  I began to feel badly if I didn’t reach my target distances, like I’d failed.  I’d taken the joys of walking, and turned it into something to surveil or challenge or threaten.  

I sighed, picked myself back up, and remembered that wasn’t the point.  The point was the exploration, to see the city in new refractions.  I began challenging myself to take ten photos on every walk, just to make the experience palpable.  I shared them on Instagram.  My friend LaKedra jokingly started calling them #talliethemiles, and so an absurd hashtag was born.  Then when I went for walks in Fiji and Aotearoa this summer, the requisite #talliethekilometers also had to join the fun.

To my surprise, people really reacted to these walking posts.  Friends around the world started taking their own walks, and sending me photos.  I became increasingly delighted at the idea of allowing my eyes to look for new creative outlets.  How might a simple leaf or an errant sign or a slant of light be a cause for attention and recording?  It allowed me to feel part of something bigger and more fun, and allowed me to decrease my weird obsession with competing.  Occasionally I’d run into people here in San Diego while walking. They’d look at me and then conspiratorially whisper, “wait, are you on one of your walks now?  I’ve been watching them,” they’d say, as if I were some brand name influencer instead of a beefy professor wanting to find moments of peace and beauty while also enjoying his body and the space around him.  Honestly, these walks, and the weird community formed around them, has sustained me more than anything else this year.  And it’s beautiful to feel like it’s something simple, free, and healing.

I think my favourite song this year for my walks was Heart of My Own by Basia Bulat. It’s a guitar driven folk song, and I like her aching voice as I walk, step by step out of my constantly humming mind and into the future.  If I can hold the thinking at bay for a bit, my heart and lungs can keep pace, and who knows? I might find something else new and beautiful.  Maybe I’ll run into you.

If I go, what do I hold? It is work to be dancing out here If tomorrow I'm mending the empty bones There are roses that come without seeking

[ycurkxng-a]

Rude Awakening.

Characters: (Dead Space) Dean King, Topaz, Robert Norton.

No cw/tws

•

•

•

•

•

"Playback, message- 34."

The machine had been going through every last message left on it, damn near every last one had been from Ellie. Christ, what a shitshow that turned out to be. Although Dean didn't really know what he had expected, but still- hearing her voice sent knots down into his stomach. But still, it spoke to him. "Dean, I know you're there. Come on, pick up the phone!"

He only continued to stare at the torn apart image of the two, slowly turning around as the machine continued her message. "...fine. Look, I just called to say.. I'm moving on, I have to. Just, take care of yourself. Okay?"

Dean turned to the table next to him and slapped the torn picture down onto it before planting his hands down against it and hunching forward. He hated this, he'd been through this same scenario so many times- but it never got easier. At least this one isnt- bad joke, he had to stop his own mind from finishing that sentence. Dean refused to open up that wound as well.

In a moment of confusing emotions that raged throughout him, Dean threw his whole body into swiping the pictures off the table and onto the floor, before promptly going back into the same position he had been in merely moments before. He didn't know what to do with himself right now, he was lost in his own mind and just wanted this one person. Why couldn't everything just-

He was grounded back into reality as his door opened with a soft release, pushing upwards. Dean snapped his head to the side to see if anyone was there- but the doorway was empty. He had a bad feeling about whatever the hell had caused it to open, it didn't just randomly decide to open on its own... Someone was out there, or inside with him.

That thought scared him out of his mind, resulting in him grabbing onto his plasma cutter. Old reliable, ever since the Ishimura at least. He aimed it at the doorway and slowly began to move forward, each moment he took made his heart pound a little heavier in his chest. He was so lost in his own fear that he'd forgotten about the corner, completely ignoring the fact that someone could've very well been behind it.

And someone was.

Topaz stood there, gun in hand as it waited for Dean to walk into it's range. And once he did, it made it's move. Stepping out of hiding and slamming down on Dean's arm, forcing him to drop the plasma cutter. But as soon as it knocked the gun out of his hand, it wasn't able to move fast enough to knock him down.

