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[christianniro21]

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[yeyinde]

STRAW HOUSE, STRAW DOG

Baby Trap + Soap x Fem!Reader : or, Johnny finds a wife in the woods and decides to take her home.

18+ | DEAD DOVE, DO NOT EAT: noncon, kidnapping, breeding/baby trapping. somnophilia. implied stalking. obsessive behaviour. forced reliance/dependency. non-con drug use (implied). vulnerable character (injured reader) being preyed upon by an opportunistic scavenger.

Somehow, getting hurt in the remote wilderness of Nahanni National Park without any immediate rescue is the least of your worries when a rugged man shows up and claims he's going to help. Out here, you've been told your biggest fear should be bears, steep canyons, and a swift death with fangs and claws.

But maybe you should have been more concerned about strange men with crowlike smiles and blistering eyes.

ADDITIONAL TAGS: descriptions of injury. implied head trauma. bearded Soap. smut. this is my love letter to NWT and a what not to do in a national park.

BABY TRAP MASTER LIST | AO3 LINK

It happens in an instant. 

The trek up the fjord narrows suddenly. Chossy growing slick from rainfall the night prior. You pace yourself, stepping carefully on the wobbling slate, testing its resilience before you take another step. Climbing higher. Higher.

There's a storm brewing in the distance. Its burgeoning pace grows rapidly, nipping at your heels as cool winds whistle through the steep valley below.

The park wardens at the visitors centre warned you about it when you set out into the rugged wilderness of Nahanni this morning. Brows pinched, wary, when you'd come to them—all alone—and signed your name on the barren ledger collecting dust on the counter. A fact that drew your attention when you flipped through the empty pages. 

Don't get too many visitors around here, the man murmured, eyes cresting in apprehension at your question. Not the most isolated or remote, no. That's probably higher up. Quttinirpaaq, maybe? Heard from some buddies up there that they had no visitors last year. We do pretty well. About one thousand a year? Usually filmmakers and the like. Adventurous types. Gets kinda lonely up here. Ain't no Banff, that's for sure.

They added that the weather was unpredictable this time of year. All year, really. Nahanni is known for sudden swells and white-outs, for weather that can turn in an instant, going from calm to cataclysmic within seconds. 

(“Storms,” the man huffs, and you think the sigh was meant to be a laugh. One that falls flat when he takes in your hiking boots (too big, but the sales lady at the sporting goods warehouse assured you it was fine, that you would grow into them), and your cheap Lululemon knock-off tights. Your flimsy rucksack. The tinge of green around your ears; the stench of an overeager novice. “And, uh, it’s urban legends.”)

Valley of the Headless Men, he intones, squinting up at you when you ask about them. Adding: be careful out there when you turn to leave.

Dauntless, you still set out into the park, determined to at least make it to your campground before it set in. But the majesty surrounding you on all sides distracted you from your pace. Eyes caught on the Xanadu of an untempered wilderness slowing your trek to a crawl as you took in the steep, rolling batholiths reaching high into the aether, their sides sloping down in a dizzying, vertiginous drop to a lush valley below of scheele’s green below. It all looked so perfectly symmetrical from the high point in the valley where you stood, breathing in the scents that perfumed the air. With the rugged mountains cupped around a winding white line where the river sawed through. 

A lone moose grazed at the bottom of a rolling fell. The sight of her stopping you in your tracks long enough that the plume of darkened clouds—all a terrifying burnt sage—had time to catch up to you, crackling overhead as thunder rumbled through the canyons. 

Your campground is at the top of this ravine. Three nights spent inside a cabin with nothing but yourself and several paperbacks for company. Into the Wild amongst them—a morbid parting gift from a friend on what not to do—and its inspirational predecessor, On the Road. 

You won't read it. You never do. But it sits, a humourous paperweight, in your rucksack as you clamber up the ravine. An anchoring comfort. A piece of home. Something that reminds you you're not completely alone even though you are. 

The book, your friends, and the encroaching loneliness that you feel prickling behind your eyes, all weigh on your mind. Spooling out before you in loose, loop threads. You follow them eagerly, glad for something to abate the unnatural silence, and—

A sound.

It comes from the left, hidden in the thick tangle of furze. A click. It shatters through the eerie quiet of the sprawling boscage. An animal, maybe. Hopefully. 

It must be, you think, heart hammering thunderously in your chest. There's a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. You hold your breath. Eyes glued on the thatch of green shrubs lining the base of the dense forest. 

Nothing happens. You blink, shifting on your feet—

A red line pierces through the gap between the leaves, aimed straight at your ankle. It's thin, diaphanous. Slips over the scraggy rock like liquid.

It's so out of place here that it takes you a second to familiarise yourself with its unexpected presence. A laser—

An explosive boom fills the ravine the moment the thought connects. A rifle. Aimed right at you. It happens fast. The world turning over itself, spinning right off its axis. You fall against the ledge in a crumpled, heavy heap, legs so close to dangling off the precipice. 

Gravity is a choking weight on your sternum, pushing you down, down, toward the jagged, rocky shoreline. A fall like that—

You curl into yourself instinctively. 

“Ah, shite—” is all you hear amid the roar in your ears. “Y’alright? ah didnae see ye thare—”

In your tear-stained periphery, a man appears. He stands into the glare of the waning sun, limned in a halo of gold. There's a pinch between his dark, thick brows. A steep ravine.  He's ragged. Wild. Tuffs of black hair hang loose past his ears and nape, curling slightly at the ends. It blends, almost seamlessly, into his thick, scraggly beard. He pushes a hand through the top, grabbing a fistful in his palm.

“Easn't expecting anybody oot 'ere. Nae this far intae th' woods.”

He seems to be speaking to himself more so than he's talking to you. There's anger writ in the fine lines of his face, but this ire isn't turned toward you. It's inward. Self-admonishment. His eyes darken when they flicker down to your ankle, as if reminding you of the hurt there when you'd been so focused on how out of place his accent is in the Northwest Territories.

The ache in your ankle brings you crashing back into reality. The pain seems to vibrate from within your marrow, riveting up your bones. 

You chance a glance—

You swallow down the drum of panic. A trick of the light. It must be. 

A dream. A nightmare. 

But the man appears. His hand falls onto your knee, holding you steady. 

“Ah will hae tae put oan a tourniquet. Will hurt a lot, doe.” 

Absently, you nod. Keep nodding. Can't stop. 

There's a hole cut through your ankle. Tore thro' yer Achilles, he's saying, words water in your ears. He instructs you to wiggle your toes.

"Ah know it hurts, but just dae it fer me, okay?"

You do. You—

Nausea buds in your guts, churning your stomach. The apple you ate earlier is choked out into the bushes dotting along the ravine. Insides purging themselves, replacing everything—food, water, coffee from earlier, bile—until nothing but shaky panic remains. It tastes like iron in the back of your throat. 

“Ah know, doe,” he's saying, fingers knotting into your slick hiking trousers. Lululemon knockoffs from an outdoor warehouse in the city. A pocket knife follows, and cuts a seamless line inches below your hip. 

Sad tae see ‘em go, he murmurs, accent thickening around the words. Saturating them in a drawl that's too liquid for your unpractised ears to catch. He makes a mournful sound when he slides the blade down your leg, adds, “hugged yer arse like a dream, doe.”

Another trick. The mountains do funny things to sound, you know. It must be all in your head. All—

“Don't worry,” he's shushing you now as he peels the fabric off your legs, groaning low in his throat. “Ah have ye. Ah will take care o'ye, tae, doe. Bonny thing, aren't ye? a' alone. Nae anymore, doe. Jus' me 'n' ye now. Jus' us —”

You always thought you'd have your wits about you in a traumatic situation. Be able to think clearly, rationally. Make appropriate decisions that befit the situation unfolding. Life saving ones. Practical. 

To gear up for this trip, you watched survival videos on YouTube. How to make a fire. How to make drinking water. How to build a shelter. Tips on weathering down for a sudden storm. Tucked it all inside your head, and thought, I got this. 

Had to, really, because everything you've read about Nahanni says it's unpredictable. Calm weather, gorgeous views one moment, and then a sudden deluge the next. Snow falling quicker than you keep up with. Animals blend in seamlessly with the landscape. Slips, falls. It's so easy to get lost, someone wrote. 

But as he uses the scrap of your trousers to wrap around the wound on your broken, mangled ankle, you realise all that planning was for nothing. This was one of those moments when you discovered just how much you bit off. That panic made you mute, made you freeze up. 

The pain is almost secondary to the surge of adrenaline. Fear.

You need to go home. You tell him this, slowly. Muttered through numb lips. 

There's something almost like pity in his eyes when he glances up at you. 

There was a mix-up, he says, slowly. Cautiously. You got yourself turned around in the opposite direction. There's no campground on the fjord above. All the lodges and cabins are in the opposite direction. 

Y'got lost, he tells you. Turned the wrong way out. Ye'r in th' backcountry.

“I'll go back,” you press, urgent. Insistent. Panic is acidic in your throat. Corrosive. It burns when you swallow. “Please, just tell me which way to go, and I’ll—”

"Cannae dae tha'."

“Why?”

“Storm,” he points in the distance where a plume of cloud gathers. So dark, they're almost black. Ominous. “Gonnae skelp solid. Na choice but tae git oot."

“I don't have anywhere to go—”

He rakes his hand through his hair. “Ah kin take ye tae mines. Git a cabin in th' woods. Juist ootdoors o' Nahanni Butte.” 

“No, I—”

His hand squeezes tight around your ankle. The pain makes itself known in a visceral, awful throb that travels up your leg, curdling at the base of your spine. Wrong, wrong. Something is wrong. Your body is trying to reject the agony. The breaking of your bone. It's foreign, it doesn't belong. But there's nowhere for it to go. 

Pain pulses in tandem with your heartbeat. 

You don't realise you're screaming until you hear the echoes of it rebound against the limestone walls. And then there's a whisper in your ear. You feel the scratch of his beard against your cheek.

"Shush, bonnie. Cannae let ye go oot oan yer own. Gonnae take ye home, yeah?"

Home. Home. You nod furiously, and it's only when the scraggly black curls covering his chin and jaw catch on damp skin do you realise you're crying. 

He leans away from you, arm stretching toward the rucksack behind him. 

The rifle leans against it. You feel sick all over again. 

“Drink this,” he says, unscrewing the cap. “It'll make ye feel better.” 

He presses the lip to your mouth, a hand slipping over the back of your head, tilting your chin up. “Drink,” he says again, and it's firmer this time. A command. “Ah promise ye'll feel better, doe.” 

It tastes bitter. You swallow it down. Keep swallowing.

“Good,” he rasps, hand sliding down the length of your spine until it rests against your lower back. “Keep drinkin’, sweet thing.”

It pools in your belly, sloshing uncomfortably when you move, but it washes the bitterness from between your teeth. You keep drinking. Swallowing it down. You know you shouldn't, that you might get sick again, but it's a distraction from the mess that is your ankle—bloody, twisted, mangled—

Nausea swells. You choke it down until you can breathe without feeling as though you were going to be sick again. 

“You'll be okay,” he's saying, moving around you with a practised efficiency for something so broad. It's almost graceful. Agile. 

He patches you up as much as he can with the supplies he has, but you refuse to look again at your ankle. It's broken, that much is clear. You can feel your bones grinding, sliding against each other. The sensation is horrific. Wrong. You turn your head to the ledge you were standing on just to distract yourself from the agony of it all. 

You're surprised you're not crying. Screaming. The urge is there, just beneath the surface. But for some odd, unfathomable reason you find you can't. Your chest feels heavy. Lungs sluggish. Slow. 

It must be an adrenaline crash, you think. Why else would you feel so tired, so exhausted. 

“I'm—” you start, but you feel dizzy. “‘m—”

“Shush, doe.” He mutters, and it sounds far away. Garbled. “You need yer rest. Had a traumatic accident. But don't worry. Ye can trust me. A wouldnae let anythin' ill happen tae ye ever again."

“Yeah,” you breathe, nodding. Nodding. You can't stop, can't—

“Lay back. Git some rest. A'm almost done, 'n' then ah will hae ye back home in no time—”

You come to on a groggy whimper, head buried in the messy locks curtained over his nape. There's a soft, pulsing thud in the back of your head when you try to lift it up. It feels heavier than it should. Leadened. You groan again, fighting against the currents dragging you back down to those soporific depths—

Your head is a slurried marsh. Thoughts ephemeral, broken. Fragmented. They slip through your fingers when you reach for them, diaphanous wisps you can't seem to catch. 

“Don't worry, doe—” your world quivers when he speaks. Words vibrating through your chest, catching on the heavy rails of your ribs. The seismic vibrations rumble in your ear, coming to life as a mere echo in your head. “Ah will keep ye safe.”

It's comforting. A raft in squall, something to cling to as the waves make futile attempts to drag you under. Your arms, dangling loosely over his shoulders, sluggishly flatten to his chest, linking over his chest. 

He grunts at your touch, palms slick on your skin. 

“Thank you,” you slur, words thick in your throat. Sluggish. “Thank you for helpin’ me. Fer savin’ me—”

Your body shakes when he trembles. With your forehead against his nape, you hear his thick swallow. The air ghosting out of his lungs in a soundless whisper. 

His hands flex around the backs of your knees. Squeezing tight. The man doesn't say anything for a moment. In the silence, the pursuing somnolence catches up to you. It digs heavy fingers into your eyes, dragging you back down into the sticky, thick tar. 

Sleep finds you in an instant. 

You try to read his words in the quiver of your bones when he speaks. Make sense of the tremble reverberating through the hollow gaps, tangling in the pulpy mess. 

But there's a mistranslation somewhere. A missing decibel. A forgotten wavelength.

It almost sounds like he says—

“Wouldn't leave mah wife alone in th' woods like tha’.”

How funny, you think, and hide a giggle into the hardened ridge of his shoulder blade. 

Cognisance is a transient flicker.

You're not sure how long he matches through the thicket with you on his back, navigating the unending chaparral with an ease that feels innate rather than practised. You stare down at the ground, world hazy around the edges, and think, suddenly, intrusively, that you ought to remember the steps. Every left, every right. 

You get to seven lefts, three rights—a small ravine, a flattened coppice; a gnarled spruce sat alone in a valley of lush green and clumps of topaz podzol—before your eyes are too heavy to keep open. They slip shut. And you think, only for a moment. Just a second, I just need to rest my eyes, and then come to at the sound of a groggy engine growling to life. 

The world morphs from a dense forest intercut with sheer cliffs looming, indomitable, in the grey distance, to the faded beige felt covering the ceiling of an old truck. 

Your blink is a slow crawl, lashes weighed down by anchors dredging over the seafloor. Gritty, raw. It hurts, now, to hold them open. A furious throb jabs at your temple. It aches like a bruise. But it's nothing compared to the nauseating agony that floods your core each time your foot is jostled. Nerves being lit aflame in an endless throe of pain unlike you'd ever experienced before. 

Your mouth feels sealed when you go to speak. Lips glued together. Sluggishly, you squeeze your tongue through the crack between your teeth, licking along the seam. 

A plastic bottle appears in your periphery, nozzle tipped toward your mouth. A hand curls around the body of it. Fingers overlapping. It looks small in this big hand. Tiny. Long wisps of black hair cover their ruddy knuckles, spreading in a dense crop up their forearm, growing thicker at the wrist. 

Their skin is pale, tinged slightly pink. Even through the brume, the lambent light of the sun catches on their skin. Illuminating small scars, cuts. Little scratches from the snagging furze. 

Their hand shakes. The dark veins that branch off from the white-capped peaks of their bent knuckles pulse under the thin skin when they move. 

“Drink, hen,” he murmurs, bringing the bottle to the jut of your lower lip. “Ye’ll need it.” 

A plastic bottle is an odd choice to bring into the backcountry, but as you peer through the translucent skin, you find the water inside is cloudy. Chalky. 

“Donnae worry—” he gives the bottle another shake, disturbing the sediment congealing at the bottom. “It's electrolytes, ken. Nothing fishy.”

Your teeth ache from the cold when he slips the rim between your lips, prying them apart. With your head already tilted back in the seat, the water slips in. A slow trickle. He feeds it to you, humming in appeasement when you swallow. 

“Tha’s a good girl.” 

It carves a jagged tunnel through the murk in your head. The praise slipping in, liquid, until it coats your burgeoning trepidation in a sudden swell of endorphins. With their unpractised, gauche hands, they paint a mockery of Sargent in the gaps of your synapses, stuffing the spaces between with oversaturated hues of teal, white, yellow, orange, and pink. 

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. 

But despite the shoddily crafted pastiche, it works. 

Your eyes flutter, bones growing heavier, heavier, as they're forced to carry the weight of your liquified flesh. This molten heat in your chest turns your insides into putty.  

Water dribbles down your chin. He sees it and coos.

“Ah, doe. Right mess ye are now. Ah will hae ye home in no time. Git ye a' cleaned up."

The idea of home melts you further. You sigh in the seat, soft and drawn out, and shake your head slowly when he wriggles the bottle in front of you again. 

“Get some rest, doe,” his hand falls, heavy and warm, on your thigh. Thumb stroking along the curve of your leg, fingers curling into the seam, digging deep. Resting there. 

It's too high to be appropriate. You know this. Went through lesson upon lesson in school of bad touches and what's considered friendly, polite. But when you try to open your mouth to say something about it, you catch the spread of his palm over your flesh. Wide, broad. Masculine. It catches in your throat, and gets tangled in the mush at the base. 

It should be fine, you think, dizzy over the way his hand swallows you whole. He saved you, after all. 

But it burrows. Digs deep. Some sense of wrongness permeates out from the firm grasp he has on you. It feels possessive. The sort of thing you might expect between people who are intimate with each other. A couple. You've known him for—

Hours, maybe? 

Most of it was spent in a pain-induced hypnagogia. 

It curdles in your stomach. Rotten, spoiled milk. 

But—

He saved you. 

You'll choke yourself on it if you keep thinking about it. So, you don't. You push it down. Cover it beneath the sediment, and bury it deep. 

He's just a man. 

Kind. Helpful. 

As you dig a hole for this unease, he keeps his hand fixed on your thigh. The other is pressed against the steering wheel, the ball of his palm under the curve at the top of the wheel. Relaxed. Easy. You try to adopt his nonchalant disposition and glance out at the blurry world around you. 

You feel exhausted. Unsettled. The sort of fatigue that comes with a raging fever. There's sand in your mouth. Your throat is dry. 

You don't ask for water. 

In the lull, he pitches the truck forward with a grave rumble. The silence is broken by the crunch of vegetation and gravel beneath the wheels as he ploughs forward. 

There are public roads to get to Nahanni. The floatplane you entered into the park on was chartered by Parks Canada. And yet—

He commandeers the truck around a flatbed of rock and dirt. Muskeg dots the tops in some places, and he veers expertly to avoid them. 

It's less of a traditional road and more so a forged desire path. You know the highway has to be close by, the link between Fort Liard and Fort Simpson, but as you peer out the window, the world around you looks overgrown. Wild. Alien. 

Sloping hills in lush green stretch out into the distance, meeting with the dense montane forests dotted along the stretch of land. The grassy coppice under his wheels is matted down, and interspersed with clumps of brown, wet muskeg and crushed slate. 

Over the grey peaks of the mountains in the distance, a thick, black cloud looms. The sky turns gunmetal, almost indistinguishable from the monoliths jutting beneath them. 

At some points, he takes his hand off your thigh to navigate winding turns better, but it always ends up back on you. And always a little higher than it was before. 

Your mouth is filled with lead. Tongue thick, malleable. Tensile like mercury. You can't speak. So you just ignore it. Dig your crown into the headrest, and breathe in the woodsy scent of him. Laurel, tree moss. Coumarin. Rotting pine. Sweet acacia. It tickles the back of your throat. Sticks there, glued in the syrupy mess. 

You'd hoped it would get easier to ignore, but it stays there, a constant weight, even as the world outside fades into a hazy twilight. 

In the hush of the cabin, he squeezes your thigh. “Cannae wait tae get ye home, doe.”

Against the staggering backdrop of a black, jagged mountain, a doe stands in the talus. Her fawn fur and tuffs of white spots stick out against the charcoal-coloured cliffs, and you watch, some distance away, as she bends down to fossick through the scree in search of food. 

With the looming clouds of gunmetal and ash gathering around the craggy peaks, her presence here feels dangerously out of place. Jarring. She shouldn't be here. She doesn't belong. 

But the beauty of this moment is breathtaking. Mesmerising. You stare in muted horror, awe, as she grazes in the rubble, slender neck bent in a graceful arch. The sloping handle of fine china. Her wet, black eyes are so open, so kind. Puddles of ignorance, naïvety, as she flicks her tongue out against the desolate rock, a fruitless search for grass in which to mull on. 

Thunder crackles over the snow-capped ridges. Her ears flicker, but she doesn't run. You should warn her. Scare her away. But you can't move. Can't speak. You're a mute spectator, a piece of dross on the ground watching the approaching calamity without a mouth. Horror churns. You want so badly to tell the doe to run—

An impossibility, you know. It's much too late for her to do anything at all. 

Around the doe’s leg is a shackle. 

Your skin rips, tears, as you force your jaws apart, blood pooling in your mouth. If you can make a sound, she’ll—

A boom echoes through the canyon's cradle. 

The scream gurgles in the back of your throat. 

Agony rips through your leg—

—you wake with a gasp. 

Sputtering, choking on the saliva pooled in your mouth. It tastes bitter, brackish. You feel something gritty between your teeth. It sticks to the backs, granular specks that dissolve, sour and chalky, on your tongue when you run it along the ridges of your gums.

You swallow it down, grimacing at the acidic taste. 

“Awake, aye?” His voice chips through the dense fog. You blink the haze away, glancing sideways at him through bleary, heavy eyes. 

His profile is lit by the harsh glare of high noon. The sharp jut of his ball cap. The curve of his nose set in the thick bushel of his scraggly beard and moustache. His broad chest concealed most of the view from the driver's side window. The lax bridge of his arm, knuckles loosely curled around the steering wheel.

He tilts his head toward you. “How're ye feelin’?”

Sluggish. Awful. There's sand in your eyes. Cotton in your head. You feel like you've been left out in the hot sun all day. Dizzy and sunburnt. Feverish. Heatsick. Your throat is dry, but you don't ask for water. You don't answer him at all. Can't. Your tongue is laden. Lips numb. 

It takes you a moment to reorient yourself, squinting through the glare of the sun—

That reels you back. Breaks through the fog. 

You know that the concept of day and night in the summer is different here. Twenty hours of daylight with twilight lasting all night. But even with the skewed perception of time and the heavy molasses thickening around the edges of your cognisance, you know that something is wrong. 

When you left the park, it was close to five in the evening. It should be twilight, not—

Your gaze lists sluggishly to the clock on the dashboard. Through the haze, the unmistakable gleam of one-fifteen stares back at you. 

It was the right time last night. 

“Wha—?”

You're not sure what you're asking. It's not even really a word, but a garbled sound. A noise of distress, confusion, in the back of your throat. 

He seems to understand it all the same. 

“Park had a bad storm,” he answers, pitch far too light for the severity of your situation, of what you're feeling. It makes you frown, sharp and sudden. “Washed through th’ river. Where ye were—well. Wouldnae ‘ave made it out, ye see. Would’ve gotten all torn up in th’ storm—”

You read that storms in Nahanni are vicious, sudden. Weather can turn in an instant, going from moderate to devastating in a blink. But—

What he's saying doesn't make sense. You remember bits, pieces, from earlier. He said you got turned around. Wandered too far off the trail, lost in the deep wilderness of Nahanni’s sprawling valley. 

“Where are we?”

“Nearly home.”

You push the wave of nausea down. “I need to go to a hospital.”

“Can't dae tha't'.”

“Why not?”

He doesn't answer for a beat, eyes fixed on the dirt path. Unblinking. 

Finally, he mutters: “had tae leave th' park oan th' opposite side when th' storm came in. No roads take us tae town.”

“I have—” you're not sure where your bag is. You hope he had the wherewithal to snatch it up after you fell. Hope. “I have a satellite phone. I can just call—”

“Sorry, hen. Yer bag flew off th' ledge. Ah coudnae grab it 'n' ye. Ah dinnae hae a phone oot 'ere. Never needed one—”

Hopeless. Hopeless. 

“How—how could you survive out here without one?”

“Nahanni Butte is a few hours awa'. Go intae town when th’ winter road is open. Inaccessible now. Th’ rivers flooded it. Cannae cross it. Can hunt, 'n' ah hae everything a'm needin' oot here.”

“So…” the reality of your situation is beginning to dawn on you. Helpless. Hopeless. “I'm stuck here until—winter?”

“Ah hae a friend flying oot fae Yellowknife. Comes tae drop off supplies 'n' th' lik'. He'll be 'ere in two months—”

“Two months?” This whole situation feels impossible. Wrong. You're so close to people—Fort Liard, Nahanni Butte, Fort Simpson. How could you be stuck here for two months? The idea of it is absurd. “You're not—you can't be serious.”

“Aye. I am.” 

There's a pinch between his brow. You wonder if it's meant to convey the severity of the situation, but as it grows deeper, deeper, you have the sudden sense that it's not an emotional decree of his sincerity. That it's, instead, a sudden twist of anger. 

It scares you. 

“I want to go home.” You mean for it to be forceful, but it comes out in a whimper. 

The man nods. The punch in his brow lessens. “Aye, me tae.” 

