#even educated fleas do it

[ourlittleforever]

sniffles pathetically. i miss caleb

[scriobh-an-iontas]

Something can only be said to be alive when its reaction to something bad is

"Well THAT'S fucking dumb, let's do something WORSE instead!"

instead of throwing up an error signal or looping endlessly.

No I will not hear any arguments against this, good day to you

[zivazivc]

Does Hed help Les with grooming his back?

This is a really old ask about this post. And the answer is yes, definitely!

I ended up drawing them back in their room in Vibe City because I've been thinking a lot about them growing up there lately. This is a little before Les gets kicked out (big fight with dad) and they end up traveling around with Flea who is at uni at this point. (Flea isn't a local, he moved there because of uni a couple of years prior, and that's when Les and Hed met him. He is the only other mixed/non-fully funk troll they know at that point.)

In the drawing Hed is studying for a test. He's in the second year of high school when he drops out. This upsets and angers Les because he has good grades but Hed insists that they should form a band (like they used to talk about when younger) because he is secretly shit scared of letting Les live alone and fuck off to who knows where. - At this point in time Vibe City is pretty much grounded in the same location most of the time, and if Les doesn't have work, he likes to spend his time in the suburb/woods outside the city where he takes care of his beetle van, Scaab. And Hed is aware Les has been itching to leave the city for a while already...

This has been an unexpected mini lore dump, thank you for your time :P

[gaia-prime]

it’s so cool how homosexuality is found in every race, religion, and nation, across time and culture, around the world and how we are never going away 🌈

[agueforts]

forever fascinated by the many machinations of brennan's mind. image description in alt text, below, or at this reblog, originally from @arctic-hands

[Image Description: tweet by Brennan Lee Mulligan, @ BrennanLM. It says "While the statement 'Even educated fleas can do it' may at first seem inclusive, it actually suggests an insect society sharply divided by class, where access to institutions of higher learning is seen as prerequisite to the full range of natural emotions. In this TED talk I will–". In response, Sam Reich, @ SamReich, tweets "for the love of god brennan it's valentine's day", to which Brennan responds "Not for the working class fleas it's not! #Solidarity ["solidarity" in allcaps]" End I.D.]

[arabellasleopardcoat]

Whatever souls are made of (Aemond Targaryen x Reader)

Summary: Aemond and his wife explore touch.  Can be read as a part two of DIFM or a stand alone. 

Warnings: Mentions of SA (Heavily) Purity culture, internalized misogyny. Aemond’s POV.  Angst. Fluff. As always, more detailed warnings at the end after the dots.

A/N: I do not have the amount of time needed to create my own philosophy, so I took western’s ideas. Title is from Wuthering Heights.

Aemond didn’t believe in soulmates. Whatever the maesters of old had said about them, be it either the same beings separated by the gods or people made from the same substances, it was not real. As any educated young man, he had often wondered what it was that gave humans life. Rationally speaking, there had to be something that set us apart from other beings and at the same time was finite, else people wouldn’t die. Aemond had settled for calling it soul because it seemed to be a sort of universal denomination. It didn’t mean he believed in all the romance related tales. 

Then, his mother had brought him you. 

“Just think it over, darling.” Alicent had said, laying a careful hand on his shoulder. He had felt the urge to nuzzle into her touch, pull her in for a hug, yet he couldn’t. He couldn't because there were secrets on top of secrets all boiling up in his throat, behind his eye, and sometimes he felt so utterly lonely he wanted to scream them all. All the hatred and fear and solitude, out loud and open. But this time, Aemond stayed behind his wall and didn’t speak, merely humming. 

“I have found you the perfect wife. She likes reading, and she is very learned. Dutiful, too. You would never have to worry, with her at your side. She is not like your sister.” And Aemond knew she was not thinking of sweet, demure Helaena. “She is demure and devout, and has the most charming eyes I have ever seen.” 

“Mother…” Because, really, he was not ready for marriage. The idea of having to be so vulnerable again frightened him. Yet at the same time, he craved the feeling of companionship it could bring, if done right. Aemond often wondered if that was what his sister and Daemon had, despite being so awful. They seemed happy. Partners in crime, the wretched pair. He wondered, too, if that sense of companionship was what Aegon was forever looking for in the women of Flea Bottom. If he was never meant to have it, if there was something deeply wrong with him for not enjoying what other men seemed to enjoy like that. 

“Aemond, love. I really think she is perfect for you. You will understand when you meet her, it is as if the Seven made her for you. You two are so alike… As if you were soulmates.” 

And there it was, that dreaded word again. Despite being broken, and missing pieces, Aemond didn’t think there was anyone one in the world that could be his other half. He was alone. He had always been. Yet… If what his mother said was actually true… If there was a woman who shared his interests and was polite and demure… 

“I’ll do it.” The words bubbled out of his throat, uncontrolled. At least this way, he could have someone to talk to. Perhaps it wouldn’t be love, but if the girl truly liked the same things as Aemond did, they could talk, occasionally. And if she was as dutiful as his mother said, his chambers would never be empty again. Because definitely, she would be there with him sometimes, she would sit by the fire and read, or embroider, and perhaps it would be enough, even if they never touched. “I will court her.” 

Aemond has this dream, every so often. It’s not what you would expect, of a dragon rider. He never dreams of falling, or of the day he claimed Vhagar. He should, probably. A normal person would get caught up on what if’s, or even on the events of that night, he will not ever speak aloud. Perhaps, on the pain of losing an eye. Aemond is not normal, though. He dreamed so much of being out in the snow, you might take him for a northern. 

There was a window on the side of the Red Keep. It overlooked the dinning hall, clearly built to allow the common folk to watch their King dine. It has not been used in very long years. Aemond dreams about it often, of standing out of it on a cold day, locked out of his home as his family dines. Of banging his fists on it until the wood nearly cracks. He screams with all his might, but soon the cold is on him, turning his breath into crystals, his blood into ice. Until Aemond is nothing but an empty husk, robbed of soul. And the most terrifying thing about the dream is his family never look up or notice he is not at the table, not even when his cold, lifeless body thumps against the snow. 

I’ll tell you a secret. It was not the pain of losing an eye, what traumatized him. Nor the scorn from the rest of the court. 

“…Thoroughly questioned!” 

“Where did you hear such lies, boy?” 

Aemond knows you can’t die in a dream. He has died on those many times. Yet still, it always takes him an embarrassing amount of time to realize the tears on his face are not frozen and that he is in his chambers. And even then, he feels lost and adrift in the world. 

The day he meets you has to be the happiest day of his life. You come out of your carriage, aided by the ever helpful hand of Ser Criston. His mother is also there, practically shining with happiness. Aemond realizes, then, the whole soulmates thing is an utter load of shit. 

There is no way a woman as beautiful as you could be the other half of his soul. He is too broken, too jagged and dirty to be the other half of someone as pure as you. Aemond will not be able to remember later what color was your dress, or if you were wearing a cloak with your house’s sigil on it. He remembers your smile, the way the sun lighted up half your face, and a pair of intelligent eyes, nervously trailing over him. 

You curtsy perfectly. You say all the right words. And Aemond then takes your arm, and you have to shift because you are holding a book in your hands. It’s a very well-worn copy of Ten Thousand Ships. It’s clearly a parting gift from your family. It’s not often that someone gets to take a book with them in a world like yours. Most nobles families keep their books well locked and cared for, not in the hands of young maidens. When you start to chatter a mile per minute on rhoynar history, Aemond knows he is a goner. 

Aemond thinks of taking you. It will be his right, or so everyone keeps repeating. He spends hours on his knees, trying to erase the sinful urges from his mind. The more he falls for you, the more he wishes for closeness. The more time you spend together, the curve of your neck, your plush lips, they all look more enticing. Yet, the idea of touching another and being wrong halts him. The spell would be broken, then. It would be clear to both of you he is not yours. You would know then he has too many rough edges, that Aemond was not built to love. 

The first kiss you share is on the Sept. You look up at home, eyes warm and soft, but also frightened. It is then he decides he can’t do to you what was done to him. Not only for his sake, but because Aemond’s heart breaks when he thinks of you sporting the same broken look he has. He can’t bear the thought of you squealing in pain, eyes welling up in tears, body left used and discarded. He thinks of Aegon and the serving girl, of his mother, and wonders what kind of man can be so ruthless. 

In his nightmares, you stand facing him, a scar over your eye.

Still, he marries you. The soft balm of your companionship lulls him into a false sense of safety. This must be what heaven feels like, Aemond thinks, as he watches you try and fail to learn and play Cyvasse. It’s all perfect. Until his mother starts demanding a grandson. 

Telling you the truth has to be the most difficult thing he has ever done. Aemond only does because you have a right to know. He has seen how you look at babies, with such longing eyes. And once he tells you, he is astonished at your kindness. You hold him, as Aemond tells you of that horrible night when he was thirteen. Of the feeling of being a prisoner of his own body, unable to stop the situation. Of the shame. So much shame. 

“Your body understands what it wants, my Prince.” Sticky, sickly sweet. Crooned in his ear as he suffocated, as he screamed inside for it to stop, to stop, to-

Aemond doesn’t actually remember how much he tells you. These are the facts. As he boils over, words bubbling up from his throat, you hold him. And it doesn’t feel like you are suffocating him, but as if he is the one clinging to you like a drowning man clings to a lifeline. 

You show up with research a week later. He has noticed your touch becoming more hesitant, of late. Aemond had wondered what that was all about. You had tackled the problem as you often did, his wonderful smart girl. Diagrams, sources, even a speech prepared. He admired that of you, your attention to detail. 

You are too perfect of a being to be his. The Seven must have made a mistake, placing you on his path. But Aemond is too selfish of a man to let you go. 

It’s that thought, what makes him brave enough to step behind you one night, as you are unpinning your hair. He is no stranger to your night routine, after so many nights spent together, talking until your eyelids drop and giggling like children over board or card games instead of performing your marital duties. 

Aemond is careful to let you notice him approaching in the mirror, eye shining in the low light. You look like the Maiden come to life, the light from the fire giving your skin a faint golden glow. Foreign, yet so familiar. Targaryen silver against spun gold. 

“Allow me.” Aemond says, gently taking your hand and placing it on your lap.  Through the mirror, you smile at him, and tilt your head back in silent acceptance of his touch. He is grateful for it. Aemond often needs the reaffirmation that he is not forcing you to endure his touch. He wants you to be kept safe from the horrors he has endured, when it comes to matters of the flesh. Even if that means never touching you. 

Nerves make his stomach flutter. He has found that the first time he touches someone, that’s the hardest. Touch after that, he can endure. He had voiced that to you, once. 

“It’s not about you learning to endure my touch, Aemond.” Your soft voice rings in his memory. “It’s about exploring touching and seeing what you enjoy, if any. There is no goal here, or stages. It’s about learning if you want touch and learning to speak out about it.” 

No enduring, Aemond reminds himself. Seeing what it’s like. A hesitant hand is placed on your crown, getting used to the texture of your hair under his fingers. His hand is big, and it makes for an amusing sight, nearly enveloping your skull. Aemond wonders what it would be like, to be so close there is no flesh, no skin between you two. Yet at the same time, he doesn’t need to wonder. He knows you so well, it feels as if he knows you to your very bones. 

You stay very still, as he plucks one pin, then the other. Your eyes flutter closed, as your hair falls down in a shapeless blob. Aemond stares at it, perplexed. Surely, he has done something wrong. Your hair doesn’t look like this in the mornings, all loose and mussed from sleep.

It must show in the silence that stretches around you two because you laugh and offer him a silver comb. 

“I brush it after. So the marks that the pins leave vanish.” Your smile is kind, encouraging, but also questioning. The comb, it is an offer. One he can refuse if he so wishes. It thrills him.  

The comb strokes soothe him. It’s much like brushing a horse.  Methodical, calming. But better, because it is you. This close, he can smell the sweet smell of the perfume he bought you for your first month of marriage, see the vulnerable skin of your nape. Hear all the sweet little sounds you let out when he scratches the brush lightly along your scalp. 

Aemond decides he likes this kind of touch. There is something intimate about standing behind you, brushing your hair. Something that not even knowing all your secrets can give him. No matter if he knows where all the scars on your body come from or what’s your favorite book. There is something special in the way you turn all soft and pliant with pleasure, in the way you turn vulnerable. Trust. You trust him. This is it, he realizes. What he didn’t know he had lost, that night. 

The brushing stops. You scrunch up your nose at him through the mirror, in the same way you do when he keeps you from falling asleep, or when the bed lacks the number of blankets you like. Adorable. 

“Will you do mine?” He asks, and you nearly jump out of your seat in front of the vanity in your haste to obey him. 

“Are you certain? May I braid it?” It’s very lighthearted, but still asking for his approval. His consent. 

Aemond sits down on the deserted stool. He closes his eye, and removes the eye patch, so it doesn’t get in the way. A gesture that cannot be misinterpreted. Your breath hitches, slightly. Trust. He is reciprocating the favor. 

The brush begins running through his hair in soft, controlled movements. It’s even better than what he imagined. 

“Tell me if it doesn’t feel good.” 

Aemond doesn’t answer. He relaxes under your hands. Whatever souls are made of, yours and his are not the same. Nonetheless, he is keeping you. 

. 

.

.

.

.

Detailed warnings: The fic is Aemond’s POV of the aftermath of trusting again a partner after SA. It deals with nightmares, self esteem issues, shame, guilt and bad memories. There is a line of dialogue (ONE) from the actual SA. No descriptions

Tags: @yentroucnagol

[precious-little-scoundrel]

Elvis Presley Masterlist

The old links weren’t working so here we are, compiling yet again 🤌🏻💋

Requests: CLOSED

~Crawfever Series

~Mile High Club Masterlist~ (sky high lovin’)

• Trash Magic (big daddy trailer park cop AU)

• Bringing up Elvis (one shot, a Michael Corleone/ Elvis Presley crossover)

•Sweet like Cinnamon (Hollywood Elvis one shot

•Somebody’s Daughter (one shot)

•Ain’t no one going back to Nod Empty (70’s Elvis new dad one shot)

Series:

A Whole Man is Hard to Find (ongoing series: 1870’s riverboat AU)

Regency Elvis Series:

One

Two

Gigi Masterlist ~ (70’s Elvis fix it series)

Sarge & lil Mama Masterlist Below: (ongoing series)

• Sarge Spouses

• Sarge Headcanons (start here)

•Birth Chart

50’s—

•The Beginning

•Proposal

•The Great Elvis and Elaine Conspiracy of ‘58

•Even Educated Fleas Do It

•Memphis to Fort Hood

•Like Lightening

•The Birth of Jesse and Ella

• Welcome to Germany Mrs. Presley

•Stitch (50’s)

•Ten Minutes (50’s)

•D Rations (50’s)

•K Rations (50’s)

• Good Husbandry (50’s)

• Fort Dix to Memphis

60’s—

• Wouldn’t it be Nice?

•Ann Margret’s Three Way Script (60’s)

•Ann’s the Name (60’s)

• Hop to it Tink (Ann and Elaine)

•History of the Hollywood Hullabaloos (60’s)

•Goldfish in the Privacy of Bowls (60’s)

• Marlon

• Favorite Face (60’s Sarge)

70’s—

•Road Head

•Let’s Fall out of Love

• Patch it Up Baby (Sarge 70’s)

• What About Wendy (short Daisy blurb)

80’s—

-A Little Devil’s Lettuce

90’s—

• Marie Presley’s Rolling Stone Magazine (90’s Sarge)

• Snow Bunnies (90’s Sarge)

[hoodreader]

i think u should get a cat.

adopt don’t shop

LINKS — menu. forms.

these are my natal astrological theories for someone who would enjoy having a pet. this isn’t reserved to cats, it’s for any domestic animal. but this morning, i woke up and saw my cat’s face and said… hm… i need to dedicate something to u.

there’s gon be a lot of text. like a lot. so buckle in! click the Keep Reading button below to unlock the rest of the text. and i hope u enjoy.

History of Animals & Pets in Astrology

in astrology, the house indicator for pets is the sixth house.

the reason why the sixth house is seen for pets is due to the sixth house ruling hierarchy and providing of care. when the domestication of different animals began, it was always rooted in some sort of service. and in my opinion… it was usually some sort of labor or brutality. after all, we must consider mars rejoices in this house.

many animals unconsensually exchanged survivalism for service — with the promise of their physical needs being met, such as shelter/food/water/protection, they provide some sort of task to the humans. but like i said… mars rejoices here. and things being done unconsensually or with force is a martian quality.

so the domestication processes for many animals — if not all — were violent. for horses… they had barbed spikes in their bits and whips on their flanks. they were used for war. on chariots and then horseback. for dogs, they were given companionship given that they murder their own brothers and sisters. for cats, they were kept around if they hunted the pests that came with our young species’ booming agriculture. other animals were domesticated for the purpose of a controlled hunt, or for the purpose of carrying heavy things for us for long periods of time. the sixth house is speciesm — the belief that there is an order of command in the animal kingdom that places humans on top.

then that doesn’t include the breeding for sport. and that also is violent. whether it’s a contest of ability or contest of pedigree. horses get their legs sored — a violent process in which their legs are damaged in order to alter their gate. or animals are purposefully bred to have predispositions to health issues (and illness is ruled by the 6H). dogfights, cockfights, horse nose slitting, and so on. while indigenous peoples globally had much of a better relationship with animals, the dominant culture has brutalized animals since they were able to contain them. there’s a reason why the 6H is the house of both domestication and slavery. and they are two sides of the same coin. but i won’t get into that now.

i also even want to add in the 12H representing large animals and large animals often being used as beasts of burden. burden in the 12H! or pedigrees… which is like animal eugenics. it shows “wealth of bloodline” thus jupiter, but there’s still that saturnian/12H aspect about ancestry. and that martian aspect about how u have to essentially ‘compete’ (through merely existing) to be considered a ‘purebred’ of ur respective breed.

now… as a species, we did eventually come to a consensus on what is an appropriate way to interact with animals. though… many people do not get the memo. people still walk their dogs in 90°F weather when they’re not supposed to. people still neglect to get their pets flea medication routinely. people still hit their pets. and this isn’t a judgement to the ignorant, but a point about how when u base a relationship with another being on ownership (mars rules possession)… it’s easier to leverage their livelihood over them.

that’s why pets are ruled by the malefic sixth house.

for that reason, i don’t recommend getting a pet without educating urself. u should know the ins and outs of the animal u seek because they lose dominion when they live with u. they eat what u choose to feed them, they live where u tell them to, and so on. even just the comfort they give u from being cute or cuddly is a service. so be wise.

Animal Rulership (cont.)

animals in general — 6H, virgo, jupiter, pisces

large animals; outdoors animals — 12H, jupiter, pisces, sagittarius, sun, 9H?

small animals — mercury, virgo, 6H (this includes pests, such as roaches, rats, and bedbugs)

house animals — 4H, 5H, 6H, cancer, moon, mercury, 6H, virgo

insects, arachnids, herpitiles — mercury, scorpio, saturn, aquarius

mammals — moon, cancer, 6H, mercury

aquatic animals — cancer, moon, pisces

beasts of burden — saturn, 12H

burrowing animals — 4H, saturn, scorpio

carnivorous — mars. maybe saturn? i mean he ate his own kids ion think he picky

omnivorous — jupiter? my theory. just because jupiter shows openness.

herbivore — venus, taurus, moon, pisces

Animal Connections

cancer / lunar energy shows fondness for animals. especially cancer ascendants, moons, sixth houses. moon influencing the ascendant or sixth house.

sixth house lord in the fourth house or twelfth house can show familiars. a familiar is a spirit, demon, or alter ego that is closely linked to the person it familiars. it’s often thought that they take the form of animals.

how to determine whether ur pet is a soul mate or familiar will obviously be in the synastry and composite charts. but it’s tricky because most people only have an approximate date of their pets’ astrology charts, especially those who adopt their pets and don’t shop them.

sixth house containing neptune, moon, in cancer, in pisces, having jovial influence shows sensitivity to animals. these people are also very in tune with animal wellness, which is why i recommend veganism, vegetarianism, or ethical meat consumption for them.

jovial influence in the sixth can also show u have a bunch of pets, lol. and jovial plus aquarius energy can show u have strange or relatively uncommon pets, such as an octopus or a madagascan hissing cockroach.

sixth house can show how u get ur pets: lord in the eleventh, maybe it was an organized community event. lord in the third, maybe u was just walking around and saw it. lord in the fourth, maybe it was a childhood pet or family pet that u just took responsibility for. lord aspecting mercury…. maybe u saw them online.

Types of Pets

lastly, i’m going to type in what i think different 6H energies might gravitate towards for pets. read for house lord, planets present, sign, and major aspects made to house lord.

this won’t account for all the nuances (example: a 6H in sag would indicate an adventurous pet but if saturn is there it could show this quality is subdued). just written for fun.

solar — something a bit bougie that stands out. attention needy ass pets. might be talkative pets but then randomly get phases of introversion. enjoys being pet and pampered. could have a golden or bright hue to fur/skin/scales/exoskeleton.

lunar — shy, sensitive, protective, and loyal pets. could see them being a real cuddly though. i really see cats for this. either a silvery / grey type of coloring or something dark and mysterious. might prefer only “their people” but get a bit territorial otherwise. could see aquatic pets here. big watery eyes.

mercurial — chatty, active. a bit of anxiousness. lovesss to play. could love learning tricks too. loves going outside and exploring their immediate environment. i imagine a warm undertone on their coloring. i could see birds here.

venutian — very pretty. maybe food motivated or play motivated. enjoys grooming, might groom themselves rather often. could see someone having a rabbit lol, or another dainty sort of pet. i could see it having many colors! possibly patterns as well.

martian — might be a predatory animal. so for example, a cat. or a scorpion. etc. lurking in the shadows. i could see them also not wanting to be bothered much lol. type to hiss or growl or puff up. irritable. if the mars influence is scorpio, i can see dark coloring, like a black cat. also i could see arthropods and herpitiles, also rats. they’re kinda shamed

jovial — biggg personality. piscean will give sweet watery eyes. emotional. loud… talkative. they themselves can be a bit large for their breed or species, or put on weight easily. they might love freedom or window time. very curious and love to explore. nosy. i can see them also having a large array of coloring. bright and expressive eyes. aquatic pets!

saturnian — dark in color. quiet or simply incapable of making a verbal sound. i could see them loving to sleep or be in solitude a lot. could be on the less cuddly side but still less irritable. might like being under things, like burrowing. might only really have one fave person, but past that… not really tryna interact much. i could see pets that are shamed here too… esp b/c saturn rules shame & exile

that’s all. i hope this was a bit interesting. :P

now… about adopt don’t shop. this is a slogan warning about the dangers of kitten mills and puppy mills from unethical/backyard breeders. there are already millions of houseless animals right now. we don’t need people breeding even more who will end up dumped at overfilled shelters.

and this isn’t limited to dogs or cats. birds, fish, reptiles, insects, and arachnids (and more) are all animals impacted by unethical breeding practices. now personally… i feel like there’s an ethical concern to be raised about all animal breeding (lol). however, if u have to get a pet from a breeding facility, make sure they’re a reputable breeder who ensures a great quality life for their animals. do not get pets from pet stores. i worked at one and had to quit from just how many of their animals died, got sick, or were mishandled.

instead, locate a reputable breeder. check out petfinder, adopt-a-pet, or ur local shelter. and if u have the ability to, maybe give senior, disabled, or shy animals a chance. they have a higher mortality rate in kill shelters because nobody thinks they’re worth the energy.

lastly, i recommend against ‘exotic pets’ or ‘exotic hybrids’ because this just further commodifies animals. not only that but the average person does not have the resources to care for them. which is why so many wolf dogs and bengal or savannah cats end up surrendered!

okay. that’s my political vegan psa. the end.