It didn't even register that a hand was now gripping the side of its neck, before it had a moment to react- it was practically thrown back into the corner it had hidden in before. Landing against it with a grunt, it looked up in time to see Deans fist swinging right at it. His knuckles dug into it's cheek and cracked them against it's jaw, which knocked it onto the ground. Dean lowered slightly and grabbed the rifle out of its hands before hitting it again with the butt of it, enough to keep it down for the next few moments- which was all he needed.

It had sight on Norton as he entered, who didn't have his gun out- most likely having expected it to put Dean down. But he was met with a much different sight, which was the barrel of its gun- said gun being held by Dean himself. Robert raised his hands as to not get shot by him immediately, with that- King walked around him to his back and began patting him down. When he found nothing, he raised the gun up and struck Norton in the back of the neck with the butt of the gun, knocking him down to the ground on his stomach.

"You stupid sons of bitches- come into MY place, try to take me out? You picked the wrong guy, motherfuckers! Now you got 5 seconds to tell me just what the hell you're doing here- BEFORE I BLOW YOUR GODDAMN BRAINS OUT!" As he shouted, he pressed the barrel of the gun against Roberts head. "Hold on, hold on! Are you Dean King?!" Topaz spurted out, which caused the man to look over at it confused, raising a brow.

"Who's asking?" He questioned, "EarthGovs last battalion," Norton answered quickly. "-we need you for a job, I understand you're something of an expert on markers, you created one-" He wasn't able to finish his sentence before Dean put more pressure on the back of his head with the barrel, "No! I didn't make shit! Your government made me!" Dean spat back.

"And you destroyed two, it's why we're here!" Norton continued, "No, screw that, I'm through with all that! You go to some other poor bastard, get him on board for your suicide mission." Dean growled, "We DID. We lost contact with her, Ellie told us to find you."

That made Dean recoil, his features softening before rage took over once more. "Where is she- what the hell did you do to her?! WHERE IS SHE?!" He yelled, Topaz could see nothing but hatred in his eyes already. But none of them could pay attention to that for long, as an explosion outside caught everyone's attention, quickly followed by a voice coming from Topaz's rig. "Unitologists have breached the Inner Concourse! We can't hold them!"

"Listen," Topaz finally spoke up. Slowly beginning to get up, "We're running out of time. And we need to go, now." It told him, it's hands up at it's chest. "She's out there all alone, Dean. I can't help her unless you help me." Norton spoke out again, silence filled the room before Dean finally groaned and spoke, "Fine.. but I swear to god, if either of you try shit, I'll kill the both of you. Got it?" Dean told them, backing away from Norton and aiming the rifle at Topaz, Robert slowly stood up and turned around to look at Dean. "Alright, sure. But we have to go, come on."

Norton pushed past Dean and walked down the hallway, leaving him and Topaz standing in the room. He looked down at the rifle before looking back up and tossing it to the sergeant, who barely managed to catch it. Dean grabbed his plasma cutter off the ground, he looked at the other a final time before turning away and walking out as well, Topaz stood there for a few moments before snapping out of its trance and quickly following after Dean, who it could hear speaking to Norton from the hall.

It wasn't the easiest or prettiest way to get him to come along, but they got him at least- and they didn't get killed in the process. It could settle with that.

[valorousimperial]

I've not been around in goddamn ages what happened to that gamzee with the fucked up ear and that sugar empress? And how are your lil grublings??

I don't like the way you're referring to Gamzee's scarring, but I'll fill you in all the same, I guess. Listen, though, do you think if you lost some fingers that you'd like your hand referred to as "fucked-up" by strangers? Put some respect on and be the person Mister Rogers knew you could be.

My Squishfish is getting on famously in the timeline she moved to, and I'm happy to say she'd doing even better now that she's not on social media all that often. It's poisonous, I'll tell you. Anyway, she'd abdicated to her heiress long before she stopped logging on.

Gamzee and I broke up a long time ago. We had been having relationship problems for a great long time before that and though we tried to at least live together for the grubs, ultimately he moved back in with his human dad, Scott. Our three wrigglers - Liosin, Nahtie, and Lycori - go and stay with him sometimes, but Scott's an old human man and the kids are just old enough to start doing their times tables; it's not a good time for them to be there right now. He...doesn't know what happened. But he doesn't need to know, cos I sent the wrigglers away once I knew it was unquestionably dangerous and we're moved in to the new spot now and all safe and happy.