“Where are you from?” You pry, needing the distraction from the endless trawl of green and slate and permafrost enclosing in on you. “You're not from around here, are you?” At the gentle raise of his brows, you add, hurried, rushed: “you just. Have an accent, and I—”

“Fae Scotland,” he answers, and there's a quick grin on his face. Roguish. Charming. The sight of it has your start thudding in an uneasy gallop. “Edinburgh."

“Oh. Far from home.”

“Aye—” the grin fades, twisting into something ugly. “Had an—accident,” he spits the word out, brows pinching once more. Anger is writ in the hard clench of his muscles, his jaw. His knuckles blanche around the steering wheel, and you think you should have just kept your mouth shut. “Sent me here.”

There's a multitude of questions you want to ask. Vying for the top is the most obvious—why did this happen? why isn't he letting you go?—but what comes out instead is, “why?”

Just that. Nothing else. 

“Military.” 

He adds nothing, either. 

“Military?”

A nod. “Go’ hurt. Had rehab. Sent me here tae clear ma heid, and well—” his eyes flicker to you. You can't read his expression. “Got a fresh mission, dinnae I?”

“You don't—”

“I cannae leave ye. Both oo' us are stuck 'ere 'til someone comes tae pick us up, 'n' take us home.” 

The idea that somehow he's just as trapped as you are hasn't occurred. Why would it when he has a rifle, a truck, freedom—

But what good is all of that when you're landlocked in a place known for winter roads. Permafrost. The forced shift in perspective doesn't quell the anxiety roiling in your guts, but it lessens it. Somewhat. 

“Two months?”

He nods. “Aye.”

“And you have no cellphone? No satellite?”

“Ye can check it—” he makes a flippant motion toward the glove box in front of you. “Deader than ever.”

You hesitate only briefly. Long enough to level him with a searching look that yields no results before you reach for the compartment, gingerly pulling it open, and—

Sometimes, things get overlooked by their surroundings. Swallowed in the vacuum. Blending seamlessly into the muddle, the commotion. 

This isn't like that. 

It sits on top of a manila folder. Sleek black and cold silver. You're not terribly well-versed in guns—the extent of your knowledge stemming mostly from formulaic crime shows aired late at night; CSI, NCIS, Criminal Minds—but you recognise this one instantly. Some sort of handgun. Police issued, you think. It's bigger than you'd expected. Looks heavier, too. 

Your heart stutters. The air galloping out of your lungs in a stammering rush. 

He makes a noise, soft and nonchalant, as if keeping handguns in the glove box of his old, burnt orange truck is perfectly normal. 

“Fer protection,” he mumbles. You catch the jerk of his chin in your periphery. “Forgot I had it in here. Been usin’ th’ rifle fer huntin’ mostly. Or th’ shotgun.”

Three guns. You swallow. “Why—” your voice comes out in a brittle whisper. You clear your throat. “Why, um, why do you need three?”

“Not fae around here, are ye?” He echoes your words with a wry twist of his mouth, eyes slanting in the sunlight. “Tha’,” he takes his hand off your thigh to jab his finger at the handgun. “Is fer wolverines.” His index finger falls, his thumb juts out. He jerks it over his shoulder. “Tha’ is fer huntin’. The shotgun back home is fer bears.” 

You try to move out of the way when his hand falls back to your thigh, but the pain radiating up your leg immobilizes you. There's not much you can do in this situation but endure.

Military. Wounded in action. Three guns. Touchy. 

You're not sure what to think. It would be easier if you couldn't. 

“What do you hunt?” You ask instead, glancing out the window to the barren landscape rolling out around you. There doesn't seem to be much in the jagged hills, and towering mountains. 

“Gettin’ hungry? Donnae worry, doe. Go’ tha’ pesky hare I was tryin’ tae shoot oan th' ledge fer dinner tonight.” 

It's not much of a comfort. The idea of being injured—by accident, he claims—to such an extent over a rabbit makes you feel a little sick. 

“That's it?”

“I can make a mean steak oot o' anythin'. Stews fer tougher meat. Fish—whitefish, arctic grayling, and lake trout. Learned how tae make a nasty fishfry from th’ locals in Nahanni Butte. Bannock, too. Got berries ‘round ma cabin. Caribou, Moose. Taste better in tacos or burgers. Mountain goat, Dall’s sheep. Been eatin’ better ‘ere than ah did at home.”

“And you're—just allowed to hunt them?” The website advised about a permit through some special outfit needed to hunt when you requested your pass into the park. Said that only aboriginals were allowed to do so. “You're not—”

“Aye,” he cuts you off with a small nod. “No huntin’ in th’ park. But. We're nae in th' park anymore.”

“Where are we?” You ask again, firmer this time. 

“I told ye. Nearly home.”

“And where is home?” 

The way he sucks his teeth makes you recoil slightly. Wet. Irritated. As if he's tired of this conversation already. 

“Close.”

You don't let his flat tone deter you. “Are we—are we still in the Northwest Territories?”

“Thereabouts.” 

It's not an answer. It doesn't reassure you in the slightest. 

You open your mouth to say so, words curling on your tongue when he jerks his chin toward the handgun, brow furrowed. 

“Thought ye wanted tae check oan th' satellite phone.”

His tone is severe. A growl curdling the ends, pitching it down, down. Displeasure, irritation, blooms in the gnarled petals of witch hazel when he narrows them into slits. 

You swallow, wrenching your gaze from the storm brewing over fields of wheat, and set your jaw. Masking your fear for annoyance. Confidence. 

But your hand shakes when you reach for the black box shoved into the corner. Palms slick with sweat. You try not to touch the gun, doing your best to curve around it. It feels—

Real. 

A real gun. In the real world. In a place you came to get away for a weekend, experience something you'd never had before. Freedom. Reliance on nobody but yourself. And now—

Somewhere in the Northwest Territories. Injured. Locked inside of a truck with a man who wavers between warmth—an unending heat, a furnace; a beacon of light—and severity like a swinging pendulum. You feel safe with him. You commit every turn to memory. He's in the military. He's going to take care of you. You think he's lying to you. He'll—

He'll let you go. 

You're sick. You're paranoid. You're taking all of your grievances out on this poor man who is just as trapped as you are, turning him into a monster for no reason at all. At the end of this, when he drops you off at the airport in Yellowknife, you'll have to grovel on your knees for his forgiveness. Sorry I thought you were a bad man. 

It could be worse, you suppose. He hasn't done anything untoward to you—touching your thigh like he's owed the right aside—and you shove it down. A problem to deal with later even though the suspicion tucks itself into your head, folded up against your skull. Metastatic. It eats all of his expressions, turning them over and over again for hidden clues. 

If he does something, you'll run. 

You'll—

“Almost there,” he murmurs, and you hear the rasp of exhaustion glued to the hinge of his jaw. You wonder how long he's been driving for. And why didn't he just go back to Nahanni Butte. Flooded he said. Too deep into the park. Never would have made it. 

If that's the truth, you suppose you should thank him. 

It sits in the back of your throat. You swallow around it, reaching for the phone instead. 

There's a small thread of hope in your chest that it'll work. That he's wrong, doesn't know how to work it, and all you have to do is press a button and it'll crackle to life. Freedom within reach. 

But when you press down on the button, the phone doesn't even whimper. Broke, as he said. Dead. 

“Can you—can you charge it?”

“Tried. Must’ve blown somethin’ inside. Fried it.” 

His words are a prison sentence carrying a punishment of two months. You knew this, of course. He said so himself. But the reality of it breaking over you is different from blind belief. The realisation of your predicament is a jagged knife cutting through tissue, letting corrosive panic entrench you as it spills out. 

This is the sort of thing you’d only read about. Novels, and biographies. Memoirs. Movies. An extraordinary event that could never happen to you. Never. 

And you're aware of it. Optimism bias. The not-me fallacy. But everything in your life thus far had been so unequivocally mundane that the possibility of it not happening seemed to eclipse any chance of it occurring at all. 

The crux of the bias, you suppose. Though it does little to stem the disbelief surrounding it all. Even when you told your friends, and your family, that you were going on this trip, the most mordant of them said you'd get eaten by a bear or end up lost in the wilderness. 

Injured, unable to walk, and stuck with a man you only marginally know (trust) seems like the plot of a lifetime movie. 

But—

Two months. 

You're sure in the meantime, someone will notice your absence. Raise the alarm. Call the police. They'll launch an investigation, and come searching for you. It's just a waiting game. 

And—

(You glance at the man once more, his profile limned in a halo of gold. The rim of his hat casts shadows over his face, eyes concealed in the thickening tenebrous that enshrouds him down to his broad chest, dense with corded muscles. Athletic. Trim. Big.)

—staying alive. 

Survival. 

If only for just two months. 

But the facts are cold, unforgiving. You are alone with a man you don't know. A man with three guns. Military. His experience in this wilderness vastly eclipses your own. 

He's fine. Fine. Touchy, sure. But he hasn't asked for anything. 

—his hand is on your thigh—

You'll be okay. 

It hurts to swallow. “Thank you,” you murmur, hoping the conciliatory lilt eats the panic you feel. “For saving me.” 

His gaze darts to you so sharply that the truck veers slightly to the left, tires crunching over thick beds of furze that line the forged road. The action is sudden—surprised, maybe, by your reedy gratitude. A deviation from the demeanour he'd shown you so far—calm friendliness. Affability. It jars you. Scares you. You grip the seat cushion tight in your fists as he mutters something sharp you can't discern under his breath. 

It only takes him only seconds to correct, rippling his hand away from you to commandeer the truck back into the centre of the beaten path. Even keeled now. Almost as if nothing amiss had happened at all. 

But it's undeniable. Congeals in the air, tense and unignorable. A vacuum that siphons the breath from your lungs. It sits in the whites of his knuckles, arsenic bones jutting from thin, rough skin, demanding to be seen; the terse set to his shoulders. To the grind of his jaw as he clenches his teeth. 

You take him in with bated breath, swallowing whole each microcosm that buds to the surface of his demeanour. Wary. Watchful. Squeezing the satellite phone tight in your hands. But he doesn't meet your wide-eyed stare, choosing instead to keep his gaze fixed on the dirt road. Knuckles popping, brows furrowed. Silent. 

But it's heavy. Oppressive. The same unrelenting chill as outside. You fight back a shiver in the blooming cold, wishing you'd packed more than just a pair of hiking tights (in tatters, now) and a thermal windbreaker for the trip. 

The hum of the engine, and the cracking of rock and muskeg crushed under the wheel, are the only noise that fills the cabin. You stifle your breath. Hold it in your throat. Skewer your eyes to the landscape yawning out around you. The deep, thickening sense of unease grows in the pit of your stomach. Metastasizing. 

Outside is a sprawling taiga forest. Emaciated spruce, balsam fir, jut out from the muskeg, dusted in a sparse layer of sphagnum. You can almost hear the trickle of a stream. The dirt road is wet under the tires now. A creek must be close by. A river. Flat River. South Nahanni. Further out might be Slave River. The Liard. Little Buffalo. Great Slave Lake, even. 

Narrowing it down seems impossible when nearly the entire south corridor of the Northwest Territories is wet marsh and snaking bodies of water. 

It both worries and reassures you at the same time. Getting to Nahanni alone was a challenge. With most of the surrounding area limited to a few year-round highways, there are not many places he could go without reaching dead-ends or winter roads closed for the season, inaccessible in the warmer summer months as the snow melts. 

Though—these highways arch as high as they can. From Yellowknife to Tuktoyaktuk, right on the coast of the Arctic Ocean. 

But he hasn't driven on any stretch of highway since you woke up. The road is unpaved, wild. You're confident you're still south, but the exact location eludes you. Northwest Territories. Yukon. Northern Alberta. It's overwhelming. Daunting. 

You try to commit the geography to memory. Sifting through an endless trawl of nothing to find something familiar. A mountain range. A sign. Anything. Anything—

“Ye mean tha’?”

The sound of his voice draws your attention, raspy. Hoarse from disuse. 

He swallows. There's something raw in his expression, fractured. Yearning, you think. For something. What that something is, however, you can't place. 

It stays on as he slowly slides his tongue out, licking over the bristles of hair covering his lip. 

You offer a shallow nod, unsure why this matters to him suddenly. 

“Yeah, I'd be—” 

You pause, words turning to smoke in your throat. Uninjured, is the first thought. Without him, your leg wouldn't be—

Whatever it is. Ankle broken. Achilles torn. A gunshot wound clean through tendon and tissue. 

But at the same time—

All turned around, he said. Lost. He was hunting, too. You must have somehow wandered outside of the park limits. Must have because the sound of a rifle would have drawn attention from nearby wardens. They'd have come to investigate. 

You swallow down the bloom of unbridled panic. The aftertaste is bitter in your mouth. The thought of being outside of the borders, all on your own—

“I’d be dead if it wasn't for you.” 

The hush that falls is immediate. Your own mortality dangling by a thin thread. Happenstance keeping you alive. 

He clears his throat again. Your fingers tighten around the metal until it hurts. 

“Names Johnny.” He twists in his seat, facing you. “Johnny MacTavish.” 

It's a bit late for introductions, but you take it in all the same. Johnny. Johnny.

(saviour—)

His eyes grow wide when you slowly, haltingly, breathe yours out. Letting it sit in the air where it dissolves into the silence, the weight of it somehow more damning than being alone in the woods. There's power in a name. In knowing it. Military. You're not sure why it matters, but it does. 

You fight another shiver when he says it back after a beat, much too fond, adoring, for the sparse companionship you've barely begun to build. 

“I'll keep ye safe,” he says your name again, accent curling in between the bridges of each letter. There's a heat in his eyes; pyretic. A sickness. “Don't hae tae worry aboot anything.” 

He turns back slowly, angling the wheel around a sudden bend in the thicket. The path is clearer here, looking more like an established dirt road than a sparse coppice. It twists upward, cutting a meandering line through a dense cropping of spruce. The canopy above—as thick as it is—curls over the road, enclosing it in a bed of conifers branching overhead. Concealing it from view. 

The sight fills you with a new bloom of unease. How quickly the wild swallows you whole, shielding you from prying eyes, prickles against the nape of your neck, dripping like hot oil down your spine. 

“Where are we?” It comes out in a whisper. 

He makes a noise in the back of his throat. In your periphery, you see him lift his hand off the wheel, but sit, paralyzed, when he brings it down to your thigh, giving what attempts to be a pacifying squeeze. 

“Home,” he answers, making the turn. 

A log cabin comes into view. It’s situated at the end of the clearing, covered by the same dense tangle of trees as the path. The forest seems to bend around the single-storey home, enclosing in a cradled embrace of intermixing wry jack pine, bold tamarack, dark spruce, and white birch. Trembling aspen peaks above the heads of the other trees, hiding the smoked black spruce roof from view above. 

It might look homey under different circumstances, but the thick, stripped logs—made of varnished white spruce—jutting out half-crescents to form the walls seem brooding. Claustrophobic. It's small—just a storey and a half. A camper's cabin not meant for longtime use. It wears its age in wood rot and peeling varnish. The scent of wet wood clings to the air when he rolls the window down, coming to a stop a few paces away from the single step leading to the porch. 

Firewood stacked high to the awning on both sides of the blue door, encased in metal to keep it dry. Moss-covered concrete foundations lift the house off of the ground, keeping it from melting the permafrost below. The remains of a snuffed, charred campfire is perched to the left of the winding path leading to the door. Felled lumber lays on its side, the top whittled down onto a seat. A wooden rack leans against a tree close by. The hide of an animal is stretched taut across the panels. Leather-making materials sit in a bucket beside it. 

A metal box—bear-proof, you're sure—is half-buried in the soil. Storage, perhaps, for the unusable remains of the animals he hunts. 

It's fairly standard for a cabin up north, you think. But something about this place makes you feel anxious. Trapped. You can't see anything at all through the dense cluster of trees, but you can hear the sound of running water. A river, maybe. A stream. It splashes against the rock, the current too quick for you to even think about swimming in it. 

It only adds to your unease. 

“This is home,” he says, jerking his chin toward the house. 

Home is a cabin nestled somewhere in the unorganised wilderness of the Northwest Territories. Nahanni National Park is several hours in another direction. Too few communities exist on highway seven for you to even stumble onto them—

Assuming, of course, that you could walk there to begin with.

The lingering pain in your ankle, the heavy bandage wrapped around it—it's an immediate certainty that you can't walk. Broken, you know, from the glimpse you'd taken before. Milkwhite against raspberry red—

You don't think about that. 

You don't think about much at all. 

“Right.” You murmur. This place is the furthest thing from home you could imagine. 

He moves in your periphery, reaching for you. You jerk back, driven by instincts. The need for distance, space—

The jostling of your foot makes you hiss in pain, and he offers a conciliatory hum. 

“Ye’ll be alright, bonnie. Lets jus’ get ye inside now.” 

The inside is made of varnished wood. A mix of black and white spruce. It's cosy, you suppose. 

It opens up to a living room immediately upon walking in the door. A mat sits under your feet. A small closet to the right with the door slightly ajar. Along the length of the left wall is a doorway spilling into a small kitchen. From your vantage point, you make out a sink, and then another door to the right. 

Along the back wall beside the arching doorway is a brick fireplace. Soft fur is spread out on the ground in front of it. An old, weathered couch is pushed against the left wall, a shawl tossed over the back. 

There's no television. A stack of books and magazines sit above the couch—used more for an end table than entertainment, you note, spotting the glass of water resting on the pile. A pack of cigarettes beside it. An ashtray on the floor. Bottles of beer sit on the small table shoved under the window. One of the chairs is covered in clothes. 

It's lived in, you note, but lifeless. 

There are no pictures on the wall. No personal artefacts littered around. It's—

Perfunctory. 

He comes home, shucks his boots off by the front door, and drinks warm beer on the couch until he falls asleep. An inference, of course; but as he carries you further into the house (his insistence—ye cannae walk oan tha’, doe, stop bein’ stubborn and lemme carry ye), your notion gains credence. It's sparse. Threadbare. 

There's a single plate in the sink. The old stove, separated from the sink by a small countertop, is covered in a layer of dust. A fridge is pushed against the back wall. 

The door you glimpsed in the kitchen leads to the washroom. It's tight. A shower, a sink, a toilet. No windows. A towel is hung over the curtain rail, still damp from his shower before. A single mat covers most of the tiled floor below. A tube of toothpaste sits in the porcelain basin of the sink. 

Beside the washroom is the master bedroom. The bed is unmade. An untouched glass of water is left on the end table beside a worn leather book and a bible. 

An open closet sits across from the bed. The window is open. The breeze flutters the old, jaundiced curtain. 

He gives you his room and says he'll take the couch. Under normal circumstances, you might have fought it. Insisted that he sleep in his bed. You're a guest. You couldn't put him out like that. But the door has a lock. 

“Thank you,” you murmur, and he seems to tremble at your words before nodding. 

“O' coorse.” 

Johnny places you on the bed before he sets to work rebandaging your ankle. You're all too aware of the fact that you need to know. You need to see what you're dealing with, and how bad the damage is, but the pain that cuts through you when he rests your ankle—as gingerly as he can—on top of an extra pillow makes you yowl in agony. 

It's vicious. Whitehot. The pain rattles through your bones. 

He shushes you as he unwraps the clumsy brace he put on in the park, murmuring incomprehensible things under his breath that you think must be Gaelic. Words of comfort, perhaps. 

You feel none of it except an uneasy dread pooling in the empty pit of your stomach. 

“How bad is it?”

He hums, brow pinching tight. “Th' hare took most o' th' damage,” he says, eyes tracing along the congealing blood on your ankle. Dark cherry red. You swallow down a gag. “Tore yer achilles, though. Clean. Doesn't seem tae be any fragments. Broke your ankle, though. But,” he taps your calf, just above the bend of your foot. It doesn’t hurt. “It’s a clean break. Maybe just a fracture. Shuid heal up in no time.”

“And what about infections?”

“Got some stuff oan hand if that happens,” he leans back, and gives you a wink. It feels out of place considering the severity of your predicament. Garish, almost. “But ah was a good nurse. Patched ye up nicely.” 

You don't ask anything else, and silence trickles in as he refocuses his attention back to cleaning your wound and redressing it. The bed is soft under you. Giving. You lean back, staring up at the log ceiling, and will yourself not to think at all. Each slight jostle of the wet cloth running along your ankle feels like fire licking at your skin. If you had anything at all in your belly left, you might have thrown it up on the side of the bed. 

This pain is consuming. Persistent. 

Your fingers knot into the soft blankets below, gripping tight until your knuckles ache. A futile attempt to exchange this pain for a lesser one. Something you can ignore, forget. 

Through the open window, you can hear the playful caws of a raven searching for food. You want it to distract you, to pull you away from the sickening sensation of your ankle separating from the heel, but it doesn't.

All you can think about is the fresh pain. Your flesh ripped apart. Torn achilles, he'd said. You feel it as he moves, washing away the dried blood, the viscera. The break in your tibia. It's a nauseating feeling. Visceral. It screams at you that something is wrong, reverberating through your bones. 

The raven caws again. 

“Gonnae ‘ave tae stitch yer heel up.” 

You make a sound—a pathetic whimper choked in the back of your throat. 

“Fine,” you rasp, tensing. “Just—”

Get it over with. 

Johnny seems to understand, offering a consolatory pat on your shin. “Ye'll be fine. Ah know what am doin’.”

You glance back at him, avoiding whatever is happening below his elbows. Refusing to look. 

He reaches up, fingers stained pink with your blood, and pulls the ballcap off his head, shaking the matted hair loose. His hair is thick, curling at the ends. Dark brown. Soft. You take in his expression, him, as he works, using it to churn your thoughts away from the prickling sensation of him pressing your torn skin back together, readying it for the needle. 

He's intense, focused, as he works. Eyes lidded to half-mast. Long lashes fanning out over the dark circles beneath his eyelids. Bruises that speak of long, sleepless nights. The empty bottles of beer and the full ashtray within arm's reach make a little more sense as you see the extent of his fatigue. 

It doesn't concern you. You rip your gaze away from the thin, twisting rivers of red that snake through the jaundiced whites of his eyes; the possibility of his vulnerability notches something inside your chest you don't want to think about. Can't. 

Your saviour, you think again, veering sharply on the edge of too cruel—

“Might pinch a bit, doe,” he mutters low, soft. His thick, even brows pull together at the centre. You feel the prick of the needle pushing through your skin—

Down his brows. The oblique curve of his nose. Bottled to a point. The thick bed of hair beneath his nostrils. Thin, pink lips jutting from the thatch of black bristles. The wisps curl down the slope of his neck, thinning at the hollow below before thickening back into a dense crop on the scant patch of his skin visible from his unbuttoned shirt. 

Another prick—

A thin, gold chain loops around his neck. Tucked against his sternum is a Latin cross. It's plain. Traditional. Solid gold, maybe. But not purely for decoration. Where the arms meet the body, the surface is smoothed down. Worn. In the reflection, you can see the thin, circular lines of a fingerprint. 

The bible on his dresser makes sense. You glance over at it, taking in the folds and creases on the leather cover. Aged and well-loved. Used. Pages are dog-eared. Waterlogged. Scotch tape holds the spine together. 

The Holy Bible gleams in faded gold lettering. Douay–Rheims is etched into the surface. 

The sight of a worn-down book and thumbed cross shouldn't relax you, but it does. A good ol’ boy, then. You turn back to him, eyes caught on the gleaming gold flush against tanned skin. It's tight to his sternum. Hung delicately around his neck. 

Seeing it now feels a touch voyeuristic. It wasn't intentionally bared to you. Wasn't offered up willingly for you to gawk at, mind looping around thou shalt not kill and do unto others as you yourself would want done unto you, and finding comfort in the ordered morality of its symbolism—however fickle that could end up being. 

You know a man is not as moral as his religion demands of him, but he looks devout. 

A good Catholic boy. 

Still—

You peel your gaze away from his chest as the thread slides through. The sensation is uncomfortable. Ticklish. Forcing your attention back to him, well above the neckline. His nose. Nostrils flaring when your knee jerks. His hands close over your shin. Mouth parting slightly just to say, keep still, doe. Donnae want tae hurt ye. 

His hair is slightly greasy near his scalp. Sweat from earlier dampens his locks, flattening it tongue head. It's longer at the top compared to the sides. An odd, asymmetrical hairstyle that doesn't feel like an aesthetic choice at all. Maybe he had a mullet. Or—

You see it when he tilts his head down, chin angled toward your foot. 

A scar stretches from his temple back, thinning the hair that lines his scalp on the right. The flesh is jagged, uneven. Cratered. It forms a ravine. The canyon walls clumped scar tissue. The nullah in the centre is all pink and raw. 

You think of a shooting star. Meteor showers in the indigo sky. 

You think of his words from earlier—ah know what am doin’—and the depth of his medical knowledge. It stands out now. You suppose he would, wouldn't he?

The thought has shame dripping down your spine like hot, slick oil. Burning. Tarry. You remember what he said in the truck about being wounded in action, the misery in his words, the anger, and choke yourself on the regret that swarms your throat. 

He looks up, then, catching whatever awful amalgamation of self-hatred, shame, and regret makes of your expression, and the words—sorry, I'm so sorry—tear through your throat until it's bloody and raw. Pulp. Unspeakable, now. 

It dampens his brow, but there's no embarrassment in his eyes when he holds them to yours. Nothing except an intense, dizzying sense of curiosity. Of—

Intrigue. 

It doesn't have a place here, and the sight of it is sobering. 

Why is he looking at you like that when you're gawking at his injury? Confusion knots deep. Uncertainty coiling around your ribcage. Maybe he didn't notice. Doesn't care. 

Is too used to it to worry about whatever conclusions you might draw from the jagged skin barely knitted back together. But his eyes flash. Understanding edging out the unfathomable greed lurking in hazel plains, nestled, restive, in the shade that falls over the sloping boscage. 

