#chapter one hundred and eighty five | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nereidprinc3ss · 5 months

Text

do you believe me now? | 4

in which spencer reid and inexperienced fem!reader are interrupted at the most inopportune of times. he calls you on the first night of his case. dirty talk turns into a hard conversation. we get a glimpse into spencer's past, and we finally learn why he's so hesitant to sleep with you.

series masterlist

18+ (smut) warnings/tags: dirty talk, phone sex/mutual masturbation, softdom!spence, obligatory he talks u through it, lots of graphic discussions of sex, established relationship, angst (sorrryyy!) a/n: so remember how i said you'd need the bonus chapter to fully appreciate/understand this part? i was wrong!! it will come in handy probably in the next part tho:) also idk how these parts keep getting so long im sorry! anyway, i love you all so bad. thank you for bearing w/ my craziness. PLEASE let me know your thoughts on this part!! i adore hearing from you!! kisses

(also special thank you to @fliesforeyes who convinced me phone sex w/ spence could be done!! i will link his phone sex blurb here :)) thank u binx!!

“Three million six hundred eighty four thousand three hundred thirty two times fourteen million seven hundred sixty one thousand nine hundred seventy one.”

You’ve lost count of how many stupid math questions you’ve asked your human calculator boyfriend, just to see if he can actually do them. Spencer is silent for a second, and you think you’ve finally stumped him.

“That one is complicated.”

You sit bolt upright in his bed, looking down at him and pointing an accusatory finger. His brows raise at the manic look in your eye.

“You don’t know.”

“I do know. I meant it would be hard to explain if you aren’t a math person.”

“Bullshit!” You scoff, “you don’t know!”

“It would display on a calculator as five-point-three-eight-eight-E-thirteen. It’s a really big number.”

“Oh, really big, huh?” you mumble, searching for your phone blindly in the sheets and scrambling to open the calculator app. “Um… what numbers did I say?”

Spencer repeats them back to you and you press the equals sign.

You look at it.

And then you set your phone down.

“I was right, huh?” he smiles up at you, probably reveling in your pouty wrongness.

Too proud to admit it, you collapse on top of him, burying your face in his shoulder.

“I don’t like this game anymore. What the fuck even is an e? Why are we doing algebra?”

Spencer laughs, brushing your hair aside.

“The e stands for exponent. It’s to the power of ten.”

“Ever heard of a rhetorical question?”

“Yes, I have.”

It’s hard not to snort even at his dumbest jokes.

“You’re annoying. Let’s do something else.”

You roll over onto your back again, letting your head flop over to look at Spencer, whose hair is exactly the right amount of messy after a long day, falling in impossibly soft waves over the perfect lines and contours of his face. Despite lounging, he’s still in his suit from work—he’d left Quantico and immediately picked you up. There were no solid plans for the evening, so after both of you pretended that you wanted to go out for a while, you ended up back at his apartment.

He looks good. Almost too good.

“Something like what?” he smiles lazily, reaching over and tracing his fingers over your cheek.

“Something… naked?”

His grin widens and he shakes his head.

“Me naked or you naked?”

Pretending to think about it, you roll your bottom lip between your teeth.

“Mm… why not both?”

“Hm. Why do I feel like I know where this is going?”

The mattress sinks underneath your elbow as you prop yourself up, dropping your head over Spencer’s to kiss him.

“Because you’re so smart, and you think it’s a great idea.”

He entertains your kiss for a moment. Just a moment.

“You sound sure of yourself.”

“Because I am!” You finally give in to your impulses, tangling your fingers in his hair and looking at him meaningfully. “It doesn’t make any sense for us to have not had sex. I don’t care about any of your weird, cryptic moral reasoning.”

He grabs your wrist carefully.

“It is not moral,” he scoffs. “We haven’t even talked about it yet.”

“Really? Because I feel like we’ve talked about it a lot.”

He begins to reply, but you realize you don’t want to get into a debate over whether you’ve technically talked about it yet. “I don’t even care! If that’s all that’s standing in your way, then let’s talk about it. Right now.”

Spencer sighs, his eyes darting between yours as he reaches up to cradle your cheek.

“Fine. But I have things to say you’re not going to like.”

“So business as usual?”

He rolls his eyes. You allow yourself a tiny self-satisfied smirk, forever relishing in his poorly-hidden soft spot for your constant teasing. Spencer ignores this. Which is probably for the best.

“I know you probably won’t see it this way, but—sex is different than everything else we’ve done so far. It can be really fun, obviously it feels good, it facilitates deeper feelings of connection—that’s all true. Which is why, in my opinion, it’s incredibly important that you be selective with who you sleep with. Because it’s so easy to do something you regret, and sex is vulnerable. It should always be with someone you trust and—and… care about.”

A pink flush stains his cheeks like watercolor as he stumbles over the last few words. It makes your heart flutter against the confines of your chest.

Maybe best not to think about the absence versus presence of certain four-letter words and what they may or may not mean. You’ll move on to more pressing matters and pretend like it doesn’t ache just a little in your whole body.

You cover his hand with your own.

“Are you going to break up with me anytime soon?”

Spencer’s eyes widen, filling with genuine horror and confusion.

“What? No!”

“Are you going to cheat on me?”

“Absolutely not, I—”

“Then I’m not going to regret it. Issue resolved. Moving on.”

“Honey, I just want you to be 100% sure that I’m what you want.”

“Oh my god,” you groan, flopping onto your back once more. “I have begged you to sleep with me on multiple occasions. We have been dating for months and I liked you even longer before that. I think about it literally every time I see you. I don’t know how to be any surer.”

It’s quiet for a moment as you study the imaginary pattern on the ceiling. The rebuttal you’d been anticipating doesn’t come—instead, the mattress shifts next to you. Spencer enters your field of vision, now leaning over you with a little smile on his face that gives you butterflies.

“Every time?”

“…yes, every time,” you agree, voice considerably thinner than it had been a moment ago. Spencer glances at your lips as he speaks.

“Interesting. And what is it that you think about exactly?”

You groan again, attempting to roll facedown, but he pins your shoulder to the bed. The way he’s sweetly kissing down your cheek and jaw is infuriating because you know it’s a false pretense.

“Ugh, I don’t know! Don’t make me answer that!”

“You said if talking about it was all that was standing in my way, we would talk about it. Now I want to talk about it. Come on,” he says, voice low and cloying against your throat as he attempts to tease the answer out of you. “Tell me what you think about when you think about us having sex.”

You let out a shaky breath at the feeling of his lips skimming your neck, hating how easily he can reduce you to this.

“I… I always wonder what it will feel like. Sometimes I wonder if it will hurt.”

Spencer sighs, interrogation by way of seduction momentarily forgotten. You silently curse yourself for saying something so un-sexy.

“It might, sweetheart. That’s one of the reasons we’ve held back. I… really don’t want to hurt you. I don’t even know if I can.”

You grab his face in both hands, forcing him to look at you with more confidence than you feel.

“Sometimes I worry about it, too. But I like you a lot more than it scares me. I still want to.”

He kisses your palm.

“You’ll be okay. It doesn’t hurt for everyone, and even if it does, you’re resilient.”

“Exactly. So you have to get over yourself.”

Spencer laughs like he wasn’t expecting to, eyes sparkling as he regards you.

“Yeah. Yeah, maybe I do.”

He’s smiling again as he leans down and kisses you—a slow, lingering thing which tastes like spearmint as you part your lips for him.

“Please?” you whisper against him after a long moment. He hums, keeps kissing you.

“What is it that you think you want? You don’t even know what you’re asking for.”

“Tell me,” you beg, chasing his lips. “Tell me what you’re going to do with me. We can talk about it. This is talking about it.”

Spencer exhales deeply, wedging a thigh between yours. Immediately you clamp around it, trying not to grind against him too overtly.

“You want to know what I’d do to you?”

“Yes—” you paw at his jacket. Surprisingly, he doesn’t stop you from pushing it off. Your heart pounds.

“Well… we both know how anxious you get,” he muses, pressing his lips so delicately to your fluttering pulse-point in emphasis, and then back to your mouth. His thigh pushes harder against you to supplant the absence of his lips as he speaks, though he kisses you sporadically and between sentences. “You’re hard to get out of your head when you’re nervous, you know that? I watch it happen. One minute you’re with me, and then you start overthinking, and getting self-conscious. The only thing that seems to relax you is letting me touch you—so first I would touch you like I’ve touched you before. I’d make sure you know how pretty you are and how good you deserve to feel.” You whimper inadvertently at his words, arching into him and grinding against his leg as he pauses to kiss the sensitive soft spot below your jaw. “You’re going to need to be really ready to let me in. Do you know what I mean by that?”

As he asks, he pushes his thigh against you harder. Your body responds immediately, arching into him and seeking more friction. When you squeak, he takes it as a no.

“I mean I need you relaxed and wet. You’ll excuse my crude language.”

You pull at his tie, breathing heavier now and so turned on it’s almost painful.

“What are you gonna do after that?”

“What else is there to do but fuck you after that?” he breathes. “You want me to tell you how I’d fuck you?”

Something about it makes you whine salaciously. You’ve heard him curse—you’ve even heard him talk about fucking you. But it feels more real now; when it’s low in your ear and you’re covertly undressing him and he’s pushing your shirt over your stomach promisingly.

“Yes, please.”

He hums against your jaw, nipping and brushing his lips over the skin as he considers. Leaves you waiting.

“I would have to take my time with you. You’ll be overwhelmed. I know you think you won’t, but you will. I’m going to have to be so, so careful with you, angel. It’s going to drive me insane. But it will feel good for you.”

“Why careful? I don’t want that.”

He chuckles. A chill runs down your spine.

“Yeah, you do. You’re going to want me to be careful when I’m—” he pauses, pressing his thumb to your bare lower tummy and dragging up to a spot below your belly button. He presses down lightly again. “Right here. Approximately.”

The surface of the sun has nothing on the temperature of your skin in this moment, as you writhe underneath him in both arousal and embarrassment. Mostly, burning need. You feel almost sick with it.

“Please don’t make me wait anymore. Just do it, please, Spencer. I need it to be you, I don’t want it to be anyone else. I promise I’m ready.”

It’s silent for a moment. Your heart quickens. You sense his walls wearing away, his instinct to keep you intact for god knows what reason crumbling. He’s finally going to give you what you’ve been begging for.

Spencer opens his mouth, eyes glimmering—

And then his phone rings.

You both freeze—he melts dejectedly before you do, more accustomed to an ill-timed phone call and realizing the finality it can present.

He’s breathing heavily against your neck, as if maybe whoever it is will just hang up. But the phone keeps ringing.

“I’m sorry.”

Your stomach sinks as he sits up, grabbing his phone from the side table and rubbing circles on your inner thigh as he answers.

“This is Reid,” he says, lackluster.

If you wanted, you could hear what Penelope is saying—but you don’t bother listening. It’s going to be a case. Spencer is about to leave. The details are his problem.

“Okay. I’ll be there in an hour.”

He hangs up, tossing the phone onto the mattress and not speaking for a moment, just continuing to rub your leg apologetically. Watching you almost mournfully—taking in your disheveled hair, your likely blown-out pupils, the shirt pushed almost over your chest.

“I have to go right now,” he finally manages with a heavy sigh, gently pulling your shirt back into place.

You sit up, shedding all the hopes that had been building for the evening, and try to sound chipper—though all you feel is bitter disappointment that goes deeper than you understand.

“I know. Go ahead, I can get a cab home.”

He frowns, running his hand over the back of your hair.

“I don’t love the idea of you standing on the sidewalk waiting for a car in this part of town so late. Do you just want to stay here for the night and go home tomorrow?”

You force a smile. Great. So you’ll be spending the night in his bed after all—just without him.

“Sure. Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

Neither of you are feeling particularly grateful.

Soon you’re walking him to his own door. Both of you come to a stop in front.

“I’m sorry,” he sighs again.

“Spencer, it’s fine. It’s your job. You don’t need to apologize. You were very clear about this part when we started dating.”

“I know, but… it’s easier in theory than in practice.”

You smile. If Spencer is a reflection of you, it doesn’t quite reach your eyes. His hair is still messy from your fingers running through it and he’s missing his tie. You hope all his coworkers see and feel bad about taking him away from you.

But it’s not their fault. You just want someone to blame.

Instead you mould yourself to his body, wrapping around him like you belong there. He returns your embrace, pressing his lips into the crook of your shoulder and rubbing your back in that way he always does with you.

In that moment, your affection for him becomes so profound it’s like a chemical reaction—everywhere he touches burns and you love him so fucking much it aches in every inch of your body the way your muscles do when you have a bad fever. Love is the most terrible of afflictions, you realize. It is a fever dream. It’s every fiber of your being screaming to tell him how you feel, to beg him on your knees not to go because you love him like a child loves a parent or a bee loves honeysuckle or the ocean loves the horizon. Pared down to your most basic components, the barest version of yourself, you require him. Your soul needs his soul.

“Spencer?”

“Hm?”

It’s nothing more than an absentminded hum against your skin.

“I…”

Should you be looking him in the eye when you say this? Should you say it right before he has to leave? Just because you say it doesn’t change the fact that he’s about to be gone for several long days. Maybe this is a terrible time to admit something that suddenly feels so true and so consequential.

He senses your internal conflict, pulling back despite your resistance and holding your face between his hands.

“You what?” He murmurs, soft eyes bouncing back and forth between your own. Fuck—you feel so observed, now. Like he can read your mind.

“I forget.”

FUUUUUUCK.

Spencer blinks. Processes. You watch the disbelief crystallizing over his eyes like ice freezing over a lake.

He knows.

He knows you didn’t forget, and he probably knows what you were going to say, and he’s going to tell himself he was wrong to spare your dignity.

Everything hurts when he kisses you. You wonder what regret tastes like.

“Well, let me know if you remember.”

It’s too gentle and at the same time he can’t hide the edge with all the tenderness in the world. You nod as if in a trance, already looking forward to dissociating as you lie in bed and stare at the dark ceiling.

Two small goodbyes are exchanged, slightly stifled now, as if shared between drunk strangers who have sobered up and are mutually embarrassed about how candidly they’d interacted before.

You close the door behind him, doing up all the locks, and meticulously flick every light switch in the apartment off before climbing into his bed—though you don’t really feel like you deserve to be there anymore.

But perhaps this is all an overreaction. It’s not like you owe it to him to say I love you, or anything—it was bad timing, anyway. And why can’t he say it? In fact, why hasn’t he said it?

Maybe you have it all wrong.

Maybe he doesn’t feel that way about you.

You fall asleep before you allow these questions to make you sick.

24 hours go by.

24 hours go by and you really had meant to leave his apartment—it was just that you woke up late, and your phone was dead so you couldn’t call a car, so you charged it while you made breakfast, and then you ate, and then you decided to take a shower and wash your clothes, and then it was two in the afternoon and you hadn’t left yet and you decided to walk to the store and replenish the groceries you’d used up.

Maybe you got a bit distracted looking at flowers and other beautiful things at the market and by the time you got home it was 5:00, so you decided to wait until seven to skip rush hour. And then eight, just to be sure.

Before you know it, it’s midnight, and you’re dozing off in his bed again (teeth cleaned with the brush you’d bought at the store—maybe this whole situation hadn’t been entirely unwitting on your part.)

Throughout the day, you tried to let all your anxiety about the previous night melt away. If it’s something that needs to be addressed, Spencer will address it. Everything will work out in the end. That thought is how you’re able to doze off.

You’re almost asleep when your phone lights up and begins buzzing on the side table. You wince as your eyes open, not adjusting well to the harsh bright display and unable to discern who’s even calling you at this hour. Stupidly, probably because you’re half asleep, you answer without checking.

“Hello?”

Your voice is groggy, quiet with sleep.

“Shit, did I wake you?”

“Spence?” you whisper, stomach flipping at the sound of his voice on the other line. You feel caught, still sleeping in his bed.

“… yeah,” he chuckles. “Did you not check who was calling before you picked up?”

“I was asleep,” you pout. “Kinda.”

“Okay. Go back to sleep, honey. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

You sit bolt upright, phone balanced between tense fingers and speaking directly into the microphone.

“No! No, I’m awake. What’s up? Why did you call?”

A longer stretch of silence—you’re too sleepy to comprehend what it might mean, though never too sleepy to worry about it. With a pang of pain, you recall your strange goodbye, the words you hadn’t said.

“I just needed to hear your voice,” he sighs. You frown, staring at nothing in particular in the pitch black room.

“Oh. Is everything okay?”

“As much as it can be.”

“Right.”

More quiet. You chew on the inside of your cheek, stricken with a sudden feeling of awkwardness that you haven’t had with Spencer in a while.

“I’m sorry… I don’t really know what to say.”

“That’s okay,” he says, and you can hear the smile in his voice which makes you feel a bit better, “why don’t you tell me about your day? Or you can absolutely go back to sleep, if you’re too tired.”

“Don’t ask me about my day,” you whisper, flopping down on the bed once more. Shame seeps into your voice. He laughs.

“What? Why?”

“Because if I tell you you’re going to think I’m super weird and you’re going to break up with me.”

Laughter tapers off into gentler tones.

“I already think you’re super weird. It’s actually one of your most attractive qualities.”

Blood rushes to your cheeks.

“But it’s like… borderline crazy.”

Immediately, he replies, “for better or worse, I also frequently find myself attracted to crazy.”

“Thank you for calling me crazy and super weird,” you grumble.

“I also called you attractive twice. Tell me.”

When his tone takes on that easy, assertive quality, and it’s sort of raspy and low because it’s late and he’s been talking all day, and you can hear the lazy smile on his face—you imagine him laying on his hotel bed, arm slung over his eyes in the dark as he grins into the microphone—you have a very difficult time saying no.

“Fine. Guess where I am right now.”

“Um, I would hope you’re in bed?”

You smile to yourself, basking in the victory of successfully throwing him off his game even slightly.

“Guess whose bed.”

Silence.

“What an interesting question.” That cocky smile, the low drawling is back, and you chew on your lip, ignoring the shiver that runs down your spine. “If it’s not mine or yours, we’re going to have issues.”

“But if it is yours? You’re not going to call the police on me?”

“Why would I call the police? To tell them there’s a pretty girl in my bed and I don’t want her there?”

“To tell them your psychopathic girlfriend broke into your apartment and might be holding hostages there.”

Spencer laughs; a brittle, drawn out thing, flat and quiet as the desert.

“If you were a psychopath, calling the cops would be a waste of time. I would handle you myself.” The idea of being handled has your thighs clenching. “But—yeah, don’t invite anyone else in.” More humor finds its way into his voice, momentarily relieving some tension that had sneakily begun to build. “Having people in my space makes me anxious.”

“But not me?” Your whisper is half flirtatious, half insecure. Spencer’s reply is soft, as if he’s picking up on this from hundreds of miles away.

“No, not you. You are always the exception.”

“Good,” you say, cheeks aching as you half-bury your warm face into his pillow. “Because I made myself really comfortable. You have a nice shower, by the way.”

Spencer groans.

“You’re killing me.”

“What? What did I do!”

“Don’t talk to me about my bed and my shower. I might start to think you’re intentionally being a brat.”

“You asked me about my day! I’m just telling you what I did!”

But you’re also intentional teasing him for sure. After a pause, he sighs in defeat.

“You’re right. I did do that. Tell me what else happened.”

“Well,” you begin, all too eager, “I had to put my clothes in the dryer after I got out, so I borrowed some of yours. But then they were way comfier than mine, so after I went to the store I put them back on, and—”

“Okay.”

“Okay what?” you frown.

“Tell me what this is.”

“I—I don’t know what you mean.”

Lying to a profiler is usually pointless.

“I’m not stupid, sweetheart. Tell me why you keep talking about my shower and my bed and my clothes.”

Caught red-handed. Your skin heats up.

“I don’t know. I miss you.”

He hums in a way that blurs the line between sympathetic and patronizing. Even through the phone you can feel the bass of it in your bones. It changes the frequency you’re vibrating at. It’s hypnotic.

“But that’s not really why you’re being intentionally provocative, is it?”

“No,” you admit quietly. “I’m still upset you had to go last night.”

“So you’re frustrated and you’re taking it out on me?”

Your brow furrows. Well, when he puts it like that…

“I’m not taking anything out on you.”

“I think you are. And I don’t appreciate that, because I’m on your side, honey. Do you think I prefer being in a hotel bed by myself or being in my bed with you?”

Somehow, he makes you feel like a scolded child. But he makes it appealing in ways you don’t understand.

“Your bed with me,” you murmur, skin prickling with the coldness of his absence even as you curl under the blanket.

“Right. So why don’t you tell me what I can do for you right now, instead of punishing me for things that are beyond my control?”

“I wasn’t punishing you,” you mutter.

“No? You weren’t intentionally talking about using my shower and sleeping in my bed and putting on my clothes so that I’d have to think about what I can’t have right now?”

“I—”

“Believe me when I tell you I have been thinking about what I can’t have, all day. Your efforts are entirely redundant and you can’t say anything about yourself that is even close to as dirty as the frankly disrespectful thoughts I’ve been having about you for seventeen hours.”

The lack of air is making you so dizzy your vision goes gray at the edges.

“What… what thoughts?”

“None that you need to concern yourself with.”

“You can’t just say something like that and then not tell me!” you insist. He’s obviously giving you a taste of your own medicine and it’s fair but it doesn’t mean you have to like it.

“I can do whatever I want,” Spencer corrects cooly in a way that pisses you off beyond belief because he’s right. It triggers some adolescent immaturity within you—a desire to get back at him, so to speak. He wants intentionally provocative? He can have it.

“Fine. Then so can I. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it even if I could.”

“Spencer,” you warn. “If you don’t tell me what you were thinking I’m gonna—” you look around the room for ammo. “I’m gonna look through your nightstand!”

“Go ahead. I’ll warn you, it’s not very interesting.”

“Sounds like what someone who has something hide would say,” you mumble, crawling across the mattress through tangled sheets and using your phone flashlight to open the drawer.

Spencer is patient and silent as you take in its contents—a small blue leather-bound notebook (full of what looks like Russian), a fountain pen, a glasses case, various kinds of vitamins, and—

“Spencer Reid,” you say, dragging out his name and pretending nothing is fluttering in your stomach, “what are these?”

“I don’t know. I can’t see what you’re referring to.”

“Take a wild guess.”

“Oh, I have one. But I’d like to hear you say it.”

You realize you may have gotten yourself in deeper than you meant to by going through his stuff. Well—they don’t say karma is a bitch for nothing.

“What are you doing with a box of condoms?”

He chuckles and you feel it in your whole body, warm as you stretch across his mattress and eye the box like it might jump out at you.

“Those are years old. I’ve used three since I bought them.”

“Don’t tell me that,” you whine. “I don’t wanna think about all the other women you’ve seduced.”

“You wanted them to be for you, huh?”

You flush. Honestly you hadn’t even thought about that.

“I… I don’t know. I kind of just assumed…”

It’s silent for a second and you frown, realizing you hadn’t even considered protection when you’d imagined sleeping with him before.

“You assumed what, honey?” he asks, voice soft.

“It’s dumb. I can’t tell you.”

“You can tell me anything. I’m not going to think it’s dumb, I promise.”

You chew on your lip, letting your eyes unfocus on the box as you muster the courage to be honest.

“Whenever I imagined it… we didn’t… use anything.”

The words make you cringe even as you’re saying them. So does the quiet that follows.

“When you imagine us sleeping together, we don’t use a condom?”

“Ah!” The phone drops to the mattress as you cover your ears and roll onto your side, curling into yourself once more. “You didn’t have to say it! You make me sound so weird!”

“It’s not weird,” he laughs, because he can probably imagine exactly what you just did, “I just wanted to make sure I was understanding you. That said… we would definitely use protection.”

“Do we have to?”

The quiet words take even you by surprise—and they seem to stun Spencer as well. Several false starts are punctuated by a sigh as he gathers his thoughts.

“We really should, baby. That’s the kind of thing we need to take seriously.”

“But you’re… you’re good, right?”

Thankfully he picks up on your meaning.

“I am. I wouldn’t touch you if I weren’t.”

“And I’m good. So...”

“Hm. And has anyone ever explained to you where babies come from?”

You groan in frustration.

“Spencer, I’m being serious! There are ways to negate that.”

“Honey,” he murmurs, “I understand that. But it would be irresponsible of me to say yes. We can talk about it in the future, but—”

“I’m telling you it’s already dealt with. The chances of an accidental pregnancy are slim to none.”

The new information hangs in the air for a moment until Spencer speaks—to your surprise, his voice is low and humorous.

“That is… good to know. But even so—I’m setting a dangerous precedent if I always let you get exactly what you want.”

“Is it such a bad thing that I just wanna—I wanna know what it feels like? You don’t want that?”

“That’s not what I said. I want to know exactly what you feel like. I’m just hesitant to give in so quickly because it makes me look weak.”

You laugh breathlessly, caught between being turned on by the first part of his sentence and amused by the sarcastic second half. Your thighs clench and your hand absentmindedly wanders between them.

“You know what I was thinking about?” you ask. Spencer hums curiously. “I was thinking about when you let me, um… when you let me touch you how you touch me.” He hums again, but you can hear the amused curve of a smile in it now.

“When you had your mouth all full of me and you looked so pretty?”

