⭒ the girl with the tattoo (i)
grumpy!matt sturniolo x sunshine!fem oc / reader
summary : matt is a grumpy tattoo artist and y/n books him for her first tattoo.
warnings : needles and pain (not very detailed tho)
mickey speaks : i don't have any tattoos so i actually know nothing ab the procedure lmaooo just guessing but i’ll be writing multiple parts for this. also i am very much self indulging bc i headcannon y/n as poc! but obvi anyone can read there's not much exclusivity ab how i write her, i js wanted to note that for any poc readers <3.
THIS IS PART 1 BTW!!!!
“SHITTT,” you draw out the last syllable at the rumble and screech of your car engine as you continue your attempt to start it.
eventually you throw your head backwards in defeat, annoyed by the unbudging car. this is the actual worst timing. you're supposed to be at the tattoo shop (that is a 12 minute drive from your apartment complex) for an appointment in less than twenty minutes.
you truly want to scream and border on throwing a tantrum but decide it would probably be better to find a solution than complain about the agony further.
you quickly find your roommate's contact, raising your phone to your ear and pinching your eyes shut as the vibrating ring hums through your skull.
"y/n? what's up?" andrea answers confused as you had only just walked out of the door five minutes ago.
"hi drea... so i know you have your own plans right now but is there any way you can give me a ride... please?"
you hear shuffling on the line, "mmm, where to?"
౨ৎ
“thank you again for driving me,” you smile at andrea and squeeze her hand before reaching for the door.
“yes, of course. you can call me when you’re done and i’ll head over here- m’sorry i can’t stay with you.” she replies and exaggerates a frown.
"i'll be fine, i think- i hope..."
"you will be fine. just don't stress or it'll hurt more."
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your arms are crossed tightly over your chest as you make your way into the shop (in its form of an oversized warehouse, fixed up to look stylish and comfortable- something you’d never really seen before). the rickety jingle of a small bell kindly indicates your presence to the rest of the shop.
a few people sitting in a waiting area look up before continuing their conversations (though some continued to stare as you walk by). you see a surprising amount of people crowding in a brightly decorated lounge area, housing many arcade games and a kitchenette.
you reach the receptionist desk and are greeted by a young man dressed casually, humming along to the music playing in the background of the space.
“um, hi. i’m here for my 1:30 appointment.” you state with a smile, you’re suddenly aware of how nervous you truly are.
the brunette looks over to a desktop screen with a soft scrunch of his face, “for y/n, right? huh, that’s crazy…” he rubs his chin, “1:30 was like nine minutes ago,” he looks up at you, almost like he was questioning you; who do you think you are? and why do you think you’re important enough to be late?
as soon as your face begins to morph into fear and embarrassment his own face splits into a large smile as he laughs softly. “i’m sorry- i’m such an ass but i had to- your file said you’re new clientele so i just had to fuck around.”
“you’re sick! i was fully prepared for a fucking lecture on timeliness or something,” you let out a soft laugh.
the boy comes from around the desk holding a paper and clipboard. “yeah, sorry, i’m chris,” he reaches a hand out to which you willingly return and restate your name to him, “‘m not usually up front so you probably talked to asha over the phone when booking.”
you nod and smile at the familiar name, “yeah, she was so helpful over the phone.”
“she’s awesome, i miss her,” he touches each of his shoulders then forehead before kissing his hand and pointing to the sky.
"oh my god? i'm sorry for your loss."
his eyes squint and lips pucker in confusion, "oh, she's not fired she's just on vacation right now."
"so why'd you...?"
chris cuts you off by handing you the clipboard and grabbing a pen from a cluttered mason jar on the desk as he explains, “okay, we’re just gonna have you fill out this quick consultation form; just so you and your artist will be on the same page about things.” you nod in understanding. “keep it brief, matt’s not big on reading large bodies of text,” chris laughs.
“got it,” you smile before turning to find a chair and begin writing. you truly were relieved that chris wasn’t hard on you about being late, for a second you thought you would be lectured and have to carry the guilt of dissapointing someone into a room where you'd be paying to lie in excruciating physical pain. (damn, double homecide)
the sheet had general information to fill before the questions specifically about the tattoo you’d be getting today came.
you go back up to chris once you’re finished.
“cool, follow me we’ll set you up with matt.” he leads the way and your nerves are suddenly back as it's feeling more and more real with each step. you pacify your thoughts by looking around at the many images and messages written in sharpie along the walls of the hallway. there's also plenty of hanging shelves around with vintage trinkets and succulents that compliment the space around.
chris reaches a curtain and dips his head past as if he were checking for something before giving you a chance to see. you notice the small "Matt" embroidered on the black curtain. chris then opens it wide enough for the both of you to walk into the surprisingly large space.
(who you can only assume to be) matt sits comfortably in a wheeled desk chair, legs spread. his elbow rests on the arm of the chair and he holds his head up with two of his fingers, as his middle finger grazes his irritated mouth with a stern look on his face while he scrolls on his phone.
he doesn’t move his position when he looks up at the two of you.
“alright! matt this is y/n,” chris motions between you two. matt hums, placing his phone on the desk and placing his hand out expectantly for the clipboard. chris goes to hand it to him and whispers, “fix your face, jackass,” then turning around to leave you some reassuring words, “good luck y/n, the tat’s gonna look amazing.”
but chris doesn’t see matt exaggerating a large, sarcastic smile from behind him in defense of chris’ words (he immediately drops it though). something that would make you at least giggle if you weren’t so nervous.
“thanks,” your voice is a little hoarse as you haven’t used it in some time. matt watches the boy leave before looking over to you. he rolls the chair closer, reading over your short (as requested) responses.
“you can sit down.” he forms it almost as a question like are you going to sit down or do i have to direct you to do everything?
you sit on the black cushioned bench, lined with a disposable white cloth and begin to fidget with your fingernails as matt goes over your paperwork quietly.
“''kay, so you’re getting a small hello kitty on your lower hip?” he summarizes while checking and signing a few lines on a paper.
“yeah, um, i told asha over the phone that way you could have it sketched already- she told me that’s best and saves time for the both of us.”
his response is a slowed nod and a breathy, “yep,” as he rolls over to his desk and places the clipboard on the surface before opening a drawer and digging through it.
you gaze around the room and wonder if he decorated the space himself or if he wasn’t the type to be bothered enough to add personal things to his work area. almost all the posters are of music artists or tattoos, the most personal things you see are a small picture frame on his desk and a pokémon plushie sat on a chair in the corner of the room. all of which just pose more questions in your working brain.
you notice him switching to a different swivel chair that is lower to the ground and bringing himself (as well as a moving table with already prepared supplies) closer to you.
you’re nervous again. even after your roommate and older brother have both given you advice on first tattoos and the pain expected you’re still finding yourself scared of what to expect. your ear piercings would have nothing on this.
“first tattoo?” matt clarifies, as if he could read your mind. you nod and go to speak but stop when he gestures for you to lay back on the cushion.
you’re sure that he only was searching for a quick confirmation from you and is not too interested in your life or what brings you here but you’ve found that talking relieves your own stress and you absolutely cannot just lay there and only speak when spoken to.
“yeah, i guess m’nervous. i just hope i don’t, like, die from pain or hate the outcome or curse myself in a couple years for the placement- but it's not that i'm doubting that it'd be cute. younger me would be screaming at the fact that i'm even here..." you pause just for a second. "but then again i'm not sure how much forty year old me will appreciate it. so i guess i just don’t know. you know?”
you lean yourself up to get a look at matt, only to realize he has airpods in and simply has not been listening or interested in you (just as you expected). he’s moving his head the smallest amount to the beat as he works on his sketch.
he notices your movement though and takes a headphone out of his ear, “are you okay?” is all he asks.
a pretty broad question. and an anxiety inducing question to ask a girl who's been questioning her decisions as much as you have. you hope you’re okay. will you still be okay when this (mostly) permanent decision is etched into your skin forever? is he okay? will he give you any sense of encouragement or comfort during this process? are tattoo artists typically like this or are you just considered especially needy clientele?
“yeah, i just was- like, curious, i guess.” you mumble a little and internally hate that you feel so insecure in this situation. so out of control.
“was just adjusting my sketch to be a smaller. nothing crazy happening over here.” he shrugs. “you can go ahead and pull your shirt up, though. i’m just gonna clean the area and prep before inking.” he explains to you very straight and to the point.
you fall back into place and obey, inching your shirt up further to expose your lower stomach. you drape your arms over your face to gain composure as you hear matt rip some packaging.
the coolness of the cleaning pad sends your stomach butterflies and you try to not think too hard about the fact that matt’s hands will be on your lower stomach and hip for a good length of time.
eventually matt speaks to you again, “i’m starting so if you’re feeling the need to get the fuck out you gotta do it now or for forever hold your peace.”
you smile a little at his dry joke but when you turn your head to see him fully serious you blink, “no, i’ll be fine. thanks though.”
he just nods his head and goes to put his airpods back in before you’re interrupting again, “wait. whatcha listening to?”
he’s suprised by the question. his clients rarely get too involved in what he’s doing. mostly because he does a great fucking job no matter how few words he may utter over an entire session. there's a mutual understanding there that he's never had to speak up about to anyone. other artists use a strong bond or charisma to secure returning customers but matt finds there’s nothing better to display than his pure talent and passion for his craft. that’s how he keeps clients. they ask and he will always deliver; and that’s how he particularly likes it. no questions and minimal conversation.
the sound of the tattoo gun begins and just for your sake he decides to answer the question without malice, “just some frank ocean instrumental tracks." he places his hands back onto your skin, "don’t start moving.”
you pinch your eyes shut and squeeze your forearms as soon as the initial pain takes over. it’s a feeling you can only describe as a needle poking into you a trillion times at once. which is literally what's happening to you.
you’re not oblivious to matt’s disengagement with your attempts at conversation but you need him to continue to speak to you or else you’ll think too much about the needle actively puncturing you. “oh yeah? i’ve never listened to him before…”
“surprising. he’s pretty big.” matt mumbles slightly, focusing on his work far more than his slight interest in your knowledge of frank ocean.
