#god i wish i could recapture that feeling in a bottle

[santaresistencia]

i'm going back rn and backtagging all of my spn posts (for like archival posterity reasons, shut up) and i've finally reached the date of nov 5th 2020 and holy cow we really did collectively lose our minds huh

[amandaoftherosemire]

And Hell is Just a Sauna -- Part One

Fandom: Marvel/MCU

Pairing: Bucky Barnes X Reader

Characters: Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanoff, Steve Rogers, Wanda Maximoff, OMC Joseph

Author: @amandaoftherosemire

Rating: Mature

Word Count: 6,121

Format: Short Series (Complete)

Warnings: Language, violence, references to captivity, implied abuse, angst.

Summary: You meet Bucky Barnes upon your mysterious and deadly escape from a power obsessed cult leader and his followers. Though you carry a secret in addition to the wariness of trauma, you can’t help your attraction to Bucky and his irascible demeanor. As for Bucky, he is drawn to the light he sees in you while he fears the things you’re hiding. Can you trust him with your secrets, and your life? Will you have a choice?

A/N: I haven’t posted anything in five months, so this may be a little on the odd side. I guess I’m working through some stuff? 

This takes place in between Black Panther and Infinity War but is not consistent with MCU canon because I do what I want. 

I used my old taglist, but only as a way to let y’all know I’m posting again. As always, feel free to ignore me. 😊 Heads up, future parts will get smutty.

 Part One // Part Two // Part Three // Part Four

  And Hell is Just a Sauna -- Part One

 The first time Bucky saw you, you were literally on fire. Not just a little flame, either, but a full-on conflagration engulfing your entire body and crackling with cheerful menace. You’d turned to him, your eyes blazing white in a face painted in flame, and intoned with a voice that both popped and roared.

“Are you a god?”

Bucky’s eyes widened over the barrel of the gun he continued to keep trained on you despite his uncertainty that it could do any good should you decide to attack. Unsure how to prevent that decision, but wanting to try, he responded slowly. “I have no idea how to answer that.”

From the woods around him, Bucky heard a shout. He stood at the edge of a clearing in which you stood at the center, a scatter of charred bodies surrounding you. He went no closer, not willing to discover the hard way what your range was.

Sam was yelling as he walked closer, “Ray, when someone asks you if you’re a god, you say, ‘Yes!’”

Bucky was fascinated to see blue flames dance along your teeth as you smiled. He couldn’t explain it, but something about the way the flames whipped and whirled around you was unbelievably beautiful. It was also incredibly terrifying, but Bucky had needed to survive horrors best left undefined, so had long since learned to find the beauty in terror. In the next moment, Sam was stepping into view on the other side of the clearing, his own gun out and ready.

You turned, and with a happy, surprised sob, cried, “Sam!?” The next moment, the fire was flickering into nothing and you were just a lovely woman wearing nothing more than the ash from what had once been a long white dress.

Sam immediately holstered his gun and ran forward. “Y/N? We knew there were prisoners but--"

"Sam," you whispered brokenly as you stumbled on knees turned to jelly toward the concerned face of your friend and former colleague. You hadn't seen him since before your abduction, not long after that last doomed mission in Lagos. When he'd gone on the run with Captain America after the fallout over the Accords, you'd been nothing but happy to hear that he was alive and free. His face was one of the last you’d expected to see upon your escape, but the sight of Sam was a joyous relief.

"What are you doing here?" Your teeth chattered on the question, reaction and your own nakedness leaving you freezing and shaking. You didn't see where the silver emergency blanket came from, but Sam was nevertheless wrapping you in it and then in his own arms, to your everlasting gratitude. You'd never been anything more than friends, but he'd always been a true and loyal one, with a giving heart and wicked sense of humor.

You let him comfort you, the bone-shattering terror of your ordeal hitting you now that it was over. Now that someone you knew and trusted held you, the sick horror of what you'd endured sent tears flooding into your throat. The exhaustion of everything you'd done that day turned your muscles to water and so you didn't resist when Sam bent and slid his arm behind your knees to lift and carry you out of the clearing where you'd hurt so many. Instead, you buried your face in the crook where his neck met his shoulder and let the tears fall.

"Do me a favor and tell the others I've found Y/N Y/L/N and that I'm taking her back to the jet."

Bucky had lowered his weapon when the fire had flickered out with your recognition of Sam, but his eyes were still narrowed with a hint of suspicion. He was pretty sure you weren't a danger to Sam, at least, but that didn't mean he thought you harmless. He nodded slowly and lifted his microphone to his lips to report in even as he fell into step behind Sam as he headed back the way they'd came.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," Sam said gently as he walked briskly back to the jet, "but do you know who is in charge of all of this?"

"Joseph." Your voice was a rasp with the tears that still shivered out of you, but all of the emotion had left your tone. "I don't think he survived."

Bucky glanced back at the clearing where they'd left a half dozen charred bodies and figured he knew how Joseph had met his end. When he turned back, you were peeking over Sam's shoulder at him, to his admitted consternation.

"I'm sorry about the dumb joke." The emotion was back, remorse in your eyes and tone as you looked at him. "I wanted to either make you laugh or scare you. I just didn't want to hurt anyone else." With that, you buried your face back in Sam's throat and started crying again.

Bucky tried to resist but his heart throbbed in sympathy, with understanding. He knew all about being forced to do things he didn't want to, both by cruelty and circumstance. He'd be the last to blame another for what they'd done to escape. He was concerned about your apparent propensity for bursting into flame, but he understood why you'd done so, since you could.

"He probably hasn't seen Ghostbusters, sweetheart." You lifted your head, a frown on your tear-streaked face to glare with narrow-eyed suspicion at Bucky, who was at a complete loss as to what the two of you were even talking about. Sam laughed when he saw your face and went on. "This is Bucky Barnes."

Your face cleared in understanding and Bucky wondered who you were that you recognized his name so quickly. "Welcome back, Sergeant," you said softly, with a shy smile that Bucky couldn't help but find charming even as he wondered who you were and how you seemed to know so much about him when he'd never heard your name before.

"At least now I know why we're here," Sam called back to Bucky, his voice cheerful as he tramped back towards the jet. "Nat's got a soft spot for this one; I'm willing to bet she had an idea we'd find Y/N."

Bucky murmured as he kept his eyes on yours from where they peeked over Sam's shoulder at him. "I didn't know we were looking for Y/N."

"I was part of the supply chain." You didn't like the wariness with which this man watched you, but you could hardly blame him, considering your introduction. You weren't normally so dramatic, but he couldn't know that. "Natasha would have noticed when I disappeared."

Sam shook his head with a smile and moved toward the edge of the forest, now in sight. "Why am I not surprised? Were you Nat's secret source?"

"Of course." You couldn't seem to stop looking at the man following you and Sam with such deadly grace and aloof readiness. You'd never seen anyone look so dangerously bored. You were damned if you didn't find it sexy as hell. "She asked me if I wanted to help and I said yes. The Accords are a human rights violation."

Bucky's eyes flicked to yours and warmed as the corner of his mouth lifted just a little. Your heart skipped in the first beat of attraction as Sam laughed out loud. The sound had you smiling even as he replied, "Like I said, not surprised." He turned his head to call over his shoulder, "Bucky, this is Y/N. She used to be support staff for the Avengers, was one of the researchers there. She helped me when Steve and I were looking for you."

Bucky bent his head in acknowledgement and smiled fully for the first time. Now that he had more of a handle on things, he could roll with them. And he'd ever been the sort willing to go the extra mile for a pretty woman. "Pleasure to meet you," he rumbled, and sounded like he meant it.

You thought about the sacrificial dress you'd been wearing when the fire had blown through and carried you out of the building, remembered the fear in the eyes of the henchmen sent to recapture you as they'd circled you like a pack of wild dogs. "Believe me. The pleasure's mine."

As Sam broke through the tree line where the quinjet that had brought them sat, the little bottle blonde assassin behind the controls, he turned to catch your eye. "So, Y/N, are you gonna tell me how you're a firestarter now?"

Natasha turned in her chair at the sound of his voice as they mounted the ramp into the jet. "Good, you found her," she said briskly with a gentle smile for you. You smiled weakly back as Sam set you down in one of the chairs. Natasha turned back around and continued, "Strap in. Steve and Wanda are almost back and I want to be in the air five seconds after that."

Bucky's eyes flicked to you in puzzlement at the sound of a soft hiss, like that of a snake, followed by a crackle or a popping noise. He may have looked elsewhere, but you'd made a soft shushing noise that drew his eye.

That shushing sound was followed by a tired sigh when Sam lifted a brow at you as he went about helping you rearrange the blanket so you could strap in but remain covered. "I wish I knew, Sam," you replied to that lifted brow and Bucky wished he knew why he didn't believe you.

You sat in the sand and watched the ocean crash against the shore, letting the sound soothe you. Feeling hot and itchy most days, thanks to your experience at the hands of the weird cult that had abducted you, this was often the only peace you could find. Most days saw you driving down from the house in the mountains to sit here and let the wind and the waves ease your mind and soothe the soul.

Today, however, you couldn’t seem to settle, upset by the conversation you’d had with Steve that morning. He’d wanted to apologize for overstaying their welcome, and assure you they’d be moving on soon.

After your rescue, they had come to stay with you in the house you’d inherited from your uncle. Tucked away in the heavily forested mountains of Oregon’s Coastal Range, it was big, secluded, and ideal for hiding five fugitives. You’d simply been happy to help, to give them a safe place to rest.

Now you were dealing with the fact that you didn’t want them to leave. You were chilled, sick at the thought of rattling around in the big house with nothing for company but your thoughts and the memory of what had happened in a house in upstate New York. You may have traveled three thousand miles to escape what had happened that night, but you couldn't escape what was now yours, whether you'd wanted it or not.

The soft hiss in your ear warned you that someone was approaching, but you were surprised when that someone flopped onto the cool sand next to you with a huff of irritation. "Huh. What a shitty day at the beach."

Damned if you knew why the surly bitch did it for you, but Bucky Barnes had charmed the fuck out of you by not being the least bit charming.

He wasn't mean, or rude, not by a long shot. He was unfailingly kind and polite and genuinely grateful for the shelter. You could see the good man underneath the pissiness, but Bucky was perpetually baffled and annoyed by most of the world around him. He never complained, really, but he regarded everything with a vaguely hostile skepticism. You could not understand why you thought him adorably sexy, the big, grumbly bastard.

"Good thing we’re not at the beach," you replied with a laughing sneer, your habitual attitude towards him as it prompted that ridiculous half-smile. You fucking adored that sly smirk. "We’re on a beach. We’re at the coast."

Bucky gave you his amused disgust face and made you melt. He picked up a handful of sand and held it up to let it run through his fingers in a rather accusatory fashion. You waved him away. "I would think a Broody McBrooderface like yourself would immediately get this."

You gestured at your surroundings, a lonely beach on a winter day in the Pacific Northwest. Clouds covered the sky and boiled over the sea, turning the waves into a stormy bluish gray that reflected in the eyes of the man that watched you with a reluctant fascination. The wind whipped around you both, tumbling his hair around his sculpted face and making you think of the covers of trashy romance novels from an earlier era. Moody and bleak, a cold winter day at the coast was made for Bucky Barnes.

A long, charged pause as he stared at your profile in disgusted astonishment.

"What?"

You couldn't stop the snort at the sound of pure stupified horror in his voice. You didn't know which part of what you said he found objectionable, but the insult of something clearly offended him. You didn't usually get this much reaction out of him, so you had to assume it was the new nickname.

"The beach," you replied snottily, "is where you go to relax in the sun or swim in the ocean." You tilted your head to fix him with an intense stare. "But we’re in the ring of fire, Bucky, and the ocean doesn’t play with the shore here. We’re at the coast, where the sea meets the land with force." You gestured out at the dark waves as they continued to crash and pound on the sand, curls of violent energy breaking upon the shore. "The beach is for fun; the coast is where you go to brood."

With that, you uncrossed your arms and placed your hands at your sides on the cold, dry sand behind you, bracing yourself as you leaned back, a smirk on your lips. You loved informing him of opinions as though you had just bested him with facts. The way his lips tightened when he was holding back laughter made your heart gallop.

Your breathing joined your heart in its race and sped as well when Bucky's eyebrow quirked in addition to the happiness that gathered in the corners of his lips. "Broody McBrooderface?" he asked, doubt collecting in his eyes and his furrowed brow. His voice was still rich with the disgust that had characterized his earlier question. The combination made you sputter with mirth before giving up and dissolving into a fit of laughter. You fell back onto the sand to wrap your hands around your middle and hold on as you cackled and snickered.

When you calmed enough to look at Bucky, he'd shifted so that he was leaning on one arm, turned towards you to grin delighted at your laughter. He was so pretty, white teeth against the dark brown of his beard, thick hair tumbled in the wind around him. You hoped you didn't look as starry eyed as you felt. Some days it was harder than others to not bodily tackle the man, but it seemed tacky, not to mention gross, to accost a houseguest.

His satisfied smirk turned into a look so hot with promise you could feel it in your toes. "So you don't wanna go skinny dipping?"

You laughed even as you cringed, your body tightening at the memory of underestimating the Pacific Ocean's wilder moods on visits to your uncle during your childhood. You shook your head as a chill at the thought ran down your spine. "I double-dog dare you to jump in that water." Bucky crooked another brow and then surprised you by leaping to his feet in a move shockingly graceful in its deadly arc. He was off in a run in the very next second towards the waves. You sat up to shout after him but he was faster than you'd thought possible. "But don’t say I didn’t warn you about the FROSTBITE!"

If he hesitated for a second, you didn't see it. Fully clothed in the athletic wear he’d donned to run down to the beach, he leapt over a terrifying curving beast of a wave into the now dark gray and, you expected, freezing cold water. You got to your feet to follow him to the edge where the sea lapped at the shore, a little wary to find out how the grumpy super-soldier would react to the Pacific's bite.

The two of you argued all the way back to your car.

"The least you could do is give me a ride back to the house." Bucky didn't seem like the water had really fazed him beyond pissing him off. He wasn't shivering, his teeth weren't chattering, but his jaw was set in severe irritation and his eyes blazed with banked anger. He was so fucking hot it made you crazy.

"My seats will get soaked." You couldn't help it; he was so sexy when he looked like he wanted to murder the world. You didn't know what was wrong with you, but the way he was striding up the beach toward the parking lot where you'd left your car made you shudder with lust. You had to fuck with him a little more, irritate him just that little bit extra. Maybe it was because of what had happened to you, but you needed to toss a little more gasoline on the fire. "I only brought a towel for sand, not for swimming. Besides, I told you it was cold as fuck; you jumped in anyway."

"I can't run home like this, I'm fucking freezing." The look Bucky shot you was so vicious, your heart kicked in response, but in desire rather than fear. He was perfectly bristly and annoyed now, his bright blue eyes blazing and his sculpted cheeks flushed with temper. You could eat him alive.

"You should have thought of that before you jumped in an ocean that is obviously not into your shit right now.” You deliberately kept your tone and demeanor casual as you stopped at the water fountain at the top of the beach to rinse the sand off your feet. “It's not like I would have thought less of you if you'd stopped when I warned you about how cold it was."

Mostly clean and aware based on experience that mostly clean was the best you were going to do, you dropped the rubber flip-flops in your hand and slipped your wet feet into them as Bucky glared at you.

“I would have thought less of me,” he replied with a sneer that made you want to lean in and bite his plump lower lip. “I took a dare. I'll finish a dare.”

Unable to help yourself, you burst into delighted laughter, throwing your head back in the pure enjoyment of him as you nearly stumbled down the sidewalk toward your car. Bubbling and cheerful, the warm chuckles poured out of you until Bucky was grinning at you, albeit reluctantly.

You were somewhat calm by the time you got to your car. You turned to Bucky with a sparkling smile, the laughter still trembling on your lips and Bucky’s heart kicked in response this time.

“You’re fun, Bucky.” You leaned against the driver’s side door and grinned at him over the roof of the car. “A little bonkers, but fun.” Shooting him a sassy wink, you opened the door and slid in. “Fine, get in the car."

“I know this is a big ask.”

Bucky was sweating, but he was determined not to let you see that. He was asking a lot of you and he knew it. If he didn’t believe it was important, for you as well as himself, he’d never have had the courage.

“I’m really more confused.” Bucky made himself stop watching the way your lips shaped the words when you spoke, your eyes wary and your brow furrowed. “If you don’t mind me asking, why don’t you want to go with them?”

He didn’t think you’d noticed how he watched you, fascinated by the curving whip of your movements, like flame had become part of you. He couldn’t help but focus on you, obsessed with both the magic and mystery of you. How could he stop himself when he could also hear your mutters under your breath? He was concerned yet intrigued by the admonishments to behave yourself.

He’d had numerous fantasies about misbehaving with you.

Bucky’s attention moved to the way your fingers fidgeted with the book in your lap. He couldn’t explain why, but he loved to watch you move. There was a grace and beauty there that he’d rarely seen and always treasured. He’d seen too much ugly and cruel to take anything as pretty or as kind as you were for granted. He'd made a study of you because it soothed him somehow to do so.

Your hands weren't fidgeting in agitation, concern, or fear; all of which he'd seen and memorized. Through trial and error he'd learned how to distract you from whatever had you picking at your cuticles in anxiety and, sometimes, something that looked perilously close to panic, but he could see that wasn't necessary now. You were fidgeting absently, the same way you had been for the entire conversation, not in response to his request.

Bucky was still a little struck by his daring in asking if he could stay when the others moved on. He hadn't known if he'd have the nerve when he walked to the little library where you often sat in the window seat so you could read with your face to the mountain air coming through the open window. But when you'd looked up with a smile when he'd poked his head in and asked for a minute, he'd known even if you said no, he could trust you to be gentle.

"I don’t want to fight anymore."

By the way your eyebrows flew up and your lips parted before you paused, Bucky could see that you were as surprised by the blunt honesty of his answer as he was. But he was asking a lot of you and he knew it. Harboring an international fugitive was only the least of it. You knew his reputation, and that it was based on fact, yet you'd welcomed him into your home. He had to be honest with you if he was going to ask anything more than that already unimaginable kindness.

He smiled at you, but he couldn't stop the sadness, the exhaustion of a century's worth of years from quivering around his mouth. Your eyes, scanning his face under those expressive eyebrows, softened and your lips twisted with wry sympathy. "Of course you don't. Why would you?"

Bucky relaxed back into the plush little sofa where he'd taken the seat you'd offered when he started this conversation. He now knew it was going to be reasonably painless. Something about you almost always put him at ease within only a few minutes in your company. Maybe it was the way you listened to him, both the things he said, and the things he could only speak around.