“When I—yeah,” you agree, too caught up to deny his compliment as your fingers brush your most sensitive spot through clothing. “And how you got me all messy after. And I was wondering what it would feel like… inside me.”

He sucks in a breath. Your legs brush against each other and you twist slightly as you pretend like you’re not touching yourself just a little bit.

“You want me to come inside you?”

“Yeah,” you whisper, brain short-circuiting at the way those words sound in his voice.

—

On the other side of the line, Spencer isn’t doing a fantastic job of thinking clearly either. His dick is half-hard already and it’s only getting worse with each little noise you make that you don’t seem to realize you’re making.

“Really? That would be very messy, baby. I’m surprised that’s what you want.”

“But I really want it,” you breathe. He’s not even looking as he slips his hand under the waistband of his pajamas and palms himself, his other hand rubbing tiredly over his face as his phone rests on his chest. This was not how he intended for this call to go, believe it or not—but he’s here now.

“Yeah? Is that why you’re touching yourself right now?”

You go silent—which is more or less exactly the reaction Spencer had been expecting. Patiently he waits for you to deny it, in three, two—

“’M not.”

Now, he could explain how he knows that’s a lie. How your breathing pattern changed, and your voice got softer and airier, and how you started speaking with smaller words in fragmented sentences. But he doesn’t feel like explaining any of that.

“I know that’s not true,” he murmurs. “You know what? It wasn’t fair to get you all worked up last night and then leave. I don’t want you frustrated, honey. I want you to do whatever you need to do.”

You make a little gasping noise, and Spencer can imagine the way your back would arch when you did it. His own hips buck slightly as his dick twitches under his fingers.

“Where are you touching?”

“Um—over my clothes.”

Cute.

“Go under them for me. Tell me how it feels when you’re touching yourself like that.”

It takes a moment, in which all he hears is the rustling of fabric, until you’re whispering, “feels… it feels good. I wish you were here.”

He inhales, freeing his cock and squeezing the base.

“I know. Just listen to my voice, pretty. I’m right here.”

Spencer allows himself a few slow tugs as he imagines what’s happening in his bed. You make a squeaking noise, like a held-back moan, and his eyes screw shut.

“I need them inside,” you whine, and he knows you’re referring to his fingers—the ones currently stroking his own leaking cock.

“You can use your own, just give yourself a minute first. Remember what I said about needing to be ready?”

“I am ready—” judging by the surprised chirp you interrupt yourself with, you’ve proven yourself right. What surprises Spencer is the weak sound of disappointment you make next. “Spence, it doesn’t feel the same.”

“We’re different sizes, honey. Your hands aren’t as big as mine. But you can still make it feel good.”

He almost says, 90% of the nerves in the vaginal canal are located in the lower third—in other words, within approximately 2.36 inches from the opening, which you can most certainly reach—but he refrains. He’s not sure if that’s good dirty talk.

“You have a really sensitive spot about three inches up, right in front. It’s going to feel a little different than the rest of you when you touch it. I want you to try and find it for me, okay?”

“Okay,” you breathe, ever-eager to please even from a great distance. There’s a quiet moment. “I can’t—I don’t think I can r—oh,”

The moan is so pretty Spencer can’t help speeding up the motion of his hand, hissing slightly as his fingers brush against the angry tip with every pump.

“Did you find it?”

“Yeah,” you whine, a weak, high-pitched thing. “Oh my god.”

“Be gentle,” he warns with some effort as his own hips jump slightly. “You’re really sensitive there. If you’re not careful you’ll make yourself sore.”

“I don’t care—holy shit—” the way your voice rises and tightens to a squeak at the end has Spencer moaning as he fucks his fist. A black hole forms and warps time, turning every minute into a second and every second into an infinity until he has no idea how much time is going by. He drags his thumb over the tip, smearing precum over his cock and whining as his jaw drops at the feeling. “Oh my god, Spencer,” in that same strained, high voice. “’M gonna—ah!”

He gets the general sentiment.

“What, baby? You’re gonna make yourself come all over your fingers? Is that what you wanted to tell me?”

“Mhm!”

“Yeah, I bet you are. It feels good, huh?”

“Yes,” you cry.

“See? You don’t need my fingers to feel good. Mine barely fit, you know that? I have to hold your fucking hips down whenever I put my fingers in you because you can’t stop squirming. I don’t know how you think you’re going to take my cock.”

“Spencer!”

He knows.

“Come, baby. Let me hear you.”

The delicate sounds you make as you bring yourself to orgasm tip him over the edge of his own—grunting as he comes all over his fist.

“Jesus,” he strains under his breath, the word dragging out into two long syllables as his hips buck involuntarily and cum drips down his knuckles. He’s lightheaded and he’s created a mess and it all happened so quickly. “Fuck,” he breathes, a rasping chuckle as he reaches for the towel he’d dropped on the bed after his shower earlier. “You conscious over there?”

“I’m conscious,” you slur, breathing heavily. “I’ve never had an orgasm by myself before.”

“Are you proud of yourself?” Spencer smiles, wiping his hand off and making sure he’s otherwise clean. “You should be. I am.”

He’s barely kidding.

“I’ll be proud when I can do it without your help,” you tease.

“But I’ll always want to help you with that.” His already warm face flushes further as he goes over what he’d said. “Sorry I was so vulgar.”

You laugh. He blushes even more.

“Are you? I think you secretly love being vulgar.”

“I don’t know why! I have no idea where it comes from. I would never speak that way in any other context. I should probably work on that. Sometimes I look back on the things I say and I’m genuinely appalled.”

“Well, don’t stop on my account. Personally I enjoy it.”

“Yeah, I think I’m corrupting you. You probably shouldn’t enjoy it.”

The truth of it weighs heavy on his mind, but he’s pretty sure his voice alone doesn’t betray that and you can’t sense it through the phone.

“Oh, my god. Do not do that falling on your sword shit. I like being corrupted by you. If you stop I’ll be very upset.”

“Well god forbid you get upset,” he teases gently. Idly he wonders if the reason he’s suddenly feeling so depressed is because his cortisol levels were already high from the case, and then he jarred his system with an orgasm, spiking his dopamine and ultimately causing it to plummet without the oxytocin release that post-coital physical contact would usually provide.

Or if it was something else. It could also be something else.

For the millionth time, he wishes he was with you. Part of him also wants to go to sleep. But mostly he wishes he was with you.

—

A comfortable silence settles over the conversation. In the ditch between words, you’re mapping constellations in the texture of Spencer’s ceiling. If you squeeze your eyes almost shut, you can imagine it really is the night sky. You can imagine he’s really here.

You think about what he said—his apparently mindless vulgarity. Did it mean anything? Or was he just rambling to get you off?

“Spencer?” you murmur.

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

He sounds earnest, perhaps a little tired, as he replies, “always,” through the little metal rectangle on your chest. He likes me and my questions are important to him, you repeat to yourself silently as you work up the strength.

“If Penelope hadn’t called, last night… were you going to have sex with me?”

Your lip tastes like his toothpaste as you chew it. Spencer sucks in a breath of air like he’s about to speak—and lets it fizzle out like foam on a carbonated drink.

“I don’t know,” he finally admits, lamely. “That wasn’t my plan, but you can be extremely convincing when you want to be.”

“But why can’t it be your plan?” It’s an almost whine, pouty and childish—but the next words are quiet and pained. “Is it something I’m doing wrong?”

“No, no! It’s not you. You’re perfect. It’s—it’s complicated. It’s a me thing.”

Such trite words—such a ubiquitous, simple excuse sounds almost comical from his mouth when you know he’s capable of all the eloquence in the world. It’s not you, it’s me. It’s ridiculous.

“Okay. Let me simplify this for you,” you begin with an uncharacteristic assertiveness that surprises even you. “I want to have sex with you. Either we are going to have sex or we’re not. So your future branches in two diverging paths. In one, we have sex, and then we keep having sex. In the other we never have sex ever. If you want to ever have the privilege of fucking me, then we just have to do it. Otherwise it simply will never happen. And I’m not eternally patient, Reid.”

Go me, you think, slightly breathless from your monologue.

“Watch your mouth,” he says dryly. Something about the chastisement makes your stomach flip and your whole body tingle. “When you talk to me you call me Spencer. I will also accept Doctor Reid.” You wrestle down a smile, refusing to let him change the subject. A delayed sigh from him sobers up the conversation. “You know what I want. I’ve been very clear with you about that. But…”

“But…?”

Another sigh. A deeper, shuddering sigh, like his breath is searching for balance. Like Spencer is in a precarious position for which he was unprepared.

“But—but to be completely honest… I worry that you’ll regret choosing me. And I know virginity is a social construct and I’m not implying that your worth will somehow be diminished if we have sex but regardless of my views on virginity as a construct, having sex for the first time can be weird and scary and it’s incredibly intimate and I don’t want you to regret your first time like I regret mine because you chose the wrong person.”

The words come at you so rapid-fire it takes you a moment to process them. And aside from all the ways you want to reassure him that you will not regret choosing him—that you could never, ever regret anything about him—one thing stands out.

“You regret your first time?”

Something between a scoff and a sigh travels through the line. You can tell he’s not annoyed at you for asking so much as he’s flustered himself with all his own words as he occasionally does.

“Yeah. Yes. Sometimes I do. The person—she didn’t… like me as much as I liked her. And I was really, really in love with her, and she knew that and she knew she wasn’t in love with me—or maybe she was, I don’t know—but my point is, when one person likes the other more than the other person like them, things get complicated. And however you feel about me—that’s fine. It’s fine. I don’t want you to feel bad if we don’t feel exactly the same way about each other. I understand that this is newer for you, it’s different, I—I just don’t want us to do something we can’t undo because I don’t want to relive that. And I’m not saying it will never happen but I just don’t want you to make this choice when… when right now, I think we’re in different places emotionally. Regardless of that, I want you to choose the right person. I don’t want you to choose me and then find out that we feel differently after we sleep together and leave you feeling like you signed up for something you didn’t understand. I’m sorry. Maybe telling you this is selfish. But I’ve been thinking about it and trying to ignore it and I think I just have to be completely honest.”

Your ears ring like Spencer just fired a blank right into the microphone. Like you just got backhanded across the face and now you have the world’s worst case of whiplash.

Every finger is numb and your blood is so cold it feels blue as it slithers thick through your veins.

What you want to do is scream. What you want to do is go back to last night and stop yourself from almost telling him I love you, slap yourself and keep your cards a little closer to your chest. Because now he knows, and he doesn’t feel the same.

You want to scream bloody murder.

But when you try, when you unhinge your jaw and part your chapped lips and expect a bellow to come hurdling up the corridor of your throat with so much force it rattles your bones, all that falls out is a small, “oh.”

Maybe that’s worse.

Spencer doesn’t reply. You hate yourself for feeling obliged to fill the silence.

“I didn’t realize you…”

I didn’t realize that you don’t love me back.

I didn’t realize I like you more than you like me.

I didn’t realize you’d tell me to masturbate in your fucking bed and then drop this not even five minutes later.

If Spencer Reid was able to talk to you over the phone with the same amount of affection and familiarity as always, like everything was still okay, knowing you love him and he doesn’t love you the whole time, he is not who you thought he was.

“I’m sorry,” he lamely says again, like it could ever help.

More silence. Now you can’t bring yourself to speak, so Spencer does.

“I realize how awkward this is. I really didn’t mean to put you in this position. Especially not over the phone when I—god, I’m stupid. I’m sorry. But can we—can we talk about this in person when I get back? Please?”

Is that what grownups do? Is the proper etiquette for him to take you out to dinner and explain why he’s not in love with you? Is he going to break up with you?

What does one even wear to a breakup date?

“Okay,” you whisper. Your eyes sting, your everything stings, like you’ve been wrapped in a shroud of briar. Sheets that were soft a moment ago feel like sandpaper on open wounds. You feel like an open wound.

Spencer sighs. It’s a sound of relief that confuses and hurts you even more.

“Okay. I—okay. Thank you. Um—I’ll let you go back to sleep, now.”

“Okay,” you repeat—as if any of this were okay. But you can’t keep being that stupid girl who feels it all so much harder, who loves easily and begs to be loved in return, too naive to assume that someone who treats her so kindly might not reciprocate her feelings. It has to be okay, because if it’s not, you’re silly and dramatic and you’re just proving him right.

“Goodnight,” Spencer whispers, and you can’t help but feeling that it’s the last time you’ll ever hear those words from his mouth while you’re in his bed. And he’s not even fucking here.

So you pull the blanket a little higher. You let your tears stain his pillow because they’ll be invisible by the morning. It will be like they were never here. Like you were never here.

“Goodnight.”

part five

#spencer reid #spencer reid fic #spencer reid smut #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x self insert #spencer reid angst #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x you #criminal minds #criminal minds smut #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds fic

2K notes · View notes

zvaigzdelasas · 6 months

Text

[BBC is UK State Media]

Truong My Lan is charged with taking out $44bn (��35bn) in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank. Prosecutors say $27bn may never be recovered.[...]

The evidence is in 104 boxes weighing a total of six tonnes [!!!]. Eighty-five defendants are on trial with Truong My Lan, who denies the charges. She and 13 others face a possible death sentence.

"There has never been a show trial [sic] like this, I think, in the communist era," says David Brown, a retired US state department official with long experience in Vietnam. "There has certainly been nothing on this scale."

The trial is the most dramatic chapter so far in the "Blazing Furnaces" anti-corruption campaign led by the Communist Party Secretary-General, Nguyen Phu Trong.

A conservative [sic] ideologue [sic] steeped in Marxist theory, Nguyen Phu Trong believes that popular anger over untamed corruption poses an existential threat to the Communist Party's monopoly on power. He began the campaign in earnest in 2016 after out-manoeuvring the then pro-business prime minister to retain the top job in the party.

The campaign has seen two presidents and two deputy prime ministers forced to resign, and hundreds of officials disciplined or jailed. Now one of the country's richest women could join their ranks.[...]

Although Vietnam is best known outside the country for its fast-growing manufacturing sector, as an alternative supply chain to China, most wealthy Vietnamese made their money developing and speculating in property.

All land is officially state-owned. Getting access to it often relies on personal relationships with state officials. Corruption escalated as the economy grew, and became endemic.

By 2011, Truong My Lan was a well-known business figure in Ho Chi Minh City, and she was allowed to arrange the merger of three smaller, cash-strapped banks into a larger entity: Saigon Commercial Bank.

Vietnamese law prohibits any individual from holding more than 5% of the shares in any bank. But prosecutors say that through hundreds of shell companies and people acting as her proxies, Truong My Lan actually owned more than 90% [!!!] of Saigon Commercial.

They accuse her of using that power to appoint her own people as managers, and then ordering them to approve hundreds of loans to the network of shell companies she controlled.

The amounts taken out are staggering. Her loans made up 93% [!!!] of all the bank's lending.

According to prosecutors, over a period of three years from February 2019, she ordered her driver to withdraw 108 trillion Vietnamese dong, more than $4bn (£2.3bn) in cash from the bank, and store it in her basement.

That much cash, even if all of it was in Vietnam's largest denomination banknotes, would weigh two tonnes.[!!!!!][...]

David Brown believes she was protected by powerful figures who have dominated business and politics in Ho Chi Minh City for decades. And he sees a bigger factor in play in the way this trial is being run: a bid to reassert the authority of the Communist Party over the free-wheeling business culture of the south.

"What Nguyen Phu Trong and his allies in the party are trying to do is to regain control of Saigon, or at least stop it from slipping away.[...]

faster growth in Vietnam almost inevitably means more corruption [sic]. Fight corruption too much [sic], and you risk extinguishing a lot of economic activity.

10 Apr 24

503 notes · View notes

holylulusworld · 3 months

Text

Two bikes (2)

Summary: You’re back in your hometown and meet two men from your past.

Pairing: former Jax Teller x fem!Reader (pre-story), Biker!Bucky Barnes x fem!reader

Warnings: smitten Bucky, fluff, light/implied smut scene

A/N: I wanted Jax and Biker!Bucky in one fic. So suffer with me…

Two bikes (1)

Two bikes masterlist

He moves slowly but with enough strength to punch the air out of your lungs. You gasp with every powerful thrust, torn between lust and regret.

How could you end up in his arms? How could you let him fool you again?

“I knew you’d feel this good, baby,” he groans in your neck. His body presses yours into the mattress and you are glad that he can’t see your face.

You’re close to tears because of your bad decision of getting close to the man breaking your heart more than once.

If only he chanted your name when you were not tangled in each other. If only he meant the words he whispers in your ear while taking you apart.

You know better, and still, you fell for him again.

“Look at you, all fucked out,” he groans with the last thrust. He is still on top of you, his face buried in your neck long after he came inside of you. You feel his chest pressed against your back, so close that it feels like you are one person. “Shit, you gave me another one.”

He finally slips out of you, huffing as you do not move. “That was amazing,” he says while already looking for his pants. “Uh-maybe you should head home. It’s getting late and I’d hate for you to walk in the dark.”

“I-“ your voice fails. How can he be a passionate and sweet lover one moment, and the next he turns into the selfish asshole you know so well. “You’re right.”

You slip out of bed to grab your clothes and throw them on. He watches you hastily dress with amusement. “You can go slow. Give me a little show.”

“Fuck you,” you snap at him. You walk out of the room, your jacket, bag, and one shoe tugged under your arm to get away from the next mistake you made. “How could I have been so stupid?”

You walk away, ignoring passersby watching you walk along the sidewalk with only one shoe on. Your apartment isn’t far away from his place, and you are too out of it to put your second shoe on.

You’re more running than walking when you see your building. With your last strength, you spring toward the building and unlock the door with shaking fingers.

You stare at the word count before rereading the words. “That’s awful. A bad sex scene and the angst doesn’t hit right.” You rub your tired eyes. “Three hours and I only got three hundred and eighty lousy words. You’ve got to be kidding me, Y/N.”

Slamming the laptop shut you sigh deeply. Of course, your personal experience is always a good inspiration, but not this time. You want to start this book with a perfect opening, so the reader doesn’t want to put the book away until they read every single sentence.

“What do we do?” you hide your face in your hands and sigh again. Since the day you met Jax again, your mood turned sour.

You believed coming back to your hometown would spark your inspiration. Instead, you got your heart broken by the very same man causing you to leave town years ago.

“Fuck, I need to come up with something better than this shit.”

You’re about to give up when your phone starts ringing. Reluctantly you leave your unfinished first chapter to answer the call. “Hello, this is…”

You don’t get to tell your name before Bucky calls you doll. “Hey, doll,” he chuckles when you squeak a hello. “I wanted to tell you that I fixed your car. You can get it this afternoon if you want to.”

“That would be great, James,” you smile to yourself. Hearing Bucky’s voice saved you from despairing over your first chapter. “I can be there at five, is that okay?”

“No, no doll,” he stops you before you can say more. “I’ll pick you up, doll. I can’t let you walk or take the bus. And please, stop calling me James. My father called me that when I did something stupid. I hate it.”

“Did he call you James often?” you tease. “I bet he did because you did something stupid all the time. Like smoking or driving too fast.”

“Ma’am, I’m a responsible driver, and I do not smoke,” he replies, but you hear the joke in his words. “Maybe I like a good drink, but that’s all. Oh, and don’t worry. I don’t drink and drive.”

“I can call a taxi, Bucky. You don’t have to pick me up,” you try not to owe Bucky another favor. He refused to take money from you for repairing your car. That’s more than enough.

“Doll, if we want to stay friends,” he tries to sound serious, but chuckles, “you’ll accept a ride on my bike, miss. I’ll pick you up at five pm sharp. Please wear something…nice.” He laughs when you mutter into the phone. “Nah, just kidding. Come as you are, Y/N. That’ll be enough.”

“Fine, but I’ll pay you back somehow.” He makes an odd noise but plays it cool. “Oh! I know. I’ll devote the first chapter of my new book to you, Mr. Barnes.”

“A new book!” He gasps. “Will it be about the same woman? Another part of your series? Please say yes.”

You’re surprised Bucky knows your books. “Yes, and no. I try to…I don’t know.” You huff. “I want her to have a fresh start, just like me. Old habits die hard, but it’s time. If you know what I mean.”

“I know damn well what you mean, doll. I’ll pick you up at five and we can talk about that fresh start some more…”

“Here,” Bucky holds a leather jacket in his hands. It’s too small to be his, and you frown. “I got you a jacket, so you won’t freeze.” He grins when you glance at the jacket.

“Bucky, I’m not your old lady,” you point out, knowing about the traditions of bikers.

“Not yet,” he retorts. Bucky helps you into the jacket, and a big smile on his face when he zips it up. “Looks good on you, Y/N.”

You roll your eyes. He’s very charming, but you know the flirty banter will turn into something more if you don’t stop him. But…do you want to stop him?

“I got you a helmet too,” he grabs the helmet and helps you to put it on. He taps it twice and grins. “Perfect. Now we can go for a ride…”

Bucky gets on his bike, planting his feet on the ground to steady it. He holds out his hand to help you get on the back of his bike.

“Hang on, baby. I don’t want you to fall off my bike.” He smirks when you laugh. “You can hold tight onto me, Y/N. I won’t mind.”

You hesitate for a second. This situation is a little too familiar for your liking. You look at his back, reading the wrong club’s name on it. “Howling Commando,” you whisper.

“Is everything alright,” Bucky asks. “We can wait if you’re scared of driving in the back.”

“No,” you shake the memories of the past off and wrap your arms tightly around Bucky. “All good, Bucky. We can go.”

He starts the engine, ignoring he can feel you pressed against him. If he gets too distracted by your closeness, he’ll crash his bike with you in the back. And that’s the last thing he wants to do…

Tags in reblog.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes x female reader #biker au #jax teller #jax teller x reader #Two bikes (2)#x reader #female reader

203 notes · View notes

macfrog · 1 year

Text

state-of-the-art sex on fire chapter two

*chants* ceo joel ceo joel ceo joel

part 2 to you shook me all night long!!! massive credit to @whore-4-pedro again for the concept this is SO much fun. work trip coming soon babies!!! masterlist here, ao3 here 💓

pairing: ceo!joel x fem!reader

summary: joel’s had a rough week at work. you figure you know the perfect way to relieve some of his tension

warnings: 18+ (minors dni!!!) more teasing and touching, oral (m receiving), getting handsy in public + fingering, unprotected semi-public piv sex, creampie, daddy kink, softdom!joel, age gap (reader is late 20s, joel late 40s), cursing, workplace relationship

word count: 6.6k

series masterlist | main masterlist | playlist

The stretch is too much; he’s all the way in down to his knuckles, curling and then uncurling his fingers deep inside you. Your hips are slowly circling by instinct, rutting against his hand as it fucks you, sending fluttery waves of pleasure all over your body. You ball up your fist, nails digging half-moons into the skin of your palm, attempting to fight the tidal wave fast approaching as Joel’s fingers snap harder into you, a third beckoning your orgasm nearer and nearer. You’re there – right where he wants you, almost throwing your head back with the feeling he’s giving you. And then you make the mistake of looking at him, catching that ever so Joel smile when, shielded from the others by his hand, he breathes, “There’s my girl.”

The black mug. Not the one with the gold handle – that’s one of Martha’s. She doesn’t use it much – at least not as much as the one with her granddaughter’s face printed on it – but she once left you with a stack of paperwork to shred all by yourself just ‘cause you made yourself a tea in it.

No. Just plain black all over. No words, no pictures. Plain. Black.

Few spoonsful of coffee into the filter, hard granules sprinkling over the white paper. Close the lid, flick the switch, and then wait for it to brew. Once it’s done, fill the mug almost to the top – until the coffee kisses the bottom of that one chip in the ceramic. No sugar. No sweetener. No nothing.

Just plain black.

“Thanks, darlin’.” Joel takes the mug carefully from your hands as you wander over, then you perch yourself by his side on Martha’s desk. He takes a sip and nods like usual, confirming what you already know.

You make a damn good cup of coffee.

“You’re worth, what, a few hundred million? You can’t buy a better coffee machine?”

“’s wrong with that one?” he asks, mug on his bottom lip.

“Works like it’s from the eighties or something.”

Martha clears her throat behind you both. “I am gonna give you five seconds to explain what you mean by that.”

“I mean…it’s not exactly state-of-the-art, is it?”

Joel’s jaw drops dramatically. His head wobbles like it’s about to implode, hearing what you just said. “You hear that, Martha? We ain’t state-of-the-art anymore, you ‘n me. We’re older ‘n that coffee machine, you know.”

Martha’s shaking her head, clicking away at her computer.

Joel nudges your arm with a soft chuckle and you sigh, turning away to watch the four men in his office; stood an awkward distance apart, small talking, pacing, adjusting their suits. One of them is messing with some trinket on Joel’s bookshelf.

“You think they’re nervous?” you ask, and he laughs from behind you.

“I reckon they’ve a lot to be nervous about.”

“Was it that bad? On Monday?”

Joel had spent the better part of four hours locked in that conference room, right after you two – you know. He was late for lunch by the time he was ushering them out, collars loose, jackets slung over arms. It was probably a good thing you’d tired him out a little beforehand, or he’d have been way more unforgiving than he was.

Three departments in Joel’s company have gone over budget. It isn’t a huge deal. He has the money. Just, he wants the right people in charge of it, and right now…he clearly doesn’t have that. Honestly, you hate to admit it, but it makes sense. You’re kinda on Joel’s side.