“mhm. i’ve been meaning to give him a listen. could you share?”
matt’s eyes just move to look up at your face as he tries not to beg you to just be quiet and let him do this so that you both can leave within an hour. “i’m good on that.” he returns to tattooing.
“huh? you can’t share music?”
“i would prefer not to but-” he doesn’t even know why he’s continuing to fuel this anymore.
“what if i add a pretty,” you pause to wince a little as the needle moves lower, “pretty please?”
“i’m almost done,” he mumbles the lie.
“matt?”
he pauses for only a second to glance over to you. he’s met with a face scrunched in pain with an attempted smile that he thinks makes you look more like a doped up hippie than the cute effect you were going for. you plead after his glance, “pretty please?”
he rolls his eyes and sets his tattoo gun down, reluctantly swiveling over to his desk. before you even realize what exactly he’s doing there’s a airy beat of drums and piano playing from a small speaker in the room.
once he's back over to you he can tell you’re smiling even though your face is mostly covered by your arms. “thank you, i needed a distraction or something.”
he mumbles an “mhm” and returns to his work.
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there was generally no talking after that. only a few moments you observed (due to your need to cling on to literally anything going on besides the pinching at your lower side) that were any indication of matt's quiet presence. you noticed when matt would softly hum the lyrics to the instrumentals over the speaker and when you began to tap your fingers out of boredom and nerves, to which he simply placed his hand over them to force them flat while muttering a small “stop.”
when matt was completely finished he asked you if he could take a picture to add to his instagram and you agreed eagerly. he then added a strip of tattoo film over a layer of protective ointment. after he helped you to fully stand he explained how to care for it and how important cleaning is because “that shit will get gunky as fuck.” and you told him that you promise to do everything he said. he also gave you a detailed list on a card for you to follow just in case you forget.
you glance down at your tattoo one last time before you begin to leave the room you’d just spent a lengthy hour of your life in. you assume matt doesn’t want much else from you until he calls your name from his desk. you turn and see him still looking at his phone before glancing up, “uh, what’s your insta handle, so i can tag you in this?”
you don’t know why you’re surprised but you are.
you agree to exchange handles with him before deciding to compliment him once more, “my tattoo is perfect, by the way. i love it so much, thank you.” you want to tell him that you hope you didn’t annoy him too much but you don’t know if that will annoy him more. so you take his nod and hint of a smile as his way of showing appreciation, keeping your own smile bright to mask the crushing feeling of someone seeming so indifferent towards you.
after walking past the curtain and through the trinket-filled hallway you’re back to the main area of the warehouse. you see a different collection of people gathered playing pool and some more huddled on a couch looking at a girl’s phone in awe. chris is busy talking with what seems to be a close friend when you walk up to the reception desk.
when his eyes find your bright expression he’s bouncing back with energy, “hey! i’m assuming it went well?" he asks.
"very well. glad it's over though, i can't lie." you laugh while taking your debit card from your purse.
"yeah, definitely not the best feeling. especially when matt's ugly face is that close to you." chris jokes and takes your card to cash you out.
you laugh along with him but assure him that matt's looks weren't an issue. he raises his eyebrows and has a growing smirk that travels to his eyes when he gives you your card back. you try not the blush at the implication, "i didn't mean it like that."
"right," he nods and chuckles softly, "well hopefully you'll be back for another eventually?" he hands you a receipt.
"i mean how could i not with such a sweet receptionist asking me? i'm sure you get everyone to come back," you joke.
chris shrugs with a cocky grin, "somethin' like that."
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"oh my god it's fucking adorable, what?!" andrea exclaims with a spoonful of frozen yogurt still in her mouth.
she initally begged to see it as soon as she picked you up but you dramatically told her you had just experienced the worst pain of your life and you'd need a sweet treat if you were planning to not sleep the rest of the day away. so she just rolled her eyes and demanded you show her once you both arrive at your favorite frozen yogurt shop (conveniently down the street from your apartment complex).
"i knowww," you respond and quickly pull the lower part of your shirt down with a smile, taking a seat across from drea.
"how'd it go, though? i'm curious. i've only been to warehouse 79 like once, and it was for an event."
"it was good, they were all generally kind and my guy did exactly what i wanted. i'm pretty happy."
"'my guy,' oh okayy?" she takes a bite and smirks.
"not what i meant! i should have just said matt. like, the guy who did my tattoo-"
"mhmm."
"stop.” you smirk, “i mean he was not ugly by any means but he seemed to not care to get to know me at all. which is fine, he's not paid to care about me. but i doubt i'll ever see him again." you shrug taking another bite of frozen yogurt.
꩜⋆ ˚。⋆🎱˚
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Hi friends! @1800titz here. This is my contribution to the collaboration, and I’d like to start off by saying that I am so, so, so beyond excited to work with the immensely talented @cherryjuiceblues!! Thank you for working with me Soph :’)
We have loads of goodies planned, and we’d like to kick things off with Mr. Hitchhikerry. (Sidenote: he’s a little late to the party, this WAS supposed to be a spooky piece for Halloween but SHDJDJCJDJD don’t worry about it. Life got in the way a bit, but he’s finally HERE so WOOOO). A little idea based on this reddit post. This one has great big warnings. DARK HARRY. VERY DARK HARRY. With a piece like this, I want to really emphasize: this is purely for entertainment purposes, and there is 0 correlation intended to the real Harry Styles <3 just a spooky faceclaim.
With that disclaimer out of the way, here’s some content warnings: dom/sub themes, choking, (light) spanking, degradation (and praise!) ((some good ol’ LET’S PLAY SIMON SAYS)). THE WOOF WOOF is for humiliation purposes only <3 GREAT BIG WARNING FOR A DISTURBING CONFESSION OF INTENT TO HARM.
Also, I writhe in my seat as I write, wanting to put in lengthy context of prediscussion and safewords and aftercare and everything important I always talk about, BUT. You’ll see. He’s an …interesting character and I tried to keep hitchhikerry true to himself.
PLEASE DON’T HOOK UP WITH STRANGE MEN YOU PICK UP ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD AT NIGHT. PLEASE DON’T PICK UP STRANGE MEN ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD AT NIGHT. Enjoy ٩(◕‿◕)۶ (WC is 11K)
She doesn’t do hitchhikers.
Not figuratively, not literally.
Y/N was raised outside of the scope of the seventies, post-Bundy and his hitchhiking antics, and since the evolution of serial-killer lore, she’s never been fond of a stranger hopping into her passenger seat and then cutting her up into itsy-bitsy parts to hang around his back garden like string-lights, or something. An ear there, a palm with crooked fingers there. Morbid stuff.
Y/N doesn’t do hitchhikers, but she doesn’t think about that, hurtling down some back-country road, a poorly lit vale through a field of tall, boundless grass. It’s not the first thought budding behind her skull when she sees his silhouette through the shone of her pearly brights — a blip by the line of tall shrubbery — even a good distance away. And from her distance, he’s just a little blip in a cream, hoodless sweatshirt, feet planted into a bed of patchy grass. Her first sane thought, as she squints through her windshield, has to do with why someone would be out on this road, at this time of night, with no feasible form of transportation, and how. As her Honda nears and passes some fork off, a dirt bend of clearing into the winding field of nature, the man’s hitchhiking, signature thumb morphs into a wave of his arms, and his foot steps out, toying at the edge of the road. It doesn’t quite breach the threshold, but her speedometer decreases enough for her to catch baggy denim, distressed at the knees, and a slow wave of his arms, raised. He doesn’t launch at her car, forlorn, as she passes — thank Christ. But even then, his frame swishes by, out of sight, coated by darkness. She casts her gaze to the rear-view, and the image of him scrubbing over his face with an exasperated palm shrinks in size the further she gets.
The young woman gets about a hundred feet before she nudges the break with her foot to a halt, sighing as the car settles with a subtle lurch. She makes another glance to the rear-view. Now, she can’t see him, not in the shroud of night, but she squeezes her eyes shut for a second, and then twists the wheel until the car curves. A tire slips off onto gravel and grass with the U-turn, but she steers herself back onto the road and drives into the same direction she’s just come from.
He looks surprised to see her reverse, form pivoted toward the same headlights that’d just passed him with a crease over his brow bone. Y/N slows and breaks as she nears, absent-mindedly pressing a fingertip over the lock button on her door. TV Girl is still playing quietly from her car speakers when she cracks the window, stopped beside him across the road, and beckons with her chin raised just enough for her cadence to seep through the opening, “Do you need help?”
“Yes, yeah, I—“ the man makes a quick glance towards the side of the road where vehicles would be incoming, a sharp turn of his chin, and then a step towards her parted window as Y/N twists over the volume toggle. “I just— my car broke down,” he raises an arm and points towards the dirt clearing that slips into the field, “I was coming this way, and my phone’s died—“
He pauses, shaking his head down at his converse, his voice a baritone croon with charming, foreign dialect, “I know this is so odd, and you probably don’t want a stranger in your car. But f’you could just order an uber or something, I could give you the cash for it?” the girl watches his ring-clad palm disappear into the front pocket of his denim hastily, only to retrieve a wallet, “—If that’s alright?”
Y/N doesn’t do hitchhikers.
And still, her pupils rove over the charming stranger, trailing from his soft dark curls, swiping over his lashes as his head ducks, down the slope of his nose, to the cushiony pink of his lips. Irises graze down his neck and catch a white tee under the collar of his cream pull-over, and they brush down his denim, to his battered, white converse. The young woman watches his hand stretch out, cautiously, a wad of neatly folded cash cupped by pads of fingers with short, yellow-lacquered nails.
“No, don’t— …I can give you a ride,” Y/N tells him, her tone soft as her gaze wanders over his frame.
A downward shift plucks at the corner of his plush mouth and his jaw flexes, a hesitant look shaping over his features, “It’s— I couldn’t— s’like a thirty minute drive, and I don’t wanna take you out of the way…”
His large hand is still stretched out toward her, and she admires the cross inked over the back of his hand, on the fleshy area between his thumb and forefinger. Her brows pinch together, and the window whirs as the glass partition sinks. The girl raises her hand and points back with her thumb.
“Are you going in that direction?”
Wordlessly, the attractive stranger nods — a single dip of his chin.
“I’m going that way, too. I can give you a lift.”