Somehow he always ended up saying more than he'd intended.

"I didn’t volunteer, you know." You tilted your head in question, so he continued, not sure where the words were coming from. "Not like Steve, who wanted in so bad he kept trying to get past the physical. I was drafted." Bucky laughed a little and lifted his hands to rub them over his face, dragging them through his hair before threading his fingers together behind his head. "I just wanted to settle down to a normal life and try to keep my best friend from dying from one of the thousand things trying to kill him. Instead…" As he trailed off he shrugged and noticed your eyes drop to his chest in what he would swear was appreciation.

The corner of Bucky's mouth was lifting in a crooked half-smile when your eyes flicked to his. Bright and intense, he felt pinned by your gaze as the still forming grin fell from his face. "Instead you got to be a prisoner of war for sixty-odd years," you said, your voice full of the wry sympathy that still lived in the slight curve to your lips, "only to discover that things are still trying to kill your best friend?" In the next instant, that searing stare was gentle with understanding, your eyes warm with concern. "You're a little fucking tired?"

Bucky huffed out another of those little laughs, the only kind he really had these days. A little fucking tired was an understatement if he'd ever heard one, but the fact that you saw that so easily explained why he was even asking this of you. "You get it," he said, that half-smile coming back in a sweeter form. "That's why I'd like to stay here, actually." Your lips had started to curve in response to the little half-laugh, even that much heard only occasionally, when the warmth in his face sparked an answer in yours, charming you with the little glimpse of sweetness under all the salt.

Bucky's breath caught a little at the look on your face, the way the movement of your hands had smoothed as you absently toyed with the hardback still in your lap. He could see you relax by degree in his presence and wondered if you were as soothed by his company as he was by yours. "I don't want you to think you have to say yes," he heard coming out of his mouth, more honesty he couldn't help, but he didn't want you to feel pressured. "I'd rather stay here in the States, but I'm not homeless if it doesn't work for you. If it's a no, I promise, no hard feelings. I have another option lined up. I understand if you don't want to stay alone with a man you barely know."

He was starting to worry based on the soft, gentle look that remained on your face. You normally smirked and teased him, poking at his gruff exterior with a playfulness that had charmed him completely. You may not have known it, but you had him firmly wrapped around your fingers. This tenderness made him afraid you were about to let him down easy. He braced himself for rejection.

"Alright," you murmured thoughtfully, your eyes kind if shrewd as they rested on his face. He wondered what you saw when you looked at him, how much you saw beneath the surface. "If you wanna stay, we'll have to have a few ground rules, a couple of understandings."

Bucky's face lit up in surprised delight as his heart began to pound. He hadn't really expected you to say yes, and so hadn't prepared for the rush of excitement and satisfaction that ran through him at the prospect of getting to know you without feeling like he was being watched by his friends. His heart speeding a little, a hot shudder of anticipation working through him at the prospect, he shot you a bright and reckless grin. "I was afraid you were gonna say that."

Something dark and hungry moved in a flash over your face. Bucky's heart raced in answer despite his uncertainty that he'd even seen the lightning fast emotion. He wanted to be your friend first, but he couldn't deny he'd found inside himself a well of desire for you so deep he'd yet to find the bottom. He could only hope you felt some fraction of that for him.

"First and most important understanding," as you spoke your eyes flattened and your mouth tightened, your gaze on his face reminding him of the first time he'd seen you, "I am not afraid of you." The words were a warning, not a threat, but the hair on the back of Bucky's neck stood up. "If you're going to live here for the foreseeable," you continued, your face softening again into something lonely and sad, "I need to be clear on this point. I have no reason, whatsoever, to be afraid for my own safety. Not anymore."

The hollow tone to your voice was a chilling counterpoint to the fingers wrapped in white-knuckled terror around your book. Bucky could see you were trying to tell him that you were still dangerous, despite how deceptively harmless you looked when not bathed in flame.

"The fire?" Bucky didn't know he still had that much tenderness inside him for anyone, but he could hear the gentle sympathy in the two words clearly. By the tentative smile teasing the corners of your mouth, you could hear it, too.

"I would tell you if I thought you weren't safe." You looked sick with worry that he'd reject you and Bucky could see that he was right; the two of you needed each other. You went on in a little rush, your eyes dipping to your hands still clutching the book in your lap. You frowned as you spoke and he watched you deliberately uncurl your fingers as though you were carefully calming yourself. "I don't believe you're in any danger here. I will absolutely tell you if that changes."

Bucky always preferred when people were matter of fact in their questions about him and his issues. He figured he should start there and see how you responded. "Can you control it?" he asked, his voice unconcerned, his posture unchanging from his easy sprawl against the corner of the couch.

Apparently, you also liked plain speaking as you smiled a little more, this time with a wry exasperation that piqued his interest. "Some. More persuade."

Bucky's heart throbbed as he asked the question he knew you'd least like to answer. He wished he didn't feel like he had to, but he needed to know how not to incite the blaze. His voice soft as a whisper, as tender as a touch, "What set it off that night?"

The look on your face sent a chill down Bucky's spine, your eyes empty and cold and nothing like the warmth he'd come to expect and adore. Your voice as hollow as he'd ever heard it, you answered with just enough information to somewhat explain. "Joseph was going to hurt me."

Upon your recovery from the forest surrounding the house in upstate New York where you'd been held against your will, it had become clear that you'd been snatched up by one of the occult offshoots that often split from HYDRA. As HYDRA was itself founded as an occult offshoot of the Nazi war machine, it wasn't really a surprise that it so often shed more of the same. The one that had taken you, however, had apparently been particularly weird and cultish, the leader, Joseph, convinced of his own superiority and seeking the power he believed to be his due. You hadn't spoken much of what had happened to you while held captive by them, by him, but Bucky could recognize pain and trauma when they were right in front of him.

"Since I won't be hurting you," he said gently, the words both reassurance and promise, "it shouldn't be a problem." When your eyes, blurred with memory, focused back in on his face, Bucky's lips curved slightly, the smile sweeter than any he'd given you yet.

Your lips curved in response as a soft sigh that didn't come from you whispered at the edge of Bucky's hearing. His ears perked even as he kept his eyes on yours, his expression betraying nothing but the warm appreciation he always had for you. The next moment, however, his attention was caught and held by the grin you flashed, sparkling and friendly. "That's what I was thinking," you chirped and looked happier than he'd ever seen you.

The sight had his body tightening in lust even as his heart squeezed. Bucky had always been a romantic with a love of making a pretty girl smile. Being able to make you smile like this made him feel like he was getting another piece of himself back. Still, he wanted you to know that you could trust him with more than just your physical safety.

"Do you wanna tell me about it?" he offered, his voice gentle again.

"Maybe," you said, and Bucky cursed himself when your smile dimmed. You shrugged and looked back down at your hands where they'd tried to tense around the book. "I might need to. You gonna tell me about you?"

"Some." He answered quickly, without hesitation, though he grinned sheepishly when your eyes lifted to his in suspicion. "Probably."

When your eyes remained narrowed on his even as the corners of your mouth twitched with suppressed humor, Bucky narrowed his eyes back at you. To his surprised delight, that sparkling smile came back. You stretched the denim clad legs you'd had curled under you out and relaxed into the pillow at your back.

"Then rule number one," you said cheerily, an interesting heat in your eyes, "is that you continue to be your usual hostile self. It revs my engine." The cheer on your face took on a darker edge, your smile more like a dare. Bucky's eyes narrowed once again, but this time his gaze glittered with desire, with the urge to take that dare.

"Does it?"

You bit your lower lip as his voice rumbled through the air and into you. Bucky could swear he saw goosebumps erupt over the skin of your arms when he spoke, the desire riding him clear in that quiet question.

You laughed, a little breathless, and grinned at him, a cheeky taunt all over you. He was dazzled by the flash of your smile, the sparkle in your eyes, the whipping movements of your hands as you gestured while you spoke. "Rule number two is that you make yourself at home." You pointed a mock stern finger at him and made him smile. "Don't be a houseguest or stand on ceremony. I want you to be genuinely comfortable. If you have to stay under house arrest for now, you should be able to do so as painlessly as possible."

There you went being sweet and kind in addition to being sexy and adorable. Bucky didn't know if he could take it. He was beginning to think he was in over his head but he couldn't find a thing not to like about it.

"Steve keeps me in line." Bucky smirked as he teased. "Once he's gone I'll make you regret that."

You looked delighted with him and Bucky could have wept with gratitude. Spending time with you was helping him remember parts of himself he'd thought long dead, like the boyish flirt he'd once been, but he was equally grateful that he seemed to be good for you, too.

"Okay," you purred as you smirked back at him, "in case Steve has kept you in line in other ways, rule three is you clean up after yourself. I will be very annoyed if you start leaving dirty dishes or clothes around once he's gone." One eyebrow lifted in mock warning and Bucky could have cuddled you.

"He’s the slob, actually." Bucky huffed out a laugh and shook his head. "You're making this too easy, doll."

He couldn't be sure, but for a moment you looked shy and a little vulnerable. Bucky's heart squeezed again as he quivered with the conflicting desires to both ravage and protect. When you glanced at him from under bashful lashes, he felt torn between.

"Am I?" The murmur of your voice was rich with something dark and exciting, something that lit up his ear and made his stomach tighten.

Bucky's voice was husky on his reply as he offered both clarification and escape route. He wanted everything on the table before the negotiations came to a close. "Any other rules?" His face spread in a hot, almost feral grin, one that left no doubts as to what rules he was asking about. "Any other lines you don’t want crossed?"

The corner of your mouth lifted in a grin equally hungry, equally reckless. "Nothing comes to mind." Your eyes reminded him of sultry whispers, heated words. "I think we can play it by ear from there."

Bucky felt his heart race in exhilaration and wondered what he'd gotten himself into. He couldn't wait to find out. "I’m happy to dance to your tune."

Part Two here >>

Taglist:

@hellzzzbelle @bucky-the-thigh-slayer @cheekygeek05 @lbouvet @diinofayce @bibliophile1773 @thatawkwardlittlefangirl @miraclesoflove @nerdy-bookworm-1998 @destiel-is--endgame​ @irritated-bisexual​ @peaceinourtime82​ @badassbaker​ @walkingtravesty97​ @fashionworld12​ @readermia​

[void-knights]

Storms End

Square Filled: Thor/Loki

Pairing: Thor/(Male)Loki

Rating: M – Mature

Word Count: 3632

Tags: NSFW, 18+, Incest, Erotic electrostimulation, Temperature kink, Ice Play, Sex & Magic, Choking, biting, Mentions of genderfluid Loki, Jötunn are not cold bodied/blooded,

Summary: Thor reflects on his new life in New Asgard just as a storm rolls in.

Written for: @lokibingo​

AO3 Link

A/N: Thorki isn’t my thing but I tried! I’m not a Ragnarök fan but it’s ending suited for this fic. ALSO I can’t stress this enough, this plays on unhealthy themes such as Incest (they’re brothers) and the shitty parenting of Odin and Frigga.

Lay on his front Thor listened to the oncoming thunderstorm, the once gentle tapping of rainwater against the windows had turned into hard painful lashes. It was as though his very element was punishing for deeds that had long gone ignored, but he knew he could step into that thunder and lightning and walk out fine.

His element may injure him for a time but never would it’s effects me lasting, for he was born with the power of thunder coursing through his veins. This was of little comfort to him now, he wished at times for that storm to be his end, for his roof to collapse and the storm take him. It would be a befitting death.

Grey skies above loomed heavy, burdened with the grief of a god who could not rest, who could not find his peace this evening. In the far distance he could hear the low rumbles, in his bones he could feel the first stirrings of lightning, his power grew in her rage.

He breathed in the cool damp air, his element sang to him as no other element could. She was unsurpassed in her might none might compare as she did, though they often tried. He could taste the rain on the air, for a moment he could believe he was back on Asgard.

But Midgard’s lightning spoke a different song, she was stronger, far more dangerous and unpredictable. Where he could predict a flat realm who’s weather patterns were as easy to predict as the seconds and minutes Midgard’s did as she pleased and to Hel with the concerns of the mortals who cowered in fear or stared in awe.

The scent of moss and salt clung to the air, something completely foreign filled his senses, a noise or feeling he was not accustomed to feeling. It caused him to shudder, old memories stirring as he tried not to think, he just wanted to sleep! Could he not be allowed this precious moment alone? To be at peace where old ghosts could not find him, what a sweet paradise that might be.

His eyes lit up, his skin crackled and for the moment he lost himself to the feeling of his element swallowing him whole. She wanted to slither her fingers deep into his soul, to empower him for the next battle. But there was to be no next battle. Not for a while.

A hand slithered its way up Thor’s middle resting upon his chest, “Try to sleep,” whispered Loki his bare pale form lit beautifully beneath the moon's light.

But Thor could no more rest than the storm could suddenly end, with a heavy sigh Loki propped himself up taking a moment to take in the god of thunder who lay with the expression of a man caught between a war of emotions.

Had they been a happy healthy family they might know of a better way of dealing with their grief than this? Instead, both stuffed down anything they could, it was best not to confront those feelings, to let them loose in battle and box them away until after death. Burdened with their parents lies both found little comfort in memories as others might suggest.

Instead, Thor cast the burdens of his crown aside for the night to fuck his little brother. Not by blood that much had been made clear, but it was not the healthiest way of resolving tension. It was odder still that when Loki looked at Loki still bearing his bite marks he still saw his little brother.

This was not their first time, the first had been on the Statesman, a moment of pure madness they both agreed. They had spent a day conflicted about what had happened, but neither could casually go fucking away their feelings as they once did.

Thor was now king, he could not have a bunch of bastards running about, (it wasn’t as though someone thought to bring the contraceptives with them when they were fleeing Asgard) and nobody who was of Asgard wanted to sleep with a Jötunn no matter how well disguised.

So they fucked again, and again and again until it had become some twisted routine. Something born out of the need to be closer, to seek comfort in the familiar. It didn’t matter if Thor was fucking his brother or sister what mattered was their connection, their love, perhaps obsession and codependency were better more suitable terms.

It was perverse.

But neither could stop themselves. Loki smoothed his palms over Thor’s chest a worried expression settling behind those emerald eyes. It was so fucking wrong to see the boy he had once been, back when their lives were better.

Hindsight provided Thor with the proof that it had never been happier or better. There were moments of true happiness, where they had been allowed to be innocent children. But with time and came realization. It was obvious to Thor now the damage that Odin and Frigga had inflicted upon Loki.

Where once Thor had resented Loki for having their mothers attention he now saw it for what it was. A way for the family to keep their eye on Loki by providing him someone he could depend and rely on. Someone to trust in, someone to cry to when Odin could no longer bear looking at Laufey’s son. The son he stole from Jotunheim for the sake of…

Well nobody knew, did they? Odin had once had a plan for Loki, had Loki never found out the truth they may have learnt what that plan might’ve been. For there was no other explanation as to why Odin kept Loki. He could have given him away if all he wanted to do was deny Laufey the chance of fatherhood.

Instead, Loki was raised in a house that saw him less than a son and more akin to a thing to be used. That purpose no longer mattered to Thor with the passing of Odin, but he suspected deep down that Loki still wanted to know. Loki who still searched for… well they were all searching for that something weren’t they?

Between them silence grew, the oh so distant rumble of thunder did not disturb them as it did others. Loki traced his fingers along the brief lines that the sparks drew across Thor’s skin, he chased and traced those sparks capturing one with his magic and allowing it to slither around his long slender fingers.

Of course Loki was capable of bottling lightning. Once such an action would inspire awe and wonder in Thor who had at one point adored Loki’s magic without question. Odin had been sure to remove that childhood love, that awe from Thor, he was not supposed to love and respect the magic used by men.

Resentment brewed within Thor as he tried to recapture that innocent childhood awe. He found nothing but the emptiness that Hela’s return had filled him with. The realization that he had not been the first, not even the first child to be exiled. But he had succeeded Odin’s second attempt at raising a child whereas Hela had been erased and abandoned. She had just wanted to be remembered, to be loved and…

He saw Hela within Loki, Loki who sat on top of him marvelling at the lightning captured within the fragile glass orb. He tried not to see his siblings, but how could he not? Did Odin look upon Loki and see Hela as well? Why had Loki as a babe chosen that look, had the baby shapeshifter conjured it from Odin’s memories?

There were too many questions the ancient king was leaving behind, it hurt to think about. He would rather admire the way the slow white glow of lightning lit up Loki’s face, the way those emerald eyes shimmered and shone as he quite seriously studied the captured element within his palm.

Thor was wrong in assuming that was glass, when Loki pressed his mouth to the small orb that captured his lightning that continued spark and bounce about its container he watched droplets of water escape the orb and moisten Loki’s pale thin lips.

The lightning flickered and flung itself against the orb as if to sense what Loki was doing or perhaps Thor’s desire to have his brother’s lip back around his cock rather than teasing the lightning. How odd was it to be turned on by this most unusual display?

If there was anyone who could make sex more unusual it was his brother… Loki, Loki, Loki, he must stop referring to the man he was fucking as his brother. It made things more odd, more perverse.

Slipping the orb into his mouth Loki lowered himself down, curious as to his brothers scheme Thor sat himself up a little. Somehow, Somehow, Loki managed to fit the tip of Thor’s cock into his mouth.

Thor groaned gripping the sheets beneath him, he did not dare grab Loki’s hair fearing a genuine chance of killing either or both of them, which only added to the pleasure. When had the risk of death become so erotic?

He groaned as icy lips and tongue teased his cock, that orb of ice rolling around with the motions of Loki’s bobbing head and teasing tongue drove Thor mad with pleasure. Loki’s eyes never left his brother’s single eye that continued to glow white with power, his hands traced the outside of Thor’s thighs as the god of thunder tried so hard not to come so soon.

Thoughts of propriety had long been abandoned on the route to Midgard yet in the back of their minds they knew how wrong this was. That made it all the more exciting. Whether it was done as a ‘fuck you’ to Odin or just a rather meaningless need to let out frustrations that did not involve punching or stabbing something they could not say.

It hardly seemed to matter now. 

That life was taken from them. 

Loki swallowed Thor down his throat, the god lost it as the ice in his brothers mouth cracked that lightning quite giddy to be let loose attacked anything it could. The sparks of pleasure started small, licks that were little more than tickles turned into the sharp snap of static before evolving into something quite like the snap of a whip.