He’d given them to the end of the week to come up with action plans, figure out how to undo the mess. This is the end of the week. This is supposed to be the big reveal.

Joel runs a hand through his hair, palm hooking around the back of his neck.

“Wasn’t great,” he mutters.

You knew that much. You’d asked what he wanted to eat as he passed your desk en route back to his office, and he’d waved his hand and told you to order whatever you wanted with his card. When his door closed, you glanced over to Martha, who shrugged, and went back to playing solitaire.

You figured he wasn’t down for more sex. He didn’t reappear until five o’clock, when he walked you down to the street, carrying your jacket for you, and helped you into your cab.

The elevator dings and the brass doors separate, revealing a figure behind.

George Mackley. Short. Stout. Obnoxiously bright red tie. Head of marketing.

He waddles in a hurry toward the three of you, nodding curtly to Joel as he passes. His shaking hand fumbles around the handle of the office door, which he pulls on instead of pushing, and gives an awkward chuckle before rushing inside.

“Fuckin’…finally,” Joel grunts, passing you his mug and standing up.

“Should I order my own lunch again?” you ask, looking up at the man stretching his arms out before you. Like he’s about to go in and punch sense into them all.

You’d probably love him to do that. It’d make for some great sex afterward.

“I’ll be takin’ a lunch break,” he replies, tapping your knee, “whether we’re done or not. Be out at one.”

You nod, and he stalks off to his office. His mug’s still warm in your lap. You’re still staring when he enters the room, watching how all five men immediately file into the couches across from his desk just at the sight of him. Watching how Joel’s lean figure sits back against his desk, his ankles crossed. His arms folded at his chest. His broad shoulders beneath that tight white shirt.

He has that way about him. Commanding, confident. Strong. It’s probably what convinced you to fold, if you’re honest. Sure, he’s kind, and he’s a good boss, all things considered. He’s funny. But he’s cool. It takes a lot to shake Joel.

This meeting? It’s not shaking him. He’s barely even giving these guys enough attention to sit up straight. He’s so damn breezy, so laidback that when he pushes off of his desk and stands up, you give a small gasp.

You lift his mug, drinking from the same spot his lips touched only minutes ago.

“Thought you hated black coffee,” Martha murmurs.

“Stress sipping,” you reply. “Fucking hell…”

Joel’s erratic. Waving his arms, pacing around the room. You swear the men cower as he approaches; shoulders hunched and heads low until he’s past them.

He looks…Yeah. Fuck it. He looks a little shaken.

Martha tuts. “Shouldn’t be idiots with his money.”

“He has money, though,” you offer. “Like, this ain’t that big a deal, is it? He can afford to go over budget sometimes.”

“Joel doesn’t like anyone messin’ with what’s his,” she tells you. “Doesn’t like other hands on his toys. It’s not the overspending he’s pissed about. It’s the crossin’ the line.”

Your eyebrow cocks. She can’t see your expression, and good thing, because it’d probably give you away. Doesn’t like other hands on his toys.

A flash of movement from Joel’s office drags your eyes from the dregs of his coffee back to the transparent wall between you. He’s whipping the shades closed one by one, putting a barrier between his office and the outside world.

It can’t mean anything good, right? It doesn’t look like they’re about to sit in a circle and braid each other’s hair. Sure as hell aren’t about to see Joel’s good side.

“I gotta go in,” you declare, lifting off of Martha’s desk like you’ve taken flight.

She calls your name, almost tired of your antics. “I don’t think that’s a good idea…”

But you’re already scooping up a notepad, slipping it under your arm and fishing a pen from your desk. Already walking over to the office door, hearing the dangerous hum of Joel’s voice through the wood.

Your knuckles rap three times. You don’t wait to be called inside. Just push the handle down and slip in.

He’s stood against the frame of one of the windows, hands in his pockets. When you materialize from behind the door, his face relaxes. Brows loosen, jaw slackens. Lips almost tug into a smile.

“Sorry I’m late.” You sidle over to his desk and sit down in his chair, biting on your bottom lip, casting an unsure glance around the room.

Five pale faces turned to you. George Mackley looks like he’s about to weep.

Joel thanks you and then steps forward. “So, Ken, we were at last month’s sales.”

“Uh, yeah…” Ken draws his gaze from you when Joel moves in front of the desk. As he waltzes by, he spins slowly, giving you a look as he passes.

Kill me, he mouths, rolling his eyes. You smile, looking down at your blank notebook. You’re not here to take the fucking minutes. You know that, Joel knows that. You’re only here so he has something to keep him from losing it. Something to sit and look pretty, and calm him down.

Also: you kinda want the gossip. What the fuck did these guys do with all of Joel’s money, right?

Almost two hours in, a dozen games of tic-tac-toe against yourself, and one very crude drawing of Monday morning’s activities, Joel startles you by slamming a file down onto his glass coffee table.

“And you think that’s a solution?” he spits, voice laced with fury.

“Joel, you gotta see it from my side. I’m managing thirty people down there, it’s–”

“’n I’m managing five idiots from up here. Mackley,” he turns to the face as red as the tie below it, “you got anythin’ else for me?”

George Mackley shakes his head. His hair’s unkempt; it was gelled flat to his head when he arrived, but his hands have been through it more times than Joel’s lapped the office.

“Alright. Y’know what,” Joel seethes, backing up and motioning for them to stand, “everyone out. Meeting’s over. Go.”

“Joel–” A tall man with blue eyes stands up.

“If you ain’t about to offer me somethin’ that can fuckin’ fix this mess, then shut your mouth and get out of my office. All of you.”

The men sheepishly collect their briefcases, their documents, themselves, and stand, filing out of the door one by one. You rise from Joel’s chair, taking your notepad between your fingers, and slowly wander around the desk.

He’s standing with his head in his hands, shoulders swelling with his breathing. Does he want you to leave, too? You don’t want to rile him more; certainly don’t want to be the first face his angry self sees. But you want to make sure he’s okay. Want to check on him.

Plus, he’s kind of hot when he’s pissed.

You’re tottering toward the door when Joel drops his hands from his face, notices you, and says, plain as the coffee in his mug, “Not you.”

You turn back, pushing the door closed behind you.

“Didn’t mean to yell.”

You don’t reply. Your hand lifts to find the lock blindly behind your hip, and you click it. Now there’s nobody, no one to disturb you both. No one to walk in, no one to see.

You approach him.

He’s still talking: “Didn’t want you to have to hear all that. I spoil your morning?”

Your head shakes and you mutely take his hands, leading him around to his chair and pushing him back into it.

“Baby, what–”

You part his legs with your own, his fingers still interlocked with yours. Then you think he gets it. Understands where you’re going.

You sink to your knees between his thighs.

“They were bein’ idiots,” you say, fingers undoing his belt. “’n you didn’t spoil my mornin’. You gave me a little bit of excitement.”

Joel’s breath shudders as he watches you tug his belt through the loops of his pants and drop it to the floor. Still, he laughs, and asks, “Is that so?”

“N– Oh, fuck. Not like that. Like–” You pause, breathing out a sigh.

Yeah, okay. Like that, if you want. I’m down if you are.

His pants are open, lying loose on his hips. The waistband of his boxers visible. You hook two fingers over it and peel it down a fraction, following Joel’s happy trail as it grows thicker and darker, when he puts a hand over yours and breathes your name.

“Relax,” you mutter back, nudging his hand off of yours. “Just let me take care of you.”

His head falls against the back of his chair and his shoulders sink into the leather. You pull on the elastic and take hold of the base of his cock, already stiff, slipping it out from beneath the black cotton.

Joel’s knees fall slack when you take a hold of him. Two hands, because he’s so fucking big. Your fists pump him a few times, feeling him harden in your grasp, warm skin rock solid in your hands. You lean forward on your knees, thick bead of saliva falling from your lips onto his head, dribbling down his smooth shaft.

Joel’s watching through hooded lids. Caressing your hair, petting you. Your fingers collect your spit and drag it up and down him, and you swear he almost fucking whines.

Almost isn’t enough. You want to really hear him. So you slacken your jaw, part your lips, and slide them down, tongue flat against the underside of his length as he fills your mouth. Joel’s fist tightens, pulls harshly on your hair for just a second, until he’s breathing out again in relief, body relaxing to the feel of your wet tongue around his hard cock.

“Don’t need to – do this, babygirl.”

“Mhm,” you mumble around him.

“Fuck…” he whispers.

Your elbows are hooked over his thighs, holding yourself up in place between his legs. He tastes salty; skin warm, smooth. Your tongue flickers over his head, collecting precum, and Joel groans.

You pull off of him and lick your lips.

“What you gonna do?” you ask, fingers squeezing and dragging saliva and Joel’s arousal up and down. “About the budget stuff?”

His chest is heaving, hips lifting out of the seat almost like he’s trying to put himself back where he belongs. “What…can I do?” he asks through desperate pants. “Can’t – fuck – can’t drum sense into ‘em.”

You wrap your puffy lips around his tip, kissing it, tongue playing with him again. Swirling around, gathering him on your tastebuds. “Why don’t you cut ‘em loose, then?”

Your head dips again, lips sucking around his shaft, tongue still darting around his swollen head.

He can barely fucking answer. His eyes close over and, with a groan either side of the sentence, he replies, “’s not that easy, baby. Fuck. Keep doin’ that.”

You loosen your lips enough to let your reply pass them. Your voice is muffled, thick. “Sounds easy to me.”

“Shut up,” he grunts. “Keep fuckin’ – usin’ your tongue.”

You obey, running your tongue up and down his length and coming to rest to pay more attention to his tip.

“Yeah, just like that. Good girl.”

You hollow your cheeks and let your lips trickle up and down for a bit before releasing him with a pop. Joel’s writhing underneath you, leaning almost horizontal in his chair.

“Gonna cum, daddy?”

He nods, eyes still screwed shut. “Yeah, pretty girl. You want it down your throat again?”

“Mhm.”

“Fuck – dirty girl.”

It’s all the encouragement you need. You widen your jaw, taking him in your mouth in full, until he’s choking you down to what feels like the bottom of your fucking neck. You fuck him with your throat, bobbing up and down, his fist in your hair pushing and pulling even though you don’t need him to. Your mouth meets the skin at the base of his cock over and over, dark hair brushing against your glossy lips.

Joel’s moaning each time, when his cock kisses the back of your throat, when you involuntarily choke around him, when your tongue drags along his length as he pulls you up and down. And soon his breathing loses rhythm, hips tense, and you know he’s there.

He cums, hard, at the back of your mouth. Warm release spilling out over your tongue, neatly running down your throat as you wait for him to still. His cock throbs with each shot of cum, swelling and jerking between your lips. When Joel sinks back into his chair again, you slip him out of your mouth and back under his boxershorts.

Your head lulls to the side, resting on his big thigh as you swallow him with a smile on your lips. His grip on your hair loosens, turns instead back to soft stroking, chest still panting as he comes back down. You watch him through glazed eyes; his shoulders rising and falling, breaths passing his lips like waves at the beach.

He’s twirling your hair gently around his finger, looking down at you like you’re made of twinkling gold dust.

Eventually, Joel takes a deep breath and sits up straight, beckoning you to do the same. He tucks his shirt back in, redoes his pants, then leans forward and hooks both hands under your arms, pulling you up to him.

You giggle as he lifts you onto his lap, straddling him with your knees either side of his waist. Your elbows rest on his shoulders, hands linking at the back of his neck.

His jaw turns upward, and you lower yours, your lips meeting in a soft embrace. You laugh against him, letting his tongue slip into your mouth, pushing yours into his.

“Better?” you ask once you part.

“Better, darlin’. Thank you.”

He kisses you again, a little more rushed, little less tender. Then his hands squeeze your ass and you squeal into his mouth, jumping up off of him.

You pass him his belt and lift the empty coffee mug off of his desk. “Refill?”

“Yeah. Sure. Thanks,” he says, slipping the leather through his belt loops. His shoulders are lifted, tummy sucked in as he feeds it through. He almost looks cute.

You smile and then turn on your heels, wiping the corners of your mouth as you emerge from the office.

—————

“Is he comin’, or what?”

“Huh?”

Martha jerks her head in the direction of Joel’s office. She’s stood at your desk, hands on her hips, bag over her shoulder.

“He’s…Yeah, he said he would be. Let me go check.”

You close over the budget report file you’d been reading through and shimmy out from behind your desk, trying to amble as casually as possible over to the shuttered blinds.

You turn the handle, poking your head around the door.

He’s stood at his desk, raking a hand through his hair, top button of his shirt undone. Tie sitting loose around his collar. He spots you and gives an apologetic smile.

You comin’? you mouth.

Joel points to his phone. Some panicked voice fills the silence between you both.

“…so I gave the two of ‘em a tellin’; they shouldn’t make any more purchase orders without my permission. Without your permission, Joel, I mean…And about last month’s sales, too…”

You step over to his desk, slow, suspicious. Mischief on your mind.

“Sorry, baby,” he whispers, tucking a lock of hair behind your ear.

You cock your head, brows furrowing. You’d been looking forward to lunch with Joel all day; something to take his mind off the meeting this morning.

Martha had called his favorite restaurant, they’d told her they had no space, she’d mentioned it was for Mr. Miller, and a table had magically opened up. Then you’d encouraged her to ask Deb, knowing she’d inevitably ask James, her admin assistant, and, before you knew it, your small lunch was a party of five.

Worked for you. You and Joel would probably be too caught up in each other’s company to notice the rest.

Except, the way things are looking, Joel isn’t getting off this call anytime soon. Soon meaning within the next thirty seconds, given the reservation is in ten minutes.

You’re growing desperate. Running out of time, knowing if you don’t do something to shut this guy the fuck up, your little daydream of sitting side by side with Joel, so close you can feel the heat off of him, feel his chest vibrate when he talks, maybe even feel his hand trailing up your thigh…won’t come true.

“What if you just…” Your fingers walk along Joel’s desktop, heading for his phone. “…lost…connection…?”

He doesn’t say a word, but the smirk that forms across his lips grants you all the permission you need. Your fingers clutch the receiver, lifting it barely an inch, then drop it back into its cradle. The panicked voice cuts.

“Oops.” You shrug, straightening up in front of Joel.

“Oops,” he repeats, wrapping his strong arms around your shoulders and pulling you into him again. You lift your jaw to kiss him only quickly, before you’re pushing yourself off of his chest and dragging him away from his desk.

“Sorry, Ken!” you call as Joel yanks the door open, the pair of you laughing like schoolkids.

You meet the others outside the building, huddled together at the bottom of the concrete steps. Deb puts her cigarette out on top of a trashcan when you both approach.

“Well, we thought you weren’t comin’,” she utters to Joel.

He lifts his eyebrows in response, hands slipping into his pockets, and glances around the group. “We goin’?”

“Waiting for your driver, Mr. CEO.” Martha winks.

“Aha,” Joel replies, face unmoving, “funny.”

“It’s, like, two blocks, we can walk,” you say, setting off down the street. Joel’s quick to follow, strolling at your side, but there’s a chorus of groans from the rest of your party. “Come on!” you yell over your shoulder.

“We’re supposed to be dining with the head of the fuckin’ company!” Martha cries, and Deb cackles.

“I gotta live like the rest of y’all sometimes,” Joel shrugs, walking backward, “keeps my feet rooted, doesn’t it?”

“I hate you,” you mutter, and he knocks into your shoulder with his own.

The Courtyard is bright, modern, and…beige. It’s only Joel’s favorite because it was a buddy of his from grad school who opened it, but you’re the only person he’s entrusted with that information. It’s decent food – they do a great chicken risotto – and it is always busy, so Drew must be doing alright with it.

You walk under a fake ivy plant covering the entrance, past twinkling fairy lights and to a rustic wooden reception area. Some hyper server comes bounding over and introduces himself as Jake, before Martha gives the name of the reservation and he batters it into a keyboard.

“Lopez?” you ask Martha, screwing your face up.

“Yeah. Comma Jennifer. I like to make it exciting.”

“If you wanted exciting, go for Beyoncé, or something. Lopez?”

“You really think Beyoncé is gonna come eat here?”

“You really think Jennifer Lopez is?”

She bats you away, turning her attention to Deb, who finds the JLo joke hilarious. When Jake springs off, beckoning you all to follow him, Joel leans in close to you.

“She used to use Pamela Anderson. Glad she’s evolved a little.”

You snort and follow Jake toward the same table Joel always sits at: the very back of the restaurant, quieter, separated by screens of more fake greenery. Windows looking out over the busy streets. Bare lightbulbs hanging from unnecessarily long wires over the tables.

Joel pulls your chair out for you and slots in beside you, on your right. Martha, Deb, and James – who hasn’t said or done much more than chortle at anything Joel’s said – sit opposite. Jake borderline frisbees the menus at you guys and tells you to give him a shout when you’re ready to order.

You turn to Joel who shakes his head, hand cupping his chin.

The five of you scan down the menus – at least, you, Joel and Martha pretend to. You’ve been coming here regularly enough for long enough that you know what you’ll inevitably end up ordering. James is asking Deb if the steak might fill him up too much before his squash practice later on tonight when you feel a familiar heat on your leg, and look past your menu to see Joel’s hand curving around your thigh.

You hold back a smile, pretending to be really into the laminated sheet in your hands. So long as he keeps it PG, and James keeps rabbiting on about squash being good for your hand-eye co-ordination, this is fine. This is…enjoyable.

This is exactly what you fucking wanted, when you organized lunch.

But when Jake returns to collect the menus under his arm then scurries back off, and Martha and Deb start discussing some TV show they’re both hooked on, Joel’s hand begins to rake higher. Taking the hem of your skirt with it. You suck in a deep breath, pretending to watch the two women and trying your best to listen to the words they’re saying, but he’s getting dangerously close to your–

“You ever try squash, Joel?”

“Huh?” Joel’s hand halts instantly. You exhale.

James is sitting forward, elbows on the table, nodding with a perfectly innocent smile on his face. “Squash. Yeah. I play every Friday evening, straight after work. It’s fantastic for shakin’ off that week-long stress, y’know? Not that workin’ here is a stress, but sometimes it can build up, sometimes you just need something to…” He balls his fists and jerks them, gritting his teeth.

You choke on a laugh and play it off as a cough.

Joel shifts a little in his seat, his palm still clamped around the top of your thigh. “Never played squash. More of a golfing guy.”

“That what you’re gonna do this weekend? Burn off all that stress you’ve had with a round of golf?” you ask Joel, lips almost trembling with the effort it’s taking you not to burst out laughing.

“Not what I had in mind, naw,” he almost spits back.

“Well, if you ever wanna try it, you know who to call. Squash, I mean. I mean – sorry, I don’t mean call squash. I mean call me. To try squash. You won’t find a better stress reliever.”

“Thanks, James,” Joel mutters, fingers fumbling with the cutlery on the table in front of him.

You could fucking burst. No better stress reliever than squash, right Joel? Nothing like it. Not even the one sitting next to you, her thigh under your grasp. Nope.

You’re thankful when Martha calls your name and averts your attention.

“You have got to watch it. I reckon she’d really love it, right?”

Deb nods eagerly.

“What’s that?” you ask.

They both start chirping away, describing the plot of some mystery thriller. It’s hard to keep up, what with them both speaking over one another, deciding which parts are safe to tell you and No, we can’t tell her that, that’s a spoiler, which actors are in it and how many episodes it took for them to really get into it.

Not to mention Joel’s hand, which has resumed its climb up your leg.

“There are three seasons,” Martha says, finger drawing shapes on her placemat, “and do not go lookin’ online for anything, because at the end of season two, there’s a massive death, and…”

Your thighs are bare again, skirt rolled up and held at the top of your legs by Joel’s wrist. He’s squeezing as he goes, massaging, driving you fucking insane as he adds more and more pressure. Still, your legs part for him the higher he goes.

“W-what– where can I watch it?” you ask, your eyes closing over as Joel’s fingers loosen their grip.

Deb says something, but it’s muffled. Drowned out by the ringing in your ears. Joel’s right hand sits under his chin, elbow propped on the table as if he’s musing over the weather or considering what to do with his weekend.

His left moves swiftly over to run along the elastic of your panties. Sift his thumb down below them. Fingers drop to cup you over the lace fabric. Suddenly, you’re sitting upright, your arms propping on the table, then falling to your lap, then one elbow up, then both down again.

What the fuck– how the fuck do you make this look casual? Being touched by your boss at lunch, with three colleagues sat opposite you?

Joel seems to be enjoying watching you squirm. You hear him breathe a laugh into his hand, and then his fingers begin to travel even further south, moving your panties to the side to sift through your folds.

Which are, regrettably, fucking soaked.

“Hm,” you hear Joel hum, and you can’t look at him. Knowing he’s found exactly what he was looking for. Knowing he’s achieved exactly what he set out to do.

You sit stunned, staying completely still for fear you might draw attention from your company. But then he’s dipping a finger in, pushing deep inside you, and your jaw falls loose, a silent moan escaping in the form of a sigh.

“Oh, that reminds me,” Martha addresses you and Joel, “as requested, flights organized. You leave for Paris next Friday morning, fly home Monday afternoon.”

“Yep,” you reply, shuddering slightly. “Sounds good.”

You’re not fucking listening to a word she’s saying.

“Thanks, Martha,” Joel says, as casual as if he were telling her the time. Almost bored.

You drop your hand and it clamps around Joel’s wrist; you’re sure you’re scratching him, but you don’t care. Not only does he deserve it, but it’s all you can do to stop yourself from screaming out when he inserts a second finger.

You ball up your fist, nails digging half-moons into the skin of your palm, attempting to fight the tidal wave fast approaching as Joel’s fingers snap harder into you, a third beckoning your orgasm nearer and nearer.

You’re there – right where he wants you, almost throwing your head back with the feeling he’s giving you. And then you make the mistake of looking at him, catching that ever so Joel smile when, shielded from the others by his hand, he breathes, “There’s my girl.”

It’s the last push. The last fucking shove.

Your walls clamp around his fist, your entire body screams, a scream that forcibly dies out in your throat as you lean forward and –

You slam your fist down on the tabletop, the sudden jolt of cutlery and glass making the three opposite you jump.

“Are you– what’s wrong?” Martha asks, leaning closer.

“Cr– fuck– cramp,” you mumble, eyes screwed shut, hand still gripping Joel’s wrist. He slowly drags his soaked fingers out of your tight cunt, casually maneuvering his arm back where it belongs whilst the table’s attention is still on your head and shoulders.

“Cramp?”

“My – fucking – leg. I’ll be – right back.” You’re almost hyperventilating as you shakily stand, shoving your chair back with your legs only for it to be caught by the hand Joel had inside you seconds before.

You waddle off to the front of the restaurant, nearly breaking out into a run when you reach the hallway leading to the restrooms. The door to the ladies room bursts open and you throw yourself against a sink, gripping onto the ceramic, chest heaving, shoulders hunched. Your cunt is still throbbing, waves of your orgasm slowly losing power and retreating.

You wave your hand under the faucet and cold water automatically flows, filling your cupped hands, cooling your blood, cooling your skin when you dab it onto your cheeks. You sigh with relief, leaning against the sink, catching pathetic glimpses of yourself in the mirror.

And then, the door pushes open. And his silhouette sneaks inside. He leans back against the wall, hands in his pockets. Face with a smirk you want to slap off of him.

“How’s the cramp?”

“Are you fucking–” You flick your hands toward him, splashing him with water as he throws an arm up to dodge it, laughing. That fucking laugh.

He wanders around you, looking your shaking body up and down, and comes to a halt with his chest against your back. His chin leans into your shoulder, and you look at each other in the mirror.

It takes everything in you to fight the smile growing on your lips, but when Joel mirrors it, you can’t help it.

“Fucker,” you whisper, and he kisses your shoulder. You lean back into him, ass pressing against him, feeling something you already suspected would be there.

“Feel what you did to me?” he asks, voice muffled into the cotton of your shirt.

“Mhm,” you reply, and you drop your hand to take the outline of him through his pants.

“You wanna fix it for me?”

Your head rolls back against his shoulder, smutty grin melting across your face. “Yeah, daddy.”

“Good girl,” he tells you, lips dragging across your neck, hands at his belt.

Your fingers clutch your skirt, still hiked halfway up your thighs, and pull it further. Joel’s hands replace yours on your hips and he shoves his pants apart, lining his bulge up with your core. Then his palm is at the bottom of your back, pushing you forward into position. Your knuckles whiten around the ceramic sink.

“Fuck,” you whisper when you feel his tip at your entrance. You’re already soaked through, no need for him to take his time. Not that you have time, anyway, with three coworkers out front waiting for the two of you.

Joel thrusts forward, entering you in one go, filling you up so fast you nearly double over. He keeps a tight grip on your hips, dragging you up and down the top of his cock a few times before slamming all the way into you again, eliciting a cry from your lips.

“Quiet, babygirl,” he says, low, dangerous. “Just gettin’ you warmed up.”

“Your hand wasn’t enough of a warmup?” you throw over your shoulder, and he takes your arms and pulls you flush against him.

“You gonna run that pretty mouth the entire time we’re in here, or you gonna let me fuck you?” he breathes around the shell of your ear.

“Both.”

You bite back a whimper when his hips buck into you painfully. A telling: don’t start.

Joel establishes a pace quick enough, both of you aware you can’t take too long in here. His grunts match the rate his body snaps against yours, your panting matches the rate you bounce up and down on him.