Another look of hesitancy flits over the curly-haired stranger’s face, a soft, dubious touch to his facial features. He purses his strawberry mouth.
“If you’re sure.”
Y/N doesn’t do hitchhikers.
And still, she slips her hand over the unlock button, and the doors click to signal unshuttering as the man culls his wallet and stuffs the cash back in, sticking that back into his jeans. She watches him wind around her car, his gait trailing behind, and her eyes follow his side profile, bathed in the red of the brake lights, through the rear-view. The passenger door slips open. She rolls her window the rest of the way up.
“Thank you,” the man tells her in his low baritone, raking fingers through his curls as he slides into the seat beside her and shuts the door.
He smells heady and fresh — expensive. But it’s not overpowering, by any means. A blend of tantalizing notes; cologne blotted in increments that mesh well with his natural musk. The pleasant scent is the first thing she notices when he climbs into her vehicle. The second is the sculpt of his side profile — lengthy lashes over the crest of his cheekbones, his nose, a plush, pink mouth, a stray curl splayed over his forehead. He’s a little older than her, at least by a handful of years; there’s this innate, aged quality to him, and she can witness it in the shape of his features, in the soft dusting of stubble over his jawline. Y/N catches glimpses of his side profile discretely as the music track shifts, eyeing the bob of his Adam's apple as he cranes his neck back against the headrest. The screen over the center console reads 1:02 AM.
“Long night?”
It’s a shit attempt at small talk, but the young woman turns the wheel in her palms, hopeful that the man is interested in something more than an awkward silence, sparsely filled with the mellow keys of electronic-indie leaking from the speakers. She heard him expel a breath more than she sees it in her peripherals, and as the car embarks on another U-turn, he tells her, with laughter suffusing his cadence, “Yeah. Yeah, s’been a long night.”
She does make out that he pivots a bit towards her, and his tone is earnest when he says, “But it’d be a little longer without you, I think. Thank you, again. Feels like I can’t say it enough.”
Her mouth quirks softly. The young woman keeps a haphazard left hand on the wheel, vision bouncing from the poorly illuminated road ahead and the phone in the cupholder. The LED display lights alive as she swipes her thumb over the lockscreen and toggles onto the maps app, cueing him by nudging the electronic in his direction.
“Um. If you could just type in the directions— I’m sort of shit in these parts, to be honest.”
She casts a brief gaze toward him and sees a soft divot pinch into his cheek as the corners of his mouth crook up. His fingertips, warm and rough — calloused — brush over the back of her hand with the handoff, and then his thumbs are working over the screen before an address and a winding blue line of directions with an eta of thirty-four minutes teems the screen.
“Hi, by the way,” the man says in his honey-smooth cadence, “My name’s Harry.”
“Hi,” Y/N grins, shooting a bashful glance into the attractive stranger — Harry’s — direction, before fixing her irises up ahead. “I’m Y/N.”
“Y/N,” the man parrots — God. She could listen to him drone on about the most monotonous topics in that voice. He doesn’t. Instead, he uses that same timbre again to say, “S’a pretty name.” And she has to ignore the flurry of butterflies that swarm her innards at the entirely innocuous compliment and the heat that suffuses her cheeks. “Are you from around here?”
“Ish. Sort of,” she slows at a curve through the field. Her brows pinch, “I mean, I’ve lived here for a bit now, but I moved from Oregon.”
“Oregon? That’s sick. Any particular motive?”
Y/N lifts a subtle shoulder, because there isn’t. She pauses before she answers. “Dunno. Just needed a change of scenery.”
Harry twists the ring over his pinky and nods down at the motion, lips pursed with intrigue, “Adventurous.”
The young woman’s mouth crooks, because he’s, evidently, from the opposite hemisphere.
“That’s admirable,” the man motions with his chin.
Her mouth is still smiley when she rounds another curve, in the opposite direction, and mirrors his dialogue, “What about you? Any motive?”
“My motive?” his inflection is cheeky and playful, “You don’t think I’m a native?”
The girl makes a wry sound of amusement; an obvious inclination of disagreement. The handsome man grins, all raspberry-tinted lips and friendly teeth. “Just …visited, and never wanted to leave,” he declares with little expansion on the topic. Simple, short, sufficing.
There’s a little moment of lull between them when she straightens the car out and the track slips into the chorus.
Harry shifts in the passenger seat and asks, in that same deep timbre she could sink into and drown in, “Where are you headed from?”
Where is she headed from? Y/N blinks at the road ahead, digits flexing over the steering wheel. Truth be told, it’s a late hour to be out and about, especially in this deserted neck of the woods. Every cozy little farmhouse in these plains, distant beyond the fields of grass, has lights off. No other car passes.
“I was on a …date,” the young woman tells him.
Harry nods and swivels in his seat to face her a bit. “Good date?”
Y/N pauses, the fragments of the story rolling around behind her skull. And truth be told, …it wasn’t a very good date. But it wasn’t a date to begin with. In all honesty, she’s not about to tell this attractive stranger that she’d driven forty minutes for a routine hook-up with an old tinder match, only to be stood up outside his door.
He was a character whose path happened to cross with hers for purely carnal purposes, and their flings were like rolls through seasons, rendezvous blotted into her timeline where either had a smidge to make room. She’s not going to talk about that. It’s piteous, basically. The young woman doesn’t risk side-eyeing him. This man seems like he’s well off in that department, and she doesn’t want to discuss her shit intimate life and the way that Cody decided, last minute, that he was more interested in going out for miller lites with his buddies than entertaining the idea of sleeping with her.
He didn’t even have that impressive of dick game anyways — that’s the brutal candor. It wasn’t that he had this particular lack of satisfaction guarantee, but the sex was okay. It didn’t tick all the boxes or leave her fulfilled, not in the real sense, but it was sex, and it was decent. Maybe the most brutal part is the way she’d driven all the way to see him, even knowing that the sex wasn’t going to be top notch.
Apparently, her silence stretches too long, and the pause gives away the answer she mulls tactics over hiding.
“Bad date,” the girl hears from beside her — it’s in this thoughtful sort of way, like Harry’s slotting puzzle pieces together in the lull.
Y/N shifts her fingers over the wheel, the sound of skin sliding over leather meshing with the starting notes of a Cage the Elephant track. Her thumb toggles over a button on the wheel. She skips it.
“No,” the girl responds, eventually, but she doesn’t even sound fully convincing to her own ears. There’s this high note to her cadence, and she hears it in her own waver of honesty. She wants to cringe up, a little, at the sound. “Not …bad. Just. Well, you know. What about you?”
For the first time since she’d gotten back onto the road, Y/N casts her gaze to him. A glimpse, a twist of her chin, enough to take in his side-profile for a smidge of a second, more in a way to incite switching the topic and pivoting the point of conversation than the inconspicuous stare she’d made appreciating his features. The corner of his plush mouth curves up, and he makes a little sound; a puff of air through his nostrils like he’s bridling mirth.
“Was my date bad?” Harry says, in this playful sort of way. Like he’s teasing her.
“No— your— whatever you—”
Y/N huffs. She rolls her shoulders back against the seat, a heat teeming over her cheeks. Why was she so nervous? Why did he make her so nervous? Harry makes another sound of amusement, the cushion of his lips unsealing to display straight white teeth.
“I was at a friend’s,” Harry expands, opting to stop drawing out the teasing, enough for Y/N’s shoulders (that’d grown rigid) to relax a little against the seat. “Was actually having a good night, believe it or not. And then, you know.”
Unfortunately, she does know. He’s sitting in her car, after all.
“Do you know what went wrong with it?” she ponders.
“Well,” Harry the pads of his fingers over the door, and it takes every fiber in her not to sneak a glance at the motion, not to admire the yellow polish, washed with darkness, dim in the car, “the check engine light was on for a bit, to be honest. But— no,” the man pauses with a little simper, shooting her a glance, “Cars aren’t my specialty.”
They talk about loads of things — she learns all about his friends and the sort of outing they’d had (game night it’d been, Uno, and he’d beckoned her opinion on a debate that’d arisen — whether a draw four could be stacked onto a draw two). That had spawned another conversation on card games —
(“Is it like Go Fish, then?”
“No,” she snorts, “not at all.”
“Not at all?”
“There’s a board and it’s— more complicated.”
“There’s a board,” Harry parrots, shifting with his elbow brace on the center console like an armrest, “And it’s just, like. Cards, like, in a deck of cards?”
“You’ve never played cribbage?” Y/N repeats in disbelief.)
She learns about his job, and his cat, and his collection of vintage vinyls. He’s amiable, and he answers every question she directs his way with this smooth sort of charm. He’s easy to talk to, and the span of the drive cuts shorter and shorter through intriguing conversation. But she leads the way for the majority of the inquiries.
It’s not until they’re at the halfway mark before he asks his own, rather than redirecting one of hers.
“Can I ask you something?” Harry drums his fingertips over the plush of his mouth, and Y/N struggles to fix her eyes back onto the road once she’s spared him a glance.
It takes her a second to hum out an agreement, too.
“It was a bad date, wasn’t it?”
The girl expels a breath and drums her fingers over the wheel, casting her gaze onto the screen of directions.
“It wasn’t even a date,” she confesses, “he was like—“ she blinks, lashes fluttering as exasperation at the reminder leaks through, “A tinder hook up, and we didn’t even end up hooking up.”
Before he can interject, Y/N tacks on, begrudged, “He wanted to hit the bars with his posse of Mag-con wannabes, instead.”
And then there’s this sort of pause that has Y/N thinking that maybe she’s overshared. The man with the sun-polished nails isn’t an old friend she’s having a gab with, catching up on the phone — he’s a stray man she’s plucked up off some deserted road, and if he judged her for her choices, it’d kind of be justified. Namely, the one where she’d driven out in the middle of the night for impromptu cock.
And anyways, this all feels a bit surreal — the beginnings of a therapy session with a stranger who’d hopped into her sedan for a lift, filling the void of a psychologist in a great, big leather armchair.
Except Harry sounds earnestly disbelieving when he says, “You’re kidding.”
She purses her mouth and readjusts her fingers over the steering wheel. “He sort of …canceled when I was already at his door? Forgot to text me that the plans changed. That’s what he said.”
“What a dickhead.”
“Mm,” Y/N hums.