Amolin is done shedding teeth (for now) and is in speech classes to learn how to work with the ones they have. They can talk in full sentences, and we don't mind it, but they're not very confident outside the palace. Mostly, they prefer sign language. Absolutely killing it at spelling, too. Not to mention that they're *wondrously* strong and bulky even for their little kid body! They almost picked up one of my cars the other day. Might've done, too, if they were any taller.

Tiumia is such a precious girl, and she's in to drawing dogs right now because Karkat showed her a way you can draw dogs with a few circles. They're on everything she owns now.

I took Liosin shopping and after we'd gotten him a few things to play with and a new blanket (his texture needs are extremely specific sometimes) he pointed out a very fancy-looking pen and asked for it. He keeps trying to click it. It is a cap-type. He cried to me twice to click it for him because I'm bigger and stronger. Both times I took the cap off for him. Both times he promptly forgot it was a cap within minutes. He is not quite three!

Nahtie developed Gamzee's voodoos early and teleports around the place, BUT since we've just moved into a new home TODAY, she's not familiar enough to escape bathtime! She had a physical recently and her doctor confirmed that he found muscle structures developed for controlling wings, so. Not looking forward to which pupation that's gonna be.

Lycori's the smallest and the youngest, and she's started talking recently. She started late. She says some weeeeiiiird stuff, though. Or, she did before we moved. She's not ready for talking right now, I guess. She's practically totally blind, so I guess that this move is probably the hardest on her.

And that's it for now!! Mituna's hale and healthy after everything, I'm still having daymares but normal bad memory stuff and not the curse shit, uh

Oh, yeah, actually after Kannus died, uhhh....the planet became explosively biodiverse and a bunch of people started accidentally messing quite a bit up as APPARENTLY we most all got magic! Which is great! I guess! Everything Kannus does makes my life harder, he can't even die politely. Can't kick this corpse anywhere.

So yeah we're just getting settled in the new palace, waiting on the new egg to hatch...Karkat's been on a trip with Sollux and Terezi, hosted by Resolute, and he just got back! Easy business.

[marvelandimagine]

I Caught Fire

Pairing: (Alfie Solomons x baker!OC Annie Murphy)

Word count: 3,500

Summary: Alfie never expects things to go smoothly. He doesn’t expect his date with Annie to go so incredibly well, and he definitely doesn’t anticipate her wanting to go back to his place. But he’ll take it just the same.

Warnings: 18+! Dirty talk, oral (f receiving), fingering, slight praise kink, piv (unprotected), cum marking

A/N: Um this took forever but I'm pretty dang happy with the end result! *self five* Title from the song of the same name by The Used. “We could take our heads off, stay in bed and just make love, that's all ... And I’m melting in your eyes, like my first time that I caught fire. Just stay with me, lay with me. Let’s sleep ‘till the sun burns out.”

---

Alfie always had a back-up plan. Usually, at least 3. To succeed in his line of work, you had to not only accept that things would go awry, you needed to know how to pivot seamlessly when they did.

The downside to this constant state of vigilance was that it bled over into his life outside of the criminal underworld, forever waiting for the other shoe to drop when things felt too quiet. Too good.

So, it was only natural that as he knocked on the door of Annie's flat to pick her up for their date, bouncing the sunflowers he brought against his thigh, he was steeling himself for one of the following worst-case scenarios.

A) There's no response at her door. Plan: Pick the lock, go in, and see if she’s with another man. If so, tell him that if he hurts her, the Wandering Jew will cut his balls off and have him watch as he feeds them to stray dogs. Exit immediately. Go shoot something or someone. If Annie isn’t home and there are signs of a struggle, burn Camden to the ground until he finds her.

B) She answers the door BUT says she changed her mind. Plan: Say he understands, leave, and go shoot something or someone. Drink copious amounts of the rum he "never" touches. Cry?