Thor bucked beneath his brother spurred on by the immense pain his own element caused him, Loki remained unharmed and so unaffected which turned on Thor even more. That devious glint in Loki’s eyes as Thor grabbed his long raven hair wrapping it around his fist and pulling Loki further onto his cock had him wanting to prove himself. Thor liked a challenge and Loki was the perfect challenge, designed for him in a way no other being could be.

He came hard down Loki’s throat with a roar that matched the lightning creeping up on New Asgard. Not wasting a drop Loki swallowed his brothers come with a devious smirk, the mortals might think him devilish, temptation given form, but Loki was no devil, simply a trickster.

Not that Thor had been tricked into this, they had both tricked one another, thinking it a good method of coping.

Shoving his brother down on the bed Thor growled, he would have no more of Loki being in command, it invited his brothers more devious and delightful ideas and while that was tempting he had no desire for the complex this evening.

He just needed to fuck and Loki was not about to argue about that.

Loki reached up grabbing his brother by the shortened hair, how they both hated that hair. It was demeaning to them, to their culture, it removed an important piece of Thor. He threaded his fingers through the short blonde hair enjoying how fluffy it felt, though he longed for the return of those long golden locks.

Closing his eyes Thor allowed himself a moment of peace, he turned to kiss the palm that rested against the side of his head, they were both caught off guard by the tender loving gesture. More and more of those had begun to slip in as of late. A kiss here, a tender smile, a hug, sharing a bed, it was all becoming dangerously domestic. It really shouldn’t be, should it?

They weren’t related by blood, Thor kissed his palm again, they weren’t related by blood so why was this so wrong? He had grown up alongside Sif and many expected him to marry a woman he saw as his sister. Why was this so different?

Because they had spent over a thousand years believing one another to be brothers. That is why. It was not two friends who had grown fond of one another, it was to brothers who had found a perverse pleasure in one another's bodies. Blood did not bind them but they were still brothers.

They should not be doing this, Thor kissed his palm a third time, but he could not stop, they could not stop.

Loki was just as to blame as Thor, Loki who pushed Thor into random spaces to fuck him against whatever surface he could. Loki who slid her cunt over her brothers leather clad thigh riding him to completion while he signed documents and paperwork. Loki who with both cock and cunt would pleasure themselves until Thor could no longer resist their body.

Instead of pulling away, of finally saying no Thor watched as Loki slid oil slicked fingers along Thor’s length guiding his brothers dick into him. It was not so easy to adjust to his brothers girth, but that is what made it all the more pleasurable to Loki, that brief bout of pain as his body adjusted to accept his brother.

Thor restrained himself watching as Loki’s eyes fluttered shut, he was caught in that war between pleasure and pain, the sight alone made his cock twitch. He looked so beautiful with pale thin lips parted in ecstasy as a pink flush coated that pale moonlit skin his hole stretched around his cock his inner walls clamping around him in a scorching Jötunn heat.

His brother was so warm, so perfect, so beautifully tempting it was becoming impossible to keep his eyes and hands wandering. With his right hand he slid his palm other his brothers lithe pale form, electricity nipping at exposed pinked flesh, he ran his palms across those pert dusty nipples causing Loki to buckle beneath him shuddering in pleasure.

A whining moan escaped a pleading to his brother to cease with the teasing and to fuck him, fill him already with his cum. But he would not beg and as much as Thor would enjoy hearing those pleas falling from his brothers pretty lips he much preferred this. It had become a perverse secret between them, a secret no one else could share in. It was theirs and theirs alone.

A white flash of lightning lit the room in a rather ominous shade, something heavy threatened to smother them both. They shoved it aside as Thor slowly withdrew from his brother who regained his composure, those talented fingers sling along his own length playing with himself as though Thor weren’t there.

He would remind his brother who it was that was fucking him, who was pleasuring him. Just as he had done when eating out her cunt or fingering her arse until she was coming all around him. Thor knew how to pull his brothers pleasure from him by now, to make his brother scream and cry his name in the throes of passion.

Sliding a broad palm around his brothers throat Thor rammed himself back into Loki who screamed out a gust of pleasure before Thor began to squeeze cutting off just enough air to make Loki’s head swim in pleasure.

“Brother,” Loki should not be moaning at a time like this, “Brother,” should not be a word that turned on Thor like nothing else.

But Thor once again pulled himself from Loki until the tip of his broad cock remained and then brutally rammed himself back in. It would be painful, crippling to a mortal, but neither of them were mortal. The sparks of electricity that danced along Thor’s skin nipped and shocked Loki who squirmed and writhed.

The combination of Thor’s cock, the electricity, the hand pressed firmly against his throat all made Loki moan out praising his brother, a prayer that was uttered better than any mortal could hope to muster.

Thor’s brutal pace had Loki grabbing onto the headboard above him, wood splintering beneath his fingers as he tried not to destroy another bed. Thor braced himself on that same headboard as he fucked his brother hard and fast, slick sweat covered Loki’s body causing him to shine in the light of the storm.

Their pleasure came upon them, Loki teased his own cock collecting more of that electricity that wanted to tease and torment him and spread it gingerly against his own length. Thor released his brothers throat and swatted his hand away from his hard reddening cock, he grabbed it in his own sparking hand and Loki screamed his name.

There was no pain sweeter, he called out Thor’s name in the storm not the beg Thor wanted to hear but the anticipation of one he would in time bring out in his brother who whimpered in the pained pleasure brought him ever closer to his own release.

It was brutal, some might say without love, the rough way in which he gripped Loki, pounded into him until they were both bruising and aching only their feral sounds accompanied by the storm outside could be heard. Not that anyone could hear, they would never hear.

Loki his lower lip stifling the moan that threatened spill from his lips, Thor snarled increasing his grip upon Loki’s cock the pre cum that leaked mixing with the oils that Thor used from the remains of the bottle that lay beside them.

Bucking beneath his brother Loki urged him on, to move otherwise he would be using Thor’s cock for his own pleasure and ignoring his brother’s wants. Thor got the silent message and thrust deeper, harder into her brother striking that sweet spot that had Loki clamping around him.

Both breathed out their pleasured too stubborn to be the first one to come, Loki grabbed Thor’s shoulder as he attempted angle himself, so he could strike deeper in Loki who could not hold back the loud moan.

He would not beg.

But Norns was he close!

Thor closed the gap between them still pounding into the breathless Loki, instead of kissing him like Loki expected Thor licked along the side of his brothers long pale neck savouring the taste of sweat and something sweet from the oils.

The previous bite marks were fading, so he bit hard into Loki’s neck and shoulder savouring the sweet way in which Loki bucked against him, a pitiful attempt to fight back lost the moment Thor squeezed his hardened red cock.

He came hard spilling all over Thor’s fist, his brother was not far behind him, coming undone when Loki squeezed around him filling him up with his seed.

Thor moaned into the nape of Loki’s neck mumbling nothing of importance between bites and licks. Loki breathed his fingers tangled in blonde hair, gentle nips of electricity flitted along their joined sweat slicked bodies. Thor refused to pull out, to move, Loki clung to his brother unsure why that comforted him so much.

With a last flourish of magic Loki cleaned them up as best he could, what with Thor refusing to remove his softening cock that lay nestled within his brother. Thor instead rolled them over pulling Loki’s overly warm pale body tighter against his own sun kissed body.

He brushed the raven hair from Loki’s face savouring how sweet he looked as he stared out to the Midgardian sea that now acted as their background. The seas and land were dark, only a few golden lights of New Asgard were lit at such a late – almost early – hour. The distant bones of what would be Heimdall’s new observatory managed to stand out when the lightning lit up the lands.

The thunder and lightning remained, echoing their previous roars of passion, Thor meanwhile hummed some old Midgardian tune that he had picked up from some place.

It was better than those old lullabies that often talked of joyously murdering Jötnar. Why had their mother sung those songs knowing what Loki was? Why recite those old tales that made Loki hate what he was?

Loki kissed his brothers neck savouring the taste of him before sitting up, already half hard and rocking himself against Thor. Tonight was going to be a long night, not that the god of thunder would complain. Instead, he watched as Loki guided his brothers hands to his pale slender hips and rocked himself upon the half hard cock nestled within him.

Neither of them spoke as Loki slowly fucked himself on Thor’s cock, instead Thor watched in silent awe. How beautiful was his brother by the light of the storm and moon, he watched as Loki took his pleasure as he needed it, using him until Thor could give no more, as a god of fertility he took that as a challenge.

Silently he settled himself watching as once more Loki captured lightning, bringing it Thor’s own lips.

He could taste the power, the pain and pleasure.

For tonight, he could forget all that waited for him outside these walls, for tonight he had Loki and Loki had him. That was all that mattered. No matter how wrong it was.

[eisehaus]

Music is never the same after Obey Me. A Headcanon story...

Every song starts playing through as a scenario in your head. Which character is singing it, what's happening for this to take place? Now for this headcanon journey I would like to share this song...

Ruin My Life -- by Zara Larsson

Everytime I hear this song I can't help but have the following scene play through my mind. So I decided to write out the headcanon.

MC is female for this story--

Now let's set the scene. MC was a bartender and part time singer in a local band where she's from that does shows at dive bars before her time in the Devildom. Upon returning to the human world, she finds her way back into her old job. It was an easy enough position to regain, no one even questioned her disappearance for a year. It was a come and go scene after all.

After some time, MC is also able to reconnect with her old band mates to rejoin the fray and once again find the stage. The band books their first gig after the split from MC's disappearance at the bar she works at.

She's excited to get back on stage, her heart was desperately hurting after her departure from the Devildom. Song was her way of coping with everything that she kept bottled up inside. She'd written a new song that the band adored and was eager to debut.

They had seen how she was during rehearsal, knowing that the number came from her soul, telling a story they could FEEL. MC had the tendency to leave her heart on the stage. It was part of what made her so captivating.

The band is setting up about ready to begin their reunion debut performance for the small yet crowded dive bar.

And we begin---

Bandmate: MC, you sure about this? It's been a while after all. But we are glad you're back!

MC: *nods her head earnestly.* Definitely. My heart needs this.

Bandmate: Damn honey, I'm not sure what happened to you while you were away for you to write our opening song but I have to say, it's powerful. Maybe you can tell us eventually about the guy who broke your heart that no doubt was the inspiration.

MC: *remembering the demon brothers* Yeah maybe someday I'll tell you guys the story. It's quite the tale. *Then she giggles to herself as she grips at her chest*

Other Bandmate: *puts a hand on MC's shoulder* Well what do you say we rock this joint?

*The band steps out on to stage and MC approaches the mic*

MC: *looking out over the crowd* Good evening! How is everyone doing tonight?

Crowd: WHOO HOO!! YEAH!!

MC: Now that's what I like to hear! Some of you might know us, *whistles sound from the crowd which makes MC grin* so we're here to say, we're back bitches!! This first song is brand new, enjoy! *Turns to the band* HIT IT!

*The music begins and MC can feel herself melting into the melody. All the pain, all the ache, all the love, radiated from her core and tingled out to her fingertips. Her cue approaches and she brings the mic to her lips*

MC: I miss you, pushing me clooose to the edge --- I miss you... I wish I knew what I had when I left --- I miss you...

*She could feel her song consuming her and she leaned into that urge, letting it drive her*

MC: You set fire to my wooorld, couldn't handle the heat -- Now I'm sleeeeping alone, and I'm staaarting to freeze -- Baby, come bring me hell, Let it raaain over me -- Baby, come back to me --

*Images of her time in the Devildom started flashing behind her eyelids. Each and every precious moment dancing through her mind as she sang. She moved into such power as the chorus cued in, her voice and heart seeming to swallow the room*

MC: I want you to ruin my life -- You to ruin my life, you to ruin my life, yeah -- I want you to fuck up my nights, yeah -- Fuck up my nights, yeah, all of my nights, yeah -- I want you to bring it all on, If you make it all wrong, then I'll make it all right, yeah --I want you to ruin my life, You to ruin my life, you to ruin my liiiife!!

*The room disappeared around her as she let her emotions bleed out into the microphone. Tears begin to form in her eyes, though not enough yet to leave them as she opens into the second verse*

MC: I miss you, more than I thooought that I could -- I miss you... I know you missin' me too like you shoooould -- I miss you...

*Her chest grows tight, as her hearts pounds with such vigor... it's as if it's trying to leap out of her and burst*

MC: You set fire to my wooorld, couldn't handle the heat -- Now I'm sleeeeping alone, and I'm staaarting to freeze -- Baby, come bring me hell, Let it raaain over me -- Baby, come back to me --baby, come back to meeee

*As the second chorus sounds in, MC removes the mic from the stand and let's the passion take her body. The entire stage is hers now and she bellows out, becoming truely and completely captivating.*

*Then the cue for the bridge approaches in the melody and the tears begin to fall from her eyes, trailing down her cheeks*

MC: I miss you, I miss yooooou -- I wish you, I wish yooooou -- Would come back, would come back to meeeee -- Come back to me, come back to meeeeee

*For just a moment before the last chorus begins, MC glances out across the crowd. She could swear she could see seven familiar forms looming at the back of the room. But between the stage lights, the tears in her eyes and the music enveloping her she couldn't be sure. It, wasn't... possible*

*She brushes it off and let's the music recapture her, commanding the stage and the crowd for the closing chorus. Her bandmate chimes in on another microphone to sing the regular part of the chorus while MC takes to the overlaying power notes in harmony.*

*She finishes the lyrics with her head back bellowing the final note, and drops her hand as the music finishes trailing out. The crowd cheers loudly, whistles and clapping all layering over each other. But she swears there are a handful of voices among the cheers that sound, familiar...*

*MC brings her head back up to throw a huge smile out to the crowd and takes a deep bow. When she raises her head again, her heart stops. She hadn't been seeing things....*

*She replaces the mic on the stand and quickly turns back around to her bandmates. They were beeming at her, clearing proud of everything that had just happened.*

MC: I need you guys to switch up the next number and do one without me.

Bandmate: Wait what? What happened? Are you okay?

MC: *glances behind her to the back corner of the room just to double check before turning back to her band* only the greatest possible thing imaginable!

Bandmate: You mean he's here!?!

MC: *nods with visible excitement* Mmhmm! They all are!

Bandmate, confused: wait, ALL?

*The band members eyes follow to where MC had just looked and each of them nearly drop their instruments*

Bandmate: Holy god damn mother fucking shit MC!!! How in the fucking hell? How are guys that look like that even real?? Shit! And they're here for you? You really mean --

MC: *smiles the biggest smile at her bandmates* I'll be right back, I promise! Just do one song with out me, I have some men to tackle!

*And with that MC bounds off the stage, pushing through a confused crowd to leap into the arms of her favorite beings in existence, the absolute loves of her short, sweet, weird little life*

The demon brothers: Hello MC... We missed you too.

FIN

Do you have a song that plays through an Obey Me filter in your head? Let me know!

[katehuntington]

Title: Changes - part eight Word count:  ±4800 words Summary “Changes”: Huntress Zoë Sullivan (OFC) crosses paths and swords with the Winchesters, when the brothers stumble on a case she’s already working. When complications arise, they are forced to work together. Summary part eight: Zoë meets with Terry Cliffer, or is it the shapeshifter? She tries to find out fast, but can’t prevent bullets from flying. Episode warnings: Dark! NSFW, 18+ only! Angst, gore, violence, character death. Description of blood, injury and medical procedures. Demon possession, supernatural creatures/entities. Smut, swearing, alcohol use/addiction. Kidnapping, mentions of torture and murder, illegal/criminal practices. Mentions of nightmares and flashbacks.  Music: Boulevard Of Broken Dreams - Greenday. Author’s note: I couldn’t be more excited to share Supernatural: The Sullivan Series with you. There are quite a few people I want to thank: @coffee-obsessed-writer, @soupornatural & @mrswhozeewhatsis, who edited the early drafts, and my girls @girl-with-a-fandom-fettish & @winchest09 who are deciphering the recent version. Everyone who encouraged me to go for it, you are awesome!

Supernatural: The Sullivan Series Masterlist 01x01 “Changes” Masterlist

     Zoë sips her cappuccino as she observes the foam floating on top of her hot drink. She’s at Beetle’s, sitting on a stool at the bar. Cigarette smoke fills the air, and even though she would love to light one, she ignores the smell. Instead the huntress stares at the bottles across from the counter, exhibited on the shelves, the back wall is a mirror to create the illusion that they have a lot more drinks in store. It’s a modern kind of place, the only history it shows are some pictures, pinned to the wall. The current number one hit Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Greenday plays in the background. She listens to the lyrics, the song appealing to her.      I walk this empty street, on the boulevard of broken dreams      Where the city sleeps and I'm the only one and I walk alone      My shadow's the only one that walks beside me      My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating      Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me      'Til then I walk alone

     The long nights are taking their toll. Although strangers still see a stunning young woman, she herself notices the signs of fatigue in her reflection, despite her makeup, that is a little more prominent than usual. Zoë finds it thrilling to pretend to be someone she’s not. She traded her leather biker outfit for a white blouse, a black blazer, matching suit pants and pumps. Her straightened dark hair is combed back and tied together in a bun. It’s funny, leather or business, she still gives away the same message; don’t mess with me. 

     Her eyes capture the bottle of Johnny Walker Red again. She would kill for a glass, but having a shot wouldn’t be a smart thing to do. Focus is the issue here; no way she’s letting her guard down. The damn bastard shot her once and she doesn’t feel like peeling a bullet out of herself for the second time today. But one glass wouldn’t hurt, right? Zoë shakes her head, deciding against it.           This appointment can go two ways: either the shapeshifter shows up and this bar and its customers are going to have the most ‘exciting’ evening of their lives, or Terry Cliffer shows up and this will be nothing more than a boring interrogation. Not to mention, this case will once again take longer than anticipated, because by now, the fucker could’ve easily shifted into someone else already. 

     She finishes her coffee and leaves the empty cup on the bar. Carefully, she glances over her shoulder. Zoë can’t put her finger on it, but she can feel a pair of eyes burning in her back; someone’s watching her. The shapeshifter maybe? She remembers Sam’s words and realizes that even if she meets Cliffer within fifteen minutes, the son of a bitch might actually be here right now. Suddenly, she hears something sweeping towards her over the wooden bartop. Startled, she turns to the bartender, who still has his hand folded around a glass of whiskey.      “You’ve been eying that Johnny Walker bottle for twenty minutes and you look really tense. You need a drink, on the house.”