[my-on-and-off-writingstuff]

A Soft Smile | Daemon x reader

Summary: The battle in the Stepstones left Daemon Targaryen wounded and a fever strikes. Corlys Velaryon had sent for a gifted healer who immediately catches the eye of a certain prince when he wakes up.

Warnings: none I think

Disclaimer: I have not written a piece of fanfiction in years so it might be absolute shite. in addition to that I have a form of dyslexia and english is not my first language so in advance my condolences for poorly written sentences, wrong grammar and spelling. I just wanted to write some fluf for Daemon. (I hope I did not make him too much out of character

He came by to a voice singing a song he did not know. However the language of the song was quite familiar. With a groan he opened his eyes to immediately close then again due to the bright light. The singing transition into a hum and moved away from him. He tried again this time succeeding. His eyes were filtering the room towards your figure standing over a table grinding some herbs by the looks of it.

“How do you know High Valyrian?” His voice was a little more unsteady and raspy then he would have liked but it did its job. “King of the Stepstones you are awake.” You had turned around from your previous occupation and gifted him a soft smile. He was taken away with your beauty but also curious about you all the same. It was clear that you had taken care of his wounds as they were bandaged and he smelled like a field of herbs.

You helped him sit upright and with a wet cloth dabbed the sweat of his forehead. He frowned at the gesture almost ready to grab the cloth as he was not a babe, but he also relinquished in the soft touches of your hands, the light feathering touches and the soft smile that had lasted on your lips. “Here my lord.” You handed him a cup of a fool smelling mixture and encouraged him to drink it. “Gods women are you trying to poison me?” A soft giggle came from your lips and enthralled he looked at you. “No milord of course not, it’s a mixture of herbs and water, it’s not the tastiest but it will help with getting your strength back from the fever.”

Fever? “How long was I out for?” He asked before knocking back the drink like it was the wine from the pubs in flea bottom. “Not more than two days my lord, Lord Corlys Velaryon has sent for me right away.” Even though he was not aware of what the potion exactly was for he started to guess when his eyes started to drop. Not wanting to yet return to an unconscious state he concentrated his full attention on to you. Trying to still his curiosity as much before he had to give in.

“So little dove you did not answer my question, how is it that you know high Valerian?” For a moment it looked like you were going to ignore his question. The soft smile that had adored your lips the entire time disappeared for just a moment before returning only to not reach your eyes this time. “I learned it from my father.” Ah so his little bird was well educated. As some nobles learned their children various degrees of High Valerian although none of them ever reached the ability you had.

“If my lord does not mind can I check his wound on his back? I have not really had the change to look it over as I could not get you to move on my own.” She politely asked diverting her eyes from his own not caring to elaborate further on how she knew the language only so few knew. He snorted amused. “Are you calling me fat little one?” He ignored the pain in his shoulder and pressed his fingers underneath your chin forcing you to look at him. Your cheeks heated under his graze something he found irresistible and to be fueling his growing obsession with you. “Of course not my lord I only meant to not bring you any discomfort.” He jested further finding it almost hard not to do. “So you ignored my wounds in favor of my comfort.” You had now caught on to his jests a playful glint noticeable in your eyes. “You are the prince after all.”

“Ah Some mere minutes ago I was a king.” Referring to when you had called him the king of the Stepstones. He repressed a yawn but not without you noticing. you lightly pressed on his shoulder to move him forwards so you could check out the bandage on his back. “King or prince it matters little if you are dead.” You shrugged at him little impressed with him it seemed. “So you do wish me dead? I knew you made me drink poison.” “My lord, if i was out to kill you I would have done it sooner to save me the hassle of bringing you back from the fever.” He smiled at your words finding it hard to remember the last time someone so innocently and carefree had spoken to him. “Daemon Targaryen.” You looked up at him confused. “I know who you are lord, did you hit your head?” You hovered over him wanting to check his head for any bumps fearing you had missed something.

He grasped the your hand before it could make contact with the back of his head. “Not that I am aware of but I want you to call me Daemon” he kissed your hand and heard you take a sharp intake of breath. “None of that my lord nonsense either.” He added before letting go of your hand. Again the heat rushed to your cheeks and he smiled pleased with himself. “If that is what you want Daemon.” His names rolled of your tongue like sweet honey and he found a smile of his own tugging at his lips. “And what do I call you little healer?” You starred at your hand which was still in his and he made use of that opportunity to pull you on the bed he was laying on. Your eyes met his before you answered aware of the connection between the two of you. “Y/N” no last name but he would get your story from you another time. At this point he was barely keeping his eyes open. “Well little witch of mine it seemed a proper thank you for saving my life is in order.” He tugged you even closer to him. Surprised by the movement your free hand moved to his chest stabilizing yourself.

He moved forwards and captured your lips in a soft kiss. A pre taste for what was to come. He softly bit your lower lip before drawing backwards. Your body moved instinctively forwards when the contact between two if you broke and he smiled at the sight of that. Oh yes you were going to be fun. Woken up from the trance like state his kiss has brought you in you glanced at the tent opening before making your way of the bed. The place where your hand has rested suddenly felt cold. With cheeks still flushed you made your way to the opening. “Sleep now Daemon I will let lord Corlys Velaryon know you are awake.”  He tiredly blinked before nodding. You turned around to go find Lord Corlys but his voice interrupted once more. “Promise you will be back when I wake up little one?” You once more turned around to the sleepily prince who now had his eyes closed. “I will be there when you wake up.” She promised him. Even with his eyes closed he smiled once more at her. You were quickly becoming his new little obsession.

___

Part two!

[ourlittleforever]

idea: draw your self ship as the Steven Uni.verse meme

[autistichalsin]

My chapter-by chapter analysis of The Hunger Games, chapter 1

Disclaimer: this and all future chapter analyses will contain spoilers for all the books.

What really strikes me about this chapter is what a masterpiece it is; a masterpiece of foreshadowing, establishing moments of characterization, worldbuilding and more, all without ever feeling like we're actually getting infodumped on. This is accomplished with Katniss's stream-of-consciousness storytelling. I've heard it criticized so much, but even aside from the very salient point that it fits her characterization as an emotionally stunted, traumatized, poorly-educated teenage girl, it still helps the story in moments like this. We feel Katniss's inner chaos, and it makes the story that much more immersive.

On to the spoilery part of the analysis:

When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress.

There was a post, a while ago, that I can't find but wish I could. In it, the OP talks about how Prim is literally doomed by the narrative, not "heavily foreshadowed death," but literally doomed by the narrative, and this paragraph is the first sign, because Katniss reaches for Prim and feels emptiness instead. And re-reading this, I agree. The first thing we see Katniss do is reach for Prim, and find nothing. This time, it's temporary, but by the end of the series, it won't be. We've been warned, even if we don't realize it yet: Prim is doomed.

Scrawny kitten, belly swollen with worms, crawling with fleas. The last thing I needed was another mouth to feed. But Prim begged so hard, cried even, I had to let him stay. It turned out okay. My mother got rid of the vermin and he’s a born mouser. Even catches the occasional rat. Sometimes, when I clean a kill, I feed Buttercup the entrails. He has stopped hissing at me.

Katniss loves her sister and will do literally anything for her. Katniss also has no moral qualms about drowning kittens. With just one paragraph, we learn what a simultaneously harshly practical yet beautifully caring, loving person Katniss is. She has no room in her life for useless things like pets, and drowning strays probably helps the people of 12 in the long run by leaving vermin to be eaten by those on the verge of starvation. But her sister wants to keep Buttercup, and so she will. Katniss will sacrifice anything to keep Prim happy.

Foreshadowing. Prim is doomed.

Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love.

STILL more foreshadowing, for different themes: both for one of Katniss's biggest complexes (I'll get into details about this later) and for the theme of love. Katniss doesn't truly love anyone but Prim. Her entire world, we know, is going to be shaken when she does finally feel that for someone else again. Once again, we are being introduced to the recurring themes of love vs practicality and the classic question, "how much pain is love worth?"

Katniss is going to answer this question again and again: for Prim, there is no amount of suffering too great. For others... she'll find different answers. Eventually.

My father knew and he taught me some before he was blown to bits in a mine explosion. There was nothing even to bury. I was eleven then. Five years later, I still wake up screaming for him to run.

The first hints of Katniss as a deeply traumatized girl emerge. Sometimes, when you're traumatized enough, thoughts can segue into The Event with no warning, just by proximity. And through the combination of blunted language and stream-of-consciousness leaps, we can see just how broken this has left Katniss. Unfortunately, this is only the start of Events for her.

My father could have made good money selling them, but if the officials found out he would have been publicly executed for inciting a rebellion. Most of the Peacekeepers turn a blind eye to the few of us who hunt because they’re as hungry for fresh meat as anybody is. In fact, they’re among our best customers.

A brilliant bit of worldbuilding. The Peacekeepers are working off of deeply corrupt laws, which they ignore because they too are being mistreated and systematically starved, even if they aren't as at risk as the people of 12. The system doesn't care about the very same people it safeguards to enforce its rules. This is the first hint we get that the system isn't sustainable, and it comes before we even fully understand what kind of hell this government is.

The theme of "bread and circuses" is going to be hammered down to us again and again that this is how tyrannical governments, including this one, pacify the masses. But when only the bourgeoisie are being given the bread and circuses, well.... the proletariat aren't going to take it forever.

The book hasn't shown itself to be the anti-capitalist masterpiece it is yet, but this is the first hint that we're reading a tale of class warfare.

“District Twelve. Where you can starve to death in safety,” I mutter. Then I glance quickly over my shoulder. Even here, even in the middle of nowhere, you worry someone might overhear you.

I have seen criticisms that this is an egregious case of showing and not telling, with Katniss constantly talking about the dangers of badmouthing the government while never facing them. But in truth, it's the opposite. Yes, Katniss hasn't been caught despite repeated statements that she could have, but we'll learn, here and in future chapters, that 12 has been receiving a sort of tradeoff with other districts; their more severe poverty places them below notice. No one thinks them capable of causing real trouble, and even their district specialty- coal- is later proven to be basically useless, busy-work. So they get ignored... for now. Until the oligarchs start seeing what the proletariat can actually do and crack down all the harder to ensure they keep their cheap labor.

Are you seeing the resonance with the real world yet?

Even at home, where I am less pleasant, I avoid discussing tricky topics. Like the reaping, or food shortages, or the Hunger Games. Prim might begin to repeat my words and then where would we be?

Here we see the dual themes of parentification and sacrifice. Katniss will be the adult, even though she ISN'T an adult, for her sister. She will keep quiet on things that hurt her, and upset her, to set a better example for her sister and keep her from getting hurt. Prim gets to have the normal and safe childhood Katniss never had, because Katniss has invested everything into ensuring she does.

We are taking a step up the ladder of self-sacrificial acts, here. In other words: more foreshadowing. Katniss will give everything for Prim. Prim is going to die, because Katniss is going to lose everything she cared about in the process of protecting everything she cared about.

In the woods waits the only person with whom I can be myself.

Katniss can't be a teenage girl. She has to be Prim's mom. She has to be tough. She has to be a provider. She has to be a trader. An advocate. She so rarely complains about it, too. But it shows here just how much she's given up. Only one place, and one person she can be herself with, and yet...

Gale.

Isn't this ironic. Because we are about to see, throughout the entire series, that this day is going to be the last time Gale actually lets Katniss be herself (and even here, there are strong hints that Gale wants Katniss to be something very different).*

*Disclaimer, because it seems important: my opinion on the Katniss/Gale vs Katniss/Peeta ship war is "team nobody." I think both of them were very bad for her in different ways. Any comment I make that seems like it is favoring one ship or the other... isn't.

“Hey, Catnip,” says Gale. My real name is Katniss, but when I first told him, I had barely whispered it. So he thought I’d said Catnip. Then when this crazy lynx started following me around the woods looking for handouts, it became his official nickname for me.

Maybe I'm overanalyzing, but I feel like this sums up the Katniss/Gale relationship so much. Katniss tries to speak, and Gale doesn't hear or understand her. Gale projects something onto her, and Katniss rolls with it. Sure, in this case it's a cute nickname, but it represents so much more to me.

Gale doesn't understand Katniss. Fundamentally. He understands the Katniss he wants to exist. The one who will run off with him and play house in the woods and indulge his little fantasies. He doesn't know very much about the real Katniss, at least as long as he's looking at her through a romantic lens.

“Look what I shot.” Gale holds up a loaf of bread with an arrow stuck in it, and I laugh.

Despite what I just said, I do love Gale and Katniss's friendship, and it breaks my heart that their friendship was as doomed as Prim. (Hint. Hint.) Katniss needed someone who understood the unique pain of parentification due not to abuse, but poverty- the kind where you aren't 'allowed' to feel angry at anyone within reach. Which is the worst kind of injustice. Getting mad at someone who harmed you is one thing, but getting mad at a system you can never (... yet) hope to change is different.

She must have really loved him to leave her home for the Seam.

It's said in a casual and sort of admiring way here. But Katniss is going to learn firsthand about the intersection between love and sacrifice. With the generational mirroring as a theme, especially between Katniss and Peeta, we're being given more foreshadowing that Katniss has self-sacrifice "in the blood."

I try to remember that when all I can see is the woman who sat by, blank and unreachable, while her children turned to skin and bones. I try to forgive her for my father’s sake. But to be honest, I’m not the forgiving type.

Another little glimpse into Katniss's pain and trauma. Her mom wasn't there when Katniss needed her most, and Katniss and Prim both almost died as a result. It wasn't her fault, and we see later that she regrets it deeply, but this still leaves scars. Your parents, above everyone else, are supposed to protect you. Katniss's mom didn't, Katniss nearly died, and because of that, Katniss had to sacrifice what remained of her childhood to become Prim's mom.

Katniss and Prim's relationship never goes back to just normal sisterhood after this. From the moment Mrs. Everdeen's trauma rendered her catatonic onwards, Katniss and Prim's relationship was infused with a mother-child dynamic that never left, not even when Mrs. Everdeen became well again.

It's so painful, all the more so because it's so real. I lived this with my little brother, albeit with stakes maybe 1% this high, when my mom became an alcoholic and my dad was too busy just trying to survive to really do anything. I was the one to take care of him emotionally, to show someone cared, to provoke my mom's anger so he wouldn't be hit, to make sure homework got done and he didn't skip school (I failed. Badly.) He still considers me more his parent than either of our parents. It never really goes away, even when you're both adults; that overdeveloped feeling of responsibility stays with you. Always.

And the worst part of it is when the parent who made you have to do this decides, on their own, that the time is right for them to come back. Katniss's mom is far more gracious about it than my own. She at least understood Katniss's pain, and didn't try to force the role on her; it happened only when Katniss was ready. But that too, as we'll see in a minute, was painfully real for me.

“I never want to have kids,” I say. “I might. If I didn’t live here,” says Gale. “But you do,” I say, irritated. “Forget it,” he snaps back. The conversation feels all wrong.

Once again, a hint that despite their sweet friendship and similarities, these are two tragically, fundamentally incompatible people. Katniss is in too much pain to think of ever having a family, and Gale is in too much pain to think of not ever having one. Katniss wants to survive the way she always has (which she doesn't realize isn't her destiny yet) and Gale wants to flee and survive literally any other way.

Both change in the end, but the underlying incompatibilities in their life approaches are still there.

And even if we did . . . even if we did . . . where did this stuff about having kids come from? There’s never been anything romantic between Gale and me. [...] Besides, if he wants kids, Gale won’t have any trouble finding a wife. He’s good-looking, he’s strong enough to handle the work in the mines, and he can hunt. You can tell by the way the girls whisper about him when he walks by in school that they want him. It makes me jealous but not for the reason people would think. Good hunting partners are hard to find.

A few very interesting things are happening here. One, we're getting another hint, first dropped during Katniss's thoughts about Buttercup, that Katniss has a pathological inability to believe others actually like her- romantically or otherwise. Part of it is low self-esteem, part of it is putting Prim on such a pedestal that Katniss feels she can never live up (and giving her more self-esteem issues) and feeling like anything she attributes to herself might take away from Prim, and part of it is just raw cynicism. And maybe a dash or two of the feeling of permanent othering trauma gives you. Especially when that trauma involves a realization that you're never going to be able to rely on others to meet your own needs. You're responsible for your needs and your loved ones' too.

(Katniss is one of the most complex and real characters of all time. I relate to Katniss an uncomfortable amount sometimes.)

The other interesting thing is that you're getting a sense, for the first time, of how much trouble Katniss has recognizing and processing her own emotions- a very common trait in neurodivergent people. She can sort-of-understand a feeling of jealousy, but can't quite put her finger on the reason, and fitting with her attitude of relentless practicality, she decides that it's the worry of losing a useful hunting partner. Because, after all, Prim is the only person she loves, she can't care for anyone else, there isn't room for that. To care about anyone else would be to "take away" something from Prim.

Katniss repeatedly raises the question of when self-sacrifice crosses the line into self-harm by proxy. When altruistic love becomes self-negation instead. It's sweet that she loves Prim so much, but the codependence... If this is the benchmark for love for Katniss, it's no wonder that she feels at this point that she can't feel it for anyone else. This isn't sustainable.

(Prim is doomed. We've been warned.)

I found the patch a few years ago, but Gale had the idea to string mesh nets around it to keep out the animals.

This is going to be a recurring theme; Katniss is too impulsive and lacking a sufficient cause-effect pathway to be a planner/strategist. Gale makes the plans now; later it'll be Peeta and Haymitch.

(Also, this is foreshadowing Katniss's lack of agency. She is about to become an audience member in her own life story. She found the strawberries, but she didn't decide what to do about them. Gale did. That's about to become her entire life.)

No one in the Seam would turn up their nose at a good leg of wild dog, but the Peacekeepers who come to the Hob can afford to be a little choosier.

There is a hierarchy still, where the Peacekeepers are starving, but not as starving as the people in the communities they're sent to. Everyone is hungry, but some are hungrier than others.

Hint. Hint.

“That’s not her fault,” I say. “No, it’s no one’s fault. Just the way it is,” says Gale.

"Remember who the real enemy is." Katniss gets told this repeatedly, by Haymitch and others, and eventually she learns the lesson in time to lead a successful revoltuion.

Gale does not learn this lesson. He will end up destroying everything he cares about in his pursuit of revenge against the Capitol and anyone associated with it.

Gale would normally say that there is a huge difference between Madge, the mayor's daughter who is pampered and comparatively privileged, versus the willfully malicious Peacekeepers; the middle class are still part of the proletariat, after all. But Gale, in his pain and fear, loses sight of it and lashes out. This time, it's just words. By the end of the series, when he gets actual power, it will lead to something far more catastrophic.

Prim is doomed to die, Gale and Katniss's friendship is doomed to end in the most bitter way possible, and Gale is doomed to be his own worst enemy.

Gale knows his anger at Madge is misdirected. On other days, deep in the woods, I’ve listened to him rant about how the tesserae are just another tool to cause misery in our district. A way to plant hatred between the starving workers of the Seam and those who can generally count on supper and thereby ensure we will never trust one another. “It’s to the Capitol’s advantage to have us divided among ourselves,” he might say if there were no ears to hear but mine. If it wasn’t reaping day. If a girl with a gold pin and no tesserae had not made what I’m sure she thought was a harmless comment.

Gale knows he's wrong to say things like that. But again, as said above, his pain and fear get the better of him, and cause pain to those around him. His normal philosophy is correct, but he loses sight of and discards it far too easily.

(Gale is going to lose everything because of his scorched-earth approach to anger.)

Also, a note: this is how the real world operates too. Culture wars to distract from class war. For an entire generation of readers, this was their introduction to the basic principles of socialism.

But what good is yelling about the Capitol in the middle of the woods? It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t make things fair. It doesn’t fill our stomachs. In fact, it scares off the nearby game. I let him yell though. Better he does it in the woods than in the district.

Katniss is still hung up on practicality. When she rants about the Capitol, she is, subconsciously, crying for help. But venting for the sake of venting doesn't make so much sense to her, given her stunted emotions.

Another bit of characterization I really enjoy here is the realistic teenage behavior. Yes, they're the oldest in their families, responsible for their entire family and only able to support them by hunting, and they should "know better". But they're teenagers in a fascist government, with an already extreme list of traumas and corresponding problems with emotions. Of course they're going to act irrationally at times and scare off game because they're having a meltdown- even non-traumatized teens would do that sometimes!

They're teenagers. Incredibly well-written, realistic teenagers. They don't have fully developed frontal lobes with the corresponding gifts of planning, impulse control, cause-effect relationships, and other things yet. They're more mature than most, but they're still going to behave foolishly sometimes.

Prim is in my first reaping outfit, a skirt and ruffled blouse. It’s a bit big on her, but my mother has made it stay with pins.

This is probably a "the curtains are blue because they're blue!" moment, but this is another bit of symbolism I enjoy. Katniss, at Prim's age, was hunting and entering the Hob. Prim is being kept alive by both Katniss and Mrs. Everdeen. She has a dress that mostly fits. She has good meals now. She is protected where Katniss wasn't. The dress represents both the sacrifices Katniss made for her and the fact that now, Prim has the adoring mother Katniss didn't have. She has two loving people looking out for her, willing to do anything to keep her safe, healthy, and happy.

(Prim is doomed.)

To my surprise, my mother has laid out one of her own lovely dresses for me. A soft blue thing with matching shoes. “Are you sure?” I ask.

Katniss can't comprehend her mom doing motherly things for her. Both because of the parentification, and because Katniss still fundamentally can't believe that anyone, even her own mother, actually cares for her enough to want to do anything for her. Not after four years of Katniss carrying the entire family on her back. It's incompatible with the world she's lived in for the last four years.

Katniss is painfully relatable.

I’m trying to get past rejecting offers of help from her. For a while, I was so angry, I wouldn’t allow her to do anything for me.

Painfully. Relatable.

What Katniss is feeling in this scene, I don't think I can describe to anyone who hasn't been there. It's relief-bitterness-anger-hope-longing-mistrust.

"Oh great, look who's finally here to help now that things are okay again and I figured everything out on my own! I want you back. I want a parent back. I don't want to do this anymore. I can't stop it. I can't trust you not to make me do it again. I'd better keep doing it so I don't get my hopes up. How do I even live without doing this? How do I live as a person and not a caretaking robot for my family? Am I allowed to do that? What kind of selfish person would I be if I did, especially now that I've seen what will happen if you fail again? No, I'm not letting you do this. I'll let you pretend to the little one because they need a parent figure and they deserve to feel normal, but me? Hell no, do you think I'm stupid? I am taking care of myself, I already learned what it costs to trust other people to see to my needs and that is not a price I'll pay a second time, thankyouverymuch. Yeah, mom I love you. I'm glad you're okay now. And thanks for doing this for me, I guess."