You’re watching the sight reflected in the mirror: Joel hooked around your shoulder, lips against your ear, whispering praises and filth, and you, leaning back against him, rutting on his hard cock with a thick smile on your lips.

“Daddy…” you whine, and Joel’s vice grip tightens even more.

“Good girl,” he pants, “so fuckin’ good for me.”

It’s not long before that heat is swirling around your core again, sparks of lightning jolting through the whirlwind of pleasure Joel’s hips create between yours. You take a hold of his arms for stability as you begin to feel your orgasm crest the horizon, knowing by the sounds he’s making in your ear that Joel isn’t far off, either.

“Cum in me,” you whimper, watching for his reaction in the mirror.

He pulls a face that’s almost…defeated. Groans like you’ve given him an impossible problem to solve.

You plead with your eyes. “Cum – in – me.”

It’s like you’re pressing on the weakest part of a porcelain vase; daring it to break. Daring it to fall apart. Joel knows he shouldn’t, knows it’s more sensible not to. But the way you look, body against his, whining and whimpering and fucking smiling right back at him – the way you feel, so warm and wet, squeezing him so tight he’s surprised he’s even lasted this long…

He can’t fucking help himself.

He moans and his hands clamp on your waist, forcing you forward as he ruts into you once, twice, three times before he’s twitching deep inside, warm seed spilling out and coating your walls. Your release floods over you, then, too, your head falling forward as your legs give for a few seconds, Joel’s grip the only thing keeping you upright.

Stars in your eyes, you pull the strength to lift your head and look at your reflection; Joel behind you, face to the ceiling as he slowly stills between your legs.

Your cunt throbs, and you move your hips back and forth gently, drawing a noise from Joel that you wish you could never stop hearing.

“Baby,” he lulls, looking down to watch as your dripping cunt rocks back and forth, taking him all and then letting him go again.

It’s a minute or so before you both return to reality. Bodies still connected, Joel places a steady kiss to your cheek. You lean into him, turning to place your lips against his. You’re both hot, sweaty, it’s probably pretty noticeable you just fucked.

And you don’t care.

Joel slips out of you and backs up, letting you fix yourself in the mirror as he stuffs himself back into his pants.

“You think you can walk back to the office?” he asks, smirking.

“Call Rand,” you reply, and his head tips back in a laugh.

He nods toward the door and the pair of you slip out discreetly, you first to check the coast is clear, and Joel right behind. You walk along the hallway, heels clicking, like you’ve just come across each other right outside the restrooms.

“Hey, Joel,” a voice says from behind you both as you wander past the bar.

“Drew,” Joel replies, and shakes the hand of a tall blonde guy in all black. His t-shirt’s so tight you can make out his pecs underneath it.

“How’s it goin’? You been in long?”

“Just waitin’ for our food,” Joel says, “it’s probably out by now.” He glances over at you and your legs clench subconsciously. He introduces you then, says, “My assistant. Best assistant I could ask for,” and your lungs close up.

Drew shakes your hand and then turns back to Joel. “Don’t go without catchin’ me, ain’t lettin’ you pay a thing. How’s business?”

Joel nods. “Good, good. We’re, uh, we’re heading out to Europe next week, so.”

“Jean-Marc?”

“Yep.”

“Nice.”

“Yeah. Place is lookin’ good, same as always.” Joel glances around, pointing randomly to the light fixture above your heads.

Drew does that thing men do when trapped in a dry conversation: folds his arms, looks to the floor, and nods some more. Waiting for Joel to say —

“Alright, well. Great seein’ you again. Thanks for lunch.”

He puts an arm around your back and guides you off back to the table.

“Nice meetin’ you.” You smile at Drew as you pass and he returns it, turning back to the bar.

Once you’re out of earshot, you look over to Joel.

“Something going on there?”

“Huh?”

You scoff. “You two couldn’t wait to be away from each other. Why’d you always come here if it’s so awkward?”

“Well, if I see ‘im, I get free food.”

You slap his arm as he pulls your chair back out for you.

“Feelin’ better?” Deb asks, pushing French fries around her plate.

You nod, pulling your seat in beside Joel, who’s still laughing at himself. As you settle, you feel the warmth he left behind spill out of you a little, pooling in your underwear. And Joel seems to notice, whether from some sexual sixth sense he has when it comes to you, or just the way you awkwardly shift in your seat. He hands you a smug smirk, nudging you with his elbow.

You narrow your eyes at him and turn back to Martha.

“So, you were saying you fixed the flights for Paris?”

----------

taglist: @regalwhovianbrowncoat774 @casa-boiardi @earthtogrogu @sexygaypalpatine @serenaxpedro @brittmb115 @pascalpvnk @jediknightjana @mrsquill @uncassettodiricordi (lmk if i’ve missed you out & check my taglist info for how to be added!)

#joel miller #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller fic #joel miller x reader #ceo!joel miller #ceo!joel #the last of us #tlou #tlou fic #joel miller smut #joel miller x you #the last of us hbo #tlou hbo #softdom!joel miller #softdom!joel

1K notes · View notes

it-was-summer · 2 months

Text

Video Killed the Radio Star - Tape #3 (Spencer Reid x Fem!reader)

A/N: I am exhausted this weekend so if at some point you feel like the writing shows that DON'T BE ALARMED. It is simply just me fighting back the urge to go to bed. The chapter does contain a good amount of sexual assault and violence so please, please, please be mindful of that while reading. I love all the comments here and Ao3, they make my day! I have also been noticing a lot of love towards the original of this series and I appreciate everyone for taking their time to read the remake! Please know that as of right now this thing IS NOT PROOFREAD I JUST NEED TO GET IT OUT! Stay safe, healthy, and happy! -Love, Em.

Video Killed the Radio Star Remake Masterlist

Link to the Ao3: Video Killed the Radio Star

Previous Chapter: Tape #2 > Next Chapter: Tape #4

WARNING: Cancer mentioned, sexual assault, blood, knife, cutting, mentions of death, death threats. Remember that you are not alone.

Tape Contents: Spencer and Derek are sent to discuss your abduction with Adeline. You fight back a sexual and physical attack from Heather. Heather reveals her plans for what will happen if anyone finds you.

Word Count: 4,029

March 5, 20XX

Spencer wasn’t too fond of hospitals, but he was fond of children. He interacted with them, loving that he could see how they processed information–new and old—every day. He loved Henry to bits, the way the kid was so willing to listen to Spencer’s ramblings or the way he was so amazed at a magic trick Spencer was doing.

Sick kids were a tragically different story, not that he didn’t like them. He always felt like… well, he was having a hard time conceptualizing it as he weaved through the crowded lobby. The pediatrics oncology unit was too packed for his liking. Statistically, he knew that one in two hundred eighty-five children could be diagnosed with some form of cancer before they hit twenty. That didn’t mean he had to like weaving through a small crowd of parents, doctors, and nurses on the way to room two hundred thirty with Morgan. There it was –the words for that feeling– watching someone younger than himself not being able to experience life at thirty.

After finding the friendship keychain, Hotch decided that Reid and Morgan should find your alleged ride-or-die, Adeline Smith. Meanwhile, Hotch and Prentiss would drive to Norfolk to talk to your mother. Rossi and JJ were handling some information with the police, so they were all paired away.

Derek and he slipped into the hospital room that housed Adeline and her daughter, Nicole. His chest tightened involuntarily at the sight of a mother stroking her daughter’s head, a smile on both of their faces. Derek was quick to speak, “Excuse me,” The mother and daughter jumped at the noise, and their eyes snapped to the hospital room door. “I’m Special Agent Derek Morgan, and this is Doctor Spencer Reid. We just have some questions.” His hands dug into his jacket pocket to pull out the badge, muscle memory for both.

Adeline’s hand fell from her daughter's hairless head to her shoulder, her fingers giving it a light squeeze. “Questions regarding?” She asked with a curious expression as she stood up, a skeptical look in her eyes.

Spencer’s eyes met Nicole’s for a second, a small smile rising to his lips, and she gave him a nervous smile right back. He moved his gaze over to Adeline, who was now standing with her arms folded across her chest as she waited for the two men to answer her question. Derek looked over his shoulder at Spencer, then back at Adeline. He gently motioned for her to follow him to a slightly more private area to talk to her, the two moving to a corner of the room near the bathroom.

“Were you aware that Y/N L/N was being stalked?” Derek’s voice was calm as Spencer approached Nicole’s bedside chair and sat in it awkwardly.

Spencer motioned towards the girl’s stuffed animal, a bright orange cat that sat in between her legs. “I love cats,” he said in a soft voice.

Nicole beamed at him, grabbed the stuffed cat, and happily petted the top of its head: “Me too! This is Bee.”

“Bee? Do you like Bees?”

Adeline’s eyes strayed to Spencer's conversation with her daughter, and she nodded a little at Derek’s question: “We talked about it. She went to the police.” She said, a little numbly, before her head suddenly snapped towards him. “Why?”

“She was taken from her apartment on March third. She recorded videos for the police to send to us, the Behavioral Analysis Unit, to help find her.” Derek explained gently as he watched Adeline’s face go pale.

Adeline grabbed her clothed chest and searched for a breath, her eyes wild as she looked at Derek’s face. Her eyes began searching for some hint in his face that he was lying, but she found none. She couldn’t stop the tears that were filling her waterline, and she turned her body away from her daughter and Spencer in a desperate attempt to hide her tears from her daughter. Her knees felt weak as she tried to breathe.

Spencer glanced back at Adeline and Derek, scooting a little to obstruct Nicole’s field of vision. He didn’t want the young girl to see her mother cry. Nicole shook her head slightly at his question, “No, not really. Auntie Y/N got her for me, and she loves bees.” She laughed softly, her words making Spencer’s heart melt a little.

“Is Bee your favorite?”

The girl covered the cat’s plush ears and smiled like she had a secret. “No, but she is my second favorite.” Her fingers scratched the stuffed animal’s ears gently. “Mr. Business is my first,” she whispered to him.

“Ah, and where is Mr. Business?” His eyes searched her hospital bed, and then he spotted a stuffed cat, a tuxedo cat. He grinned a little, and he motioned to the stuffed animal with his eyes, “Mr. Business is a very fitting name, I think,”

Adeline held out a hand for some space from Derek, and the hand clutching her chest came up to her mouth as she tried to keep from vomiting all over him. She had been stuck in this hospital when you had called her that first night. Having always loved talking to you, she answered enthusiastically. Still, the more she listened to the situation, the more she realized she didn’t have the emotional strength to comfort you the way you needed. And she said that to you. She said that to you. She couldn’t help you then, and she couldn’t help you now. She couldn’t even help her own daughter.

A sob rose in her throat, and she shook her head rapidly. “No, no, no, we talked on that day. Th-That night,” She recounted softly to Derek through her tears.

“What did you talk about?” Derek whispered the question softly as his eyes searched the room for some tissues, but his search was futile. He places a gentle hand on Adeline’s shoulder instead.

“We talked about college; she wanted her mind off of things, so we talked about our apartment when we were in grad school. It’s been two days! What have you been doing for two days while my best friend went missing?” Her cheeks were red, her fingers pointing accusingly at him before she sobbed softly, and her hand was moving back up to wrap around her mouth to muffle the sound.

“She didn’t show up to work on March fifth. That's when she was reported missing. We’re doing everything we can. What time did the two of you talk?”

“W-we talked around nine, maybe nine-thirty?” She whispered back softly before she started to breathe heavily again. “Why didn’t I call? I should have called again. It was getting so late, and she had locked all the doors, and I thought she was just being anxious. I should have called her again. I should have left the hospital to visit her.” Her mind was spiraling, the neverending rabbit hole that showed her all the ways she could have saved her best friend, unhinged its proverbial jaw and swallowed her whole, ready to digest.

Morgan wasn’t necessarily new to the information, as Penelope had already told him about your call logs from that evening, but he always liked to hear it be confirmed. It also helped him place an estimate of the time of your abduction. “Could you tell me about anyone, anyone at all, that might have been a little too into Y/N? Any ex-boyfriends that refused to leave her alone? Did she break up with anyone around Christmas?”

“No, she hasn’t dated anyone for almost a year.” Adeline sighed thickly and shook her head as she tried to calm down. “No, all her ex-boyfriends, they were always so mousy. ” She sighed, “And they always look alike,” she paused and gave a soft, sad chuckle, motioning over to where Spencer was as he continued to entertain her daughter. “Well, they all look like your Doctor friend, if I’m being honest. She’s always been too nice for her own good, even in college.”

Spencer tried to talk over the sobs that could be heard from the corner of the hospital room, clearing his throat or laughing as Nicole stumbled through a story. “She’s a loud crier,” Nicole whispered with a gentle pat on Bee’s head.

Spencer frowned as his efforts failed him, and he looked over his shoulder at Morgan, who was looking at him with a similarly sympathetic look on his face. He was about to say something when Nicole shoved Bee toward him, “You should give this to Auntie Y/N. Mommy said she was sad the other day. Bee always helps.”

Spencer turned the stuffed animal over in his hands, and he debated telling her the truth, but thankfully, his better judgment decided against it. “It’ll be the first thing I do when I see her,” Spencer promised softly as Nicole smiled wide at him.

As Derek and he walked out of the hospital, Derek’s eyes stayed on the stuffed orange cat in Spencer’s hands. As they pushed past a small group of people, Spencer found himself almost slamming into a pretty nurse, a gorgeous nurse. Her blue eyes blinked as she shuffled to one side, only to be unintentionally blocked by Spencer once more. She sighed a little and gave him a once over with a frown. Her eyes lingered on the gun holstered against his hip before she gave him a polite smile and said, “Excuse me,” and slipped past the two men with a determined look in her eyes.

Derek only said something when they got into the parking lot, the two of them walking to the black SUV, “Did you pick one up at the gift shop?”

Spencer groaned softly, making Derek chuckle as he walked around the car’s front to the passenger seat. “Open the door,” He said bluntly. When they were both inside the car, Spencer carefully placed the stuffed animal in his bag, and Derek chuckled again at the sight, turning the key.

“You didn’t even buy me one,”

March 5, 20XX

You were assuming Heather was angry with you. The assumption wasn’t baseless as the hunger in your stomach growled. You were quick to find that the harmony between a full stomach and morphine did matter and that harmony had left you many hours prior. You also were basing the assumption as you had spent what must have been a whole day fighting off tears and nausea.

The sick part was that you were beginning to get used to how your body got swarmed with heavy, hot, and benevolent warmth. The dull pain in your ankle was silenced under the warmth’s blanket of kindness. It reminded you of a heated blanket in a strange way.

You had finished the sips of your water before falling asleep and regretting it. You had learned that the bucket off to the side of the dresser was the perfect distance from the bed. Your broken ankle was dragging against the carpet with every movement. The chain around your good ankle didn’t snag as you sluggishly managed to hold your body up against the wall to pee into the bucket.

Once you were done, you hopped on your good leg and managed to pull your clothes back on. Your body fell face-first onto the bed, eliciting a soft groan from your lips as you found your body reluctant to move from its new home.

You closed your eyes and fell into the position, letting the bed sink in deeper. Your eyes snapped open with a sense of alertness that you hadn’t felt in hours as you heard the first click of a lock. Your arms weakly managed to push yourself up into a sitting position, pushing yourself back to your former position against the headboard. Your head throbbed at the fast movement, and your vision blurred as you tried to focus on the door.

When it slowly opened, you sucked in a small breath of air, watching as Heather slid into the room with a tray of food. “Hello, my Catherine.” She sighed as she shoved the keys into her scrub pocket with one balanced hand. “My, my, someone is looking pale today.” She asked as she sat down in the chair off the side of the bed with a gentle, pretty smile.

You nodded a little. Your lips were numb as you licked them. “What day is it?” Your voice came out quiet and strangled.

“Monday,” She stated simply as she twisted the top off a bottle of apple juice. She handed it over to your already waiting hands before she carefully lowered the morphine drip’s intake level. You greedily drank the juice without thinking twice, desperate to get something in your stomach.

You panted lightly as you pulled the half-empty bottle away from your lips, “Th-the date, I mean,”

“March fifth,” She rolled her eyes as she carefully rearranged a neatly made turkey sandwich on a paper plate, slowly placing the plate on the edge of the bed for you to take. “You moved in here early Saturday morning, don’t you remember?” she laughed out like it was the silliest thing she had ever heard.

You felt your mouth start to move to correct her, to tell her that you didn’t move in; she had kidnapped you. But as you stared at the turkey sandwich on the edge of the bed, you realized that playing along would be better. Playing along meant more food and less nausea. Playing along meant living longer. “Right,” You said breathlessly as you pulled the paper plate to your lap. “How could I forget?”

Heather smiled a little as she watched you bite into the sandwich, happy to see you adjusting. You were eating so fast that she was a little worried about your empty stomach. She didn’t want to make feeding you so sporadically a habit. But yesterday, when she came up with a food tray, she thought about your rudeness and how cruel you had been to her. It made her stomach twist into angry knots. She decided that not feeding you for a day would be a lesson.

“I’m so happy our first fight is over. I hate to be angry with you, Catherine.” Heather’s sweet tone wasn’t lost on you as she touched your arm gently. Your chewing slowed for a second before you swallowed, your eyes glued to her hand on your arm.

“I picked out every gift just for you,” She sighed softly as she traced soft circles against your skin. You fought back the urge to pull your arm away. “You’re a hopeless romantic, you know? You remember in college when you and Adeline dressed up as Lizzie and Jane Bennet. No one got it but god,” She sighed, her eyes finding yours as you stayed frozen.

The hand on your arm slowly reached for the paper plate on your lap. Your fingers twitched a little as you fought back the urge to grab the food as she placed the plate on the nightstand beside your bed. Everything was happening so fast and yet incredibly slow at the same time.

Then she stood up and crawled onto the bed, swinging one leg over your lap before stranding you with a white smile. Her hands came to cup your face and tilt it up. A soft sigh fell from her lips. “You’ve always been brilliant,”

You shook your head in her hands lightly. The warmth of the morphine was slow to leave your body, but as your body filled with an intense feeling of dread, you could feel everything. Your ankle throbbed sharply, and you were starting to feel like you were about to be sick again. “I’m not,”

Heather threw her head back and laughed as if it was the funniest thing she had ever heard. When she lowered her head to meet your gaze again, she leaned closer, one of her thumbs reaching up to trace your bottom lip. You cringed a little at the feeling, a sight that she ignored. “You’ve always been so humble, too. How did I get so lucky?” She whispered as she leaned in to kiss your lips softly.

You felt your lips tighten and bile rise to your throat, and you swallowed it. You let her kiss you once, then twice, then a third time. Your lips stayed closed in a tight line as you tried to imagine yourself in a different position, but with every touch Heather placed on you, the more you stayed cemented in your reality.

Heather pulled back with a look in her eyes that you could recognize as crazed lust. You didn’t want to. You didn’t want to know what her hands felt like anymore. You bit your lip to silence a whimper. Her hands pulled roughly at your shirt as she grabbed the hem of it and pulled it over your head with a simple yank.

You shook your head quickly now, “No, Heather, I-I’m not ready. I don’t-”

She shushed you softly with a gentle smile as she traced the swell of your breast slowly, the touch eliciting your tears to pool over your waterline. “I know you’re worried, but I’m going to take care of you, I promise.” Her eyes lingered on the prominent bruise on the center of your chest. She frowned, leaning down carefully to kiss the blue and black patch of skin.

“No,” You cried softly, your voice soft before you decided that you couldn’t take it anymore. “No!” You yelled, causing her back to straighten and sit up.

“I’m sorry?” She asked with a soft scoff.

“I-I can’t do it, I’m not ready. I don’t want to, Heather. Please don’t make me.” You begged softly as tears rolled down your face. “I’ll try next time, I promise. I just, please, please don’t make me.”

Heather frowned a little before she let out a harsh laugh, her arms folding over her chest tightly. She looked down at you, “You know I saw your precious little Adeline today,”

You felt your back tense at Adeline's mention, “What? I thought you worked in pediatrics, not pediatric oncology. W-why did you see Adeline?”

Heather reached out a hand to press on your bruise roughly, the feeling making you wince. “I work in pediatric oncology. Sometimes, I help Nicole. I loved it when you visited her at the hospital. It was almost too easy to steal the copy of your apartment key from Adeline. She doesn’t love you as much as I love you, you know that, right?”

You shook your head, and you cried harder as you realized that you had never even noticed her at the hospital. Your focus has always been so zoned in on Nicole or Adeline that you didn’t even register Heather’s presence. Would Adeline remember Heather? You doubted it.

“She talked to some agents or something and was inconsolable. Fucking useless friend of yours. Anyway, I ran into them in the hallway. Scrawny kid with some buff guy, I’m sure Adeline called them.”

You found your hands grabbing her hand on your chest and shook your head side-to-side. “No, Adeline doesn’t know. I didn’t tell her anything. I didn’t, I promise.”

Heather’s eyes met yours briefly before they trailed down to your bare chest and your hands holding onto her wrist. “Say you love me more than her then,”

“I-I, what?”

“Say it.”

You opened your mouth, but all that came out were gentle sobs as you tried to form the words, terrified that she was about to do something to Adeline. The thought of Heather hurting Adeline had you gasping softly for air.

Her eyes were on yours again as you panted softly, “You don’t love me?” Her spit hit your cheek as she hissed the words in rageful disbelief. She was off your lap in seconds as she moved to the dresser and quickly pulled out a small pairing knife.

“Wait,” You cried softly as you tried to hurry away from her, making a vain attempt to get up from the bed that was meant with a howl of pain from your ankle and your body slumping over the edge lamely.

Her hands grabbed your ankles, good and injured, and pulled you roughly to the edge of the bed. A scream left your throat at the contact. “You think I’m going to let them find you?” She questioned in a suspiciously calm voice as she grazed the smooth side of the knife against your collarbone.

You stayed frozen as she leaned in closer, her lips at the shell of your ear, “If they ever found you, Emma. I would kill you and then myself. I’ve already decided. We have to be together,” Her voice in your ear had you breathing harder as she slowly pressed the tip of the knife into the area above your heart.

The knife only stung at first before it felt like a ripping pain. Heather dragged the knife into your skin with a deliberate sense of control. Not too deep, not too superficial. Something she wouldn’t have to stitch up. She made a diagonal line before staring a few inches apart from the other cut. “We belong together, Jane.”

You cried out again as she started dragging the knife into your skin once more, “Please,”

“You just need to open your heart. If they ever found us, I need to mark where to shoot. Stay still.”

As Heather got close to completing the ‘X’ mark on your chest, marking you as a possible target. You felt your body thrash under her weakly. The edge of one of the lines skewed to the left, and Heather let out an annoyed groan before she pulled the knife away from your chest and to your lips. “Stop fucking crying,” She growled as she slashed at your bottom lip.

You hissed at the feeling as blood coated your chest and filled your mouth. You stared up at her as soft sobs kept leaving your mouth, “Fuck you.” You muttered before gathering as much spit as you could in your mouth and shooting it directly at her.

You laughed as it made contact with her cheek, and she wiped the bloody spit away with the back of her hand. She laughed harshly as she nodded a little, “Okay, so you want to be a brat.” She laughed.

She was sliding off the bed now, leaving you lying on your back, her chest rising and falling quickly as she gripped the pairing knife in her hand tighter. “Enjoy the rest of your meal. It’ll be your last one, Emma.” She snapped at you before stomping to the door and flying it open.

Once she was gone, you stayed there, staring up at the ceiling wordlessly. You licked at the cut on your lip gently as blood flowed freely into your mouth. You swallowed the copper-tasting liquid as you let the consequences sink in. She was going to kill you if they found you, and you had already called for a team of highly trained professionals to come to find you.

You almost laughed at the irony. You didn’t want them to find you. You did want them to find you. It was almost hilarious. You tried to smile with your cut lip but found the action too painful to manage.

You didn’t want to die at twenty-eight. You wanted to see your mom again, Adeline, Nicole, hell, you wanted to go to work one more time. You rolled onto your stomach and cringed the way the fluffy comforter grazed the bleeding “X” on your chest. You reached for the morphine drip and rolled it closer as you slowly turned a knob and upped the intake. Your shaking hands then moved to the sandwich on the nightstand with a sigh.

She could kill you when they found you, but if she thought you weren’t going to try and manipulate the situation, she was dead wrong. You weakly bit into the sandwich while trying to think of a plan.

You refused to die without leaving a mark.