C) She answers the door and has not changed her mind. Plan: Try to not have a goddamn nervous breakdown in front of her because holy fuck, when was the last time he went on a date, and would Annie actually have a good time, and did the blue vest Edna told him to get actually look ok or did he look like a cunt, and -

And then she opens the door, and he stops worrying about his head going to shit, because his whole body promptly stops working. Was this what people meant by lovesick? Dizzy and feverish and incapable of rational thought, incapable of focusing on anything other than her luminescence. There she is, beaming at him in a sparkling black and gold short-sleeved dress with matching bracelets and heels. It’s the first time he's seen her with her hair untied, and all he wants to do is run his hands through those dark, silky waves.

By some miracle, he manages to pull himself together, breathing out the first words that come to mind:

“You are fuckin’ radiant, love.” He presses the flowers into her hands, and she inhales happily.

“You’re sweet.” She steps closer until she’s practically against him, her green eyes scanning, drinking him in. She smiles, running a hand down his chest, and Alfie feels like his veins are tangled up with power wires.

“And you clean up very, very well yourself, Mr. Solomons.” She kisses him and Alfie kisses her back, the tiniest part of him nudging, pleading to, for once, trust that things can stay this good. To trust her.

She puts the flowers in a vase and as she takes his hand in hers and leads him out the door, he finally feels like he can exhale. And he tells his doubt to politely fuck right off, if only temporarily.

Remarkably, it works. At dinner, he just gets lost in her, in how easily their conversation flows, in their game of imagining backstories for other patrons.

“That couple at the bar there lookin’ like they’re ‘bout to fuckin’ poison each others’ drinks, yeah, you have got to ask yourself, An: did he sleep with her sister or her best friend?”

“Nah, their maid. His wife fired her when she found out, is now without a cook and won’t do it herself, so he brought her here in a feeble attempt at reconciliation — and so he wouldn’t starve.”

“…. You are a fuckin’ genius, An.”

“Cheers, love.”

She’s as effervescent as her champagne, bubbling and brimming with life and laughter that fills up the dark and hollow spaces in his chest. And that buoyancy sustains him, nourishes him even more so than their lavish dinner.

Buckwheat blinis just like his mom used to make, vessels for the salty, sinful caviar that Alfie justifies to a thoroughly amused Annie: “If ya squint in this light, yeah, it's just like scales on a little fish. Proper kosher, then, innit?” Succulent lamb with crisp potatoes and a vinegary cucumber salad, delicate lemon sole alongside fresh asparagus with creamy hollandaise. And, of course, the fabled toffee pudding Annie is dying to investigate. “There’s fuckin’ whiskey in it, no wonder my drunken Irish brethren all fancy it!”

Alfie can't remember the last time he felt so at ease, this peaceful. When they finally get up to leave, a quick look at his watch reveals that three hours have flown by, and he smiles. The King of Camden and his beloved queen, together in their own little realm. And he's desperate for it to continue, to stay in this paradise just for a second, a minute longer with her. His wish is granted as she tugs his hand, guiding him through the warm August air to walk alongside the winding Thames, where the glow of the street lamps reflect like golden sparks. They fall into a comfortable silence, lulled by the current, by the magnetic pull that keeps their hands, their bodies, close together. And it's a good thing he's got one arm slung around her shoulders, because her heel catches on a crack in the stony path. He steadies her as she yelps and tilts toward the dark waters, shaking his head.

“Easy there, love. It’d be my fuckin’ luck, wouldn’t it, takin’ you out and you catchin’ your death in the bloody Thames."

“Dunno why you’re worried, I’m incredibly graceful.” Her lofty tone doesn't mask the grin in her voice.

“Pet, I watched you walk right into a fuckin' door last week.”

"Only because you distracted me!”

"And I am not the least bit sorry, yeah, because it was one of the funniest fuckin' things I have ever seen in my miserable life.” He kisses the top of her head as she huffs. “Kinda cute too, seein' ya lose focus over me."

Annie rolls her eyes, lightly checking him with her hip. “Shut it.”

"Why dontcha make me,” he replies, brushing his lips against her ear.

And she does, stopping abruptly and pulling at the front of his vest as she kisses him, deep and warm and intoxicating. She is the taste of toffee and champagne and home, and Alfie clings to her, letting her flood his senses.

Annie breaks the kiss and her eyes are embers.

“I don’t want to stop.”

“So … don’t,” Alfie replies, his brow furrowing slightly with confusion.