It goes something like that.

But I digress.

In just this paragraph Katniss expresses so much of the pain of parentification, so succinctly yet vividly that it makes my chest hurt.

I just really, really love Katniss, okay?

“You look beautiful,” says Prim in a hushed voice. “And nothing like myself,” I say.

Ow. Just... ow. She says it so matter-of-factly. Like she's just accepted it into her worldview; Prim, the embodiment of everything good in the world, is beautiful. Katniss, the leftover, the thing that exists just to take care of Prim, is ugly. That simple.

I wish we could have seen Prim respond here; surely she doesn't like anyone, even her sister herself, talking about Katniss this way? Or maybe Prim is so used to these kinds of casual self-put-downs that she's stopped trying to talk Katniss out of it.

Again: painfully relatable.

I protect Prim in every way I can, but I’m powerless against the reaping. The anguish I always feel when she’s in pain wells up in my chest and threatens to register on my face.

Once more: Painfully. Relatable. You put so much into protecting 'your kiddo'. And then something comes along and reminds you that you're even more powerless than the useless adults in your life. It hurts. It feels like you failed. It's one thing for you to get hurt, you already know how to deal with it, but them?

Ugh. Dystopian fiction isn't usually where my inner abused and parentified child gets validated, but this series unlocked some things in my neural pathways.

Thank you, Suzanne Collins, for Katniss. I feel so seen in so many ways through her and her story.

Sorry. I know this is supposed to be an analysis, not a love letter, but damn if Katniss doesn't play my heartstrings like a fiddle.

“Tuck your tail in, little duck,” I say, smoothing the blouse back in place. Prim giggles and gives me a small “Quack.” “Quack yourself,” I say with a light laugh. The kind only Prim can draw out of me.

Sorry, I am going to try to not repeat myself so much, but once again it just... Prim gets to be a child, because of Katniss. She gets to be a normal-ish 12 year old who makes silly animal noises and can't tuck her dress in. Katniss was fighting for her life and trying to find food. And of course it's not Prim's fault- I love Prim. But there's something just so painful about this contrast. Katniss had her childhood stolen from her, first by the tyrannical government she lived in, then her father's death, then her mother's mental illness, and finally the needs of a child she never should have been responsible for.

It's no wonder Katniss spends so much of the series in that emotional state abused, neglected, and traumatized children know all too well. You're simultaneously precocious and childish. Too grown-up one minute and acting like a child the next. Katniss never got to experience linear growth, and her psychology sure as hell shows it.

Painfully. Relatable.

Also, yet again: Prim. Is. Doomed. She's the most important thing in Katniss's life, the rationale for every decision Katniss makes, the reason she gets out of bed in the morning. The one person who makes Katniss's life worth living. Precious, sweet Prim, who retains her innocence and kindness in a world that aggressively stomps out both, is doomed by the narrative in every possible way.

Anyway, Gale and I agree that if we have to choose between dying of hunger and a bullet in the head, the bullet would be much quicker. The space gets tighter, more claustrophobic as people arrive. [...] I stare at the paper slips in the girls’ ball. Twenty of them have Katniss Everdeen written on them in careful handwriting.

When you're a child, you can't comprehend something awful happening to your parents, because your life experience just hasn't shaped yet to show you that it's even possible. You don't understand that it can happen.

When you're an adult, you can't comprehend something awful happening to your child, because your life experience has shaped to show you exactly how it's possible. You know exactly how it can happen, so you can't believe that it can actually happen.

Katniss is at a stage of her life that would already be transitional in normal circumstances, where she'd start contemplating mortality- but she's already dealt with it for years.

Her own death doesn't scare her anymore. Her sister's scares her so much that she doesn't even think it's a possibility. After all, everything she's done for the last four years of her life has been for Prim. To keep her alive and give her the childhood Katniss lost suddenly and traumatically.

Prim is doomed.

Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch — this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy.

We got hints of apathy and cruelty before, but now the curtain is, for the first time, being peeled back. This isn't a system built on simple oppression. It's a system built on raw sadism.

It's another sign that Panem isn't sustainable. People can endure a lot of cruelty when their loved ones are hostages, but there are limits. When those limits get pushed (hint), something will have to give.

To make it humiliating as well as torturous, the Capitol requires us to treat the Hunger Games as a festivity, a sporting event pitting every district against the others.

Bread and circuses. The poor give labor (food) and entertainment, and the rich receive them. The rich live sequestered lives full of privilege, yet ultimately just as much under the thumb as the tyrant as anyone else. But still supporting the system because they lack the empathy to want change when they benefit from the status quo more than they would from a new system, so they think. They are simultaneously disgusting and pitiful.

Like the comfortably wealthy Trump-supporting boomers we all know and loathe.

The last tribute alive receives a life of ease back home, and their district will be showered with prizes, largely consisting of food.

Our very first, incredibly subtle hint, that winning the games might be even worse than losing them. The first time reading, of course, you'll take this at face value. Later, though, you'll think of this and realize it was all only mockery and isolationism, a way of guaranteeing that the victors would be scapegoated by their District, ensuring they would never find companionship again even if their trauma didn't prevent it. And they can't complain, because, after all, they now have a life of comfort.

So many things are intersecting here; class warfare (Victors being an allegory for "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" and the American Dream) and the isolation of trauma and mental illness and more.

But suddenly I am thinking of Gale and his forty-two names in that big glass ball and how the odds are not in his favor. Not compared to a lot of the boys. And maybe he’s thinking the same thing about me because his face darkens and he turns away. “But there are still thousands of slips,” I wish I could whisper to him.

Katniss so rarely worries about herself, only those she cares for. Again; her own mortality is okay to her. It's those she protects she can't let this happen to. But since she can't even bear to face the possibility of Prim being chosen (Prim is doomed) yet, she focuses her feelings on Gale, not only worrying that he'll be picked, but worrying that he will be upset that she might be. She only spares thoughts for herself for a few brief seconds, in the next paragraph.

Katniss gets accused of being selfish so many times, but it's notable that those moments only happen once she volunteers to go into the arena, once her survival depends on a bit of selfishness. Before then, she's one of the least selfish people in the entire series, and I'd argue that even at her worst she doesn't count as truly selfish. She's a teenager trying to survive and return home to her family, not a toddler who won't share toys.

I’m feeling nauseous and so desperately hoping that it’s not me, that it’s not me, that it’s not me.

But, of course, even when you are theoretically okay with dying, being faced with the actual thing will still inspire terror. So for just a moment, Katniss lets herself lapse into worry about herself.

For just a moment, she thinks about herself- and just that fast, Prim is placed in danger.

(This is how Prim will die too, by the way; being put in danger the one time Katniss is focused on something other than her. Prim is doomed.)

Effie Trinket crosses back to the podium, smoothes the slip of paper, and reads out the name in a clear voice. And it’s not me. It’s Primrose Everdeen.

The unthinkable has happened, and Katniss's life has been changed forever.

And even though she can save Prim this time, it's only temporary.

Prim is doomed. Nothing in the world can prevent it now. Prim would die in the arena, but by going instead, Katniss has put herself in a position where any and all actions she does will spark a revolution that gives her a Pyrrhic victory.

There is no version of events where Prim lives.

Prim is doomed.

[aconflagrationofmyown]

Even Educated Fleas Do It

A Sarge & lil Mama episode (wedding night)

Warnings 18+ -smut! breeding kink, innocence kink, cream pies, unfortunately historically accurate portrayal of female naïveté regarding sexual acts, male entitlement to female bodies, copious dirty talk, virginity loss. This is mostly fluffy and tender and sweet with a few VERY rabid moments and feral sentences. 20k of smut and it’s surrounding auras…I have a headcanon that Baby Elvis resorts to being a bit of an ass in order to maintain his slipping control, whereas a more mature era of the man he only chooses to be a bastard out of the fun of it

Credits: my supreme thanks to the indefatigable @prompted-wordsmith for editing this mammoth and her few choice additions of sentences, and also to my discord wives: Christi, Ally and Birdy who cheered me on and really made this happen with their feedback, suggestions and enthusiasm. Lastly, to all my darling readers who’s hype for this has carried me through and now we are all saddled with this monstrosity. Y’all are the best, I live off your comments and love. Xoxo, Marina 🌹

Elaine’s fingers glide admiringly against richly black, quartz marble countertops, glinting back at her almost as brightly as the gold mirror and the gold faucets and gold tub–everything is golden up here in the master bathroom. Even the sink is gold plated, she realizes with a giggle, and stares at her reflection in the basin, flushed face and curls hanging about her features as she looks downward, distracted by the opulence and the shininess and the ability to finally breathe. An endeavor which would be aided if she obeyed her new husband—heavens to Betsy, she has a husband!—and took off her wedding gown and girdle.

She chose a simple dress to be married in, long and slender, the style and measurements entrusted to the Smith cousins and delivered by them with remarkable effect. Demure yet elegant, she felt it was a nod to the silhouette of the future, prom crinolines and ball gowns abandoned for a more streamlined effect that set off her waist to perfection, or so her wedding guests told her. And for tonight’s purposes, it had a handy zipper down the back of it that she now tugged loose to her immense relief.

It was a little puzzling, the way Elvis had torn her away from Dodger’s admonishments and hurried her upstairs to sleep, only to then shoo her into the bathroom to undress herself. Some silly part of her thought he might kiss her when they arrived up there alone, maybe dance a little, maybe help with the zipper. But he had looked very feverish and a little scared when he told her she was looking worn out, and then ushered her upstairs as the whole house party fell dead silent below them in their wake. Funny, the whole thing had felt a little funny, and they’d been having such a nice little party after the vows, daddy had been a little weepy and Elvis had looked so handsome and she had to pinch herself a dozen times that this event she’d planned was her wedding.

Her wedding—it didn’t feel real. Not without mama here, she realized, that was the missing part to it all. Mama. Hers, and his. They were both missing them. She worked at the brassiere clasps and stifled the little cry she felt coming up her throat, memories flooding in of the first time she saw Graceland.

Elvis had tore down to the studio in his fancy car, begging any and everyone to see the place he bought for his family. Father had been too busy with Cash but mama was not. So, she and Elaine had piled into his pink Cadillac and let that happy puppy of a boy whisk them away to a world of antebellum dreaminess for the afternoon. Gold, there had been so much gold even then, and Mama had ribbed the boy mercilessly about his decor choices as only Mrs. Phipps could get away with,

“Elvis dear, it looks like a tart’s bedroom up here,” she had teased him in the master where Elaine’s groom was now waiting for her daughter to make an appearance.

He had turned bright red before dissolving into hiccuping laughs that her mama had joined. He hasn’t changed the decor, gaudy chandelier hanging above a gold damask bedspread, gilt mirrors everywhere on the walls with black padded headboards and doors. It was… unique, and a little ominous if she was being honest, although maybe that had been her nerves over him rushing her up here so fast, so…urgently.

“June’s gonna love it, E!” Elaine recalls gushing to him on that first house tour, entirely unsure if June would indeed love it, but certain that anyone would be honored to be mistress of such a place, though that honor had then been firmly Miss Gladys’s right at the time.

Now it’s all hers.

Elaine swallows hard and rubs at the angry red lines on her belly and breasts that show in the mirror from her girdle, thinking of the weight of that. Thinking of how she had been wrong. This—kingdom—wasn’t for June, this had been for her.

Elaine pulls on the silky, shimmery slip he had given her the money to treat herself to, watching it as it spills over her curves and drapes her kindly. The soft baby blue color makes her skin look tan even in the wintertime and her eyes shimmer dark and smokey in the dimmed vanity lights. It takes her aback a little, the prettiness of the picture she sees in the mirror, hair freshly loosened from its pins and looking like it does when he’s had his hands in it. The kiss-nipped red of her lips is no cosmetic allusion, he’d devoured her lipstick right off a few minutes into married life, clutching her to him in the foyer, acting like hiding by the front door made them discreet.

She touches their puffy vibrancy with a small smile, thinking of him, thinking of being loved. Thinking of mansions and gold sinks and graves dug, thinking of the boy outside the door who did far more than fall in love with her. He provided, and he did it with intent. A great deal of intent. Her heart does a flip at that.

It gives her the bravery to fluff herself in the slip and ignore the nervous tremble threatening to keep her holed up in here, her skimpy attire making her blush for reasons she doesn’t know. Such silliness. She looks pretty, and she is loved. She sets her shoulders back and turns the knob.

Elvis has been pacing a furrow in the plush carpet of his bedroom and berating himself for many things, chiefly having shooed his wife away into the bathroom the first private moment they’d had together.

He is an idiot, he concludes, a prize idiot.

He should have trapped her against the door and kissed the daylights outta her, maybe laid her out all romantically on the bed and caressed her like the movies taught her to expect. At least helped undo the damn zipper. But no, no he panicked, and trying to be a good man, he had sent her into the bathroom alone to strip while he talked his heart and cock into some semblance of restraint. He tears at his hair and tosses his suit jacket on the chair and tries to think of what he’s gonna do, how he’s gonna manage this. He had come across Dodger and Elaine in a tête-à-tête and heard the words from his Grandma:

“Make sure that boy licks ya nice and good ‘fore he tries to stick his pecker in—”

and had proceeded to panic and grab his new bride and hustle her upstairs for “sleep”. He’d caught Mr. Phipps’s pleading eyes on the way up and now he felt like a first team all American pervert. Gone was the sweet, comforting weight of the wedding vows, the religious aura the day had carried with it. Replacing that was a deep seated shame for how often he’d wanked to the thought of this night and all it entails.

In his dreams it had been fun to shock the girl by bending her over and putting it in, watching her eyes go wide and her struggle under him to adjust, but that was before he loved Elaine, he thinks. Now he tears at his hair, paces his bedroom eyeing the bathroom door like it’ll open and release a lion, and wonders how he’s gonna cherish her like he should, when his wants and his adoration keep vying for the upper hand. She boils his blood, shoots lightening up his spine and keeps him stiff at all times, and simultaneously, he is warm pudding when she smiles, and bluer than robin’s eggs when she’s sad.

The weight of getting all he ever wanted, the weight of actually having married himself off, the weight of mama’s hope coming true and her buried right under the window—he feels a little unhinged by it all, and he starts mumbling out incoherent prayers for guidance and self control and a capacity to not fuck up Elaine Presley’s first time. Because that’s just it: she’s Elaine Presley now, and he has a duty to the woman he married ‘afore God to make it good, t-to…

The bathroom door opens and the shimmering vision of Elaine and her feminine assets clad in nothing but a silk slip stops him dead in his tracks, his mouth liable to catch flies it gapes so at her beauty. She looks poised even jiggling and nipple perked in a light drape of silk, and he inwardly curses when her initial confidence seems to flag upon noticing the state he’s in.

Fully dressed with just his suit jacket discarded and here she is near naked—it’s not kind, he knows that, and curses again at his self absorption.

He looks like he’s gone a little mad, she thinks, and she can tell he’s been tearing at his hair in that fidgety way of his when he’s working himself up to a frenzy. It won’t do him good, she knows him, knows he’ll start hyperventilating and that always panics him.

It’s this urge to calm him that has her forgetting her bashfulness and crossing the floor to embrace him, his warm and clothed body pressed against hers in a hug he returns fervently.

“Ya look like an angel,” he rasps his praise in her ear and she is so pleased by that, and by the look of awed admiration on his face that makes her forget to blush, too pleased to be coy.

“Do ya have a new bird, Elvis?” she asks him, trying to distract him from whatever it is that has him so anxious she can near feel him vibrating against her.

“Uh, umm, a bird?” he is truly thrown by that and more than a little distracted by the feel of slippery silk curves molding to him in his arms.

“Dodger was saying—”

Dodger was talking about “peckers” he recalls, and is fast to cut her off in a great rush,

“No, no uh, I haven’t got no bird—sides you,” he jokes weakly and fails to add more, just staring down at Elaine in his arms, Elaine who stares back, her expression curious and amused and maybe a tad unsure.

Of course she’s unsure, you fool, he berates himself after finding his way back to steady thought. God, he should… do something.

“Elvis,” she pipes up and her voice is small but hopeful, “can I help you get comfortable?” and she thumbs at the ruffles of his dress shirt.

He feels his flush paint his neck and his body feels like it’s alight, but it’s perfectly reasonable for her to ask. It’s just that he knows her sweet confidence stems from her not even knowing enough to be bashful, and that’s… heady.

“Yeah,” he croaks and squeezes her to him once more before letting her set work to undoing the ruffled shirt he wore, sans tie.

She’s methodical and steady undoing the shirt, even as she flicks those lined eyes up at him, desperate for his assuring little nods and pleased smiles. He takes to stroking her cheek, running his knuckles across the high bones there and over her bitten lips, she kisses them with each pass.

Last button undone she spreads the fabric apart and places her hands on his chest, a wild delight showing on her face as she runs her hands across his pecs and collar bones, down to his belly, swooping up and down his arms, taking the shirt with it.

It falls to the ground and yet her hands continue to glide across his fevered skin entranced by the warmth and the contours. She’s wanted to feel his heartbeat for a long while now. Watching that tattle tale vein in his neck thump was the closest thing she could content herself with all these months. Her hands drift to his neck and sure enough, it’s thumping like a race horse at a gallop.

She excites him. That thought makes her eyes flick down to his trousers, recalling that strange spurt against her backside on the swing. He’d called that excitement, too.

She moves to open the button of his slacks and his belly sucks in with the breath he holds, she can feel it against her knuckles as she undoes it. She rubs her knuckles soothingly against the fine trail of hair disappearing into his waistband, it makes him shudder instead.

So far, everything on display she has seen before at the pool with him, but more, the prospect of more makes her heart speed up and her curious mind whirl. She’s a little preoccupied with all this as she starts to push the pants over his hips and while he doesn’t prevent her, his motion is a bit jerky when he clasps his hands around her jaw and tilts her eyes away from his hips and the curious bulge there, up to his face.

She hears his belt and the fabric thud to the floor just as his lips descend to meet hers, and then she grows distracted by the kiss he melts her with.

“Hey you,” he whispers hot and breathy against her lips, pillowy plushness rubbing together, kiss-slick and scorching.

And he’s right, it feels like finally seeing each other for the first time today. They’ve a decent rapport together when surrounded by friends and acquaintances, a very seamless dance of social politeness and steadying closeness. But nothing compares to the way they sizzle and melt when it’s just the two of them, like their inner selves are finally allowed to make a showing on their faces in the form of dazed smiles and in the slump of their shoulders, the bellies no longer held in nor the sighs longing to spill out.

“Oh, Elvis,” she manages to gasp, grinning and huffing at the proximity, the way her nipples rub against his chest from the crush of his embrace, just a silken layer between them, and it sends electric static down to her very toes.

“Ya happy?” he dares to ask because she is grinning so silly and sweet right there in his arms.

“Terribly happy!” she doesn’t bother with aloofness, her hands kneading his shoulders and he breathes again, recalling that this is Elaine, sweet Elaine who has gentled him back into the land of the living these last few weeks by simply knowing and caring for him, and while it’s a terrifying responsibility to do right by her—it’s also the best thing to ever happen to him. Elaine, here, in his arms, in his room, as his wife.

“Just ya wait till I get some champagne in ya,” he teases, waggling her chin in his hand and she looks surprised and a little excited by that.

“Elvis I-I’m too young,” she whispers, a guilty and hopeful little thing that suggests she is very amenable to champagne.

“You naughty lil thing, I see that hopeful glimmer in’ya eye,” he clicks his tongue and she giggles, “It’s lawful if your husband pours it for ya.”

“Is that so?” she bites her lip and her eyes twinkle up at him, falling easily into the banter, “Then I’d like to try it—since it’s lawful and all.”

“Mhmm, champagne, an’ a record, that’ll set us up jus’ right, I think.” He’s nearly buzzing himself, feels a little drunk even though there’s not a drop of alcohol in him.

“Don’t want ya to have to go down to the kitchen and leave me, though,” she admits, a little shy. His gut clenches at the confession, the way her lashes dip and fan over her cheekbones. He’d get beat by his mama if’n she knew of the unholy thoughts the pout of her lips made him think. He reels himself back to the present with a persistence that few things in his life made him exercise. For Elaine, his patience was boundless, because she doesn’t wanna be alone, or, rather, she wants to be alone with him. The simple acknowledgement sends his heart racing in hope that he’s managing to do something right, enough that she can’t bear for him to even pop down to the kitchen for a minute.

“Guess what, sugar?” he grins while fluffing her hair away from her face and she perks up, that mouth lifting inquiringly, “I got a refrigerator in the closet.”

“No!”

“Yup.” Elvis’ boyish grin grows until it’s a dazzling, proud smile and he begins to back up, she goes with, still clinging to his arms and giggling in excitement as he backs them into the gargantuan changing room.

“Where?” she cranes her neck this way and that, soon spinning in his arms as she tries to spy a refrigerator amongst the rows and rows of custom suits and well stocked shelving.

He holds up his finger for her attention, and gathering all his showmanship, backs away from her until he reaches the built-in cabinets and with a dramatic flourish flings open the wooden door to reveal his mini Frigader.

“No. Way,” she enunciates dramatically as her pretty mouth hangs open in delight and his own heart clenches and-

-God! Elaine! I can give you so much, he thinks, hang in there with me, I can give so much, I'll make ya fall in love.

He throws her a wink before bending over and retrieving the planted bottle and chilled glasses from inside. The fact he’s bent over double in just his briefs only registering when he’s already got his head half in the refrigerator, and her burning stare threatens to light his ass on fire. He straightens up and spins round to present her with his ribbon adorned findings, noticing her blush scarlet and flick her eyes back to his face.

-My, my, Miss Elaine, what a curious little mind you have.

He kicks the fridge closed and closes the distance between them again, handing her the glasses while taking her other hand in his and leading her back into the dimly lit bedroom. She sets the glasses on the sideboard top and goes to put the needle down on the record after he tells her “Ella’s already on there”, while he smoothes down the profusion of crinkle ribbon around the bottle neck in preparation to open it.

Elaine adjusts the needle and gets the record going and soon Ella Fitzgerald croons warmly:

-Birds do it, bees do it

She turns back around and watches as Elvis begins to gnaw on the champagne cork with his million watt, pearly white money-making teeth.

“What on earth are you doin’?” she protests, hurrying back to him. He’s like a rabbit with the thing, she thinks humorously.

-Even educated fleas do it,

He pulls the spit slicked cork away from his mouth to explain in a loathing huff, “Forgot to bring an opener up here.” And he doesn’t want to leave his baby, goes unsaid, doesn’t wanna leave her since she said she didn’t want him to leave.

-So let’s do it, let’s fall in love

Elaine’s lip wobbles into a fond smirk even as she tries to maintain some sternness, “You’ll break a tooth, E!” she warns even as her heart throbs at the sweetness of it.

“Nah, nah I’ll get it, my baby wanted champagne n’ she’s gonna have it,” he insists as she makes aborted little movements with her hands to try to aid him but is unsure of what to do or hold. “Here, hold the end, I’m gonna try’n pull it out, probably gonna gush so, be ready.”

And so Elaine finds herself in a laughing fit, holding onto the bulbous bottom of a champagne bottle as Elvis Presley himself buries his nose in the thatch of ribbons and gnaws the cork loose, like a dog with a bone, yanking this way and that while growling playfully around it.