“He’s a moron for passing up the opportunity,” Harry tells her. It’s not in an awkward way, or anything creepy, either. He’s got this air to him, she finds — an ability to make a comment like with effortless delivery of charm. He’s not even looking at her when he says it, only risking her a brief glance that she catches in her peripherals. She still side-eyes him from her seat in surprise, the edges of her mouth curling up bashfully.
“M’serious,” Harry says, dimples pinching into place beside the upturned-curl of his plush mouth.
And the thing is, Harry is so friendly. He’s kind, and interesting, and despite the way Y/N had assumed allowing for his presence in her car would be the world’s greatest chore, she’s pleased to be in his company.
That’s why she lifts a wry shoulder and tells him, “The sex was bad anyways.”
The man’s face pivots to face her, then. “Yeah?” he coaxes for expansion in his molasses-slow croon of a timbre.
“It was just a little boring.”
“Boring?”
“Not— maybe not boring. Just, you know. There was nothing…” Y/N drums digits over the steering wheel, “I don’t know.”
The man beside her clears his throat.
“Was he a missionary in the dark type of bloke, then?”
“Yes,” she responds, almost instantly. Because missionary in the dark is, perhaps, the best way to describe Cody’s sexual nature. Down to the T, practically. She can’t fathom how many times she’d lay there, hoping he’d switch up into something different, something where his hands weren’t resting shallowly on the bed sheets beside her shoulders, something where his face wasn’t tucked into the crook of her neck, his mouth biting back everything but soft hisses of air as his hips rocked at an mediocrely slow pace.
Harry’s mouth quirks.
“But not even that, it’s like. He wasn’t bad at foreplay, or anything. It wasn’t the best. But, you know. It was all sort of… plain.”
The young woman pauses before she continues with an apathetic, one-shouldered shrug, “And there’s nothing wrong with plain. It gets the job done, and, you know. That’s what some people like.”
There’s a shift in energy, from there. It’s subtle, but Y/N can feel it, and she wonders whether the morph is a one-sided experience. It happens with the honesty of the context, with the way she swears jade winds over her figure from beside, with the rasp of his voice beckoning something playful.
“But that’s not what you like.”
Y/N takes a second to answer. “No.”
“What do you like?”
Maybe that phrase is where it hits her. Where she recognizes that the subtle shift in energy is not one-sided. Not by any means.
Y/N risks a haphazard glance into his direction.
“Not …that,” the girl laughs. It’s a nervous, giggly kind of sound, but it’s not because of him.
It’s different now, she thinks. He’d been so timid at first — all bashful gazes through lashes glimmering under the beam of headlights, hesitancy shaping his features. Friendly dialogue — alluring, but curt in anything beyond friendly. This is different. This is blunt and forward. This is his eyes raking over her, this is his tongue swiping out over the plush of his pink mouth, this is his dimples peeking as the corners edge up.
“What do you like?” Harry asks again, a note of flirty, lighthearted amusement to his smooth cadence.
Y/N sighs, the corners of her mouth tipping up. “I don’t know. Oh my God. Why are you interrogating me?”
Harry laughs. His brows rise, and he tips his chin down so the green sparkles at her. “You don’t know what you like?”
“I don’t know,” she huffs, good natured. And then she gives. “Something… rough. Something exciting. I don’t know, pull my hair, make it hurt a little. Don’t… lay there in the dark and…” her speech morphs into giggles, “Groan into my ear about how tight I am while I’m laying there like a dead fish.”
Y/N doesn’t know how she ends up pulled over in some deserted parking lot. She doesn’t know how her headlights end up off, how the stranger’s hands sew into her hair, how his lips mesh softly with hers, hungrily. Well. She does know, but she doesn’t care about the details in between. Because he’s hot, and he tastes of mint, and the tips of his fingers press into her scalp and tug a little when they brush through, when he slips a palm over the nape of her neck through the work of his cushiony mouth. It’s thrilling, and it’s sexy, and it’s dangerous, she thinks, but that thought becomes clouded and pushed back to the dells of her mind.
“Such a pretty little thing,” Harry murmurs when they disconnect, fingers splaying over her cheeks. Her heart hammers in her chest, and his irises trail after the motion of his thumb, bumpily dragging over the side of her lips, all the way to her cupid's bow. That same pad of his thumb pauses and tugs, drawing her bottom lip down to show the slightly parted seal of her teeth.
And then he’s taking his thumb away and nudging the tips of his index and middle finger, coaxing, “Open your mouth, open your mouth.”
The pads of his digits meet the tip of her tongue and prod in, brushing over her taste buds, until he’s tapping onto the center of the muscle and crooning, “Stick it out. Tongue out for me.”
A little hum escapes her, plucking at her vocal chords when she complies, only for him to trace further with his fingertips and nudge until he strokes the back. He holds them there and makes a little motion with his chin and a soft tut when her irises stay pinned on him, glazing with a sheen of watery protest at the depth of the intrusion.
“Ah— don’t you gag,” he tells her softly, every syllable of every word coated with these notes of dominance that almost seem …innate — like the headspace is a pair of shoes for him to slip into with ease.
It’s filthy, it’s so filthy — this stranger’s fingers in her mouth, this man she’s never seen a day in her life, a complete, nameless stranger, not even an hour prior, prodding into the warm wetness behind her lips. And her, following his aimless direction, just to please him. She doesn’t gag through the way his fingers crook, her tongue twitching and her throat bobbing, her sight growing blurry with the coating of sheen. It’s worth it, immensely, when Harry hisses out a soft curse and groans softly, his brows pinched.
It’s worth it when he takes his fingers away, and Y/N’s jaw is coated with her drool, when her tongue is still out, when Harry says, in this soft, strained voice, like it’s praise, “Christ, you’re a filthy thing.”
She finds that this impromptu rendezvous sort of gives her whiplash. She’s parked in some empty parking lot with her lights off, and an alluring stranger’s just untucked his fingers from her mouth. Maybe someone would deem this a new low — having a shag with some hitchhiker she’s scooped off the side of a back-country road. But he’s eyeing her like she’s prey, and he rolls from one action like pages flitting and flipping in a book, and every detail keeps her on her toes. She can’t keep up. Y/N pants wetly, like she’s not sure whether to slip her tongue back into her strawberry mouth, because she’s not.
Not until he swipes another thumb over the tip of the lax, twitching muscle and beckons, like he’s a little amused, “Aren’t you?”
Slowly, her tongue retreats, and that’s when his hand slips and cups over her throat, and that’s—
Her pulse thunders like it’s straining to beat out from below her skin, and Harry adjusts his grip, that same, wet thumb drawing short, slow lines over the point like he wants to test the race of her heart, like he wants to know that the pattern has skyrocketed since his palm has made homage over her windpipe. The man hums, pupils trailing and lingering slowly.
“Tell me—“ Y/N shifts in her seat, spine straightening out against the cushion, and something wracks down every individual knob when his blown gaze pins her the same way his palm pins over her neck, “Tell me you’re my filthy plaything.”
The press of his hand isn’t harsh by any extent, not until she parts her lips to answer — that’s when he nudges a little firmer. A little harder. He cocks his head at her in this condescending way — like her stifled sound of surprise entertains him, like the subtle, almost unnoticeable jolt of her eyelids, widening, pleases him. Judging by the slight quirk at the edges of Harry’s plush mouth, it does.
Her tummy coils with unanticipated desire. This feels almost scary. This feels like traipsing over a rope, like teetering over dangerous territory, and the sudden spike of adrenaline only has her thighs clenching together harder. Because this is sweet Harry, the friendly hitchhiker, in his cream sweater with his nice smile, and his charming dimples, and his loose, clean curls, with his warm palm cupped over her throat and the pad of his thumb digging into her pulse. He looks fucking hungry.
“I’m—“ her statement’s muzzled by the press of his hand, an increase in only a slight increment. It’s enough to wrest a garbled sound from the back of her throat. He tips his head.
“What’s that?”
“I’m your…” she pauses when he presses harder, again, and this time’s enough to have her feeling lightheaded, her bleary eyes wandering over his face and every muscle of her face battling the light flutter of her lashes. She thinks a dimple peeks from his cheek. Harry lets up.
Y/N siphons breaths like her lungs have been deprived for ages, and not just partly for the timespan of a short fifteen seconds. Still, his palm is glued over the front of her neck — just there. His thumb strokes over her pulse gently.
“I’m your …filthy plaything,” the young woman confesses in this pathetic little voice that’d have her ashamed in every other setting. But in this one, it doesn’t.
Arousal creeps through every fiber of being, instead, crawling through her arteries and settling into her veins like a twisted, dark goo. It thrums through her and sinks through to the trench of her tummy, frothing as chills teem down her back. He’s got this glint in his eye, like a dance around a bonfire in the deep of the night — but it’s just a stray street light that casts its shone as a spotlight when he ducks forward a tad, just enough for it to. When he tips forward, his gaze growing half-lidded, lower and lower the closer he gets, it feels like he starts to siphon every breath from her own mouth as his cushiony lips ghost over her cupid’s bow. Even for the smidge of the second it takes for their mouths to mesh again, it feels like the movement is in ultra slow motion.
The mold of their mouths together, this time, feels a lot less like she’s got her hands on the wheel — the first time had been almost testing, sweet — something soft that’d shifted into something headier, something firmer. This feels like something he guides, something he takes the clear lead in, from the pace of his hungry lips to the exploratory nudge of his tongue against the seam of her own mouth. Her fingers flex over the center console aimlessly, palm straying, and fingertips catching on a part of his cotton sweatshirt. They twist into the fabric softly when Harry’s tongue strokes over her own. A hand settles onto her thigh. It’s not her own.
“Get in the backseat,” he hums into her open mouth, squeezing over her flesh when she doesn’t immediately comply. He’s got this way of dulling her reflexes, crumbling the semblance of her mind to mush, and Y/N is convinced it has more to do with his touch than it has with the time of night, despite the way exhaustion wears at her tired muscles. “Get in the fuckin’ backseat.”
When her arms strays and she reaches for the door handle, though, he squeezes at her thigh again, and hums out a displeased note of disagreement. “Not like that.”