She shakes her head, framing Alfie’s face with her hand. “Let me be more clear.” Her voice is quiet yet confident, every syllable dripping with honey and molten fire. “I want you. All of you. Yeah?”

Alfie’s eyes widen slightly, and Annie smirks, sending his hair on end as she traces his jawline lightly with her nails. He catches her hand in his and squeezes firmly.

“First order of business, love. I am categorically fuckin’ keen on the idea, make no mistake.” He exhales deeply. “But the tiny part of my soul not yet utterly consumed by complete fuckin’ darkness feels compelled to emphasize that there is absolutely no expectation of you rushin’ into anythin' with me. That said, I am properly thrilled to devote myself wholeheartedly to studyin’ the noble fuckin’ art and science of bringin’ you pleasure.” His tone softens, brushing her hair behind her ear. “But there is no pressure, yeah?”

“I know. But I’m sure. Just like I’m sure how I feel about you.” She tilts her head slightly. “But categorically fuckin’ keen, huh?” A sly grin spreads across her face, and she punctuates her next sentences with slow, searing kisses that cause Alfie’s head to spin.

“So, you can't tell me you haven’t thought about it. About me. In bed. With you.”

“I could but I’d be a fuckin’ liar, then, wouldn’t I?,” he replies, his breath hitching slightly. He puts his hands on her shoulders. “Annie, you are absolutely sure-"

She cuts him off, rolling her eyes. “C’mon. Your place is closer.”

"Right.”

He grins and grabs her hand once more, but this time, instead of a slow stroll, they hustle across the busy cobblestone streets together.

--

Alfie unlocks his door and is immediately met by Cyril, who quickly pushes his owner aside to greet Annie.

“Cyril! I missed you, my sweet boy.” Annie’s laugh echoes throughout the house as the massive dog jumps on her, pinning her against the wall with a barrage of slobbery kisses.

With great effort, Alfie heaves Cyril off Annie, grumbling.

“Come off it, you daft dog.” He gets down at eye level with the bull mastiff, who is unmistakably pouting. “Sorry, mate, my woman, not yours.” Cyril continues to stare and Alfie sighs, reaching into a massive bin in the corner to pull out a well-chewed bone, and Cyril decides that all is forgiven. “There ya go, that's a good lad, getcha treat and trot on.”

Once Cyril lumbers away, Alfie stands up and strides over to Annie. “C’mere, you.” He picks her up easily and she locks her arms and legs around him, dipping down for an off-kilter kiss.

He carries her down the hall to his bedroom, his heart thrumming in his ears as she untangles herself from him and slides onto his bed. He plops down right next to her, bracelets clinking as he cups her face with his hands.

“Fuck, you are beautiful,” he murmurs, placing his forehead on hers. He kisses her deeply and their bodies connect, his hands sliding down to hold her waist as her tongue meets his own. He's so alive and so in love, so completely dumbfounded as to why God decided to offer a man like him a woman, a goddess, really, like her.

He starts tugging the bottom of Annie’s dress up and she shifts to her knees, helping him guide it off and over her head. Alfie's breath catches at the sight of her, swathed in scraps of dark silk and lace. His eyes dance across her, transfixed.

“Fuckin’ hell," he exhales. “You really are a vision, An.”

His rough hands trace across her arms, smattered with burn marks and taut from the labor of kneading and carrying, from transmuting stress and grief to the boxing bag in her basement. But the rest of her is so, so soft, and his hands linger on the curves of her breasts, her hips, her ass. Every part of her he's privileged to caress sends blazing heat straight to his gut, his cock. He is reverent in this new religion he’s discovered, worshipping at the altar of her sacred form.

His awe-struck reverie is suddenly broken when, her eyes smoldering into his, Annie unfastens both clasps of her garter belt. It's a simple, subtle motion, and Alfie can't explain why it sets something off in him, but he doesn’t care. Because now he’s tackling her flat against the mattress, and she's crashing back into him, and the fire tethering them to each other is the only thing in the world that matters.

It's frantic and slow all at once as his brain tries to keep up with all the separate sensations. His tongue dancing with hers and her teeth sinking into his neck, his hands ripping the delicate lace off her chest, watching her nipples harden as he grabs at her breasts, sucks hungry kisses along their curves.