“This is the silliest thing—” she wheezes even as his jaw’s yanking motion makes her feet slip closer, her light weight losing ground in this tug-o-war until suddenly there’s a pop and down he goes, flat on his ass, cork in mouth, champagne showering him from above.

He’s curled in on himself at her feet, all long tan limbs contorted and white briefs quickly becoming transparent, crunched in half from the force of his laughter and partly to shield his eyes from the alcohol rain. She watches in a bit of a state, though she’s unsure of what kind, as golden alcohol glistens over that heart, pools in every divot of him and even sparkles tauntingly on inky lashes.

“Quick, quick catch it baby!” he waves at her frantically through his wheezing hiccups, “With your mouth, put it in yer mouth!” he explains and she suddenly snaps her attention away from watching his underwear cling to him and brings the bottle up to her mouth.

She chugs on command, her throat working rhythmically and her eyes wide at the new taste, bubbly spillage glossing up her chin and chest and down her slip, a dark trail that makes his mouth dry out with thoughts of other things. She pulls away with a gasp and a wet pop as he struggles to his knees, cupping himself like that’ll detract from his obvious outline, thanking heaven his jitters seem to have kept him half mast.

“Here, it’s fizzy,” she informs him like that’s news to him before bringing the bottle down to his lips and tipping the champagne into his slack mouth. His hands fly out to rest on her hips, steadying himself as she pours the celebratory drink down his throat. “Cheers!” she giggles as he taps out his max capacity on her hips, his breath fully gone and his cheeks bulging with the fizz.

“Here’s to you, Mrs. Presley,” he gasps after his swallow, smiling up at her stupidly sweet.

Elaine isn’t sure if it’s his breathlessness, those fathomless blue eyes looking up at her adoringly or the way he’s proving he’d do anything to please her, but she’s suddenly filled with a burning compulsion to eat him up. And she acts on it, bending down to slot their mouths together, one hand gripping his sticky shoulder and the other still holding onto the bottle neck.

He rises to his feet in an effortlessly smooth motion, hands dragging up the curve of her as he goes until they tangle in her hair, his arms criss crossed over her back and then the real kissing begins, the kind he had figured he’d gentle her into but she seems to have already found a taste for. It’s open mouthed and sloppy and she nearly lets the bottle slip from her hand as she seems to levitate right out of her skin and upwards to some hot and hazy sphere where a pink tongue dances with her own.

And sweet Lord, she loves the way he kisses her, large hands yanking her head back by her hair so he can pour his passion into her keening mouth from above, his arms encompassing her shoulders and pressing her to him, his plush mouth working her up to a frenzy. She squeezes his shoulder, in retribution or encouragement, she doesn’t know which, for the ache he always manages to spark in her belly. Speaking of, his soaked underwear is pressed to her belly and dampening the fabric of her slip so it, too, becomes tacky and drags as he shifts against her, almost like they’re riding waves together, grappling in a gentle struggle for leverage in this caress.

-electric eels, I might add, do it, though it shocks ‘em I know,

She’s a responsive little thing, his new wife, and fiesty in her affection, too. Her nails dig into his back and make him hiss pleasurably and he finds he can’t help but hump the little curve of her belly beneath the silk, wet briefs tantalizingly coarse against his cock. It occurs to him this is a precious moment, for many reasons, but particularly for the fact that never again will she kiss him without at least some anticipation of more to follow. What’s a kiss that goes nowhere? A kiss that devours and consumes and grapples and bites but has no destination? Her whole body conforms to his in an effort to get closer as they sway in the middle of his bedroom floor, but she knows of nothing after this, she doesn’t know it’s leading anywhere. The kiss is all she knows. It’s like she has an incomplete map, one he gets to draw the big red ‘X’ at the end of. He wonders if a body can combust if kissed long enough, if he can make her shatter apart just by ignorant need and a searingly good necking. He pours more energy into plundering her mouth and ignores her whimpers begging for a breath.

Elaine finds her free hand sliding from his shoulder down the plush side of his ribs, tacky with champagne, and thumbs at the soaked waistband of his briefs. It makes him break their kiss at last, near drowned for air and his eyes wild as he rears back to study her face.

“You’re getting me sticky,” she whispers smilingly and watches him lick her spit from his lips with a languid tongue.

“Ya could just say you want me nekid,” he quips, and nearly swallows his tongue in horror right after, holding his breath to see how the joke lands.

Elaine is… taken aback, judging by the way her eyes widen and her cheeks flame bright in the dim light of the bedroom, but she truthfully shrugs and murmurs while staring past him, “I would really like to see ya, E.”

“Whatever you want, baby,” he whispers back earnestly and she flicks her eyes back to meet his before her smile returns and she makes a motion to one handedly strip him before thinking better of it.

She takes another chug from the champagne bottle instead and he chuckles, making a motion with his hands to hand it to him when she’s done. She gives it over and he gulps down the liquid courage while trying to go somewhere else as Elaine begins to carefully peel his soaked tighty whities down his legs. Her yittle fingers make it mighty difficult.

-God, I hope she’s at least seen a penis before, he prays. Or, or actually no. I hope she hasn’t, I hope she has no fuckin clue about any other man, most certainly no trimmed up, affluent, all American, circumcised one.

While he’s busy making his nose burn with the bubbles he’s downing like water, Elaine takes a moment to feast her eyes on tan thighs and the boney cradle of his hips, defined by a lean belt of muscle descending from his abdomen and that faint dusty trail of hair that was pointing downwards to a destination after all. He’s pink and soft and harmless looking down there, very much like the anatomy sketches she’s seen in the medical books. A limp little tail-like thing that hangs between his legs with a sheath of skin covering it, pillowed atop a very heavy looking sack that’s a couple shades darker than the shaft thingy. Maybe men have a bladder on the outside, she ponders.

She finds herself a little relieved, and also stupidly endeared. It’s his privates, she should let him be, they’re not like hers that have a dual purpose of child bearing and peeing. They’re just his soft parts and he’s terribly sweet to let her satisfy her curiosity about them, and so she rises back to her feet with a pleased sigh, having refrained from the stupid impulse of reaching out and grabbing hold of them. Elvis lets out a ragged sigh of his own and looks like he’s trying to read her brain as she presses another kiss to his lips.

“Thank ya,” she chirps and he raises his eyebrows in surprise that this is going so well.

It goes well until it gets weird. And by weird Elvis means his sweet young wife starting to circle him like he’s a damn statue, her hand trailing over his skin and letting out appreciative little noises at the way his muscles twitch beneath her fingers. His ribs tickle and his arms jitter and his back tenses and then there’s that throat closing feeling of her palming the swell of his ass, admiring and entitled as you please. He feels a bit like a prize horse, being eyed up at auction, Elaine the buyer that’s testing to see if he’s a well-bred stallion. Seeing if he’s a good breeding partner, if he’s made of good stock.

Elaine’s appraisal halts at his other side, she’s got a hand gliding up his sternum like the feel of sparse chest hair is equal to the most priceless Persian rug, and her other hand keeps petting the swell of his ass as she presses kisses to his shoulder—oh god help him, he likes it, much as it makes him squirm, this entirely unexpected review of his assets has him standing at attention and hoping she approves. Something else starts to try to stand to attention and it’s through a helpless sort of mortified resignation he feels little Elvis twitch in earnest. The sorta twitch that’ll lead to precum sputtering out soon enough.

She notices. Of course she does, he feels her lips fall away from his shoulder so she can peer over it at the growing developments, and with unerring accuracy she repeats the motion she had just made, expecting a similar result if providing the right equation. His cock is feeling benevolent if a little demure tonight, and he can’t help but flex his hips as the next rush of blood makes the thing move again. Oh damn, he thinks, they’re getting somewhere now, and he’s not yet given a single lesson.

Elaine had long harbored a rather inordinate curiosity about the male figure, her swimming hole adventures and glimpses of mechanics stripped down covered in grease had all inspired a rather alarming curiosity in her girlish head as to what the male form looked like… unimpeded. She thought it silly that there was such emphasis on men’s tastes being visual, on pinups and advertising girls selling dish soap that had nothing to do with the bikinis prominently filled out. For her, Marlon Brando swaggering around in a sweat soaked singlet had done more to convince her to move to a New Orleans tenement than all those skimpy dressed floozies ever had ever convinced a regular ole father of three to buy Lucky Strikes. But to touch? To feel searing hot masculine blood pumping right beneath that terribly smooth skin and the dip and give of his muscles beneath her palm? Her chest aches and her hands move of their own accord, wondrously eager to make him wag between his legs again, like a happy tail swelling and jerking with each squeeze she gives his butt.

“Elvis, you’re so pretty,” she gushes the admiration swirling around and around in her mind and feels the whole long, lean, glorious length of his shudder at the comment.

She’s enchanted with his body, he realizes, he’s pleasing to her, and her hands flutter in a hopeless want to touch him everywhere and it’s all he can do not to seize a dainty hand and wrench her away from this sweet perusal and make her grip him here he needs it. He wants, needs, filthy things from her. And she just thinks he’s pretty. The moan he stifles with his hand is only fuel to her fire.

“Uh—” he begins, figuring he better get somethin about the mechanics of things out before this sweetness turns him feral and the tempting thoughts to just… sneak it in her… take precedence in his brain.

“What’s it doin’?” she interrupts instead, and he savors the feel of her holding his bare waist while he pinches the bridge of his nose, taking steady breaths, forcing some blood back up to his brain.

“I-i-it’s, it’s gettin’ excited,” he figures is an honest start, “F-firmin up.”

“Why?” she asks curiously, sounding ever so child-like, still petting his sides like, like—like he’s her pet.

He wouldn’t mind being her pet. He’s foolin’ himself thinkin’ he isn’t already, she’s just embracing her role with innocent confidence, unencumbered by silly knowledge of roles and shit, like he is.

“Well, uh, it’s, it’s—” he bites his lip harshly before gently grabbing her arms and moving her round to face him, stroking her neck soothingly while keeping her at a safe distance where her silk clad belly won’t encourage little Elvis any faster. “It’s gotta firm up as, it’s, it’s, it’s my key, baby,” he explains gently, watching with burning concentration for any flicker of understanding flitting across her earnest face.

“Your key?” she repeats gravely, that nagging feeling returning that there’s more to this… marriage business… then she’s been told, and she’s about at the end of her patience with being fobbed off the topic. “Elvis—” she goes to appeal for an answer to his generous nature, the lush set of his features above her sweet and sultrily eager as her own, encouraging her that he’ll humor her—

“Elaine, we gotta have a business meetin’,” he declares, effectively cutting her off, and it’s the voice he uses at conference tables with the colonel or with reporters but she knows it’s him scrambling to grab hold of some control. Ever wary of the delicate state of his emotions these days, she holds her peace. “Bout, b-bout marriage,” he clarifies and for the first time since coming up here, a cold shard of fear slices through the gooey warmth of his presence.

“Alright,” she agrees, firmly supportive, squeezing his arms to emphasize that she’s on his side in this, she takes her cues from him. It’s what good wives do, and it’s what all of humanity does when Elvis Presley starts to direct a thing.

Her compliance has the intended result of soothing him, his jitters calm under her hands and the light beam of her encouraging smile. He gives a few small nods of his head as if agreeing with an unspoken suggestion, and Elaine is entirely certain he’s got a self affirming monologue running up there in that pretty head to drown out whatever has him so panicked.

Alight with her touch, with thoughts of her and her lil house and making it good, making sure it takes, of finally having what he’s dreamed about for goin’ on two years now, he feels his knees near buckle and he murmurs hurriedly,

“Let’s sit on the–the bed for a minute.”

Hand in hand, and at a head clearing distance from each other, they mosey over to the canopied wonder that is his bed, decked out in black and gold, tufted pockets of down beckoning for a bounce amongst, and Elaine can’t help herself. Maybe it’s the champagne or a stubborn desire to keep the jubilant atmosphere alive but she slips her hand out of his with a parting squeeze and launches herself into the downy sea of gold.

His stride falters and he watches with a fondness he feels deep in his gut as his Elaine bounces into the bed like a giddy child, her long limbs splayed artlessly and the swell of her ass rippling under baby blue silk, a sliver more of inner thigh visible as it rides up, kicking her footsies gleefully for good measure before she lifts that darling face and grins at him beckoningly through a curtain of chocolate curls.

God he loves her. And this is what he’ll get to see and feel and love for all the coming nights, for the rest of his life. He moseys up to the bed and reaches out, caressing Elaine’s shiny locks back in place, matching her smile in an endeavor to help keep this mood as joyous as it should be. She grabs at his wrist that is petting her hair and pulls him atop her. Weak and wanting, he goes, registering with searing clarity the first feel of his long limbs being pressed atop every inch of her smaller frame, the bedspread tufting beneath their combined weight.

He is burning hot atop her, and so much larger than her own body, she realizes with a thrill that tingles down to her very toes. She resumes her petting of the wings of his shoulder blades, smooth and sweaty beneath her hands and she wiggles beneath the new sensation of his thighs pressed to her own, and his hips cradled by her hips, fitting together effortlessly. It’s delightful and she acts on the urge to tilt his face out from the bedspread and seek more kisses from those cherry red lips of his.

Elaine keeps undulating under him, spurred on by a thousand heady new sensations, slippery as an eel in her silk, and Elvis’s mind blanks at the feel of her eager and squirmy body beneath his. He forgets about lessons and marriage and sacred duties and instead acts on his most natural instinct which is to kiss her back ferociously and buck against the cradle of her hips ‘till his cock weeps for joy at finally being heeded.

As natural as riding a tandem bike, after the initial wobble for balance, Elaine quickly finds his rhythm and grinds along with him in a unified dance for propulsion, feeling something besides his champagne-sticky skin begin to slick up her nightslip.

That’s the wet smear of his excitement, she realizes, and rocks up more vigorously to encourage him. His penis is a throbbing pipe between them, and while she can’t see it, she can feel the thing growing and digging into her belly and she thinks of keys and she wonders, and aches. The whine her groom lets out, once hazily recognizing the fact she’s actually trying to aid his pleasure like a good wife should, is pulled from deep in his gut into her open mouth, sending a triumphant shudder through her.

“Sweet—lord—fuck—Elaine,” he blasphemes into her ear in a pained cry, his hand a mere agent of his cock as it fumbles between them frantically to pull up the hem of her slip.

Her hot breath fans against his face in shocked gusts and if he cracked open his screwed shut eyes he’s pretty sure he'd see her looking a little scandalized, which is why he doesn’t open them. He’ll save that for when he’s balls deep inside her and there ain’t a lawful thing she can do about it. For now he just doggedly hikes up her slip until it’s halfway up her belly and his balls are rubbing amongst the pettiest thatch on a beaver he ever did see. Not that he sees it now, mind you. No, his eyes stay closed and he forces her into another kiss lest she protest, but he recalls the particulars of her cunt like that addled inspection he made of her lady parts was yesterday and—

—her lil house, his promise, his duty! It all comes crowding back to his mind with an icy damper just as her hands glide down to land with a strong and naively lecherous grip on his ass and he—

—he might have made it if it weren’t for that grab. It’s not a good precedent to blame one’s wife for a loss of control but he’s afraid that’s just what it is, a precedent when, heedless of her confusion, he grips her delicate shoulders in each of his hands and leverages up, one pump, two pumps, three pumps amongst the slick petals of her pussy and then, then it’s white hot satisfaction and… Elaine.

Elaine, Elaine, Elaine—oh how I love you, oh how I want you, Elaine, Elaine, Elaine, you drive me nuts.

“Oh, oh wha—oh,” through the ringing haze of busting a nut against her, Elvis can hear her bewildered enjoyment as he spurts and slicks her up real messy, grinding against her pearl with powerful, heedless strokes.

He stops his whimpering moans and sucks in a breath, still somewhere else in his bliss and utterly unmoored, but not so useless as to stop moving along to her guiding hands on his butt.

Her breathy gasps are—they’re everything he’s ever fantasized about, and to make up for blowing his load like a green boy, he keeps up the pace she wants, slippin’ and a’slidin against her, listening intently as her pitch spikes when his cock smudges her clit with his head. She begins to replace each gasp with a noisy inhale.

“Wha-what’s oh, Elvis what’s—” she finds her voice just enough to babble as her head thrashes in a confused protest a few times amongst the golden tufts.

Then her hands clench on her handful of backside before the head of his cock slips in its glide and snags against her untried door. The bitten off shriek of surprised ecstasy she lets out, and the cruel bite of her nails in his butt, the rigid spasm of her thighs beneath his, tells him she’s gotten a taste of the heaven he just indulged in early.

“That’s it, that’s it, it’s nice feelin’, ain’t it?” he preemptively shushes her worries, the ones that gather even now on her brow the minute her pleasure ebbs away enough for rational thought to raise its pesky head.

“Elvis, I—what was—” she pants and can’t find the words or courage to finish her question, she just blushes beneath him instead, and for the first time tonight he can sense her feeling insecure.

“That was actin’ married, baby,” he answers simply, cupping her face and letting his thumbs rub soothing circles in her hairline. “You alright? Did I scare ya?” he whispers, terrified in suspense as Elaine seems to give his question thought, reviewing the recent memory of her first orgasm with typical, analytical detachment.

“It felt… tingly,” she decides, having to acknowledge no harm was done and this sated feeling of her melting into a puddle beneath him is rather lovely. “I liked it,” she decides, then insists as he still looks down at her, chestnut hair falling into his eyes and his worried mouth wobbling like a scared baby’s. “I liked it a lot.”

“Ya liked it?” he perks up, his lip curling in a smile, eager as a puppy, and she remembers him asking her the same thing, in the same eager way, about the grand staircase when he first showed her Graceland.

“Yes, yes I did,” she nods emphatically, ignoring how something seems to hang in the air about them now, something more that prods her to ask, “What now?”

Because “more” feels like a third person in this room and her curiosity has been too long deferred.

“Now we have that business meetin’,” he replies gravely, as if he suspects her of plotting against the meeting and its solemn necessity.

He tries to pitch his voice down in a bid to sound authoritative, but all she can think of are his pitiful little whimpers as he wet her belly. She smirks and reaches up to push his hair out of his eyes. “Yessir, Private,” she teases, immensely pleased with herself when he lets out a throaty laugh and rolls his eyes in response.

He pulls his body away from her, forcing himself not to cringe at the goopy mess he made of her pussy, or the resiliently adhesive string of spunk that refuses to break the connection between them as he pulls away. She is watching his every expression, he knows, every movement, the bat of his eyes, all being used to form her own opinion of this and he is careful not to show any reaction that might have her embarrassed, or worse, thinking the act gross. Sex is nasty, and he fuckin’ loves it for it. And if he can help it, so will she.

He twists off her and rolls on his side, sitting up where his legs dangle off the bed and he flips her slip back down in what he hopes is a subtle but swift enough gesture to be considered gentlemanly. She sits up beside him and folds her hands expectantly in her lap, her legs swinging off the bed beside his own and if he thinks too long about the fact he’s probably dribbling down her primly closed thighs, he’ll go insane all over again.

Get this part done and then you can go nuts, he tells himself, then it’s free reign. Or, well, nearly.

“Elaine baby,” he begins, this time his voice is naturally deep and earnest as it often is when discussing something very important, she recognizes it and gives him all her attention, “Do ya know anythin’ bout what mamas and daddies do when they go to bed?”

Her head is still fuzzy from whatever trickery they just engaged in, the way his hand now descends to her thigh making the pounding between them worse than ever even as the pleasure is sharper, more satisfying than any she’s achieved. It clouds her mind and stalls her reply. She thinks that she could answer smartly that he just showed her what they do, or she could say she knows they sleep, or she could rattle off a buncha scared suggestions that might make her seem a little less lost, a little less dumb about this whole thing. But she trusts him, trusts him to be kind and patient, to want to be married anyway. So she bites down her pride and shakes her head adamantly, not a shred of flippancy left.

“Well, part of bein’ married is makin’ babies, right?” he responds, “And that happens in a marriage bed, or least—that’s where it happens first time ya try,” Elvis explains the best he can, his voice gentle and his drawl persuasive like it had been when he showed her cords on the guitar. “Now we uh, we’ve talked bout your lil house already,” he notes and she nods with sober and locked on fascination, waiting for him to drop a hint of something that will make practical sense, “and I done told ya bout my key. You felt it gettin all firm, yeah? Then sprayin’ ya belly—sorry bout that, jus’ got me so excited, went ahead of myself—well, baby, ya see…” He twists his lower lip with his fingers in one last pained procrastination before getting the rest out in a measured slur, “To make a baby the daddy’s key has gotta go inside the mama’s house a-a-and unlock her.”

He holds his breath and watches this lesson land home on her sweet face. He takes note of each stage of comprehension as it morphs her face. First there’s her squint of concentration, then the eyebrow quirk of confirmed speculation, then the lip bite of second guessing his meaning, then crystal clear compression that seems to freeze her features in one of disbelief until they reanimate in a frenzy of emotion that culminates in her heavily fringed eyes darting down to stare at his recently spent, half mast cock. His key, he corrects himself, and like a damned pet, it wags under her wide eyed study.

“Oh ha, oh.” She tries to master her gasps and they just come out in a tumble anyway, staring at that strangely animate part of him that is nothing like any one of hers. The longer she looks the larger it grows, the sheath drawing back and revealing a tender looking tip, so vibrantly red it matches the flush splotching down his chest. It looks like it’s aches, and she suddenly has sympathy for the eager thing. At her aborted movement to touch it, she sees it sputter out clear fluid, as if weeping for her attention.

A great many bits of hearsay, of anatomical layouts studied, some Bible passages about “goin into her” and a few racy lyrics flash through her mind like star witnesses confirming his account of married life. She suddenly wants to laugh at the absurdity of not putting it all together until the wagging heft of the thing swelling beneath her stare makes her suddenly hope he’s wrong. Or, or -teasing, he’s gotta be teasing.

Oh course he is! Her shoulders loosen up and she lets out a great big sigh before meeting his stormy eyes and poking the soft rolls of his belly warningly, “You had me there!” she tsks and begins to laugh the more she thinks of the idea of him shoving his… his pee pee… up her to make a child.

Elvis doesn’t laugh, he looks suddenly quite alarmed and her merriment dies on her lips, stuttering out at the sight of his earnest face.

“You. Are. Teasin,” she repeats with a pleading diction, “You don’t really -oh gosh y- you ain’t pullin’ my leg, Elvis?” she almost whimpers, her mother’s proper nomenclature gone right out of her pretty mind at the idea of that chubby snake thing inside her.

“I ain’t pullin’ your leg sweetheart.” he swears, no hint of mockery in his voice, “That cream ya felt…coming out, the sticky stuff, i-it shoots up in ya a-a-and fertilizes y-your eggs. I-it’s called making love, baby, cause it’s-it’s makin…love.”

Elaine feels her face growing hot at that visual and would like all these components to make less sense right about now. It all comes together in her logic like a missing piece of the human puzzle, but far from being the Devine enlightenment she was expecting, she finds it’s a sticky, bobbing, whining, gushing, squelching process that isn’t remotely medical or Devine. It’s comedic, and her jaw clenches in protest at the absurdity of it all. God really must enjoy a good laugh, forcing folks to spew and shake apart like idiots just to keep the human race alive.