TAG LIST: @babyspiderling @cocobean16 @kodzukenie333 @mmmunson

121 notes · View notes

ofmermaidstories · 2 years

Text

there’s something so bittersweet and lovely about fanfic, at it’s core. it’s so impermeable, because it’s so individual. fics don’t get finished. fics get lost because they were typed out and sent to friends, in the 70s, and somewhere along the way someone packed it up in a cardboard box and their kids shuffled it to the attic. websites go down. archives get built, but then people lose faith in the story or the canon or the creator and delete them. you read it at like, 3am, and can’t remember the title months later when you look for it again.

the tiktok these comments are from was lamenting about the loss of a favourite fic—it (the tiktok) had 85k+ likes, and over 700 comments, mostly similar to these. people talking about downloading fics to read on a tablet only for them to disappear the next day. using the wayback machine and combing through results, just to find something they loved. i think it’s sweet because it’s so human—how easily we love something, and how easily we lose it. i used to print out my favourite fics, as a kid—i still have a binder of them, buried under yearbooks and the old journals i kept during those topsy turvy preteen years. i could tell you the overarching plot to a Cardcaptor Sakura fantasy AU i read (and loved; it became my personality for months afterwards) but i can’t remember how it ended, or if it even did. i finally broke down and signed up for an account on AO3 specifically to bookmark an old, old fic that i had read somewhere else, years and years and years ago and found again on AO3 only because i accidentally stumbled on the author here on tumblr (i had only found the fic in the first place all those years ago because of a playlist). i used the same shade of lipstick for years purely because a fic i really liked had the main character apply it (it was a limited edition one at the time; i bought my first one from a ebay seller in the UK at double the retail price, lmao) while the love interest watched them, but i can’t remember the name of it, only how it made me feel (and how, for years afterwards, i would wear that shade whenever i felt like the day had something promising to it).

one of the first anon’s i ever got, in the early days of this tumblr, was someone who asked me if it was okay if they downloaded surrender—and of course it was. of course it is. there was a point, during the final stretch when i was trying to write the last chapter, that i almost lost the entirety of what i had written for that fic—and i mean, it was on AO3 by that stage so it would’ve only set me back a chapter or so, but it goes to show how fragile things can be. how sometimes fics only last in tiny ways—because of the unfinished PDF file someone downloads. The patchy memory of someone’s who’s jumbling it and three other fics together. Because someone wore the same shade of lipstick you mentioned, off-hand, for years afterwards.

(this is a love letter to the silent readers; the silent savers. the lurkers. fandom and the internet at large is made of lurkers (eighty-five thousand likes. seven hundred comments). people who saved fics and waybacked them and will reread them, even uncompleted. telling each other we did a good job, that we liked this or we liked that is wonderful, and fun, and a great (and important) way to build a community and has also given me my current friends—but sometimes something you make will matter and live on in a way you will never, ever know. and it’s just how it is. it’s part of the fun and it’s part of the charm. it’s just how we work as people.)

#floating rubbish island: mermaid spam #shall i do a part two for the opposite end of the spectrum? the readers who tell you as they’re rereading?#the ones that come back to point out details that have stuck with them?#sometimes i worry i don’t give enough to those of us in the community who do that #today i got a comment on surrender and it made my whole day—which otherwise would’ve been spent being miserable trying to sweat out my fever #people are so sweet and i feel so empty-handed for them sometimes #because time is so valuable—people don’t *have* to comment #people don’t *have* to note the tiny details #i share these fics because i *want* to—that is a choice i make knowing that maybe people won’t like it or respond to it #no one asks me to spend the time i do on these fics and so no one owes me for it #which makes the time someone *does* spend commenting or tagging or saying hello even more precious

609 notes · View notes

jamneuromain · 4 months

Text

Wild Child Chapter 6

Series Summary:

As the granddaughter of the sole Duke in your country, you know that you were going to marry some douche prince, because it is the only way to solidify the grasp the future king has on the Upper House. On the flight home, you come up with a brilliant plan to defy your upcoming matrimony.

Bringing a random man to your grandfather's place, and say you have a boyfriend already.

"Is there anything else I should know about? Before I meet your family?" Ari cocks his head to the side, watching you adjusting your cerulean Valentino dress when you wave your hand dismissively.

"Just say we're in love and help me get out of marrying this D-bag."

Ari Levinson x You

#i didn't know he is my fiance-douchebag-prince

#when i did, it was too late

A/N: I'm sorry it took me half a year before squeezing(?) out a new chapter😬😅 thank you all for loving WC!Ari and Reader, and last but not least, a huge thanks to @jaqui-has-a-conspiracy-theory who provided the wonderful idea of Ari and allergies😌❤️ and as always, thank you to @rogerswifesblog/@rogerswifesblog-updates for her support and endurance of my on-and-off inspirations😘❤️

The bodyguard, Ethan, quietly followed you as you walked with Ari, as you were introducing your house and your family to your fake boyfriend.

“This is the ballroom.”

Servants pulled open a huge door as you walked through. You gazed upwards, pointing at various portraits on the walls, “These are my ancestors. Hardly knew any of them…” Your fingernail raked through a tiny bronze plate which had your name on it, “This is a family portrait when I was … five?”

You sounded not so sure about yourself.

Ari raised his head and saw the oil painting, that had a girl in a blue dress in it, along with her parents, who looked like they were deeply in love.

It looked like a happy family.

Though he doubted that was the case.

Your eyes landed on your mother’s face in the portrait.

“My mother is a nice woman.” You whispered. Too low even for yourself to hear, “She is going to like you.”

Ari did not comment.

Your gaze wandered to the name on the bronze plate. As by Ballenian Law, she took your father’s last name. Losing her own. “You would think that married to my father, she is what, something similar to him. But no, she is the nicest mom on earth.” Your voice grew louder, clearing your throat, introducing the only woman, probably the only person that mattered in your life.

There was a small smile on the corner of your lips. Small but firm.

“We had a writing contest in school today.” You walked into the room with hands folded in front of your abdomen, walking like a true lady indeed, before handing your backpack to one of the servants, thanking them sweetly. Like a true lady.

“That sounds interesting.” Your mother tugged your hand so that you would sit by her side while putting the crochet and yarn away from the sofa, “How did it go?”

You chose to sit on the sofa's armrest and swung your legs happily. You did win a prize, after all, you deserved happiness.

“I-”

“Put your feet down, sweetie.” Your mother kindly advised. Softly but curtly. She pursed her lips together, frowning as if swinging your legs would invite horrible viruses into your calves. Or worse, rudeness. Landing a hand on your knee, she suggested, “You are twelve years old, not two. That is not ladylike. And sit on the sofa, not the armrest, while you are at it.”

Mother is always right. You thought. Even though the rules are annoying and the ways she told me to get my father back never worked.

You did as told, sitting beside her without any further leg movements, and said, “The teacher told us to write about our future dreams.”

“That sounds wonderful, sweetie.” Your mother nodded, “What did you write about?”

“I wrote that…” The word journalist turned one hundred and eighty degrees at your tongue. Somehow, even though it was the true answer, you did not feel comfortable letting it out. You swallowed thickly, making up a word on the spot, “Diplomat. I wrote that I wanted to be a diplomat. Helping countries exchange communication and building allies, that sort of thing.”

The corner of your mother’s lips twitched lightly in amusement. “Quite a dream, darling,” she complimented you half-heartedly, “Though why not be a Princess? You can do all that while being a Princess and taking care of your family as well. Like a superwoman. You have always wanted to be a superwoman, haven’t you?”

Yes, and that was five years ago when I read the first comic book ever in my life. You answered, silently, deep down, but your forced smile was betraying you.

“Don’t you want to be a Princess, my dear?” Your mother seemed puzzled, “That is the goal we have always worked for.”

No, I don’t. “Yes, of course.” You answered, sickly sweet like the industrial sugary flavor, “I just thought that maybe the Prince won’t like me. I have never met him before …”

“Oh nonsense.” Your mother huffed in annoyance, “He is going to love my precious little girl. You are going to fall in love and have babies. But of course, he shall marry you first …”

“Miss?”

A servant approached your sides, gesturing to the living room, “His Lordship is ready for you.”

You did not take long to hand the roses to one of the servants, ordering them to put the flowers into a vase in your room, before asking Ari to join you in the living room.

“Just follow my lead.” You whispered, folding your hand over your abdomen, you stepped into the living room.

If your eyes did not mistake you, your father’s arm landed on the back of the chair, then on his other arm, finally settling on the side of his body. He was either posing for the next cover shot of GQ, which you were fairly certain that there were neither cameras nor photographers in this room, or he was nervous.

Nervous? That was absurd for a man like your father. You scoffed. He must be trying to intimidate your fake boyfriend. And not very successful at it, you might add.

Behind you, Ari narrowed his eyes.

Which made your father nearly jump from his seat.

“Well,” Your father stood up from his large armchair, his eyes darting from you to Ari, and back to you again, “I take it this is the … man – date, eh, boyfriend, you are trying to introduce me to.”

“Yes.” You replied shortly, “Guy, this is my father. Father, Guy Thomas.”

Ari strode forward, extending his hand for a firm handshake.

“Pleasure to meet you, Sir.”

“No, the pleasure is all my - aye.” Your father grimaced as if he had a living frog shoved down his throat. His pitch literally went up an octave. He could practically feel the bones being crushed under the iron grip.

“Shall we, um, take a seat?” You gestured towards the large sofa, tugging Ari by his sleeve. An act out of fear that your father would flip any moment.

It was one of your motives to piss your father off, for starters. A not-so-subtle defiance of “fuck-you” towards the ridiculous marriage you were bound to since the day you were born. But it wasn’t worth it to cause a huge fuss for your father to wreck chaos in your home and your family as well, particularly when you had yet to meet your mother since your return: you feared that he would take it out on your mother, which wasn’t surprising, seeing that your father adored violence when he found he would not be winning by his shitty reasoning.

You were dancing dangerously between the lines of your freedom and planned to use up every drop of it carefully.

“That would be lovely.” Ari smiled softly at you, sitting by your side.

Your father clenched and unclenched his fist behind his back. Taking the seat opposite you, and asked the servants to bring some tea.

Asked. Not demanded.

It was either you woke up today in a completely different world, or that your father had banged his head on the coffee table and another soul was taking over his body –

“So,” began your father, smoothing his hand over his prized tux, “I heard that you were doing business?”

“Ah, yes.” Ari covered your hand with his, squeezing your rigid fingers that were probably leaving permanent sweat stains on his suit jacket, “From Thomas, Kit & Co. A family business.”

“Sure. Sure. Sure.” Your father fumbled with his cufflink absent-mindedly. He nearly spilled his tea onto the Corinthian leather under his ass while taking the cup from the servant. Looking like a cherry bomb that was about to go off, he sure did spend the entire sane part of his brain preventing him from yelling at the servant. Your father grumbled with a detectable fury over his face, “Please, have some tea. I hope you, er, enjoy it. Milk? Honey?”

He offered but none answered.

“Hope no one is allergic to this.” Your father grunted under his breath.

You peeked inside the fine china.

Ugh. Fruit tea.

Ari, on the other hand, took a small sip of the burning liquid. He did not even wince.

You placed the tray onto the table, and decided to break the silence, “Father, I thought my mother would present. I’d very much like to introduce my boyf- um, boyfriend to her.”

“Your mother is unwell.” He replied coldly.

Ari cleared his throat, taking another sip of the thing that could barely be called tea.

Who the hell on earth invented boiling fruit and called it tea??

“I, hmm, suppose she would present at the wedding.” Your father added, in a creepily kind tone that a doting parent would use.

A sharp click.

Ari’s tea cup went back on the tray before he put it down.

Your father gulped.

Ari reached into his pockets, turning to look at you, “Speaking of, sweetheart, I prepared a gift for my darling fiancé.”

Your head snapped in his direction. Your eyes bulged just a little because you agreed on fake dating, not fake marrying!

Engagement? What the heck was he talking about? Or was he trying to insinuate the fact that you got engaged to a completely random person? That bastard.

But the velvet box lying in his hands, the box that had a watch inside, the box you handed to him a while ago, telling you that he was, in fact, sticking to the plan, albeit improvising from the script you negotiated.

“Oh my gosh!” You squealed in delight. Your voice sounded painfully forced even to your own ears, “Thank you, babe. What have you got for me?”

A watch, of course. You knew already.

Yet you played your part, opening the box like a surprised girlfriend.

Wonder how that played out. Deep down, you scoffed at your near-lousy performance. Given the chance, you would undoubtedly take an acting class someday.

“I – ahem, appreciate how you value my daughter, Your – uh, your reputation precedes you, Mister …”

Your father clearly struggled with your fake boyfriend’s name, so you helpfully chirped up, “Thomas. Guy Thomas.”

“Right.” Your father shot you a warning glare, “Mister Thomas. But – You see – Eh, excuse me, my thoughts have been incoherent.”

And since when did your father become so polite to just about anyone? You couldn’t help but wonder if your father woke up this morning and had those fancy mushrooms or special brownies.

Ari smiled, patiently waiting for what your father was about to say.

“All I am trying to say is that,” Your father sat up from his spot on the couch, his fat purple lips pushed a greasy smile over his revolting face, “It would be such a shame if our, um, noble lineage died down, no?”

Ah. So that was his plan. You tried hard not to sneer.

Playing the blue blood card so that your fake boyfriend would pledge either allegiance or admit he was no match for such a noble family.

You rolled your eyes when your father was not looking.

Typical.

You put the velvet box away, but not before placing the watch around your wrist. What your father suggested could be easily solved, “I’m sure we could work out on having a son of mine taking my family name. Don’t you agree, baby?”

Ari did not reply, much to your confusion.

He simply raised the cup to his lips again, blowing the steam away from the edge of the cup. He did not drink, but said, “It would.”

The corner of your father’s eyes twitched in ecstatic, “Then I-”

Ari interrupted him before your father could finish his sentence, “To my knowledge, my dear fiancé is your only child?”

“Girlfriend.” You hissed under your breath, pinching his waist which was seemingly made out of metal, because he had not waivered, even though you had pinched him.

“Sorry.” His arm surrounded your shoulders, apologized by saying your name, his eyes had nothing but warmth inside, calming your frantic heartbeat, “Our sweet Y/N here, has no siblings if memory serves me correctly.”

What did having a brother or sister has anything to do with the succession of your family title? You’d rather throw it into the Atlantic than have anything to do with it, especially since your father would possibly be accepting the title soon, considering that he was the only son of your grandfather.

“Yes, but-” Your father stammered.

Your blood ran cold at the thought of something. Something that might tear you and your mother’s life apart.

What if … what if your father had a son?

A bastard had no way of taking the title, which meant that the only way for your so-called lineage to continue, was for your father to divorce your mother, and marry his mistress.

Losing the chance to marry the Prince was one thing.

That you give zero fuck about.

But your mother …

Your mother would be devastated.

You could practically hear her disappointment if this all went down.

“I’ve raised you, fed you. This is not what we hoped for…”

Blood drained from your face.

“Then that is settled.” Said Ari softly.

Settled? The heck had been settled? What was he doing for crying out loud?

“But Your-” Your father choked on his own spit, coughing, “ah, your parents wouldn’t mind, would it?”

“That would depend.”

Why are these two speaking in riddles? Has the topic of this conversation taken a strange turn when you were thinking about you and your mother’s future?

“Depend on what, may I ask?” Your father left his seat, leaning forward so hard that he could have his necktie soaked with the fruit tea from his cup.

Ari had his gaze land on you.

You, on the other hand, had no clue of what was going on, or what were they talking about.

Things were truly getting out of hand, and you did not enjoy it.

“I thought it is only appropriate if my mother joined us too.” Your palms were getting sweaty. It has been a long time since you talked to your mother. The last time was when she worked with your father to coax you back – the phone call that contained both your father's and your mother’s voice.

You did not appreciate that when you ended up in your own room and no way out, but she was your mother, and she brought you up, no matter the means or education purposes.

“She is unwell.” Your father squeezed the words from his teeth, “I’ll arrange a meeting when she turns out better. You, however -”

Ari raised his hand to pause the conversation.

That hand curled into a fist in front of his nose.

He furrowed his brows.

And sneezed. Loudly.

Your father's face turned into a spectacular turquoise shade.

"Sorry." Ari sounded unapologetic, "I think I'm allergic to your bullshit."

Though your father did not find it amusing for one bit, you literally snorted out laughter, burying your face in your hands and shaking uncontrollably, giggling like a maniac.

… which is why you did not witness either the victorious smirk on Ari’s lips, or the scene where your father rose from his seat, his face bloated like a cartoon character, and tripped over the carpet when he exited the room.

“Tell me about her, Ari.” Queen Olivia tapped on her glass with a silver spoon, signaling the servant to pour another cup of red, “I heard from your head security that you have been spending quite some time with her.”

Drinking down some mineral water to make his mind sharp, Ari replied, “She’s cute. Funny.” His memory trotted back to the little conversation about your epic plan to piss off your father, he couldn’t help but grin, “She reminds me of you, Mother, when we used to head to the Royal Garden-”

And spend time with him without the watchful eyes of his grandmother. The old croon – bless her soul – did everything she could trying to pry Ari away from his mother, for fear that Queen Olivia’s “American blood” could pollute the precious prince, even though Queen Olivia was very much part of the royal family, born and raised as a proper princess.

He didn’t have the best family in the world, so to speak.

A small glimpse of upset flickered over Queen Olivia’s expression. Like her son, she also remembered when the queen, Victor’s late mother, wanted Olivia to give birth to more sons, threatening her with the custody of Ari.

“… which is why I have made up my mind for my coronation decree.”

Now that spiked her interest and freed her from her painful memories.

A coronation decree is the first legal command that a king would issue. Upon this sets the stone of domination for the new king. It could be as vague as “We would pay more attention to the education of rural areas” or as specific as “inviting the Prime Minister from the UK for a visit”. Of course, the first one would give more room for interpretation, hence encouraged.

Ari wiped his mouth with a napkin, before saying thoughtfully, “For my first decree, I would grant the same succession rights for daughters and sons.”

Taglist (also tagging those who might be interested: @irishhappiness @patzammit @identity2212 @lokislady82 @petalj

@thezombieprostitute @jaqui-has-a-conspiracy-theory @magnificentsaladllama @xx-rennyxx @cringeycookies

@autumnrose40 @hawkeyes-queen @vonalyn @theliheat @boo8008

@mrsevans90 @bradfordmyworld @delldenaro @molisighs @otpcutie

Find the Wild Child Masterlist here 👈

Questions? Comments? Requests? 👉Send them to my inbox 👂

#ari levinson x reader #ari levinson x you #ari levinson x female reader #ari levinson smut #ari levinson fluff #prince!ari levinson #royalty au #ari levinson fanfiction #ari levinson #wild child

61 notes · View notes

ao3feed-brucewayne · 3 months

Text

operation: keep batman alive

by shelovestowritenonsense Despite wearing gloves, Tim can hardly feel his fingers yet he finds himself clutching onto the coat Detective Montoya had put over his shoulders. He opens his mouth to thank her but realizes she is now suddenly without her winter wear so Tim shrugs it off and tries to return it to her. “No thanks, I should be okay,” He says, ignoring the way his voice shakes. “Kid, your cape is dripping wet and your lips are turning blue; Take it until your boss tells you to get in the car.” Montoya crosses her arms in more of a parental stance than a chilled one and Tim can’t tell if she’s hiding feeling cold (because there is no way someone isn’t cold in negative degree weather, soaking wet or not. ... Or, Tim has pneumonia and tries to hide it from Bruce, out of fear Bruce will die because of it. He's overthinking it, he's just like me fr. Words: 6207, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Animated Series Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: Gen Characters: Tim Drake, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Alfred Pennyworth, Leslie Thompkins, Renee Montoya Relationships: Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson, Tim Drake & Alfred Pennyworth, Tim Drake & Alfred Pennyworth & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne Additional Tags: Mentioned Barbara Gordon, Sick Character, Sick Tim Drake, Good Parent Bruce Wayne, Bruce Wayne is Bad at Communicating, Tim Drake is Robin, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Tim Drake Needs a Break, Good Sibling Dick Grayson, Series: The New Batman Adventures, unpopular opinion i like timmy todd he's so baby, be kind this is my first time, ive never written batfam before, wish i had eighty more seasons of the new batman adventures, and then five hundred more of the comics, Pneumonia, Sickfic, I am not a doctor, Harvey Dent is Two-Face, no beta we die like jason todd, sorry jason ily babygirl via https://ift.tt/hzwKC4X

#IFTTT #bruce wayne #batman #the dark knight #the caped crusader #gotham #dcu #dc #ao3 #ao3feed

20 notes · View notes

itsseohannbin · 7 months

Text

• Like A Volcano | Part Three | •

Han Jisung Mini Series

♡ itsseohannbins masterlist ♡

Series Masterlist

Chapter Genre: Angst⚡️. Hurt

-Bestfriends to Lovers Trope-

Summary: being best friends with the kings of kpop always has its ups and downs, and when you're offered a spot on the next European-American book tour to promote the publishing of your new book, there's one kpop king in particular who just doesn't want you to go.

Pairing: Idol!Han Jisung x Female Reader x Bestfriend Skz

** Includes two of my own original female characters, both whom are romantically involved with two of the members. Chan x Jo / Minho x Ash **

Warnings: angst. hurt. swearing. mentions of alcohol. mentions/implications of domestic abuse. mentions/implications of cheating. mentions/implications of domestic manipulation. mentions of injuries sustained from domestic abuse (reader has a fractured wrist). reader has a panic attack. one instance of self-hatred. instances of self-doubt.

I think that's it. If I missed any, lmk!!

Word Count: 7k

**this chapter has been edited & heavily revised from the original**

Enjoy!

It’s been sixteen months since you left home.

Sixteen months since you left your world behind to embark on what was promised to be the adventure of a lifetime. An adventure filled with smiling faces, adoring fans, hot interviews, exclusive meetings and so, so much more.

It’s been sixty-nine weeks since you’ve had a proper night's sleep.

Sixty-two since you’ve last felt relaxed.

Fifty-six since you even felt a real smile on your face.

Four-hundred and eighty-five days since you said goodbye to your family, and four-hundred and eighty-four since you said goodbye to Jisung.

Sixteen months since you left and you’ve regretted every fucking second of it.

While you were gone, everyone kept in touch with you, just like they promised they would.

Felix and Hyunjin facetimed with you every couple of nights before bed just to tell you about their days and talk about how much they missed you. Changbin messaged you every couple of days to quiz you on your Korean and ask for girl advice as he did so. Seungmin, Jeongin, and you scheduled regular game nights where you’d all load up on snacks and play video games online together into the wee hours of the morning, despite the major time difference between Korea and America.

As Ash and Minho began wedding planning, they made sure to include you in every part of it as if you were right there beside them. They sought out your expertise on every detail and decision they made in terms of color schemes, decor, dress styles, tie options, and everything else that came along with getting married.

Jo and Chan texted you every single day, nearly every hour, updating you on life back at the family house. They informed you of every single joke Seungmin made over breakfast, every single idea the group had come up with for new tracks, every time Minho found a stray cat on the street and begged Chan to let him bring it home despite Changbin’s allergies as if he wasn’t a grown ass adult who could do whatever he pleased.

Even when their Maniac Tour began, they always found time for you. They sent you endless Tiktok’s and Reels of their performances, videos of the goofy shit they’d get up to while backstage, the links to new interviews and Skz-Talkers as soon as they were released. They even went as far as video chatting you mid-concert to help you feel included, passing the phone around to each member as they danced on stage and sang along with the rest of Stay.

All but Jisung.

He was the only one you hadn’t heard from. He was the only one who wouldn’t take the phone during the concert video chat, the only one who didn’t send you funny animal videos on the regular, or send selfies asking for your opinion before posting them to social media. He was the only one who hadn’t updated you on his life since you left.

It was as if the two of you were complete strangers.

Everyone else called to check in and make sure you were having fun, and it was getting increasingly harder to pretend that you were.

When your and Jisung’s eyes met back at the airport through the line of people waiting to go through security, you froze. You hadn’t expected him to come, and upon seeing him standing there, looking less than stellar and frowning at you in distress, you had to force your feet to stay put.

It took every ounce of willpower you had not to run into his arms. You had to remind yourself of the things he had said to you the night before and how selfish he had been. You had to remind yourself of Seojun, the man who was waiting for your arrival at the Vancouver Airport, where he had flown a week earlier to prep the tour itinerary with his manager, Sookie.

Your and Jisung's eyes locked for no more than thirty seconds before you forced yourself to spin on your heel and walk away from the temptation he held. He didn’t call you or text you at all to even explain why he had suddenly shown up and what he wanted. He simply let you walk away from him again, and that was the last time you had any form of contact with him.

As much as you wanted him to, you couldn’t even blame him for not trying one last time to stop you. You broke his heart and left him behind, two things you once promised you’d never do. He had every right to hate your guts, though there was no way he could hate you any more than you already hated yourself for it.

Still, you held out hope for a text, a call, a freakin’ email. Anything to let you know he still wanted you in his life, but you knew it would never come. Your friendship was over, and based on the way the rest of the members would tense up and go quiet whenever Jisung’s name unintentionally left your mouth, you knew he would never forgive you.

Not this time.

“Y/n? Are you even listening?”

You tore your gaze away from the photo on your phone that Felix had sent of him, Jeongin, and Jisung at their LA concert, and looked towards the voice that called your name. It took you a second to register who spoke.

“Hmmm?” you hummed in response, feeling dazed and confused and every bit tipsy that you should’ve been given the triple shot of vodka you had just downed a moment before. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

Seojun, whose hand was possessively wrapped around your waist, dug his nails into the skin above the waistband of your jeans, glaring down at you as he undoubtedly left half-moon indents in his wake.

A warning.

He leaned in close to you with a tight-lipped smile, seeming as though he was going to kiss the side of your head affectionately. Instead, he spoke in a harsh tone that was quiet enough for your ears only.

“He’s never going to forgive you y/n, and at this rate, I won’t either if you don’t put your fucking phone down and socialize,” he growled. He dug his nails in once more for good measure and you bit back a wince of pain as the pads of his fingers grazed over the barely healed scars from days previous.

“Sorry Jun,” you muttered an apology, pocketing your phone before he could grab it from you. He gave you a satisfied smile before turning his attention back to the redhead who called on you.