Bemused, Y/N shifts in her seat. A glint of something playful glows in the jade when Harry tells her, “You can find another way, can’t you, pet? Go on.”
Y/N sits in confused silence for all of three seconds before the man sits back a tad and cocks his head, irises flashing towards the backseat with a playful, little grin quirking at his lips. Like he’s suggesting.
It takes her longer than three seconds to clamber into the back from the driver’s seat, through the slot over the center console, but it satisfies Harry, evidently, judging by the way he palms over the globes of her backside through her stretchy mini-skirt. It’s not very graceful, and if she was less aroused she’d probably find it in her somewhere to be a bit embarrassed, but. She doesn’t. She wriggles over the cushion, instead, settling back.
Harry has smarter ideas. He toggles the gear on the side of the passenger seat and sets the whole top of it back, like a makeshift day-bed, and scoots into the back of the sedan through the opening. And there’s not much leg room — not for the two of them, not with the whole back of the seat splayed — and there’s not much room for their heads, either, but they manage to squeeze back, and he’s gripping onto her shoulders and twisting her on his own whim before the young woman has a chance to shift around, herself.
“Get—“ the way Harry manhandles her with a grip on her hips, (once he’s got her slumped, at least somewhat) — with ease, like he’s flipping a page in a book rather than rearranging her whole position in the cramped space of a sedan backseat — that lights something fiery in the pit of her belly. “Hands and knees, baby,” Harry tells her, grunting softly while her limbs scrabble over the pleather. He pulls her back into him, by the hips as she’s physically molded into it, parroting, quieter, “hands and knees.”
“Itsy bitsy skirt… so easy to just—” Harry hums, this sort of mischief to his cadence — and it becomes blatantly obvious, the reason for it, when his digits creep under, from behind, and his colossal palms hitch it up, “Oops.”
She’s wearing tights under it. They’re not the fleece-lined kind, despite the bite of chill in the air outside, but they are there, and Harry spans the pads of his fingers over the barrier like he doesn’t have plans to discard them the practical way.
He doesn’t. The man stripes a fingertip down her core, from behind, over the fabric and the faint hue of cheeky purple that peeks through, and makes this devious sound of mirth when her whole body twitches. And then he draws the same fingertip back up, in the same line, and nudges a bit.
“What am I gonna do with you?” Harry coos. The third, slow drag has her arching her hips back. “Hm? What am I gonna do?” He takes almost a thoughtful second, tongue peeking out to swipe out over the cushion of his pink bottom lip, before Harry splays his palms over her bum, “Pretty girl… pretty arse…”
And it’s so calm — he’s so calm, so casual, so nonchalant — Y/N doesn’t even sense it coming until he sighs, and then he’s digging the tips of his digits into the nylon, stretching it from her core, and just tearing. Casually. Nonchalantly. The sound of fabric ripping apart coaxes her jaw to slip open, and her pupils stick to the inside of the door, unblinking, as he just tears, and tears, and tears.
And she’s not even upset, is the thing. She’s not irritated that this stranger’s just torn the crotch of her tights apart — she can’t be, not when he hums devilishly and strokes over her core, a layer closer. Maybe that’s pitiful. Maybe that’s sad, that she’s so fucking horny that she doesn’t care that her tights have been split open with no prior discourse on the topic, but this direction of impulse — the way she’s not even able to try and guess his next move, it kindles something hot and hungry.
And if she ever has Cody to thank for anything, Y/N thinks maybe it’d be that he’d inspired her to shave and slip on a pair of decently attractive underthings.
“These are pretty, too,” Harry tells her, thumbing at the crotch of the thong, just over one side. The young woman gives this dreamy little sigh and arches back up into him further. “What d’you want, sweetheart? Want me to give some attention …here—“
Her spine jolts when he nudges the pad of his index right up against her clit, lightly, over the purple fabric, “Maybe? Is that it? Eager girl.”
He draws a featherlight circle over it, and then another, and another until her thighs are trembling. The tip of his digit taps. She nudges back, and he takes it away altogether. An amused sound slips from his mouth.
“Say please,” Harry demands.
Y/N jumps as his fingertips trail to her inner thigh, crooking and tickling in the line they draw.
“Please.”
Again, he makes a disapproving tut, and Y/N rolls her cheek onto on a forearm, tucked over the seat.
His eyebrows climb up his forehead, and his fingertips drift up and down the back of her thigh, drawing closer and closer where she needs him most with every lap. Each word is covered with notes of firm dominance. “Not like that. Like you mean it — like you’re pleading.”
Y/N mulls over the words, her heart thundering.
“How d’you beg?”
It takes a second for his words to sink in, but then when they do, she croons out, softer, more desperate, “Please.”
There’s a soft sound of a breath being expelled, the seat crinkling quietly as, she assumes, Harry sits back on his haunches, head ducked. Like it’s not good enough. Her tongue traces out over her lips and she beckons, “Please, please,” each plea prompting a spiral of unfamiliar humiliation — glazed with arousal — to unfurl.
“Please, please, please—“ each word emphasized with a rock back of her hips. And finally, he touches her.
His palm cradles a cheek, and he doesn’t sound even slightly impressed. Instead, his voice comes out exasperated when he tells her, “That’s not convincing. You’re desperate. You want something — you need it, you’re pleading.”
“Please— please—“
“Louder,” he scoffs, “Beg. Beg.”
“Please,” she tries, desperation creasing her voice strained on the syllable, and Harry drags fingertips, airy, across her inner thigh, from bottom to top. “Please, please, please—“
And finally, something clicks. Something slots together, at some point, when she ditches the inhibitions and her cadence starts to border on a delirious sort of desperation. Finally, something works.
“That’s better,” Harry says softly, swiping his thumb over her clit, “Much better.”
She doesn’t pick up on that, though, and she’s still begging, pleading, quietly. Quieter, quieter, quieter — the words growing more sparse the longer he spends time honing on her clit, the firmer his touch becomes.
“Good girl,” Harry coos, his fingertips latching up under the hem at the crotch of her panties, before he tugs, “Good girl. You ask nicely, and I’ll give it to you. S’that easy.”
He slips a thumb against her gushing entrance and drags it down, tracing careful shapes over the bud of nerves, before he tugs down on the hood and emphasizes on the new exposure by reigniting the touch with the thumb on his opposite hand. Two hand task — very dedicated.
“S’this all for me?” the man teases, pinching her clit, lightly, between the pad of his thumb and the side of his index. He sounds a little self-satisfied when he declares, quietly, “I’m flattered.”
Her lips part as a silent, breathy moan wrests from the back of her throat. It happens when the pad of his long middle digit prods at her entrance and nudges in. The thumb on his other hand sweeps, side to side, over where she’d most sensitive, and he stuffs into her further. And they are lengthy — his fingers. She’d seen them drumming over the center console, and smush over the raspberry tint of his lips, felt them coat her tongue, and felt them press against her throat. They can reach further than her own, crooking against her spongy walls, curling when he adds a second before straightening out and scissoring for the stretch.
“Christ, you’re gushing,” Harry says, and as if on cue, the pornographic squelch of his fingers working crowds the cramped space, “Jesus— d’you hear that?”
Y/N buries her face in her arms to muzzle the little sounds of bliss that he pries from her mouth. It’s not until he’s proper fucking into her with his digits, the pad of his thumb dragging tight, little circles over her clit, that those sounds escape her. And when they start, they pour in a flood. Because he works so expertly, so deftly — from the pace, to the angle, to the way he hones on her clit with his other hand, and the filthy dialogue he spews in his honey-smooth baritone. It’s everything, everything, and it prompts the coil in her belly to circle and squeeze, tighter, tighter — a telltale prior to its inevitable snap. She clenches over his fingers helplessly.
But then he just— stops.
The nudge of his digits skirts to a stand-still within her, and his thumb stops drawing circles, and Y/N just squeezes over him like a silent plea. He makes this sound — this mirthy, deviously pleased hum, like her displeasure at his pause amuses him. It’s pure sadism.
It’s not until she rocks her hips a bit, a shallow, desperate kind of back and forth, that the amusement seems to slip from his tone.
“Don’t—“ Harry tuts sharply, taking his thumb off her clit altogether to grip at her hip harshly, “Stay still. Naughty, little minx.”
And she does. She stays still when his voice gets hard like that. There’s a bit of quiet between his snap and the subtle freeze-up of her rocking. Soft breaths sew through the lull, but then he talks again, his tone a little nicer.
“We’re gonna play a little game, yeah?”
That’s …intriguing. Y/N shifts over the cushion. His grasp over her hip has softened considerably, but there’s still this humiliating heat that swarms her face at the fact that the crotch of her panties is still tucked against her skin, that everything’s out in the open, that Harry’s practically ogling in lieu of touching her.
“It’s a bit like Simon Says. Except, when you play Simon Says, you hesitate a little, right?”
The man’s thumb presses back to her clit, and she buries her face in her folded arms.
“And I don’t want you to hesitate. I’ll tell you something to do, and—“
His fingers sink into her, and her shoulders grow tense from the bliss. Y/N muzzles her groan.
“You’ll do it. Sounds easy enough?”
It does. It’s easy enough instructions, and when Harry pats at the same hip he’d been clutching over and beckons, “Hands back here,” Y/N obliges easily enough.
Her cheek presses to the cushion, cool against the warmth teeming beneath her skin, and she lets him manhandle and move her splayed fingers to his liking, arms stretched behind.
“That’s good,” Harry croons in his low timbre, the warm, lewd praise of it drawing chills up the nape of her neck, “Now spread a bit for me.”
Y/N does that, too. Her finger pads nudge and press into her flesh, coated with the tights, and her digits crook as the tips dig in to splay — to follow his direction, to please him. And it’s shameful, a pinch in her shoulders as her arms reach back, fingers twitchy, imprinting into her own backside with little divots as she opens herself up for him to do nothing. But his satisfied little hum sends an unfamiliar sense of accomplishment spiraling through her veins. The way his warm palm rests on and pets over the back of her thigh along with it feeds something new and starving.
“Good girl. There you go. See? S’easy.”
Y/N makes a little sound into the seat, and her fingers flex as Harry pumps his own digits, a steady rhythm of in and out, paired with a hum from him that sounds absolutely pornographic.