“Why’s it growin?” She demands hotly, resigned to the logic but quite unappreciative of the fact that the more excited about making babies his key gets, the more likely its growing size will make it impossible to fit inside her.

“It’s getting firm so it can go in,” he defends his offending boner as meekly as possible, eager to get back in her good graces and refusing to listen to little Elvis’ cries of offended honor, “A-a-and so it’ll feel good inside ya.” he makes sure to tack on and notices her incredulous left eyebrow shoot up to her hairline.

“That so?” she asks, utterly sarcastic.

“Yes!” he pleads and her face softens a little at his hurt tone, at his obvious honesty, “Once inside it’ll rub ya all nice like it felt a minute ago. ‘Member that? this’ll be like that just… even better.”

“I-I-I do, I do recall,” she softens at his worried face, realizes he thinks she’s gonna back down from this and curses the fact she’d really rather. Impotent anger rises up in her for a brief flash that she didn’t have more time to prepare for this, that no one told her so she might settle her terrified little belly to the thought of him—

—it’s too awful to be pondered for long and she takes a great deep breath and holds it in the way she learned at the hospital, to calm a bout of panic, staring off across the room at the portrait of Jesus he has hung by the closet door. She thinks about how best to fly away while he does what is necessary, she thinks about babies, she thinks about how pretty and sweet he is. She thinks about her mama, and wonders if the procedure is so awful, why didn’t she and every woman in her life warn and prepare her for it? Now her aunt’s words make sense. Be good and let him do what he needs to. If this is what he needs to do, then she reckon’s she’ll just have to let him see to it.

“Elaine?” he begs her to look at him, his warm hand gently grabbing her chin and turning her face to his like an ornery mule by its bridal. “Elaine, what’s in that pretty head? Talk to me please,” he puts his face all up in her own’s business, hands cradling her face and noses brushing, she can feel the brush of his lips when he speaks again softly, “Ya don’t think God would tell folks to be fruitful then make it awful for ‘em, do ya?”

It’s as if he’s read her mind, her own rationalization on the subject and she gives a slow nod of dissent, “no,” she agrees, and realizes due to her watery voice that she must’ve started crying somewhere along the way. It rankles her, being so skittish, being so troublesome for her groom when she’s not even been married a full day.

Lord, instead of being angry, he’s nuzzling her tear tracks across her face and swearing never ending tenderness to her. Her heart does another flip as his lips trail down her neck, and she warms again, her ache returns and it reminds her of his own. She tilts her head so he can better suck at the soft skin of her neck and casts her eyes down to his lap, finding him still eager. His key looks so desperate and needy, and despite her grievance against its size, her hand darts out instinctively to swipe at the leaking mushroom head like she would anyone’s tears from beneath their eyes.

It has a rather startling effect on her young husband.

Elvis lets out a choked cry and crushes her arms where he holds them, his kiss bitten cry turns into a chomp on her shoulder as the shock of his reaction makes her squeeze his member harder, eliciting a yet greater amount of pleasurable anguish from him. The way the previously dribbling precum gushes over her knuckles is entirely the most heady thing she’s ever managed to feel in her life. That molten warmth in her belly ignites again, and she kisses his own neck in delight at the responses he gives her, even as she drags the flat of her palm up and down his key, taking notes on the way he bucks against it.

“Elaine—” he garbles into her throat and she kneads his neck comfortingly even as she continues to watch the way this new friend throbs and gushes under her tiniest attentions. Like a personable pet or a responsive baby, it’s a joy to have something react to her with such inordinate eagerness.

“Alright, I believe ya,” she whispers soothingly as she thumbs at his leaking slit and strokes down his foreskin, noticing a definite ridge and then a puffy head differentiating the head from the rest of the shaft, “Just the tip has to go in, right?” she surveys the bulbous little head and calms herself. It’s not that big, just awfully wide. She can manage it, for the babies.

“N-no baby.” he stutters into her throat, miserable and worried sick about repeatedly having to be contrary, “S’all gotta go in.”

“But, but you can just spray up once it’s in!” she cries out, laughingly incredulous and a single sentence away from reverting back to suspecting him of playing a trick, “Why’s the whole thing gotta go in when it shoots the stuff a foot or more?”

That’s- that’s a worrisomely valid point, he thinks, but he can only deal with the logic of her hand fondling his cock right now and so he insists, “No baby, it’s gotta go deep, way up in your belly so it don’t get lost with all the cake ya ate.”

“That ain’t gonna get very deep.” she’s rather unimpressed with his length and it brings him right back down to earth with an Elaine shaped thump, “It’s the girth that’s unnecessarily…plentiful.”

“Ya sayin’ God didn’t know what he was doin when he made me?“ Elvis feigns outrage and pulls away to grin at her, to confirm she’s grinning, too.

She rolls her eyes, then that famillair, sweet smile overtakes her face as she flits her eyes all across the lean yet soft, pale yet golden, masculine yet boyish whole of him, -she finds him very good. “I reckon he knew what he was doin’,” she murmurs wryly, her stare dragging up his form, “I just object to the practicality of so few brains and so much—”

“Elaine!” he growls, gripping the back of her neck, “Kiss me, woman.”

She kisses him with the same gusto he’s previously seen her reserve only for football matches on the lawn. She catapults forward and it knocks the wind outta him, lands her solidly in his lap, a smooching, hair tugging goddess of a mad woman, and he scrambles to keep up, to assist the gearshift that just occurred. Zero to sixty it seems. Elaine can’t seem to hold still when she kisses, always leveraging up and wiggling around and it makes for two of them writhing, to the immense satisfaction of his cock that gets wedged between his belly and hers during this heavy make out.

Eventually she seems to notice -Elvis wonders what gave lil Elvis’ position away: the incessant twitching or the gallons of precum dribbling down the front of her gown.

She pulls away from the kiss and looks down, suddenly reaching and straightening his cock against her belly and through the haze of ball tingling appreciation for her touch he realizes she’s measuring the depth against her belly. That thought makes him spurt so violently he’s not sure if he’s cummin’ a lil or just, just gushin’ like he’s never seen himself gush before. Thank God this sweet little girl seems to like the fact he’s a messy, sensitive, uncut hick of a boy.

“We’ve just gotta try our best, hmm?” he stifles his anticipatory giggle at the size comparison to her abdomen and thumbs at her throat coaxingly, “I’ll try’n get it real deep, and you’ll be good and lemme, right?“

She will, for the babies, he already knows that. Knew it the minute she agreed to marry him. It’s why he wants her.

“Right.” she agrees and tries to not make it sound like she’s being condemned to torture, “I’ll be good for ya.” Be good and let him do what he needs to.

“And I’ll make it nice,” he swears adamantly and she nearly believes him, “It won’t hurt much, not at all after the first time, I’ll make sure you enjoy it, baby. Have ya begging for it in a few hours, you’ll see. It’s gonna be nice, remember?”

“Yeah.” Her tone is unsure but she waggles her eyebrows conspiratorially.

Then, before another promise can be made, she bends away from his lap and flops on her back, legs spread, baby blue silk riding up to show her wet curls, hands serenely crossed across her chest, face expectant. “Well, c’mon, gimme those babies.” she eggs him on, somehow keeping the wobble out of her thin voice.

“Elaine, honey, you’re shakin’,” he worries, noticing the visible battle in her body between desire and fear.

“I am a little chilly.” she replies very decorously, and with a liar liar pants on fire smile of assurance.

“Bullshit, you’re terrified,” he murmurs, petting her spread legs that are still partly in his lap, sliding his warm palms up her inner thighs and noting with satisfaction the way it makes her nipples pebble helplessly beneath the silk. She even rocks her hips towards his soothing attentions and that’s perfect, that’s how he’s gonna handle this, just soothe her into it, her entirely absent prudery a great aid. Although this next little detail he’s gonna teach her may push her to the limit.

“Now, ‘fore I go in, there’s a great deal of prep’s gotta happen or else I’d not be a husband, just a mean bastard, you understand?” And he watches closely as Elaine’s chest heaves in relief that she’s got a little more time before the main event. Come to think of it, he should buy her more time, maybe a bath to get her all loosened up and pliant. “How bout we take a bath first, ya wanna take a bath, baby?” he suggests and knows that it was entirely too random a segue the minute it leaves his mouth.

“Not–not right now.” she whispers honestly, her hands still crossed across her breasts and she makes a motion that hikes the neckline a little higher, telling him all he needs to know about her shyness. He’ll let her leave the slip on for now, the fact her cunt is considered husbandly property but her breasts are sacred maidenly assets makes him feral with want. “I’d like to just get this over w- to, experience it,” she does a decent job at damage control of her initial sentiment but he figures it’s understandable to want it over and done with, like a procedure, like a tooth being pulled. “Honestly Elvis, I’m too nervous to enjoy anything till we do it,” she admits, no pretty turn of phrase, just that precious honesty he appreciates so much about her.

Boy does he have a surprise for her, then. He grins and he nods understandingly, “I getcha, baby, we don’t gotta do nothin you don’t want,” he swears, “Just gotta prep ya then we’ll get on with it. Hey, stop shruggin’, ya just might like it.” He pinches her thigh and it makes her giggle, she gives him another unconvinced shrug that he takes as a gauntlet thrown to turn her into a whimpering cock slut.

“I-I’m gonna pull this up a lil,” he narrates gently, figuring it might put her at ease as he matches his words with the action of rolling her hemline up to her ribs. Her soft belly caves in with the breath she’s holding and he lays his searing palm on it, coaxing her to settle for him.

She can feel his calluses and the grounding weight of his broad hand on her womb, and the rightness of it turns her body pliant. That dreamy submission he first coaxed from her to make her sleep after her mother’s funeral -she can feel it coming over her again and settles glady. He’s never steered her wrong yet, and he’s let her keep her breasts modest, a sweet concession she is eager to thank him for with obedient compliance. She focuses on his large hand and the way it’s now petting, no, more like digging gently, with his fingertips into her lower belly, little digs and pulls upwards over and over again. She can feel each tug downstairs in her little house, like his fingertips are tugging at her little button’s string from the outside in. Her head truly sinks back into the gold tufted comforter and she absently palms a heaving breast. This part of being married is lovely.

The awed look overtaking Elvis’ cherubic features as he stares down at the freshly undressed slit between her legs is reward enough for her. Life is suddenly dreamy and hazy, like she’s viewing his rich coloring and decadent face through a stocking over a lens, like the girls do to minimize their pores in photographs. He looks like that naturally, too rich and pretty and lovely to be true, now muddled and smeared from the feelings his hands excite, he looks otherworldly and she lets slip a moan of appreciation.

“You’re so pretty.” she babbles again, unsure if any of it actually made it out of her head. It seems very pressing to tell him, maybe in lieux of the “I love you” he’s dying to hear but made her swear she wouldn’t say till she meant it.

For Elvis, the entire picture of Elaine, melted ivory skin with a halo of chocolate curls and a wisp of sea foam silk covering what he’s dying to see -she is like an erotic painting brought to life just for him to lick and squeeze and split open on a sea of gold. He shudders and keeps his finger tips massaging her giving belly, this ole trick of Johnny’s obviously not half bad, judging by the way she goes boneless and her long legs begin to spread of their own accord, knees bending out and her pink petals beginning to make an obvious flutter beneath the curls.

“You recall what Dodger said.” he asks her very softly, mumbling it into the soft skin of her inner knee as he gets her used to the feeling of his lips creeping closer to the place he’s about to devour, “remember her sayin I was to lick you?” he prods, knowing that bringing up his grandmother is not ideal seconds before slurping at his wife’s beaver, but he guesses rightly that he might benefit from some moral backup for what he’s about to propose.

“Y-yes, yes before a pecker o-“ Elaine’s already a little incoherent as he permits his hand to stray from her belly and scratch amongst their curls, digging and tugging at her outer lips from afar, making them glide against each other in a soft stimulation, like a foreskin getting rubbed over the glans.

“Pecker’s jus’another word for key.” he whispers into the butter soft skin of her twitching thigh and her hips jerk from the tickle of his voice.

“Oh is it?” she manages to laugh, even as it’s a far away little sound, “dear Dodger.” is all she adds.

“So like she said,” he carefully moves himself to a crouch, taking care not to jostle her out of her docile trance, crouching like those mountain cats between her legs, he carefully replaces his hand with his cheek as he rubs his face against her belly -entirely cat like, “like she said I gotta lick ya. See, cause….’‘fore ya use a-a key in a new lock ya gotta grease, it, right?”

Elaine Presley is so bewildered and terribly hungry for something, anything, Elvis could suggest just about any sort of fuckery right now and she’d agree. As is, she thinks she’s read in the Bible about a man kissing his woman down there, a vague reference to pomegranates that King Solomon might’ve thought real slick, but wasn’t subtle. There was certainly more of an illusion made to it in the good book than anything about chubby snakes going up inside a girl. She has no qualms against it, also very few brains at her disposal right now it seems, and she finds it’s nice having one’s mind wiped blank after such a hectic two weeks of planning and organizing.

“S-so I’m gonna lick ya down there, a k-kiss sorta a-“ Elvis is explaining, unnecessarily thorough in a pained, urgent, desperate whisper that he uses when he wants a thing bad but he wants you to think you want it badder and she-

-Later on in life, later on the next day even, Elaine could never quite tell or explain where the urge or the bravery or the biblical amounts of entitlement to his services she suddenly felt in that moment. All either of them had was the memory of her fresh as a daisy self, steering her groom by his hair till he was face planted between her legs, doing his duty. Licking her open, pink tongue wriggling and lapping.

Terrified shitless that somehow, somehow he’d mess up the one thing he was certain he was remarkably good at, Elvis’s skilled tongue had bolted into her wet heat like a colt through the starting gate with a lot to prove. And he maintained that ferocious pace and fervor for a undocumented and unrecalled amount of time. He was not sure how he managed to breathe down there for the hour or more he spent sucking and licking and jabbing his tongue into Elaine’s long dreamed of cunt, living off fumes from the sweetest pussy he’d ever tasted, hair tugs of gratitude his only payment and the sounds of shock and awe spilling out of his new wife at every bout of pleasure he tore from her.

The sounds she was making -they were the same as when the two of them went down to the flower festival in New Orleans, while he was on set, where she’d gasped and cried and exclaimed joyously over five street blocks worth of Lilies and Dahlias and the stringy flower bushes Elvis’ didn’t retain the name of.

“So, so nice, oh, oh right there”. This frantically happy compliance, this unabashed enjoyment by a virgin girl smashing his face into her snatch -it was more than Elvis’ wildest, most self indulgent fantasies could have hoped for.

He had noticed in Elaine a peculiar sort of common sense that most people didn’t have in common. If a thing was not harmful or explicitly forbidden, she had no objection to it, in fact, she considered it free game. And bucking her hips up to meet his tongue and utilize his nose against her button -was obviously one of those non prohibited joys of life. And he set about to make it so addictive that she would be collaring him for a lick every day of her life for the rest of their days. His hands slowly gravitated up her belly, squeezing and appreciating the firm give of her sides and up to her breasts that she still guarded with panting lassitude. He didn’t know if he had snuck his hands under hers to knead the firm mounds or if she’d allowed him under of her own accord, and placed her hands atop his in blessing. But either way, he stayed bent like that, hands groping at her tits and jaw near unhinged to swallow her down, his own hips rutting into the mattress, the seams of the bedspread chafing his cock pleasurably.

“Can I have another?” she would ask eagerly after having shook apart and dribbled over his tongue for the tenth time.

Who was he to deny her?

He worked his fingers in gently, but after the amount of spit and slick they had produced together, it was a mere pinch for her when he snuck in first one long finger, then another. Careful to keep her revving, he dallied for a while with just the two, scissoring them and spitting inside the tight little hole until her objectioning mewls turned to breathy sighs again. Working in the confines of her wet heat near drove him mad, feeling how tight she was around just a few digits had his cock aching and groans of his own came pouring out of his mouth, buzzing her clit and causing her to writhe.

He took to curling his fingers inside her, her walls giving under more readily after his patient coaxing and he rubbed the calloused pads of his fingers up and curled untill he found a soft, giving little spot unlike its surroundings, spongey in a way he’d only ever heard about. Her reaction to his touch there was also something that had before only been mere hearsay from the boys on the road. Her hips leveraged off the bed like she was possessed, and through the smash of her thighs about his ears he heard her scream, and perverse determination was entirely to blame for the way he forced his fingers to keep curling as her little house clamped down around them and suddenly his head was being crushed like a melon between her legs and a jet of sweet, Elaine flavored goodness was spewing at his grinning face.

“Sweet Jesus would ya look at tha-“ Elvis heaved in a dozen breaths the minute her legs fell apart again, propping up on his forearms and watching his stunned wife tremble violently, her belly and thighs shaking like they were motorized, her pussy still gushing feebly and her hands patting herself down as if to make sure she was still all there. He’d only ever heard of squirting, and here he was now, half blinded by her spray.

The sight of the teary eyed, mortified yet pleasure dumb confusion clouding her exquisitely clever face had given him no other option. He had to have her, had possess her, had to take, had to fuckin’ take his due. Now.

She was in no position to deny him, shaking in pleasurable shock and splayed out boneless and unsuspecting. Through a tunnel of starry spots she saw his glistening wet face come in to view, hovering over her own, and felt the warm weight of his body settling over hers, famillair and steadying. She tried to raise her floppy hand to pet his rosy cheek, to somehow convey how lovely he made her feel, but her hand wouldn’t respond beyond flopping around a few inches from the mattress like a beached fish. She began to giggle and could not stop, thinking she should stop so he could kiss her: ya can’t kiss a giggling woman as her lips aren’t available when she’s giggling and he’s gonna kiss her —

—he didn’t kiss her, instead he had gripped her cheek and it steadied her enough for the giggles to die out almost as effectively as the sobering feel of a blunt, slippery, heated thing pushing at her entrance.

“No, no, no” Elaine’s mind whimpered in betrayed protest, “no, no it had been so lovely, it had been so lovely, it had been nice acting married.”

Tears that had gathered and spilled from the nerve wracking ecstasy he had forced out of her, now spilled afresh down her splotchy cheeks. Her dark eyes glittered like dazzling pools of hurt, her head tilted to the side in disagreement with his plan.

Of course, of course, she thought, there’s always something more to be asked of a woman, a banquet can be enjoyed but there are always dishes afterwards, you get your pretty breasts but you have to bleed every month for them, you can have your house licked to madness but it’s only so that a hungry boy can more easily split you apart.

No, no, why? it had been so lovely…

Elvis had of course thought about fucking Elaine Phipps until she cried, he sometimes dreamed about her thrashing from too much pleasure her eyes streaming tears and her mouth twisted as she tried to let him finish, as he made her enjoy it more than she thought she had the capacity to. He’d thought of it, but it wasn’t the same as trying to push into a hole belonging to a girl mindlessly whimpering “No, no” beneath you.

Having an innocence kink, Elvis was discovering, was a lot sexier in theory, before stupid feelings emerged and pesky consciences nagged and the shuddering terror of your wife beneath you was abundantly tangible. That was a fantasy best kept between himself and his fist, and rock hard as he was, and nearly unhinged from waiting, he just couldn’t manage to do it this way. That old insecurity, that burning awareness that he had always wanted her more than she had wanted him came crowding into his mind, making his own eyes burn in rejection and fear.

“Shhh, shhh baby, it’s alright’ sweetheart, hey, hey it’s me, me c’mon, look at me.” he had begged her, hands engulfing both sides of her face, “I’m sorry, Elaine, I’m sorry.” it spills out in cry of his own because he doesn’t know how else to admit his long harbored expectations of her, the carnal weight of what he has wanted all this time, and all the wasted years he’d never told her he worshiped the soundboard her yittle fingers so cleverly levered , “I’ve loved you ever since I came back and found ya grown. I’m sorry, I’ve -I-I’ve wanted to have ya for years. You’re the most perfect thing alive. I-I-I just gotta have ya, I just gotta. I-I’ll d-d-die if ya don’t want me, too, honest I’ll die.”

When she looked at him then, looked and truly saw the soul of him stamped on his face -suddenly she saw everything she once doubted existed. He loved her. Elvis loved her and she was at peace.

It was Elvis. Dear ole Elvis, the boy at the studio who liked her sandwiches, the boy who she could most likely find sitting on the couch with his mother talking about his day, the boy who brushed her hair out for her the day they buried mama. It was Elvis, who was gonna give her babies, who’s gonna make sure she never wants for a thing, who is never going to let her be lonely or purposeless again. Elvis who was the most beautiful, exquisitely potent man she’d ever known, laying on top of her, shaking in desire to be inside her. He wanted to be inside her, so badly in fact, that all his power and his verve and his pride were shaking and shuddering above her.

“Oh my darling, you made me feel lovely.” she whispered to him, wanting that said before he split her open and took away her innocence. “Your love makes me happy, so happy. How could I not want that?“

“You want it?” he begged against her lips, he begged to hear it again while grabbing his tip and smudging against her clit, making her jerk and bow up in his arms. A reminder of what he can do to her, what he can give her, why she should be obedient.

“Yes, yes I want it.“ she repented of thinking anything unkind about her husband’s cock that’s gonna water her garden and grow her a family, that’s going to pry her open so children can pass through.

“Alright, ok.” he gathered his wits one last time, terrified to think of how he’s gonna lose all grip on himself once inside her after expending so patience beforehand, “Here's what we’re gon- we’re gonna let you control it.''

His brain pumped out fragmented explanations but he managed to sit up and bring her with him, landing her in his threatening lap, his arms cradling her little self, and he scooted higher in the bed until he was sitting upright, the padded black headboard at his back.

“There, here… we’ll, we’ll get it in like this.” he took to referring to his own body like it was a stranger, heaving in ragged breaths like a snorting racehorse. “At’cher own pace, baby. Ya-ya can…ya can sit on it.” He was no longer bothering to make sense, and thank God she seemed to realize that.

Being naive did not mean she was a fool. The novel concept now explained it was abundantly obvious in mechanics. Elaine grasped the slippery length of him firmly again, relishing the aliveness of it, holding it as she had when measuring him against her tummy.

She bit her lip with savage determination. Babies, he’s gonna give her babies.

Her husband’s face was all lash fanned anticipation, his pouty mouth grimacing in barely contained fervor and his eyes crinkled in a wince of pleasure from her grip. She saw a single tear escape his thicket of lashes and run down his prominent cheekbone, headed towards his hairline. She swiped at it tenderly with a thumb and had her hand grasped by him in response, tremblingly guided to his shoulder.

Leverage, she realized, he was giving her leverage and she raised up with her thighs like she would in the saddle, felt his hand meet her own down there to line him up, the size of his head against her giving her a thrill of horrored excitement.