     She looks him in the eye, trying to decide whether or not to trust him. She smiles politely and takes the glass, but doesn’t drink, just yet.      “Thank you,” she says, observing him. “You’re the owner of this place? Rob Michaels?”      “That’s me,” Rob answers while he polishes a glass.      We’ll see about that, Zoë thinks to herself. The bartender could be the shapeshifter, for all she knows. She needs to figure out if he is, without giving him the impression that she’s suspecting him.      “Then you probably know most of your regulars, right?” she questions.      “Right…” Rob hesitates. “Am I being questioned?”      “Whatever you wanna call it,” she flashes him her FBI identification.

     He raises his eyebrows. He thought there was something more to her than just a businesswoman who’s getting a drink after work, but a fed? He had city police over, even state police at one point, this is a new one. He leans in for her to hear his whispered words.      “Something shady going on in my bar?” he asks, looking around for anything suspicious.      She puts her ID away in the inside pocket of her blazer, after which she folds her hands together, ignoring his question. “What do you know about Terry Cliffer?”            Rob chuckles. “Are you kidding me? Terry wouldn’t hurt a fly.”      “We’re not just around to catch the bad guys, Mr. Michaels. We actually intend to prevent crimes from happening, too” she states, pretending to be insulted.      “Is he in trouble?” the bar owner wonders.      “I think I’m the one who’s doing the questioning here, Rob. Can I call you Rob?” Zoë grabs a hold of the conversation again, not impressed.      “S-sure,” he answers, intimidated.      She glances at the clock, it’s 5:55. Then she continues.      “Tell me what you know.”

     Zoë’s eyes are penetrating, yet calm and the bartender soon begins his story, but he doesn’t start off with anything new. Shy guy, father of two, yada yada yada. Her thoughts wander off to the whiskey bottle on the shelf again, as she partly listens. Shit, she wants that heavenly brown liquor, and she wants it bad. Although there’s a full glass in front of her, she still refuses to drink it. Zoë hasn’t actually seen him rinse the glass, nor if he poured the whiskey straight from the bottle; it could be spiked. The huntress contemplates on dragging him over the counter and cutting him; if he screams out in terror, he’s not the shifter, if he doesn’t, he is. Yeah, maybe not such a great idea, Zo, she thinks to herself. And all this time she keeps staring at the Johnny Walker Red.

     “He moved into town a few years back with his family. I believe he still owns some property about a mile or three out, though. Somewhere on 110th Ave,” Rob says with a lowered voice.      Suddenly there’s the sound of glass breaking. The bartender turns around and is surprised to find the bottle of whiskey in pieces on the floor.      “Ah, damn it! Must have left it too close to the edge,” he mutters as he kneels down to pick up the biggest pieces of shattered glass.      Startled, Zoë stares over the bar, recapturing what just happened. Did she just… Ah shit, not this again.      “That’s a shame,” she comments to break the silence.      “Sure is,” he agrees, but then pulls his hand back with a little screech. “Ow!”      He gets up and Zoë immediately detects the bleeding cut on his finger, which causes Rob to hiss in pain. A shapeshifter wouldn’t feel a thing when being cut by glass; so much for her theory. As if she was waiting for the lights to go green on a racetrack, she puts the glass to her mouth and lets the whiskey ooze down her throat. My God, she so needed a drink. 

     In the meantime Rob takes off to the kitchen, probably to bandage the cut. It’s when the door closes behind him, that his last words sink in. 110th Ave! Cliffer owned land there? She quickly gets her ducks in a row. She knows O’Brien, Middleton and Gibson, the missing people, have all been at 110th Avenue over the last month, but no one actually owned a place there. This might be a major lead! Why didn’t she learn about this sooner? She has to find the exact address and pay a visit as soon as she’s done here. 

     As the place gets more crowded during these after work hours, Terry Cliffer walks in. Zoë straightens her back and looks over the crowd. Insecure, the guy in his mid-forties searches the place, then he carefully approaches the bar. He’s not a tall man and he seems thin. It surprises Zoë that the shapeshifter chose his body to copy in the first place.       He glances behind the bar, probably looking for Rob to ask if there has been anyone around looking for him. By this time, Zoë has hopped off the bar stool and walked up to the guy. Her gun, loaded with silver bullets, hangs from her belt and burns in her flesh through the fabric of her dress pants. If he attacks, runs, or does something else that she doesn’t like, she’s going to shoot him.            “Terry Cliffer?”      He turns around and looks her in the eye. Not a sign of recognition. The shapeshifter would recognize her, after all, she is the one hunting him. Nothing strange, nothing out of the ordinary happens, he just puts out his hand to greet her.      “Are you the FBI agent?” he assumes, carefully.      “That would be me, yeah,” she takes out her federal agent identification again. “Shall we take a seat?”      They move to a table in the far corner and sit down. A good spot, one she picked out the moment she walked in. From here, she has a clear view over the entire place, yet it’s private. She signals Rob, who probably took care of his little problem and is back behind his bar. In a few seconds he halts next to their table.

     “What can I get you?” he takes out a pen and a small notebook.      “A beer, if that’s okay?” Terry glances at the woman across from the table.      “Be my guest,” she approves and looks up at Rob. “Plain water please.”      “Oh, and can I get something to eat? I didn’t actually get the chance to have dinner, yet.” The last sentence was more directed to Zoë than to the bar owner, excusing himself again in that self-conscious way.      “The usual?” the owner of the place asks.       Terry nods.      “Anything else?” Rob glances from one to the other.      “No, I think we’re fine,” Zoë answers.      “Okay then, coming right up.”

     Rob leaves the table and finally Zoë can start her conversation. She begins with an attempt to break the ice, since Terry seems to be pretty tense. It’s not every day that you have a one-on-one with an FBI agent.      “Not planning to have supper with your family?” she assumes.      “Not today, my wife took the kids to their grandparents for the week, down in Preston,” Terry tells her.      Good, they are safe, Zoë notes. She folds her hands together leaning on her forearms on the edge of the table, ready to start the interrogation, but Terry beats her to it.      “I don’t want to be rude, but I expected to meet a man today,” he admits with a nervous laugh.      “Right, I heard you talked to my partner. He called in sick,” she makes up quickly.       “It was really odd, he didn’t know your name,” Terry tells her. “For a moment, I thought I was being pranked or something.”

     Uh-oh. Is he suspecting something? She has to come up with something good now to keep a good impression.      “I actually got married a week ago,” she lets a smile play on her lips, turning her mother’s engagement ring on her finger, drawing attention to the piece of jewelry.       “I changed surnames. What can I say, he doesn’t like change.”      “Congratulations!” Terry smiles back, seemingly buying it.      Pfew, that was a close call. Now it’s her turn to ask some questions, because all she has been doing during the last five minutes is covering the Winchester’s fuck ups. Just as she takes a breath to begin, Rob shows up next to the table with their drinks and a cutlery set for Terry. Zoë lets out an annoyed sigh and looks away.

     “One beer and plain water.”      He puts down the glasses from his dinner-tray, which he holds up with his left hand. As he sets down Terry’s beer, the meat knife slips from the plate and falls, the sharp edge pointing down. Zoë looks up just in time to see the knife penetrate the hand of the man she’s about to negotiate. She almost lets out a moan of disgust, but strangely enough, Terry doesn’t even notice it until he glances at his hand.      “Terry, Jesus Christ! I’m so sorry, it - it just fell off!” Rob stammers, but neither of them hear him.      It’s not a silver knife, it’s stainless steel, Zoë realizes instantly. Slowly the person  - no - creature, on the other side of the table lifts his head until he looks directly at her. His facial expression is no longer insecure and friendly, but self-confident and sadistic. For a brief moment his eyes flash white, as the eyes of a cat reflect when it stares into a pair of headlights.

     “You son of a--”      There’s no time to finish her sentence. In a split second, the shapeshifter draws his gun and Zoë is just in time to flip the metal table over on the side. She goes for her Smith & Wesson as well, as the shapeshifter backs up, causing his chair to fall over. Several people turn around to see what’s going on as Rob turns pale and steps back. Just before he unleashes a bullet on her, she shouts a warning.      “Everybody on the floor!”            As screams are let out by people inside the bar, the shifter fires two bullets at her, but by using the steel table as a shield, she stays unharmed.      “No way you’re gonna shoot me twice, fucker,” she snarls as she aims her gun over the edge of the table and pulls the trigger.      Making sure not to injure any civilians, Zoë fires three shots in a row. She’s not sure if any of them hit the target, but he’s still running.      “Fuck!” she curses as the third shot shatters the glass of the front door.

     Quickly, she follows and intends to run outside. Good thing she takes cover behind the doorpost as she glances around the corner, because the huntress stares right into a barrel. Just in time, she retreats and the two bullets shoot by her. Stumbling back inside, she takes a short second to catch her breath with her back against the wall and her gun tightly gripped in both hands and pointing it down. Several frightened and panicked eyes look straight at the FBI impersonator. One face stands out, Rob stares at her as if he just saw a ghost.      “I hope you’ve got insurance, Rob,” she comments, out of breath from all the excitement.      He nods his head, dumbfounded, unable to get a proper ‘yes’ or ‘no’ out of his mouth.      “Good, have a nice evening. Sorry ‘bout the mess.” She smiles uncomfortably and gives him an awkward wave.

      After gathering her courage, the huntress exits the bar. With the gun pointing ahead and her index finger off the trigger, Zoë clears the area, but there’s no one there but a bunch of thrill seekers who probably heard the gunshots. Zoë lets out a sigh and lowers her nine mil; she’s back to square one. There’s no need to follow him, he could be anywhere and anyone by now. She moves back to the small alleyway next to the bar where she parked her Harley, still expecting an ambush behind every corner. When she walks up the street, she notices a shiny fluid on the sidewalk, which catches her attention. Curious she kneels down and touches it with the tip of her finger; it’s blood. A grin appears on her face; looks like she managed to hit him after all. 

     When she looks further she notices a blood trail leading to a manhole in the center of the alley. The shifter left the cover off, allowing the huntress to stare down into the black depth.      “Hope my bullet hurts as much as yours did, fucking lizard!” she bellows down.      Zoë gets up and makes her way to the Harley, thinking through her next move and forcing herself to focus, even though the adrenaline is still rushing through her body. Terry Cliffer’s property at 110th Avenue; that is her first priority. She would bet money on it: this has to be the location of the shapeshifter’s lair.

     It’s quiet in the parking lot when Zoë pulls up to the motel, but she doesn't pay much attention to the silence, determined to close this case tonight. She rushes inside while taking her helmet off, doesn’t bother to pay attention to the man behind the counter and quickly opens the door to her room. Her Macbook is still buzzing softly and as soon as she presses a key, the screen activates. She selects a tracking website from her favorites and types in the information she has. After several seconds a complete address shows: 3841 110th Avenue NW. Quickly she kicks off her pumps, changes her dress pants for jeans and her blazer for the new leather Harley Davidson jacket. As she’s lacing up her biker boots, when three loud bangs on the door startle her. Cautious, the huntress takes her gun in her left hand, finger still off the trigger, and silently approaches the door.      “Mrs. Johnson! I know you’re in there!”            She recognizes that voice, it’s the owner of the motel. Quickly she puts away her weapon and opens the door. The old man is waiting with a phone still in his hand, he doesn’t seem amused.      “I just received a call from one of my guests who was dining at Beetle’s Bar, said he saw you shooting up the place,” he recalls.      “I can explain that,” she states, calmly.      “I bet you can. You know what? I’ll bet your real name isn’t even Johnson. I want you out. I said I didn’t want any trouble,” he insists, pointing down the hallway.      “Just give me a sec.” She goes for her ID in her inside pocket while her other hand makes a calming gesture, then she shows it to him.      “My name isn’t Johnson, you’re right. It’s Evans, Sarah Evans. I’m a federal agent and I was working undercover,” she explains.      “FBI? Yeah, right. I don’t give a damn. Now, get out of my motel,” the man decides.      “Alright, let me get my stuff,” she sighs, putting back her identification.

     Instead of pulling back her hand empty, she grabs a small flashlight, turns it on and points it in the old man’s eyes. Her suspicion is confirmed, because his eyes flash white. For a brief moment the shapeshifter is overwhelmed by the reveal, enough time for Zoë to drop the flashlight into her striking hand, breach the space between them and slam her fist right up his nose, giving him one hell of an uppercut. He goes down in the hallway and looks up at her, staggered.      “Come on. Did you really think I was gonna be that easy?” she chuckles, flipping the torch up in the air and catching it skillfully.

     She grabs him by the collar and drags him inside her room, shifting the fight between four walls instead of on the corridor, not wanting innocent bystanders to get caught in the crossfire. She drops him to the ground, glaring down on him with disgust as she takes her gun from behind her waistband. The shifter clears his throat, wiping crimson red from his lip.      “Actually, I did. I almost shot you twice. Reckoned this would be a piece of cake,” he gloats with a grin, after which he struggles to get on his feet, holding his hands up. “You wanna shoot me in a fully booked motel? Try to explain that to the neighbors.”      Zoë narrows her eyes at him, mentally kicking herself for leaving the gun suppressor in her storage locker the last time she was there. The bastard has a point; shooting what looks like the owner of Motel 6 through the heart, will definitely draw attention. She scoffs, pursing her lips, then she takes the magazine from her weapon and lays it on the bed.      “We’ll finish this the old fashioned way, then,” she agrees confidently.

     They face each other, challenging. Zoë adjusts to a back stance, putting her left foot behind her and bending her knees slightly. Her hands lift up in front of her face as she flexes her fingers, ready for anything that son of a bitch is going to throw at her.       “I have to say, you got me fooled. Making me believe Terry Cliffer was going to be your next dress-up party, while he actually was your first. Smart,” she admits.      “If you admire me so much, why waste me?” he tests, blood dripping from his nose.      She smirks at that, entertained by his arrogance. “Don’t give yourself too much credit.”

     He steps towards her, but she beats him to it. In a quick move she defends, blocking his attack with her forearm and swings her back leg up with force, kicking the shifter hard against his temple. He goes down, shaking his head to ward off the black spots that are inevitably swimming in front of his eyes. When he looks up, the huntress has taken her rear foot stance again. One fist with her palm up on her hip and ready to strike, the other is ready in front of her to defend.       “Gotta say, you fight pretty good for a girl,” He gets to his feet again, wiping his brow. “Or should I call you the Karate Kid?”      “Oh, I’m not a kid. I’m more like a ninja,” she smirks, staring him down.        “Ninja or not, you’re no match for me.”

     He charges her, faster than humanly possible. Despite his supernatural speed, she dodges his jab and releases another kick, against his ribs this time. The creature locks her leg before she can retreat, however, and steps in while Zoë has lost her balance. With a fierce strike, his fist hits her in the jaw, hard. He still has a hold of her leg and twists it, forcing her on the floor, pulling a groan of agony from her as the ligaments in her knee stretch further than possible. Not giving up that easily, she pushes her left foot from the ground, using the leverage of him still holding her right leg tight to swing the other to his head, hitting him on the side of his face with her instep. He releases her and she breaks her fall, rolls, and gets up again, all in one swift movement. The arm that had a strong grip on her only seconds ago, is now twisted to the shifter’s back. Roughly, she  forces him to his knees; he can't go anywhere. 

     “What did you do to those people?” she demands, not asking very nicely.      “Oh, don’t worry, I don’t actually kill them. It’s far more fun to watch them suffer,” he responds, sadistically.      “You son of a—”      She doesn’t have time to finish her sentence, because the shapeshifter throws his head back and hits her hard in the teeth. Sharp pain shoots through the roots into her skull and for a moment there she’s sure he broke off a tooth or two; so much for looking fabulous.       In that split second, the chameleon manages to fight free, grabs her by her arm and violently throws her over his shoulder. Zoë lands on her back, the air slamming out of her lungs. She gasps sharply, unable to catch her breath. No time to recover from the pain, though, because she receives a kick in the gut a moment after. 

     Losing control over the fight fast, she tries to push away from her attacker to buy herself some valuable time, but her opponent takes the liberty to help her up, forcing her to stand by pulling her hair, before she suffers a blow in the chest with a strength that exceeds that of a human being. The huntress slams into the table, the edge bruising her lower back, feeling the tight grip of the shifter's hands on her throat when he roughly pushes her into the wooden surface.       With a devilish grin on his thin lips, he chokes her, clearly enjoying the display: how his victim fights for air, trying to pull in desperate breaths as he crushes her throat under his fingers.  

     “You know what I do to them? I keep them somewhere safe, safe from the world, where no one can find them,” he tells her, his speech eerily slow, as if he’s reading a chapter of a horror novel.      Zoë glances aside briefly. Although she can’t move her head, she notices the empty whiskey bottle she and Dean left last night, still laying on its side in the window sill. She reaches out, almost touching the glass, but the bottle remains out of reach by an inch or two. The shapeshifter laughs at her attempt and continues his story, as if he has all the time in the world to tell it.      “Humans are such strange creatures, you know? If you keep them together in a tiny cage for a while, they tend to behave like spiders. They attack each other, eventually kill and actually eat their own kind out of pure desperation. How amusing is that?”

     Zoë can’t hold back a gag, but forces herself to concentrate on the bottle. It vibrates almost unnoticeable, then the bottleneck turns towards her slightly. Focus, Zo! You can do this! She sends all her energy through her stretched out arm towards the nerve endings on her fingertips. It works, because the bottle flies into her hand. With an unexpected strike Zoë breaks the bottle on the shifter’s head, who stumbles back, finally letting go of her neck. Trying to suck oxygen down her painful windpipe, she coughs uncontrollably. Alright, that’s enough. A fair fight seems noble and all, but having a face off with a supernatural being, might not have been one of her smartest ideas. The huntress reaches for her gun and takes the magazine from the bed, swings around, aiming at… nothing? The room is empty.      “Fuck, not again,” she curses, bummed that she can’t put twenty years of jujitzu training in good use because of the runner.

     Before bolting out the door, the experienced huntress glances both ways down the hallway, her gun ready. Shit. No sign of the shifter. She lets out a frustrated sigh and  moves in, rolling her tongue over her straight teeth in the meantime, checking if they got chipped after the nasty headbutt she received.       When she clears the foyer, she is surprised to find the real motel owner, tied up to a chair in nothing more than a shirt and trunks, his mouth taped.      “Are you alright?” she asks, as he ‘hmm’s’ loudly.      In a quick movement she rips the tape from his mouth, unleashing a rant of curses and shouts.      “Ouch! That son of a bitch! Where is he?! Where is that bastard who did this to me?! I’m gonna kill him! I swear, I’m gonna--”

     Zoë stares at him for a moment, feeling a headache coming on, then grabs the roll of duct tape from the counter. While the manager keeps on raging, she rips off a piece of tape and presses it over his mouth. There is no way in the world she’s gonna release the pissed off elder; he needs some cooling down time. Casually she picks up the phone and for a moment considers dialling 911, but decides this isn’t really that much of an emergency and calls the local police.      “Hello? Yeah, hi. I just found an old guy tied up to a chair in not much more than his undies… Motel 6, 2107 Highway 52 North... My name? Yeah, it’s Not Interested.”       She hangs up and clears her throat, wiping her prints from the horn, then walks away, bored, with the roll of duct tape in her hand, leaving the furiously moaning motel owner behind the counter.