You almost miss the shadow when it appears. Wrought with Leashed ghosts. Tempered anger. Wild, frenetic. The chains holding it at bay tremble. Shake—

And then it's gone.

Dissolve back into passive cordiality. All ire stayed behind a wall. 

You want to apologize, but the words are ash in your throat. Unspeakable. Johnny doesn't address it. He dips his head down once more, silently refocusing his attention to your ankle, and offering no explanation for the scar on his head. 

You don't ask. Don't pry. It's not your place. But your eyes are still glued to it. 

It's a horrific injury. Survival from such a terrible wound seems like an impossibility. A gunshot, you're sure. Seeing the small chasm carved into skin, narrowly missing his eye socket, fills you with a blistering sense of pity for this man, and you quietly, quickly, peel your eyes away from the jagged surface, letting your gaze run across the room. A meagre sense of privacy, you're sure, but it lets you breathe a little easier when you can't see the way his temple split apart to make room for a bullet—

“Had a mohawk,” he says. “They cut it off when this happened.” 

A mohawk. The asymmetry of his hair makes sense now, and you can almost picture it as you stare at him. The edges shorn, the top long. Unruly. His hair has a slight curl to the ends, but is mostly straight for the first few inches. 

As wild as he looks now—untamed, rugged; the thick tangle of uncharted wilderness—the mohawk must have made him roguish. Boorish. With his broad shoulders, thick biceps, and piercing blue eyes, the mohawk would have added to the playful appeal. Boyishly charming with his cropped hair and puckish grin. The draw of a bad boy, a vandal. 

But as you try and shape this around him, you catch the strain in his shoulders. The terse set to his jaw. 

“You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to.”

“Was shot.” 

It's said without a preamble as if he was waiting for you to ask. But the words are spat out like they're something foul in his mouth; like he's ridding the taste of it between his teeth. The anger, the aggression cows you slightly, but you offer a small, warbling smile you hope is conciliatory. Apologetic. 

“I'm sorry,” you offer around a stuttering exhale. You can't imagine what that must be like. Shot in the head. The idea is unthinkable. Improbable. And yet, the evidence slashes across his temple; a meteor shower carved into his flesh. 

He lifts his chin, staring down at you from the bridge of his nose. “Wasnae yer fault, doe.” 

“I know, I just—” 

Johnny gives a nod in response, ending the bubble of words and apologies building up behind your teeth. It is what it is, he mutters when you blink at him, flummoxed. This sort of reveal seems like it should necessitate a bigger conversation, a deeper one. Questions buoy to the surface—from prying (how did it happen, how did you survive) to intrusive (what did it feel like, does it hurt still)—but you trample them until they sit, a building mass lodged in your throat. 

He seems content, then, to continue with what he was doing, and says nothing more about it. And it's not your place to pry. To chisel into his trauma. 

You let it pass. Let it moulder. 

The raven caws once more. You lean back in his bed, staring through the fluttering curtains, mind reeling at this discovery. 

Stupidly, you feel more at ease in his presence. As if this show of vulnerability somehow negated the distress of your predicament, and the infeasible nature of how you ended up here, in his home. Gazing through the thick canopy of green to the golden sky above. A whole world away from your home. Broken. Injured. But the cross, the thumbed-through bible, and his human fragility seem to curl along the vicious dread curling inside your guts, soothing over the distrust with gentle, sweeping brushes. 

Quelling a frightened child after a nightmare. 

How strange, you think, but let yourself relax in his presence all the same, breathing in the scent of stale smoke, sweat. Coumarin. Tree moss. Fresh pine. It smells like the valley. Soft, waning detergent. Masculine. 

You pretend you're watching for the raven as you sneak small glances at him. Taking in everything with a new perspective. The broadness of his shoulders. The thickness of his waist. There's power in his arms, in his thighs. Sculpted musculature, honed and refined. Despite the thickness of his fingers, he has a delicate touch. Deft and sure, as if he's used to working his bulk around small parts. 

He's unkempt. The ballcap hid most of his dishevelled state, but he's not sloven. It reminds you of the outdoorsy explorers. The hikers you met on your trip out. Roughhewn and unconcerned about their overgrown beards and their tousled hair. 

There's something potently masculine about it, and you can't deny that even with the garish wound on his head, all mangled scar tissue, he's handsome. Rougish. The scar elevating it somehow—a testament, perhaps, to his resiliency. 

He catches your stare on the next glance, holding it as he leans back with a quirk of his lips. It's not quite the grins he aimed at you before, but the shadow of it lingers. 

“Now,” he utters, the severity in his tone makes you flinch. Sobering quickly under the weight of his solemnity. “Th' bad part.”

“Bad part?” You echo, confused. “What could be worse than that?”

He taps two fingers against your swollen ankle, urging you to look. You swallow and force yourself to glance at where he rests his fingers. 

With your split heel stitched up and wrapped in bandages, the sight of your leg doesn't make you want to curl into the fetal position and cry. But it's still horrifying to look at. 

A mass half the side of a baseball juts out from your skin. 

“Ankles dislocated,” he murmurs, sliding his fingers over the mound. “Gotta pop it back into place.” 

“That's not—” you shake your head. “That's impossible.” 

“S’okay, doe. I gotcha.”

“That's not the point. That's not—”

“Look,” his pitch lowers dangerously, firm now. “Gotta do it or you'll have problems later on. Much worse than a bit o’pain.”

“But—”

He inhales sharply. “Can't let it go, doe. Gotta fix it.”

You understand the logic in that. Leaving a dislocated ankle will undoubtedly cause problems later on. But—

“Will it hurt?” 

Your fear quiets the irritation brewing in steeled hazel. “Aye. I won't lie tae ye, doe. It will hurt.” 

You swallow around a whimper. 

“But,” he leans over, his hand sliding over your cheek. Cradling your face in the palm of his hand. “I'll do mah best tae be quick. Ah won't hurt ye, doe.” 

It must be the way he carries himself that puts you at ease, so assured in his abilities; confident in what he can do without any sense of grandiosity. 

“Fine.” The word is juttered out of your chest. “Just—”

His thumb catches the tears that spill over your lashline, swiping them away with a tenderness that makes you shiver. 

“Ah’ll be quick.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out two chalky white pills. Tylenol, he mutters, catching the furrow of your brow. It abates the unease somewhat, and you let him drop the pills into the flat of your palm, rolling them over with your thumb as he grabs the water on the end table. They're circular with a slit down the middle. 

“It'll take the pain away.” He says, holding the water up to you. “Ready?” It's uttered so severely, so seriously, that your breath hitches in your lungs. Mirth blooming between your teeth. 

“As I'll ever be,” you rasp out before popping the pills into your mouth, cradling them on your tongue protectively as you reach for the glass he holds out. They're bitter. 

You wash it down with a mouthful of stale water before leaning back on the bed, letting the scent of his sheets wash over you once more. 

Outside, the raven trills. 

The pain of popping your ankle back into place leaves you a weeping mess in his sheets, but Johnny doesn't seem to mind the shuddering sobs. He pets down your back, shushing you quietly under his breath as he mutters something in Gaelic that you're sure is meant to be soothing. 

“Ye’ll be fine,” he says, tracing figure-eights down your spine until the Tylenol kicks in, and the agony tapers off into an aching throb. “Jus’ breathe. Ah’ll get ye somethin' tae eat.”

He leaves soon after. You let the numbed, drowsiness of the pain medication lull you into a doze, listening to Johnny move in the kitchen. The squealing slide of unvarnished wood rubbing against old metal. The thud of a knife. The scent of hot oil. Muttered curses. A playful raven's caw. 

You're not sure how long you slip in and out of this dreamless state, but Johnny appears in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest as he leans against the frame. He watches you with hooded eyes, a small, secretive smile tugging on his lips.

Blearily, you yawn, somehow still exhausted despite how long you slept between yesterday evening and today. Trauma, you suppose, and say nothing at all about it when he helps you sit up in the bed. 

Dinner consists of leftover bannock—the fried dough soft in your mouth, the flavour buttery; smokey—and hare stew. He pulls a chair from the living room into the bedroom, eating on the edge of the bed with you. 

He's sloppy about it. Slurps all the meat and potatoes out of the bowl before sopping chunks of bannock into the gravy, shoveling it into his mouth with a grunt. It dribbles down his chin, and dirties his beard. This slovenly display might have churned your stomach before, but you're just as ravenous. 

And it's good. 

The bread leaves grease stains on your fingers, but the toes on your uninjured foot curl when you bite into the crispy surface, teeth sinking into the pillowy dough below. 

“This is bannock, you said?” You ask, dabbing the napkin he offered with a wink when you finish. At his nod, you continue. “It's good.”

“Aye,” he grunts around a mouthful. “S’the best. Make it every mornin’ so ah go’ fresh bannock tae go.” He swipes the back of his hand over his mouth, slurring out: “s’good wit’ jam.” 

“Did the locals teach you how to make it?”

He nods. “Scottish dish, originally. Made wit’ oats. Drier, too. But—fuck. S’good—nae. Better like this. Ol’ couple taught me when ah first came. Paler ‘n’ shite, they said. ‘n didnae ken a fuckin' thing about surviving oot ‘ere. Big man, Jim, taught me ‘ow tae hunt. Where tae fish. An’ ‘ow to cook it. Made this cabin, aye. He, ah, and his son. Offered ‘er up tae me when they realised ah didnae come wit’ shite all but a bad attitude.” 

“That was nice of them.”

“Most folk up ‘ere are. Quiet, ken? People take care’a ‘emselves, most. Take care’a others, too.” 

You mull over his words as he leans back in the chair with a satisfied groan, legs spread wide. His hands folded over his belly. The picture of ease. Contentment. This freedom of motion makes you slightly envious. 

“An’ wha’ about ye?” His eyes are lidded, leonine, and fixed on you. The intensity is always on the side of too much. Too dizzying. Consuming. 

You stamp it down, running your thumb along the inseam of his gingham throw. “What about me?”

“Why’d ye come here?”

His question throws you off balance. “It’s a pretty park,” you offer with a shallow laugh. “Who wouldn't come here?”

“Lots of pretty parks. Why this one?”

“Dunno. It was—”

“‘ave ye ever been tae any other parks? Anything like this?”

“I hiked a bit, and, um—”

He sucks out a piece of meat from between his teeth. “A bit, aye?” 

“Yeah. A bit. Why—”

“Ye came all the way here fer what? A pretty park? With no experience at all? And alone?”

The shift in his posture reads as angry, irate. You blink, bewildered by this sudden change. 

“Well. It was supposed to be an experience.”

“An experience, aye? Survival skills of a lemming.” 

It's derisive, cutting. You bristle through the sting of humiliation, grappling through the slurry of fatigue to cobble together some form of defence against this lambasting of your—admittedly—ill-thought adventure, but he's already moving on. Fingers tapping an off-rhythm beat against his belly as he levels you with a sober look. More serious than you'd ever seen him before. 

“An’ yer family? They just let ye come here oan yer own?”

The mention of your family makes guilt well to the surface, buoying above the indignant anger at his mocking words. Cowed, you shrug. 

“Sure.” 

Something cracks in the severe mein he carries; fracturing through the blatant disapproval. Cutting it like a knife. 

He sighs through his nose before reaching up and scrubbing his hands over his face. “Shite. Ye really needed me, aye?” 

You blink at the odd choice of words, brows drawing together in a tight knot. It's indefensible, of course. In many ways, he's right. If he hadn't found you—

Well. 

You temper that thought before it forms. You're too out of it, spatially unaware and unmoored, to let yourself fall into an existential pit of despair when you know you won't be able to climb out. Thinking of your assured doom out there, all because of a misstep somewhere along the path, makes dread bloom in the pit of your stomach. Nauseous, roiling. It froths over the basin, ready to spill over and drag you under. 

Swallowing around the surge of panic—mortality a fickle thing in a place like this—you offer a despondent shrug in response. Unable to scrape together any sense of a defence that won't make you sound childish and idiotic. 

You ready yourself for more mockery, having become the very thing the park rangers tried to warn you about when you showed, alone, in hiking boots much too big for you. 

But then he's shifting, expression clearing. The anger folded back behind a quick grin. 

“Pretty here, isn't it?” 

You're not sure what to make of his mercurial temperament; emotions cascading by, quicksilver and sudden. The flashes of anger, intensity, curiosity, and this, all happening within such a short period. It's overwhelming. 

It unsettles you. But—

“Yeah,” you mutter, unable to stem the awe from leaking through. 

The change in conversation is freeing. Sometimes it's just easier to let sleeping dogs lie, and that's exactly what you do. Tucking his odd behaviour behind a plexiglass of indifference, pretending it wasn't there, lurking just out of sight. Something to unravel later, when your heart wasn't on the verge of buckling under the strain of your anxiety. When your chest didn't feel like it was slowly being crushed. Your stomach is all twisted up in knots too tight to untie with your bare hands. 

It's easy to let yourself heave through jittering lungs, and pretend you couldn't feel the rot festering on the sides of them. Eating holes through delicate tissue. 

The majesty of this place hasn't quite worn off, and you use that as an excuse to drift. To close the doors on the overwhelming deluge of hysteria creeping up on you. 

You still think of the jutting fjords instead. The steep ravines, the moose in the distance—her colours sharp against the green backdrop—and let the untempered sense of reverence split you down the middle. 

It comes out in a flood, then—as if you've been biting back the words this whole time. 

You tell him about the valley. The waterfall. The white river. The marmot you saw poking its head out. No bears, you sigh; the forlorn lilt to your tone seeped with a touch of relief, an aspect he pokes at with a crooked smirk until you huff, rolling your eyes to the ceiling at his gentle ribbing. Huffily, you admit that as much as you want to see a bear, you're not quite ready to face them in the wild. 

Lots’a bears ‘round ‘ere, he taunts, rolling his knees out further as he sinks deeper into the chair. 

He dodges your next question of where, exactly, is here with a silky grin and a need tae know rolling off his lips before they tug downward in a sudden frown. 

You must be acclimating to the strange ebb and flow of his emotions because the lour grimace on his face doesn't deter you as much as it did moments ago. You pick up the slack when the conversation lulls, telling him about the places you've been and how they compare to Nahanni.

“They just—don’t.” 

It's hard to encapsulate the scale of it all into simple words; digestible pieces someone else can swallow. The park isn't too far from Yellowknife, and yet it feels like a world on its own. The remoteness, the vastitude of it all, is hard to describe, but Johnny seems to understand. 

He listens with a slight quirk to his lips. A smile you'd almost call fond. He gets it, you know. The words you can't say. The ones that feel too lacklustre when you do. 

“That really why ye came?” 

You hesitate for a moment, looping a loose thread around your finger. Contemplating. Mulling it over. You've never told anyone the reason for the trip outside of a new experience for yourself. Testing your mettle. But with Johnny—

There's a sense of kinship, you find. An understanding. 

“It seemed so—” he waits for you to find the words. “Lonely, I guess.” 

“Lonely,” the way he says the word is ruminative. Rolling it around between his teeth; testing the weight of it. “Ah suppose it is.”

“You don't think so?”

“It's—” he pauses, eyes listing to the side as he mulls over what he wants to convey. 

He does this sometimes, you think. Gets lost. Loses himself. Retreats inward. You can't help but wonder if this is a manifestation of his trauma—a head injury such as this would be classified as a traumatic brain injury, wouldn't it? You're not well-versed in this area, and it feels a little mean, cruel, to have this thought, but it blooms as his eyes fog over. As he struggles, almost, to find the words he wants to say, to give voice to what he feels, thinks. 

“Lonely, aye,” he grinds out after a beat, but he looks frustrated about it, and glares down at his lap, silently fuming. Annoyed. “Big.”

The word is ripped out from between his teeth, and you nod, hastily, to both quell the looming anger brimming in the terse set to his shoulders and to let him know you understand. Can read between the lines—if only just. 

“Is that why you came?” 

The shrug he offers is noncommittal but you can see the tension pooling in his brow despite your efforts to quash it. “Couldnae go home after this—” he lifts his hand, tapping his fingers against the scar tissue on his temple. “Wasn't safe. Had tae give up everything after. Maw. Da. Sisters. Cannae ever see them again.”

It doesn't make sense. None of it does. The innate understanding between you is shattered by the impossibility of this moment, and his half-formed words. What you gave up seems paltry in comparison to what he's confessing to. His family. His whole family—

“Might see them one day. Once that fuckin' prick is in th' ground, but 'til then—” he shrugs again, easy. As if the look on his face wasn't cataclysmic in its anger. It's rage. Sorrow. Hatred. You flinch back as if the blackhole of these awful emotions will eat you alive. 

Johnny sees it, and reaches for you, making soothing noises under his breath as his hand wraps around your thigh. “Ah, doe, don’t worry. He wilnae find us—” 

You're not sure what to say to that, but the grip he has on you is firm. Unyielding. There's a scowl etching over his lips, as if the mere thought of such a thing fills him with disgust, fury, and you shake your head slowly. 

“I'm not—I’m not worried.” You don't know how to tell him that this phantom prick from his past isn't what made you reel back, but the intensity of his wrath. The sudden infliction of his ire. So you don't. You give in with what you hope is a conciliatory smile. “I, uh, I trust you.”

It's loose. Shaky. Your conviction wanes around the edges, falling flat and hollow when it trembles out. If Johnny notices the brittleness around it, he doesn't show it. If anything, he seems to take it as a sudden gospel. 

“D’ye—” There's a crack in his voice. He swallows, then. Adam's apple bobbing harshly against the skin of his throat. You wonder if you've upset him. Angered him. But he's leaning down, eyes widening. Feverish. Blue lagoons. “Ye trust me.”

It's not a question, but he poses it as such. You nod slowly and unsure. 

Johnny ducks his head, then. Lifts one hand to rub at the bristles around his chin and upper lip. Lost in thought, maybe—

It's when he reaches around, scrubbing at the nape of his neck, do you see the flush peeking out from beneath the thick bed of hair covering his cheeks. The sight is jarring. Unexpected. 

You're not sure what to make of it. Of this strange reaction. But it passes almost as quickly as it started. The red is replaced by a wide, blinding grin. He squeezes your thigh. 

“Hah, doe. Ye really know what tae say tae cheer me up—”

You haven't said anything at all, but this, too, goes unacknowledged. And before you can even try to draw attention to it, he breathes in deeply as he sits up in the chair. 

“Ye finished?” He motions to the bowl and plate on the bed. You nod. “Alright. Ah'll put ‘em away. Get ye some tea.”

“Oh, I'm fine—”

“Nah, hen. Tea is good for ye. Will help ye heal.” 

He leaves without another word, carrying away your dirty dishes. The unfinished conversation lingers in the air around you, but beneath the loose strands of everything unsaid, you feel something tangle inside your chest as you replay his words in the back of your head. 

All alone in Nahanni, unable to see his family. You're sure the prick he's referring to is the one who gave him that horrific scar, nearly taking his life. 

Somewhere in the loop, a knot of pity begins to take shape. 

Johnny brings you Labrador tea—a speciality he learned how to make from Ethel and Jim, the couple from Wrigley who took him in. It's good. It tastes sweet, earthy. Honey and pine. You sip at it as he grabs sleep clothes from his dresser, watching him with a muted sense of listlessness. 

You can't imagine the next sixty days that loom before you. Restlessness, claustrophobia—it coalesces into this strange, itchy feeling that sits, uncomfortably, atop your chest; an increasing pressure. You wish you could pick it off like a loose scab. Dig your nail under the hard clot and tug—

Peel it all off until just silken new skin remains. 

Johnny looks antsy when you finish the tea. Eyes bright. Wide. 

As you contemplate the surrealism of your predicament over Labrador tea, he grins like a shark and tells you he only has one toothbrush. 

“Dinnae mind sharin’, doe,” he offers, too jovial, eager, for the notion of lending his toothbrush to a stranger he met less than twenty-four hours ago. Ah ‘ave good hygiene, he adds, as if that might make this any better. 

Putting away the disgust, the idea of sharing a toothbrush feels much too intimate to you. Something befitting a long-term partner, or kin, before a man you know only the bare bones of. 

But like most things lately, what choice do you have? 

Johnny grins brightly at your acquiescence. All teeth. He hands you an old sweater—his favourite football team, he adds with a wink when you blink at it—and then moves toward you with a wicked gleam in his eyes you try to pretend is just overeager hospitality. 

“Wait—” you start, jerking back instinctively as he looms over the bed. “What are you doing?”

A dip forms between his brows, and he cocks his head quizzically at you. “What're ye talkin’ ‘bout, doe? Need'tae brush yer teeth, don't ye?” 

“I—I can walk—”

He snorts. “Oan yer broken ankle? Will only hurt yerself more.” 

Despite the truth in this statement, the flippancy in his voice stings. Prickles under your skin. Your loss of mobility, of being wholly dependent on another person, is a bitter thing to try and swallow. Especially when you're here for the literal antithesis of it. To be free. Self-reliant. 

Not needing anyone at all except the grit in your bones and the determination to see things through. 

Having all of that ripped into pieces in front of you, by a man who says it with such nonchalant disregard—as if your efforts were meaningless, insubstantial for what it got it—is humiliating. 

You can't remember the last time you needed someone for something so simple as walking to the washroom to brush your teeth, to wash up. The loss of this minute freedom makes you want to cry; to break down. Rage. Break things with your bare hands just to show the world you still can. To fight against these shackles locking around your ankles, and run—

Johnny's hand falls on your knee, thumb brushing the torn edge of your tights, grazing the skin beneath the loose threads with each pass. 

“Don't worry. Ah'll take care 'o ye.” 

That's the problem, you think, chest burning. This awful feeling inside is churning. Frothingly acidic, corrosive. You don't want him to. You don't want to need this man at all. Ever. For anything. 

But—

“Thanks,” you choke out. It tastes like iron. Like defeat. 

He carries you to the washroom, cooing the whole time about how ye ‘ave nothin’ tae be embarrassed ‘bout while you blister from mortification, from shame. 

You came here to be self-reliant. To grind your mettle against the wilderness and come out on the other side victorious and better for it. But what you've accomplished so far is getting lost, getting hurt, imposing on a man you barely know—

One who has to sit down on the ledge of the bathtub with you cradled in his lap like a child, injured foot elevated on the lid of the toilet seat. He cups his hand under your mouth as you scrub at your teeth, trying to catch any of the foam from the toothpaste that spills from your mouth. 

It's mortifying. 

You've never felt so vulnerable in your whole life. 

“Sorry,” you choke out around the brush—his brush—as he slowly commanders the weight of you around enough to spit in the sink. 

He waves you off with a noise. “S’alright, doe. Ye can lean oan me all ye like.” 

So he says. But you feel the rapid inhales behind you. The soft pants spilling from his lips, lungs expanding, broadening his chest into your back. Exertion, you think, slightly cowed and humiliated. Desperately trying to hold some of your weight on your uninjured foot. 

“Nah, ah,” he breathes, arm slinking around your middle, tugging you firmly into his lap. “Ye jus’ worry about gettin’ ready tae go tae bed now. Ah got ye.”

He soothes his palm up and down the length of your arm as you finish up in a fruitless effort to calm your nerves, but it doesn't work. Can't. Because you know what's coming next. 

“Can I, um—” your tongue is thick in your mouth. “I need to use the washroom to–to, uh, washup, and stuff—”

His thigh jerks beneath you. When he speaks, his voice is rougher than normal. “Okay.”

But he stays where he is. 

“I think I can do it on my own—”

“And if ye step oan yer leg?” He tuts, arm tightening around you. “Only gonnae hurt yerself more, doe.”

“I'll be careful, but I really have to—” 

“S’okay,” he coos. “S’only me.” 

That's the problem, you think wildly. Hysterical. That's the whole problem, isn't it? 

“No, you don't understand. I need to, um, go.” He makes another noise, soft. Agreeable. Fuck. “I need to pee.” 

It comes out in a hiss. Feral, like a cat. Embarrassment turns you into more animal than man. 

Again, he hums. “I know, doe. Donnae worry, ah’ll hold yer leg.”

“Can't I just keep it, um, on the ledge?” 

“No, no. If ye put weight oan it, doe, ye’ll be in serious trouble. Dislocated. Broken. Jesus, ye cuid slip the bone out of place—”

No. No.

The idea of him holding your ankle as you piss is beyond any measure of shame you've ever felt before. You like your privacy. Crave it, sometimes. You don't think you've ever done this in front of someone since you were a child. 

You need—

A moment.

Time. A pause. 

But he doesn't give you a chance. 

Johnny's other arm loops under your knees, and with a small huff he stands, holding you aloft with an arm anchored across your belly. It's quick. Mercilessly so. He steps back and lifts his foot to toe the lid off the toilet seat, unbothered by the loud clang it makes when it hits the tank. 

“There we go,” he mutters, and sounds almost breathless for it. “Let's get ye ready.” 

It should be awkward. Clumsy. But he moves with a surprising agility that belies the firmness of his muscles, the bulk. He lets your uninjured leg drop to the floor, murmuring for you to put some weight on it as he cradles your shin in his hands, careful not to let your foot move more than it needs to. 

The strange dance ends with him holding your shin in his hands, stretching your thighs out more than they'd ever been before. An image that might have been comical under different circumstances but just makes you flounder at the suggestiveness of the pose. Added, in large part, by the firm hold he has on you. There's not an ounce of give. No threat of falling. 

You gasp when he moves, shuffling backwards to pivot you around until the back of your shin meets the cold porcelain. 

“Alright now, doe,” he motions toward the seat as he slowly bends down to a crouch on the floor, your foot still held in his grasp. 