“Such a good girl,” the man tells her, fingers crooking, but the praise isn’t enough to muffle the bemusement that wracks her when he says in this devious hush, “Let’s try another. Bark.”
Bark.
It takes a second for the command to register past the immediate threshold of the pleasure curling in her belly as he strokes at her spongy walls. And when it does click together, his word settling past the membrane of bliss, her initial thought is that she’s definitely misheard him. Because that’s …sort of a ludicrous request. The young woman sounds strewn between groggy and muzzled when she cranes her neck a bit over the cushion and beckons with a confused hum.
“Bark,” Harry repeats, “like a dog.” Simple and nonchalant.
Bark like a dog. She’s midway through creased brows, a strained raise of her head, and a baffled what, before the man stills his fingers and takes a grip over her wrist, sliding her hand away.
And then he smacks her, hard, with his palm on one side, in the same place where her digits had dug in to spread herself open.
It’s loud, and it stings, and it sends a shockwave through her nervous system, strong enough to have everything buzzing on alert as her forehead pastes to the seat and the parted gap of her mouth struggles to mute a gasp. Maybe the most surprising part is that the hurt feels good, that the sting morphs into something else as it fizzles and ebs, that the hammer of her heart spikes this famished, unfamiliar arousal coursing through her when he doesn’t even bother stroking over the bruised skin. It’s definitely hard enough to leave a ruddy mark under the tights, and Y/N blinks down at the faux leather, wordless and a little gobsmacked.
And then Harry sighs in this way that’s so …disappointed. And the calmness of his inflection, grouped with the irony of the harsh hit… that has a chill climbing up her spine.
“That’s not how you play the game, pet.”
He says it in this eerily nonchalant note of disdain, like he’s not just casually tattooed the shape of his hand onto her backside with a blow. Like he expected better. Like it’s a little mishap they’ll gloss over. She doesn’t even realize she’s still got a vice clamped over his fingers until he shifts the digits in her, coaxing her core to flutter around him. Harry sighs again.
“Did you forget the rules, baby?” he asks, cadence soft and basked in condescension. The man strokes over the heated skin, the same spot where Y/N is sure a subtle welt has peaked to the surface below the thin veil of the sheer tights, “I tell you to do something and you do it, right?”
Her knees are starting to ache a little, a soreness settling into the joints, but she doesn’t even mind it when his fingers pump again, slowly.
“That’s how the game goes. Right? I need an answer.”
She makes a soft sound. A little sound that’s not protest. A little sound that’s not outright agreement. It’s a whimper into a void, but everything about him and his touch lights something alive in her. And she wants more. She’s dizzy off of it when she manages out a breathless, “Yes.” It’s a short word that comes out in a breath, like she’d been holding the air in her lungs.
Maybe that’s why she’s dizzy.
“Are we on the same page? Let’s try again, then. Bark.”
Y/N shifts over the seat. The hand he’d moved has splayed helplessly to her side, and the fingers curl and uncurl as the weight of the suggestion hits her. Because that’s— it’s humiliating. It’s demeaning, and it’s strange, and the fact that he demands it has the tips of a fire licking up at her insides. The young woman makes an uncharacteristically pathetic noise.
Harry sighs.
The split second of hesitation is enough, apparently, for another slap, just as hard, in the same spot. It has her rocking forward and clenching over his digits again. Harry’s quick to correct her posture with a hand on her hip, guiding her back in a way that lacks gentleness.
“I said, bark.”
This time his voice is harder. Meaner. Y/N gives.
She gives because the tips of his fingers prod at this heavenly spot inside her, because her skin smarts in a way that has her practically drooling, because she’s dizzy, and hungry, and desperate. Her thighs are quivering when she gets out a half-hearted woof, her lips shaping over the word like the task is a chore to get out.
“Better—“ another slap, aimed lower onto the back of her thigh, has her hips jutting and the straight line of her spine twisting up, “—but not what I’m looking for. Try again.”
She doesn’t even aim to please, is the thing, when her yelp overlaps with another smack. But it morphs into something surprised and deliciously pained, and evidently, it’s enough, judging by the way his touch smooths over the stinging skin.
“Oh, baby,” Harry tells her, his fingers stroking like he’s smudging the pink-tinge of bruising, “That’s pathetic.”
And it dawns on her then, that there’s no winning with this game. When he tuts and tells her, absolutely patronizingly, “So desperate for it, she’s barking like a stray.”
It dawns on her that she doesn’t want to win. She doesn’t care, because his filthy dialogue, as demeaning as it is, just draws her wetter and closer. As if to highlight on it, Harry crooks his fingers and tacks on, “You’re leaking all over the seats, pet.”
And she is, she’s sure. It’s a dirty game he plays, and she loves every part of it and more. It has her writhing when he draws circles over her clit, it has her aching for more when he guides her hand back to her backside with a squeeze and a wordless coax to keep spreading.
“Gonna let me fuck you?” Harry pulls the digits out, dirtying what’s left of her tights and smearing sticky wetness over the back of her thigh, “Hm? Gonna let me—“ his belt clinks as he unbuckles it, and then comes the soft sound of a zipper, its teeth unlatching, “—fill you up?”
“Glovebox,” Y/N mumbles, hips shifting back when he pets at her thigh.
His pupils flit, sticking to the back of her head, before they jump back down to his handiwork. Harry’s tone sounds absent-minded and mirthy when he asks, “What’s that?”
“There’s condoms in the glovebox,” she expands, a little louder than her prior murmur, bracing on her forearms to cast her gaze back at him over her shoulder.
And he looks rugged in this boyish, youthful way, then, is the thing. The corner of his mouth jolts, lopsided, and a stray tendril has flopped over his forehead. His hands are on the undone buckle of his belt, and his fly’s down, and he sounds absolutely amused when he says, “Are there?”
There are.
“You’ve prepared for this, then, have you?” Harry sets a palm onto her hip, squeezing as a dimple pinches into his cheek, “Condoms in your glovebox …like a proper dirty whore?”
Coyly, she blinks, cheek nuzzled to the seat, and she watches him stretch his arm out for the glovebox as he knees away.
“I’m always prepared,” Y/N settles on, softly.
The glovebox slips open. There’s rummaging — his torso turns to face it entirely, and then he gleans a shining, golden little packet, tucked between the pads of his digits. The young woman wriggles her hips. There’s this glint of fiery …something. Something playful, something lewd, something hungry in the jade, when he clambers back over, steadying himself with a palm on her tailbone. It coaxes her spine into a pretty, sharper arch.
“You do this a lot, do you?” Harry teases, “Pick up strange men, let them fuck you?”
She hums in agreement as the man takes the little gold square, snug between his teeth, fingers working quickly, pushing buttons through slots and tugging his cock out.
“Maybe I do.”
He tears at the wrapper with his teeth. She knows, because his next words come out a little muffled.
“Is that right?”
It’s not. It’s so out of the norm, so far from the usual, but Y/N would be a masochist to string out the arousal that’d built between her thighs in lieu of letting Harry span his palms over the globes of her ass in the backseat. Harry, with his cheeky smile and his sunshine, short-trimmed nails. Harry, with his denim-tethered bulge dragging over the back of her thigh and his filthy tongue shaping crude dialogue.
She doesn’t see him as he tuts from behind, but she can picture it; his palm cupped over the base of his shaft as he rolls the condom over and then presses the tip against her teasingly.
“Wanted to be fucked like a dirty whore, is that it?”
Her “yes” stretches and ebs and splinters into a whispery hiss when Harry nudges forward and stretches her out. And then he’s beckoning for her hands, one hand splayed over her hip and the opposite coaxing at her shoulder, tugging and jolting in gentle nudges, mouth shaping over firm, “Hands, hands, give me your hands — behind your back— that’s— just like that.”
Barred from scratching at the seats with his firm, warm grip binding the joints hostage, Y/N presses her cheek to the cushion. She slumps into his willpower, gives into him, the smush of her face sweaty on the cushion, jolting with every rock forward. The young woman clenches over him helplessly. Soft sounds slip past her lips, pried out by the nudges of his hips, over and over, again and again. Her fingers stiffen and flex, and the arch in her spine shifts when the head of his cock bumps that delicious ridge so deep in her — and it’s like Harry senses it, the way her entire body grows taut like a string. He goes at that too, prodding, again and again, until a whine plucks at her vocal chords. Every shallow jolt of his hips sends waves of paralyzing bliss licking over her insides. Every nudge forward has her slumping more. And when he talks, Y/N barely registers it over the rush of blood in her own head.
There’s been little things that fall from his mouth — soft curses and hisses as he slides in, hums and groans when he bottoms out, readjusting his grasp over her wrists. Words, though — now he’s saying words. They’re still in that gentle baritone, this sort of luring croon.
“Come on, baby. Come on — got a stranger’s cock in your pretty, little pussy—“ Harry’s voice catches on a strained note as he pulls out—
…A sigh as he rocks back in, “—and …you’re not gonna struggle?”
A warmth stems from his grasp, behind her back, and as if on reflex, her digits crook and flex. The danger of the words don’t even register. Because, yeah, he’s right. She’s got a stranger holding her restrained, rocking up against her, and all that peaks in her at the filthy dialogue is a bud of deranged arousal. She doesn’t shoulder forward though, doesn’t try to pull her hands apart, doesn’t sag forward, not even a little, too concerned that even a minute shift will alter the delicious intensity of the angle.
“Not even a little bit?” Harry tuts, grinding forward, one more time, slow, and then he squeezes over her wrists hard and picks up in pace. Just until he settles into a hard tempo of short, deep thrusts, and her shoulders are aching from the way he pulls her arms back.
His words blanket her with this patronizing sort of humiliation — the kind that has her spongy walls pulsing over his length and chills erupting from the nape of her neck to the creases between her shoulder blades. “You make it so easy.”
So easy for a stranger to fuck her — so easy, pulling over in some desolate parking lot. So easy, letting him wrap a palm over her throat and stick his fingers past her lips. So easy, following his every command for the reward of his hips pummeling against her own.