     Back in her room, she gathers her things and stuffs them in two duffels, which fit into the two big leather saddlebags on her Harley perfectly. She makes quick work of getting rid of all the evidence, including the glass she shattered on the shifter’s head. With both bags on her shoulder, she takes a last look around and leaves the room, waving at the motel manager on her way out while hiding her face from the security camera.       The cover of the manhole in the center of the parking lot is removed; her shifter went underground again. He's running back to his hideout, only he doesn't know that she knows exactly where that is.      “3841 110th Avenue Northwest,” she mumbles to herself as she gets on her bike and puts the helmet on her head.

     That’s where she’s going, that’s where this is going to end. The Harley engine roars loudly when she accelerates. Its back tire spins for a moment before the motorbike takes off as the evening sets in. This is going to be her last night in Rochester and his last night on the face of the earth. Zoë is determined: this hunt ends tonight.

Thank you for reading. I appreciate every single one of you, but if you do want to give me some extra love, you are free to reblog my work or buy me coffee (Link in bio at the top of the page).

Read part nine here

The Sullivan Series tags: @a-gir1-has-n0-name​​ @destielhoneybee​​ @fookinghelljensensthighs​​ @idksupernatural​​ @laphirablack​​ @magssteenkamp​​

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[imagineclaireandjamie]

I would love a story about scandalized older jamie overhearing claire giving sex advice to the younger generation. Or maybe just a story with scandalized Jamie because those of are some of the funniest moments in the books.

To summarize the first part of Coke Bottles & Romance Novels—which was written a million years ago—Brianna, Roger, & Co. have returned to the 18th century with some 20th century gifts. Among them, is a romance novel for Claire, from Joe, which she intends to read to a scandalized Jamie. 

(Many, MANY thank yous to @dingbatland for providing me with the wonderfully hilarious romance novel copy!)

Coke Bottles & Romance Novels, Part 2/2

My husband was a cultured man—a learned man, for all that, having received his education in universities, on battlefields, in the peaks of the Scottish Highlands and backcountry America. At 58, the iron cast of his world had been set, the lines of truth or falsehood drawn by his experiences—as concrete as a stone in his hands.

Ships were “evil vessels in alliance wi’ Satan.” Drunken men, while generally disagreeable, could be, “Easy money, aye?” for their generosity with information. The sky was blue, the grass was green, and if one could lend a helping hand, then it was one’s duty to do so.

Sex, too, had its own particular shape in his mind, though he (thank God) no longer took his cues from animals.

But of course, the world did not revolve around the beliefs of Jamie Fraser, however solid he might find them. As it turned out, ships were essential to the trade market, and drunken men were often liars. The sky was certainly blue and the grass certainly green, but I rather thought a distinction should be made between “helping” and “meddling.”

And sex—well. There was no defining that.

As if to prove this final point, Sacred Pleasure’s protagonists were performing acrobatics. Their boneless limbs had effortlessly folded and twisted, then disappeared altogether (“Wasn’t her leg just around his torso?”).

Jamie was vibrating beside me, questioning everything from the author’s diction (“Conquered her lips?”) to the logistical implications of sex in a closet.

“Sassenach,” he said, “you ken well how it is in a ship cabin! Ye canna expect me to believe that—”

“Hush!” I retorted, swatting away his protestations. “You can’t just interrupt a woman’s heaving bosom.”

I cleared my throat, and read on.

“Consume me, Rodney. Here. Now.”

“Aye, if he’s a snake, maybe,” Jamie grumbled, and I rolled my eyes.

“Perhaps Rodney and Harriet are quite flexible. And double-jointed, and—”

“Former members of the traveling circus?”

“Precisely.” I replied. “Now. Where were we?”

“Harriet’s consumption, Sassenach.”

“Ah. Yes.”

Harriet took a deep breath and pulled his surgical trousers down. She had never been so bold with a man, and it thrilled her.

Rodney recaptured her lips as she took his silky steel rod in her hand.

God, he was big!

He grasped her love jugs, and her nipples exploded with delight.

“Nay, it doesna say that!” Jamie cried, moving forward to snatch the book from my hands. “Yer making it up!”

Rather absorbed in the story myself, I evaded his swipe and reread the paragraph, pointing at the evidence with a poorly concealed smirked.

“I most certainly am not! It says it right here: ‘He grasped her love jugs, and her nipples exploded with delight.’”

Still disinclined to believe me, Jamie pried the book from my gasp, eyes moving quickly along the lines of text. At last, and with a grunt of contempt, it was confirmed that Harriet’s breasts were, indeed, of a particularly volatile sort. With a loud exhale through his teeth, Jamie took over the reading.

“You drive me mad, Harriet!” Rodney groaned, his quivering member pulsing in her hand.  

He bucked his hips against her, and she let him go, eager to feel that length in her wet depths.

“Oh Rodney!” she screamed as he drove into her clunge, cleaving her. Her body opened to his love dart like a soft pink flower.

“Whoa-ho!” I snorted. “I wonder, which is better: a ‘quivering member’ or a ‘love dart’?”

“I’m partial to ‘clunge’ myself, Sassenach,” Jamie replied, though I thought his expression much more serious than Harriet’s ‘clunge’ deserved. Using his thumb as a place-marker, he studied the cover, scratching at his stubbled chin. “Is this really what ye read? Is this how lassies in yer time learn about—”

“I read the books for entertainment, Jamie. After all, you didn’t get your sexual expertise from Fanny Hill, did you?” I said, brow raised and hand crawling towards his leg. One finger, two fingers tapping against his thigh in silent suggestion. “That just comes with practice.”

“Aye, practice, aye,” he said, only half-listening.

To be fair, the author of Sacred Pleasure was rather…inventive with her descriptions of the human anatomy and sexual intercourse. It had more than earned its rightful place in Joe’s pantheon of romance novels, and I wondered if it was pilfered from the hospital’s collection or his own.

Brows knitted, Jamie reopened the book and turned the page.

“Hey!” I said. “Don’t read ahead.”

“I’m no’ reading ahead, Sassenach.” Jamie leaned back, rubbing his index fingers in slow circles against his temples. “I’m trying to imagine it. D’ye think it’s even possible to make a woman’s nipples explode?”

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Jamie regarded me sideways, a grin beginning to stretch across his face.

“And d’ye wish I had the will for that, Sassenach?”

“Not that particularly, no. Though if you do, I’m sure I could muster some gratitude for the effort. Not sure my nipples could though. Having been blown to bits and all.”

Jamie looked at the far wall, tilted his head. I found his thoughtful silence somewhat disconcerting (and my nipples did too, to be honest), but decided not to dwell on the images probably flashing through my husband’s mind. I brought the book closer to my nose and continued to read.

“Harriet! Harriet, my one true passion!” Rodney called out, gasping as his body convulsed with love.

He rested his forehead against hers for a moment, and then pulled away. “I must leave now. I have a surgery.”

“Well, I hope he washes his hands,” I snorted.

“Aye, dinna want her exploded nipples to cause an—” Jamie paused, searching for one of my words, “infection.”

Harriet’s shock was cut off with a hot, heavy kiss. “Stay here. I’ll be back.”

“Is it so different, then, where ye come from?” Jamie asked me then, voice reflective and distant.

I left Harriet and Rodney to their post-coital tension, only to find my husband’s intent stare.

“Why, yes…” I began, slowly, hesitantly. Quite frazzled by the look in Jamie’s eyes. “The fundamentals are the same, of course. We’re all anatomically identical, whether we’re from here or there. Of course, some are more, err, well-endowed than others…” I paused, dropping my eyes to let him know he was, in fact, one of the blessed. “But we’ve all got the same parts in the same places. Unless 18 century men have sprouted an extra organ in my absence.”

“If you’d kept at yer tonics and potions after the Rising, Sassenach, I’ve no doubt you’d have given someone an extra ball, at least.”

“If it were that easy, I should think I’d have every male tenant knocking at my door.”

All at once, a fact of memory struck me. This happened occasionally, as I recalled certain events and places of my past—natch, my future—that would have no meaning for those in my present century. I laughed to myself, and Jamie moved closer.

“Something funny?”

“Nothing,” I said, still stifling a giggle. “It’s only, just—where I come from, there are means of…male enhancement. For those who aren’t as endowed as the others.”

Jamie’s eyes widened in disbelief.

“An aphrodisiac ye mean?”

“No, not quite. Aphrodisiacs enhance sensation. I mean…the physical size of your, err…”

Despite the myriad of terms at my fingertips, sexual eloquence seemed to be failing me. “The penis. But the instrument I’m referring to is called—well, you can’t laugh, Jamie.”

“A man’s cock is never a laughing matter, Sassenach. Verra sensitive, they.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “An instrument, ye say? That doesna sound verra nice.”

I wrinkled my nose, recalling the strange contraptions as I’d seen them: once, in a catalogue meant for the neighbors. And another time, photographs brandished at a faculty party after too much drink. All steel and hard lines.

Jamie was right—hardly an invitation for the so-called ‘sensitive.’

“It’s called a penis pump. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, they were used strictly for medicinal purposes. To help impotence, and such.”

Jamie nodded somberly.

“But then the 1960s came around, and people began using them for their own recreational uses…I saw quite a number of patients who didn’t know what the bloody hell they were doing. Ended up in the ER.”

Jamie’s bubbling laughter abruptly ceased at the idea of penile injury, and he laid a protective hand over his own member. “Are there…a lot of things like that? Then?”

“Sex toys? A couple. There was the beginning of a sexual revolution during that time,” I replied, and I could see the questions already brewing behind Jamie’s eyes. Anticipated his response. “No, I never used any myself.”

Whether this was a comfort or a disappointment to him, I couldn’t tell, but he seemed suddenly forlorn over the notion of these differences between mankind’s past and future sexuality.

“Does this…excite you? Worry you?” I asked hesitantly, standing. “Would you rather bed me then than bed me now?”

“It’s just that,” Jamie said, smiling and pointing at the pages of Sacred Pleasure in my hand, “it is a wee different in your time than in mine.”

“That’s hardly proof,” I retorted. “20th century writers have just been forced to use their imagination. All those that came before…” I paused, squinting to read the jacket cover, “Ms. August, here, had used all the normal terms already. She had to get creative, I suppose.”

“Aye, ‘creative’ is a certain way of putting it, Sassenach. I dinna think she’s much succeeded, but I’ll grant Ms. August some credit for trying.”

“You mean ‘grasping my love jugs’ isn’t an accurate representation of all bedroom activities?”

“Nay, Sassenach. When I take ye, I dinna cleave ye like a piece of meat—though ye are tasty, if ye dinna mind me saying so.” He eyed my backside with appreciation, and I swerved away to obstruct his view.

“I object to your objectification of me, James Fraser,” I replied. “So tell me, oh ye of such highbrow literary taste—

“Sassenach,” he interrupted, getting to his feet with a provocativeness that spoke plainly of his intentions. Saunter notwithstanding, there was an equally blatant indication further south, and I gladly met him halfway. “Ye asked me, just now, which I’d prefer: 18th century sex or 20th century sex. Mind you, I’ve no’ had the pleasure of bedding a lassie in the 1900s, but…”

I laughed quietly, standing on my tiptoes to nip at his earlobe.

“I’ve been denied that privilege as well. No 20th century women ever made it to my bed, I’m afraid.”

For a man who once told me he’d spent the better part of an evening memorizing Fanny Hill, I was surprised to see the tips of his ears turn pink. Still, his mouth curled up at the side, and I felt his pulse, quick beneath my lips when I pressed them to his neck.

“Ach. I didna mean that, Sassenach. I only meant as I should ask you the same question. You being the expert, in such things as life, then and now.”

I broke away from him and offered a contemplative frown.

“Which is better, you ask…Sex in the 18th century or in the 20th?”

Jamie nodded, a current of expectation surging through him—a response, I thought, that showed a considerable (and much-deserved) amount of confidence in his sexual prowess.

Hoping to tease him, I took my chin in hand and began pacing back and forth.

“Such a quandary you’ve put me in, James Fraser. How will I ever choose?”

He rolled his eyes. A few more moments of half-hearted debate—and with the first seeds of doubt crossing Jamie’s face—I finally turned back.

“Dear me,” I said, smirking, “I’m still positively torn. Perhaps with a bit of persuasion…”

Quick to the bait, Jamie snaked his arm around my waist.

“I’ve been told I can be verra persuasive, Sassenach.” He pulled his body to mine, his hardness pressed in perfect demonstration against my thigh.

I, for one, was not wholly unsupportive of his methods.

“Oh,” I purred. “I can see that.”

“Can ye now?” Eyes gleaming with mischief, Jamie promptly dropped to his knees, hands making a gradual climb up shins, my thighs, until they stopped at my…

“Ahhh,” I moaned, relishing the feel of his fingers, moving in slow but deliberate strokes.

“Is an answer coming to ye yet?”

At the rate this was going, I wagered I would likely come before any coherent answer presented itself. Seeking balance, I ran my fingers through his hair and tugged.

“I think…I think I could be persuaded a little more.” I threw my head back and moaned a second time. “I’m a proper 20th century woman, after all. My opinions are hard-earned.”

I awaited a lewd joke, but Jamie was already pushing me onto the bed, advancing on his knees and lifting my skirts.

“Aye, and I’m a proper 18th century gentleman, Sassenach—I respect my lady’s needs.”

Grabbing me by the buttocks, he pulled me hard and bodily towards him, tongue finding the perfect spot.

I needed no further persuasion.

Sometime later, we lay in a gasping tangle of limbs. Had I any question as to the superiority of the 18th century, I was now confidently in favor of laces, bum rolls, and stockings.

But at the sight of Sacred Pleasure on the bedside table, I felt a pang of sympathy for its buxom heroine, who was the victim of more than Eloise August’s outrageous euphemisms.

The hell of it was: real love was beyond clever wordplay, creative positions, titillating toys, and forbidden locations. Never bound to a time or a place.

What the novelists could never describe was the feeling of my husband’s mouth on me, a butterfly’s touch against my dew-dropped skin. The understanding that, regardless of where or when we were, Jamie would be there, always. The century was hardly relevant—it was the hands that healed you, the lips that worshipped you, and the soul that met yours in the long, quiet hours of the night that truly mattered.

“D’ye really think there’s a difference?” he asked, breathless but returning to that same question.

“As long as it’s with you? No. Surely not.” I inhaled deeply, skin still tingling. “Jamie, that was…”

“Aye,” he said, laughing softly. “D’ye hear that, Sassenach? I dinna ken if that’s my heartbeat or yours, but it’ll wake the whole Ridge soon enough.”

I rolled towards him, seeking the sureness of solid flesh, as I found my footing not in our bedroom or by the height of the moon, but through Jamie’s heat next to mine. I rested my head against him, the synchronized rise and fall of our chests lulling me towards a satiated sleep.

“My heart or yours?” I mumbled, nuzzling his shoulder. “Is there a difference?”

I felt him smile into my hair.

“Nay,” he whispered. “Surely not.”

[nommerwatch]

Happy Valentines Day, @asexualtabris! I was your partner for the  @mcgenjivalentine exchange. Enjoy! 

The parties in Oasis are always insane, despite the omnics, despite the Global Crisis, despite the bodies stacked up like firewood all over the world. In Oasis, they think that Jesse’s hat and revolver are charming, and his boots are quaint, and his stories of shootouts as as no good kid are sweet and rustic. It’s easy to be charming in Oasis, because everyone is so drunk and so rich and so ready to be charmed.

He’s at a ritzy party tracking down a black marker dealer, whiskey in his hand and a woman’s hand on his ass, when he spots a particularly fancy omnic across the room, and has to swallow his surprise in a gulp of his drink. The whiskey goes down smoothly, but the smallest wrinkle appears on the face of the woman he’s been charming, and by the time he’s finished properly recapturing her attention the ‘omnic’ has vanished. No matter. If he caught a glimpse of Genji it was because Genji wanted to be seen, and if Genji is not speaking to him now it only means they’ll speak later. Jesse returns to his party.

The prediction comes true that night, when Jesse returns to his room, drunk off his ass and ready to collapse, and flops onto his bed, eyes closed.

“I know you’re there,” he drawls. When he opens his eyes, Genji has appeared on the edge of his bed, holding the Blackwatch datapad Jesse hid in the DVD player.

“Cowboy,” Genji says, putting the datapad down. “You are not as drunk as I thought.”

“Oh, I am. You’re just not as quiet as you think.” Poking Genji is an old game, one both of them enjoy. Genji rises from his chair and stalks lazily over to the bed. Jesse is drunk enough to openly admire the curve of Genji’s chassis, his thighs, the delicate menace in each of his steps. Jesse’s always had a weakness for shiny, dangerous things.

“Have you ever been married, Jesse?” Genji asks, lazily.

“Why, are you proposing?” Genji’s visor slides up, and he grins. The smile stretches at his scarred lips, turning the expression feral. It’s the sort of expression that is one hundred percent unadulterated trouble, the sort Jesse loves.

“Maybe,” Genji says.

The beat doesn’t drop until the mission is over, when Jesse goes to check out and is congratulated on his new husband and his upgrade to the honeymoon suite at the Kusanagi hotel.

“Thank you kindly,” Jesse tells the receptionist omnic. “I don’t suppose you could give me directions? I seem to have misplaced mine.”

The Kusanagi is a very new, very exclusive hotel, the kind where a room costs as much money as Jesse used to make in a year. Blackwatch ain’t exactly comin’ up in the world so much as it’s going sideways, but it has the occasional perks. Better than starving in a hole, anyway, and if the sheriff ever busts him it’ll be the UN and not some janky podunk town sheriff. Jesse McCree has reached the big-leagues.

He lets the friendly omnic receptionist check him in and ambles up to his suite, half tempted to take a detour to swipe some stuff from the other rooms. Places like this always make his palms itchy; old reflex from when he was stealing shit out of corner stores back in Dorado. He resists. A scan of his fingerprint- god, he does not like having his prints in the system, but it would have been weird to object- gets him into his suite.. King size bed, champagne, chocolate, fridge, television, kitchen, hot tub, city view, balcony. The works and then some. Everything but Genji.