You follow him down until you meet the seat, trying to avoid his gaze as you clumsily paw at your tattered pants, slipping the down your thighs in a hurry. Your panties follow after a moment of hesitation. 

When his breath catches, you say nothing at all. Pointedly avoid whatever face he might be making as you stare, fixed, at the panels on the wall behind his head. Wallpaper. Probably moisture-resistant. It's peeling in some places. Decades ago, it might have been a soft canary yellow. 

His breathing is shallow. You ball your hands into fists and press the flat of your knuckles against your thighs. 

It's hard to focus when you can feel the scorching heat of his body bleeding into your leg, your knee. Close enough that all he has to do is bend down a little more, and his face would be pressed against your thighs. 

There's no room, no privacy. 

You close your eyes and pretend you can't hear how his breath seems to fill the entirety of the small washroom, ghosting over your skin. Virginia Falls comes to mind—a roaring rush of water—but even in the solitude of your mind, you can't ignore the way his stare drills through your skin. 

You swallow. You can't do it. Can't do this. 

“Can you—” back off, go away. Stop breathing so heavily because you might get the wrong idea, like this whole thing excites him somehow—

His voice is rough when he speaks. Ragged. “Cannae ah what, doe?”

“Turn the tap on? I can't—I can't concentrate.”

“S’only me, bonnie girl,” he murmurs, but does what you ask. Leaning over you, broad torso swallowing you up entirely under his bulk. You can feel the soft give of his belly on your knee as he presses it into you, but it only lasts a second before you meet a wall of solid muscle beneath. He braces a warm, rough palm on your naked thigh, leaning in as he reaches over to the sink above. 

It's barely a fraction of his weight but the drag of it makes you blink in surprise. His skin is burning. Redhot. 

Opening your eyes brings you close to his chest, nose only a hair away from the tanned skin stretched over his collarbones. The metal chain gleams in the flushed light hanging overhead, sitting in a golden contrast to his sunkissed flesh. Its reflection casts beads of glittering lambency over the slope of his neck. 

Pretty, you think, watching as it coruscates in a mesmerising dance each time he moves. 

The faucet turns with a metallic squeak, breaking you from your reverie. Water gurgles up from the pipes, spitting into the basin with a hiss. You pull back, twisting your head to the side as heat floods your chest. 

“Thanks,” you mutter, unable to meet his stare.

His fingers tighten around your flesh. His voice is raw when he mumbles, “anytime.” 

The trickling rush of water reverberates around the room, and it's easy to close your eyes and pretend you're alone.

So that's exactly what you do. 

His palm grows slick on your skin. Damp. But you ignore it, focusing on nothing but the urgency of getting this over with as quickly as you can. It works, marginally—

(Johnny makes another noise in the back of his throat. 

That, too, you ignore.)

“Finished?” His voice is thick, wet. You nod slowly, peeking out from the sliver between your lashes to paw at the wall for the toilet paper roll. “Here, ah’ll help ye out of fer pants—”

Your head feels heavy. Limbs laden. The embarrassment crushes you into a fine powder; malleable, putty. You let Johnny take the lead after. Let him slip your tattered tights down your thighs, and say nothing at all when too much of his palm glides along your skin as he pulls. Needlessly, of course, when just two fingers would do. 

But it's fine. Fine. Maybe he's never taken off tights before. Maybe the material is too thin and he's worried about it catching on the scrapes over your knees, the bandage wrapped up to mid-calf. 

Your shirt, too. When he slips his fingers under the hem, splaying them wide over your belly before dragging them up until it bunches around his wrist. Tugging, tugging. Hands gliding over your skin, fitting along the contours of your body.

He keeps one hand moulded to your neck, fingers brushing your jaw, as he gingerly pulls the shirt over your head. The ragged pants in your ear, the soft groans when you slip into his old shirt—

It's exertion, really. Must be. He's tired from holding you up the whole time you brushed your teeth, washed your face in the sink. It's all fine. He's being gentle. Doesn't want to hurt you.

He's just being nice. 

(And when you notice that your panties are missing from the pile of dirty clothes he shoves into the corner behind the door, that, too, you ignore.)

Exhaustion takes you soon after Johnny tucks you into bed, dragging you under once again. He tells you he'll be on the couch. To holler if you need anything. Sluggishly, you nod. Thank him when he places a glass of water on the bedside table for you. 

(Bite your tongue when he brushes his fingers over your cheek as he bids you goodnight.)

Through the gossamer of sleep, you can hear the floorboards creak in the doorway, but when you look, there's nothing there. Just an empty kitchen. The soft flicker of the fireplace smouldering in the living room. 

Nothing, you think. It's nothing at all—

There's a weight on your chest. 

Warm, searing. It dampens your skin where it sits, heavy, on your breast, cold air ghosting along the sweat building up each time it moves. 

You stir. The pressure takes shape. A hand. A man's hand. Rough, calloused, and hot. In his palm, he holds your breast, thumb brushing along the curve of it. Sliding, sliding—

You come awake with a gasp. 

There's a twinge in your ankle when you move, and the pain grounds you, silences you. His thumb twitches on your nipple, but he, too, stills. Quietens. An impasse. 

And you suppose this would be where you'd scream. Rage. Slap him across the face, rip his hand off your breast. Curse at him for being a creep, and a pervert, and nasty, disgusting man because there's nothing at all that could justify the reason for why the shirt he gave you to wear to bed is tucked up over your chest. The bruising press of something hard digging into your hip negates any excuse he might try to give. This is unmistakable. You should scream, cry, and—

Leave. 

This is what glues your lips together. Keeps you from moving at all, from making a sound. Where would you go? How would you even get there to begin with? 

It's this—the uncertainty, your vulnerability—that paralyzes you. Keeps you still, silent, as his hands brush over your skin, touching, fondling. His palms are rough, calloused. Pyretic. He squeezes, kneading your flesh in his sweat-slicked hand like he's owed the right to touch you. Like he's allowed. 

He pants against your temple, breath warm, humid on your skin. Heaves like a dog in your ear, grunting low as he ruts his hips into your side, smearing something hot, tacky across your skin. Something you try not to think about, to inch away from. But he catches you quick, and stops your meagre protests before they form. 

His thumb and forefinger close over your pebbled nipple, pinching softly at your budded flesh. The shock of pleasure is unwanted. Awful. It churns your stomach, and you fight the urge to weep—

He leans up, ragged exhales growing heavier as he moves until milk-warmed breath shudders over your bare breasts. His excitement throbs against your hip. You swallow down around the sudden wave of disgust, the sickness knotting itself together in your belly. It devours the lingering pity you'd felt earlier. The safety, the comfort, that brimmed inside of you for him. 

(bleeding heart—

he gorges himself on it.)

Stay still, you think. And maybe he'll go away. 

But he doesn't. Of course, he doesn't. 

Johnny leans down, mouth closes over your nipple. It's all searing heat. Wet, soft. A sudden jolt of pleasure shoots down your spine when he sucks in tandem with the soft, rolling pinches he doles out on your tiger nipple, and you hate your treacherous body a little bit more for it. For how good it makes you feel when he flicks his tongue over your hardened peek, laving it sloppily. Messily. Drooling all over you—the big fucking dog—

You wonder how long he's been doing this. Touching you in your sleep. The thought sits like hot oil in your guts; sloshing against the soft lining of your stomach until it aches. Burns. You blame it on that when he grunts against your breast, the vibrations send a shiver down your spine. Have to, don't you? Because the alternative is to admit that you're slick, soft between your thighs already; folds soaked, inner thigh damp. Wet. Blame it on him, and the burden in your chest eases when you feel the stirrings of desire, lust, thicken in your lower belly. Bodily reaction becomes your clutch, your lifeline when he lays his upper body against you, the weight, the heft, of his bulk forcing the air from your lungs. 

Johnny lifts his head suddenly, eyes drilling into yours before you can feign sleep to avoid looking at him. You don't want this. Your body thrums with reluctance, with fear, but you can't drag your gaze away from him. The rapturous look in his eyes, burning in the low simmer of a never-ending twilight, is paralyzing. Electric. You can't remember a time in your life when another person has ever looked at you with such raw want. Desire. Need. It's covetous. Ugly. Marbled with heady streams of hunger, of awe, as if he's not sure whether or not he wants to eat you alive or savour you for aeons. Taking bites, nibbles, when this urge becomes too burdensome to bear; when the ravenous chasm in his guts threatens to devour itself, bones and all, like a man-made black hole. Under this heavy, unrelenting stare you wither. Submit. Your head rolls until your cheek is pressed against the pillow, neck bared. Offered up to him. 

(anything, you think, to run away from the naked want on his face. because with his mouth slack, lips slick, glistening with spit, he looks predatory like this. animal. bathed in gloam and flushed a deep roseate.)

He props himself up on his elbow, watching you. Feasting. Your quiet submission makes him moan; hips juttering at the slow reveal of your vulnerable neck. A paroxysm. As if he just can't help himself to hump against you like a beast in rut. 

He swallows. You watch his throat work from the corner of your eye, Adam's apple bobbing up and down, up and down—

Then:

He lifts himself up higher, angling his body until it's bracketed over you. Sliding between your legs until your slit is pressed against the coarse hair that covers his thighs. He keeps his elbow propped on the pillow, sliding up, up, until his forearm comes to rest beside your face. It boxes you in completely under his weight, and the position forces your legs to spread open to accommodate him. Not given up freely, of course; but your compliance in this is inessential, it seems. He moulds you how he likes, mindful of your injured ankle the whole time. A kindness that makes something molten thicken in your throat, stifling the scream that claws its way up your esophagus. 

You try not to stare when he clambers over you, chest bare against yours. Hips chiselling a gorge between your thighs wide enough for him to fit. To press his fattened length on the insides of your sticky thighs; groins drawing together. Your legs slung loosely around his tapered waist. A dreadful pastiche of lovemaking. Intimacy. 

But even as a mockery—bastardised as it is—it’s embarrassing how easily you open up for him. Legs falling, spreading further apart. Hot, sticky at the apex of your thighs. Wanting. 

Blame it on sleep, on this endless hypnagogia you've been feeling since he leaned over you on the cliff edge, and said, pretty thing, aren't ye? All alone. No’ anymore, doe. Jus’ me an’ ye, now. Jus’ us—

You swallow, fighting the urge to cry. Blinking rapidly against the tears that pebble against your lashline, but you're helpless to stop the flood even though the levee doesn't break, doesn't spill over. It just sits, a sorrowful lagoon with nowhere to go. 

In your attempt to hold back the deluge, you let your gaze wander away from the piercing blue that drills into your face—seemingly unbothered by the tears in your eyes, the ones that clot over your irises, stinging and hot—and stare down at his broad chest. A mistake, maybe, because you catch sight of the gold cross dangling around his neck. Like a pendulum, it swings. The motion is mesmerising. Hypnotic. 

It distracts you for a moment. Or maybe you've just grown accustomed to his touch, to the heat of his hand on your skin. Whatever the reason, it's enough to pull you away from the feverish trail his fingers leave as they make a steady drag downward. It's only when they dance over your belly button do you realise the muted tickle is Johnny, and by then—

“Shush, s’alright, doe,” he's cooing, warm breath ghosting over the plains of your face. It might be comforting if he didn't rest his weight on his elbow, freeing his other hand just to bring it over your mouth, thumb brushing under your eye. A warning maybe. Don't scream. “Ah go’ ye. Ah’ll make ye feel so good—”

There's a fever in his eyes. Wildfires spreading through the yawning boscage, burning everything in sight. The heat is hot enough to char bone; to blacken meat into a dessicated husk. Eating away at everything in its path. 

You know, almost immediately, that Johnny's beyond reason. Or, rather—

He's gone, turned inward; delusional enough to think that this is something he has to do. 

You'd seen all the warnings of the kindling fire before. Something you'd decided to ignore even as the hunger in his eyes surged; as the shape of it morphed into a frothing devotion that felt ill-fitting for two strangers stuck together like this. 

Stupidly, you thought you could outrun it. That he was a good man beneath it all, and wouldn't succumb to touching you in your sleep, to lulling you into a false sense of security—

Except. He hadn't, had he? 

He'd been blunt about it all since the beginning. My wife—

How silly, you thought. 

But the humour fades when he teases over your hips, resting his palm over your mound, middle finger perched above your clit. Just holding. Touching. The possessiveness of the action is unmistakable, unignorable. 

It shouldn't send a shiver down your spine when you'd rather he didn't touch you at all, but it does. There's something about him, you think. Electric. A lightning storm. It crackles in the air around you, humming low in the atmosphere; this unavoidable surge, natural phenomenon. Maybe that's what he is. 

More storm than man. A force you can't outrun, but can only endure—

His eyes flash when he slides his fingers further down your slit and finds your skin soft, hot. Drenched. When he groans your name out, it sounds like a prayer. An orison. 

“So wet, doe,” he's heaving out in a whisper, eyes nearly rolling back into his head as his touch grows bolder, more insistent. As if the softness of your flesh, the wetness that sticks to your inner thighs, is all the consent he needs. “So fuckin’ wet fer me, aye? Been waitin’ fer this, haven't ye?” 

You want to shake your head no but it's futile. He drops his head to look down the chasm between your bodies, watching his hand slide along your skin. Legs spread around his waist, inviting. He curses foul under his breath when he sees how wet his fingers are from just a touch, words mangled in the back of his throat. They sound less coherent as he roams your body, parting your folds and stroking through the slick spilling out of you, dragging it up to your clit. 

His voice is closer now. Lips bruising against the shell of your ear. Butchered English. Gaelic. An amalgamation of low whines, and rasping grunts. He sounds more animal than man. A booming thundercloud groaning above you, as if touching you is enough to please him, too. Siphoning it from your body as he presses his fingers against your clit, circling, stroking. 

It’s good. So good. And that's the problem, you think. It's easy to give in like this when he pets your pussy like the feeling of your fluttering heat on his hand is enough to make him cum. No one has ever touched you like they were starving for it. Needed it as badly as you did. 

The sensation is almost too much. The notion of it getting tangled in the back of your head, looping around the part of you still screaming to run. To go home. To push him away. 

(your arms are laden. your tongue is a puddle of mercury in your mouth—)

But just as the pleasure blooming in your belly raises with each pass of his thumb, he pulls away. Slides down, down—

Circles your hole with the tips of his slick fingers, petting with the same desperation he showed your clit until he deems you soft enough for him. He slowly sinks his finger inside of you to the knuckle, stretching your walls around him as he moans into your ear about how good ye feel around him, all tight. Hot. So fuckin' wet, do. So wet fer me—

He pulls out just as slowly, shushing the soft gasp you make when the ridge of his palm catches on your clit. 

“Ah told ye, didnae ah? Ah’ll take care’a ye.”

He presses two fingers inside of you as he peppers kisses over your cheek, cooing low about how badly you need him. Only him. 

Johnny fucks you slowly on two fingers. Gently. Deeply. Sliding into the last knuckle, petting against your slick walls, like he's owed the privilege and not touching you in your sleep.  

He brings you to the edge, takes you right there, and—

Pulls away. His fingers slide down as your hips flit, lifting to make them catch on your clit again. It's embarrassing how badly you want him to touch you. Shameful. 

He leans up and catches your mouth in a messy kiss. It's all tongue, wet, no finesse. The wild, unkempt tangle of hair abrades your skin, rubbing it raw as he devours you. Scoops out your tongue with his own, enticing it into his mouth. His teeth close on the thick of it, lips pursing. Sucking on the tip. 

His kisses are doglike and obscene. Leaves drool dribbling down your chin, soaking into your neck. He can't seem to decide what he wants to do, so he tries to do it all. Everything. Biting your lips, trying to choke you on his tongue. Slurping up the taste of you until his mouth is stained with it. Beard matted down, drenched. 

Despite it all, he's a good kisser. His pace is fast, breakneck. You can't keep up, but you try. Struggling along as he seems hellbent on eating you alive. But it's sporadic. He pauses just long enough to settle into an easy rhythm that makes you arch into it, silently begging for more as he fucks you on his fingers. Nips your tongue as he slides in a third, swallowing the gasp you let out, savouring your moans between his teeth. 

Johnny ruins you with just a kiss. Leaves you panting, unmoored. Mouth slack, open wide for him to do what he pleases because the taste of him is divine. 

“C’mon,” he urges, spreading his fingers inside of your cunt until you keen, whining his name. “Suck my tongue, bonnie.” 

It's disgusting. You do it, anyway. 

Your quiet acquiescence makes him moan, hips rutting against you. The hard press of his cock into your skin is bruising. It aches. Your inner thighs are tacky with your slick and the smears of pre-cum he leaves behind as he humps against you. 

He sounds mournful when he pulls away, mouth messy with spit, and whispers, “fuck, wish ah could taste ye again, doe—” You don't know what he means until his eyes drop down to his hand, working insistently between your thighs. 

Your stomach drops. Plummets. You thought this started when he was touching your chest, when you woke up to his hand on your breast—

“Ye didnae wake when ah did it before,” he says, as if sounding mournful, sad, over the fact that you didn't wake up to him eating your pussy while you were asleep, was normal. “Must’a had too much tea—”

You wish, so suddenly, so viciously, that he'd stop talking. You can't hear this. Can't bear to listen to him confess to all the needling worries that bloomed in the back of your head, ones you stamped down with a heavy foot and a potent sense of guilt, shame, for condemning a man who was just trying to help. 

It makes you want to cry. 

“Oh, doe, don't cry—” he coos the words out, contrite and conciliatory, but you can feel the way his cock twitches against your thigh. The unmistakable heat mushrooming in his eyes as the sight of tears streaming down your face. 

He seems to take it as misery over not feeling his mouth on your cunt, a plaintive assertion he whispers into your ear (poor thing, jus’ wannae feel ma mouth on you, aye? wannae feel me lick yer sweet pussy again?), and decides to rectify your sorrow by kissing his way down your body. 

His fingers slip out when he moves, resting them on your knee as he kneels back on his haunches. 

You spare a glance toward him, nervous with trepidation, and—

This whole time, his cock had been this phantom sensation against your skin, bruising and hot. Leaving wet smears over your thighs. Hidden from view. But like this, it's the first thing you see as it hangs, heavy and thick, from between his thighs. 

The sight is—

Something. 

You don't want to think about the heat in your belly. The nervous flit of your heartbeat. 

A pearlescent strand dribbles down the weeping, slick head, dropping to the sheets below. The shaft of his cock is similarly drenched, smeared with what seems like a copious amount of precum. It gathers at the base, a startling contrast of thick, black hair and globs of milky white. 

Something about it makes you recoil. Almost instinctively, primal. 

Your flinch just makes his cock twitch, spitting more out. 

The motion seems to unveil more of it to you, adding to the growing unease you feel because his cock is the furthest thing from pretty. 

It's flushed a daunting vermillion and purpling like a bruise around the engorged glands. Thickening at the base. Streaked with dark veins that run the length of it, like rivers intersecting and jutting up from his skin. Blotches of red, pink, purple, and peach make up the colouring of it. Marbled like a black eye. A busted lip. 

It bobs when he moves. Ugly, garish. You don't want it anywhere near you—

But Johnny’s wet hand on your knee keeps you from moving. Holds you in place as he bends down, resting on elbow to bring his face as close to your pussy as he can get. 

Johnny stares—unabashedly—at your bare cunt when he finally settles between your thighs, widening them further to fit the broad stretch of his shoulders. Eyes lit with a heady greed, a hunger, that knocks the air from your lungs. 

“Missed ma mouth, didnae ye?” 

For a moment, you think he's talking to you. Confusion colours the panic you feel, dampening the dread down until it's flattened by sheer bewilderment when you realise his eyes haven't left your slit. 

“Such a bonnie girl,” he purrs, breath ghosting over your cunt. “Been so lonely without me, aye? Poor thing.”

It heats you up from the inside out. The mesmerised, almost unfettered look of pure adoration shaded alongside the raw want on his face twists a sense of desire inside of you. Has anyone looked at you with such naked need on their face? As if the idea of not having a taste was somehow the most agonising thing they could experience? The way Johnny looks at you is enough to make you ache. And with anyone else, having him address your pussy instead of you would be awkward, humiliating, but somehow, him doing it makes you burn white-hot. Makes you want—

“Johnny,” you whisper, paper-thin, and his head shoots up, brows inching high on his brow. You're acutely aware that this is the first thing you've said since this started. Since you woke up to him groping you, touching you, in your sleep. And it's his name. Johnny. 

Not no, don't. Stop. Please. Just—

“Johnny.”

It's not consent. You're not sure you're fully capable of doing so right now, if ever. But it's the closest you think you could come to saying yes. Admitting that you want his mouth on you, even though the situation leading up to this still makes something ugly and awful twist in your guts, is as much as you can give. He seems to see this. To know. 

But Johnny takes it between his teeth as an unequivocal yes despite that, groaning low in his throat, midnight eyes rolling back into his head. The hands on you tremble. Shake. 

He breathes in deeply through his nose, the sound whistling as a great plume of air is forced through small channels, filling his lungs. Perfuming them with the heady scent of you, of sex, clotting in the air. 

“Fuck, doe. Gonnae give ye what ye need.” 

And then he bends his head, eyes lidded still, half rolled, and without any preamble, glues his lips to your drenched slit, forcing it between your soft folds. 

The first touch of his tongue is molten. Soft, tensile, he laves it over the whole of your slit from the sensitive skin beneath your hole, to the crest of your clit. Digs his tongue in, swirling it over and under your folds leaving no part of you untouched. Feasting. Devouring. 

It makes you mewl. Your back arches off the sheets, ankle throbbing in a heady, pulsing pain at the sudden movement, adding to the shrill whine in your voice. 

He notices, and pets your knee once before sliding his bicep under your leg, looping his hand around to secure your thigh in the crook of his below. Locked in tight. Immoveable. The other he pushes down with the flat of his palm, until your joints ache from the stretch. Your knee is almost flush with the mattress. Widening you further for his searing, eager mouth. 

If his kisses are dogish—wet, messy; sloppy with drool—then the way he eats your cunt is foul. Slobbering down his chin, slurping up the mess he makes with a series of chewed-off moans and muffled whines. He paws at you as if he was denied the pleasure of drink for aeons, feasting like a man half-delirious and starved. There's no finesse. No skill to speak of. Just a desperate man lapping at you like a beast. Worshipping you. 

He nuzzles his chin and cheeks against your cunt, drenching himself until his beard is matted to his skin. The feeling of his coarse hair grazing your sensitive flesh is overwhelming. Too much. Too ticklish. But—

It feels good. 

The contrast of his fleshy tongue rolling over your clit, and the rough brush of his hair when he nuzzles you with the point of his chin, cooing softly about how pretty this little pussy is, getting him all wet, is cataclysmic. The heat floods your belly, and you clench around nothing. Achingly empty. Moaning at the feeling of him bringing you right there, right to the brink, with nothing by the hair on his cheek. It's unreal. Inescapable. Your head drops, mouth lax, open wide as you pant and whimper through the madness of Johnny MacTavish trying to find a way to suck your clit and fuck you with his tongue at the same time. An impossible goal, you know, but he doesn't seem to care about logic or reason with his head buried between your thighs, mouth never leaving you once. He merely nods his head up and down, refusing to pull away.

It's divine. It's worship. It's—

He pushes two of his fingers inside of you, lapping at your taut rim to stem the sting of his sudden intrusion, and you think, for a moment, that you see Nirvana behind your eyelids. 

It's embarrassingly how quickly he brings to you the brink, slurping messily as he drills his fingers into your hole, petting against your walls in a mockery of what he'll do to you once he's had his fill. Satiated his hunger with the taste of your pussy. 

Something he can't seem to get enough of.

Your thighs draw together, crushing him between your legs. Arching into his mouth, nearly smothering him as you rut clumsily against his face, moaning at the rough scrape of his beard against your skin. You're not normally so aggressive, but he loses himself in it, eyes rolling as he grabs your hips and pulls you closer to his wanting mouth, encouraging you to use his tongue, his lips, to meet your end as you see fit. Riding his face as much as you can with your leg locked tight between his shoulder and bicep. 

And it's in between his loud grunts, his whines—almost caterwauling into your slit—where you shatter. The sound of his pleasure, the feeling of his mouth on you—it’s all too much. You break when he sucks your clit into his mouth, keening in the back of his throat as he works another finger into you. It feels good. Too good. 

Johnny works you through it. Lets you take, and take as your muscles spasm with the force of your release. Fingers digging into his shoulders, fisting the sheets. He moans along with you, eagerly lapping at your cunt until you whine, begging him to stop. You've had enough. Can't take anymore—

He only pulls away when you melt into the sheets, shuddering with the aftershocks bubbling through your body. Leaning back on his haunches once more, the hair around his mouth slick and wet. The evidence of your pleasure dripping down his chin, droplets still clinging to his beard.

He crawls over you once more, eyes boring into yours. Pits of coal. An endless black hole.

In this strange space, liminal, you lose yourself. Shed pieces of who you were before when he slots his hips between your thighs, cock heavy in his hand, and presses it to your slit. 

This is happening. He's going to fuck you. 

You wish the thought didn't make your knees fall apart a little wider for him. Make your hips flit, lifting slightly into the air. Eager. Hungry for it. For him.

It's loneliness, you think. Desperation. 

Madness is addictive. It feeds itself and infects those around it. Noxious. An all-consuming black hole that eats, and eats. It must have bitten you, too. Dug infectious teeth into your skin, severing flesh to imbed its jowls in your marrow. Clinging. Poisoning you from the inside out. 