Gently hovering and squatting, she gentled the puffy, leaking head of him in. The burning little sting of it only served to confirm that Elaine was about to be split apart when the rest followed. Now nestled far enough to need no guide, he grabbed at her other hand and put it in place on his shoulder, their noses touching, their legs bent atop the each other’s, arms encircled -suddenly this embrace made it feel completely essential to Elaine that they be connected in that remaining way. As if he could feel her submit around his first inch, his eyes flew open and a hungry azure gaze burned her up as her hair curtained around their faces and—

“You were made for this.” he reminded her as she whimpered at another little bit of length inserted, “You w-w-were fashioned u-up i-in heaven f-for this m-moment.” and the young man who couldn’t be made to stop wiggling in a Church pew tried to hold still as his drippingly tight wife cringingly lowered herself more, “In the doll factory u-up above, h-he m-m-made this lil house to t-the direct d-demensions t-t-to squeeze me d-dry —oh fuck, baby c’mon! That’s it, m-more come on, take me. Take more of me!” he groaned, his head bowed and watching where he began to disappear inside of Elaine, the culmination of all his madness.

“God Elvis it’s-its already awful.” she admits, staring at the stupid black headboard and registering every pulsing inch and vein and ridge of his rock hard, half jammed penis inside her tiny canal. “I dunno if i can-“

“Aww no ya don’t! No -don’t ya dare.” his snarled and gripped her hips as she began to raise up and dismount -it was only going to make it worse to try again and he was gonna make her finish this for her own sake, “Good wives don’t get off their husband’s cock till he says so. We’re ruinin’ ya for anyone else, babydoll, course it's gonna hurt something awful first time. Gotta see it though, don’t ya lose our progress.”

He saw a vicious emotion flash across her face -and he recognized it. It was the one from the mirror before a show, that wretched look of ambition that keeps him from fleeing from a crowd when all he wants to do is hide and puke his nerves away. He barely had time to brace his back before she was impaling herself on him again with teeth gritted ferocity, seething in his ear something about how she’d rather get kicked by Trojan -her gorgeous quarter horse. It made Elvis think of horses and her thighs working in the saddle and horses and stallions and stallions mounting mares and fuckin ‘em full and he-

“You’re gonna, you’re gonna take me.” he declared inexorably as she whimpered, “You’re gonna do what God made ya for, you’re gonna take my cock.”

“I can’t.” she wasn’t even whining, she could just feel him hitting a barrier and she couldn’t take more. “Please E, be nice, I-I ca- it’s not gonna fit, E!”

“It will, you’re my wife, ya will. You’ll take it all.” he kissed her check while reminding her steadily.

Then he snapped his hips up to meet hers in a powerful pump that tore her right through. She landed flush in his lap, a gush of virgin blood pooling between them, full to the brim with his thick cock nestled inside. Not even a cry let past her lips, just open mouthed shock, as if he’d punched the scream right out of her diaphragm.

Holy shit, his mind supplied, she was the tightest, most spectacularly tight -tightly wet pretty- tight woman. His whole body shook in delight at the wet, moldable grip of her walls, and he held her closer, blessing her for being so perfect, mumbling in between her still clothed breasts that he was gonna ruin her cunt for any other fella.

Elaine recalls just trying to breathe, even while clutching at his shoulders and listening to the filth pour out of his panting mouth, filth that confirmed his confession that he’d had designs on her body long ago. It made her shiver, which rubbed him inside of her and she doubled over into his chest, whimpering at the fullness and the burning sting of her stretched entrance. A thought flashed across her mind that he was mean to make her take all of him, the tip would have done just as well, and now she feels like she’s impaled on a pipe and his hips won’t stop squirming to force it that much deeper. He sounded like he was enjoying himself, maybe even having a vision of heaven buried inside her, and in that alone she took joy and made herself disentangle from him enough to glance down at the marvelous union they’d made.

It made her gasp in awe. She had swallowed him whole with her own body, taken him down to the root, his sack warm and full beneath her petals, absorbed him till there was no longer a he and she in the bed, but merely them. The Presley’s.

“Lord almighty, you’re tighter than hell.” Elvis moaned in appreciation of the absolute restructuring of her privates that he’d just done, gripping her back with his sweaty hands and letting his eyes roll into his skull in ecstasy.

“Tight yes -great balls of fire E, it hurts like hell.” she reiterated, a little petulant over his enjoyment of her wounded kitty, but he could tell even now she was recovering from the initial tearing open. “It’s not, it’s not supposed to -I can’t believe it fit.”

Curious despite herself, Elaine snuck a hand between them and gingerly felt the stretched ring of her hole and the thick base of him where they were flush, dark curls meeting together. He put his hand on top of her own and encouraged her exploration, making her pet herself and making her squeeze him despite the pained whimper she let out each time her pleasure made her please him.

“Jus’ ruinin ya for anyone else.” he repeated and she shivered in his arms, flicking her eyes up to meet his and sensing a beastial sort of claiming in them she had never seen before, “My wife,” he gloried in the title as his hips began to gently rock her in his lap, making her mewl, “my pretty wife, my good wife, look at you takin’ every damn bit of my cock, look at ya makin yourself useful, pleasin your man, ya like pleasin me dontcha? I know ya do, I’ve felt ya shiver when I praised ya before, I feel ya watchin me to make sure I like a thing you do. I know you, ya might not love me but ya love to please me, I know what you want. You wanna please me, always have since I first saw ya. Ya know what pleases me baby?” he tilted her face to his by her chin, her cheeks wet with tears and her mouth panting as he ground inside her deep and hard as granite, ignoring her whimpers -only her eyes showed the wild revelry she was feeling at being spoken to like this, “Know what makes me happiest?”

“No sir.” she gasped, respectful and suddenly aware of how helpless she was in his lap as his huge hands engulfed her plush hips and made her to swivel and grind on him, the motion tugging her lil house apart even more.

“Pleasin’ God by pleasin myself by filling you up. That’s what. That’s what makes me happy” he stated, the look of girlish shock she showed at his language shooting straight to his cock and making him jab up into her body until she clung to his shoulders and wailed, painfully aroused by the concept and terribly hurt by the process.

“Please, please.” she sobbed into his neck as he gripped her ass and leveraged her up and down on his thick shaft, his groans mounting joyously and her body trembling at being used so presumptuously. It’s too much, he’s too much of a man and her womb aches from his thrusts.

“Please use me?” he grinned into her neck wildly, “That wha’ you’re tryin to say, lil one? can’t get it out with a cock in ya, can ya? So yittle I bet I’m clean up through to your throat, ain’t I? My poor lil wifey.”

It was his glutted acknowledgement of the fact he knew she felt like he was spearing her beyond her capacity, yet he wouldn’t stop, loved her too much to stop driving himself into her, making himself fit in her. He wanted to be a part of her so bad he’d grab her wrists and bruise her hip with his grip and snap his pelvis against her own ruthlessly -just so he could be close to her. Just so she would be his.

It had her moan again, this time from something besides pain.

“Elvis.” she moaned out, trying to tell him, to somehow alert him to the fact she was willing and good and could feel her body had begun to give into its natural purpose, she was slumping into his chest, and her pussy still burned and ached but had surrendered to the veiny little conquerer plundering her depths. “Elvis I-I- yes, yes, use me.” she managed and was given a proud and searing kiss in return for her submission. “You’re so pretty.” she said it like it was some dazed explanation for her obedience.

With Elaine’s pussy giving and wet from blood and slick, he knew he could begin in earnest now. So, gently, he tipped her backwards out of his lap again, laying her on the golden sheets and falling deeper inside her as he got back on top, never pulling out through the whole maneuver. Her eyes rolled back as she felt him lay atop her, buried to the hilt, her legs pushed apart to bracket his waist and allow him deeper. She threw her arms around his neck and breathed in like she was about to be dropped on a rollercoaster, some imminent adventure obviously looming as he buried himself deep and got a thorough grip on her shoulders before kissing her ardently.

It was when she was kissing him back and thinking how wonderfully sweet he was that she first felt those famous hips pull back, then drive himself inside of her with shocking precision. It made her cry out, and before she could suck in breath to replace her cry he was pulling out and pumping in again, little gusts of shock mined out of her at each powerful and measured pump and her back began to rub against the bedspread, her whole body seemed to shake from the force of absorbing his vigor.

“Thank me.” he required, aiming to find that spot that had made her spray his face, determined to wipe that pained grimace off her face and replace it with pleasure.

“Thank -thank you?” her tone was dazed and he wasn’t sure if her confusion stemmed from what she was supposed to be grateful for, or if she disagreed. She gripped the comforter, hands above her head and out to the side, absorbing the ripple he drove into her flesh.

“I've made ya a woman.” he reminded, proud and smug as only a 23 year old boy can be when tumbling his pretty young bride in the sheets beneath him, “So thank me.”

She pensively watched him as he swayed above her, blocking out the gaudy chandelier, his hair flopping into his eyes and moving with the cadence of his body, his body was unforgiving and driving into hers with a steady, slow beat, but his face was still desperately insecure, searching for approval and a hint that he was doing well. She loosened one hand from the counterpane and brought it to his cheek. He melted, a huffed out whimper of his own, in sharp contrast to the rigid power of his desire.

“Sweet man.” she whispered, “So good to me, always so good to me.” she assured, and he gave her a wet kiss full of wanting, letting her pet down his neck, over his back, stroking the swell of his flank, remembering the reaction it had elicited in him and figuring she’d thank him once he managed something worthy of it. Which he was very close to doing, she sensed, if he could relax himself. “Elvis,” she nuzzled his nose with hers, propping herself up on her forearms, to look down the length of her belly at the place where he speared her, “gimme those babies, and I’ll thank ya.”

Her daring grin had the intended effect, his nostrils flared as he heaved in a breath and his pupils blew wide, he pried her other hand from the bedding and interlaced it in his much larger one, pressing the knuckles to the mattress,

“I love you.” he swore before gripping her hip and tilting her pelvis off the bed, to the angle of his satisfaction before he drove his hips in with the purpose of finding that place that made her wild, the one his fingers had discovered and got her to spray for him.

He knew he’d brushed it when her face went from sweet compliance with the discomfort and placid curiosity for the proceedings to eyelash fluttering shock.

“E!” she gusted out urgently and a little unsure, unsure that this horrid taking of him could really be morphing into the spine tingling thrill she was now feeling each time he drove in, the tug and ache of his size still apparent but almost serving to heighten the aliveness of her feelings down there. “Right -right there it’s, it’s oh, it’s-“ she hadn’t a word for it, as the feeling was growing in strength and any moment there might be some shift that turned it back to pain, his speed was picking up and it scared her as much as it excited her. Like when he started speeding on the winding roads of North Carolina just to hear her shriek, conflicted between excitement and fear.

“Yeah?” he huffed, shining with sweat and heat above her, his hair darkened and his eyes darkened and his lips darkened and he- he looked so flushed and dark and decadent and she moaned at the sight of so beautiful a creature possessing her, pleasuring himself with her body, like any animal or male would do with a mate. He could have just hunted her down on a forest floor, chosen her for her scent alone, pinned her fist to the ground and her hips up to his pelvis and -it was that primal. She loved it. Like all the energy and raw potency of life he had in him when performing was now being driven into her aching belly. “Yeah? Yeah that’s where ya like it? Tell me how ya like it, jus’ tell me and I’ll do anything. Anyhtin’ for ya, Elaine. I done told ya, told ya I’d make it nice.”

Nice was a pathetic word for what he was making her feel and she found herself wishing she had an extra hand to stifle the sounds that began to wail out of her throat at his unforgiving depth. His own moans and breaths were shuttering across her face and the intimacy of what they were doing filled her with a serene joy she’d only felt on crisp, tea drinking early dawns in autumn. It made her squeeze him closer and she could just feel the comfort he took in it, his whole body melding to hers. Elvis’ slow and long pumps had her adjusting well and the unerring accuracy he maintained when noticing something she liked soon had her clenching from pleasure rather than pain.

“You’re in me.” she stated the obvious with a little shock in her voice, turned silly beneath him as he shuddered and pumped in her, “Oh god you’re in me, and, and it’s, it’s -you’re so good at this…”

There was a kind God above after all, and she let out a giggle at the joy of it, at the joy of taking Elvis Presley to the hilt like she’d been born to do. The pride on his face came through the feral pleasure painting it, his hands beginning to map her own body, feeling the jiggle and give of her as he fucked her up the length of the bed, shock coming across his own features as he registered something new that first made a flash of panic burn through him.

He was in her, entirely bareback. And, well, he knew that of course but suddenly, the mind bending intensity of sensations around his cock made sense. It was the first time he’d been inside a woman without a barrier, no condom to distract from her silky grip, his precum gushing and spluttering, slicking up the way for his cock to drive in, turning their love making into a lewd cacophony of sounds that made the man in him exult. It’s my wife, he reminds himself both jubilantly but also to keep the reflexive panic of going in raw at bay, it’s my wife and I need to give her babies. To keep her I gotta fill her up.

“Look at that perfect face.” he groaned aloud to himself, and he meant Elaine’s “taking-cock” face, which he had imagined a million times, but her open mouthed, eye fluttering, hands in hair image below him was the most erotic thing he’d ever seen in all his life, “Look at that perfect fuckin lil face.” he repeated as he forced himself in her all the way, bumping at her crevice and making her let out some form of sob.

“Y-you’re in deep enough?” she gasped out an inquiry, suddenly able to recall what this was all for, accepting of her purpose and close to feral in desire to accomplish it well.

“Ya can take more?” He asked, truly about to lose all grip on himself and wanting her blessing for it, “Gonna lemme get deep, baby? Make me a daddy, hmm? Gonna make me a daddy?”

He sped up with each sentence, her frantic nods and her “yes, yes Elvis, give me more, all of you!” spurring him on till he was driving into her and making those gorgeous breasts of her’s bounce wildly beneath her much abused silk nighty. “Get it deep, please, please get it deep.”

In theory he knew she wanted his swimmer's up past the cake she ate, his own perverted lesson suddenly coming back to bite him with a vengeance as her pleas sent him careening towards his own orgasm faster than he had any intention of blowing. But he was a man, and all his cock heard was “deeper.” And so he drove in deeper and harder.

“S’good.” she continued and her perfect diction was now slurred, her tongue heavy in her mouth and nothing but Elvis Elvis Elvis in her view and in her mind and in her body. “Gonna be good, it’s so good I-come on E, gimme those babies, please please, yes, you’re so good to me.” she was looking up at him in awe, her body spasming and shaking so hard he wasn’t sure if she was coming constantly or having one terribly intense build up. The sweet darling certainly had no clue, and that thought made him grip Elaine harder and he felt his mind grow hazy at her praise, “Elvis you’re, you’re so pretty like this!” she cried out, her neck strained as she clasped her hands around his face and stared deep into his eyes as he plowed her, those carmel colored eyes holding an intensity he’d never seen in a woman.

It shook him to the core and plunged him somewhere deep and subservient, the world felt like it was tilting and he was fading to a place where he was a pretty boy and a useful stud and he-

“Fuck! Elaine you-“ he wanted to tell her she couldn’t, she couldn’t say such things to him, it would turn him mindless, he knew the symptoms. He’d no longer be the strong husband she needed but her goddamn slave, a whimpering pathetic mess. He was going to come.

He pulled out abruptly, and as if his cock stuffing her pussy was filling the whole of her with strength, like a doll with batting. she deflated against the bed in confusion at the sudden halt and withdrawal.

“Baby?” she questioned him in a forlorn whimper, her entire consciousness begging for more as he patted her thighs soothingly and fought to grapple his sanity back in place. He couldn’t slip and turn ‘little’ tonight, he simply wasn’t able to do that to Elaine. He stared down at her freshly gaping little hole and swore he didn’t mean to be an ass, but he was just a man, and she was his wife to do with what he wanted. She wanted his babies, and she didn’t know better than to let him do whatever it took to give her that. And right now, he couldn’t handle the adoring looks and innocent dirty talk pouring out of the mouth of a virtuous girl he had long harbored such obscene intentions for. It turned him very desperate and perhaps a little mean.

“Forgive me, mama.” he muttered when leaning over Elaine and kissing her hard before he gripped his bride’s delicate waist and flipped her onto her knees. “It’s better for breeding this way.” he gritted out at her confused gasps, palming her ass where her slip had ridden up to expose her. He lined himself up with her pussy and watched with savage enjoyment as his girth slowly stretched her pretty pink rim beyond all seeming capacity and her following whimpers were music to his ears, her trill of confused enjoyment as he slid to the full, the cutest thing imaginable.

Immediately she missed the sweet intimacy of his embrace, the pleasurable sight of his face above her, also. And this angle, this method, it was deeper and tugged again at the petals of her house that had just gotten used to his usage. She thought to object, to tell him she didn’t like it this way -he had told her to tell him what she liked. She assumed, hoped, that stood for what she didn’t like, as well.

Elvis is a good boy, she heard her father say in her head, Elvis is a good boy -even as this good boy lined his inordinate organ up with her sore little place and thrust inside again. She was going to have to tell him she didn’t like it this way.

That is, until she lifted her head from the sheets he had tossed her in, belly first and face down, and noticed the mirror hanging opposite them. In it she saw a perfect view of her own face, a face she knew but hardly recognized, so…matured…was it in the gilt reflection. Her face was flushed and richly colored and her mouth gaping like one of those steamy movie posters where the woman has succumbed to the man’s embrace-and god knows whatever else it was the man was doing to her below the waist where the posters always seemed to cut off. The man was snapping his hips to push himself inside the woman, that’s what they were all doing. Now she knew, and she watched enthralled as Elvis mounted her from behind like a damn stallion, his broad hand gripping her shoulder and yanking her back against him as he snapped forward, the other fiddling under her hemline until he found her little button and began to play.

Nevermind, she thought, focusing on trying to breathe as he began to set a demanding pace again, pain and pleasure in this act equal parts for her as she propped up on her forearms and watched him watch what he was doing to her virgin hole, -nevermind he can keep at it, she decided.

His calloused fingers were petting and swirling and tugging so perfectly in her little nub in time with his strokes she began to happily anticipate the next thrust, rocking back on her own accord, feeling the bliss build again but this time stronger than what he had given her before with his mouth. In the mirror she could see how the strap of her slip had fallen off her shoulder and now lay partway down her arm, her gaping neckline now exposing a whole breast showing how it jiggled obscenely with each of his movements. It made her cheeks burn.

Elaine tried to right the strap but holding herself up with one arm made her nearly wobble face first into the sheets again and it made him lose his rhythm and suddenly it was entirely too good like that, face in the bed and hips propped up, and she needed that hand to stifle her shrieks of pleasure as he pounded into her without a hitch at the new position.

“Ya like it like that, hmm?“ he gritted out as she folded and screamed beneath him, speeding his fingers up on her clit as her thighs began to clamp shut. “God look at these hips, anythin’ but cradlin’ babies would be a goddamn waste of ‘em.” he squeezed at their plush width while yanking her back on him again and again.

“T-t-they’re gonna hear me.” she wailed once, and he realized she meant the guests downstairs, that once she realized that he wasn’t going to stop just because her pleasure had her in a place where she could no longer be in possession of herself, she had begun to fear for their reputation.

“Let ‘em.” he growled, taking his wet hand from between her thighs and running it up the length of her bowed spin, relishing the way she was drenching his thighs too, “They all know what I’m doin’ to ya. They knew what you were signin’ up for, even if you didn’t.” that thought made his balls tingle and he knew he close, that and the fact Elaine’s had her pretty little face barely propped up enough to watch them in mirror, watching as he plowed her from the back in tear stained, shocked, pleasured obedience to his wants, “Whole world’s gonna know what a good wifey you are, soon enough. They’re gonna see ya swellin and fillin out and they’re gonna know how good you are for me, how well ya take me, how much ya enjoy splittin’ yourself on my cock.”

“Oh God!” she screamed at the thought and at the thrill of his praise and buried her face into the golden bedding in abject submission and ecstasy, no longer able to compute the image of her dear, sweet Elvis mounting her body and snarling in pleasure in the mirror as he used her to chase his relief.

Elaine, to his lust clouded mind, had the prettiest ass on earth and it filled his hands perfectly, and her overstimulated shrieks and mewls and squeals sounded every damn bit like a Disney Princess. And somehow, that thought really did it for him.

Elvis hadn’t given it a lot of thought before, mind ya, hadnt spent time contemplating what it would be like to make Snow White touch her toes while getting skewered or how it would be to push Cinderella’s sweet face into the sheets. But he was pretty sure that if one of those doll-like little ladies had ever been made to take cock after true love's kiss, they’d sound rather like the squeaking little thing writhing beneath him right now.

He jabbed harder just for the fun of that, just for the enjoyment of the fact he was balls deep in a virgin cunt about to blow his load inside a woman for the first time ever. His jabs and swivels and fucks made she squeal more, clinging to the foot of the bed, no rich alto moan left in her with every inch he made her take.

She sounds like Tinkerbell, if Tinkerbell ever had the sweet misfortune to be loved on by Elvis Presley. He grins at the mirror, grins at the bowed figure of his little wife, gives a passing prayer of thanks for this perfect woman he is gonna spend the rest of his life loving in this way.

Take this, Tinkerbell, he thinks excitedly, ramming home once more and feeling himself drain inside her at last in long, pulsing, gushing spurts.

She knew that feeling, she realized in a daze. Yes she had felt it just this night when they were writhing against each other but -this hot gizer of warmth shooting inside her… the porch swing. He had wasted his seed in his pants on the porch swing. He wasted so much wanting her without telling her, it makes her heart ache for him. She spreads her trembling legs apart and tries to wiggle him in deeper, pushing back onto his key as he shudders to a halt, trying to be of help for him, to get it where it needs to go. No more waste. No more pining. It makes him sob and groan as she milks him, her sweet boy returning as he drapes over her back, a boneless weight before gently rolling onto his back and taking her with him, still impaled. A stopper of sorts, to keep it from leaking, from wasting.

There is not a single part of her body that does not tremble, nor of his either, they cling to each other, fully equal in post-coital vulnerability now and try to remember what world they belong in. His hands cradle her lower belly, pressing her close to him and swiping his thumbs along her spine, just as she pets over his arm and nuzzles into the hollow below his throat. She’s so touchy, caressing him and squeezing him like she needs the contact as badly as he does, and it’s exactly what he always wanted, hoped, didn’t dare ask heaven for but he’s got it. She’s here, she’s his.

“You’re my wife.” he marvels, and he is referring twofold to the act that just made her so and he means it wondrously by the way she lov- cares- for him so well. “You make me so happy.” he says against her lips.

“Thank you.” she whispers, cracking open her eyes to see him soft and gentle right there beside her, “For choosing me.”

“Didn’t have a choice.” he croaks, “Never has been a choice with you, I had to have ya, was more your choice than it ever was mine to lemme be yours.”

“You are mine now, aren’t ya.” she muses and he sees the way that thought sparks some life back into her heavy lidded eyes.

It’s good to belong to someone, he thinks, comforted as he brings his mouth down to hers. “Yeah, always, always gonna be yours.”

He kisses her long and slow and she returns it, her body sated beneath his caresses in a way his masculine, virulent one could never be when laying beside her, buried inside her still, newly laying claim. It is a gentle rocking when he begins again, quite helplessly, to move inside her, and she is so busy tugging at his cropped hair and nipping at his lips that she doesn’t seem to notice that they’re swaying vertically until he draws her leg over his hip and begins to drive up again in earnest, her moans a sweet melody she pours into his mouth. It’s quiet this second time and unrushed, and she has grown used to the ache, he thinks he should tell her soon to use the restroom, but he’ll have to take his fill again first.

He wonders when he’ll find the time to tell her to go between telling her he loves her. She asks him if they can do this often.