Fuck it, Jesse thinks.  

He’s sitting in the hot tub drinking whiskey and texting Reyes when Genji comes in. Not through the door, naturally. Genji would never be caught using something as pedestrian as a door. Genji comes in through the window, despite the fact that they’re forty stories up; Jesse catches a glimpse via one of the wall mirrors.

“Sweetheart, bring me some champagne, would you,” he calls, and keeps texting. A beat, and then Genji walks in. There’s blood splashed across one of his thighs and champagne in the other. A long, silent moment, and Jesse realizes Genji is staring. He wishes the visor was off; it would be nice to see the look on Genji’s face, to know where his eyes are going.

“You look like a bear,” Genji says, recovering.

“Well, ain’t you a charmer,” Jesse says. Genji places the champagne bottle down on the counter, out of Jesse’s reach. “But seeing as you’re my darling husband who got us this place, I’m inclined to forgive you. You go out for a light jog, honey?”

“I was working,” Genji says. “Life is not just about sitting in hot tubs.”

“Well, someone’s got to work, and it might as well be someone else,” Jesse says lazily. He rises from the hot tub and pretends not to notice the way Genji goes still, then grabs the champagne and holds it out to Genji.

“You got a screw?”

“What?” Genji says. Jesse’s spent enough time studying the tilt of Genji’s visor to know where Genji was looking.

“Screw,” Jesse says lazily. “For the bottle, to open it.” He sees Genji shifting and doesn’t bother trying to dodge the blow; the floor is slippery, and he’d just embarrass himself. Instead, he hooks an arm around Genji’s waist, and both of them end up on the floor. Jesse’s hand is on Genji’s waist. The champagne fell into the hot tub, but didn’t break, so Jesse counts this as a win.

“Violent, aren’t you,” Jesse says, and runs two fingers through the cooling blood on Genji’s thigh.

“You are unmannerly,” Genji says, as if he didn’t just knock Jesse ass over teakettle.

“You married me, darlin’,” Jesse tells him. “What’s up?” It’s not the weirdest place he’s gotten a briefing.

“Put some clothes on,” Genji tells him, and retreats hastily from the room.

Jesse puts his pants on, humming, and rescues the champagne from the hot tub. Genji glances at him, tilts his head slightly and proceeds past him into the bathroom and closes the door. A few moments, and there’s the sound of the shower running. Genji’s managed to avoid getting any blood in their room. Jesse smiles and sprawls out on the bed.

Genji comes out a few minutes later, shiny and wet from the shower, looking like a car Jesse wants to drive.

“What’s up?” he asks. Genji lazily twirls a set of shuriken between his fingers like the show-off that he is, and activates something with the other hand. Bug blocker, looks like.

“There are some people in this hotel who are trafficking in omnics. Black market dealers. You are here to provide cover, and to shoot anyone who tries to shoot me.”

“Are you saying you don’t love me? My feelings are hurt.” Genji’s visor comes up, and he grins, then advances, wolfish, onto the bed.

“I did not say that,” he says. Jesse is treated to an actual kiss, the first one’s he enjoyed in ages. It’s one thing to kiss people for work, and another to have a hundred pounds of distilled murder in your lap. Genji’s lips are scarred, but Jesse doesn’t mind. Not remotely. There’s plenty of beautiful people in the world, but there’s only one Genji. He feels like he’s had a lot more than a few sips of whiskey. Genji pulls away.

“Cowboy,” Genji says, and smiles again. It’s a dangerous expression: bright and feral, beautiful as a bullet. “Don’t tell Reyes,” he says, and kisses Jesse again.

This, naturally, is when the door clicks open, and a set of omnics, apologizing profusely, peer through the door.

“There’s been a---”

“I’m busy,” Jesse says, not needing to fake the annoyance in his voice.

“This matter is---”

“Busy,” Jesse says, louder, doing his best to imitate Reyes’ voice. The omnics beep sadly, and then the door closes. Genji at least waits until the door is closed to start laughing, his shoulders rising and falling. Jesse reluctantly bumps him ahead by at least five points in their game of one-ups-manship.

“I ain’t one to hold grudges,” Jesse lies, “but I hope your engine stalls.”

Genji only laughs harder.

~~~

Jesse is sulky after Genji’s trick; he vanishes for a few hours, long enough that Genji is forced to go look for him. He finds Jesse at the artificial beach attached to the hotel, chatting with a set of beautiful teenagers. When Genji was still human, he would have loved such company, but he is not. He is what remains of a man, held together with steel and electronics.

Jesse spots him and waves enthusiastically. Robot fucker, Genji thinks; it is a thought that comes from the most caustic, bitter part of him, the part that used to urge him towards greater and greater transgressions against his family. He shoves it away. Jesse has a taste for dangerous things and heists and Genji is a weapon and a war chest all rolled up in one. If Genji were still human, were still a Shimada, were still living uncomfortably off blood-money in Hanamura, he would make it a game to see how long he could string Jesse along without sleeping with him.

But Genji is a thing now, as much as a person, and Jesse is waving to him. He advances, allows himself to be introduced as Jesse’s fiance. One of the girls starts to say something about omnics, then catches herself.

“I was hoping I could borrow my husband,” Genji says, and shamelessly swipes Jesse from them. Jesse doesn’t mind, or he doesn’t appear to mind. Part of Genji wants to dismiss him as stupid, a dumb hick who’s a decent shot. The other part knows better; he’s seen Jesse charm information out of professionals, steal information from thieves and kill seven men with six bullets. If Jesse wants to hide, he can.

It wouldn’t be so bad, to kiss him and mean it. Genji might even enjoy it. The fake sand crunches beneath his feet, and he wonders morosely if any of it has gotten into his joints. You never liked the beach anyway, his memory reminds him.

“Penny for your thoughts, partner?” Jesse says.  

“The people who are stealing omnics are going to try and steal me,” Genji says, and steers them towards the relative privacy of the gardens. Once there, he continues. “They have been tracking me. The program that they use overrides the omnic programming, makes them docile and obedient. Angela does not think it will work, but you have been enlisted as a precaution.” The bitterness in his voice at the last surprises even him; two years a robot, and it still blindsides him sometimes, how much he’s lost. He waits for Jesse to make some sort of obnoxious quip about how Genji is his, but Jesse steps back, allowing Genji his space.

“What do you need?” he asks. The list is long. Genji needs his body back, needs not to have this stupid crush on Jesse, needs to have hair and skin and fingers that can feel.  

“If there is some kind of electronic attack that disables my systems, we are counting on you to work manually. Otherwise, nothing. You are my cover.” Jesse grins wolfishly. He’s got a line of stubble coming in; Genji would like to know what it feels like. He thinks Jesse would let him. In the bath, Jesse’s fingers had lingered on his waist, his thigh.

“I’m nothing if not manually dextrous,” Jesse says, and wiggles his fingers at Genji. Despite everything Genji’s mood lifts. Jesse is fun, and one of the better monsters Genji has cohabited with over the years.

“Why don’t you show me,” he says, tilting his head towards one of the exits.

Genji beats Jesse impeccably at tennis, and compounds his victory by stealing Jesse’ hat and hanging it, unreachable, on top of the hotel flagpole.

~~~

The attack does not come that night, or the next night, or even the night after that. Genji and Jesse go the gardens, and to the beach, and to a conference optimistically titled “Rebuilding the world! Architecture in a Post-Crisis Economy.” Jesse doesn’t care about architecture, but he enjoys the free wine and the careless scientists and the practice at lying.

Genji’s rage cohabitates uneasily with the two of them, but each night it disperses a little, allows Genji to come a little bit closer. Jesse waits, unworried. Genji is a lot more animal than robot, whatever he might think; a skittish, predatory thing, like a mountain lion Jesse saw sneaking around the ruins of Santa Fe.

On the fourth night, Genji decides he wants to go out clubbing.

“You think scientists go for that kinda thing?” Jesse says lazily. He’s sprawled out on the bed, enjoying the rare moment of relaxation. Next week he’ll probably be in a foxhole; Reyes doesn’t like him getting used to things being fancy. If Jesse didn’t know better, he’d think Reyes was determined to be his dad. He grabs a cigarette from the side table and lights up.

“They are human as well,” Genji says idly. “Your contempt of science suits you badly.”

“Don’t get it, is all,” Jesse says with a shrug. “I’m a simple man. That sort of thing is too complicated for me.” Genji advances onto the bed and plops down unexpectedly next to Jesse like a cat. Jesse resists the urge to try and pet him.

“Liar,” Genji says idly. “I’ve seen your transcripts.” Jesse knew those would come back to bite him someday, but Reyes wanted him to get a degree, made him take a bunch of dumbass tests. Didn’t mean nothing.

“I don’t get why people want that,” Jesse clarifies. “Whole life spent inside, never going out and seeing anything.”

“What do you want to see, Jesse?” Genji asks. Jesse takes a drag on his cigarette and few moments to reflect.

“I reckon I’d like it if Overwatch quit giving out my files to anyone who asks,” he says. He wonders what else is in that file, whether Reyes thought it was worth writing down his mother’s name and her criminal record, whether Mercy knows that Jesse was barely fifteen the first time he was drug up in front of the judge. Still. No use in parading his soft spots in front of Genji. He gets up, goes to the bathroom, steals a beer from the mini fridge. When he returns Genji’s on the phone.

“In fifteen minutes? Excellent. We will be there.” Jesse raises an eyebrow at him.

“We’re going to go see the city,” Genji says, and hold up a booklet. On the cover, a slim boat glides over the waters of the city. It is an apology of sorts.

The boat is a slim, beautiful thing with a good engine and smooth controls; Jesse’s bad mood vanishes the moment they get out onto the water. It’s late, the sky turned dark and starry, sunset long gone, warm light shining from the high towers, casting gold reflections on the water.  Jesse’s grown some since he was that fifteen year old kid dying of thirst down in Arizona, but he still remembers the first time he saw the ocean, how utterly astonished he was at the size of the sea.

“You have a boating permit,” Genji observes. He does. Reyes took him out one day and taught him how to steer, how to fix an engine, how to swim, how to radio for help. Everything but catching fish, and that because Jesse had been seventeen and stupid and would have lost his shit if he’d realized what Reyes was up to, taking him out to fish. He hadn’t.

“Reyes taught me how. Claimed it was for a mission, but I don’t use it none too often.”

“The water is a strange place for a cowboy. Perhaps you should be a pirate, instead.”

“Pirates vs. ninjas?” Jesse asks. Genji laughs, but does not offer a response. The silence stretches out comfortably between them, the beauty of Oasis a shared communion better than anything they could say. Jesse takes the boat through its paces, fast, slow, turns, drifts, and Genji sits on top of the cabin, unbothered by all the swerves.

At last, Jesse slows the boat down and drops anchor.  Genji is still atop the cabin, his feet swinging slowly back and forth. Jesse climbs up to join him. The two of them sit side by side, gazing out over the dark river and the golden lights. In the distance, another boat glides over the water, the faint hum of the engine growing steadily louder.

“I have not been swimming in a long time,” Genji comments, glancing out over the water. Since before whatever turned him into this, Jesse would guess. Genji’s files are much better guarded than Jesse’s; Overwatch are a bunch of tight-asses about security clearances. It hasn’t stopped Jesse from breaking into a few offices, but the bits of paper he has found are sparse. All he knows is that Genji was part of a serious gang, and it turned him into this on the way out.

“I’m sure Mercy could cook something up, if she hasn’t already.”

“Do you think this body floats?” Genji asks.

“I seen you scale a wall like it was nothing, Genji. You look so light a stiff breeze could blow you away.” Genji snorts and pushed his shoulder sideways, against Jesse’s.

“I am glad I am not as oversized as you. It makes people arrogant.”

“And you’re just a paragon of humility.”

“I am as humble as they come.” It’s Jesse’s turn to bump his shoulders against Genji’s. Genji slides up his visor and smirks at him. His eyes reflect the light like a cat’s, or something even more strange; they glow green, the pupils slit like an animal’s. Jesse turns towards him, drawn by the sense that he’s on the verge of some great, unspeakable secret, and then the radio comes on in a burst of static.

“Recall code 78-91; Activation 5302.” Jesse glances at the radio, then back at Genji. Genji’s eyes are glowing, shedding light like an internal fire. His shurikens rise and fall back into his fingers and Jesse realizes in a burst of panic that the omnic hijacking program has just been activated.

He hops down into the boat, grabs his gunbelt and his holster, regretting that he didn’t bring his grenades, and reflects that he might be better off jumping in the lake. Genji is fast, and Jesse ain’t too likely to beat him in close quarters. As he’s loading up his gun, Genji hops down from the roof, eyes still ablaze. There’s something moving around a him, a kind of shifting shadow that makes the hair on Jesse’s arms stand up.

Jesse fires. The bullet pings harmlessly into upwards. deflected by Genji’s sword, and then Genji is on him. He shoves Jesse’s gun to one side and slides his sword up against Jesse’s throat. His visor opens. When he smiles, the light glints oddly off his teeth, making them look like fangs.

“Oh, cowboy,” he says, his voice light and teasing. “It is only me.” The sword vanishes back into its sheath, and Genji steps back. 

“You’ll forgive me if I ain’t too trusting of that,” Jesse says.

“Darlin’,” Genji says, his accent a bad parody of Jesse’s. “You will see.”

When the other boat comes in, Jesse is waiting in the water on the other side. Genji, who is pretending to have been hijacked, is standing on the boat, his visor down. The sound of heavy boots, and two of the men climb on board.

“Unit designation and purpose, please,” one of the men instructs.

“Unit A7- 35, reporting for duty. I am an infiltration and assassination unit, fielded by Overwatch-” the rest of Genji’s answer is lost in the sound of water as Jesse begins to swim.

There are five men, two on the boat with Genji, and three on the boat that’s about to have Jesse. The key is to take them alive. Jesse swims over, grabs the side ladder, and waits.  

“Do you know any other languages?”

“竜神の剣を喰らえ,” Genji says, and a green light flashes like a beacon, shining out over the waters. Step right up, Jesse thinks.

He has only a few moments after rising from the waters to coordinate his shot, the targets flashing in his head like little skulls.

“Draw,” he says, and fires. He’ll have to thank Ana for her sleep darts, for insisting that he keep them in his pack. The men hit the deck. A shot rings out through the darkness, clipping Jesse’s shoulder. He staggers back and throws himself behind cover. A wild howl rises from the other boat, like a phantom train rushing through the night.  No second shot is fired. Jesse peeks out. Something is coiled in the darkness, moving through the air like smoke, visible only in pieces. A claw, a sinuous body, scales, sharp teeth. The image resolves. The dragon stops and turns to face him, and though the body is alien, Jesse feels, impossibly, that they have met before.

The light vanishes, and Jesse is alone in the dark with three kidnappers who are starting to wake up. He rushes to tie up the men, hurrying from body to body. The last one is twitching when Jesse reaches him, his hand creeping towards his gun, and has to be knocked into the deck a few times before Jesse can tie him up. Job finished, he hurries over to Genji.

Genji stands in the middle of the boat, blood smoking from his blade, and smiles. The green is gone from his eyes.

“They still alive?” Jesse asks.

“Yes, although they may regret it.”

“Do you know how to drive a boat?” Jesse asks. Genji begins to laugh.

It takes some time for Jesse to drive to shore with the bodies, call in the Op, fill out his report, and direct Overwatch back out to the other boat, and he’s exhausted by the time he makes it back to the hotel room. An initial scan reveals no sign of Genji. Jesse flops into bed and whacks his arm on the metal chassis of a concealed ninja.

“Rude,” Genji says irritably.

“You don’t even sleep,” Jesse says crossly. “What are you doing under here?”