There's no other reason for why you reach for him, hands sliding over his sweat-slicked skin as he falls into the open brackets of your arms, grunting when the head of his cock catches on your rim. He's a wall of heat. Firm muscles. Your nails dig into the thick cords of his shoulders just to feel the reluctant give of his skin. 

Nothing about this man is soft. His waist, his thighs, his chest, his arms, the hard ridge of his cock. It's all unyielding muscle. Burning. Searing into your skin when it drags against his. 

“Gonnae fuck ye, doe,” he whispers, words pitching low. Damp wood, felled timber. Rough. You shiver from the heat of it. The warning, the plea; both extremes coalescing together to make truism more potent. Weighty. “Gonnae fuck this pretty pussy, and yer gonnae beg me fer it.” 

Despite the surety in assertion, he doesn't wait for you to plead with him to split you apart, taking the initiative instead to sink the head of his cock into you. The stretch stings already, and only his glands have sunk in, a fact he grunts into your ear as he drives forward another inch. Another—

You don't think you've ever been this unmoored before. Rendered this docile. A mere domicile for him to burrow inside of; to carve a home from the sanctum of your walls wrapped tight around him. And carve he does. Splitting you apart as he grunts with the efforting of forcing his cock into you, feeding it further with blunt jerks of his hips, his hands feverish on your skin. Sweat slicked already even though he's barely halfway inside of you. 

“Feels so good,” he slurs into your ear, face pinching. Twisting up as pleasure blooms over his brow. “So fuckin’ good, doe, fuck—”

It does. Beyond the blunt pressure of him forcing his cock inside of you, the sting of the stretch, there's an intense, dizzying pleasure in the fullness you feel. In the press of him notching against something inside that makes heat bloom in your belly, turns your bones liquid. It might be the previous climax rendering you oversensitive, but the feeling of him splitting you apart is euphoric. 

It's aided by the moans he lets out as you take more and more of him, as if the sound of his pleasure is funnelled into yours. By the look on his face, eyes widened, feverish, as he darts his gaze between your face and your pussy, unable to decide if he wants to watch his cock disappear into you or watch your face, pinched up in pleasure, in flickering pain, as you take him fully. 

This sort of bliss, this pleasure, is addicting. Narrowed down to the sharp nudge of his cock grazing places inside of you that light your nerves on fire, burn through your synapses until your thoughts are muddled, mush. No coherency, no logic—just the fat length of him bludgeoning into your walls; the tap of his heavy, full sack slapping against your ass as he finally, finally, roots deep.

He must feel it, too. This strange, overwhelming pleasure loops around your lower belly, twisting itself into knots because when he pushes the last few inches inside of you, he nearly collapses on top of you, his whole body shuddering. Trembling. Presses his damp face to your cheek, matted, slick hair tickling your skin, and groans from deep within his chest at the feeling of you wrapped around him. The noise shivers through you. His pleasure is enough to make you clench down, tightening up around him. Already on the verge and all he did was slide his cock inside of you. 

A fact he seems to luxuriate in, huffing shakily into your ear as he quenches himself on the soft, fluttering pulses of your walls around him. Content to grind his hips into yours in shallow gyrations that make your eyes roll into the back of your head. The tension in your belly coiling tighter and tighter, the pleasure ameliorating the shame you'd felt before, burning it into cinders. 

As long as he keeps his cock inside of you, as long as he keeps pushing the blunt head into that spot that makes your vision whiteout, you think could cum just like this. Right now—

He doesn't. 

Johnny lifts himself off of your chest, elbow coming to rest beside your head, taking the brunt of his weight. His eyes are bright, burning. He stares down at you, and the look of sheer adoration on his face is daunting, overwhelming. It threatens to eat you alive. Devour you whole. Pure rapture. Devotion. 

You flush, face stinging with embarrassment. Prickling with unease. No one has ever stared at you like this, so hungrily, and the fact that it's him makes your head spin. Looping endlessly in circles of disbelief and fear. 

He might be omnipotent, you think, with the way his lips tug sharply downward, brow bunching together as if he can hear your thoughts, taste your disquiet in the air. 

Johnny rolls his hips back slowly, inching out of you with a hum until just the tip remains. The loss has your hands scrambling down his chest, fingers tangling in the coarse, drenched hairs at the soft incline of his belly. The other sliding around the thick breadth of his ribs, nails digging into the slick skin covering his spine. Pressing. Biting. 

More, you don't say. Please. 

The knot in his brow dissipates. Eases into something almost playful, impish. 

“Want ma cock, doe?” He whispers it waggishly, like a cloy secret, and you pretend the tease in his voice doesn't make your heart lurch in your chest. “Didnae anyone teach ye some manners? Gotta ask politely.” 

You won't. You won't. 

Your reluctance makes him sigh. The chain around his neck swinging when he moves. His hips pull back, and he reaches down with his free hand, and grabs his cock, pulling it out of you, and sliding it against your slit. The head bumps into your clit, and you nearly choke on the gasp that's ripped from your chest. The pleasure is too much, too—

He pulls away, denying you the euphoria of release. 

“No, no, please,” you babble, resolve crumbling into ash. “Please, Johnny, please—”

“That’s more like it,” he coos, and lets his cock dip back inside of your fluttering hole, rim stretched taut around him once more. The sting is lessened now, but still there as the thick glands force you open for him. “Sound so pretty when yer desperate for ma cock.” 

He leans down, catching your mouth in another sloppy kiss as he slams his cock back inside of you hard enough to bruise. To make you see stars. Cockhead bludgeoning into your cervix in a dizzying amalgamation of pleasure and pain that makes you whine, the whimper snatched up between his teeth as he burrows them into your lip with an echoing groan. 

He fucks you hard, working his cock into you at a maddening pace. Bestial, now. All animal. The tenderness from before dissolves into an choppy desperation. An eagerness to seek his own end as you fall to pieces beneath him, shaking from the force of taking him over and over again, each piston, each hard thrust driving the thoughts from your head until all you have left is sensation. An absence of everything except the way he feels above you, inside of you. 

Sweat builds up along your hairline, gathers at the base of your spine, and soaks the sheets below. You feel liquid under him. A ragdoll for him to sink his jowls into, to toss around as he likes. 

Johnny is all sensation and a cacophony of sound. 

He ruts into you clumsily, groaning in your ear. Moaning out how good you feel around him. Pretty pussy made just for him. 

“Oh, fuck, doe—” he moans, arching into the next thrust. Drool dribbles down his chin when he curves his spine, dropping his forehead onto your temple. “Feels so good. Feels like my cock is meltin’ instead ye—”

The lewd squelch of his cock pistoning into you seems to echo through the room, louder somehow than the ragged moans that spill from his mouth. 

“Been so long,” he shudders against you, rooting his cock deep. Burying himself inside of you as his cockhead bullies into your cervix. The flash of pain is whitehot, blinding, but the bloom of pleasure eats it whole before it can pollute the puddle of bliss pooling in your belly. “Been savin’ it all jus’ fer ye—”

His hand slides from your hip, burrowing between your bodies as rubs at your clit. It feels so good that it nips sharply into pain, into agony. Too much, too much—

But he doesn't relent. Fingers toying, circling your clit in time with each jarring thrust, tightening the coil inside of you until it whines from the tension, the pressure—

It snaps when he growls into your ear—cum fer me, doe; wannae feel this pussy squeezin’ ma cock—and releases in a flood, a deluge of molten heat. Back arching, toes curling. You're barely cognisant of the ache in your injured foot, the throbbing pain. It's swallowed by the surge of endorphins roaring through you, ringing in your ears. Blotting everything out except the way you pulse around the thick of him still lodged deep inside of you. 

You barely have time to come down before he starts again, forcing you to take him as he thrusts in harder than before, mindlessly seeking his own end as you gush around him, nails raking across his flesh. 

He's babbling above you, spitting words into your ear about how he's going to take care of you. All of you. Take you back to Scotland with him so you can raise your children—

It slices through the haze, ripping a hole through the fog clouding your mind. 

“No,” you whimper, devastation flooding your chest alongside the vicious pleasure still rolling around inside of you. “No, please—”

Children, he breathes like you hadn't spoken at all. Lots. Lots of them. Brothers and sisters. Two, maybe three, of each. But he's not picky, bonnie, he'll take whatever you give him. And keep fucking you over and over again until he gets what he wants. A whole family to raise. To surround himself with. Been lonely, you think he says. Needed something to keep him busy. 

You don't want this. Can't. But he doesn't stop, doesn't relent. He breathes life into the picture he paints with the soft flutter of your cunt clenching tight around him at words, once again betrayed by your own body. 

Despite the nausea that bleeds to the surface at his words, your eyes roll back into your head once more, driven mad with the thunderous pleasure that rips through you as he forces every last inch of his cock into you. 

Johnny grinds his hips against yours, moaning, loud and untethered, muscles jerking, twitching, as he cums deep inside of you. 

The aftershocks of his pleasure make him tremble, body spasming as he drives himself tight against the seal of your womb. A new heat grows inside of you as Johnny slumps against you, panting in your ear. 

“Ah’ll be so good tae ya,” he promises in a rasping growl, shoving his head into the crook of your neck. Gyves close around you as he nuzzles his mouth into your flesh, licking at the sweat that beads on your skin. 

“All mine. All fuckin’ mine—” The confessional is tainted with the sickness that leaks from the craggy hole chiselled into the side of his head. Obsessive devotion hewing ruinous dogma into the fibrils of your head. Tenderised, softened, by the blunt, unyielding touch of his hand. A slurry that this polluted notion slips inside, tainting your resolve until it's thickened into his whim. His wants. 

You sob into his chest as he wraps you up in his arms, shackled against the man who carved a place inside of you just wide enough for himself to fit. Who spat poison in the hollow crevasses, and called it absolution. Love. 

All you can do is heave through corrupted lungs as he smothers you under the weight of his madness. 

“No’ gonnae let anyone touch ye. Ah'll kill anyone who tries to tae take ye away from me, doe—”

The conviction in his tone is bound in steel. In feverish blue. 

“Ah’ll take care’a ye,” he rasps, voice thick in his throat. “Donnae worry about a thing, doe.”

“Will you let me go?”

He doesn't answer at first. Just digs his nose into your hairline, breathing in deep until the wide breadth of his chest expands across your back. Mulling it over, maybe. Coming up with an excuse for his behaviour. Something to negotiate with on reasons why you shouldn't call the police the moment he does. 

And for a moment, a startling, terrible moment, there's hope. The assurance wells on your tongue. Some unfathomable amalgamation of please and i’ll never tell. Maybe you were going to tell him he was an honest man who did something bad. That there was still good within him. All of those hideous clichès bubble up through the cracks—

But it's all dashed when his hand drops down from its perch beneath your bare breasts, sliding over your skin until it curls possessively over your lower belly. 

He breathes out and the hope inside you is snuffed under the gale of delusion, his obsession. “Why would ah do a thing like that?” He prompts, and the genuine confusion in his voice makes you shiver, as if the idea of it is so outlandish, so absurd, it negates everything he'd done to get to this point. You feel hollow. But not—

Not empty. 

As if he hears the thought thundering in the ruins of your mind, he presses a tender kiss to your temple that you think is meant to be soothing. Shushing you softly when you begin to shake. “After it took me this long to find ye, doe. Am no’ lettin’ ye go fer the world, ken. Yer mine. All mine.”

And then he closes his jowls around your throat. 

Time feels artificial here. 

You wake up several hours later, groggy and disoriented, but the sun doesn't seem like it moved from where it was perched last night at all. Fixed in place. Lost in some strange, eternal twilight zone where the sun is a warden, watching you tirelessly through the window. 

Cardboard cutout hung amongst the stars.

Your ankle aches horribly—an agonising throb. You must have turned in your sleep, jostled it. You're further away from the spot you were last night, too. Rolled over in your sleep, maybe. The burn brings tears to your eyes that you swallow down with a groan. 

As you awkwardly settle your leg in a way that hurts slightly less than it did before, you let cognisance slip back in to keep your mind off of the horrible ache that tremors through your bones. Your neck. 

Between your thighs—

It's then that you hear Johnny. 

He's whistling in the kitchen. You peer out through the crack in the door, catching the broad expanse of his naked back as he works over the stove. Flexing. Muscles bunching. He hums a tune you can't recognise as he scrapes the spatula over the cast iron pan. 

His grey sweats sit low on his hips. The divots above the hem—dimples of Apollo, you recall—are stark against the hollow ravine of his spine. You can't help but stare. Gawk. Limned in the soft light of the morning sun that spills through the open window, he looks almost ethereal. Unreal. Like something out of a magazine and not the middle of nowhere in Canada where the sun doesn't set this time of year. 

He feels surreal. A man too good to be true. All sculpted musculature that looks like it could just as well be handmade by an amalgamation of both David’s by Michelangelo and Gian Lorenzo Bernini. All sharp, angled lines; beautiful in their fluidity. 

It's unfair, you think suddenly. To be stuck with a man you feel nauseous thinking about but can’t seem to take your eyes off of. Some paradoxical madness. Retribution for a time in a past life where you swindled fate and got away unscathed. All of your karmic sins pile down on top of you as the events last night flicker past, drenched in seafoam. Ghosts linger in the cracks; in memories. 

The phantom weight of something slung over your waist, knotted tight between your breasts. Scorching heat glued to your spine. A heavy hand cradling your lower belly. Words whispered into your nape—

He turns, then. Catches your eye like he knew it was there the whole time. Stands there like the picture of ease, of a satiated man puttering around a small space while his sweetheart lounged in the bed, lazing the day away. 

Like this wasn’t illegal. Immoral. He treats you like a lover even though you’d only met less than a day ago—

And already his cum was drying on your inner thighs, thick and sticky. His madness pooling in your head, words uttered into your ear about this cabin he has back home, back in Scotland. He’ll take you there, he said. It’s time he came home, he thinks. His head is on straight again, and he finally feels like he can breathe without shattering into a million pieces—

(He put your hands on his head last night, palm cradling the ugly scar on his temple, and whispered, fervent and insane, ye keep ma head together, doe. Ye make me feel whole again—)

Knows a man, he told you. A good bloke who’d help him get you home, too. 

His smile is bright. Blinding.

“Mornin’, doe. Ah made breakfast.” 

[vaingod]

you better be stealing shit during any holiday sale btw, black friday isnt real. 90% of these prices are genuinely fake, items that were usually $40 put on sale for $39.99 with a "was" price listed as $60 and a black friday sale banner put above it will get sold out within the day, there are no sales no deals nothing is currently being sold at a crazy good price just save your money and steal all year round! theres your deal! 100% off all the time forever baby stop being tempted by artificial sales meant to empty out corporations warehouses just to refill them with shit for the next capitalism holiday i know its hard but steal that shit instead of spending any money on it

[whatsnewalycat]

“do you believe in aliens?”

Pairing: Dieter Bravo x GN Person

Summary: Meeting DB in a furniture store.

Prompt: “Do you believe in aliens?”

Trope: Meet-cute

Words: 1.4k+ (sorry can’t shut the fuck up)

Rating: Teen (because swearing)

Notes: For the @dieterbravobrainrotclub May Drabble Challege! Also slightly inspired by Broad City when Lincoln said he met Ilana in a foot locker in Times Square and she was just chillin’. First person POV.

—

It was one of those weeks.

The kind of week where you seem to have no patience for anyone or anything. The kind where extra heavy traffic adds an hour to your commute each way. When you find yourself picking fights and reaching for comfort foods and maybe smoking twice as much as you normally do.

You know the kind of week where you come home on Friday after a long day of suffering under capitalism, only to discover that your live-in boyfriend up-and-left with all of his belongings?

Maybe that last one is just a me problem.

Anyways.

After the first sleepless night on the floor of my apartment, I decided I should get a mattress. Maybe even a bed frame if I could find a good deal.

I went to this nearby furniture outlet, and right away I could tell the place was understaffed. The employees wore these bright sunshine yellow polos that made them easy to spot across the open air of the warehouse. They were outnumbered four to one, easy.

This was gonna take up my whole day. I didn’t mind, though. The way I looked at it, I could either go back to my half-empty apartment and cry about the fact that I didn’t have a bed or a tv or a boyfriend, or I could wait my turn to buy a goddamn bed.

I found the cheapest mattress/bedframe combo available, then laid down on the starch-stiff comforter and gave it a few test bounces before deciding it was good enough.

I walked up and down the aisles of sad-looking bedroom furniture sets, trying to catch the attention of a sunshine polo to no avail.

That’s when I heard him.

“They said it might be an hour wait.”

Following the voice, I turned around and saw this guy all stretched out on a king-sized sleigh bed. He radiated the same energy as a sulking teenager waiting for his parents to pick him up, scrolling on his phone with one arm tucked behind his head.

I checked over my shoulders, then asked, “Are you talking to me?”

He looked up from his phone, dark eyes peeking over the rim of his sunglasses, “You’re trying to get a sales person, right?”

“Yeah.”

He shrugged, sitting up to bend his legs criss-cross applesauce, “Might as well make yourself at home.”

“Well, what can ya do,” I sighed and looked across the warehouse, confirming the sunshine polos were neck deep in annoyed customers.

“Hey, uhhh… since you’re waiting, would you do me a favor?”

“What’s that?”

“Tell me what you think about this bed.”

I turned to face the furniture in question, tilting my head as I studied the thing, “I don’t know, it’s big, I guess. Looks… sturdy,” I kicked the leg and nodded in approval, “Yeah, that frame is solid as fuck. Is it comfy?”

“Pretty comfy,” he took off his sunglasses, hooking them on the collar of his worn-out shirt before patting the bed beside him, “See for yourself.”

“You know, normally I make a guy buy me a drink before hopping into bed with him,” I teased, raising an eyebrow at him.

He gave me this charming, dimpled smile, big brown eyes all sparkling warm when he shrugged, “I’ll buy you one after, how’s that sound?”

Heat clung to my stomach and I couldn’t even bear to look at him wearing that devilish grin.

Shaking my head, I climbed onto the mattress, “I’m just giving you shit.” I laid back on the pillow and sank down into the plush bedspread, “This is so much better than the one I’m getting, oh my god.”

“Yeah?” He chuckled and laid down beside me, crossing his ankles as he stretched out, “I’ve been trying to find one that’ll put me right to sleep. I keep having these weird fuckin’ dreams and—”

He cut himself off with a sigh, then looked over at me, “Do you believe in aliens?”

The ludicrous question took me by surprise. This big bubbly laugh escaped my throat and I turned to him, lost for words. All I could do was repeat the question: “Do I believe in aliens?”

“Yeah.”

I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.

Searching his face, I smirked, “Who are you?”

“Dieter,” he rolled on his side to make eye contact with me, “What’s your name?”

So I gave him my name and then I told him, “You know, when I was a teenager I lived out in the country. I’d always see things in the sky I couldn’t quite explain. These lights that would stay static in one place for minutes before zooming off into the stars, and… and, yeah, Dieter, I do believe in aliens. Why do you ask?”

“Well, ok,” he propped his head up on the heel of his hand, “See, the person I bought my bed from told me they were abducted by aliens. And I keep having these dreams where I’m in some kind of a spacecraft and these little gray fuckers won’t stop doing experiments on me. I dunno if it’s my subconscious or if I’m being abducted, but I gotta get a new fuckin’ bed either way.”

“Why would the bed make them abduct you?”

He frowned as he considered this, looking around before returning back to me, “Maybe they have a tracking device on it. I don’t know how it works. Probably not even real.”

“But just in case, you’re getting a new bed?”

“Yeah.”

I shrugged, “Doesn’t hurt to try, huh?”

He nodded, eyes flicking around my face, then rolled onto his back. We laid there staring up at the steel support beams and ugly lights fixed to the warehouse ceiling. For a little while I wondered whether or not he would think it was strange for me to bring up my own grievances. Then I decided fuck it, why not?

“Yesterday I came home and half my apartment was missing. My boyfriend moved out while I was at work, took the bed and everything.”

“Doesn’t sound like he’s your boyfriend anymore.”

“No, I guess not.”

“You don’t seem too broken up about it.”

“It was a long time coming,” I shrugged, “It’s… I don’t know, I’ll be fine. Right now I’m mostly upset about the bed. I set up camp on the living room floor last night and could barely sleep.”

He hummed in acknowledgment, then asked, “Are you gonna get this one?”

“I fucking wish. The one I have picked out feels like a cement slab compared to this.”

“Do you want my old one?”

“The one with the alien tracking device?”

“Oh yeah,” he giggled, “I forgot about that.”

Laughter rumbled up from my belly and his, thick and genuine, the kind that can’t be contained no matter how hard you try. It vibrated through my limbs and welled in my eyes as I choked out, “I—I thought we were gonna be friends, but now you’re trying to get me abducted by aliens? What the fuck, man?”

He doubled over on his side, whole body shaking with these gasping giggles that spread like a contagion to me until I could barely breathe.

Once the laughter died down, I looked over at him wiping the tears from his eyes and felt something rare and beautiful spark in my chest.

“I can’t remember the last time I laughed that hard,” I admitted, rolling on my side to face him, unable to wipe the smile from my aching face.

“Me neither.”

From just an arms length away, I met his gaze and the most inexplicable compulsion overtook me. I wanted to kiss him, I realized, and that was truly insane.

His eyes dropped to my lips as though the same thought occurred to him.

“Do you wanna get out of here? Go get a drink?” he asked.

The question bubbled up my spine and made my stomach flip.

I nodded, “I do, but my bed—”

“I’ll take care of it,” he smirked, that devilish smirk that I knew would be trouble, and shrugged, “I’ll have my PA get two of these. Deliver one to your place, how’s that sound?”

“You can do that?”

“Absolutely.”

“How?”

“I’ll explain later,” he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, looking back at me, “You coming?”

Unmistakably, this was a leap of faith. It was insanity. He could have turned out to be any number of terrible things, but he wasn’t. He was a breath of fresh air. A clean break from the funk smothering the light from my life. He was the weirdest and best thing that ever happened to me.

[petitelepus]

Hello! I saw that requests were open and decided not to miss my chance. Can you please make a story about Slave!Gyomei x reader. Perhaps the reader suffers from loneliness and because of this decides to find a reasonable interlocutor.

Summary: You're lonely and somehow find yourself in a Slave Market, looking for something you're missing.

Warnings: Slavery, Slight Torture, Cigarette Burns

A/N: Slave!AU, Demon Slaves, Gyomei Himejima, Gender Neutral!Reader

Part 1 - Part 2

Living alone had its ups and downs, you kinda knew it before you moved out on your own. You were independent and could leave a bar of chocolate on the table without fear of someone like a dog or another human eating it… But it also meant that you had no one to share that chocolate, your comfort treat, with.

Speaking of chocolate, you were running low. You got your bag and headed out and get some more.

After an hour and one grocery stop later, you were on your way back home when you noticed a flyer stapled into a utility pole. Normally you wouldn't pay them much mind, but this time the bold letters caught your attention.

'SLAVES ON SALE'

You blinked as you read the headline again and again and something small lit inside you. Hope? Maybe a slave would be your answer? Someone who would need to depend on you, someone who wouldn't leave you, and who would keep you company when you would feel down?

You couldn't believe yourself or your legs worked on their own and… Against all odds, you went to the address that read on the flyer. You were actually in this huge warehouse, a Slave market, looking at the different kinds of slaves they had there…

But as you were looking at them, you took a look at their prices and came to the conclusion that you wouldn't have enough money to buy one, even if some were in the sale.

Well, looking never hurt, right?

"Looking for a slave?"

You took your words back, simply looking got you in trouble. You turned to look and saw a man grinning at you. You wondered briefly who he was, but then you realized that he must have been the salesman. You smiled nervously as you nodded, "Y- yeah, but I'm just looking…"

"Just looking?" The man raised an eyebrow at you, "Not buying?"

"They are actually… A little too pricey for me… Sorry…?" You felt a little ashamed to admit it, but sometimes it was the best way to escape from an unwanted conversation.

"I see," The salesman nodded, before pointing at the backdoor behind him with his thumb, "I got something back there that might interest you!"

"Oh, I couldn't-!"

"I insist!" The man laughed, "We don't want our customers leaving empty-handed and unsatisfied!"

You really weren't sure if you should follow him, but how did it hurt to take a look? So you nodded meekly and the man smiled brightly as he took you to the backroom… And you nearly gagged when you smelled the air in there. Heavy with iron, you recognized it as a scent of blood.

"Pardon the smell but we keep the… Let's call them cheap slaves in here." The man said and you frowned as you looked around, seeing all the different Demons in cages… And they all looked absolutely awful. Starved, fearful, aggressive…

You were curious, you had to ask, "Why are these Demons cheap?"

You could have asked why they looked so awful, but you didn't dare.

"There are hundreds of different reasons." The salesman said, "The main reason is that they aren't perfect. Fuck, I'm going to be honest, some are plain awful and just waiting to be put down but according to laws, we can't just throw them out and let the sun take care of them. They say it's inhumane."

The man dug around his pockets, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. You frowned as you watched him inhale the cancer smoke and then spit on the ground, "I call bullshit. These things are alive only to serve us."

Okay, you did not like this man, like, at all. All of sudden, the earlier charming salesman was gone, and in his place was this greedy money-loving bastard. He was awful and you wanted to get away from him as soon as you just possibly could but-!

"Namu-Amidabutsu…" You heard a deep voice chant quietly and you turned to look and saw a Demon chained to the wall. Unlike him, other Demons were strictly in cages, but you soon realized why he was chained. This Demon was HUGE.

"Ah, looking at the big guy here, huh?" The salesman walked next to you and you swallowed nervously, "Ah, a little?"

"Honestly, this thing is a huge piece of shit," The man grunted as he took a drag of his cigarette, "Fucker is blind as a bat!"