“You’ll have to excuse my girlfriend Kymmy, she’s still recovering from this morning,” he chided with a wink, pulling you flush against his waist all the while flashing Kymmy a flirty smirk.

Prick.

Kymmy’s smile turned almost ravenous as his innuendo, her eyes darkening with intrigue as she reached across the table and rested her hand on his arm.

“Girlfriend, hey?” she looked away from Seojun long enough to give you a bored once over before her eyes met his again. “How much is she paying you?”

If it wasn’t for Seojun’s fingernails digging into your skin you would’ve reached across the table and strangled her. Seojun, however, just simply laughed at her comment.

“You’re a funny one, Kymmy. It’s no wonder Juho likes you so much.” he elbowed his friend’s ribcage in approval. Kymmy’s eyes flickered to Juho for a brief second and you saw the look of utter disdain on her lips that disappeared so quickly that you wouldn’t have believed it happened if you didn’t witness it yourself.

Kymmy had no interest in Juho, and everyone in here knew it except for the poor bastard himself. The only person she was interested in currently had his hand tightly gripping your hip.

And for all you cared, she could have him.

Hell, she’d probably get him anyway when you were fast asleep and he was looking for someone else to help with his never-ending sexual desire; a desire you never seemed to be able to fulfill.

You should’ve cared more for Kymmy’s obvious advances towards your boyfriend, and his towards her. You should’ve gotten jealous and gripped his arm in annoyance while bitching the redhead out like Seojun so desperately wanted you to, but you didn’t.

You were used to this game by now, played it out more times than you cared to admit. Seojun’s favorite mind game was to make you jealous in every way he possibly could so you’d be forced to punish him later for it. He got off on the possessive behavior you’d express.

And it was fun at first. Experimental and exciting. It helped speed things along in your new and budding relationship, but when you discovered he was sneaking out after you’d fallen asleep to meet other women behind closed doors despite all the fun you two had, it was a game you were growing tired of, and quickly at that.

It took you three months into the tour to discover Seojun had been cheating on you. But by then, it was too late to back out, too late to make a scene and leave him. Leaving him would’ve caused too many problems, problems you couldn’t afford to let happen, not when your entire support system was halfway across the world from you.

When you confronted Seojun about the cheating late one night after he snuck back inside your shared hotel room, he immediately grew defensive. Shortly after that the abuse and manipulation started.

He continued sneaking around and meeting with women. Some were his own fans, others worked at the venues Sookie had booked for tour events, but a lot of them were just random women he’d meet in bars or on the street. The only difference now was that he didn’t bother hiding it.

He always came back to you, smelling of sweat and sex and varieties of expensive perfumes, and each time you told him you wanted to leave, wanted to break up and return home, and each time he threatened you into staying.

He’d threaten your career, your friendships, even your life. He’d grab you when you’d try to leave with your suitcase in hand, and he’d pull your arm so hard you were afraid it would pop out of its socket. He’d get in your face, yell at you, spit at you, backhand you for trying to leave him.

And then he’d cry.

He’d cry so hard he’d lose his breath and beg you to stay, to not leave him, telling you that you were the only good thing he had in his life. He’d tell you that maybe if you just paid a little more attention to him, he wouldn’t feel the need to seek validation from other women, wouldn’t feel the urge to hit you and hurt you the way he had. He’d beg you so hard and scare you into thinking he was going to hurt himself if you left, so you’d stay. You’d stay, and then he’d do it all over again.

It was a vicious cycle, one you were beginning to get worn out from by the second, but at the end of the day, you knew you couldn’t just leave. Seojun loved you, and this was what love was.

At least that’s what he had convinced you of at first. Now, you were just trying to get through the last few months of the tour so you could go home and be with your family and never have to see his face again.

When you finally came to terms with what you were experiencing, realizing that this wasn’t love, that this relationship was toxic and unhealthy, you had taken your problems and concerns to Sookie, the only female on tour whom you trusted.

Despite the abuse you had suffered, she urged you to stay, explaining how the number of fans that were to attend the coming events for you specifically had nearly tripled in size, and that leaving abruptly would do nothing but disappoint them. You may have trusted her, but that didn’t mean the two of you were friends. You knew she was more concerned about the money it would bring in than your overall physical, mental, and emotional health, but you didn’t have any energy left to call her out on it. She assured you she would take care of it and sent you on your way.

It was only two more months. You could surely survive two more months, right?

You jumped slightly when a shoe came into contact with your shin, hard and painful, pulling you from another whirlwind of dark thoughts. You glanced back up from where your eyes had been fixated on the napkin you were toying with and found Seojun glaring down at you again.

“Y/n, babe, Levi asked you a question. Can you show a little respect and answer him, please.” Seojun's smile was sweet, but you could see the annoyance and anger sparkling in his eyes.

You were going to pay for this later.

“I’m sorry, Levi,” you apologized as you leaned your elbows on the table and peeked around Seojun's large figure to look at him. “This tour is wearing me out minute by minute. What was your question?

The Dutch boy waved off your apology and flashed you a sincere smile.

“I was just curious as to what happened,” he answered, gesturing towards your arm. You glanced down at your wrist, inspecting the white plaster cast that wrapped around your fingers and thumb and stretched up towards your elbow.

You swallowed roughly and barely avoided Seojun’s hard glare as he waited for you to answer.

“Oh, uhm, I fractured it the other night after Seojun and I left the venue.” you lied smoothly. Levi’s eyebrows raised in surprise at your words.

“How the heck did you manage to do that?” he questioned. His English was choppy, but his accent was clean and smooth and filled with concern. You let out an awkward laugh and tried to come up with something, anything that wouldn’t throw suspicion onto the culprit behind your injury.

“Well, you know Amsterdam,” Seojun jumped in for you. He dared to send you a playful wink as he squeezed you closer to his body as if the incident that led to your hand in a cast was nothing more than a light-hearted accident.

Asshole.

“The walkways around the canal are extremely uneven and y/n here is extremely clumsy.” Seojun finished before he casually popped a fry into his mouth.

“He’s right,” Juho then added with a laugh, clapping Seojun on the back. “This is the same girl who managed to sprain her ankle so badly coming down the hotel stairs back in Texas that she had to wear a boot for three weeks while simultaneously nursing two broken fingers and a cracked rib back to health.”

Levi, Kymmy, Seojun, and the rest of the people occupying your table began to laugh at Juho’s story, and you had to force a smile on your face to keep yourself from suddenly crying. The story Seojun had fed Juho the first night he got physical sounded so unbelievable coming from Juho’s mouth that it nearly drove you mad.

Surely they didn’t buy it, right?

Surely, at least one of them would see through the irony and figure out what had actually happened. Nobody trips over nothing and falls down a flight of stairs all by herself, right?

Part of you hoped one of the people who sat around the bar table with you and Seojun would put the pieces together and call Seojun out, but another part of you hoped to God nobody would. You could not handle another confrontation right now, not without pissing off Seojun even more than you already had.

You let the conversation take a turn as everyone began discussing their childhood injuries and the embarrassing stories behind them.

It was supposed to be a celebratory night out for another successful event with just you, your boyfriend, and his best friend, but Juho was adamant about meeting with Kymmy, a girl he’d been talking to online for months now, and wherever Kymmy went, her brother Levi followed.

You were ecstatic to meet Kymmy and her brother at first and let them join in on the celebration, but once she started flirting with Seojun, and once Levi’s other friends conveniently showed up and invited themselves to sit down, you felt a ball of anxiety pool in the bottom of your stomach.

Nothing good ever came out of Seojun drinking alongside a pretty woman and a bunch of males. A fight was bound to break out between someone at some point, and you didn’t want to stick around any longer to find out who it would be between.

You were tired, your wrist hurt, and your social battery was running on empty.

You just wanted to go home.

Not back to the hotel room, but home home.

With a sigh you leaned back against the high bar chair you were sitting on and finished off the glass of tequila you were holding. Seojun turned his head to look at you briefly and you sent him a small, timid smile before turning your head downwards, and that’s when you saw it.

Underneath the table, out of sight from everyone else, Kymmy’s foot was running slowly and seductively up Seojun’s leg and into his crotch and then back down again, over and over while she let loose a high-pitched giggle at whatever it was Juho was saying. The giggle was as fake as Seojun’s love for you was, and you repressed the urge to roll your eyes.

Instead, you quickly averted your gaze, feeling embarrassed that you’d witnessed something so intimate, your brain not fully grasping the fact that this intimacy was shared between your boyfriend and another girl.

That’s when everything began to fall apart.

A second later, Seojun’s phone vibrated on the table between the two of you, bringing your attention to it involuntarily.

You didn’t mean to look. You didn’t mean to see whoever it was that had texted him. You just so happened to be glancing in the direction of where he’d end up holding his phone up, swiping his thumb across the screen to read the message that was sent to him.

You felt your stomach drop to when you read Sookie’s name at the top of the messaging app followed by a red heart and a pair of lips. When your eyes dropped down and found a picture of her naked chest staring back at you, staring back at Seojun, you thought you were going to throw up.

Seojun bit his lip and let out a breath, a small smile of appreciation forming on his lips as he openly stared at the picture. He didn’t even bother trying to hide it from you. Instead, he took his time typing back a long, detailed reply of what he was going to do to her later tonight before he locked his phone once more and set it back on the table, face down.

When he turned his head to glance back at you to see if you had been watching, you were quick to avert your eyes to one of the TVs that hung from the ceiling, watching the soccer game that was on. You bit your lip in an attempt to look focused on the game, but really you were just trying not to openly cry.

Here Seojun sat, one girl practically jerking him off with her foot, another openly sexting him and sending him nudes, all while his arm was secured tightly, possessively around his girlfriend's waist. Kymmy, you suspected, but you didn’t think Sookie would be indulging him too.

You trusted her. More than anybody else on this damn tour, and all this time, she was no better than Seojun.

A ball of emotions suddenly slammed into your chest so hard you physically winced.

Anger.

Disbelief.

Sadness.

Shock.

However, panic overpowered everything else.

In a moment, the air around you grew thick, heavy with unspoken tension as you became way too hyper-aware of everything around you. Each breath you took was like a battle against the invisible weight that was suddenly pressing down on your chest. Your heart felt as if it were frantically drumming through every vein, every nerve ending in your body.

The clinking of glasses repeatedly being set down onto wooden tabletops. The sound of silverware scraping against dated dishes. The whispers of conversations that filled the old tavern around you. The quiet voice of the on-screen announcer as the soccer game continued on in the background.

It was all too much.

The bell that hung by the entrance, chiming noisily each time a patron entered and left, ringing in your ears so loudly it felt like you had suddenly got tinnitus. The loud cheering that erupted as someone on-screen had scored a point. The fucking liquid being poured from old spouts and filling thick glasses at the bar across the room. You heard all of it all at once, and the feeling of anxiety clawed at your insides.

Your vision began to blur, the edges becoming hazy as if the world was slipping out of focus, out of your grasp. The dark, warm earthy tones of the old bar that had you feeling safe and secure a moment before now began to slip away, leaving everything in a monochrome haze. Time felt warped, seconds stretching into eternities while minutes turned to fleeting seconds.

The room spun, a dizzying whirlwind of sensations as nausea churned in the pit of your stomach, a sickening knot that tightened with each passing moment. A rush of heat then flooded your body, beads of sweat visibly breaking out across your skin like tiny droplets of panic. Every nerve felt electrified, tingling with the sense of absolute dread that surged through your body like wildfire.

You didn’t even notice the change in your breathing until Seojun’s nails once again dug into your skin, this time drawing blood.

“Will you cut it out? You’re making a scene.” he snapped, not bothering to lower his voice anymore. You could barely hear him over the sound of your own heartbeat now filling your ears, silently screaming at you to LEAVE.

You tried to take a deep, calming breath, tried to hold it in to stop the panic from seeping deeper into your bones, but it was no use. You only hiccuped as a single tear fell from your eye.

You suddenly felt everyone's gaze on you, and you bent your head down to wipe at another tear that had managed to escape to try and hide what you were feeling.

Then, a round of applause broke out across the bar as the TVs all showed replays of the game-winning goal that was scored, and that was your final breaking point.

Without so much of a word, you pulled Seojun’s dirty fingers off of you and slipped from the table. Juho was the only one to call after you as the room continued to grow fuzzy, your fingers beginning to tingle as your breathing started coming out in short gasps. The bartender gave you a concerned look and reached out to grab your arm, but you managed to slink away from her touch and pushed yourself outside into the cool evening air.

As soon as your feet took you past the fence that lined the property of the bar, you fell to your knees, your hands gripping the cobblestone so hard your wrist throbbed and your knuckles turned white. You could feel your heart threatening to explode from your chest as memories of your relationship with Seojun flew through your mind like a short film.

Every time he hit you.

Every time he yelled at you.

Every time he touched you.

Every time he scolded you for bothering him, the names he would call you over the smallest inconveniences, the way he’d manipulate you into staying with him even after all the shit he did.

It was too much.

You could barely get enough oxygen in your lungs to take a deep breath and your hands were losing feeling. You hardly heard the door behind you open and close over the sound of your cries that you didn’t realize were leaving your body, the cries that were loud enough to wake the whole neighborhood at this ungodly hour.

Blinded by the waves of tears that rocked you, your hands reached out to grasp for something, anything to help you steady yourself, ground yourself.

No.

Not something, but someone.

The sound of Jisung’s voice lulling your heart back to a normal pace when you’d seek his comfort after a nightmare. The way he would subtly pinch your elbow when the panic came in waves while you were out in public together. The way he would squeeze your hand and help bring you back down when you found yourself floating away, getting lost in your darkened thoughts. The feeling of Jisung's body enclosing around yours in a hug so soft and so safe you felt nothing more than at peace.

You needed that sense of security, now more than ever as you searched blindly for the anchor you’d grown so accustomed to but stupidly left behind.

You’ve never felt so completely and utterly alone.

So alone that you nearly fainted when warm, steady fingers landed tenderly across your back. Your body froze despite the panic that was still coursing through your veins.

There was absolutely no fucking way.

Your head snapped up and whipped around so fast you thought you’d break your neck. The shock you felt when you saw who had come to your rescue almost knocked the anxiety out of your system.

“Juho?” you barely managed, “Wha-wha-what are you do-doing out here?” you hiccuped in surprise at Seojun’s best friend.

Juho just shushed you and pulled you into a tight hug that was gentle and soothing. His thumbs rubbed circles into your back as he rocked you back and forth slowly, not caring if anyone walked by and saw you two sitting on the ground like this. Feeling his heartbeat against your chest, and the smell of the cinnamon soap he bought not too long ago, your heart began to settle, slowly but surely.

A long moment had passed before Juho finally spoke.

“Are you okay, y/n?” he asked softly, not bothering to pull away from you.

You squeezed your eyes shut, causing tears to fall down your cheeks and onto the fabric of his shirt. Then, you clenched your jaw so hard you were surprised your teeth didn’t break.

“Why did you come after me, Juho?” you asked quietly. Your body wanted to pull away from him but your heart longed for the warmth, strength, and security you’d been deprived of for so long. He reminded you of Changbin in a way. Even though his muscles weren’t nearly as big or comforting as Binnies, you still felt safe in his embrace.

The thought made you tense up again.

You never felt safe with anyone who wasn’t your immediate friend group.

Now you were slightly on edge.

“You were having a panic attack,” Juho stated, clearly confused at your question. It wasn’t every day someone willingly helped you through one of your panic attacks. Someone who was best friends with the reason behind it, to begin with.

“And?” you prompted.

“And I don’t like seeing people suffer,” he shrugged.

The both of you were quiet for a moment, seemingly both lost in your own thoughts before he spoke up again. His body tensed around you, as if he was preparing himself to get hit for whatever it was he was going to say next.

“You’ve been suffering for a while now, haven’t you?”

Your eyebrows raised at his question and finally pulled away from his warm body, staring at him in utter shock.

“I’m sorry?” you asked, unsure whether you heard him right. Juho sighed and lifted his hand to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, but you flinched away from him quickly, causing his hand to fall back to his side. His eyes look strained and sad.

“I’m not an idiot y/n. I know what’s been happening.” You could tell he was trying to be reassuring and gentle with you, but he spoke to you as if you were nothing more than a small child who needed his help, and this caused you to become defensive out of habit.

“You don’t know anything, Juho.” you ground out between clenched teeth as you tried to pull out of his grasp completely and stand up. However, his hold was firm and you didn’t get very far.

“I know Seojun, and I know the type of guy he is. I know he plays women left and right and then tosses them aside like trash,” he explained.

An exasperated breath left your mouth, followed by a humorless chuckle.

“And you’re okay with that?” you question, your tone hard despite the tears that were still filling your eyes.

Juho shook his head and also let out a humorless laugh.

“I’m not. At all. But he’d been my best friend since we were seven years old. It’s hard to give up on that kind of friendship, you know?”

You scoffed at his words and pulled away from his embrace, thankful that he released now you without a fight,

“I don’t actually. None of my friends are abusive assholes like he is,” you spoke without thinking. You pulled yourself off of his lap and up onto your feet, dusting off your jeans in an attempt to straighten yourself out and look semi-presentable to anyone who would pass by. You didn’t want anyone to know you had just broken down the way you had, but the mascara tears staining your cheeks would say otherwise.

“So he has been abusing you,” Juho spoke quietly as he followed suit and stood up next to you. His hands came up to grasp your elbows, but you pulled away from him just as quickly.

“You didn’t think I actually fell down a flight of stairs, did you?” you snapped as you stepped away from him and grabbed your bag off the ground where it had fallen in your haste to get away from the bar.

“Well, I was hoping my suspicions were wrong,” Juho answered as he scratched the back of his neck and ran his hand through his blonde hair.

“Well, I’m sorry they weren’t.” you shot back in a clipped tone. You felt bad for taking your anger out on the innocent man before you, but now that the panic had disappeared, you didn’t know what to do with all the adrenaline you had left over.

“Why are you apologizing for him?” Juho then asked, his voice hard. You could feel the glare he was shooting into the side of your head, and that alone caused your already fragile state to break once more.

“I don’t know, Juho! Fuck! Maybe because he’s an asshole? Maybe because you’ve had to put up with him for nearly twenty years? Because he’s a piece of shit friend for going after the girl you like?” you offered.

Juho shook his head and put a hand up to stop you.

“You don’t have to apologize for that either, y/n. It’s not your fault. Kymmy has been nothing more than a test”

You raised an eyebrow at him as you wiped at the tears of makeup that were sticking to your face. “A test?” you asked in disbelief.

Juho shrugged again. “Yeah. A test. One to see if my best friend was a big enough piece of shit to openly go after the girl I like. And he is. Case closed.” He was trying to act nonchalant as if Kymmy was nothing more than just a girl, but you could see the sadness in his eyes. He really liked Kymmy, and she played him so well.

The anger you felt began to slowly dissolve when you caught that look of regret in his eyes too. His tongue was prodding thoughtfully at his cheek, his eyes far away, as if he was recounting the past six months of flirting he and Kymmy had done through texts and phone calls.

You couldn’t help but feel a little bit responsible for his heartbreak.

“You don’t have to be a hero, Juho.” your voice came out soft. “I know you liked her a lot.”

Juho waved off your words with another shrug of his shoulders before he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

“It is what it is,” he said as he kicked aimlessly at a loose stone in the ground. “I’m just glad I dodged a bullet with that one.”

Silence fell upon the two of you as you both then got lost in your thoughts once more. Juho looked as if he was debating whether he should go back inside and sit through the torture of seeing Kymmy and Seojun flirt openly with one another, or if he should just leave. Meanwhile, you got momentarily lost in the thought of what would’ve happened if you had just stayed with Jisung the night before you left.

Would you have gotten together? Or would you have talked more thoroughly about the pros and cons of it all and decided to stay friends? Would you have moved into the house, into his room, or would he have moved in with you? Would you have finally gone on tour with all of them, or would you be left behind once again with yourself and your thoughts?

You liked to believe everything would’ve worked out. That you and Jisung would’ve gotten together and it would’ve been happily ever after for the two of you, but you couldn’t help but think that this entire tour had been a lesson. A mandatory one at that.

The distance had sucked, and the fight with Jisung was even worse, but spending all this time away and having no contact with him whatsoever only heightened your feelings for the man who had been your best friend for so many years. You thought leaving and getting away would help the both of you get over your infatuation with one another, but it only seemed to make the feelings stronger.

Maybe if you had just stayed home, broken up with Seojun, and stayed with the man you were meant to be with, Seojun wouldn’t have felt the need to go the lengths he had. Maybe he wouldn’t have had the urge to go after his best friend's girl in an attempt to make his own girlfriend jealous because he wouldn’t have a girlfriend to make jealous, to begin with.

You shook your head and tried to keep your irrational thoughts at bay.

A lesson learned was a lesson learned, but that didn’t mean you could start blaming yourself for everything that happened. You wouldn’t. It would only destroy you, and you knew that.

After a couple of long, silent moments of you and Juho just standing in the open, you looked at him, eyeing him softly.

“What are you going to do now?” you asked. The eyes that seemed so far away then zoned back into the present, and Juho blinked once before he gave you a knowing smile.

“What are you going to do now?” he shot back.

“Honestly, I just want to go home,” you told him with an exhausted breath. There was a bench a few feet away that you plopped yourself down onto, deciding that you’d rather wait outside until everyone was done with their drinks than go back inside the bar for the rest of the night out.

“Then go,” Juho replied as he bent to sit down next to you, seemingly making the same decision you did.

You let another huff of disbelief leave your mouth as you shook your head, looking out onto the Amsterdam canal in wonder. “I can’t.”

Puffs of cloud seeped from Juho’s mouth as he exhaled into the cool evening air. He shook his head once and turned to give you a look of confusion.

“Why can’t you?”

You shrugged your shoulders and leaned back against the cool wood of the bench. “There’s no point. There's only two months left of this stupid tour, and Sookie advised me to stay. Apparently, the number of fans coming to the rest of the events for me specifically has nearly tripled in size.” you explained.

Juho snorted despite the uneasiness that still sifted through the air around the two of you. “Sounds like she’s just after the money.”

It was your turn to snort before you spoke without thinking. “Yeah, that and Seojun’s dick.”

Juho winced at your poor attempt at a joke.

“I’m sorry y/n.”

You waved him off and mimicked his choice of words from earlier, a small smile on your face. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

“And you have no obligation to stay.” Juho then gave you a pointed look, causing you to sigh.

“I can’t just leave Juho-.”

“Of course you can,” he interrupted with a serious look on his face.

You rolled your eyes at him.

“And how would you like me to do that?”

A small grin crept onto his features.

“By packing your bags and getting on the next flight home.”

You shook your head again as a small laugh escaped your throat. Despite the physical similarities between Juho and Changbin, he was definitely giving off menacing vibes; he and Seungmin would have been great friends.

“No, I mean how am I supposed to leave? I can’t leave the tour when so many people are relying on me to be here.” You couldn’t quite understand why your brain wasn’t taking the easy way out and agreeing with Juho to just leave, but it was irritating the crap out of you the way your mind was still finding excuses to stay. “Think of the fans.”

Juho’s gaze on you turned hard and his lips thinned. He looked as if he was on the verge of lecturing you.

“Your health is more important than some stupid tour, y/n. Besides, once the boss finds out about Seojun and Sookie’s relationship, the entire tour will go down in flames.”

This caught your attention, your ears now perking up like you imagine a dog would as your eyes shot to Juho.

“Wait, Sookie isn’t the one in charge?” you asked.

Juho chuckled and shook his head.

“God, no. She doesn’t need that kind of power, are you kidding me? She works for the company that published Seojun and I. Once the boss finds out about their secret relationship, it’s over for the both of them.” he paused briefly when your eyebrows raised in shock at the news. “Yeah, it’s honestly probably best for you to leave sooner rather than later so you don’t get caught up in the crosshairs. The last thing you need on your hands is a scandal.”

You nodded in understanding before your mouth then stupidly opened itself and babbled again, not allowing your brain time to stop it.

“Shouldn’t I stay and attest to it if they need me to?”

You wanted to smack yourself for yet again trying to find a reason to stay but thankfully, Juho’s clenched jaw and scowl hit just the same.

“I will take of it. You go home,” he assured you.

You fell quiet for a moment as Juho’s words set in. All this time you were waiting, begging for someone to come along and find you, someone to see through the act Seojun had conjured up and help you escape him and his antics. You never in a million years thought his best friend would be the one to do it.

“Why are you helping me?” you asked suddenly, your voice small and unsure as you stared into Juho’s dark, kind eyes. A smile pulled at the side of his lips and he licked them once before he scratched the back of his neck and answered you.

“Because Felix would kick my ass if I didn’t,” he answered softly.

Your eyes grew wide again at the revelation.

“Wait, you-”

“Nine years of taekwondo together. I left after an injury landed me in the hospital, but he went on for another three. If he found out you were in this situation and I didn’t help to get you out, he’d probably kill me with a roundhouse kick to the skull.”

For the first time in what felt like months, a genuine laugh had bubbled from your throat before you could stop it. Juho joined in, the two of you laughing like everything in the world was okay and you weren’t on the verge of another panic attack at the thought of leaving and letting so many people down.