“It is warm,” Genji says, as if that’s an answer. Jesse half expects him to scram, but he stays, even when Jesse nestles down under the same covers. More than that, he scoots closer, as if daring Jesse to touch him. Jesse’s eyes are closing, his body heavy with sleep, too tired for whatever game Genji is playing. Genji is warm from the covers, his body relaxed, held gently against Jesse’s as if he, too, is tired. Jesse yawns, rests his chin on Genji’s shoulder, wraps an arm around his waist, and falls asleep.

~~~

Genji is a little surprised and a little annoyed when he realizes that Jesse has fallen asleep; he had intended to sleep with him, but not like this. It must be the blood loss. Jesse was not hurt badly, but he was hurt, and Genji can concede that it is four in the morning. Sleep means very little to him; it is enough to mediate for a few hours and see Angela occasionally.

Jesse’s breathing is slow and even, his arm pressed pleasantly against Genji’s side, his breath stirring the back of Genji's neck. Strange, fragile idiot, who shot three people in three seconds, who was not bothered by Genji’s dragon and was too smart to ask about it. Genji will tell him someday, but not yet. For now it is enough to be held, to be safe, to fall into to the soft darkness with someone by his side, his dragon returned to him for the first time since he lost to Hanzo. This is mine, he thinks. My body, my dragon, my companion. This is worth keeping.

In the morning, Genji wakes to find Jesse still asleep, soft snores emanating from his mouth. He considers drawing something on Jesse’s face but finds that he does not have the patience. He wants Jesse to wake up. A few seconds divest them of the covers, and then Genji climbs onto Jesse’s legs, straddling him. Jesse jerks, reaching for his gun, then realizes Genji isn’t attacking him. His hair is mussed with sleep, his eyes half-open. Genji feels the first stirring of an awful tenderness and touches Jesse's face to make it go away.

“Wake up,” he says.

“Genji?” Jesse mumbles, and yawns widely, stretching.

“Good morning, cowboy.”

“Is there a reason you’re on top of me, or do you just like the view?” Jesse drawls. The view’s not bad. Jesse stripped off his wet clothing the night before, and his bare chest is exposed, along with his wide forearms and a trail of hair leading down below his waistband. Genji lazily traces a finger down the middle of Jesse’s chest, studiously ignoring the way Jesse’s hand is creeping up his leg. Jesse thinks Genji is going to run for it. Instead, he leans down and captures Jesse’s lower lip in his teeth, then gives him a kiss.

“This ain’t a trick?” Jesse asks when they break apart. “Jack Morrison ain’t about to come busting through that door and get a faceful?”

“I am insulted that you are thinking of another man at this time,” Genji tells him.

“Forgive me, darlin’,” Jesse says, grinning. “You were so beautiful I thought I was still dreaming.”

There are no more words after that.

[ecotone99]

[RF] Foodie (~4500 words)

Warning: Contains some violence, as well as swearing and some mention of sex. I don't think this is very risqué, but I submitted it recently for a creative writing class. Most students liked it, but one guy thought I should've warned people before they read it. So I'm erring on the side of caution.

Also, some may consider this horror. I do not, and so I didn't tag it as such.

​

Foodie

Carol Wilkenson was a foodie. It was a title she wore with pride, the way other women her age might casually mention that they or their spouse were chiropractors or paralegals. Tell me about yourself, Doug had asked on their first date. Her answer was as obvious as it was immediate.

It was their twentieth anniversary. Carol marked it on the calendar in bold red sharpie, her mouth turning into a cheshire grin as she X’ed out the box. Today was not going to be just another Wednesday. Today there would be romance. Today there would be sex—and not just of the five minute variety. Today there would be a wonderful dinner, prepared by Carol, as she had nearly every night since her honeymoon. And perhaps most importantly: today she would cook not out of habit or familial obligation, as had happened every afternoon for the past few years, but with that elusive magic ingredient her mother always told her about: love. That invisible spice that makes everything smell; taste; feel more vibrant and linger in your memory for years after it happened; playing like a tableau vivant in your mouth. The spice that had for so long been scarce was ready to be recaptured.

Doug joined her for breakfast. He picked up the sports section. And said:

“Good news: the Bills are making the playoffs.”

She smiled. She thought he was joking. Then, he courteously thanked her for breakfast, as he had every day since their honeymoon, tightened his tie, and walked cheerily out the door.

It was only after the screen door screeched to a halt that Carol realized she had broken her honey dipper. Its neck lay strangled in two pieces, one of which bit into her palm. Some of her blood mixed with the honey remaining from Doug’s cursory oatmeal.

“Oh dear.”

Carol sucked on her palm (the honey and blood made it sweet and salty, like some exotic fruit), threw the honey dipper in the trash, and washed her hands, careful not to drive the few remaining splinters further into her skin. She bandaged the wound. Then, she woke up Meg and sent her off to school. Carol insisted that her daughter eat some kind of nutritious breakfast, but she only settled for the desultory Honey Bunches of Oats.

She wished Meg would eat more out of her comfort zone. But Meg did not share her adventurous spirit. A few years ago they had a trip to Bangkok for something involving Doug’s work. Carol didn’t remember exactly what. Doug brought the family along, which made it an exciting opportunity for Meg to learn about other cultures and imbue in her a love of food. But whatever they ordered (on big communal platters, common for Asian restaurants), no matter how exotic or mundane, Meg took one bite, slid her plate back, and said “I’m good.” And Doug was somehow worse; she shuddered to think of the memory.

“Have a good day!” she called out to the bus, which was patiently waiting with its STOP sign extended like an enthusiastic middle finger. Meg didn’t look back.

Carol hung her head and busied herself in the kitchen. It was still her anniversary, and she and Doug would have the best goddarn dinner the two of them ever had. And they’ve had many excellent meals. In Venetion diners and Parisian cafes. Black risotto and escargot. Frog legs and couscous. Cajun food that upset Doug’s stomach so much that he couldn’t handle a second bite. All the organic, orgasmic food they ate in all the wonderful, envious places they traveled. Before she made a pitstop in her local Walgreens. And that little plastic stick showed two lines, not one.

They stopped traveling and settled down. They couldn’t raise a kid on the go, in cramped hotel rooms and seedy bathroom changing stations. Still, Carol had loved her career as a photojournalist. It took her to all the places where the best cuisine was hiding. Some of her work was pretty well reviewed too, making waves in the small and esoteric community of photojournalism.

But that wasn’t compatible with a child. The last interesting thing she ate—interesting and good, not the Arbys that gave her food poisoning—was her daughter’s placenta. It was mostly made of blood cells, and was entirely tasteless. She finished it more for curiosity’s sake than enjoyment factor, but it only made her long for the savory, dramatic dishes of years past. As she had sat there, unenthusiastically consuming, she felt like a cow that chews its own cud. Then, there was Doug, who had walked into the kitchen at just the wrong time. He saw the placenta, opened from its styrofoam box that the hospital sent home, per her request, like a perverse McDonalds Happy Meal. Then, he had made a face—the same fucking face—as Bangkok.

Her daughter’s bowl shattered against the fridge.

“Fuck you!” she screamed at the picture of Doug, pinned with a magnet and now soaking in spilled milk. Like the milk puddling on the pool, regret immediately seeped in.

“Oh, God. I didn’t mean it.”

Unconsciously, she bit the back of her hand. Chewing it, testing the muscles and tendons as her fingers flexed. It was an unconscious habit of hers, like Meg when she bit her nails or Doug when he pulled at his tie. She never bit too deeply, just massaged the back of her hand with her teeth. Feeling her teeth grind across the heel of her hand, fleshy as a ripe apple and underlain with tendons taut like piano wire. Her habit was a strange one, but not unheard of. She figured it was the same self-affirming way an infant sucked its thumb; built from a natural yearn to find comfort using the only means at its disposal.

She heard that fingers snap with the same strength it takes to crack a baby carrot. It was an interesting thought: that such a precious instrument, the nimble and adroit hand, could break so easily. Dipped in hummus and eaten like just another Super Bowl dish. She wondered, fleetingly yet not for the first time, what human tastes like.

It was surprising that she didn’t already know. Over the years, she had sampled a king’s ransom of dishes. On her trip to Venezuela, building houses for those displaced in Hurricane Isidore, she was offered local meals from the grateful inhabitants: goat’s blood and guinea pig, the first of which was customary, the latter of which was a delicacy. She gratefully accepted both. Neither was particularly good, but at least she tried them, and that was the ethos of being a foodie, she had explained to Doug. Five years later, they went to the New York State Fair. Doug, hungry and unwilling to wait for their reservations at Le Pamplemousse, a fancy french restaurant twenty minutes from the fairground, bought a stick of fried butter. He offered her half. When she refused, he educated her on the ethos of being a foodie. She chewed. She swallowed.

In a moment of curiosity, she turned to Google for answers. What does human taste like?

After fifteen minutes of patient scrolling and several clickbaity headlines, she found out that humans tasted, strangely enough, like pork. You probably wouldn’t taste the difference if served side by side, the website explained. Is that a challenge? Carol jokingly thought. With her foodie taste buds, she was certain she could sniff out the difference. Not that she would ever try, though. As if.

While she thoroughly wiped the picture of Doug, Carol apologized to his image. She didn’t hold anything against her husband. Nothing. On the contrary, he had supported her in hard times. When her father passed. When she had her second pregnancy scare, this one (thankfully) false. And of course, his constant companionship to all those places—Marseille and Istanbul and Galway and Marrakesh.

The last of the ceramic fragments were deposited in the trash. The milk was puddled up with a dish towel, then thrown in the laundry bin. Carol got back to work.

Last month she was skimming through the Food Network and came across a fascinating recipe: hot and sour soup. She had always wanted to try it out, but never got around to it. Paired with her signature linguine and clam sauce—a dish that always appealed to Doug’s taste, the Wilkensons could have a perfect anniversary dinner. She went to the pantry, which was overflowing with jams and spices after twenty years of marriage, and selected her ingredients.

White pepper. Onions. Vinegar. Bottled mushrooms. Jarred olives. Some shrimp from the fridge. Mozzarella slices. Bits of chicken, diced like cheese. Eggs, but not too many; she didn’t want her final product to be too “slushy.”

As she mixed, chopped, sautéred, and cooked, she cheerily hummed All You Need Is Love to herself, a song that played at her wedding.

She finished the soup and went to work on the linguine with clam sauce, which by now was as habitual as brushing her teeth while Rachel Maddow gave her the news. She lingered in the pantry and brought out her spices—fourteen in all, although Doug admitted that he could only taste three. By now, she had calculated that it took two trips to the pantry for linguini, and one perusal of the fridge.

Spaghetti and bowtie pasta, finely mixed. Olive oil. More onions. A clove of garlic. Lemon juice. Parsley. A dash of Maruso soy sauce. A sprinkle of salt. Tomato sauce, but not too much. Minced clams.

Lastly, Carol went to the cellar and brought up a bottle of Château Margaux. At half a grand, it was the most expensive wine they owned, a wedding present from Doug’s childhood friend, some rich Wall Street guy named Joe, not yet humbled by the crisis of ‘07. Doug had stuck it in the basement, saving the bottle for a special occasion. Carol figured two decades was time enough at last, and stuck it in the fridge.

Oh dear! She thought with a start. I almost forgot the carrots!

She looked at the kitchen clock. It was three minutes short, but Carol realized it was nearly four. Where had the time gone? Doug would be getting back from the office around now. Meg would soon join them—she had soccer practice until five. A teammate’s mom was driving her home.

Carol cursed herself for the two hours she spent watching The Crown while letting the chicken thaw, then cook. As she hurried to chop the carrots, her mind wandered again to Olivia Coleman, venerable and austere as Elizabeth II. Carol was so far removed from all those ladies in the show, who would never burden themselves with housework (they had servants for that), but instead perform diplomatic duties, making speeches and traveling to foreign countries. To Carol, it was more and more unlikely she would ever work or travel again. After her stint as a photojournalist, she worked at home for a couple years, putting her English degree to use writing advice columns in a American Woman, a near-unheard of women's magazine. My boyfriend left, someone would write in. My husband’s not talking to me. She always gave some fancy variation of the same answer, which could be distilled to: Get a grip, girl! You’re a grown-ass woman. Take charge of your life.

Now she felt like a terrible hypocrite, an unemployed housewife with no career prospects, fussing over the thickness of Doug’s hot and sour soup. She paused from chopping carrots, bit her hand, then resumed the task. How could she have ever had the audacity to write such advice?

It had been 2007 when she quit the magazine, when Meg entered the terrible twos and ate up all her time. For the time being, she had said to Doug. But they both knew it was permanent. After an exciting and successful career as a photojournalist, anything less was cripplingly depressing. Better nothing than something less. And they both knew it wasn’t Meg’s fault. If it was, she would’ve had an abortion. She was an independent woman. Neither of their families were picky about things like that. It was just… they both knew—although neither he nor her said anything—that they’d have to stop traveling and settle down. Grow up. Move on with their lives. It was time.

It was time.

“FUCK!”

She looked down at her hand, spouting blood from the tip of her pinkie finger like a water balloon with a hole. The knife rattled against the cutting board. Blood trickled on top of the cut carrots like the decorative sauce drizzled over hors d'oeuvres at some fancy eatery. Carol knew from years of restaurant experience that this was called plating. The top of her pinkie lay with the carrots; just another delicacy.

She hurriedly covered her hand with a wad of paper towels. It soaked through.

She rushed to the bathroom and threw open the door above the sink. Toothbrushes and bottles of aspirin clattered into the sink as she found the bandages. Wielding her teeth like some disgruntled animal, she tore open the box of bandages, then struggled with the waxy strip, tears welling in her eyes and blank black painspots eating up the foreground.

When the bandage was on and she felt healed enough to move, Carol wiped up the blood. Much of it was dried and black.

Black as elderberries.

Carol looked over to the cutting board. The carrots lay there, all in a row, quiet as a crime scene. She used the knife, still bloody, to scrape the bleeding carrots into the trash. Then she stopped. The finger was still there, an unpainted nail like a postal stamp in the corner of the cutting board. It clung on by a sticky glob of blood. Carol recalled a time when she read Meg a book of scary children’s stories.

(Meg was really into that stuff as a kid, and Doug thought something might be off with her, as if she was destined to become the first female serial killer.)

As one story went, there was a boy who ate some soup with a toe in it. After dinner, he’s sent to bed. He’s later haunted by the toe’s owner. Where is my big toe? Where is my toe? Carol always thought that was the scariest of all the stories. But even still, gazing at the piece of truncated pinkie like a crumb of meat left on the plate, it looked kind of… appetizing.

She set the cutting board down. Then, moving quickly as to not regret it, she peeled the finger off the cutting board and threw it into her mouth, nail and all. It caught in her throat for a moment, and for a second she was sure she’d choke on her stupidity, but then it gave.

Down the hatch and ‘round the corner, she thought. Then, out loud, with an air of awed tranquility:

“Tastes like chicken.”

She laughed at her crack, then tended to the mess. She washed the cutting board, not caring about chopping another carrot. Doug will just have to go another day without any carrots, that’s all. He’ll manage.

*

Doug wheeled his Prius into the garage at 4:30 p.m. By then, the linguine was sizzling on a saucepan, and its tangy scent permeated the house. Carol was ecstatic.

By now, he would have remembered their anniversary. He must’ve felt horrible (just horrible!) all day at work, upon remembering, with a start, that today was December 2nd. He would walk through the door and drop to his knees, exalting her with compliments and pleas of “I’m sorry,” and declaring his commitment to marriage. And love for her.

And this morning? It was just a fluke. His morning coffee hadn’t yet set in, and he was groggy and disoriented. He had forgotten their anniversary, but only for a minute.

The door opened with an anticipatory groan. Carol breathed deeply. The smells of her fresh cooking intermingled in a miasma of spice.

“Hey,” he said, with all the gusto of a cottonmouthed telemarketer. Doug walked into the kitchen. He hung his coat. Slipped off his shoes.

“I prepared a nice dinner for us,” she said.

He said nothing, just trudged into the living room, sat on the couch, and flicked on the evening news.

Not even a “smells good.”

A minute passed. Carol saw a chime on her phone. From Meg.

“Meg’s at Amy’s house,” she told Doug. “Says she’ll be back at nine.”

“Okay.”

“We should eat without her, just the two of us.”

“Okay.”

She set the table and placed the linguine on a dish, carefully so, like an offering on an altar. She did the same with the soup, and stirred it lovingly. She blew into the steam as if in prayer.

“What’s this?”

“Hot and sour soup.”

When she saw the disgruntled look on his face, she added:

“It’s Asian cuisine.”

“Chinese food,” he said dejectedly.

“Doesn’t it smell good?”

“Yeah,” he conceded.

They ate like mannequins, miming out their movements as if reading from a script. Pick up fork. Stab bowtie noodles. Swallow.

“Anything interesting happen at work today?”

“Same old, same old.”

Test spoon in soup. Raise it to your lips. Swallow.

“You haven’t touched your linguine,” she says, once he had finished the soup.

“Sorry. Do you want it? I’m not in the mood for this stuff again.”

This stuff again. This stuff again.

Those words played in her head, round and round, heating up slightly, like the plate in a microwave.

“No, I’ll just put it away.”

She took the plate and ducked behind the kitchen counter. Retrieved a large tupperware. She tilted the plate—a move so simple yet to her as melancholic as the R.M.S. Titanic sliding into the Atlantic. Most of the plate sludged into the plastic. But some noodles remained.

This stuff again.

She took an oversized cutting knife and scraped them off, trying to get as much of the clam sauce as possible. The knife shined silver, the sauce was white as semen.

“It was good,” Doug said, and Carol couldn’t help but smile. She deposited the tupperware in the fridge, and, positioning her back to Doug to cover his view of the kitchen, discreetly removed another item.

“I’m glad you like it. But there’s more.”

With that, she heaved the full weight of her body against the corkscrew wine opener and popped the bottle of Château Margaux.

Pooompf!

Bubbles instantly fizzed up; tiny iridescent balloons in celebration. Like whitewater on a beach. Carol smiled, so lost in thought that she barely understood the words coming out of Doug’s mouth. They must’ve echoed three times around the kitchen before they reached her eardrums.

“Are you crazy?!?”

“Huh?” she was still smiling, pouring the green bottle into the first of two wine glasses.

“That’s Château Margaux!”

“I know,” Carol says, hesitantly at first. Then, with a firmer voice:

“That’s why I’m pouring it.”

“That was from Joe Briggasson. We were supposed to save it for special occasions. You just opened it. You ruined it.”

Carol couldn’t stop herself. As she spoke, she strangled the neck of Doug’s wine glass.

“Special occasions?”

She laughed, a hollow cackle that scared her more than him.

“Ruined it? Did I, Doug? Did I really?”

Anger crept into her voice in the same sneaky way she found herself humming along to a tune in the supermarket she didn’t know was playing.

“Yes, you did!” Doug said. “You’re supposed to sit on that for a few decades.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Doug.” Carol said, with mock sympathy. It was a tone unfamiliar to both Doug and herself. “I guess twenty years of marriage wasn’t enough for you.”

“Twenty years? Twenty...” he trailed off, head turned toward the calendar behind her. Red sharpie accused him. Red like blood.

“I told you, honey.” he said, getting his voice under control. “This morning. I said Happy Anniversary. You must’ve forgot.”

“Liar!”

Shmakkkk!

Carol looked down. Her hand had thoroughly choked the neck of the wineglass. It lay shattered, its glass spread out on the linoleum floor like petals of some deadly flower. Puddled with blood and $500 wine. It was the third time she cut her hand today. That’s a hat trick.

“Oh, Carol,” he said sadly, condescendingly.

“Here, let me help.”

The chair pushed back. He went into the kitchen, wearing a face of both sympathy and disgust. It was the look he wore in Bangkok. Bangkok. The beautiful city with the grilled octopus that Doug was too afraid to try and looked at her funny when she did, as if he had walked in on her performing fellatio on another man. The disgust he wore never left her memory. It was such a minor grievance, so silly that they never talked about it. One of those inconsequential peccadilloes that married people are supposed to forgive, and, if God forbade, forget. But still, like a bad stain, it didn’t seem to fade. On the contrary, it grew. Festered in her mind. Fed there.