"Blind?" You repeated, confused. Didn't Demons heal, no matter what happened to them?

"Shouldn't he heal or something?" You asked and the salesman groaned, "For some reason, it doesn't heal like other Demons."

You couldn't help yourself, your curiosity was caught, "Why?"

"Beats me." The man shrugged, "Could be that it was born that way. Either way, it's damaged goods and no one wants it."

"Oh…" You didn't know what to say. The man frowned, "Look, people want Demons because they heal. People can fuck them up and no matter what they do, Demons heal."

You nodded, and the man stepped forward towards the chained Demon. You blinked, confused but then he grabbed his cigarette and held it up so you could see it.

"Observe," He nodded, and then he pressed the cigarette's burning tip against the chained slave's arm. You covered your mouth so you wouldn't scream out loud in shock. The hideous hiss as the tip burned the slave's arm and the smell made you absolutely horrified and nauseous.

The slave didn't seem to react to pain at all, but your body moved before you could even realize it.

"Stop that!" You cried out as you jumped forward and smacked the salesman's hand, sending the fucking cigarette flying. The man looked at you and fucking laughed, "Easy! I'm just showing you! Look!"

You grounded your teeth together as you looked and sure enough, there was an angry-looking red spot on the slave's arm. You felt so sick and angry. This man was a monster, and you knew you couldn't leave this poor blind slave to his mercy!

"Okay!" You cried out and the salesman looked at you, "Okay?"

"How much?" You asked, much to the man's confusion, "Huh?"

"How much is he?" You repeated the question with more details. The salesman looked at you, no doubt surprised and then he grinned, "You want a blind slave that can't even heal?"

"Is there a problem?"

"No. I don't care what you want to do with a defective slave like this. Whip it, burn it, or fuck it, choice is yours."

You let out a sigh you hadn't realized you were holding in. You felt relieved, but it was short-lived.

"Though, now that I think of it…" The salesman rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "I guess someone could like a Demon that they can mark as much as they want…?"

Oh no, you didn't like that idea, not at all.

"I already told you, I'm buying him…!" You grunted as you dug your wallet out of your bag and showed the twisted evil man your bank card, "So how much?"

The man grinned and took you to the front room where he would charge you and you followed him there… Little did you know, the slave you were about to own had been listening and observing you the whole time…

After some paperwork and generous payment, you were a proud slave's owner, though, you didn't feel so proud… You looked at the papers in your hand and sighed as you slipped them into your bag. Time to get your slave and take him home with you.

The earlier salesman who managed to overtalk you into getting this Demon disappeared as soon as you had paid, but he returned soon to the front room with your new slave following close behind him.

Jesus, the Demon was even bigger when he was standing upright!

He was wearing some old tarp as if it was a raincoat to shield himself from the sun and you took notice that his wrists were tied together with a rope. The salesman was holding onto the end of the said rope as he led the blind Demon to you.

"Here you go! You're the proud owner of a slave now!" The man laughed as he handed the rope to you and you gave him a small nod, trying to get this over and done with, "Thanks…"

"Remember! No refunds!" He laughed as you turned and left the Slave Market with your new Demon…

It had taken some time to gain his ownership and the sun was already setting when you left the warehouse full of slaves. You could sense and see people staring at you and your Demon as you walked down the streets.

You glanced at your slave with a small frown, "I'm sorry, we will be at my place soon so hold on just a little longer…"

The Demon nodded quietly and you sighed as you continued walking, all the way to your small apartment. You went out to get chocolate and you came back with a Demon. What a day.

When you got back home, the Demon stayed by your doorway while you closed all the curtains so he wouldn't get burnt by the sun even by accident. Once you were done you grabbed a knife from the kitchen and made your way to the Demon so you could cut down the ropes around his wrists.

"Just a second, don't move…" You whispered gently, "I have a knife, but please don't fear, I'm not going to hurt you…"

The Demon nodded quietly and you took his hands and cut the rope. You frowned as soon as the pieces of rope fell on the ground and you saw the angry red marks on his wrists. That stupid salesman had tied the poor Demon's wrists together too tightly.

"Your wrist…" You whispered sadly as you put the knife away and gently turned his hands in yours so you could see how hurt he was.

"I think I have some cream that should help you…" You thought out loud quietly and suddenly the Demon's hands turned and he grasped your hands… So gently, you didn't know a Demon as big as him was able to be that gentle.

"Namu-Amidabutsu… Thank you for your concern, Master…" He said and you blinked stunned by how deep his voice was, but it fit him perfectly.

"Are you-?" You were going to ask when you noticed that he was actually crying! You couldn't help yourself, you panicked, "A- Are you okay? Did I hurt you? Why are you crying? I'm sorry!"

"Please, don't panic." He said as he gently squeezed your hands, "I am fine."

"But you're crying?" You asked and he nodded, "I am."

"But you aren't hurt?"

"I'm hurt, but it's nothing I can't handle."

"That… That's not good." You frowned as you squeezed his hands back and then pulled him inside from your apartment's entrance and into your small living room. You helped him to sit down on your couch and while it was a pretty big couch, he made it look small.

"I don't want you to be in pain," You said and he blinked as he looked in your direction with his milky white eyes, "I… I understand."

"Good," You nodded, "Stay here, I'm going to get something for that nasty burn on your arm and your wrists."

The Demon nodded and you quickly went to grab the first aid kit from your bathroom and returned to the Demon just as quickly. You put the kit on the couch and moved to pull the old stinky tarp off from the Demon, but you froze for a moment when you saw the rags he was wearing.

Old, ugly, stinky, and way too small for him. They looked like they were made from some old burlap. You would have to buy him something proper and clean to wear.

"Just a second…" You said as you threw the tarp aside and got out everything you needed to disinfect his wounds from the first aid kit.

"You know how to treat wounds?" The Demon asked curiously.

"It's surprisingly easy." You nodded, "But I did take a first aid course. One can learn a lot there and it looks good when applying for a job."

"I see."

Could he?

"This is going to sting a little," You warned him and he nodded, praying under his breath as you made sure he wouldn't get any infection and then you proceeded to clean and bandage his wounds. Oh, how many scars he had… He must have gone through so much, and just imagining it almost hurt you.

While you worked, you could almost feel like you were being observed and when you looked up, you saw him looking in your direction, even if he was blind.

"And we are done!" You nodded, pleased with yourself and the Demon nodded as he carefully traced the bandages around his wrists, "Thank you, Master."

"You're welcome." You nodded and the Demon turned to look at you and despite his tears, he was smiling, "I knew you were a good person the moment I heard your voice."

"How? I mean, what told you that?" You asked and the Demon nodded, "You never addressed me as an object but as a person. So far… I haven't heard anyone talk to us Demons that way."

"That's because you're living beings also." You replied honestly, "And I hate seeing others in pain or hurt."

"Then… Why did you come to that Slave Market?" The Demon asked.

"I…" You frowned as you thought what you should say. Tell the truth or lie?

"I… I don't know, I…" You pressed your lips tightly together, "I saw a flier, and I…"

"You?" He asked gently and you sighed, "And I guess… I was lonely?"

"I see…" He nodded and you frowned, expecting him to dismiss you and tell you that it would pass and everyone felt that way sometimes. That you should go out more and speak to more people so you would not feel so lonely. No one seemed to understand that it wasn't that easy…!

But instead, he started crying, "You're a good person, Master. I can tell you mean me no harm."

You blinked, stunned and you looked at the Demon who was smiling so gently at you. You couldn't almost believe what you were hearing, he was actually on your side!

You kept looking at him, trying to find even the smallest hint that he was lying and just saying what would please you, but all you saw was a genuine sweet smile.

"You're staring, Master." He said suddenly and you blushed, feeling caught like a child with the cookie jar.

"H- How could you tell?" You asked and the Demon nodded, "I can see… In my own way."

"Oh, cool!" You nodded and then you realized something, "I'm sorry, I forgot to ask your name!"

"It's alright." The Demon gave you a small smile, "My name is Gyomei."

"Gyomei," You nodded with a small smile, "You have a very nice name. It fits you."

"Thank you." He nodded, tears streaming down his face as he pressed the palms of his hands against each other like he was praying and hung his head, "If you allow me Master, I will take away your loneliness."

"You…" You were stunned, "You really think you can do that?"

"I don't think." He nodded, "I know."

You may have been crazy or desperate or Hell, even both, but you believed him and little did you know, it would be the best decision in your life.

[meloncholy-words]

Robin: A Word That Means Run (Chapter 2: Red Hood)

Red Hood died as a Robin, and came back as something else. The name still means something to him.