“I didn’t even know you two knew each other until Felix had texted when we arrived and told me to make sure Seojun takes you to the Royal Palace. I knew then that I needed to help you out of here, I just didn’t know how. Seojun never allowed me to talk to you one-on-one either. Probably afraid I’d snatch you up.” Juho then explained in a thoughtful breath.

Another laugh left your mouth at the irony, and you couldn’t find it in yourself to stop. If you stopped laughing, you’d probably start crying again, and you didn’t know if you could survive another round of waterworks right now.

“Ironic, but true.” you mused.

Juho wrapped his arm around your shoulder in a friendly gesture, and you relaxed with ease now that you knew Juho was one of the good ones. Felix wouldn’t have texted him if he wasn’t. You were just glad, thankful to finally have someone on your side.

“Stop worrying about what would make everyone else happy, y/n. At the end of the day, your happiness is what should matter most. And you won’t feel that happiness again until you get home. So go.” he urged on. “It’s time to go.”

You nodded your head slowly, almost habitually, as if leaving was now suddenly the easiest answer in the world. Because it was.

Juho was right.

It was time to go home.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

omg I'm so glad I finally got this stupid chapter written and posted. I absolutely HATED this chapter the first time I posted it back on my old blog, so I'm so happy I was able to go back again and change it for you all.. I am so much happier this time around with the outcome.

Thank you all for being ever so patient with me these last few weeks. I've fallen into a bit of a depressive pit with some personal shit going on, but I'm slowly on the mend. I want to get the rest of this mini-series done and posted so I can finally get back to working on The Blackened Heart,

Thank you again for reading and enjoying! Feedback is always apprciated!

I'll see you soon for Part Four! <3

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Taglist: @sungshineworld @collisvng @ihrtlix @queen-in-the-shadows

Previous Part | Next Part

#Like A Volcano #Like A Volcano Mini Series #Hannji's Mini Series #han jisung mini series #han jisung x reader #best friend skz #stray kids fic #han jisung fic #skz han #bff skz #LAV by Hannji

33 notes · View notes

dreaminginthedeepsouth · 11 months

Text

In Vogue’s 1969 Christmas issue, Vladimir Nabokov offered some advice for teaching James Joyce’s “Ulysses”: “Instead of perpetuating the pretentious nonsense of Homeric, chromatic, and visceral chapter headings, instructors should prepare maps of Dublin with Bloom’s and Stephen’s intertwining itineraries clearly traced.” He drew a charming one himself. Several decades later, a Boston College English professor named Joseph Nugent and his colleagues put together an annotated Google map that shadows Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom step by step. The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, as well as students at the Georgia Institute of Technology, have similarly reconstructed the paths of the London amblers in “Mrs. Dalloway.”

Such maps clarify how much these novels depend on a curious link between mind and feet. Joyce and Woolf were writers who transformed the quicksilver of consciousness into paper and ink. To accomplish this, they sent characters on walks about town. As Mrs. Dalloway walks, she does not merely perceive the city around her. Rather, she dips in and out of her past, remolding London into a highly textured mental landscape, “making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh.”

Since at least the time of peripatetic Greek philosophers, many other writers have discovered a deep, intuitive connection between walking, thinking, and writing. (In fact, Adam Gopnik wrote about walking in The New Yorker just two weeks ago.) “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live!” Henry David Thoreau penned in his journal. “Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.” Thomas DeQuincey has calculated that William Wordsworth—whose poetry is filled with tramps up mountains, through forests, and along public roads—walked as many as a hundred and eighty thousand miles in his lifetime, which comes to an average of six and a half miles a day starting from age five.

What is it about walking, in particular, that makes it so amenable to thinking and writing? The answer begins with changes to our chemistry. When we go for a walk, the heart pumps faster, circulating more blood and oxygen not just to the muscles but to all the organs—including the brain. Many experiments have shown that after or during exercise, even very mild exertion, people perform better on tests of memory and attention. Walking on a regular basis also promotes new connections between brain cells, staves off the usual withering of brain tissue that comes with age, increases the volume of the hippocampus (a brain region crucial for memory), and elevates levels of molecules that both stimulate the growth of new neurons and transmit messages between them.

The way we move our bodies further changes the nature of our thoughts, and vice versa. Psychologists who specialize in exercise music have quantified what many of us already know: listening to songs with high tempos motivates us to run faster, and the swifter we move, the quicker we prefer our music. Likewise, when drivers hear loud, fast music, they unconsciously step a bit harder on the gas pedal. Walking at our own pace creates an unadulterated feedback loop between the rhythm of our bodies and our mental state that we cannot experience as easily when we’re jogging at the gym, steering a car, biking, or during any other kind of locomotion. When we stroll, the pace of our feet naturally vacillates with our moods and the cadence of our inner speech; at the same time, we can actively change the pace of our thoughts by deliberately walking more briskly or by slowing down.

VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER :: The Men Walking Every Block in New York City

Because we don’t have to devote much conscious effort to the act of walking, our attention is free to wander—to overlay the world before us with a parade of images from the mind’s theatre. This is precisely the kind of mental state that studies have linked to innovative ideas and strokes of insight. Earlier this year, Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz of Stanford published what is likely the first set of studies that directly measure the way walking changes creativity in the moment. They got the idea for the studies while on a walk. “My doctoral advisor had the habit of going for walks with his students to brainstorm,” Oppezzo says of Schwartz. “One day we got kind of meta.”

In a series of four experiments, Oppezzo and Schwartz asked a hundred and seventy-six college students to complete different tests of creative thinking while either sitting, walking on a treadmill, or sauntering through Stanford’s campus. In one test, for example, volunteers had to come up with atypical uses for everyday objects, such as a button or a tire. On average, the students thought of between four and six more novel uses for the objects while they were walking than when they were seated. Another experiment required volunteers to contemplate a metaphor, such as “a budding cocoon,” and generate a unique but equivalent metaphor, such as “an egg hatching.” Ninety-five per cent of students who went for a walk were able to do so, compared to only fifty per cent of those who never stood up. But walking actually worsened people’s performance on a different type of test, in which students had to find the one word that united a set of three, like “cheese” for “cottage, cream, and cake.” Oppezzo speculates that, by setting the mind adrift on a frothing sea of thought, walking is counterproductive to such laser-focussed thinking: “If you’re looking for a single correct answer to a question, you probably don’t want all of these different ideas bubbling up.”

Where we walk matters as well. In a study led by Marc Berman of the University of South Carolina, students who ambled through an arboretum improved their performance on a memory test more than students who walked along city streets. A small but growing collection of studies suggests that spending time in green spaces—gardens, parks, forests—can rejuvenate the mental resources that man-made environments deplete. Psychologists have learned that attention is a limited resource that continually drains throughout the day. A crowded intersection—rife with pedestrians, cars, and billboards—bats our attention around. In contrast, walking past a pond in a park allows our mind to drift casually from one sensory experience to another, from wrinkling water to rustling reeds.

Still, urban and pastoral walks likely offer unique advantages for the mind. A walk through a city provides more immediate stimulation—a greater variety of sensations for the mind to play with. But, if we are already at the brink of overstimulation, we can turn to nature instead. Woolf relished the creative energy of London’s streets, describing it in her diary as “being on the highest crest of the biggest wave, right in the centre & swim of things.” But she also depended on her walks through England’s South Downs to “have space to spread my mind out in.” And, in her youth, she often travelled to Cornwall for the summer, where she loved to “spend my afternoons in solitary trampling” through the countryside.

Perhaps the most profound relationship between walking, thinking, and writing reveals itself at the end of a stroll, back at the desk. There, it becomes apparent that writing and walking are extremely similar feats, equal parts physical and mental. When we choose a path through a city or forest, our brain must survey the surrounding environment, construct a mental map of the world, settle on a way forward, and translate that plan into a series of footsteps. Likewise, writing forces the brain to review its own landscape, plot a course through that mental terrain, and transcribe the resulting trail of thoughts by guiding the hands. Walking organizes the world around us; writing organizes our thoughts. Ultimately, maps like the one that Nabokov drew are recursive: they are maps of maps.

Why Walking Helps Us Think

By Ferris Jabr

#The New Yorker #walking #exercise #body #bodymind #Body Alive #thinking #Ferris Jabr

55 notes · View notes

o-wyrmlight · 5 months

Text

Chapter 13 of A Toast to the Pigs, an AU that attempts to thoroughly explore the concept of Harry Du Bois not waking up in Martinaise with amnesia. Today, we talk to Evrart and Harry gets triggered.

Warning: Self-harm is depicted in the latter part of the chapter. Always remember to check the tags for upcoming chapters, as I tend to add tags as I go.

The first time he touches you, it's to pull you out of incoming traffic. You're drunk and supposed to be following a lead. Traffic today is high to gather for a festival around Central Jamrock's lake. You haven't been to a festival in years and don't give a shit about them anymore. You don't have anyone to go to a festival with anyway. Jean saves your life (more or less), but your first instinct is to punch him in the fucking face. His hand around your arm pulls away from you, leaving the flesh beneath simmering with coals. Your flesh is burning but there's nothing to cause it. The phantom sensation of his handprint lingers, blaring alarms through every inch of your body. Jean yelps and holds his face, cradling his palm against his jaw. He doesn't understand why you attacked him. He just saved your life. Good. He will never know. You jab a finger at him and scream. "Touch me again," you snap, pushing him. "Fucking touch me again and see what happens. I'll kill you! I'll fucking kill you!" You never apologize. The last person who touched you kindly was Dora Ingerlund. Everything since then has just been pain and betrayal. It's dangerous. You need to protect yourself before you catch fire.

In the meantime, Kim put a file filled with pedantic, repetitive numericals away, slotting it neatly back into place. He braced his arm against the door, his brain half-mush. It was as he was closing it that he noticed it—the off-color strip stuck to the inside of the door.

“…Detective,” he said, slipping out his pocket knife and beginning to pry the tape off. “I found something that might interest you.”

His knife left tiny scrapes in the paint of the metal. Bits of tape remained stuck. It didn’t need to be a delicate job.

“…What?”

Kim glanced toward the watery voice. The water was still running, hissing into the bottom of the basin. Harry’s splotchy face, red with alcohol and sick with stress, squinted blearily back at him. His right arm was still bleeding and just beginning to scab over, ugly lines cradled by red welts.

Kim… didn’t ignore this, but he chose not to comment. Instead, he peeled the rest of the paper off of the door, folding the tape neatly over the edges. “’Remember, Leo,’” he read, “’Evrart’s shoes; Special Whirling borscht; Water Evrart’s plants; sweep office floors; more banners.’”

He took out his notebook, slipping the note inside and making a notation. “The Whirling borscht sounds interesting, no? I don’t know. It seemed like something that might interest you.”

“…Sure.” Harry’s lungs rattled as he breathed in deeply. He turned back toward the sink and braced himself against the edge, arms cradled close to his chest. His shoulders rose and fell in a staggered attempt to keep tempo—in, out. In. Out. Slow and steadying.

“One hundred. Ninety-five. Ninety. Eighty-five. The furies are at home in the mirror. It is their address. Even the clearest water, if deep enough, can drown. Never think to surprise them. Your face approaching ever so friendly is the white flag they ignore. There is no truce with the furies. A mirror’s…”

His Volta do Mar stalled on his tongue, and for a while, he just stood there. He breathed. Finally, he cupped his hands beneath the still-running water and splashed his face with it, coughing. Harry ran his arm beneath the faucet one final time before shutting it off.

#disco elysium #harry du bois #kim kitsuragi #a toast to the pigs #wyrm writes

19 notes · View notes

latenightsimping · 2 years

Text

THE EDGE

“...There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who’ve gone over.” - Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels

Summary: A part of the deal to freedom included a stay at Pennhurst. It’ll take everything to keep the hope that one day the locked doors will open, the windows will no longer have bars that block the view, and that one day, the name Eddie Munson will be synonymous with the word ‘innocent’. The hope, he never realised, would also come to be synonymous with your name.

Chapter: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4

Pairing: Eddie Munson x reader

Word count: 3.1k

Warnings: angst, heavy themes of inpatient treatment/hospitalisation, heavy themes of mental health, institutional deprivation of liberties, body injuries, mentions of suicidal ideation, themes of institutional abuse, can be a dark read (continue with that in mind, look after yourselves), canon divergence, Eddie survives the demobat attack, post-S4 timeline, slow burn romance, eventual smut, 18+, eventual fluff

AN: This was an idea that I’ve had for a little while, and finally getting around to writing it. There will be multiple chapters, and we’ll get to meet the reader in chapter 2. I’m pulling on many references, some of it being my own experiences of being in an inpatient facility a couple of times in my teenage years. Write what you know, and get some catharsis through angst relating to it, innit. I will say though, look after yourselves, and seek help if you need it. Inpatient sucked, but it’s what I needed to keep myself healthy and alive. There’s light at the end of the tunnel, I promise. And if you think it needs extra tags, please lemme know. I can see replies but cannot answer due to this being a sideblog, so keep that in mind. Anyway. Hope you enjoy.

Taglist: (lemme know if you wanna be added): @edsforehead

Eleven vertical steel bars, five horizontal. eighty-seven bricks on the wall just past them. Sixty-four pinstripes on the pillowcase. One hundred and twenty one days since the last breath of fresh air.

There’s only so much counting to be done, before you go as insane as they report you to be.

Eddie had prided himself in independence, before everything went to shit. He could get up when he wanted, go to bed at a time of his choosing. Choose what clothes to wear, when he wanted to shower, what food he ate. But that had all been stripped away. A uniform of white was given to him on arrival. White undershirt, white button down and pants, white vans, white socks. A colour that he typically hated, now forced upon him with no room for argument. The food was shit, the attitude of the staff even worse. Bed so uncomfortable that what little sleep he could manage with the screams and yelps of the damned ringing in his ears, he would always wake up with a soreness that could never be taken away.

He thought he’d witnessed hell. Skies of red and thunder, twisted vines and flapping of wings and razor sharp teeth. But this?

This was worse.

He had woken up bathed in bright light, and for a second he wondered if this was Heaven. Only took a couple of seconds to realise that it was likely that the promised paradise wouldn’t smell of disinfectant and have incessant beepings of heart monitors. A couple of times in his life, he had been in handcuffs. Drug related charges that Hopper had conveniently lost the paperwork for, letting him go with a stern talking to and a slap on the wrist. But this time? This time, the steel that connected him to the bedframe of the hospital bed felt permanent. He was lucky to be alive, according to the doctors, who told him with disgust evident in their features. It should have been you who died, was clear to translate from furrowed brows and the thin press of their lips. Eddie couldn’t help but agree with them sometimes. Nurses would often ‘forget’ to give him the pain medication prescribed, leaving him in a near constant state of agony.

The demobats had really done a number on him; lacerations and chunks of flesh torn from the left hand side of his body, trailing up his neck and ending on his jawline and cheek. More on the right pectoral muscles, the backs of his hands, forearms and upper bicep. If he wasn’t facing the barrel of the death penalty, he would have cracked a joke about losing his nipple. Each and every wound was a constant ache, his jaw near permanently set to grinding his teeth to bear with it. Only when Wayne was finally allowed to visit, hollering his lungs out about how much pain his boy was in, was he finally given those syringes of relief that he so desperately craved for. Not for long, only until they decided to neglect him again. But those moments were the reprieve that were sorely needed.

It had been Hopper’s idea to turn himself in and feign insanity, when he had visited his bedside. Something about a plan, and that he would just need to hang tight for someone high in the food chain to be contacted to fix the mess. He was promised that the chief of police would make sure he wouldn’t go to jail. Just to have trust, have faith, and repeat the words told to him to plead insanity. He couldn’t remember anything past the point of letting Chrissy into the trailer. He couldn’t remember killing Fred Benson or Patrick McKinney. Couldn’t remember attacking Max Mayfield, putting her in the hospital. Couldn’t remember how he got hurt. Deny, deny, deny. It had been easy to convince the cops that he’d lost his mind; easy enough that it was borderline insulting. The last of Vecna’s victims had wounded him to find out about, and had nearly caused him to lose face. He didn’t know Red well, but he’d seen her around the trailer park, looking as lost and broken as he did at that age. Got to know her better over the time they spent together, and had admired the strength and tenacity that was in her, too much of those qualities for a fifteen year-old to carry. He just prayed to a God that he didn’t believe in that she’d pull through.

Many years ago, he had made a promise to himself not to ever turn out like his father. That waste of space that chose drugs over his own flesh and blood. But getting processed in what remained of Hawkins police station, ink still damp on his fingertips as he clutched the name board while his picture was taken, that’s exactly how it felt. The hospital booted him as soon as he was medically stable, no doubt not wanting to harbour a serial killer in the halls that were meant for healing. At least he could be thankful that the station was only a detour, a short stop to what would be his home for God knows how long.

Pennhurst Mental Hospital.

In four months, life had blurred into a monotony that was barely endurable, with no end in sight. He was afforded no luxuries; the cell he was kept in made up of nothing more than necessities. Bed, sink and toilet, desk and a chair. No windows, and the only view past his bars being a dirty grey brick wall.He’d counted the cracks in it the first week in. Counted the ones on the ceilings in the second week. The rest of the time had been spent packing back and forth, like that tiger he’d once seen at some shit zoo. The lack of fresh air had suffocated him long ago. He could swear that he hadn’t taken a deep breath since Chrissy’s body flung itself to the ceiling.

It was the boredom that was the thing that was slowly poisoning him the fastest. The unending, unyielding, mind numbing boredom. Where all he had was his thoughts, and no possible escape from them. Thoughts of the past and the future threatening to pull him under, to drown him in regrets and missed opportunities. He was going to finally graduate from high school. Corroded coffin could have gone somewhere. He was going to start a new campaign for Hellfire. He was planning to finally move out of the trailer, and into a place of his own. Back and forth, the rumination so intense it made his head spin. Made him pace even harder, until he was near the point of over exertion. The only outlet for a man that barely ever stood still in his life.

A nurse that must have had a shred of humanity left passed a book through his bars the first couple of weeks in, evidently having enough sense to realise there was no possible way for him to do damage to himself or others with it, and most likely sick of the sound of rubber soles against cement. The Count of Monte Christo was a book that he vaguely remembered from school, no doubt an essay that he didn’t hand in considering he’d never read it in his life. But by this point? He could have recited it in his fucking sleep.

It was during another countless repeat of reading it that his attention was caught by the calling of his last name, a loud bang of a fist hitting metal that snapped him out of whatever dissociation he found himself lost in. Snapping his head towards the sound, he was met with the unkind face of one of the orderlies, one that seemed to have it in for him since getting here. Eddie had heard him be called Bradford before. He must have caught the confusion on Eddie’s face, considering he followed it up with an eye roll.

“Get your ass over here,” was the gruff response he got, the jingling of keys audible as the one to his cell drove home into the cylinder. “Must be your lucky day.”

Though there were multiple questions ruminating in Eddie’s mind, he knew better to push his luck. Gift horse in the mouth, and all that. The steps he took towards the door were methodical; slow and steady, as if it was all one sick prank, getting him into trouble and thrown into the solitary confinement cells that he’d been borderline threatened with multiple times.

A firm hand planted to his chest stopped him in his tracks, the contact to the still healing scars making him wince and take a sharp breath. It was instinct to lower his eye contact upward, though it quickly dropped to the floor as the man loomed over him. “Any trouble, so much as one foot out of step, and I’ll make it my fucking mission to put you back in here. Do I make myself clear?” the man warned under his breath. The smell of stale coffee and cigarettes hitting him square in the face, making his stomach churn.

Swallow down the disgust and agony, as much as it hurts, the reasonable voice inside him whispered. Don’t do anything stupid. In another life, he would have given this figure of authority hell. A sarcastic quip heavy on his tongue, a middle finger to those who wanted him under their boot.

But this wasn’t that life. And he needed to play it smart.

“Crystal, sir,” he mumbled, fight well and truly snuffed out from the system that wanted him locked up and the key thrown away.

It seemed to have appeased the orderly, for now. The man took sure steps towards the exit, Eddie following his heels at a close yet respectable distance. Head lowered, frizzy curls now wild and unruly falling like a curtain in front of his face. It was near laughable to him that the ability to walk in a straight line further than ten feet was now a luxury. Could finally properly stretch his legs, though the destination was still a mystery.

The shift from dim lighting to sunshine with the ascension of a set of stairs that he’d only travelled down once made his eyes screw near closed on instinct, turning his head away from the windows that let it in. Once upon a time, he enjoyed sunny days. Like the feeling of sun on his skin, and the wind in his hair. Nowadays he didn’t even know what season it was.

Being led through winding corridors, for the first time he saw other patients, all eyeing him with paranoid looks. He couldn’t blame them. But he could feel the tendrils of fear beginning to grip at his gut. Would he end up like these people eventually? How long would it take? A couple of months? Years? A subtle shake of his head as he tried to dislodge the thoughts. He couldn’t think like that. Hopper promised he’d be out of here soon. He just had to have hope.

The orderly came to a stop in front of a door, deep green and paint chipping off with age. The nameplate on the front gave him pause, when he finally spared a glance at it. DR. EDITH MILLER, etched onto the brass. He’d had meetings with Dr. Miller since he got here. Once a week, the nosey bitch would try and get information that didn’t even seem relevant. He’d managed to evade some of the questions, embellished the truth on others. But if he was being summoned to her office? This couldn’t be good.

The orderly’s knuckles rapped on the door three times, a call of “enter,” being audible seconds later. Eddie was ushered inside, the homely looking woman with already greying hair barely looking up at him from her paperwork as she motioned with the pen in her hand towards the chair nearest to them. At least in his cell, he was somewhere that he knew back to front. This was completely different, completely new, and his nerves were already on edge as he shuffled inside.

“Need me to stay?” Bradford asked, hand still grasping the door handle as his eyes flickered around the room. No doubt his mind was already thinking of possibilities of what could happen with a suspected murderer left alone in a room with a defenceless woman. The thought of people thinking that he was capable of atrocities weren’t new, but it still made Eddie sick to the core.

“That won’t be necessary,” she replied, hazel eyes finally shifting upwards to look at the two men. Her monotone voice gave nothing away, face devoid of any emotion either. Bradford faltered for only a second, before Eddie finally heard the door close behind him. Only then was he given the barest hint of a polite smile as she motioned her hand towards the chair again, to which he obliged out of the need to be polite. “How are you feeling this week, Eddie?” she asked, head slightly tilted.

She was the only one to call him the name he preferred. Everyone else just called him Munson. He wasn’t stupid; he knew it was a ploy to get him to trust her. Make him comfortable with small signs of respect, though it was likely she didn’t in the slightest. His hands settled on his lap as he fidgeted with his fingers, eyes glued to the worn tiles of the linoleum and absentmindedly counting the cracks. “Fine,” he replied, the word devoid of any emotion or energy.

The truth would be sharing too much; the fear of being honest bringing the risk of even more restrictions under the guise of safety. There wasn’t a delicate way of saying “I want to close my eyes and never wake up some days.”

He heard scrawls of the pen, no doubt more notes that would dig him a grave of pills and cell bars. A pregnant pause before she spoke again, and an intake of breath. “And how are you feeling with the medication changes? Is your mood still low?”

He had to bite his tongue, to stop his lips turning up into an incredulous smile. The truth again being evaded in the answer. “Fine,” he repeated, this time with a slight shrug of his shoulders. “The pills make me feel sick every hour of the day, make me into more of a ghost than I already am.”

Another scratch of ink on paper. “Your case was brought forward to the panel this morning. We’ve decided that we should ease your restrictions, given that there’s been no record of violent tendencies to yourself or others since the time you’ve been with us.”

That made his ears perk up, the sparks of hope threatening to ignite in his chest. Head snapping up to finally make eye contact with the good doctor, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “What does that mean?”

Her eyes studied his face for a few heartbeats, a small smile gracing her features, one that seemed to be an attempt at easing anxieties. “It means we’ve decided to move you to a medium security wing. It comes with certain privileges, but also with expectations, Eddie.”

The words coming out of her mouth seemed to blur together, becoming a background noise to his rapidly beating heart. He was finally getting out of the damnation he had been trapped in, perhaps finally allowed into the light. To be able to breathe lungfuls of outside air from a crack in a window, to not have to sleep just to evade the hollow boredom. It was relief; as if the hand of an angel had reached into the pits of hell, to bring him to salvation. And if that hand was one of the likes of Miller, he’d clasp it with both hands and not let go until the end was in sight.

“-we’ll still need to see improvement to give you certain privileges, but we can play it by ear. How does that sound?” Her voice finally tuned back in, a little hazy at the edges, tears of joy and relief threatening to fall from his eyes.

“When can I go? When do I move?” he blurted, the only question that mattered. Fuck, if she’d asked him to crawl through broken glass right now, he’d do it with a fucking smile on his face.

Her eyes flickered downwards as her wrist came up, a brief glance to her wristwatch as she pulled herself to a stand. “You’re just in time for recreation, and there’s no time like the present.” She rounded the desk, taking sure steps to the door and looking back. “Shall we?”

It was instinct to move as fast as his legs could take him, quickly snuffed out with the realisation of where he was. Slow, sure movements, make yourself as least threatening as possible. Keep hands visible at all times, open and by his sides. Three steps away from the doctor, passing many twists and turns of the corridor and being led through multiple sets of steel doors, until one was finally opened for him that he was expected to step through alone.