All the while, Annie's fingers fly through undoing the buttons on his clothes, tearing them off him. And when she glides her hand across the tip of his cock, gathering his precum before she starts pumping him, he can't stop the groan and obscenities that fall off his tongue, utterly powerless under her touch. Fuck, does this woman, his woman, know what she's doing.

“I can’t wait to feel you in me,” she says beneath him, using her free hand to massage his balls. It takes all his concentration to just not cum right there on her pretty tits, knowing full well he’s nowhere near being finished with her.

“I want a taste of you first." He hooks his thumbs underneath the waistband of her panties, and she lifts her hips, letting him strip her bare.

"Fuck, look at you,” he murmurs, sliding his ring-laden fingers through Annie’s pooling arousal, relishing the elated gasps she gives when he draws circles on her clit, pushes two fingers into her and pulses.

"This all for me, love?”

“Uh huh.” She nods fervently, biting the corner of her lip.

He stares hungrily at her as he fucks her with his hand, adding a third finger and feeling his cock grow even harder at the way Annie’s walls clench around his digits. He’s entranced by how desire physically transforms her. The color rising to her cheeks, her half-parted lips, the little moans and mewls she gives as she grinds against him. Fluttering emerald irises that give way to a greater expanse of black as her pupils blossom with lust and pressing need. For him.

He suddenly stops and he chuckles at her groan of frustration. He sucks his fingers clean and trails a line of kisses down her inner thigh, wrapping his well-muscled arms around her legs to hold her in place as he begins devouring her. She whines with pleasure as his tongue deftly licks and swirls through her folds, and she grips his hair in her fist.

She isn’t shy and Alfie loves it, her hips bucking against his mouth: “Fuck, Alfie, yes, oh my God, right there.” It just turns him on more. He’s got her spread apart with his fingers, sucking directly on her clit, when she abruptly tugs his head up, her tone alight with wildfire.

“Get in me. Now.”

For once, Alfie doesn't have a smart reply. He just works his lips back up her body, watching the goosebumps rise on her flesh.

"You want this, love?" he murmurs in her ear, drawing the head of his throbbing dick through the wetness between her thighs, lining himself up at her entrance.

“God, yes, I want you.”

Lust and love burn through him as he enters Annie slowly, eyes rolling back with a groan as he sinks deeper and deeper into her, her nails clawing into his biceps when he bottoms out. He stays still for a moment, giving her a second to adjust to his length and giving himself time to savor the unparalleled feeling of her enveloping every last inch of his hardness. It’s indescribable how good she feels and being able to be fully one with her.

He blinks open and there she is, her gaze burning right through him, and he pulls back and starts thrusting into her steadily. Their hips and moans and praise come together in a delicious rhythm, a sinful cacophony that Alfie wants on full-blast repeat until the end of his days.

“Alfie, fuck, you're amazing.”

“You are perfect,” he pants, fucking Annie’s tight, soaked core with increasing ferocity. “Fuckin’ made for me.”

He stays on top, drilling her intro the mattress, until she murmurs beneath him, pleading.

“Let me be on top.”

He acquiesces immediately, shifting her into his lap, and they both moan in pleasure as she starts riding him.

“You feel so good. So good to me."

“That’s right, love. Look how fuckin’ gorgeous you are, takin' my cock like that."

“Please keep talking.” She is unashamedly begging, and fuck, is it hot. He smirks, lowers his husky tone and starts playing with her nipples, absorbed in watching her come undone.

“You just love bein’ filled up with my big cock, don’t ya, An? Stretchin’ out that perfect, wet lil' cunt of yours. Now, be a good girl and tell me who you belong to.”

"You, Alfie. ‘M yours.”

"Fuckin' right you are," he growls back, hands smacking against her ass, causing her to gasp with pleasure as she continues gliding up and down his cock. Her nails dig into his shoulders, back arching as he shifts one hand to her clit, and Alfie grunts as he feels her tight walls clench around him further.

“Oh my fuck, Alfie, you’re gonna make me cum,” she whimpers.