A/N: Forgot to post this on Friday. Most of this chapter was pulled out of my ass because I don't know how drug dealers or city work works so. Enjoy <3 Again, actual canon does what it wants so I do too. If it's bad I apologize, I rewrote this like 7 times because I kept accidentally writing myself into corners

~~~

Chapter Warnings: Explosions, gun violence, canon typical violence, swearing, drugs and drug dealers, drug dealing to kids(it's only mentioned), past character death(it's Jason), brief descriptions of that night but nothing graphic, weapon inaccuracies probably, descriptions of blood and injury. No death occurs! Let me know if I should add more warnings please.

AO3 | Chapter List

The new bunch of dealers Red Hood was tracking were starting to become an issue. He would have been happy to turn a blind eye for a bit, get a feel for their operation before approaching them with either the offer to be under his control or the threat of being run out. But the kids in the alley talked. Not usually, but to Hood? Always. The kids told Hood that these guys were trying to sell to them, which was a pretty big no-no.

So Hood couldn't let them think they were getting away with this anymore.

Taking down their initial startup was pretty easy. All he needed to do was break a few bones and shoot a few limbs before they were scattering like flies. And that would've been the end of it, if they didn't seem so determined to set up shop.

This time around, the didn't stick to one place. Every time he got a tip as to where they might be, the place always turned up empty. They were in those places, if the scraps left behind were anything to go off of, but they'd gotten annoyingly good at scattering before Hood could appear.

The only good thing that seemed to be coming out of this dance was that not having a consistent place of operation meant selling the drugs was actually pretty hard to do efficiently. These dealers were pissing Hood off by still being around, but at least he could piss them off right back by tanking their sales.

One more bust in trying to track them down, and he was thoroughly frustrated.

There wasn't a lot to find as he stalked through the abandoned warehouse, mostly just scattered trash and a few old chairs likely picked up off the street. No forgotten drugs, no loose files, no dropped receipts, nothing that could be used to hunt them down any further.

A grumble rumbled deep within the mans chest. It had been a few weeks since he'd been trying to get a hold of these guys. He'd been itching to get his hands around their throats, slowly ingrained no-kill rule be damned. But he had other things to worry about, other scumbags, and he didn't want to dwell on these ones any longer than he had to. Which meant that he'd need help, which meant that he couldn't kill them.

Whatever. Dealing with this issue was more important than the disdain he had for dealing with his family, and they'd known he'd been on this for weeks now. They'd be willing to help.

Tapping into the Bat comm line, he was met with a conversation he didn't care for.

"Listen- listen! The cookie part of the Oreo is objectively the best!" Nightwing yelled into his mic.

"How does it feel to be fucking wrong?" Red Robin shot back.

"Well I wouldn't know, because I'm not."

Gods he hates this family.

"Exhilarating debate going on! I'll stop you right there," Hood cut in, ignoring the whisper of Thank fuck from Oracle. "O, can I get some help here? I need you to try getting camera footage from around me. Every time I try I'm too late and footage is missing, but you might be fast enough."

"Yep, on it. Give me a second." If Jason strained, he might be able to hear the clacking of a keyboard and mouse over his dumb siblings arguing over a cookie. Then there was silence; O had switched their channels. Jason would be sure to visit her with pastries more often. "It looks like we're a little late. There's a path of cameras with recently cut footage. So we can't get them on camera, but we might be able to track them down. That good enough for ya?"

"Yes, thank you, Oracle, my beloved eye in the sky."

"Haha, don't flatter me." She sounded like she enjoyed it anyway. "You've been on this for a while, should I send someone over to help you? You might be able to tie this up faster, but I get it if you wanna do this alone."

"Actually, that would be great. Who've you got for me?"

There was more silence. "Ok, Red's the closest to you, but he's only passing by on his way to a potential armed break in. That would take him ten to get over there, and fifteen if it turns out to be a real threat, not including the additional travel time to circle back around to you. Bats is only about seven out though, and he's unoccupied. Everyone else is more than ten. Thoughts?"

Hood audibly groaned at that. Ten minutes wasn't a long time to have to wait, but it may end up being just long enough to be a problem. Red wouldn't ditch his mission, which Hood didn't blame him for, but that would be a twenty minutes wait. Batman was the only logical person to send over. But that meant he'd have to be around Batman, which he wasn't sure was worth it.

Possibly let these guys escape, again, or have to deal with Batman? Escape or Batman, escape or Batman, escape or...

"Fuck it, send the old man over." He hoped he wouldn't regret this.

"Got it. Sending you both directions to that last camera. He should get there a little bit after you."

"Thanks O, you're the best and I love you~!"

The trail led him to a few blocks of old, abandoned buildings. This place had been sectioned off by the city years ago, deemed too unsafe due to the amount of chemicals and pollution that seemed to unnaturally gather around this singular point. Bruce had been trying to put in money for years to get this place cleaned up, but the city didn't seem to notice. Or care.

It was the perfect place to lay low until Hood was off of their trail, and then they could go somewhere actually habitable, because no one would even think about being here for more than ten minutes. Except that Hood already here, and this was ending tonight.

The soft flutter of a cape let him know that the old man was here without him having to turn around. Sure enough, there was a living shadow beside him in seconds.

"So, we split up and try locating them faster?" It was the fastest option, and they could cover double the distance in about the same time.

Batman only grunted in acknowledgment, the bastard, before he faded into the darkness on one side. Hood scoffed, muttering something under his breath as he took to the other side.

The place was a mess. There was glass and graffiti everywhere, bits of door and wall scattered along the roads. An average Crime Alley look, to be sure. Hood scanned the windows and doorways carefully, looking for any sign of life, or even where their potential vehicle might be. Anything to give away the location of these bastards.

His comm crackled in his ear, a deep voice coming out of it.

"Found them." A simple two words, and Hood's grapple was clinging onto a building, pulling him to the direction of the Bat.

By the time he made it over to the building of their choosing, the sounds of an altercation could be heard from above. Jason couldn't help but be a little jealous that they hadn't waited for him. The sounds of metal batarangs clanging against wall and floor was soon overcome by the loud ring of gunfire and Hood tucked and rolled into a window that wasn't broken just yet.

There was blood. Blood and broken bones and grunts of pain and exhaustion in the air. Jason was careful to deal harmful, maybe permanent but not fatal damage. The joints were hard to aim for, but putting a bullet into their limbs was good enough. They had been trying to convince Jason to switch to rubber bullets recently, and as the drug dealers who thought selling drugs to kids was a good idea yelped and screamed and writhed in pain on the floor, he was glad he hadn't been convinced just yet.

Movement caught his eye. Movement that fled out of the door, that thought they could get away. Hood wasn't going to let them. Everything was almost wrapped up here, Bruce would be find on his own while he went to deal with this straggler.

The form weaved between buildings with the grace of a Gothamite who knew when to run and a rabbit who knew it had been caught. It was clunky and frantic, but it knew how to run like hell from danger. Unfortunately for them, Jason could run like a predator.

The person dipped into a building, one at the end of a block. There was nowhere to go after this - not unless they were willing to be out in the open with a marksman chasing after them. And who would want that?

Jason slowed to a walk. More of a stalk, actually. His steps were firm and calculated as he entered the space. There were stairs to one side that led to nothing(the second floor was missing), and a door to the other that likely led into a dining area. Door number one it is.

Slowly, carefully, cautiously, Hood grabbed the doorknob, pushing it open.

On the far wall there was an open window, pushed and left open. Silent in comparison to it breaking instead. And in the middle of that room, a few feet away from the window, was an old, worn out dining table. On the dining table?

Bombs.

Old bombs that had likely been sitting here collecting dust. Likely to be used in the destruction of this place before the city decided it wasn't really worth it and left all their equipment just lying around in one of the most unsafe places in the city. In the center was a timer that was ticked down to 0:02.

Jason had been here before. In front of a timer that ticked down the seconds until he died, in an old abandoned place that no one would ever find him in and no one was coming for him. He hadn't made it out on that day, dying until the smothering, fiery rubble of another building in another country.

But things were different now. He was older, smarter, not tied up and left to rot and die in the cold. He could get out. He could close the door and run, maybe try to use all the weight he'd gained to break down the wall. He could do that. He should do that. He should-

"Robin!"

He knows that name. It used to be his. He used to wear it proudly, happily. He wore it to everything, even his death day. He'd died with that name, taken it to the grave and when he crawled his way back out it wasn't his anymore. He'd grown to resent the person it belonged to, then learned to get over it. There was another Robin now, one that was neither of them. Robin was not longer him - hadn't been his in a long time.

He moved anyways.

There was warmth and tightness around him, pulling him close and away from that bomb that reminded him of his biggest failure. Pulling him into his fathers arms, and suddenly it didn't matter that he was a lot bigger and heavier than that man now. Because it wasn't true.

Here in his arms, shielded from an explosion, he was 12 again, smiling and laughing and bright and happy, because he had never died before, and the name Robin was magic to him.

It took a moment for the world to stop spinning, for his ears to stop ringing. When it did stop, he was still there in those arms. He wasn't 12, though. He was 22, and his dad still held him close.

Stray pieces of wall continued to rain down, lighting pittering and pattering against the bomb-proof material guarding him. There was dust in the air, thick and heavy and gross, but it didn't touch him when he was buried so deep into the darkness. A few seconds passed, and when Jason felt that they were properly in the clear, he shoved Batman away, picking himself up and dusting himself off.

"Do you think that's funny?" he yelled, spinning around. There was a light anger in his voice - not as bad as it was when his eyes glowed a vibrant green, but not as soft as when he mocked his brothers in the kitchen. "Where do you get off, old man, calling me that name again? What's wrong with you?"

Batman stared at him for a moment from where he lay on the floor, then another.

"Well?

A small smirk picked at his lips. "You responded to it."

Jason sputtered for a second, thankful that his helmet covered his face because he may have gone a little red. "Yeah- well- you try betraying three years of instinct next time!"

"Instincts you haven't used in seven years?"

"That- I- I've only been conscious for like three of those years!"

"Of course, Jaylad." The old man was standing now, upright and facing him with a soft smile on his face.

"Pssh, whatever. There's- we still need to get that other guy, we don't have time to sit around and handle sentimental shit."

"Of course."

"Don't say shit to anyone,"Jason called as was already turned around, walking fast in the direction he decided to go. He didn't bother listening for a response, huffing to himself and mumbling something under his breath, too quiet for his helmet's modulator to pick up.

Yeah, he regretted bringing Bruce along. A lot.

Well... maybe only a little bit.

[haee-elia]

spence-tober: day 27 - brewery owner

pairing: brewery owner!spencer reid x fem!reader

summary: in which you and your son (along with someone else special) support the opening of your husband's brewery

word count: 1530

warnings: alcohol, children, announcement of pregnancy, one mention of reader being on birth control, the reader was seemingly very easily able to get pregnant

spence-tober masterlist

Standing outside in the cool, brisque air of the evening isn’t too uncomfortable. It would be without the wool shawl on your shoulders and you make sure to wrap it around yourself a little tighter to keep in your natural body warmth. 

You also bend down to your six-year old son, Arthur, and zip his parka up to his chin, making sure he can stay warm as well. He’s tired and you can tell within the next hour and a half, he’ll start getting a little petulant so you keep a close eye on him. There’s some wooden adirondack chairs not too far from you, circled around a controlled fire pit if needed. 

Artie could always curl up into a chair if he really got tired quickly. It had been, after all, a long day for him.

He was still getting used to attending school and then after school until you or Spencer could come pick him up. Since the sale of the small warehouse that Spencer was renovating into his very own brewery, Artie was also often carted to and from the warehouse as it was being built, renovated, and decorated. He even helped choose some design elements.

For years, Spencer had only done brewing as a hobby. That was when you first even met him. You always encouraged his hobby and with time, he became very good at it. So good that he stopped working as a bartender and got a few various jobs working for different corporate breweries. It had always been his dream to save up enough money to buy a small place and open his own bar and brewery. 

Now, the time had finally come.

The small abandoned warehouse went up for sale and you knew it to be the one. Encouraging Spencer to buy it was a whole ordeal, but when he finally did. When his signature hit the paper and he held the deed in his hand, you knew it was excited to get started. That was a little over a year ago and since then, your husband has poured his heart and soul into the place. 

He was currently standing off to the side, eagerly talking to some friends who had come out for the grand opening. It had been successful so far. 

The grand opening was set for three o’clock and when Spencer set forth his little speech that he had prepared, there was already a crowd of people. Now, the sun was setting in the horizon, hours later. It cast a nice glow over the renovated warehouse and the backyard patio where everyone now gathered.

People had come and gone and the brewery wasn’t going to be open for much later into the day. At least for it’s first official day being open. Spencer mostly wanted the day to be for friends and family to celebrate, not worrying about the number of patrons or bottles of beer sold. 

The large, animated smile told you everything you needed to know. Spencer was happy, very happy.

A yawn breaks you from your thoughts and steals your attention away from your husband and back down to your son. His hold on your hand has gotten a little looser.

“Are you tired, baby?” You ask him, watching him rub his eyes with his free hand.

He hesitates, but Artie nods and with that, you guide him over to an empty large adirondack chair for him to sit in. 

“You can just sit here for a bit, then we’ll go, okie dokie?” You confirm with him, bending down in front of him.

He nods and you ruffle his hair. His chocolate brown, messy locks that are so much like his father’s. Artie looked a lot like Spencer. He’s still young, but the way he carries himself, his hair, his eyes. They all match the look of Spencer.

If you asked Spencer, however, he would always point out the little similarities that Artie held to you. 

“Hey, Artie. You doing okay, buddy?” A voice says behind you. A very familiar voice. It’s Spencer.

Artie blinks his eyes open a little, willing the sleep away and nods, excited to see his dad. 

You turn around and stand up from your position in front of the chair and see your husband. The same chaotic hair and glittering brown eyes. Spencer, however, has started to grow a small beard and has some rough, brown stubble to show for it. He’s wearing an outfit you picked out from him. Spencer has no eye for clothes. 

“He’s just a little tired. Had a big day at school with the play and all.” You inform your husband, a smile on your face.

Spencer nods, “Okay, let me just say goodbye to a few people and we can go.” He says.

You shake your head and place your hand on his arm, “No, stay. It’s your grand opening.” You try to convince him.

“Artie’s not long for this world.” Spencer retorts, pointing to Arthur who is, indeed, nodding off into dreamland.

You feel guilty. You feel guilty and you know why. You’ve been together with Spencer for ten years and it had been eight years since his dream originated of owning his own brewery. From taking his small creations that he fixed only for friends and family and opening it to the public. To sharing that experience with everyone. Spencer had been in the midst of saving money, you contributing even to his chagrin, and had budgeted according to when he wanted to propose to you and get married in a modest wedding. 

What you hadn’t exactly budgeted for was the arrival of Artie. Even though you had been married for over a year and on birth control, somehow you had fallen pregnant with Arthur. Both of you wanted children, but you always convinced Spencer to save up for his brewery first. Neither of you ended up regretting the unplanned Artie, but you had always felt a bit guilty when some of Spencer’s savings drained for baby Arthur.

“But Spencer, you won’t get another grand opening. You should stay and enjoy it, I’ll take Artie home.” You offer.

He shakes his head, “No.” Then he takes your hands in his, rubbing his finger comfortingly on the back of your hand, “The brewery doesn’t come before you or Artie. We always tuck him in together.”

“But this is your dream.” You say in a last ditch effort.

Spencer shook his head again, “You’re my dream. You and Artie and any other children we might have in the future. Nothing comes above my family, that’s my dream. I just happen to be living it everyday.”

You concede and nod, letting Spencer run off to an employee to get them to close up for the night. You say your rounds of goodbye to your friends who have come out for the night of celebration, always keeping a watchful eye on your son.

Collecting your son in his strong arms, Spencer scoops him up and has no problem walking with him through the backyard where you are led back into the main part of the brewery. 

A long bar stretches across the metal room with lines and lines of drafts for the bar with a few added concoctions of Spencers. Tables and other fun decorations fill the rest of the space with a few added streamers and banners just for the grand opening.

“Did you see my surprise for you?” Spencer asks you as you walk through the room.

Artie is out completely now, so there is no need for whispering between the two of you. You carry your own things, plus Spencer’s and Artie’s.

You shake your head, “No, what was it?” You show a confused expression on your face.

He’s as confused as you are, “The drink menu. Your favorite is officially named after you. I thought it was a sweet gesture.”

“Oh, I didn’t get a drink tonight.” You explain to him. You get the front glass entrance door for all three of you.

“You didn’t?” Spencer asks, even more confused now. 

A smile curls up on your lips. You reach your shared vehicle and grab something out of the floorboards near Artie’s seat. Somewhere Spencer wouldn’t have seen it since you had left the grand opening early to pick Artie up from after school, then heading back to the brewery.

Spencer transfers Artie into his car seat in the back, putting the seatbelt on for him as he’s still asleep and takes the bag you hold out to him. He’s still quite confused and can’t see into the bag as you’ve filled it with tissue paper.

“Artie will be quite put out that he wasn’t able to give this to you, but we can just pretend in the morning.” You say, vague about the actual contents of the bag.

Spencer gently sifts through the bag and then takes out a singular card. Before he can even read the words, his eyes lock onto the ultrasound that hangs on the cardstock paper. 

“What?” He says softly. It’s a rhetorical question and you know he’s saying it out of shock and surprise.

“We’re pregnant again.”

a/n: i always try to make the names true to character for Spencer. Luma with his philosophy lightbulb joke he made that one time and the fact Diana can mean luminescence. Then Diana, of course, his mother in the show. And now Artie, or Arthur, after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, also known as his favorite author in the series. just little Easter eggs.

[peterparkersnose]

Matchmaker

part: 2 part 1

pairing: Javier Pena x fem!reader

word count: 2.1k

warnings: slut shaming, jealousy, snitches, angst, mentions and use of weapons, blood, near death experience, hospitals, regret, fluff at the end :)

a/n i hope you enjoy! i hope its not too sappy, i know javier pena would never realistically say/do any of these things unless he was p whipped but... you never know. that gif is so sexy dude fuck i want him so bad fr fr 

summary Y/N and Javi go check out the abandoned building and run into some trouble

masterlist

join the tag list

read time: 7 mins 44 seconds

The old warehouse that your team had raided the past month came into view. Javi drove along the dirt road and hummed to a tune on the radio.

The closest you were ever going to get to driving with a boyfriend and singing songs in the car. Right?

The car pulling up and the slams of the car doors should have been enough to run anyone out of that building. It was swept by security every night and made sure it was abandoned.

“What do you think your going to find in here?” Javier asked, pulling up the do not enter tape around the entrance. You shrugged. “I dunno. It just feels wrong.”

The empty building echoed from your heels. You and Javi walked around the first floor.

“This is just a big empty box of concrete,” he sighed, walking over to a pile of scrap wood and kicking it ever so slightly. The sound from that bounced off the walls, startling a few stray birds.

This sudden noise scared you. You turned around to reach for your gun and tripped on your heels. Javi saw this and reached out his arms, catching you in his embrace. You were breathing heavy as he held you in his arms.

“Just some birds, mi amor.” he chuckled, helping you re gain your balance.

Following him upstairs, you couldn’t get his strong grip on you off your mind.

Upstairs was more complicated. There were still abandoned work benches and offices that weren’t swept out in the demolition. Any homeless person or one of Escobar’s men could have snuck in easily and stayed here for a while. You were sure the guards didn’t check every single office, as there were too many.

You searched the various papers left on the benches and ground, nothing interesting stood out to you.

“Are you gonna help?” you asked Javi, bent down going through a stack of files about grain sale statistics in Spanish. “Shh,” Javi said, silencing your hands filing through papers. You hadn’t noticed how quiet he got and how far ahead of you he was.

“What’s the matter?” you asked, standing up into full view and shrugging your hands.

The door to one of the offices swung open. A man was talking very loudly into a phone in one hand, a gun in the other.

You turned to grab for your gun. He was standing mostly in your view, and saw you first. He mumbled something in Spanish and didn’t hesitate to aim at you. He shot his gun as you recognized what was happening. You moved fast enough for him to shoot your shoulder.

Javier panicked at how quickly the scene happened. Without a second thought, he aimed his gun at the man and shot him in the chest a few times.

“Y/N!” he yelled, rushing around the tables to find you. He found you flat on your back, eyes wide open in shock. “Shit, shit.” he whispered, falling to the ground and taking off his suit jacket to wrap around your shoulder.

“We’re going to need to walk, can you walk?” he asked. You stared up at him in unimaginable shock, unable to answer. “Y/N! Shit. Have you ever been shot before?” he asked, his right hand moving for his walkie talkie strapped to his belt. “A-28 we need medical at 748 Carerra 48,” he said urgently, repeating the message into the box until he got a dispatch response.

You were bleeding and you were bleeding a lot. Your breathes became choppy as Javier held you in his arms. He kept wondering if he shot an artery or not. “Stay with me, please.” he whimpered, moving your hair out of your face. He had accidentally wiped blood on your face. He looked at his hands, and then his shirt. All were deeply painted with crimson. “Please, no, please don’t do this.” he pleaded, holding your body close to his.

“Javi…” you whispered in his ear. “Everything is going to be okay.” he assured you. Shouting came from downstairs.

“Up here!” Javier yelled. Paramedics filed into the office space and spotted you two quickly. He helped them lift your body onto a stretcher. Your wide eyes stayed locked on him. “I-I have to go.” he said to you, holding your hand and following you down the stairs. “No,” you muttered, tightening your grip on him. The shallowness of your voice tore him apart.

The caution tape had been cut by the paramedics. When he reached outside, the majority of your squadron was out watching the scene unfold. The ambulance was small, big enough only to fit you and some paramedics. “No,” you begged, reaching your good arm towards him. “Don’t-” you sighed quietly, only enough for Javier to hear.

“Leave.” you finished. His last view of you was your longing eyes locked with his and his suit coat wrapped around your wound. The dark blue had become soaked with a purple/red. The back doors to the ambulance slammed shut. Javier was left in the dust from the now screeching vehicle making its way as carefully as it could down a dirt road.

Javier broke down on his knees. His bloodied hands cradled his face. He publicly cried for the first time since he was a child. The whole squad watched him break down in front of the scene.

“Javi,” Steve said, carefully approaching him and placing his hand on his shoulder. Javi shrugged off his hand. He returned to his feet, used his wrists to clear off any tears on his face, and rolled up his sleeves. Steve walked back to the police car with him.

The view of the man who had shot you came into place. He was being carried out by other paramedics. Javier recognized him as one of Escobar’s men. His heart sank.

Your feeling about this warehouse was right.

-

Steve stood with Javi on one side, Connie on the other. They watched you through the glass of your bedroom. Javier was leaning on the wall, resting his head against it. His eyes kept fluttering shut until he was reminded of his surroundings and was flung back into this horrible reality.

“Maybe you should get some sleep,” Connie suggested, tucking her clipboard under her arm. “Nah,” Javi said, opening his eyes once again to look at you. “I got her, you don’t have to worry.” she re assured Javi. “She’s the best in Colombia,” Steve said smugly, swinging an arm around his wife. He was happy to have a reason to spend time with his wife during work hours, but upset over the circumstances.

His eyes moved to the hospital couch next to your bed. Then back to you.

They removed the bullet successfully. It didn’t hit an artery, but a major vein going towards it. After a two hour long surgery, you came out with a wrapped shoulder extending down to your elbow, and a recovery note from the doctor. You were going to be fine. They put you in a medicated sleep for a while, just to let the shoulder get used to the placement and to heal before you were awake and moving around. You were expected to make a full recovery.

“It’s getting late, man.” Steve said, checking his watch. A little after nine. “You should go home.”

Javi scoffed at the suggestion. “Not until she’s awake.”

Steve sighed. “She’s going to be fine, you need to-”

“I can’t. I almost lost her. The thought of her dying and never coming back scares the absolute shit out of me.” he hissed at Steve. Steve’s eyes widened as he stepped back. “You good?” he asked. “No. I-I…”

“You like her, don’t you.”

Javi didn’t answer, instead just crossed his arms and looked at you. He closed his eyes and took a deep breathe. “I don’t think I could live without her,”

“Then do something about it!” Steve exclaimed, smiling. “She cares about you, man. She cares a lot about you. So do something, please. I’m begging you!” he laughed, his hand slapping Javier’s back.

“Have a good night, my friend.” he smiled, trailing off into the hallway.

He made his way quietly into your room. He slowly shut the door behind him. He took off his watch, his belt, his shoes, and removed his badge and gun holster from his waist and set them down at the table next to the couch.

He made his way over to you. His thumb brushed over your forehead as his hand caressed your cheek. The blood had returned to your face, you weren’t so deathly pale anymore. “Good night, mi amor.” he whispered, giving you the softest kiss on your forehead.

He unbuttoned a few buttons on his shirt and pulled up his sleeves. He attempted to get comfortable on the hospital couch and shut his eyes.

-

Your eyes fluttered open just a bit before dawn. Putting the pieces together, you reached over to touch your wound. You seered at the touch, wiping your eyes instead and taking in your surroundings.

Hospital. You were well aware of what happened and remembered it so clearly. You thought you were going to die, die without holding Javier Peña at least once.

You blinked and turned your head to look at the sunrise. To your surprise, there he was. Javier Peña asleep on a couch. How long had he been there?

He looked exhausted. His hair was disheveled, his freshly new outfit was already wrinkled. You remembered how he took off his suit jacket and draped it over your arm. He was always such a gentleman, even when he didn’t try.

The beautiful Colombian sunrise began. The deep pinks, yellows, and oranges never failed. Your arm hurt horribly, but you weren’t concerned at that moment. Javi was there, everything was okay. Letting your mind wander, you lay waiting for him to wake up or a nurse to wander in.

-

“And everything is feeling alright?” the nurse asked. “Mhm, yes. Thank you,”

Javi shot up straight out of his slumber at the sound of your voice.

“Well good morning to you,” you chuckled, smiling at his sudden awakening. “Why didn’t you wake me?” he asked, checking his watch. Seven thirty.

“You looked so tired, I couldn’t.”

Javi got up and went to your side. He grasped your hand, and knelt down. “I’m so happy your okay,” he sighed, kissing your knuckles.

“You alright?” you asked, eyebrows raised with a suspicious tone. “Better than alright,” he smiled, looking down at your hands. He wanted to slap a ring on there as soon as he could.

Connie bursted through the door holding your breakfast tray.

“Ah, so you finally told her Javi. Congrats, the two of you.” she smiled, setting the food down in front of you. Swiftly turning to leave, Connie didn’t realize she spoiled his whole plan.

Javi had the look of defeat on his place, wishing this could have gone so much differently.

“What is she talking about?” you asked. Javi sighed. “I wish this could have been under better circumstances,” he sighed, getting up and rubbing the back of his neck anxiously.

“And?” you asked, nervous to what he was about to say.

He took a deep breathe.

“Seeing you on the brink of death scared the shit out of me Y/N. I thought I lost you.”

“What?”

“Steve told me something a few days ago in the break room-”

“Oh?” you asked, already knowing what Steve said. What a fucking snitch.

“And I really thought to myself. What am I looking for? I spent all my time with these other women, searching for something to fill the void. Nothing ever seemed good enough from them. It was never enough. But what Steve said made me think. Why was I seeing other women when the one I truly wanted was in front of me the whole time?”

Your jaw was dropped.

“I’m stupid, okay? I-I… watching you grab for me in the ambulance broke my heart. It made me realize things I never thought I wanted before.”

“And what’s that?” you asked, a smirk appearing on your lips.

“You.”

“Really?” you smiled.

“Yes!” he exclaimed, returning to his knees. “If you would have me…” “Of course I’ll have you,” “Please, Y/N L/N, be mine.”

He wrapped his arms around you, cautious of your wound. His cologne reeked off of him along with sweat, but you didn’t care. You felt his mustache tickle your shoulder.

“I won’t ever let this happen again. I won’t ever let you go.” he whispered in your ear.

“Like I’m ever going to let you leave,” you chuckled.

Who would have known Javier Peña’s street days would end with a single bullet.

tag list: : @dani5216 @uwiuwi @alohastyles-x @samanthacookieone @maddieinnit0 @alexxavicry

(my queue didn’t post for some reason yesterday, just caught it now)

[thesamoanqueen]

Way back Home

Raiting: 14+

Warnings: Angst; Fluff; The drama I dont want to talk about…

A/N: Morning break before WM39 and Im here to throw some angst around 'cause I'm going to have a meltdown tomorrow and that's it. Enjoy.

They had moved away from the city center for a while, streets were almost empty now, it must have been a residential neighborhood. Or so she thought, there were so many trees on the properties that it looked like a jungle out there and almost made houses disappear. Roman continued to swerve and follow the directions, but Y/N had looked at the map and there didn't seem to be anything nearby at all.

- Where we going? - she asked curiously, looking away from the window and at him, with that expression.

- I want to show you a thing – he announced with a smile, his attention still on the road, although by now there was no one except them.

Silently she looked out again, trying to understand. It was clearly a residential part of the city, an upmarket one probably. The streets and sidewalks were neat, the houses hardly visible, but the letterboxes and fences were, and even those made a decidedly good impression. She really didn't understand what there could be to see in such a place, perhaps a foundation, a small private museum maybe? a club? There was a connection to the bay across the river out there somewhere… all those trees were confusing her, it looked like a maze.

- We've been in the car for hours Ro.

- Are you tired?

- No, but you're keeping to go around, with all these houses, the empty streets... it seems like the beginning of an horror movie in which a serial killer drags a girl to his cabin in the middle of the Florida swamps and chains her there to torture her - she joked with a snort and Roman laughed, turning to face her for a moment.

Yes, she was exaggerating and yes, she was getting impatient, she knew it.

- There are some good people living here Y/N and if there was a chance one of us was a serial killer, it wouldn't be me. We both know that.

- True, but-

- Be good. Its here - Roman stopped her, slowly taking the last cross.

The news silenced her immediately and she moved her eyes to the road, which after the wide curve became a shaded and empty strip of asphalt. There were black railings along the sides and a few light stone pillars to space everything out, but no houses could no longer be see. Maybe there were some, but the properties must have been larger than what she had seen coming this far and after a few seconds, she realized the street wasn't even that long. It ended in a roundabout beyond which they had placed an elaborate iron gate and a lay-by with an intercom.

- What's beyond the gate? - she asked again as Roman rolled down the window to press the button just below the "for sale" sign.

- Not a cabin. – she heard him joking, before someone opened to let them in.

She had a few days off that week. A break in anticipation of what would soon happen and for which everyone would have to give their all. The idea of going home hadn't even crossed her mind for a second. It's not that she didn't like it, but she spent so much time away from there that it became a warehouse for the things she couldn't keep in her suitcase and with the mood she was in, Y/N really didn't want to set foot there to get away the plug. She needed to keep herself busy, to distract herself and continue to be absorbed by work had been one of her ways to overcome those moments for years. She had taken a car and driven almost half a day to get there, a flight would have been more practical, but sitting looking out a window with headphones on helps you think and she didn't want to. It was already afternoon when she had opened the door of the hotel room where she would stay until the next show and she had to take a shower. Leaving the suitcases in a corner and together with them her heels, she took off the earrings, rings and necklace, looking at her phone one last time.

The last message was from that morning. No calls, no news. He had yet another busy day. She took a picture of the city from the window to send it to Roman, an excuse to find out if he was all right and turned off the screen, breathing deeply to regain control, while she turned on the TV to fill the silence a bit and lock herself inside the bathroom.

Work had sucked her in one day and spat her out the next in a worse state than the previous one, Roman wasn't there, he wouldn't even be there the following week and to her it really seemed like an endless nightmare. She heard her co-workers talk, saw the show go on, people sit and stand as usual, but Y/N had the impression of being stuck in quicksand. She had tried to keep busy, to wear herself out physically, she had agreed to go out with some friends in an attempt to distract herself and resume a normal life, but just like with quicksand, moving had made things worse. She slept badly at night, head always elsewhere, clinging to those few moments in which Roman showed up and then disappeared again. She couldn't go on like the others if she didn't let go first and part of her, more than a part to say the truth, was refusing to do it… even to her own detriment. She should have faced things, cleared up, faced reality for her own good, but she was worried about Roman not herself. She trusted him, but knew how big the change was, how hard it could be to loosen his grip and lose control of something he'd driven and been responsible for for years and she didn't want him to go through it alone.

He didn't need her and had clearly chosen to keep her out of that phase of his life, yet Y/N felt she had to be there for him at that moment, she wanted to be there, to support him and in her own small way reassure him, even if her role it boiled down to a few texts and a couple of calls. Y/N'd never been the kind of woman who would give herself up to a man, her priorities had always taken precedence, but this time she just wasn't able to.

The garden looked like a little paradise, a peacefull island in the middle of nowhere. Nothing could be seen beyond the trees and the outline of the hill behind which the river flowed into the sea. There were other houses around it, yet everything seemed to be there to shield the place from the rest. Distracted, she watched the clear water of the pool stir in the wind and only when Roman sank onto the couch next to her, she turn around smiling. Y/N hadn't imagined something like this when he'd asked her to stay in Florida with him for a few days, but it had been fun.

- So, does it deserve a vote? - she heard him ask seriously, arm sliding behind to caress her bare shoulder.

- The color of the walls at the entrance is horrendous, this is not Tahiti – she reflected just as seriously.

- It can be changed.

- And living room and dining room should be reversed. There is more light on that side of the house, the windows are wider. It's strange that no one thought of it…

- Something else? - Roman inquired, looking at her with the tip of a smile.

- No, the floors are beautiful, bathrooms and fornitures too with all that marble. Rooms are huge and the garden alone is half the value of the entire house, your parents will love it.

Y/N couldn't say she knew them well, but she'd spent time with them for a variety of reasons, from PPVs to trips that Naomi and the twins had taken her and Roman was their copy. They loved having family together, keeping busy in the outdoors, that house would be perfect for everything. He had chosen well and the thought made her instinctively reach out to stroke his beard: he was a walking guarantee fund.

- It's not for my parents, my mother would be angry if I spent money on them. Its for me.

The carelessness with which he said it astounded her and Y/N hand slid down his arm as she stared at him in silence.