And it’s easy to get close with the way he works into her, tip bumping into a spot that sends waves of pleasure coursing through every millimeter of her nervous system. The kind that has every muscle stiffening to stone until the wave ebs. It’s so easy to lurch higher and higher, closer and closer, when his touch digs into her joints, rendering her helpless to his crude affections. When strained grunts and sordid words fall from his mouth, when his other hand slips from her hip and knots into the hair, at the roots, on the back of her scalp, only smushing her cheek into the seat with more pressure.
“Fuck,” Harry groans, the pace of his thrusts stuttering as he picks up the tempo into something merciless, his digits flexing into her hair and his body weight sagging onto her frame.
Every time his balls slap against her clit, teasing where she wants that attention the most, she feels the spring draw tighter, lips smushed to and gaping against the seat. And then he readjusts his grip, lets one of her hands free while he keeps the other pinned, and he coaxes, “Touch your pretty clit, baby. Make yourself cum all over my cock.”
Y/N makes it to the crest before he does. It’s her fingertips sloppily winding loose shapes over the bud of nerves, it’s his cock hammering down into her, it’s the pinch in her shoulder, and the way Harry’s grip grows harsher over the hand he still has pinned, the closer he gets himself. The way his digits are still flexed at the roots of her scalp, the way his moans and curses are garbled with pleasure with each pump. The way her helpless fluttering, when she tips over the peak, draws this long, sordid groan from him as he cranes his neck back. And then he slows, ducking his chin to watch below through slow thrusts.
“Dirty girl, cumming all over a stranger’s cock,” Harry swipes with a thumb where the mesh, toying at the seam of her hole when he goes deeper, again, slow.
And then his grip on her wrist gets hard again as his fingers flex, and he holds onto her hip and guides her in a steady-paced, back and forth bounce over cock. He chases his own releases, every motion rough, and full of control, and so brimmed with this unfamiliar hunger. She’s mush by the time his head tips back, and he gushes ribbon after ribbon into the condom. She’s mush when his grasp over her wrist grows lax, when he knees back clumsily on his knees, when he discards the condom, wrapping it into the confines of its wrapper, when he fixes her purple panties back over her crotch and strokes over the back of her thigh with an amused huff.
“Alright?” Y/N vaguely hears Harry say from behind when she doesn’t instantly sit up, his voice bordering on amused.
That’s. Yeah, Y/N thinks. She’s great. There’s still this rush of blood in her ears, and an ache in her joints that interweaves with the soreness of her muscles, but it’s all in such a good way. She makes a barely coherent hum of agreement and rolls her shoulder forward, planting her palms onto the seat to sit up and glance at the time over the display in the front of the car. It’s nearly three in the morning now, and it hits her then, that she’s so tired. She’s so tired, she feels like every piece of her energy had been strewn up and pulled tight on a rope, and now it’s all wasted away.
Harry gets it. Or he seems to, at least. Sleep beckons her with a whispery croon and a soft touch. The corners of his mouth crook up, and he pats at her hip.
“Hop up, pet. D’you want me to drive the rest of the way? S’just a little bit, now.”
Y/N doesn’t do hitchhikers. She doesn’t let strangers into her car in the middle of the night from some empty road, she doesn’t fuck them in the backseat, and she certainly doesn’t let strange men drive her car to some unfamiliar location, only lacking being undisclosed from its visible street name on the GPS. Y/N doesn’t do any of that. But she nods weakly and lets their roles flip. She’s mid-raising the back of the passenger seat by the time Harry jogs around to the driver’s seat and slips in.
In the rear-view, her reflection greets with her unshed tears and bloodshot eyes, mascara smudged below. He turns to face her and strokes a hand down her thigh. He picks the same hand up and sets it onto the gear-shift. Switches to reverse.
The first thing he says from the front of the car, strawberry mouth quirking as his eyes direct to the back-up camera, is, “I’m sorry about your tights. I hope that was alright.”
When they pull up to the motel, Y/N doesn’t ask questions. There’s only been a span of, maybe, ten minutes passed between the parking lot and their final stop of the night before Harry pulls into a parking spot and shuts the car off.
He tells her, “This is my stop.”
Y/N doesn’t do hitchhikers, and exhaustion wracks at every sinew of muscle in her body. She half-expects him to wordlessly hop out of the car. He doesn’t. The man fixes her with a smile, and says, “Could I get your number, maybe?”
It’s not an odd request by any means, but if she weren’t so tired, maybe she’d ask more questions. Her pupils would wend over the shoddy motel sign, and the shit cars parked beside them, and she’d wonder what the hell they were doing parked in front of some abandoned-looking motel. She’d ask why this was his stop, and not a home. Instead, she pulls a napkin from her glovebox and digs for a pen. She scribbles her digits and hands them off. In the brush of the cool air, from the night, when she clambers out to swap spots with him, she wraps her arms about herself. When she takes a seat into the driver’s side, she expects him to walk away. He doesn’t do that either. Instead, she rolls her window down when he beckons, and Harry leans onto the car and tells her, “Get home alright, yeah?”
It’s a miracle when she hobbles up the steps of her apartment complex, when she pries open the front door and crashes into her sheets. The blankets envelop her like a warm hug, and she doesn’t even bother pulling off her tights.
It’s a week before she gets a phone call. There’s no texts, and the morning after, when she’s greeted with radio-silence, she thinks that maybe she’d dreamt the whole thing.
Her tights, ripped at the crotch, prove otherwise.
She’s in bed, days later, when her screen lights up with a call. It’s an unfamiliar number, and curiosity peaks before she swipes over the answer toggle.
“Hello?”
A gap of silence, a breath, and a familiar, smooth baritone on the other end of the line.
“Y/N.”
There’s a little sound of the bedsheets stirring as she freezes up. He’s caught her off guard. A little laugh plucks at his vocal chords, tinny on the other end of the line, like he’s amused by the stretch of lull. Her lips part, the corners of her mouth inching up as she hears a sigh from him that seeps in all the way to her eardrum. But she doesn’t have time to contemplate what to say or how to say it, because he doesn’t let her get a word in before he’s talking again.
And his next words are not a playful jest at her lack of response, or anything friendly, really. In fact, the confession, said so nonchalantly, causes chills to erupt down her arms.
“I was going to kill you that night.”
The chills aren’t the initial reaction. The initial reflex is the crook of her mouth to morph bemused, the pinch between her eyebrows, and this sullen feeling of dread that twists up in her stomach. A laugh bubbles in her chest, because, what the fuck?
But then he keeps talking.
“Thought about draining the life from those pretty eyes the second you rolled your window down,” the voice on the other end sighs, and it’s got this sort of …reminiscent quality to it. Like he’s tracing the steps of the night back to its starting point. Reliving it when he tells her, “It’s such a thrill, you know. Taking that from someone. So intimate.”
The young woman doesn’t make any sounds, kind of appalled by the sick joke. Because it is sick, it’s disturbing, and it’s a twisted way, at the least, to strike up a conversation if he’s …looking to do what they did again. This isn’t the Harry she’d met on that night. This isn’t the same one who’d worn the cream sweatshirt, and talked all friendly with this smooth, wholesome charm — this wasn’t the man she’d let into her car, this wasn’t the man she’d let do all those filthy things to her, in the backseat of her sedan. This doesn’t feel like the same man at all, and she wishes she’d been aware of the sick sense of humor to his character before she’d let him …violate her. Y/N’s just about to budge in with a disgusted comment, tell him off for calling her so late at night to mess with her, but he beats her to the edge of the gap, yet again.
Except this time, he sounds sort of frustrated, and the phrase comes out like a scolding, the tone of his cadence firm and irate. “Didn’t your mum ever tell you not to talk to strangers? …Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to trust strange men on the side of the road? S’just …bloody stupid.”
He laughs. It’s this soft sort of chortle she’d been so charmed by that night — it’s identical, except then, it was this sweet sound full of wholesome mirth. Now, it feels cold. Odd and detached. Surreal.
“But you… you made it so easy,” Y/N listens to every word that comes through the line, hanging onto every syllable of the empty threat as dread churns her stomach. His words from that night crowd behind her skull. You make it so easy. “So friendly, so sweet. Just wanted to chat on and on. I was going to kill you, and you wanted to have a shag—”
Harry tuts. Her heart hammers behind her ribcage, and she only realizes that her breathing has slowed and that her grip on the smartphone’s grown white-knuckled when it shakes against her cheek. She’d let him drive her car. She’d let him get into her car, she’d let him lure her into pit-stopping in a deserted parking lot, she’d locked the doors, and dimmed the lights, and let him open her up with his fingers and his cock. And then she’d let him drive her car, and take down her number. There’s a moment of mortifying silence.
Harry sounds deadly serious when he tells her, “Don’t you ever pick up another hitchhiker.”
The line goes dead.
Y/N calls back. The number she reaches belongs to a payphone, unanswered.
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-> HURTING, LONGING, LOVING – DANCING TO DISCO MUSIC
synopsis: you wake up and have no memory of simon. you can only hope to find him among your fractured memories and the scattered lights of a disco ball.
word count: 2.3k
characters: simon "ghost" riley, amnesiac! gn! reader
trigger warnings: transient global (aka temporary) amnesia, mentions of canon-typical violence/interrogation
notes: heavily inspired by disco elysium and part one of @roosterr 's amnesia series. go give it a read if you haven't already (*๑˘◡˘)
Nothing surrounds you. Only warm, primordial blackness – the pond you learn about in Biology 101, the one where everything and everyone comes from. You don’t know this, of course, because you’re curled up in it, your mind fermenting in it. You’re no larger than a grain of yeast. You don’t have to do anything anymore. Ever. Never, ever.
But you’re growing. Gram upon gram of yeast, slowly morphing into meat. Muscles and bones and organs and a beating pig heart, decaying as soon as they grow. Soon you’ll need to do things. There’s a faint tickle of an idea. Soldiers. Battlefields. IEDs and tanks. You don’t know what to do with this information.
Somewhere within the idea – a sensation! Pain. Arcing, shooting pain, lightning through every new nerve in your new body. The limbed and headed machine of pain and barely-dignified suffering is firing up again. It wants to walk the streets of Manchester. Hurting. Longing. Loving. Dancing to disco music.
It wants someone. You want someone. A blurred-out face, someone you’re kneeling at the feet at. A ghost of a man. So lost he doesn’t even know what his face looks like.