"That’s right, that's my fuckin' girl, show us how much you need us, An." His fingers grip her hips as she rides him desperately. "Let me feel you cum all over my cock, love."

"Oh, oh, Alfie, fuck, Alfie!" She cries out and she all but collapses into him as her orgasm rip through her entire body, spasming around his dick in release.

She slowly pulls back to face him with a lazy smirk, cheeks pink and her voice breathless with satisfaction, but still managing to purr.

“Your turn.”

He's already lasted way longer than he thought would be possible, and now, all Alfie wants is to take his woman like a fucking animal. So, that's what he does.

He shoves Annie down onto the mattress, pistoning in and out of her with an absolutely brutal pace. It's a completely obscene soundtrack, his balls slapping against her, the sucking sound of her dripping cunt taking every last inch of his thick, rock-hard length, frenzied grunts and moans and profanities.

He hikes her legs around his waist and she instinctively locks her ankles on his lower back, letting him use the angle to drive down even deeper, harder, faster into her. His fingers seek out her own as he pounds into her core, and he knows this duality between carnal and tender, of being utterly consumed in every last hidden corner of each other, is going to send him over the edge.

That, and Annie’s crooning voice in his ear, her nails marking up the muscles of his broad back.

“Take what’s yours, Alfie. I love your cock inside me, you make me so fuckin' wet, I love you so fuckin’ much-“

“FuckinhellchristfuckAn!”

Amid his stream of tangled curses and Annie’s name, Alfie pulls out just in time to finish on her stomach, chest heaving as he watches the warm, milky rivulets trail down her body.

Still catching his breath, he grabs Annie’s face with both hands and kisses her, pulling back with a grin.

“Fuckin’ hell, you are incredible, woman.”

“Likewise. I’m very, very much lookin’ forward to doing that again.”

“I do like the sound of that.”

He rolls off the bed with a slight groan, haphazardly pulling drawers open to find a clean handkerchief. He lays down next to Annie and gently cleans her off, tossing the soiled scrap of fabric to the side.

He brings her into his arms and as she nestles into his chest, he chuckles softly.

“What’s so funny?” she asks.

“Nothin'. Just properly fuckin’ delighted, ain’t I, by the fact that my sweet little Annie, Camden’s beloved baker, is also a filthy, dazzlin’ little minx.”

She grins, lifting herself up slightly to plant a kiss against his jaw before snuggling back into him. “What can I say? I’m versatile.”

He hums and kisses the top of her head, fingers tracing lightly across her back. He just lays there intertwined with her, the room in complete stillness save for the rise and fall of their breath. And it’s sweet and serene and safe, the complete opposite of what Alfie Solomons has come to expect out of the wicked world, out of himself.

“What’re you thinking? I can practically hear the gears turning ‘round in your head.”

He’s surprised that she doesn’t even need to look at him to sense something’s up, but decides it’s just part of the dual blessing and curse of being known so intimately.

He replies slowly, continuing to draw patterns against her skin.

“Honestly, An, I still cannot fuckin’ believe you are here with me, in my arms, in my bed, because you are a fuckin’ angel that I categorically do not deserve to be in the presence of. Let alone inside of.” His dry laugh morphs into a sigh, speaking more to himself than her. “Gotta be some kinda dream, innit?”

Suddenly, he feels a pinch on his arm, and he looks down to see Annie looking back at him expectantly.

“Anythin’ change?”

The corner of his mouth twitches and he shakes his head.

“Well, that’s settled., then. Not dreaming.” Her gaze is both soft and piercing, seeing straight through all of him, the light and dark. And yet, she stays.

Alfie feels himself melting, falling even further than he thought was possible. She taps the center of his hair-covered chest softly, then taps her fingers against her own. “Trust this, trust us, yeah?”

This time, his sigh is contented.

“I love you, Annie.”

“I love you too.”

They both fall back into the quiet, limbs tangling, and Alfie feels himself starting to drift into sleep, soothed by the warmth of Annie’s body against his. A warmth that transfers straight to his heart.

He shuts his eyes and finds his mind wandering back to just a few nights ago when he lay in this exact bed, unsure and alone, wondering what he’d feel like if Annie was next to him. Now, he has his answer.

He feels whole.