“Bout as often as we can manage.” Tumbled out of his lips happily.

“And how often’s that?” she urged him breathily, her eyes losing focus they were so close to his own.

“Enough times to lose count, Laney.” he promised, “Gotta fill ya up, best we can. Gotta be diligent.”

There was no soaring crescendo to this session, he merely clutched at her harder on one lazy upstroke, her fingernail had caught his nipple and zapped him straight to heaven like a thunderbolt to the frenulum. And then she felt him spilling inside again. Warm and hot and soothing the battering of her walls. His fingers took hers and pulled them down between her legs to pet the damage again, smearing him around like ointment on a wound. They had acted married twice now, she figured. They’d done marriage twice. The second she had liked even better than the first as he held her all the while, even though no searing height had happened to her.

“When you were with other girls,” she whispered into his chest later as they dozed between bouts of kissing and cuddling, “this isn’t -you didn’t…” she faltered for a moment before lifting her face to gaze down at him with warmth and gentle pleading, “-you didn’t do this with them, did you? You don’t act married with them, right?”

Perhaps most men would have chosen to lie. Elvis had no need despite his experience and his reputation. He had, a dozen or a hundred times, wrapped himself in latex and put it in a dozen or hundred women, some he cared for genuinely and some who were life preservers in a sea of lonely travels, but he’d never acted married. He’d never done this sort of intimacy before. He figured he was practically a virgin too, in that sorta way. In making love with the intention to bind himself, trap himself forever to one single soul. It ought to have been terrifying, that commitment, but feeling himself drip out of Elaine into the cradle of his hips he just felt right, like he was home. Like he’d just given himself to someone who actually wanted him. “No honey, I didn’t act married with any of ‘em. You’re the only one who gets my seed. I swear, really I do, now or ever.”

She could tell he meant that promise, and now he’d taught her how to express herself in this new language, she thanked him the only way she knew how, by gleefully rolling atop him again. It was a language she realized she was seeking most of her life, ever since anger and joy and want had flared in her and had been summarily instructed to be curtailed.

Propriety. Mildness. Rise above it all. She was good at the art of it all, and had been praised for it. Yet here was a man who coaxed vehemence out of her, taught her to inflict it on his body, who found pleasure in this grappling, wrestling, messy way that made such sense to her now she had found it.

I could love you, I’m going to love you, I’m very much in danger of loving you, was said with each swivel of her hips and lick of her tongue down his neck. “Oh Elvis.” sounded sweetly in his ear as he bounced her like a doll in his lap and made her fall apart.

Elvis had kissed her temple as he panted his breath back in again. Kept himself plugged in as long as possible till he shrank to nothing and slipped out. His destructive cock a now harmless, wet little thing that she cooed at in a most embarrassing way for him, but he was too happy with her laying on his chest to protest the curious fondling she gave his sensitive cock.

“This new house by Fort Hood, the one that agents of your’s got us,” he had murmured huskily while swigging from the chilled bottles of water retrieved from the mini fridge -with Elaine riding on his back to the closet and then the bed again, refusing to be apart, “it’s got a split layout, ya see. Top and bottom floor’s got a kitchenette, might not be the easiest for cookin’ but it’ll give us -space.” he assured, and she bit her lip imagining what he’d want the privacy for. “Wouldn’t ya rather a lil privacy ‘stead of a big ole countertop? I-I-if not I-I can-“

“Sounds perfect.” she sighed dreamily, thinking about making him meals and him coming home to eat them, gallant and lean in his pressed uniform. “You’re real handsome in your uniform, ya know that?” she figured it didn’t hurt to admit it, her man seemed to thrive off compliments from her, and he never did seem to get a big head from them. Except for the other little head that twitched and swelled at any compliment at all.

It was getting late, or early more like, and as she felt his interest grow yet again, Elaine played at denial. A silly, jokingly, little sort of thing where she wriggled away from his grabby hands and tried to make it out of the bed -headed to god knows where, the champagne bottle or the record player or downstairs, she didn’t know as she had no real intention of fleeing. But being seized from the back by her husband and playfully thrown back on his bed, made to sprawl out on the corner of the mattress , her legs hanging apart and her pathetic little slip still hanging onto her modesty for dear life, it was rather thrilling the way he had muttered,

“Oh no ya don’t, good lil wives don’t run.” and put himself back into her overused body, relishing her moan at his first thrust in and the fucked out compliance of the grinning girl beneath him. “I wanna see my pretty wife’s tits,” he asked as he watched them bouncing and jiggling with each absorbed fuck, “C’mon baby, be good and lemme see those pretty pillas of mine, you won’t deny me will ya? Come on, baby, so pretty, so round, gonna make ‘em blow up soon enough, whole world’ll notice ‘em. I wanna be the first to see ‘em before it. Up we go, lemme, come on yittle one, thas it, lift it up.”

He watched as this woman of his who was currently impaled on his cock blushed and smiled and bashfully pulled up her slip till her buttermilk soft mounds were bare, pink nipples pebbled and a scared, hopeful look on her face as her slip bunched at her clavicle.

“Goddamn, I’m a lucky man.” he had groaned and not missed her relieved smile. Then playfully flicked the slip up and over to hide her bright red face before folding himself enough to suck on a rosy little nipple while pistoning in and out. Soft, pliable flesh giving beneath the weight of his jaw and the nudge of his nose.

It was bizarre to Elaine, her sight obscured by the slip, her breathing hampered by the same, sound and feeling her chief senses this time. Just the sounds of him enjoying himself alone had a warm feeling curling in her chest and her belly, too, his hums and groans sending delightful zaps through her previously respectfully ignored nipples. His hands running up and down her ribcage, sometimes seizing her waist to pull her on him, sometimes fluttering over her diaphragm to feel himself moving within, nearly up her lungs he felt.

She felt as if she had finally been given privacy in which to truly feel and enjoy this, veiled by her own last shred of modesty, she let herself feel -and what she felt was astounding. She felt cherished. And she felt ravaged. And as if no one was here or anywhere on this earth to judge the way she screamed in delight, she yelled it and heard him answer her:

“that’s it, lemme hear ya” his teeth snapping at her nipples as he talked around them with his movements causing him to miss, sparking a fresh wave of noise to humidify the satin covering her face,

“Oh god, oh god, oh god.”

She chanted in happy panic as her legs drew up on their own, up and up and trying to close against the delicious onslaught, only to realize too late that it made the fit even tighter, the friction even stronger, the glint in her husband’s eyes wilder. He pinned them to her chest, with a single hand, to keep them out of the way. Slapped at her clit instead, made her scream in a way he didn’t think she was capable. Thought about doing it twenty years from now, thought about how he’d have the rest of his life to make his Tinkerbell scream. He slapped her there again and this time no scream, just a hissed in breath that had no exhale, her whole body clamping up in rigid ecstasy, tightening so strongly he couldn’t even keep his thrusts going to help her through.

Almost alarmed by her lack of breathing, he thought to pull at her slip, up and over her head till her face was visible again -she looked as if she were in some great agony, and his smug heart flipped at the sight, before leaning down to kiss her.

He was all chestnut hair aglow, wicked dark eyes and sweet lips, hovering down into her hazy view and her body wasn’t her own anymore, the damage had been done and the cliff she was teetering on gave way beneath her sanity when his lips met hers, his warm chest rubbing against her spit chilled nipples. For the second time that night she sprayed him, and through the eye rolling, rapturous tingle of it she heard him asking if she was “coming.”

“Oh goddamn, goddamn look a’that, oh fuck me sideways that’s hot as hell.” he blabbered, pulling out just long enough to wiggle his cockhead against her petals and force another jet out, coating his own abs with it, relishing the way her belly shook and her legs clamped together straight in the air, her hands clawing at the slip like she was trying to fight her way out. “Sweet Jesus you’re so sensitive.” he praised, pushing back in despite her hiss, and the way her feet tried to plant themselves on his shoulders to push him away. “Gotta lemme back in darlin’, I got another deposit to make.” he joked, loving the way she was clawing and wiggling away from him on pure, over fucked insinct, red painted nails dug deep enough to rip into the gold bedding. “Come on, be good, be good for me, lemme in baby, lemme in , doin’ so good, so good I know you’re so damn full, just a lil more, lil more. Don’t want any to go to waste do ya?”

He was wicked for using those magic words to make the shaking girl open up and let him in again, but he made up for it by the kisses, he felt, and in praise, and promising her if she stayed good she’d have those babies. Careening headlong towards another orgasm of his own with the sounds she was making and the lewd squelch of how wet she was down there, downright squelching with all his contributions and her own slick, he swore she was everything he’d ever dreamed of. She smiled at that.

“I’m gonna come.” he promised her almost in a beg, pleading for her to understand why he sped up and started to pound her again in earnest, erratic thrusts.

“W-whats coming?” she whined, her eyes screwed shut and her thighs shivering beneath his shoulders, “Y-you’re already here…”

The more he drained his balls, the more his mind seemed to leave him as well, all catered sentences and prim vocabulary gone straight out the window with his last shred of self restraint. “This-is-comin-“ he punctuated as he drove himself in, then felt his balls draw up and try to offer up residual bits of spunk but nothing seemed to come out. Served him right how white hot and painful it felt, sputtering dry inside her. He hoped she didn’t notice the deposit was a blank check. Also hoped she didn’t hear the pathetic whimper he’d let out as lil Elvis heaved his last attempt at it. By the way she was humming and petting at his hair, cradling him gently as he sagged atop her on the corner of the bed -he was afraid she’d heard and felt it all.

“Why’s it called that?” she whispered in his ear, and he wondered that she had any energy at all.

He burrowed his face deeper into her neck and mumbled, “Damned if I know, darlin.” he thought on it a little while longer while also thinking of the drip, drip, drip of their mess melting between them, “Unless it’s cause it makes ya feel like you’re havin a ‘come to God moment’, ya know?” he suggested and laughed when he felt her poking his cheek. “Do ya- do ya like it when…when ya-“ he couldn’t manage it now in the gentle afterglow, starting to get a chill after all his sweaty exertion cooled and left behind clammy skin and pooled secretions, feeling how naked and soft and lonely he was suddenly upon feeling sated for the first time tonight.

“Can we really do this as often as we want?” she asked instead, and her tone held no dread in it, only hopeful excitement. Suddenly the lonesomeness was gone again.

He felt her hands stroking his back and down to his ass again and he had giggled happily, not able to hold back his relief. “Yes, darlin.”

“Gosh.” she mused, petting him still, “To think I-I didn’t know about this and now it’s…” he propped up his chin on his hands to give her an inquiring look, begging her to finish, “it’s all I wanna do now.”

“That so?” he quirked his eyebrow and she flushed and began to shake her head, her tone pleading:

“Oh, not now, not right now -oh, please, please E, I’ll die if ya do, give me a minute.” she laughed and kissed him again.

“We should sleep.” he mused, half asleep already, pillowed on her boobs, his legs still technically still standing him upright as his upper body lay across the bed, across his new wife. “And bathe.” he realized.

“It’s very sloppy.” she agreed, and the thought of how uncomfortable she must be, stuffed with a half a dozen or more cum shots roused him to action.

He picked Elaine up bridal style and carried his now gloriously naked woman into the en-suite bathroom, seating her on the chilled marble countertop and grinning at the way she melted, spineless and used against the mirror, a soft smile lighting her dear face.

She liked watching his long lean, boyish figure, hard in some places and soft in others, strangely inviting in its combinations, ripple and flex as he bent and turned on the tub faucets, snagging gold embossed towels off the rack.

E.P. they read, gold thread glowing on the black cotton.

E.P.

For the both of them. It could be for either of them, it probably had been in his mind when he’d had them made, stocked his home full of monogrammed luxuries with her future initials on them E.P. --and all the while she had been fretting of dying a loveless old maid.

She laughed happily and found she couldn’t stop, catching sight of his embossed robe, hung on the door with the same initials. E.P. She was wanted, she was so very wanted here with him. It made her slide her jellied legs off the counter and hug him ferociously from behind, pressing kisses into his spine, and the freckles that smattered his shoulder blades.

“E.P.” she whispered and he got what she meant, turning round and grinning at her.

Once in the bath she dozed in his arms, near suffocated by bubbles and relishing his embrace, the warm water and his massaging hands soothing the ache between her legs.

“We haven’t washed the babies out have we?” she asked, groggily staring into the receding bath water as he tenderly toweled her off once stepping out of the tub. “I-I-I want those babies.“ she insisted and it must’ve been the lateness of the hour or the sheer amount of muchness she had been subjected to tonight but her lip started to wobble at the idea she’d carelessly risked her hopes down the drain, swirling away with the last of the bubbles. “Elvis I-I- didn’t mean to rinse them out!” she wailed, near hysterical with fatigue.

He tried assuring her but she wasn’t easily pacified. “I-I could give ya more.” he finally offered timidly, entirely uncertain either of them were capable of enduring another round.

He was toweling off her calves as he said it, pressing kisses to her knees and noticing the tremors in her thighs. To his shock she dropped to her knees beside him on the bathmat, eyes half mast and nearly insane looking in their fatigued determination,

“Please, please give it another try.” she nodded before spinning around on the bathmat, shakily swift and presenting him with her shapely ass.

‘Better for breeding this way’, came back to mind. God she was a quick study, and he prayed for strength and some shred of self restraint in indulging her. Instead, he found himself burying his face between her cheeks and licking at her devotedly, afraid they may have washed her slick away and worrying the burn of entry would be too much for her, fresh out of the tub and swollen from overuse as she was. No woman had let him do it this way, his face near buried in her bath warmed ass and his tongue kitten licking at her slick hole, but Elaine bore it with decorous appreciation, entirely unaware of being anything but eager in her responses, her spine arched and a rosy cheek pillowed on her forearms. Her yittle hand came down to pet Elvis’ diligent head as he worked between her legs.

“That’s it, I love it, E, like that, I love it when you…” she was mumbling in a slurred litany of praise he gobbled up ravenously, just like he did the shuddering little trickles of sweetness he coaxed out of her. “I’m -I’m, yeah yeah-“ he felt her grind down on his face as she shook again, and then it was as if the top half of her body nearly melted into the mat, just his hands keeping her ass in the air. “Please put it in.” she whispered, her hand still down there between her legs and reaching for something else of his now, her tone so soft and polite, like Cinderella asking for cock.

He aimed his cock into her waiting hand and watched with barely suppressed desire as her palm rolled over the rip and her nails gently raked across his veins as she moved to grip him and point him where she wanted him. There was a lewd sucking noise this time when he went in, like her body was finally trying to swallow him willingly, and he saw her head toss on the mat, dainty fingers woven into gold shag and her neck craned back to see him as he pressed in deep. Her face was flushed deep red and the makeup had worn off and she looked so innocent, so young beneath him, a single curl plastered dark and wet against her cheek from the bath. He’d unmade her, turned her back to her simplest form. He snapped his hips, lost his mind, noticed happily how her hand went to her hip and joined his there. He held onto it like a handle and jerked her back on him again and again, her cheek rubbing against the mat and her teeth sinking into her other fist to hush her cries. Those cries of hers, maybe something was very sick inside him that he liked them so much but he did, he did and he worked hard to draw more from her just as he dreamed of this, dreamed of her fluttering pink hole trying to take more and her eyes rolling back from the fatigue of it, her body unable to deny him.

“My poor belly,” he thought he heard her whimper, yet unsure he reached down and pulled her fist away from her mouth, it pushed him deeper in, bent her more starkly, speared her cervix, “Oh god, my belly, my poor belly.” she kept saying for sure this time.

“You alright, Lany?” he draped over her and brushed the damp strands off her face, her face that was red and splotchy from sensation and blood flow. She gave him a whimpering nod.

“You’resodeep” she accused him even as he felt her squeeze and shake around his girth, her mouth gaping for a brief moment at the unexpected little pleasure. “My poor belly.” she said it over and over again and he couldn’t stop. It was more just a bewildered mantra to comfort herself, as her mind betrayed her and wanted him but her body was so well used that was she was just…taking it

“You poor little thing,” he cooed, making sure to move slow and deep in a way that had them both shaking and stepping into madness, bent all over her bent frame himself, “you’re takin’ my cock so well, so obedient, never was a more righteous wife, never was, you’re a goddamn wonder, that’s what you are. I’ll thank God for ya every day.”

His praise always soothed her and he kept it up, not even sure what he was saying anymore as he chased his own release, focused on the bent little thing beneath him and the way it made her waist look minuscule in this position, her pink face, too. At one point he saw tears instead of bath splash on her face and as he felt himself begin to spurt he shushed her the best he could with the first thing that came to mind:

“Don’t cry Tink, please don’t cry.”

The nickname tickled her consciousness like a feather on the neck, some goosey thrill that tickled up her spine and added to the satisfied throb between her legs as he splashed hot and thick inside her.

“Tink?” she thought she had asked him, bewildered and charmed to have been christened. Maybe her words got lost in the bath mat.

He did not answer her, must’ve not heard her at all, but picked her up with his own shaking arms and like a couple of bambi's they toddled into the massive bed, throwing themselves under the covers quite unceremoniously. He tried to swat at the lamp as if that would turn it off, and realizing she was the more capable of the two -he seemed almost insensibley drained by that last encounter- she leaned over his chest and pulled at the lamp string, dousing the glow that surrounded them, only to realize dawn was splashing a violet haze through the crack of the window curtains.

“Good morning, Mrs. Presley.” he had teased softly, noticing the dawn too, his head tilted on the pillow to watch her shut off the lamp.

“Good morning, husband.” she murmured, wriggling on top of him as he held her fast, arms locked over her back and her head pillowed on his chest.

This cuddling was familiar, this drowsy holding of each other until he stilled and fell asleep, an art she had perfected since his mama died. But now she was the woman in his life, and strangely now that the hunger had been glutted and abated, they entwined around each other like babes or twins in a womb, this naked closeness the most natural of assurance in the world. Something Elvis had been missing since his brother had left him, since Jesse entered the world before him and chose not to stay and endure it with him, fell into place.

My sister! My spouse! -King Solomon had called his lover, and Elvis had felt that supremely odd when snooping through the Song of Songs as a boy. But now he knew -too many roles did she fill to be confined to one, and Elvis felt tempted as Elaine fell asleep atop him to whisper, “my brother, my spouse!” into her hair.

Sometime later, when deep unconscious, dreamless sleep had possessed them and held them fast, but not a long enough time for Elvis to be remotely cheerful about it, a obnoxious clanging sound broke in on their peaceful repose. Elaine jerked awake atop him with a startled little squeak and he put his hand to the back of her head to shush her, encouraging her to lay her cheek back on his shoulder. The noise resounded again and this time he was lucid enough to determine it was coming from outside the bedroom door.

Clang-a-lang-a-lang-clang-a-lang

Elaine huffed and rubbed her tired face into his chest, his sparse hairs there tickling her nose and making her sneeze. That made him laugh and with neither able to keep up the pretense of sleep, they raised their heads and looked towards the door with matching, raised and unimpressed eyebrows of displeasure.

“If this is the boys idea of a practical joke,” he growled with sleepy morning grit in his voice, “they won’t be boys much longer.”

“Will ya put them in boxes and give them to me?” she inquired and he realized with a self satisfied smirk that her melodic voice had gone hoarse from all the screaming he’d made her do the night before.

“Heavens Mrs. Presley,” he marveled, “ya sure have gotten comfy askin’ for things -I like it.”

“I could think of a thing or two I want right now.” she bit her lip and her eyes slanted hungrily and some scared part of him that worried she wouldn’t want this as much as he did got buried teen feet below the earth, locked away forever.

“Breakfast?” he acted dumb even as she propped herself up on his chest and gingerly tried rolling her hips along his thickening shaft, hissing at the soreness of her own petals.

The sheets falling away from her and pooling round her hips like some goddess that had condescended to come down to earth and make use of her spied after Adonis, Elaine was ethereal and happy and Elvis sank his head back into the pillow and watched her, wishing to pinch himself but the roll of his foreskin against her bud told him it was real. “Breakfast and water, breath mints and fresh air-“ she listed while speeding up and causing his cock to begin to weep and slick her way along-

Clang-a-lang-a-lang-clang-a-lang

“What?” he yelled fearsomely at the door and she shivered in spooked delight at his temper.

“I’m comin’ in wi’ breakfast,” came Mary’s unmistakable drawl through the door and to his horror he watched the gilt knob begin to turn, “y’all’s best disentangle yo’selves cause I done waited till two in the afternoon to feed yous, and I ain’t taking chances for waitin’ any longer-“ Mary stepped into the room about at the same second Elaine accomplished a dismount and roll that the would have made the marine corps proud, diving beneath the covers, only a bride sized lump to be seen by the cook as she came in with a heavy laden tray, her ingenious cowbell left behind in the hall. “Lawd Mr. Elvis, you’re wearing that loved on look just nicely, if you’ll lemme say so.” she admired his marital blush and scratched shoulders as only a proud auntie could, “Miss Elaine, you best come outta ‘der, I got bagels and cream cheese, jus’ as you like.”

“Oh Mary, you didn’t!” Came Elaine’s moan of appreciation beneath the bedding and it was altogether too close to his pelvis for Elvis’ sanity, “You’re much too good to us, you know that?” Elaine wriggled till just her head peeked out and bestowed on Mary a smile of such adoration the lady forgot the ache in her arms from carrying the tray upstairs.

“Yeas, well, wouldn't do to have y’all’s dying of malnourishment.” she huffed bashfully patting Elvis’ beet red cheeks while unconsciously setting the trey in his stiff lap.

He groaned. In appreciation for the eggs and burnt bacon, Elaine had to presume.

“Don’t you take your fill again till you’ve taken your fill, you get what I mean?” she wagged her fingers at them, first at Elvis, then at his bride as if she was second guessing who here was the more likely instigator, the groom seemingly meek and the bride grinning altogether too widely than was proper. Delighted, Mary couldn’t help her matching one, “Eat up.” She nodded, backing away while eying them suspiciously, as if at any minute they might overturn her carefully prepared victuals and begin to maul eachother anew.

“Wouldn’t think of letting it get cold!” Elvis assured her adamantly and to prove his point, stuck a bagel into his bride's mouth before getting into the eggs himself.

Satisfied, Mary left them and shut the door. They heard when she picked up her cowbell and the retreating sound of her footsteps down the hall assured Elvis it was safe. He moved the platter off his lap as if it were scorching him, flinging the offending sheets off his erection and patting his thighs, jerking his chin at a wide eyed Elaine.

“I’m a very talented man, I’ll have ya know,” he told her as she settled in his lap, his chest pressed to her back, “I can feed and fill ya at the same time.”

“So,” she began genially as she wiggled him in and got comfy, sucking cream cheese off his fingers and taking advantage of his compromised blood flow, “Is Tinkerbell gonna my nickname?”

Elvis choked on his bacon, and proceeded to cough into a pillow case. “I’ve no idea what you're on about.” he denied.

“Hey,” she grinned at him without wavering, “if you can enjoy splitting me in half, I can enjoy a nickname that outs ya for bein’ a lil nasty about it, hmm?” and she chucked his chin.

She -she had a point, Elvis supposed. “Sure, Tink, whatever you say, Tink.” he droned.