“I swore I wouldn’t let you go,” your barely-formed mouth mumbles. Your teeth are hot, melted-together plastic and your tongue is jet-fuel-fired rebar.
Look up. No. You were just talking to yourself. That’s all you ever do. Even in this primordial pool. And the act is wearing thin, the spots of the disco ball fade around you…
The warm blackness is instantly replaced with a cold, artificial light. You bring your hand up to block it – since when have you had these? Gangly things with a red wire further down in… your elbow. That’s not a wire – that’s a tube. Of blood? Your blood. You have blood.
You remember now. You were born with hands and elbows, knees, feet, organs and fat and a copious amount of blood. A collarbone you’ve broken more than once. A body that was molded in the crucible of battle.
And holy shit does that body hurt. That hindbrain wasn’t exaggerating when it said that you are a being of suffering.
A dull throbbing is behind your eyes as they rove around the room. They land on a button neatly labeled Call Nurse. You press it and wait.
Everything after that is a blur. Nurses, doctors, “Follow my finger with your eyes, but don’t move your head,” poking and prodding with various instruments, “Tilt your head back so I can feel your neck,” blue latex gloves, “How much do you remember?”, bright lights in your eyes.
One nurse checks the dressings on your forehead. It’s just above your temple. His hands are rubbery and unfeeling as he re-dresses it. A trickle of cold liquid dribbling down from an alcohol swab. Bandages press against your skin. “What’s your name and date of birth?”, “Can you name the members of the task force you’re a part of?”
A man cuts through the blur as he comes thundering through the door. A balaclava with a skull pattern. Three men are behind him, hanging in the doorframe, out of the way. But the man moves quickly towards you, standing on the edge of the crowd of medical professionals, pacing back and forth, eyes on you, like how a sheepdog circles its sheep. Longing, waiting. Held back by an invisible leash of respect.
After a while, most of the personnel disperse, leaving you with a transient global amnesia diagnosis, a nurse, and the men. But even then, they leave after casting a glance at the sheepdog.
He moves closer, then stares at you for a while. He’s expecting something. His brown eyes are like sodium lights. A small trickle of streets and the sky. In your mind, you know he’s the place to be. You’re still alive while he’s around.
Yeah. He’s groovy. You want to disco with him. He is disco. But somewhere, a deep unaccessed area of your mind is saying, “You don’t want to disco like this. Not really. Not in the deepest part of your soul, where blond eyelashes only make you sad.”
Wait – come on, what are you talking about? Sad blond eyelashes? Blond eyelashes are fun!
“Why do I hurt all of a sudden?”
“Hey, it’s alright, darl.” He kneels by your bed and takes your hand in both of his. They’re warm, rough, calloused in places you thought couldn’t be calloused. “It’s me, it’s Simon.”
“What?” You pull your hand away from his. “I don’t know a Simon.”
Simon scoffs, but it’s more of an exhale of disbelief. “Don’t you remember me?”
“No.” You narrow your eyes. “Should I?”
Simon crumbles before you. His sodium streetlight eyes go out with an explosion of guilt – the bulbs pop with a fizzy sound. He looks like he should be groveling at the feet of a feudal lord, providing excessive evidence of his crimes, or throwing a cat-of-nine-tails over his shoulder and ripping the flesh from his own back. Whatever made him this way – you can be damn sure it was your fault. Those three simple words, instead of “I love you,” are “No. Should I?”
“It’s me.” Simon’s voice cracks as he speaks. Tears flood his waterline. He takes off his mask, revealing his pale face and dyed-blond hair. “It’s your Simon.”
“Simon,” you say softly. You look at him and hurt. A hole in your still-beating pig heart. Blood spills out from where the bullet went in.
“No. Nothing.” You look down at his hand. It’s palm-up, splayed out where you let go of it. It curls up into a fist, then Simon pulls it into his lap.
He says nothing. Just stares at you like you’re familiar yet somehow unknown.
You don’t know what to say. You just can’t conjure up any thoughts as you stare back. The morphine can’t be the cause of your dumbness. And it certainly isn’t the new modafinil that was just introduced to your system.
You search his eyes and feel, above all things, lost. Lonely in a hospital full of people.
Simon pulls away. His breathing is heavy and labored. A single tear slips down his scarred cheek. He doesn’t look like he’s one to cry. The tear leaves a trail of wet that looks like a new scar.
He tugs his balaclava back on and shuffles out, casting one last longing glance over his shoulder before closing the door behind him with a soft click.
That’s where it is. He is disco. He’s stumbling through the streets of Manchester. Hurting. Longing. Loving. Dancing to disco music.
You’re stuck in the hospital for a week for physical therapy and observation. Simon visits intermittently. He brings things to jog your memory – men that are part of Task Force 141, small snow globes from where you and he have apparently been deployed. Some of them work. But none of them bring back any memory of your apparent relationship with Simon – your boyfriend.
Today he comes in with a small device. It’s not a phone, but resembles it. A small wire comes from the amp and ends in a small circle of plastic.
You point at it. “What’s that?”
“It’s a contact microphone.” Simon settles in the chair that’s set up by your bed. He points at the blocky part of it. “This part holds the recording. You can play it back if needed.”
“Are you going to play it back?” You ask.
“No,” Simon says. “This one is blank.”
You take it from Simon’s hand and turn it over, looking at it. Examining. “Then why are you showing me this?”
“You are…” Simon sighs, trying to find the words. “You were a profoundly talented interrogator. You used contact microphones to record the interrogation, the confessions, the works. There’s a specified interrogation chamber underground. Contact microphones pick up the noise better down there.”
You continue looking it over. Fiddling with the wire. Running your thumb over the mesh of the microphone.
“Anything?” Simon says.
You close your eyes and think. Contact microphone… violence, blood. There’s a welding torch in there somewhere. The smell of bubbling flesh and burning hair. Cauterization without anesthesia. It was that way on purpose.
You open your eyes and look at Simon. “Interrogation.”
“Obviously.” Simon huffs out a laugh. It sounds forced. “I told you that.”
“Yes.” You sigh, looking down at the contact microphone. You try to think more. Contact… physical contact. Your fist making contact. Something hard. Solid bone breaking under your hands.
But also… something soft. Something that smells good. Smells homey. A black hoodie with some cheesy skull pattern on it. Actually, a closet full of black and grey clothes. A monotone voice to match a monotone closet.
The clothes smell faintly of cigarettes. A carton that’s mostly empty. They taste better than regular cigarettes – they’re some European brand.
“Do…” You look up at Simon. “Do you smoke?”
“Why?” Simon asks. “Do I smell like cigs?”
“No. Just…”
You close your eyes and try to remember more. The carton is a brown-orange color. The back is plastered with warnings about nicotine being an addictive chemical. No filters. A smooth, walnut-esque finish.
“Revaality,” you finally say and look up at Simon.
“Yes! Yes.” Simon takes your hand instinctively, excitedly. He smiles. Like crying, it doesn’t really fit him, but you’re glad he’s smiling anyway. “That’s the brand I smoke. I smoke Revaality.”
He takes your face in his hand and guides you to look at him. His sodium light eyes are bright once again. “Anything else? Lovie, please…”
You cringe away from his touch. Again, Simon is punched in the fucking face when he remembers that you don’t know him. Not like that.
Simon pulls his hands away. “Shit. I…”
“It’s okay,” you say quickly. “I know.”
I know you know a different version of me. The thought lingers, loud and unsaid. Simon, you’re a man with a lot of past, but little present, and almost no future. I’m sorry we only live in your memories, because I don’t even have those.
“I’m trying.” You look down at the contact microphone. “Believe me, I’m trying.”
“I believe you,” Simon says. “It’s just… it’s hard.”
Silence for a while. The artificial lights above you buzz and cast harsh shadows on Simon’s face. He looks… tired.
“I still love you,” he says quietly. Almost a whisper. “I… you’re the best thing to ever happen to me.”
He rests a hand on the railing of your hospital bed. “I’m not the best. I drink. I smoke. I have a laundry list of mental issues and types of trauma. So much it’s not even funny.”
“But you…” he sighs. “You fell in love with me anyway.”
You look up at him. He’s crying again. A pang of empathy in your heart. You don’t know why, but you don’t want to see him cry. The tears that cut through the dirt on his face are unbefitting.
“I’m sorry.” Your voice is a mirror of Simon’s. Soft and wavering. “I want to remember. I don’t even know what happened to me. The doctors always dance around it when I ask.”
Simon bunches the end of his sleeve up in his hand and wipes away his tears. “You were a fucking idiot. That’s what happened.”
You scoff. “Excuse me?”
“Not in a bad way.” Simon lets go of his sleeve and rests his hand on the railing of your bed again. “You love too much and too hard. You saved me.”
“It… the building…” He squeezes his eyes shut, forcing his waterline to clear of tears. “The building was coming down. We thought we were out of danger close. But there was a piece of rebar that…”
Simon looks down at his lap. He’s ashamed. “It was supposed to hit me. I was supposed to die. I’m used to it. I’m used to close calls and blood transfusions.”
“But I’m not used to…” He glances up at you through his eyelashes. His long, blond eyelashes. “People I care about being hurt. Or people caring about me in general.”
“Simon.” You reach out and lay your hand over his where it rests on the railing. He holds his breath like he’s afraid.
A pause. You want to be sure of your words before you speak.
“I’m going to try my damndest to remember,” you say. “Even if I don’t remember everything, I – I want to try to learn to care about you again. Because, based on our limited interactions, I know you’re a good man. Even if you drink and even if you smoke and even if you have a laundry list of mental issues and an assortment of trauma.”
Simon slowly brings his other hand and rests it on top of yours. His callouses brush against your knuckles. Abrasive yet comforting in a way you barely remember.
“Thank you,” he whispers. “Really, truly. Thank you.”
And, in this moment, Simon finally has some sense of control in an ever-turbulent world. The world that tried to take his one and only love. The world that has taken his one and only love and is only now feeding him droplets of what he knows – what he once knew. He must exercise this control carefully, lest he lose you again.
In the sky, there are no dogfights and no silverplate bombers. Only stars and the rabbit curled up on the moon and a singular winking comet. God is in Heaven. Everything is normal on Earth.
Somewhere, the spots from a disco ball freckle the dance floor once again.
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