It wasn’t until the door slammed behind him that he finally looked up to take in his surroundings. Chipped and scuffed beige linoleum tiles, walls in just as sorry a state. Large windows that bathed the room in natural sunlight, though the bars on the windows were a reminder of where he truly was. A couple of tables and chairs dotted around the room, most occupied with other patients. Who seemed to be in various stages of lucidity. A couple of benches, some more chairs crowded around an ancient TV.

In any other situation, he would call this place what it was; an abject shithole. Somewhere he wouldn’t be if you paid him. But recent events had changed his mindset, had lowered his expectations until the bar was practically on the floor. This was a damn palace, compared to his last recent address. It had the lack of staleness in the air, albeit now replaced with bleach and something he couldn’t place. It had space, and light.

It had hope.

But with the luxury of choice, came the immobilising aspect to it. What the hell was he supposed to do now? Where was he going to sit, or do? Strike up conversation and hope that the person didn’t know about what had put him here in the first place?

He was still making his choice when he heard a voice. A woman, tone bored yet slight amusement playing on the words.

“Are you just going to stand there? You’re making the place look untidy.”

#eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson fanfiction #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things imagine #stranger things x you #stranger things x reader #cw: angst

214 notes · View notes

is-deltarune-chapter-3-out-yet · 10 months

Note

Is chapter 9163863275282538353825283638 out?

Chapter Nine septillion one hundred sixty three sextillion eight hundred sixty three quintillion two hundred eighty two quadrillion five hundred thirty eight trillion three hundred fifty three billion eight hundred twenty five million two hundred eighty three thousand six hundred and thirty eight is not out yet

#questions

37 notes · View notes

thetargaryenbride · 1 year

Text

Nail To The Coffin - S4 - Chapter 1

Warnings: unwanted groping, nightmares

Pairing: Steve Harrington x f!Byers!Reader

Word Count: 5070

𝐀𝐍: 𝘏𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘦 𝘨𝘰! 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘯 4! 𝘞𝘦'𝘳𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘢 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘯 𝘥𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘰𝘯 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘵'𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘢 𝘣𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘣𝘪𝘨. 𝘠𝘰𝘶'𝘭𝘭 𝘴𝘦𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯. 𝘐'𝘮 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘸𝘰 𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘐 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘯 4 𝘱𝘭𝘰𝘵. 𝘐'𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘌𝘥𝘥𝘪𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴. 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘯 5 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘴, 𝘐'𝘭𝘭 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘸𝘰 𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵~ 𝘐𝘵'𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘢 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘢 𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦.

𝐀𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬, 𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐝𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐦𝐞 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐢𝐟 𝐈’𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐜𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐎𝐎𝐂 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐛𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲. 𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘬 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘏𝘰𝘱𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘪𝘵! 🖤 🥀

Masterlist || S3, Chapter 9 || Chapter 2

LA, California, The Spring of 1986

“Dear Mike. Today is day one hundred eighty-five. Feels more like ten years. Joyce says time is funny like that. Emotions can make it speed up or slow down. We are all time travelers if you think about it. For example, this week is going very fast. I think because I’m so busy. I have to make something called a visual aid. I hope Mrs. Gracey will give me an A. Some exciting news. Joyce got an amazing new job. She gets to work at home. She says she loves the ‘freedom’. Will is painting a lot but he won’t show me what he’s working on. Maybe it is for a girl. I think there’s someone he likes because he has been acting weird. Jonathan is acting weird also. I think he’s just nervous about college. He is still waiting for his big letter. I hope he and Nancy get to go together. But I don’t know how he’ll get to college because his car is still broken. His funny friend Argyle has been taking us to school whenever Y/N can’t. His hair is longer than mine. And he and Jonathan like to smoke smelly plants together. Will got very angry when he found out. In fact, I don’t remember Will ever getting this mad at someone.”

Two Months Ago

“See you guys at dinner,” you waved at the two once they got out of the car and they bid you goodbye, watching you drive away, most probably heading to work or to do some other tasks. You had just dropped them off at home after finishing the classes for the day and the two were excited to get to their rooms, plop on their beds, and sleep until dinner, ignoring your words of ‘Don’t slack on your homework’.

But the moment they entered the house, a strange scent hit them, like someone was cooking something and had just taken the lid off just to be hit with the strong, smelly steam.

“Do you smell that?” asked Will as he sniffed, scrunching up his nose, and El frowned.

“It’s… weird.”

The boy threw his bag on the ground and followed the smell, El close behind, until it led him to his brother’s room. His hand grasped the doorknob and he gulped before slowly twisting it open, the sound of creaking filling the air.

“Wha-“ muttered the boy when he saw that pretty much the whole room was covered in smoke and at first he thought Jonathan might have accidentally lit something on fire. Then his eyes found his brother who was sitting at the edge of the bed near the window, smoking. And by the smell of it, Will immediately figured out that those weren’t normal cigarettes which hurtled him into a state of utter disbelief.

“Will-“ his brother was about to say but the boy in question turned to look at Eleven instead.

“El, could you give us a moment, please?” he asked the girl and she nodded slowly, eyebrows furrowed in confusion, before sneaking out of the room but staying glued to the wall so she could listen, curiosity overtaking her.

“It’s not what you think it is,” began Jonathan after Will shut the door and looked at him with such disappointment it pierced his heart like a rusty harpoon.

“What is wrong with you!? Are you out of your mind!?” raised his voice Will. “Why are you doing this? You know very well what Y/N went through. Even before the Flayer made her OD she’s been taking drugs for a long time. She’s clean now but you remember what Dr. Owens said!” reminded him the boy heatedly and Jonathan’s mouth opened and closed, unable to form words or find an excuse for his actions. “She can easily have a relapse and go back to taking drugs! Why are you smoking this shit? It’s not like she doesn’t already have a constant reminder of the hell she went through. Do you want to add up to it!?” his voice kept raising as he got more and more upset, and Jonathan looked at the floor, guilt visibly eating up at him.

“I’m sorry, I just,” sighed the boy regretfully. “I’ve been going through shit and…Argyle offered I try this. It’s been…truly helpful and I can’t find it in me to stop,” he admitted with sad eyes, and Will let out a long pained sigh, flabbergasted at his brother’s confession.

“We should-w-we should tell mom or Dr. Owens,” said the boy and Jonathan’s eyes widened, hands lifting as if he was about to protest. “This is a problem. A big problem in development. You need to get help. You need to stop this, a-and find another way to cope. We can’t risk Y/N having a relapse and we can’t risk you following in her footsteps,” spoke the boy with a shaky voice he was trying hard to keep firm and steady and his brother shook his head.

“No, no, I promise, this is not something dangerous, okay? It’s the same shit Eddie smokes! Okay? It’s not going to harm me. I swear! A-and I’ll try to hide it better! Y/N is not going to find out! She’s not even going to take a whiff of this shit, okay? I promise,” begged Jonathan and Will’s eyes darted left and right, frustration and concern gnawing at him, leg bouncing anxiously as he was being torn apart by the dilemma he was currently forced to face.

“I’ll…I’ll give you some time to stop smoking on your own…If you don’t do it in the next couple of months I’ll…I’ll tell mom.”

Those were his last words before he whirled on his heel and stormed out of the room, shutting the door with a deafening bang that made both Jonathan and Eleven flinch.

They have never seen the boy so mad and upset at someone else.

“He was very worried about Y/N and I understand him. I eavesdropped on them, which I’m not proud of, but I needed to know what was going on. I was worried too. I’m telling you now because it’s been two months so far and he’s still smoking those things. Me and Will don’t know what to do. Maybe you can give us some advice? Please, don’t tell the others, though. I don’t want Joyce or Y/N to find out. Speaking of Y/N… I know that you’re all worried and want to know more but…I’m still not sure if she’s gotten better or worse in the past months since the incident…Well, I guess it’s more of a year than a couple of months now. I can’t believe how fast time flies…”

“I’m home!” your voice resonated throughout the house and El gasped as if you had just caught her doing something she shouldn’t be, and she quickly finished the last couple of sentences before sealing up the letter properly and running down the stairs to greet you.

“Welcome home,” she grinned when she saw you in the kitchen, jacket, boots, and bag already gotten rid of, as you were in the midst of opening the fridge to take out some products and get dinner started.

“Is this another letter for Mike?” you asked curiously and she nodded. “Hang in there a bit more. Spring break is just around the corner and you’ll see him soon,” you smiled softly and she nodded, rushing out of the house in order to shove the item into the mailbox.

But her excitement got crushed after she closed the metal lid and faced the house, thoughts rushing back to what she had written in the letter. She and Will truly worried about Jonathan and they truly had no idea how to handle the current situation. Moreover, they were worried about you.

You began smiling again but it never quite reached your eyes as it did before, and there was now a certain air of melancholia that you carried – a constant companion of yours alongside the dark circles under your eyes and the hollow cheeks after losing quite some weight since the incident last summer.

They found themselves stuck at a crossroad where numerous paths intertwined and they didn’t know which one was the right one. They didn’t know which one to take to help you and Jonathan.

“Honey, why don’t you leave the dinner to me and you can go rest instead?” Joyce offered while you were busy cutting some onions and you hummed.

“Well…let me at least finish chopping the veggies and you can take over,” you agreed, making her smile. “I’ll go for a swim then,” you told her and her smile faltered a tad bit.

“You sure you’ll be okay alone out there?” she asked slowly, unsurely, and you let out a light snort.

“Mom, I’m good. I promise.”

“But-“ she sighed in defeat, knowing that she couldn’t stop you from going to the water no matter what she tried, and just relented. “Alright.”

Just half an hour later, she was watching you exit the house in your surf attire and with the board in arm, sharing concerned looks with Will, who had joined them in the kitchen shortly after you had gone to change out of your clothes, and El.

“Should we… tell Dr. Owens?”

“No…let her be.”

“Here again?” asked one of the lifeguards from his station the moment you reached the beach and you shot him a look that made him smile and lift his hands in surrender. “I know, I know. Just sayin’, doll.”

You let out a sigh of contentment at the way the sand grains felt when you curled your toes around them and took a couple of steps forward so the water could wash over them. You basked in the sun rays for a while before marching into the ocean and climbing on your board, using your hardened-from-practice arms to swim further into the soothing embrace of the water.

At the end of summer last year, your mother had been solid in her decision to move to another town. In the end, she had settled for LA because you were going to university there and she was adamant in her want to be there with you, just like the rest of your family was.

Dr. Owens, bless his heart, had agreed to lend you a hand. He had found you a beautiful house in a nice and quiet neighborhood where you could live in peace and stay low under the radar for Eleven’s safety. At the same time, you’d be able to go to university for your lections and then go back home to your family instead of being separated from them and having to live amongst strangers in some sorority. As if finding you a house wasn’t enough already, Owens made sure that it was fully furnished so the only things you had to take with you were your clothes and personal items. All of your furniture were back home in Hawkins, in your house which you didn’t end up selling because you had aggressively insisted that you wanted to have a place to come back to.

“You have been saving our bums for so long, and this year you might have as well saved the whole country. The least I can do is get you a nice house and help you keep this one,” had said the doctor which had made you immensely happy and grateful.

At first, moving in was hard. The first two months in particular were extremely rough – probably one of the hardest moments in your life. It had reached a point where you didn’t want to even look at the ocean. Then, it’s like someone flipped the switch in you, and being near the water turned into a coping mechanism.

Now you couldn’t imagine being away from it.

“You’re rocking it, sweet cheeks,” commented the lifeguard once you finally left the confines of the water, a tanned hand ruffling his golden curls as he flashed you a pearly white smile, looking you up and down with his bright blue eyes. He was the typical Californian handsome guy who every girl fawned over.

But in your eyes, Steve was unbeatable.

“And I’m still taken, Ronnie,” you huffed out as you squeezed your hair off of the excess liquid and he shrugged.

“A boy can try.”

“See you tomorrow,” you bid him goodbye with a wave and headed back in the direction of your house, rolling your eyes at what he shouted after you.

“And tell your Harrington that if he doesn’t come here to claim you, someone might steal you right under his nose!”

“Stars shining bright above you…Night breezes seem to whisper "I love you"…”

You found yourself in a room that was dark and cluttered with junk, closely resembling an attic. Somehow, it felt both familiar and unfamiliar. You turned around to get a better look at it, ears straining to hear the faint sound of music that was wafting through the air like the smell of freshly baked morning waffles, instantly making you feel a bit better about being all alone in the dark, calming you down.

“Birds singin' in the sycamore trees…Dream a little dream of me…”

Suddenly, the door opened, allowing a bit of light to pierce the darkness, and in entered a little boy, carrying a jar with something inside that you couldn’t quite put your finger on. He stilled when he saw you, eyes widening. Even in the dark, you could see how blue they were but also how sullen. His shocked expression melted into a scowl that didn’t quite suit his gentle features, and you reached out a hand, wishing to grasp his.

Then, the room began filling with water rapidly. The stable house began tearing apart plank by plank and you desperately tried to reach the boy and save him. He just stood there, unmoving, and watched on curiously until he got fully submerged and panic gripped at your heart. Shortly after, there was no sign of the house or the boy and you found yourself floating in the vast blue ocean.

At first, you didn’t get scared. You were confident in your swimming skills. But never mind how much you tried to swim to the surface, you wouldn’t budge. In fact, it seemed as if you were sinking more and more rather than reaching it. Your lungs burned and ached as you were running out of breath, the stale oxygen begging to be released and replaced by fresh one.

And then the panic settled in once again and you began kicking and trashing in your attempts at getting to the surface but yet again you kept sinking lower and lower, the light disappearing as you were once again shrouded in darkness. Vines wrapped around your ankles and pulled you down, down under, and the last thing you saw in the dark abyss before drowning was a set of familiar blue eyes glaring at you.

“Y/N!” someone yelled and your eyes snapped open as you shot up in bed and felt hands grasp your upper arms. “Breathe,” they instructed you. “Breathe!”

Only then did you realize you had been holding your breath, allowing only very small gulps of oxygen to pass through, your body so tense as if you had just jumped into ice-cold waters, every muscle in your body squeezed painfully.

You took a large gulp of air and felt instant relief fill you as you tried relaxing your body and focusing on calming your breathing.

“That’s right. In and out, slowly,” Will rubbed your back with one hand while the other held yours, eyes swimming with worry and lips folding as he gulped down the lump that had formed in his throat, his rapidly beating heart finally calming. For a moment he thought it was going to jump out of his ribcage.

“Thank you,” you breathed out as you leaned on his shoulder and let out a long exhale.

His room was right next to yours and the walls were thin enough. He had woken up when he heard loud, elaborated breathing and choking, and had immediately sprung out of bed and dashed to your room. This wasn’t the first time something like that would happen so he knew right away.

“Was it the same dream?” he inquired and you nodded.

“I just don’t understand,” you muttered as you pulled away and rubbed your temples. “I’m sorry for waking you. And thanks again.”

“Can I-Can I stay?” he asked timidly and suddenly all you could see was the baby brother who would always come to you after a bad dream.

“Of course, you can,” you smiled tiredly as you scooted over to make room for him and he climbed in properly, the two of you lying down.

Honestly, he was more scared about something happening to you again than anything, so he wanted to stay and make sure the rest of the night would pass by without any more nightmares or panic attacks.

“Aww, you don’t fit in my arms anymore,” you chuckled after you tried to wrap your arms around him and bring him in for a hug. “You’ve grown so much it’s unbelievable.”

“I guess…But if it weren’t for you, Jonathan, mom, and the others, I might not have gotten the chance to grow up at all. I mean…my point is… I don’t know what I’d do without you… and the others,” he muttered softly and you clicked your tongue, running your hand through his hair soothingly. “So, please don’t-“ he cut himself off because what was he supposed to say?

Please, don’t go? Please, don’t die? Please, don’t have panic attacks anymore? Please, don’t have episodes that could end up hurting you? It’s not like you had control over it. But it didn’t hurt to wish for you to be healthy and happy. It didn’t hurt to wish for all of this to never have happened and for everything to be like it used to. Mostly, he just wished that you were okay because he was afraid one day you would be swallowed by the trauma, leaving him alone. Every time you’d get panic attacks or other episodes, he’d feel like he was going mad with worry. Every time, he’d think of the worst possible scenario, and this constant paranoia and worry and fear were going to be the end of him.

He just wanted it to be over and everything to be normal again.

“Don’t go down this rabbit hole. Trust me, it never ends well,” you whispered and he hummed, closing his eyes.

“I’m just…scared,” he confessed and your eyebrows furrowed.

“Scared? Of what, baby?”

“I don’t know. It’s like…I have this gnawing feeling that something bad will happen…Please, don’t go to Hawkins,” he pleaded and you sighed.

“You know that I want to see Steve. It’s been some time,” you reminded and he just buried his head in the crook of your neck, making you release a long, heavy exhale and rub his back reassuringly.

“You’re thinking too much about it…I’m sure everything is going to be okay.”

Yet you didn’t believe your own words for a second.

“Wonderful assignment once again,” praised the professor as he casually strolled to your desk and passed you the graded paper. “I’m very proud of you, Miss Byers. But honestly, I’m not surprised. You are yet to present something unrefined, although something tells me you never will,” he grinned at you widely, dimples deepening, dark eyes crinkling into crescents, and you smiled.

“Thank you.”

Just then, the bell rang and the students who had received their papers back stood up and began gathering their things while the others stayed put to wait for the professor to hand them theirs.

“Not you, Byers. I need to talk to you. Stay in the room,” halted you the man and you stopped by his desk, waiting a couple of minutes until everyone left the vicinity and you were the only one left.

“I haven’t done anything wrong, have I?” you asked and he shook his head while rolling up the sleeve of his black shirt, and came to stand by your side, nonchalantly throwing a folder onto his desk.

“I wanted to show you this,” he pointed at it with his head, the silver earring on his left ear glinting on the light, and you turned your back on him, taking a step forward and opening the folder, eyes widening at the documents that lay inside.

“Hold on…is this-“

“I’ll be traveling to a couple of archeological sites in Egypt this summer and I’ll be taking a couple of students from the higher courses so they can experience the real deal of digging,” he explained. “You showed incredible knowledge at the beginning of the year so we transferred you to second year. And even then it seemed like you knew half the things already. Such a prodigy is only going to waste away stuck in here. You gotta go out there and gain some more experience. Those are all the documents you need for the practice program.”

“That’s…that’s incredible,” you muttered and he hummed.

And suddenly, you felt his presence too close for comfort. The hairs on your neck stood on end but before you could turn around, his front pressed against your back as he casually rested his chin on your shoulder and rubbed his nose against the side of your neck, inhaling your scent.

Your whole body froze, thighs clenching tightly in automatic response, as memories from that night at the diner invaded your mind.

“What are you doing?” you breathed out.

“I can’t let you go just yet, though. You’re just…too inexperienced,” he murmured. “But I can help with that. You’re a smart girl. You know how one gets to the top, don’t you?” he asked as his hands began roaming over your body, groping you, and you just stood there in shock and denial, not knowing what to do.

In your mind, you were screaming.

You did not expect that your funny, bubbly, smart professor who seemed to get along with everyone and had a sassy sense of humor and a way of roasting stupid people, was actually a total douchebag in disguise.

In your mind, you were screaming for Steve, for Eddie, for your brothers, for Hopper, to come and help you get out of this sticky situation.

And then it dawned on you.

Hopper.

He hadn’t spent all this time teaching you how to fight and defend yourself just so you could fall victim to nasty men again.

You took a sharp inhale and slammed your thick-heeled boot against his ankle, making him yelp and take a step back. You took that to your advantage and quickly turned around, gathering all determination, anger, and hurt you could, and delivered a swift punch to his jaw. He staggered and fell against one of the desks, hand immediately going to nurse his aching area. In the meantime, you took the folder with the documents and put more distance between you two.

The moment you exited, your calm façade shattered and you let out shaky breaths as you tried to compose yourself and keep the upcoming panic attack at bay. You shoved the folder in your bag before adjusting your hold on it, shouldering it properly as you walked down the hallway.

“Thank you for arranging everything for me. But I’d rather go with Professor Xavier. If you can accept me into your summer practice program, I’m sure he’ll have no problem accepting me into his... Have a good day,” you muttered as you took a couple of steps backwards, while he watched on with a stupefied expression, before completely turning around and briskly walking out of the classroom.

Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion around you and you couldn’t help but think that people were looking at you, laughing at you, whispering about you as they passed you by, covering their mouths with their hands and leaning to utter vile words in each other’s ears, eyes never leaving your form.

It felt as if they all knew what had just happened and thought of you as a dirty person, blamed you, thought you provoked him somehow. If you had a skirt, you would’ve pulled it down. But you had jeans instead. You didn’t understand how and why it happened. Have you done something to evoke such a reaction? Have you done something that made him think you’d agree to something like this?

Why were men like this? Why were they so filthy? So self-centered? Why did they think everything and everyone had to abide by them? Why did they think they had a right to do whatever they wanted without facing consequences? As if women weren’t human beings.

They disgusted you sometimes.

You had to keep reminding yourself that not everybody was like Steve, Eddie, your brothers, the rest of the party, Hopper. How different would’ve the world been if they were, though?

You saw yet another pair of girls pass you by, their eyes burning your flesh as they whispered something, and you quickly pulled the sleeves of your leather jacket and shifted your arm out of their range of vision as your pace increased.

You just wanted to hide somewhere and breathe. You wanted to be able to breathe properly and freely because that’s something you hadn’t been able to do since the incident last summer.

You couldn’t wait for spring break to come because at least then you’d get to spend time with Steve and the others who you missed dearly. Maybe going back to Hawkins and spending time with them was what you needed to finally have a breakthrough and get that gulp of fresh air that you craved so you could finally move on and heal those wounds that you were unable to prior to now.

You wanted to finally go back home.

“So, how was your day?” Joyce asked, now your turn having come to share how your day went, and you shrugged, shoving a spoonful of chicken soup in your mouth and making everyone share a look. “Honey, you’re awfully quiet today. Is everything alright?” your mom asked again and you sighed, forcing a smile.

“It’s…more than alright, actually,” you began. “It seems my professors hold me-” you gulped and clenched and unclenched your hands nervously. “-in high regard. They offered me to accompany them on a couple of archeological trips, part of a summer practice program for the higher-course students,” you explained as you tried to force down the nauseating feeling that flooded you.

“What? But that’s wonderful!” exclaimed your mother, grinning from ear to ear and the rest smiled brightly.

“I knew you could do it! Never doubted you for a second,” El added and suddenly it wasn’t that hard to keep up the fake smile if it meant that your family would be happy and at ease. Besides, it’s not like you were lying. You were simply…not telling the whole story.

“Thank you…I can’t wait to tell Steve and the others.”

“I’m sure they’ll be ecstatic. Eddie especially is going to jump up and down, I just know it,” joined Jonathan and you chuckled.

“I can already form an image. But anyways, did you guys know that when you're underwater sound bypasses your eardrum and the bones of your middle ear and travels to the inner ear? This is called bone conduction and it apparently allows us to hear sounds underwater that are much higher in pitch than those we hear on land,” you rambled on and Jonathan, who was still high, scrunched up his face as he tried to concentrate on what you were saying, staring at you with dumb expression, and Will kicked his foot under the table, making him jump a little. “In one study, participants were able to hear frequencies as high as 200,000 hertz underwater, which is ten times higher than the top frequency that people are able to hear on land. Being underwater just seems magical, doesn't it?”

“Honey, you're getting more and more into this...whole marine thing. Are you considering becoming a maritime archaeologist or something?” asked Joyce curiously, eyebrows raised, and you shrugged.

“I'm actually...not sure about that yet,” you looked down at your bowl, swaying the spoon left and right, forming patterns in the soup. “I'm still fascinated by Egypt and other ancient civilizations and I wish to explore the old history of our world that's been buried and hidden. But one day perhaps, I wouldn't mind exploring the ocean too. After all, a lot of land got swallowed by the water throughout the centuries. Imagine what you can find down there,” you hummed as you scooped some of the liquid and popped the spoon in your mouth.

“Well, I can't,” slurred Jonathan. “I feel like I'd just suffocate the moment I dive in.”

“And since when are you claustrophobic?” you arched a brow and Will sighed, rubbing his temple in exasperation at his brother’s recklessness and irresponsibility.

“Okay, guys, let’s finish this up quickly,” ushered them Joyce, noticing something out of the ordinary in Jonathan’s and your behavior but choosing to let it slide for now and not pressure her children into talking about it, while pouring some refreshing lemonade in each of your glasses. “We gotta go to bed early today if we want Y/N to be on time for her flight tomorrow.”

“It’s kinda funny, isn’t it?” El tilted her head. “Mike is coming here tomorrow and Y/N is leaving. They’re gonna pass each other.”

“Yeah, honestly I regret that I won’t be able to see him but who knows? We might still get an opportunity.”

The only person who deflated at the mention of Mike’s arrival and your department and didn’t seem to be excited about it at all, the only person who wasn’t as bubbly and hyper as the others because he had a horrible, gnawing feeling that wouldn’t let him be at peace, was Will.

He just played with his food and silently watched the others converse, worried eyes following your form as if afraid you were going to be swallowed by the sand.

He did not want you to return to Hawkins.

__________________________

Tags: @anxiousbeech @ooenjoythesilenceoo

#stranger things x reader #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things reader insert #steve x reader #steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington x reader #eddie x reader #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson fanfic #will byers x reader #jonathan byers x reader #max mayfeild x reader #reader #reader insert #hopper x reader #SoundCloud #Spotify

55 notes · View notes