Masterlist

Taglist

@paradsol000

@eliseinmemphis

@prompted-wordsmith

@ab4eva

@foreverdolly

@powerofelvis

@butlersxbirdy

@crash-and-cure

@elvisabutler

@heartbrake-hotel

@stylespresleyhearted

@thatbanditqueen

@crazymadpassionatelove

@myradiaz

@ash-omalley

@whatstruthgottadowithit

@arianatheangelgirl

@steph-speaks

@burningloverdoll

@angelface-555

@lookingforrainbows

@missmaywemeetagain

@coolgirl462

@kingdomforapony

@18lkpeters

@richardslady121

@from-memphis-with-love

@lillypink

@artlover8992

@pennyroyalcreep

@notstefaniepresley

@ellie-24

@renaissingle

@waiting4brucewayne2adoptme

@presleyenterprise

[gallifreyianrosearkytiorsusan]

All Your Fault

Next

Author's note: I got the Bully Cato Sicarius Fleas. I've read the fics and they are good. I hope I got his character right.

Warnings: Bullying behavior, verbal bullying, Power Imbalance, Cato's Sparkling Personality. uh let me know if I need to add more.

Summary: You are just a Serf, and one day gain the attention of the Captain of the Second Company of Ultramarines. It's not a good thing. Just what did you do to upset him so?

Tagged: @sleepyfan-blog, @i-am-a-dragon34, @egrets-not-regrets, @gra93fruit-blog

You were born and raised near your family's farm on Calth. You had grown up hearing about the Glory and Wonder of the Imperium and how very Lucky you and the other citizens of Ultramar are to have the protection of the Mighty and Noble Ultramarines. 

You had heard stories of how some of the stronger boys in your farming community were blessed with the chance to become Ultramarines. But that had been a few generations ago when the farming community had a poor harvest and they had to give people as part of the tithe more than finished and raw farming goods. 

You bite your lower lip a little as you continue to pull weeds and tend to the section of the fields You had assigned to you to work on. There has been a bad drought that has made the usually high yield farm rather lacking. You have heard your parents and the local town leaders talking about it. 

With the Tithe Coming within a few short weeks, and a lack of agricultural goods. They had been arguing over who to send as tribute and part of the tithe. As a farming community it was heavily encouraged to have multiple children for a variety of reasons. 

The families with more children got tax breaks and help from the centralized government for Healthcare, child rearing and daycare. As well as cheap, decent quality education and help with feeding and funding Children born and continued growing. You were one of seven children and are among the middle of the pack. 

You are full grown, but due to circumstances still stuck at the family farm, working on it rather than having your own place to live. While volunteers are preferred a lottery was going to be set in place for the whole community to gather and those of a certain age range were going to be the most targeted for the Tithe-ing. 

You are in that age range, you aren't sure if you want to be one of those chosen to go. Whether it is into the Astra Militarum, Chapter Serf, or into a different part of governmental service. If it happens, you will do your duty and say your goodbyes to your loved ones. 

The sinking sensation that you felt proved true five weeks later when your name was called as part of the Tithe to the Imperium. You were just barely able to say goodbye to your siblings. Before you were whisked off to be assessed and put into quarantine with your fellow Calth-ites. After quarantine and skills tested, you were given the uniform of Serf. 

And to your greatest joy and honor. The colors of the Ultramarines, denoting which holy chapter you had been chosen for. You whisper in gratitude to the God Emperor for his mercy and wisdom. You swiftly change into the uniform And follow after those who were chosen and head to the proper disembarkation point. 

One of the higher ranking serfs explaining the rules and consequences for breaking them. As you walk by, you and the rest of the Serfs have to flatten yourselves against the walls when Astartes in Blue and Gold Armor go walking by, you keep your head lowered out of respect, even as you peek at them from the corner of your eye as awe and dread grips your heart. You had only ever heard of the Angels of the Imperium before. And now… you get to serve them, what an honor.

Even if it makes you anxious, one of the Ultramarines brushes past you, he has a stern expression on his stunningly handsome face. You swear you feel his eyes flicker over and stare at you ever so briefly before snapping back in front of him towards where some of his fellow Angels are. 

Once they leave the hallway you and your fellow new Serfs are hurried along to their destination as the Serfs who’ve been there longer and are in charge continue to go over the rules, regulations and consequences of disobedience.

Over the next several months you learn of the complex social and political hierarchy of the Serfs. Or at least, you do your best to do so as it seems a tricky, complicated and almost arcane nature. Far more complex that a simple farm hand turned chapter serf could comprehend at times. Although you did your best to do your duties swiftly, promptly, quietly, and with as little impact on your higher ups as possible.

You are carrying some clothing from one part of the ship to another when you sense movement out of the corner of your eye. You stop and shift out of the way when you spot blue and gold ceramite armor and an Ultramarine Space Marine comes walking over. You dutifully flatten yourself against the nearest wall to give the massive man more room.

The Ultramarine pauses and stares down at you. It was the same one that had briefly looked at you all those months ago when you’d first come aboard the ship as part of a tithe.

“Serf,” He barks at you.

“Yes, Lord?” You say trying not to jump. 

He scowls at you and your heart sinks and you feel like you want to cry. “What the fuck is that accent?”

“I-I am sorry my lord?” You try as you carefully try to enunciate Low Gothic properly. 

One of his eyes twitch and he scowls down at you, “Speak properly or stay silent. Serf.”

You nod, even though you feel hurt, welling up, and confusion. He was the one to start to speak to you. “Yes, Lord.”

“Hrm. Barely better,” Cato sneers down at the country bumpkin now blessed to become a Serf of the Ultramarines.

They have the same fucking accent that, Prissy bastard Captain Ventris gets when he’s talking with his uppity giant bastard of a Sargent Passinius. He’d had yet another disagreement with the Captain of the Fourth Company over tactics and Calgar had barked out orders that the pair of them needed to break it up and cool off before coming back to the meeting.

He had meant to go to the training salles to cool off as he seethed in his wrath when he spotted that one far too pretty looking Serf that had come aboard McCragge’s Honor a few months ago. Not that he had noticed them at all. Or that he’d been, for some reason, tracking them from time to time. Not that he’d sought them out while he was in a temper because of Throne-cursed Ventris.

Their large eyes staring up at him, with tears starting to gather at the corners of their eyes. Tch. Pathetic. Even as something else shifts in his hearts at seeing their emotional reaction to him. He’d hardly said much and they were already acting like he was being a Bastard. So he scowls down at them some more and snarls that they need to be tougher to survive as a Serf serving Astartes.

"Leave," He barks and you bow and scurry off and away from him as you continue to do your duties, trying to figure out what it was that you did to upset the Second Captain of the Ultramarines.

[liminsendhelp]

Don't pet the flea cat

Price×f!reader

Tags: slight description of reader (chubby, muscular, strong, denying gender as a concept), possibly slightly sociopathic/autistic reader, profanity, denial of authority, evil scientist on the way to becoming.

I don't speak English. I didn't proofread the text.

enjoy.

Part 1. Part 2.

You're quiet in bed. For real. Without the pretenses and masks of a woman subordinate to someone else's dominance, when you're not alive enough, not human enough. When the beast of animal desire inside makes you dig your nails into your palms. When you want to put out cigarettes on yourself to block out the unbridled power of the urge for sex.

It's always been a problem. People have crumpled their gut. They put on layer upon layer of approval and expectation.

Your essence was causing the thin material of socialization to fray at the seams.

To top it all off, you're easily obsessed.

Your blood boils at the sight of beauty.

He's ugly. Like everyone else.

Ordinary.

Yet you can't name a single time you've looked at Price without wanting to rip his face off.

He says, in that quiet and understanding tone of his, in those chuckles and snickers of his.

You're not even a nurse. You're a researcher in a tiny development lab. You have no education whatsoever (except for art), taken in by acquaintances to help you out, before asking you to finish some psychiatry courses just to make sure. Science dragged you down so that you were up to your ears in philosophy, psychology, old treatises and other crap.

So there you are, cleaning animal cages, helping out with easy experiments, coaching timid grad students on how to interact with small rodents. And then, at one point, you're set up as a lab technician. And you're not dumb, you have ideas, you have a desire to understand the workings of the brain. straighten it out, twist it back up and straighten it out again.

Of all the specialists, you're a little more interested in behaviorism, a little more obsessed with crime.

Brain cutting brain.

You're quiet, calm, frighteningly cold. Your gaze is dark, like a constantly dissecting blade. So what? You're better than those idiots, even without a proper education. You're smarter, more thoughtful, thorough, workaholic. Those above you - senior researchers, PhDs and postdocs - know you're good. Good enough to keep you around.

The institute is a restricted facility. It's not weird that they moved the labs to an outhouse inside the fucking military base, is it? No. After the incident, half the staff went on paid leave. Understaffed, overworked, stressed out. Neuropsych, cognitive-behavioral, experimental, psychiatric, chemical-pharmacology and blah, blah, blah labs downsized in limited space.

Each department used to have animals to do research on. Now your work is all theory and documentation. This problem was soon promised to be solved, but no one really hoped for a super secret lab with experimental subjects for every taste. From mouse to human.

They have unwanted prisoners, don't they?

Anyway.

You were transported to the base after a small-- Terrorist attack at your institute. Again, pathos on an all-cosmic scale, nothing of the sort happened, but "national brains and serious research" must be saved, come on.

No one was hurt.

Not even injured.

And now it's not like you're severely stung for budget and space, despite the relatively small footprint of the allotted space.

The most significant downside here at the base is that even while trying to stay out of the allotted space as much as possible, you see extra people. Military.

They're all killers. They're killers, and you have a taste problem. They want to clean up the developments for the good of the military, and you imagine the horror they're going to be in when, under interrogation, people break their teeth on each other while overdosing.

They walk under your windows, stand against the opposite wall when you go out for a late night smoke, show up in the lab to stick their noses where they'll get their balls bitten off and shoved up their asses.

The military are no more welcome than they should be, after all, the scientists here have only themselves to thank on the heads of the fucked up officials who decided it would be a good idea to sign you all up for this cohabitation.

And doors slam, eyes scrutinizing your white coats and circles under your eyes, hands reaching for developments, noses poking into all your dirty laundry.

But they shouldn't be anywhere near it.

You're in your second month of work, trying to function as you're used to - mechanically. But today your senior's not here, Dr. Moon's away at a useless security conference. Usually she'd be kind enough to bring you a bunch of food from the cafeteria.

You're not a little girl. You can't live on a stash of sweets and coffee without worsening your already obvious gastritis. And you need a normal amount of food to keep your body functioning. You've always been meaty, no match for thin, slim, graceful girls, some of whom had the superpower to survive on a lettuce leaf (not taking into account goddess nymphs with healthy appetites and excellent metabolisms, such creatures were a myth in the flesh).

But, you don't want to go out to this mess of heads and dirty mouths.

You clench your hands into fists, pressing your nails into your skin. You're going to have to do this anyway. You're perfectly capable of not eating for a week, thanks to your unhealthy relationship with food, but you're not going to torture yourself. After all, you've been on the wrong side of self-loathing for a long time now.

Now what went inward is actively being broadcast to those around you.

So you put on your coldest mask, clench your teeth tightly, and pretend not to notice the scrutinizing stares from all sides. You're stared at by your coworkers because you never go out into the light. The soldiers stare at you because you look like a pathetic mound of snow among their dusty greenery.

You think you're perfectly capable of eating alone because your coworkers are permanent idiots in their surprised stares and whispers.

But when you sit down at the table, with seemingly as disinterested in each other as possible eaters, both soldiers and medics begin to stare even more intensely. Like little kids. Are those some marshal generals of all the earth at your table?

How's your diplomacy going over there?

"Can I sit here?" You ask evenly, almost forgetting to give your voice a questioning tone.

"Of course, miss." The voice is deep and soft.

You definitely sat down with the wrong people.

"Thank you, I won't take long."

You don't look at them. No need to. Dr. Moon is coming tomorrow and you won't have to crawl out of the sink anymore.

You eat fast, two minutes for the whole meal. The military must realize that's possible, right? They used to mock you for that ability. Now, you unconsciously take it personally when they laugh at you from afar. That's why you hate the school system. Cafeteria, really? Just give us each a bag of dog food.

You rise from your seat to escape into your reports, hypotheses, and research.

"What's your name?"

No. You didn't hear that question.

It's probably rude, since they're high-ranking.

You'll be out of here faster than they can take offense.

"Miss?"

Will you fucking calm down, you idiot?

"Run me through the database." You almost growl, speaking in lower case.

Stupid. Startled, you look up.

The blue-eyed freak, so appealing, puffing with calm control, seems amused rather than pissed off.

Thank the Goddess, thank any Force that covered your ass and you were taken as entertainment.

Blue eyes make the dry semblance of shame in your chest scrape sandpaper across your ribs.

"I can already tell by you that you're a bitch." It sounds from behind you. Expectedly. You can clearly see from the face of the man in front of you that he's unimpressed by this outburst. The burning blue melts you from the inside out with two heartbeats, and you dare to interrupt the deafening silence of judgment around you.

You drop the apology and carry your body back to your lair. You only exhale as you lock the door from the inside with the key. As if that will save you. People won't forget.

Dr. Moon reprimands you from the doorstep the next day. You fell asleep at your desk again. She shoves you onto the small couch in her office. While she shreds the mail, you sleep peacefully for a couple hours.

"Honey? Come here."

Oh, that tone. Are you in trouble because of last night?

They couldn't be more touchy, which one of those mutts snitched on you--

"Your initiative has been approved."

You find yourself on your feet, your hair tousled, your clothes askew, but all your attention is on the screen.

Confirmation letter… authorization to conduct data analysis… for detection… with command support… attachment to teams… supervised access to files….

You blink, then reread it again.

"What's that?"

"You didn't think they'd let you play spy, did you?"

There was hope. But no, it's the other thing that's weird.

"I only asked for an archive. Ideally to observe from afar and interview recruits."

"You and I both know, darling, you're just waiting for a chance to sit your ass down and duck your head into papers. You wanted the internship, go get it." Dr. Moon sits back as contented as can be. She was the force that kept pushing you, wanting to create a diamond.

You wished you were more like hydrogen. To be present everywhere so that you couldn't be seen anywhere.

"And what am I supposed to do?"

"One team is available. Someone from the local legends. But they've agreed to work with you."

No! You let out a low scream. Then you squeeze out a loud sob.

"Can I say no?"

"I'll put laxatives in your next meal."

You sigh.

"Acting like a child, Doc." The good-natured, acerbic face in front of you contorted for a second. She hated being called that.

"That's not for you to tell me, sweetheart. Get your work plan in here, we'll review it. You go to work tomorrow."

[quinnlarrabee]

Palo santo 101

Before you click play on the audio recording and blithely ignore the written guide, be sure to review the important science-based charts and insight-rich visuals sprinkled throughout it.

If you’ve ever walked into a party hosted by someone under 40 in Brooklyn, Lisbon, California, Condesa or Roma Norte, or Venice Beach and not smelled palo santo, then you probably had covid. Over the past decade palo santo has become the official scent of good vibes. It is an olfactory assurance for anyone who recognizes the scent that conversation will be limited to polyamory, regional burns, and adaptogen supplements. Despite the fact that no one ever doesn’t want to smell palo santo, it’s important to know when to use it and when to relegate your surroundings to their default odor. This guide will ensure that you know exactly how to make the most of the palo santo you carry in the shoulder bag you purchased at the Sant Jordi flea market in Ibiza during the off-season.

Like most cultural appropriations, no one who burns palo santo knows what it is, where it came from, why they use it, or why it’s even called palo santo. Let’s uncover the facts. 

Bursera Graveolens is a tree native to the dry tropical forests of South America. Its discovery by white people dates back to 1972 at a now defunct swingers resort in Quito, Ecuador, where a guest from New Jersey named Paulo Santonicola noticed a stick with a burning ember on the end of giving off a fetid, wispy trail of smoke. He pointed at the burning stick and asked the guy holding the cocaine tray, who would now be called a consent educator, “por que?”

“Plaga,” he replied, and gnashed his teeth and made a flapping-wing motion with the hand not holding the cocaine tray. Paulo brought the wood back to his central New Jersey home as a last-ditch effort to ward off the deer that were eating the tomatoes in his garden. He started burning the wood around the clock in the steamy summer of 1972, during which he and his girlfriend hosted dozens of play parties. 

“I didn’t care if people at my parties had a problem with the smell,” recounted Paulo. “Those frickin’ deer were jumping my fence and chewing through wire to eat my tomatoes. When I caught a whiff of that wood down in Quito, I thought, ‘they won’t come near my garden if I burn this shit.’” 

Mr. Santonicola had achieved some level of notoriety in the adult film industry in the early 1970s, and his parties were well attended by neo-hippies, the disco elite and the first generation of yoga professionals. Over the course of the summer, a pavlovian association formed between the scent of the wood and casual sex, and his friends started asking him for sticks so that they could take the vibe home with them. At the sunset of his porn career, he saw an opportunity not only to rebrand his legacy, distancing himself from grainy adult films with problematic titles, but also to make oceans of cash: import the wood and sell it through his readymade network of yoga instructors under his stage name, Palo Santo. 

Palo santo’s ubiquity today grew from its two foundational use cases: repelling pests and masking the odor of too many naked bodies in poorly ventilated New Jersey basements. Palo santo is still used today as a repellent of sorts to ward off bad vibes and people who do not use the word vibe in place of most nouns at the end of a question, such as scene, weather, temperature, culture, menu, rules, culture, law, opinion, suggested attire, relationship status, sexual proclivity, net worth and so on. It is also still used during group sex, but only when the group sex is intentional and/or ceremonial. There are many other ways, however, that you can improve the vibes of the world through the smoke of this wood, which was recently added to IUCN’s Red List of “near threatened” species, making it even more important to burn palo santo as a way of calling attention to its growing scarcity. 

Airplanes 

For a brief, blissful period during the pandemic, the only people who traveled were intrepid hipsters who had already contracted the virus and been instrumental in scaling it to global significance through music festivals, long-distance polycules and global nomadism. Commercial airlines from the spring of 2020 through the summer of 2021 were basically private air travel for people who know to always ask if party buffet chocolate is psycho-active. Air travel today is a much lower vibration experience, and it’s important that assertive restorative steps be taken by conscious travelers to make flying chill again. Hanging a dreamcatcher from the back of the seat in front of you and burning palo santo on the tray table is a great way of making a public flight experience feel more private. Be sure to light your palo santo only after the aircraft reaches cruising altitude, because tray tables must be stowed until then. 

Other people’s parties

Not everyone with whom you may socialize is aware of how critical palo santo is to creating and maintaining a vibe. Some less experienced hosts try to make do with incense from India, Japan or other countries that have been annexed by Brooklyn or with candles from La Labo, and it may be up to you to rescue the vibe. Back when people consumed alcohol, bringing a nice bottle of wine was a way of showing a host your appreciation, but these days bringing palo santo, immediately lighting it and waving the stick around like Harry Potter on quaaludes is the optimal way of saying thank-you to someone who has invited you into their home.  

Hospitals

While palo santo has not been proven by any form of science to deliver the healing benefits touted by people who sell or use palo santo, be assured that it does all of the things people say it does. Burning palo santo creates smoke, and smoke is pretty to watch and - like cardiovascular exercise - creates a healthy challenge for your lungs. Medical facilities are places where people go to heal, and bringing palo santo to visit a recovering friend is a beautiful contribution to not only their journey back to health but also the recovery of every patient within a twenty to fifty foot radius. 

Conscious uncoupling ceremonies

Modifying your relationship trajectory in a direction that disappoints the person you are with might seem like a low vibe experience, but you can make it a high vibe experience by burning palo santo. While explaining that the rules that you set last week for your ENM pairing have become too confining, burning palo santo will deflect negative reactions and in some cases even seduce your partner into being amenable to a situationship that has absolutely no structure, rules or expectations. This can add to your sexual abundance and also serve as a pillar in your temple of confidence that helps you acquire new lovers at floor parties. If, rather than just undefining the relationship, you are certain there is no future with the person to whom you have exposed particles of burning wood, palo santo will prevent your ex-partner from making an opposing case or lingering too long after you have had uncoupling sex. 

During sex with someone you don’t want to fall in love with you

In a rare moment of cultural relevance, Science has proven that pheromones strengthen the bonds of attraction between two or many more people during sexual activity. Sometimes, though, it is undesirable to strengthen bonds with a sex partner. Sometimes, it is optimal to maintain a totally impartial, unattached, stoic distance between the person who you are inside / is inside of you, given that attraction can lead to unintended expectations. Burning palo santo is an excellent way of muting the potency of pheromones, leveling the olfactory playing field and creating a piney through-line for all the people participating in a sexual experience. 

Any kind of intentional wellness space

Because the smell of palo santo is so potent and distracting, burning it during intentional experiences (e.g. yoga, journaling, meditation, tantra classes, tantric sex, facials or any kind of PRP therapy) compels participants to step up their intention-setting efforts. It forces deep focus and concentration, kind of like how the deafening emo whines of RY X at a RY X concert force you to lean in, cock your head and make that weird squinty-eyed, mouth-agape listening face to be able to hear the unsolicited story of how literally anyone you happen to be standing next to was in an intentional polyamorous relationship with RY X.

Ancient actually sacred genuinely authentic real cultural events that were not invented by white people to extract money from other white people

Many people who attend Burning Man have begun to explore other intentional gatherings outside of Nevada that don’t involve metallic gold body paint. Some of these gatherings are thousands of years old and are led by people who have trained their entire lives to uphold traditions that have been passed down for generations within their culture. Particularly if a gathering takes place in its country of origin (rather than being exported, diluted and branded, like an ethnic fast food franchise), you may encounter native smells that don’t smell like palo santo. In these cases, it is not only permissible but even advisable to add palo santo to everyone’s experience, which you have probably been very reluctantly allowed to attend. Burning palo santo will communicate to the religious or cultural leaders of the gathering that you are on their level and (despite having never read anything about the gathering other than first few words of the top Google result you saw while standing on the Premier Access line into your Delta flight at JFK / LAX / SFO) have a deep respect for whatever they are chanting in a language that you cannot understand while you record the most intensely sacred moments for the Instagram story that you will post at the appropriate time in your home time zone so that everyone will know that you are an internationally intentionally spiritual person who gets access to authentic cultural events. 

Despite its countless unproven benefits and its universal appeal within a very small circle, there are certain times when palo santo should not be burned. Palo santo can trigger flashbacks for people who first encountered the scent of it during acid trips. If someone walks into your container, smells the palo santo you’re burning and begins behaving erratically, just ask them to immediately return to their own container, lest they harsh the vibe you’re cultivating. The only other times that do not call for burning palo santo are when you’re alone, and no one else will see you lighting the stick and waving it around the room, bringing it within inches of everyone’s face whether they’ve invited it or not, while making awkwardly long eye contact with them, nothing but the winding trail of smoke in front of your your vulnerable gaze, thus communicating to them that you are a spiritually endowed person and care deeply about them knowing that you are a spiritually endowed person. So, a helpful rule of thumb is this: as with masturbation, you should always and only be burning palo santo when someone is watching, otherwise what’s the point.

[nwalthall]

Birds do it, bees do it Even educated fleas do it Let's do it, let's fall in love

--Cole Porter, "Lets Do It, Lets Fall in Love"