For him? Buying another house? Did he want to move or he just want a second house? Did make sense to have a second house so close to the first? Same state? When had that idea occurred to him? Why was the first time she heard that story? And what was she doing there with him?

- You take me to choose your house? – she asked confused, while he insisted on stroking her shoulder.

Because during their visit it didn't seem like he had already decided to take it and just wanted to show it to her. The real estate agent had asked him what was his first impression. First. Had he taken her to choose a house with him? It's not the kind of thing you do with… well, she wasn't that one for him. Maybe she was misunderstanding things, she must have misunderstood. That was a life choice to share with someone special and yes, they were more than friends, they had a unique relationship in their own way and they had added quite a few, lot, benefits over the last year, but that was a serious thing.

- You have more taste than me and it's an important step. I wanted you to be there – Roman admitted without too much trouble and Y/N abruptly swallowed the boulder that had risen down her throat.

They weren't that. There wasn't that between them. It would have been nice, but it wasn't like that, she knew it. She was, she… it was just her misunderstanding, because he had a natural talent for attracting attention and destroying pussies in any way possible. This one was new and unexpected, but still a way.

- You should have brought your mama or one of your sisters, it's an investment.

- I'm old enough to know how to manage my life. I wanted you. - he insisted and Y/N made an effort with all herself to remain lucid on that patio, because the moment he said it, her mind had gone elsewhere.

He wanted her. He had chosen her for a step like this. And it wasn't a fallback, he'd planned it because they'd planned those days in Florida together weeks ago, not out of the blue. Roman had really wanted her to be there with him, to be next to him and it was a good feeling. She knew well that they weren't planning anything, that it wasn't about choosing a house for some kind of future and that things between them wouldn't change once they stepped out of that gate again, but it was still a good feeling. Knowing that he wanted her with him, that somehow she needed her support. It was comforting.

She felt his hand tighten lightly on her shoulder and instinctively followed suit, squeezing hers on his arm, an uncontrolled smile creeping across her lips when she saw him smiling a little bit too. He was so-

- That area can be expanded if you want, maybe put in some children’s games, all permits are in place. - the real estate agent broke in out of nowhere, without even trying to hide her knowing look.

- Add them to the contract and let's review everything - she heard Roman add, with a cocky smile and the woman’s eyebrows raised so much that they almost touched her bangs, as she returned inside the house.

Whether it was because of his smile or the idea of having closed a contract with all those zeros was not clear.

In the last two months so much had changed for her… and Y/N really couldn't understand when that jump into the void after a bad moment had become everything. Maybe it was inside his private bus on the road to Charlotte or maybe on the trip to Portland with Jey and Jimmy. She remembered the endless days in the stadiums, breakfasts in the car and nights in the parking lots or inside hotel rooms before leaving again the following day. The night in the gym when she had decided to go over the limit and he hadn't hesitated for a moment, even tearing the air out of her lungs to fuck her senseless, the moments together that lasted a life or the absurd day when she had seen him sign a check for that which had become his new home with her next to him.

He had been in and out of that house for the past two months, planning and planning perhaps even with someone else next to him, while she waited for him, only suspecting what was inside his head and silencing her own. Y/N didn't want to think about it, she didn't want to focus on that, it would have been useless and more painful than it already was. She just wanted to be there for Roman. And so firm in her purpose, she waited for him to finish his round of greetings and let himself fall in the locker room next to her.

- That was a big pop - she recalled, still hearing the noises of people in her ears as Roman entered the ramp with Paul.

It was amazing how everything changed when he was around. For people it was moments, but for her it had become something else and being able to be there, alone, even if it was just a little, made her feel better.

- It played well yes… I like your hair – he commented, turning to look at her with a smile.

- Thank you. – she said softly, moving playful on of her twists from the shoulder and Roman nodded slowly, returning to stare at the floor of the locker room.

Having the opportunity to spend time away from that routine was doing him good, he was physically less tired, but there was still something wrong, she could see it.

- I have to thank you.

- For the hair?

- You know what I'm talking about Y/N – he said heavy, turning back to look at her and she felt her stomach crumple, because he had always been able to see beyond her and Y/N had almost forgotten how it was like.

He had chosen to keep her on the sidelines of that story from the first moment, whether because he wanted to face it alone or because her place wasn't at his side, Y/N really didn't know and wouldn't even ask. Not with Roman, not with how she felt about him. It hurt and she wished badly for things to be different, no matter what had or hadn't happened between them in nearly a year, but she was happy, immensely happy, that he was aware of her attempts to be there for him. Because it was all she ever wanted and it was worth it.

- Don’t say that. There’s no need. – she denied quickly, gritting her teeth so as not to collapse and let everything flow all over her, but Roman stopped her when her shoulders hadn't even had time to physically shake off those words.

Something was already ringing somewhere, probably a reminder for who knows what appointment or communication, but neither of them turned to check, not this time, not yet. Y/N felt his hand caress her cheek as it hadn't done for a long time and a part of her, the one beyond the impeccable facade, the one that had thrown herself upon him for comfort and was now seeking him like air, curled up in that point as if it were home.

- I had to do it. Another month, just one. – he swore seriously, rubbing her cheekbone with his thumb, eyes devouring her as they did every time they met.

It was a bad time of the year in their parallel universe to make promises and predictions for the future, but Roman was a man of his word and whatever came next, Y/N would go along with it anyway. That moment was enough for her to know that she was a safe road for him in that chapter of his life. Past or future. A month and then she would move on with her life, she could do it for him.

- Raise up. They are waiting for you.

One month. One.

Tag squad: @sunnyfleur23 @racerchix21 @alyanarossi @wickedsunfire @romanreignsdefencesquad @romanstheory @thiccc-rider-mcintyre @keybladeofsteel @iovereigns @msbigredmachine @nayys-world @gobbersworld @utika151209 @cumxxslutt @civildawn @romanmydaddy @triscillal @papireigns-05 @helensanders92 @ichdrachenfrau @darqchilddaydreamz @meggylynnloves @vintage-pvssy @unfriendly--blvck--hottie @nicolewoo @niknakbucks92 @wrestlezaynia @reignsx @reigns-central-blog @kianaleani @daguenoire @extra-11 @thedonsfactory @snowpanda18 @nestorsgirlfriend @brattyfics @wanna-be-dominated @kitanasposts @tribalchiefreigns @2baddies2furious @vebner37 @raeluvshammett @depressedneedingrevenge @cyberdejos2 @jeonmahi1864 @romanreignseater @kilviaa7 @thewarlordsworld @mzv11

[fuck-customers]

So this fuckin happened

Crusty white lady: excuse me *gestures to empty shelf that would hold red potatoes*

Me: we're out of red potatoes, we didn't get any in today.

Cwl: *stares at me*

Me: ... our warehouse was out of them, so we didn't get them.

Cwl: *still staring*

Me: ... so... we don't have any in stock.... we're out...

Cwl: *now looks mean but still doesn't say shit*

Me: ......... *very slowly and clearly* we have no. Red potatoes. They did not come in. There are no more.

Cwl: but its the last day of the sale!

Me: im sorry. The warehouse was out of them. So they couldn't send us any. The sale is probably why they ran out.

Cwl: so where are they??

Me: not here. You'll have to try another store. Sorry bout that.

Cwl: *glares at me and walks away in a huff*

What part of no dont you understand?

@staff I HATE the new text editor!

[oneshotnewbie]

baby!danvers accidentally cuts her arm open at work using a box cutter. The cut is a bit too deep she has to get stitches. Her sisters are obvs concerned and arrive at the hospital in big sister bear mode.

2/2 - also if you wanted an alternative idea with b!d cutting herself maybe you could have her pierce an artery and need surgery (you can choose witch one cause I cant decide.

A/n: I chose the "none invasive" option because I was a little bit triggered by the pierced artery (it is a really big fear of mine). Sorry for not giving you the second option, I hope you still like it!

---

For a week now, tons of boxed full of products have been stacked in the warehouse of your part-time job. Somehow it felt as if all business partners only sent their articles to you, preparing for a sale and rush of customers that wasn´t going to happen.

Your body wasn´t ready for that much work, but giving up and taking time off wasn´t an option for you, even though you more than needed a vacation. You seemed tired and inattentive to your colleagues, which was due to the fact that you suffered from chronic sleep deprivation and had not had a decent night´s sleep in days.

You had to help your sisters with Superhero stuff while also juggling university and life in general.

"Hey Y/n. You okay?" your best friend and co-worker asked as she drove up to you with the forklift to place two more pallets of boxed near you.

You shook your head annoyed. "I´m overworked and tired. My fingertips have a thousand tiny cuts that feel like my fingers are burning every time I press them on the cardboard so do me a favor; leave me alone and get on with other things so we don´t end up in a fight today."

The dark-haired woman in front of you raised her hands reassuringly and smiled slightly, hoping for a smile in return. "Calm down, I´m just worried about you. You don´t look well, you really need a break."

"What I need and what I don´t need.. please let that be my worry." you said, stomping away from your best friend to the newly laid boxes.

Absently you began to extend your utility knife and began cutting along the tape when you suddenly slipped and the sharp blade dragged along your other arm. In reaction and not yet in pain, you screamed out loud and saw the blood begin to gush out of the freshly and deep cut.

Immediately your best friend jumped out of her forklift and was with you instantly, but you were too far gone with the adrenaline and the panic rushing through your system that you didn´t even feel how she tried to suppress and stop the blood flow with her warning vest. With slow steps she tried to bring you to the forklift and set you down in case you fainted from the adrenaline waning.

With one hand wrapped around your arm and squeezing hard, she had her cell phone to her ear with the other hand, she watched you tonelessly as your face lost color with every minute that passed as she tried to quickly describe to the emergency services what had happened and where they could pick you up.

---

While you were laying there on the uncomfortable lounger at the hospital, still pretty taken by the morphine and the anesthetic they gave you to suppress the pain, you heard two familiar voices right outside the curtains that sealed you off from the emergency room, asking for your whereabouts.

"M´ here." you slurred and lifted your heavy head towards the sounds. Two contorted bodies appeared before your nebulous gaze and were by your side in no time.

While Alex stood in front of your bed, examining you from afar and trying to understand how this accident happened in the first place, Kara threw her bag onto the empty plastic chair and walked around you to find the empty space at your abdomen to sit on before she took your heavily bandaged arm in hers. "Honey, how did this happen?"

The blonde didn´t have to ask what had happened. Your boss called her shortly after your trip to the hospital and informed her about it. However, the question as of why this happened was still unanswered.

"You should never voluntarily put a cutter knife in my hand." you laughed and collected some unbelievable facial expressions from both of your sisters. "Slipp´d and scratch´d my arm a lil bit."

"Scratched? Kid, you lost a lot of blood from your body and needed nine stitches. You don´t joke with that." The red-haired one now interjected and paced up and down as an attempt to calm her nerves down and drop her concerns about you.

Kara shook her head and buried her face in her palm. She knew you weren´t thinking rationally right now because of all the drugs in your system. Still, she was in disbelief at how easy you were with this situation. "But it´s still attached to my body so it´s fine."

"Shush kiddo, now it´s my turn to talk." The eldest Danvers interrupted and walked carefully to the other side of the bed, where she gently brushed strands of hair away from your face and began to stroke your arm. "You´re a real klutz and sometimes I wonder if you´re doing this extra to get on our nerves but please try to be more careful next time otherwise I´ll go to your boss personally and have you sent somewhere you´ll never get hurt again."

But she got no answer. You had nodded off during her speech and now you were peacefully asleep in your hospital bed trying to recover before your doctor´s would finish the discharge letter so your sisters could take you home. "There´s no point in talking to her now, Al. We have to wait until she´s off the meds and out of here."

"I know. Fact is, she´ll never see a damn knife in any form ever again cause I´m sick of these hospital visits."

[christianniro21]

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[wumblr]

have you guys ever tried to sell things? commerce nation every weekend my neighbor sets up the most involved racks of clothes and tent canopy yardsale i've never seen anyone attend and on every corner there are popup mountain of junk sales everything must go and it's like who even buys a lawnmower from the empty lot across from the perpetual mixed use five above one condo construction down the street from the bridge that's been closed all year? how are they even getting any foot traffic in that location location location? i don't know

take a box of books to half price but they open an hour late on weekends for some reason so you buy a coffee but the drive thru's full and you need (ground) coffee anyway so in you go and there goes $20. the pickled garlic at menards has in fact been on your grocery list for over a month and aldi is right there so now you've got half-frozen raw chicken too, and while-u-wait you check the one shelf that houses the $6 books you sold last time and at this point you don't even remember what all of them were but they've got 5 priced for $53, a "whopping" $15 for the youtuber who turned into a transphobe, probably by virtue of unfortunate research practices in order to pick up her video production turnaround, because it was hardcover, and $9 for the second book in paperback by the new york times bestselling harvard professor who went out of style because all her theories turned out to be undetectable at experimental regimes

and despite the capital outlay required to buy community college textbooks at the outset, they're able to make you an offer of a "whopping" $2, apologizing for it while they say it out loud, because it was obviously the wrong place to sell textbooks and you knew that. and resignedly you're like well it is an everything must go sale but i know i can do better for this one and you pull out kroenke database processing 14th edition even though it's realistically less useful than mcconnell code complete, because you found the receipt when you unshelved it and it was $200. not a price you paid because it was a certification -- to which you're considering setting fire -- that was paid by a federal program

and it's like what are we even really doing here. commerce nation but unless you have the capital outlay to establish a network of bricks and mortars, where you can just ship books in between each, anytime anyone at your convenience in the commerce nation asks for one of them (they've got brazilian portuguese in mississippi), you're not going to get a fair price for resale without patience and possibly a warehouse lease. deck stacked against the consumer at every turn, buck sure does stop here by which i mean the end user is buried in a mountain of junk they can't resell. anyway they had lauryn hill so i think all told it cost me $53 to get $2 back. but it's fine. i paid credit

[cophene]

ii. sandwich.

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pairing : p. fugo x gn reader summary : after finding a pensive, choleric ghost, a sales clerk must do everything in their power to help him cross over. but that becomes unfairly difficult when it's so easy to forget that he's already dead. notes : 20th century au, multi-chapter fic, sfw, doesn’t follow canon plot word count : 2.4k+

⊱ FUGO ASKED FOR YOUR NAME again as you left the field and repeated it a few times to himself, apparently wanting to commit it to memory. You tried to get him to remember the rest of his name, but his mind stubbornly remained blank. As it stood, you didn’t know if Fugo was his first or last name or even a nickname. At least you had it, you supposed.

At the chain link fence, Fugo hesitated while you found the same foothold you’d used to earlier and started climbing. With one last, unreasonably loud rattle, you hopped off the other side, wincing when your ankles smarted. Fugo was still staring at you through the fence.

“What are you waiting for?”

“I can’t climb this,” he said. “Isn’t there a gate or something?”

“There probably is, but I was too impatient to use it.” You waited a beat, then said, gingerly, “You know you don’t have to climb it, right? You’re—you are a ghost, I mean.”

The tips of Fugo’s ears reddened. Somehow, it had never occurred to you that ghosts could blush. You found it strangely endearing. 

“Just step on through. I don’t think it’ll hurt you.”

Fugo eyed the fence. You hoped you were right. If you weren’t, the metal would rip Fugo to shreds and the guilt would kill you.

Fugo sucked in a breath. Turning sideways, he took little steps through the fence, his eyes shut all the while. You took up your messenger bag from the ground, not sure if you wanted to laugh or feel sorry for him. The fence remained silent all throughout, barely even vibrating as Fugo moved through it.

He shuddered visibly once he’d made it through the fence. 

“I never want to do that again,” he said. “That felt violating.”

“For you or the fence?”

Fugo shot you a look. “Where’s your apartment?”

You walked back through the warehouses and then down the street. They were virtually empty now, only a few lone stragglers darting between pools of lamplight. You kept your steps unhurried, even though you were tempted to sprint all the way back to your apartment.

It was disconcerting to have a ghost following at your back. Although you knew he was there, it was still odd only to hear one pair of footsteps and see no accompanying shadow by yours. All you felt was a faintly cold draft. It made the goosebumps rise on your arms and neck. You kept looking back every once in a while to make sure Fugo hadn’t drifted away somewhere. 

Not that you would have complained. A part of you was still hoping he would be gone by morning.

For the most part, Fugo kept his eyes on the pavement. You wanted him to look around and see if the buildings and street signs jogged something in his memory. Sometimes a cab would pass by or another person, and Fugo would look up briefly before hunching back in on himself. Ghosts were reminiscent of their living selves. It looked like Fugo hadn’t been all that confident of himself when he’d been alive.

You tried not to think about it too much, but it was impossible not to. Who was Fugo? How old was he? What if he wasn’t from here? He could have been from a different country. A different time even. His clothes didn’t look too outdated, but he could’ve been from the eighteenth century and you wouldn’t know. Until Fugo regained more of his memories, you had no idea where to even begin helping him look for closure. If he had been killed in some fantastical, ludicrous way, what could you do to help him then?

But he couldn’t have, you thought, looking at Fugo through your periphery. He seems too intense to have died in any strange way.

“Does anything seem familiar?” you asked.

Fugo looked up from his shoes, glancing at a few of the storefronts. “Not really.”

You nodded. That was fine. This took time. You just had to be patient, hard as that was.

Your apartment building finally came into view and the knot in your chest eased somewhat. So far, no one had reacted to Fugo’s presence. You weren’t even sure anyone could see him, but you never knew. 

This late, there was no one in the front lobby. With a pinch of annoyance, you realized the elevator operator had already gone home for the night. You led Fugo up three flights of stairs. As usual, the stairwell smelled of stale cigarette smoke and wet dog. After an obscene number of stairs, you reached your apartment door.

You dug around in your messenger bag for your keys, taking them out so hastily that they dropped to the floor. You swore, reaching down to grab them, but not before Fugo crouched down to retrieve the keys for you. It would’ve been nice of him if his fingers hadn’t passed through the keys entirely.

A look of dismay crossed Fugo’s face. You pretended not to notice and scooped up your keys yourself. Nonetheless, you said, “Thanks. You didn’t have to do that.”

“I keep forgetting,” Fugo said tightly. He rose to his feet. “I have to get used to this.”

You swung your apartment door open. There was an awkward minute where your hand scrabbled around for the light switch, but eventually you found it and filled the front entryway with brassy yellow light. It was only when you closed your door and slid the two locks into place that you felt like you could relax.

“What am I going to do here?” Fugo asked. “If I’m a ghost, won’t I just pass through everything?”

You considered him for a second.

“Try hanging up your hat,” you said. 

Fugo arched an eyebrow. “That’s not going to work.”

“How do you know? Just try it.”

Fugo obliged. He placed his hat on the coat rack by the door, keeping his hand there for a beat in case it fell. It didn’t, and Fugo looked as surprised as you felt. He shrugged off his jacket and hung that up too, and you both took a minute to just stare at his things hung up besides yours. Really, you were trying to look at Fugo from the corner of your eye. His white shirt was neatly tucked into his trousers. He had a narrow waist and slim shoulders you hadn’t noticed under the jacket.

“How does that work?” Fugo asked.

“Maybe because they aren’t in contact with your person.” You headed into your kitchen, flicking on the light there too. “Are you hungry? Do you want something to eat?”

“Can ghosts eat?”

“We’ll find out.”

Fugo watched with interest as you opened your messenger bag and took something out. You scanned your apartment, then settled for placing the little pot  on top of your refrigerator. There was a crack in the ceramic from where you’d fallen on it, but it would hold another plant just fine once you found one. 

“Do you like planting things?”

You felt embarrassed even though it was a completely benign observation. “Yeah. I guess.” 

While Fugo drifted around your apartment, you dug through your refrigerator and cupboards for something to eat. The options were limited to a ham and cheese sandwich or canned soup. You didn’t want soup dripping onto the floor if it happened to pass right through Fugo’s mouth, so you settled on the sandwich.

You discreetly kept an eye on Fugo while you set about on the sandwich. You hadn’t decorated your apartment much and so there wasn’t much to be embarrassed about. Your kitchen and living room were really just one squished-together space, so it was small, even by apartment standards. But it was clean, thankfully. Nothing obscene or incriminating lying around. Still, you couldn’t help wondering what ran through Fugo’s mind as he looked at everything. Perhaps the only thing worth noticing in your apartment were the plants everywhere.

You couldn’t say you were an avid gardener. Just that you liked growing green things. Plants made you happy. They grew and were alive and not much else. They were easy. They made your little apartment seem less like a cardboard box. You felt as though the plants helped with your dizziness, although you couldn’t tell Fugo that. There was something comforting about being surrounded with growing green things, even if they always seemed to die as soon as your back was turned.

You grew some of the plants from seeds, but most were donated. From neighbours and family. People knew you liked plants and you never turned one down. There was some pot or other of greenery on every surface you didn’t immediately use.

Fugo seemed, if not appreciative, then at least interested in the plants. Each plant he  looked at he was wholly focused and intent on. He moved from each of the plants like a curator at a museum, noting their position and tilting his head slightly. You caught him reaching out his hand a few times as though he wanted to touch something, but then he remembered himself and stopped. You tried not to feel bad when that happened. There wasn’t much you could do for him there.

“Do you live alone?” he asked.

“Have been for a while now.”

“Must be lonely.”

You looked up at that. “It’s not too bad. I have work and my neighbours are nice enough. Sometimes I go over to the jazz club.”

Fugo wrinkled his nose. “You enjoy that?”

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t?”

“No. I suppose not.”

You finished the sandwiches and set out plates at the table. You’d never had anyone over before, and the sight of two sandwiches was suddenly off-putting to you.

Fugo appeared at the other end of the table. You’d pulled out his chair for him, but you weren’t sure if he would even be able to sit. He slowly lowered himself down, and when he didn’t immediately sink to the floor, he smiled slightly.

“I can sit down. That’s something.”

The sandwich was a little harder. Fugo tried a few times to pick it up but his fingers passed through the bread each time. You didn’t want to pressure him, so you casually bit into your own sandwich. Then you wondered if that would just make him feel worse.

Fugo’s eyebrows drew together. “There has to be some way to do this. Don’t ghosts slam doors and rattle walls?”

“Maybe you don’t have to eat?”

With a look of intense concentration, Fugo poised his fingers over the sandwich. It was a miracle the sandwich didn’t wither into dust. Slowly, deliberately, he got a grip on the sandwich and lifted it. Actually lifted it.

“Well, I’ll be,” you murmured.

Sweat was beading along Fugo’s hairline. He brought the sandwich to his mouth and took a small bite.

“It shouldn’t be this hard to eat a sandwich,” he muttered.

“It’ll get easier,” you said, although you didn’t know if that was the case. The two of you ate in silence for a few minutes. No food was dropping to the floor, so you assumed it was going somewhere. Could Fugo actually taste the food or was he just chewing for the hell of it?

“It seems like you have some experience with . . . all of this,” Fugo said at last. “Have you found a ghost before?”

“No. You’d be the first.”

“Really? Someone must have taught you then.”

“Everyone in my family has had encounters with ghosts, but they keep it to themselves. It tends to get personal, and they find it hard to share the experience.” 

You only knew a little bit about how to deal with ghosts from crumbs that your family dropped, mostly unintentionally. What you knew for sure was that you were irrevocably changed once you helped a ghost cross over. Whether that was for the better or worse depended on the ghost.

You didn’t want to be irrevocably changed. You were just fine with who you were now. Your life was quiet, but there was nothing wrong with it. People had it worse.

“You don’t have any family here, then?” Fugo asked.

“Not really. I moved away for college, but that didn’t work out, so I got a job at a store. I don’t want to work there permanently, but I’m staying until I save enough to do something else.”

“And what would ‘something else’ be?”

You finished your sandwich. “I don’t know. Still figuring that out.”

Fugo’s sandwich paused halfway to his mouth. He met your gaze. “I’m sorry about all of this. You must resent me for putting you into this situation.”

You baulked. “No, nothing like that. It’s not your fault. It’s just the way things are. There’s nothing to resent.”

“I’m disrupting your life when mine is already over. I see many things to resent.”

Your chest tightened. You couldn’t afford to think like that or you’d get too angry to do anything.

“I don’t resent you,” you said firmly. “I’m going to help you and that’s that.”

Fugo didn’t look like he believed you, but he didn’t press the point.

He finished his sandwich a few minutes later. You cleaned up, and then directed Fugo to the living room. You didn’t know what it was, but you were suddenly exhausted.

“I hope you don’t mind sleeping on the couch,” you said, spreading a spare blanket and pillow over your plaid couch. “I don’t have anywhere else for you, unfortunately.”

“That’ll be fine.”

“To be honest, I’m not sure if ghosts can sleep. You’ll have to let me know.”

Fugo sat gingerly on top of the couch. He had to concentrate to draw the blanket over himself. He peeked up at you from under the blanket, looking like a little kid. You could’ve forgotten that he was a ghost at all. He seemed very solid at that moment.

“We’ll try to figure something out tomorrow,” you said, adjusting a plant that didn’t need adjusting. “I’ll take you around town, maybe. See if anything sticks out. Hopefully, you’ll remember something and we can go from there.”

“I still don’t understand what ‘crossing over’ means. What has to happen exactly?”

You looked into his face. “You have to remember what it was that was most important to you when you were alive. Once you come to terms with your death and deal with whatever you need done, you’ll be able to cross over.”

Fugo settled deeper into the blanket. “So something is holding me here?”

“You could say so. We won’t know until you remember.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“I guess.”

“What do I look like?”

At your frown, Fugo continued, “I can’t see my reflection. I tried looking in your bathroom earlier. I just wonder … if I still look the way I think I do.”

You took a second before answering. “Your hair’s a dark blonde. You look young. My age, maybe. Your expression is always a little worried, and your eyes … they’re tired. Pensive. And violet. They’re violet.”

You felt your face heating. That was a terrible description. How was anyone supposed to visualize themself with that? But Fugo seemed satisfied.

“So I look human, then? I’m not a ghoul?”

“No, you’re not.”

“That’s a relief. I was worried I looked hideous and you were just too nice to say anything.”

Fugo looked the farthest thing from hideous but you didn’t say that. You smiled weakly.

“Good night. I’ll see you tomorrow. Let me know if you need anything.”

Fugo closed his eyes. “I will. Good night.”

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[datamodel-of-disaster]

Here's a bit of an odd (but hopefully not unwelcome) question: you've mentioned a couple of times your interest in interior decorating, but how do you *find* items for your house to fit a specific aesthetic? Where do you even look/how do you search for stuff? Or do you just look through shops and flea markets and hope to get lucky?

Ok, I love this question. (You may regret asking if you see the length of this reply 😅)

SO.

The simple answer is, I thrift a lot (on- and offline), I buy at estate sales and auctions, I rarely pass an interior design store without taking a look inside (even stores that are decidedly not my style at first sight), I read industry magazines, I save up for pieces by indie creators, and in some cases I make my own stuff (I can weld and upholster). So yeah, to an extent it's "luck".

The complicated answer is that it's about understanding my own aesthetic and optimising my search experience.

I know a lot of people who sort of know what they like, but also don't really know what they like. They'll be able to look at pictures of interiors and say "I like that" and "I hate that" but not really know how to articulate why. They might even have a label for the aesthetic they prefer, like "minimalist" or "clean and modern" or "cozy Scandinavian" or something like that, but still not really be able to articulate what that materially entails. (Yes, I know, I'm singling out a certain type of people here -I'll stop eyeing them once they stop doing this shit.)

Why is one room "good" to you and another not, even if they're both technically the same style? What makes a space work? What is the "invisible background" in the spaces you love -tall ceilings, exposed beams, greenery outside, natural light, latticed windows, crown moulding? A lot of times people think they like the interior but they really just like the house it's in, much like how you might think an outfit is stylish only because the person wearing it is hot.

Similarly… do you actually love the look of an interior or do you just love the lifestyle implied in it? Do you actually like empty surfaces or are you just tired of cleaning up your housemates' clutter? Do you love big open kitchen/dining room combos or do you just wish you had a social circle that did dinner parties? Do you really want a giant white couch or do you just dream of living in California? Similarly to ads that may be advertising a car but are selling you on the dream of freedom to travel, interiors are tied up with non-material desires and aspirations. And while that's not *bad* per se, it's very difficult to actively work towards an aesthetic if you can't tell apart that aesthetic from the underlying desires. After all, you want an interior that works for the space you actually have and the life you actually live.

The reason this is important is because the moment you understand what you are really after, you are no longer bound by names of designers, shops and styles. It stops mattering. You can find things you enjoy anywhere, from thrift shops to IKEA to antiques auctions to specialty warehouses to Etsy, without it needing to be tagged with the label of an aesthetic you're trying to fit in. A lot of the "but how will I even find anything"/"everything I love is too expensive" stress disappears like this.

Understanding how your preferred style and aesthetic actually works under the hood also gives you insight into what sort of things you *need* to make it work, what stuff adds depth and volume but can't carry the theme by itself, and what sort of things are "false friends" -stuff that seems like it "should" fit your aesthetic but actually hampers it in the space you're in. (As in: a big white sectional is not gonna give you California Cool in a cramped terrace house in Birmingham, rather the opposite.)

The second-best advice in interior designing is "buy what you love" -the genuinely best advice is "understand what you love". Because once you do, you'll find things you like everywhere.

There's also optimizing your search. This is one of the few things where website algorithms are actually your biggest friend. One of my favourite things is the "more like this" function on a lot of platforms. If you tidily keep and organize favourites on Etsy, the algorithm will typically present you with stuff that's genuinely similar to items you already like. Just using Instagram to follow artists and creators you like will curate your feed and expose you to other stuff that fits the look. Pinterest allows you to both passively and actively find similar looking items, which can expose you to items and designers you never knew existed.

Favouriting items on my most-used second hand platform (2dehands, a local Belgian thrifting platform) will actively put items that visually resemble those favourites on my front page. It's awesome, and you can "weaponize" it in your search.

For example, earlier this year I really wanted an Asian style lacquer cupboard. They can be quite expensive, and usually get picked up fast second hand. So for a week or two, I actively searched for and favourited *every* lacquer cupboard I found on 2dehands, including ones I didn't like, that had the wrong dimensions, or that were far too expensive for me. Fairly quickly, my front page was essentially all lacquer cupboards, including ones that weren't even advertised as such and that I would never have found through the textual search function. And lo and behold, I found the perfect one, and it was an absolute steal too.

Another way to optimise your search is to cast a wide net. I never pass a home décor store or antiques warehouse without taking a peak. I have bought items when I was on work trips, when I was visiting family, when I was on holiday. "Thrift stores near me" is my favourite search on google maps. And yes, sometimes that meant carrying a mahogany prayer chair on my back while walking 30 minutes to the train station in high heels and office clothes xD

A final tip is to sometimes just trust your gut and go for it. A couple of my favourite buys are ridiculous shit, like a chair shaped like high heel and a bronze statue of a robot giving cunnilingus to a woman. And the biggest interior design regrets I have are all items I didn't buy. (to this day I regularly think about the giant 5-panel hand-painted Chinese screen doors I passed up on and the Lucite dining chairs I couldn’t arrange transport for.) There is such a thing as "too cohesive" in interiors. Your home is not a catalog photo; sometimes, particularly if the item is unusual or unique, you gotta trust your affection for it without necessarily knowing how it fits in the picture. (In a way, your brain is also an algorithm subject to customisation through exposure. Learn to trust it! ^^)

It's important to note with all of this though… this is my hobby. I love spending time on it. I imagine if you're trying to curate an interior this way when you're new to it (especially if you're trying to get to a certain look all at once without any mistakes or misbuys) it's hella overwhelming and time-consuming. It's not for everyone. But even if you have no interest in turning your home decor into a hobby, the base principles still apply. If you understand what you're really after, it's much easier to identify things that would work in your space, anywhere you go, no matter how often you actually go looking.

(My own house is very much NOT perfect -a perpetual “blessed mess and work in progress”, in all honesty. But well. I AM out here giving advice, so feel free to check out some non-staged, very much non-magazine worthy pics of my home, below the cut.)

[supereffectivemoonblast]

This session began with both parties arriving in the oasis city of Ank'Harel. Question the tiefling thanks the group for their help, and gives them a Sending Stone that the Cobalt Soul could contact them with, assuming they would like more work later. Prolix asks the party to come with him to meet with his superior. They talk to one of the Alleigance of Allsight's headmasters, Alakritos, and tell him what they experienced at The Betrayer's Rise. Still untrusting, they leave out the vision they had of Alyxian, and the fact that they have the Jewel with them.

The party spend the next couple days planting roots in the city, they find an empty warehouse for sale in the Ridge District, the industrial sector of the city. Although its initially rough conditions, its cheap enough for the party to collectively afford. Aerith furbishes a garden out the front, and they get the bare essentials of furniture. Cherchael spends time in the marketplace, The Suncut Bazaar, looking for a place to establish her fortune telling business.

Cherchael eventually meets Hagred Loravan, the master of street stralls in the Bazaar. As a show of skill, Cherchael does a reading for Hagred, and turns up the 3 of Wands (inverted), the Queen of Pentacles (upright), and the 7 of Swords (upright), which she reads as; business was rough in the past, right now the bazaar is financially secure, but there are those who might use deception to try and disrupt this current state in the near future. Hagred interprets this reading as pointing to rumours he heard about a robbery in planning for the Luck's Run Casino, and advises Cherchael to point burly types to an upcoming hiring possibility.

Meanwhile, the more adventurous types in the group are looking for thrilling forms of income. Quierk books an arena fight at the Bowl of Judgment at the end of the week. The group also find a job board at the Crystal Chateau (the Alleigance's base of operations), for a lost cat. They find and the chase the cat, which turns out to be a Tressym, and use hot street food to lure it into their arms, being paid with money and magic scrolls for their effort. Ramiel is warned that his magic armour may be cursed, and one of the scrolls they recieve allows them to reverse this.

Now having carved out a place to settle in the city, the group are now free to explore Ank'Harel for clues on Alyxian's quest, and maybe their own destinies.

Background credited to u/copperdome on Reddit.