She realized, then, that she hated Doug.

She looked at the knife, snuggled in its block of triangular wood.

“Are you cut?”

She didn’t answer. She bit her hand. Most of the wine remained in the bottle, still bubbling up. Up and up and up. Fizzing. Like grease on a skillet.

“Okay, not too bad.”

He inspected her palm. Only a few scrapes. Some blood, but nothing too deep. There was a bandage on her pinkie finger covering the nail, but it looked like Carol had handled that already. So, he crouched down and picked up some of the glass from the floor. Collecting it into a sparkling pile.

She couldn’t look at him. She bit her hand. She looked at the wine. Fizzing.

Like a snake’s hiss.

“I can’t believe this.” he said, head bowed, his balding hair displayed like a half-assed attempt at a monk’s tonsure. “Five hundred down the drain.”

She looked at the block of wood, knife nestled cozily inside. The wine bottle stood beside it. Then, without thinking, her hand left her mouth. She wrung the bottle by the neck and thrashed it against his head. It exploded in a hail of glass and colored fluid.

He doubled over.

“Fuhhh—”

Glass everywhere.

Blood, too, black as elderberries.

Wine, fizzing. Hissing like a snake.

He turned around, and she could see that he fell on glass. Some pieces twinkled to the floor. They sparkled like the spilled champagne. He raised his mangled hands defensively. Fingers bled like the carrots sitting in the bottom of the trash can.

“Carol…”

She pounced on him, driving the full weight of her body into her hand, which clutched the corkscrew wine opener like an epipen. It slid into his throat.

Then, everything was red.

For one fleeting infinity: that awful, scarlet ubiquity.

She blinked, and he was there again. Eyes glazed and trembling like spoonfuls of jello. Beads of sweat on his brow, pustules of blood, drips of wine, all pregnantly static. Lips parted, as if to taste. He managed to croak out one word:

“Whhhhhyyyyyy?”

And she—still draped over him like they were a much younger couple, faces inches apart, ready to do the deed—answered:

“Octopus.”

She twisted the spiral.

He sputtered; twitched; convulsed like having a seizure. She felt every movement. His hands fell sleepily to his side, parting the broken glass.

His mouth was a science project: a volcano oozing magma. Drops cascaded down his chin the way chocolate sauce topped an ice cream sundae. They pooled in his fat neck, which was resting, bonelessly, on the linoleum.

Carol uncurled her fingers from the twisted metal spiral. She looked at them—cut up and covered in both their blood. Like a wounded animal, she licked her fingers.

Finger-licking good, she thought, and released a hollow laugh. Then, she put her mouth to the back of her hand, chewing. Ponderous, but not nervous.

“Oh, Doug. What did you make me do?”

The room smelled sickly sweet, the fragrances of wine and home cooking still identifiable. Its sallange permeated the entire house, clinging like flies to a corpse.

She surveyed the kitchen—all that blood and wine and broken glass, some volleyed across the room—and saw the oven. She looked back to Doug’s volcano face. And knew, just knew, what to do. She kissed him on the lips, wet and still warm. Then she leaned back, licked the blood from her lips, and said:

“You look delicious.”

*

Meg came home at 9:15 p.m. She sniffed the air. Something was off, but she couldn’t tell what, exactly. She shook her head. Meg had had her period this morning, and the smell of blood still lingered.

Her mother was in the kitchen, cooking, though that was usual for her. Even late at night, she always had something in the oven. With her mother, a bowl was always ready to lick, and a good meal perpetually at their fingertips. In recent months, she felt bad about turning down mom’s cooking, saying she wasn’t feeling the chicken parmigiana. In reality, she didn’t want to get fat. She didn’t want to have a nickname at school like Size-Forty Sandra.

But that would change. She would eat what her mother cooked. She didn’t want to hurt her mother’s feelings.

Besides, as far as chefs were concerned, her mother wasn’t half bad.

“Hi, Meg. How was Amy’s?”

“Alright.”

“Did you eat yet?”

“Yeah, a little. Some chicken with Amy and her parents. But I have room for more. What do you have?”

“Let’s just say… mystery meat.”

“Sure, as long as it’s not octopus again. I couldn’t stand that when we went to Bangkok.”

“Oh, no,” her mother said, flashing her pearly whites like a walking, talking dental ad. “Much better.”

She plopped a steaming chunk of meat on a plate and turned around, looking radiant. Meg could not remember the last time her mom looked this happy. She looked ten years younger! Even in the wan light of the kitchen, her wrinkles seemed smoothed, her eyes sparkled with brilliance. There was a renewed bounce to her step as she set the plate down in front of her, all the while grinning ear to ear. To Meg, this seemed almost a comical sight. Because for all this renewed vigor and ebullient veneer, her mother had not noticed what was caught between her two front teeth: dangling there, like a fly entombed in a spider’s web, was a slim sliver of meat.

“Dig in,” she said, and Meg did.

End.

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[smilingformoney]

It Lives Beneath Diamond Scene: Boat with Parker

You walk beside Parker on the creaking pier in the afternoon sun. Parker: I’ve been dying to get my motorboat out on the water. I’m really glad you decided to come with me. The water’s always better with company. You: I’m happy to come with you. I could use some quiet after all this festival noise. You both climb into a little outboard motored boat tied to the dock. Parker gives the motor two, three tugs before it purrs to life. Parker: Make yourself comfortable. You sprawl out on the bench beside him and angle yourself for the best view of the pier as Parker steers the small boat onto the water.

The festival and crowded dock grow farther and farther away, the sounds of the festivities fading with them until all that’s left is the hum of the motor. You watch Parker steer as the little boat putters along. He seems so peaceful and at home. You: Hey, Parker.

You: You… -Boat a lot?

Parker: It’s hard to live in Pine Springs if you don’t. But I actually love it. Parker: There’s just something so serene about floating in the middle of the lake. You trail your hand in the cool lake water. You: I think I can see the appeal. Parker: I just wish I had more time to get out on the water. You: Not enough free time? Parker: This is my first full day off work in three weeks. You: Yikes. Parker: Being on such a small police force has its perks, but it most definitely has its downsides.

-Look good. +Romance

Parker: Not nearly as good as you.

Parker brings the boat to a stop in the middle of the lake, the shore so far away on all sides it’s barely visible. He reaches under the bench and pulls out a cooler full of ice cold beer. Parker: Want one?

I’ll… -Take one.

Parker passes you a bottle and uncaps both his and yours with a keychain bottle opener. Parker: What should we toast to?

You: Let’s toast to… -Lake Day! Parker +3

Parker: And a well deserved rest.

-All this being over! Parker +3

Parker: I’ll drink to that!

-Us! +Romance, Parker +3

Parker grins slyly at you. Parker: To us.

You clink your bottles together and drink deeply. The beer is cold and refreshing in the day’s heat.

-Pass. Parker +3

Parker: Keeping a level head. I can respect that. Parker: Hope you don’t mind if I partake, though. You: Be my guest. Parker pops open the cap of his bottle and raises it high. Parker: Here’s to cold beers on hot days. You: Hear hear. He drinks deeply then sighs and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Parker: That hits the spot.

Parker: You know, being out here like this, with you, it almost feels… You: Normal? Parker: Exactly. Right now, well, it’s kinda hard to believe there’s some violent evil in the water and a secret society out there running the town. You: A secret society that Chief Kelley is part of. Parker: Yeah…

You: Does the Society change how you feel about… -Chief Kelley?

Parker: Honestly? I don’t know how I feel. Parker: I thought I knew him better than anyone, and it turns out he’s been keeping this huge secret from me as long as I’ve known him. You: I know how that feels. My mom and my grandpa were part of this ‘Society’ and I had no idea. Parker: I don’t think that’s right. Lying to the people you care about. Parker: I’m sure the Chief and your family had their reasons for keeping it a secret, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.

-Pine Springs?

Parker: I’ve lived here my entire life. Pine Springs is more than just a place where I live, it’s my home. Parker: I want what’s best for this town, for the people who live here. It’s my actual job to protect Pine Springs. You: And you’re good at it. Parker: Am I? How did I not figure out there was a monster haunting this town? Or that it was run by a secret organisation? Parker: Even if the Society means good for Pine Springs, and they aim to put a stop to the evil here, I still feel like I’ve failed.

Parker: I don’t know. Maybe I’m just making a mountain out of a molehill. You: Parker, don’t put yourself down like that. You: So maybe you have high expectations. That’s not a bad thing. It makes the people around you want to be better. A light blush creeps onto Parker’s cheeks. Parker +3 Parker: Thank you, [Name]. I… He clears his throat and fiddles with the bottle in his hands. Parker: It’s strange. I haven’t known you that long but I feel like you understand me in a way not many people have.

You: That’s because… -I think I’m falling for you. +Romance, MC +5, Parker +5

Parker: That’s funny ‘cause… I think I’m falling for you too. Parker lays his hand over yours, his fingers rough and callused. You come to sit next to him and brush a stray lock of hair from his forehead. You: I’m so glad I met you, Parker. He runs his knuckles lightly along your jaw, his eyes lingering on your lips. Parker: I can’t imagine my life now without having met you.

You: (I think I’ll…) -Kiss him. +Romance

You close the distance between you, capturing his mouth with your own, and he responds eagerly. Parker: Mmm… He deepens the kiss, exploring your mouth, hands clasping at your thighs, your hips. You: Mmmnn… Your kiss grows heated, hungry. You rake your fingers through Parker’s hair and he groans into your mouth. He parts from you to slowly strip off your shirt, ducking down to trail kisses across your neck and chest, his stubble scraping deliciously against your skin. You: Nngh… That feels so good… He sinks to his knees in front of you, your legs bracketing him. He kisses and nips at your exposed belly, mouth moving steadily downward. You: Haaah…

You: Parker… -Don’t stop.

Parker: I wasn’t planning on it. He peels off the rest of your clothes, leaving your legs bare, and licks a stripe up the inside of your thigh. You grip his hair tightly as he lifts your legs over his shoulders and he continues his path up. You: Nngh! Parker! Your breathing comes in ragged gusts as the pleasure builds in you, white-hot and blinding. Parker kisses back up your body, lavishing attention on your chest, before settling on your neck. Parker: I can’t believe how lucky I am right now. You: You’re telling me. You wrap your legs around his waist and hold tight to his shoulders as your bodies move together, the pleasure you create between you magnificent and all-consuming…

You and Parker lie tangled together on the floor of the boat, his strong arms around you. Parker: God, that was… That was amazing.

-Let’s slow down.

Parker: Of course. Anything you want, [Name]. He kisses his way back up your chest, nibbling gently at your neck, before recapturing your mouth. When you finally pull apart from each other, Parker holds you close to his chest, tucking your head under his chin.

-Cuddle with him.

You lean your head on his broad, sun-kissed shoulder. He puts an arm around you, holding you close, your bodies fitting perfectly together. The water laps softly at the boat’s hull and sparkles like scattered diamonds in the sun while Parker’s chest gently rises and falls. Parker: This is perfect.

You: coming out on this boat with you may have been the greatest decision of my life. Parker chuckles and plants a tender kiss on the top of your head. Parker: Should we start getting back? There’s still a lot of festival to see. You: Let’s just stay a little while longer. The festival’s not going anywhere. Parker: You’re absolutely right. Parker snuggles you closer and you both sigh contentedly, letting the gentle waves sway your small boat, feeling like the only two people in the world…

-We’re good friends. Parker +5, MC +5

Parker: Right. Good friends. Disappointment flashes across Parker’s face, but it’s gone so quickly you wonder if you didn’t imagine it. Parker: I haven’t had many close friends in my life. Not for any particular reason, just the hand I was dealt I suppose. Parker: Meeting you, meeting all of you, well, it’s like I’ve got a family. I haven’t ever been lucky enough to feel that way before. You: Hey, as long as I’m around, you’ve always got a family. Don’t ever forget that. Parker blinks back the moisture in his eyes and summons up a cheerful smile. Parker: How about another toast then? To friendship. Parker raises his beer high. You: To friendship. He clinks his bottle on the side of the boat and drains the bottle of its contents. The gentle waves continue to rock the small boat as the water glistens all around you, a million scattered diamonds in the sunlight.

When the time is right, you return to the festival reinvigorated.

I’ll spend time with… -Imogen. -Tom. -Danni. -No one.

[junker-town]

What's the best sports game you've ever seen in person?

One of the best feelings when watching a game has to be just sharing that experience with other people. You can watch it with friends, family, or strangers at a bar. But when something special happens, you’re all part of it. And you can do this with just a TV.

But some events are more unique just because you were at the arena or stadium. The game itself doesn’t have to be a championship game or anything. In fact, a random regular or preseason game that you remember vividly could be as important to you than any title. It’s all on how you experienced and remember it.

We asked you what was your favorite sports game you attended in person. These are our picks:

Hawks-Wizards, Game 6 2015

Paul Pierce’s buzzer-beater that wasn’t for the Wizards in 2015 was so freakin’ cool... until it was called off. This was the same series that Pierce “didn’t call bank, he called game.” I’ll never forget hearing my mom scream for like two straight minutes and the entirety of the Verizon Center shook. I wish I could forget having to explain to her that the shot didn’t count though.

- Matt Ellentuck

Heat-Lakers, Christmas Day 2004

For Christmas 2004, I got a pair of tickets for Heat-Lakers. I have no idea how my parents got me those tickets and I have never asked, but I probably should. This was Shaq’s first game back in LA after his beef with Kobe finally imploded and he was sent to the Miami Heat in exchange for Lamar Odom, Caron Butler, and Brian Grant.

My younger brother and I sat in the cheap seats before the game speculating about what would happen right before tip off. Would Shaq and Kobe acknowledge each other (they did, but barely)? Would the Lakers have an emotional video package during player introductions (duh)? Would I buy an overpriced meal from the in-arena McDonald’s (also, duh)?

I don’t remember much from the video but I do think it was mostly a bunch of people in the Lakers organization saying “Thank you Shaq.” There might have been a cute kid or two in there. It was emotional and I felt the crowd at Staples Center feel the same way.

Anyway, at some point in the game I spilled my soda on a person in front of me. He was probably mad that a dumb teenager just ruined a good blue sweater that looked to be his Christmas gift. We both got over it and focused on the game, which was great since the game was close throughout most of it.

It even went to overtime even after Shaq fouled out of the game for fouling Kobe. How perfect is that. Shaq got the admiration from the Lakers and it turned into animosity after that whistle for the sixth foul. Fans at Staples Center got to both love and hate Shaq in the span of four quarters, and I learned that basketball can tell some beautiful stories.

- Hector Diaz

UConn-Pitt, Big East Tournament 2011

Sitting in Madison Square Garden all day waiting for your team to play a rival is one of the best parts of the Big East Tournament. You get all the benefit of March Madness heating up combined with the knowledge that your favorite team might put forth a classic performance.

During the 2011 tournament, in which UConn ended up winning five games in five days to win the whole thing (in the last year it was possible), being in the room to watch the Huskies was electric. But never more so than against Pitt, which was a duel for the entire time. In the last seconds, Kemba Walker broke some ankles and sunk a basket for the win.

Every single UConn fan present went through the roof, especially since it was still the afternoon and everyone had energy to spare when rooting on their team. I only remember spilling my food everywhere, getting water spilled on me as someone in the row behind our group dumped a water bottle everywhere in their excitement, and texting my dad “OH MY GOD KEMBA I CAN’T BREATHE THAT WAS AWESOME!” By the time the celebrations were over nobody in the section had a voice left.

I found out later my dad had actually taped the game and wasn’t watching live, so he then knew Kemba did something show-stopping but didn’t get spoiled on what it was. Sorry dad!

USA-France basketball, 2000 Olympic Games

Olympic basketball doesn’t belong on this list — but this game does, because I witnessed something iconic, and a moment I will never, ever, ever forget. I saw Vince Carter “Dunk of Death” over Frederic Weis in person.

The video thumbnail above is almost the exact angle I had. I was behind the basket, just a few rows up. My mum surprised me with the best seats you could apply for in the Olympic ticket lottery.

The game had really been a disappointment up until this moment. Team USA was already pretty weak if you’re a 15-year-old who was hoping to see Kobe and Shaq make the trip, but all of that washed away when Carter didn’t just put Weis on a poster, he etched the image into stone.

The crowd exploded when this happened. Cheering and screaming was almost endless. It was a cacophony or realization that we’d all just seen something that might never happen again. The clip was replayed over, and over, and over again on the screen in the arena — each time being met with more applause.

One family in front of my friend and I said they were going to “talk to Vince” after the game. I assumed they were fans hoping to meet Carter and get his autograph. They ended up being Gary Payton’s family and extended family.

I can’t tell you much else about that game, but that dunk will be with me forever.

- James Dator

Pacers-Heat, 2013 Eastern Conference Finals Game 4

It was Game 4 of 2013 Eastern Conference Finals matchup between the Pacers and the Heat, with the Heat leading the series 2-1. It was before Lance Stephenson thought he should be an All-Star. It was before Roy Hibbert fell off the earth. It was when Paul George was young enough that Pacers fans felt like we had the entire world ahead of us.

The Pacers won that game 99-92 tieing up the series, and eventually forcing a Game 7. Roy Hibbert had 23 points and 12 rebounds, Lance dropped 20 points in the most Lance way possible, and every starter for the Pacers scored in double figures. But what I will never forget as long as I live is Lance Stephenson’s corner three-pointer at the buzzer at the end of the third quarter, with Dwyane Wade flying past him, and after he hit the shot he just sat on the floor and let the Pacers fans celebrate around him. I thought Bankers Life Fieldhouse was going to explode that night.

The Pacers never won a series against LeBron and the Heat but those games, and especially this one, will always be my favorite.

- Whitney Medworth

Missouri-Nebraska, 1997

I was a freshman at Mizzou in 1997, and the school was just two years removed from getting Tyus Edney’d and seven years removed from getting Fifth Down’d. I saw all the typical “Be prepared for heartbreak” cynicism and defense mechanisms from the upperclassmen around me and brushed it off.

And then, in my fourth home game as a Mizzou student...

When the ball deflected away from Shevin Wiggins, the student section surged to rush the field, assuming victory. My seats were in the 14th row, and at one point I had my foot on the wall at the front of the stands. Attacking from the hill on the north side of the stadium, a dorm mate of mine was the first one to reach the goal posts and climb on. And while trying not to fall over and get trampled, I saw the ref’s hands signal touchdown.

The ending was a nightmare, but ... what a game. Nebraska was incredible, and Mizzou, a four-touchdown underdog, was going toe-to-toe. The touchdown the Tigers scored in the fourth quarter resulted in probably one of the two or three best crowd pops I’ve ever heard. We’ll just say the game was called after 59 minutes and 50 seconds.

- Bill Connelly

Knicks-[someone], roughly 2006

Once I attended a Knicks game at which the halftime show was people throwing frisbees for dogs, who would jump really high to catch them. During one such throw, a dog slipped on a frisbee that had been left on the floor and totally lost its footing. It ended up doing a full, accidental barrel roll in mid air, but STILL caught the frisbee it had been thrown. It was the greatest sports highlight I ever saw in person, thus making whatever shitty Knicks game that was the greatest sporting event I ever saw in person. I also attended Game 2 of the 2000 World Series.

- Seth Rosenthal

49ers-Saints, January 2012

This was the 49ers first playoff game in nine years. Jim Harbaugh took over a team that had gone 6-10, and turned into an embarrassment under Mike Singletary. The team stormed to a 13-3 record and a first round bye. The 49ers were built more on their defense than offense, but they jumped out to a 17-0 lead. The Saints stormed back to take a 24-23 lead. The 49ers recaptured the lead on a designed QB run that saw Alex Smith run 28 yards for the score. The Saints re-took the lead with 1:37 to go, but Alex Smith drove the 49ers down the field and connected with Vernon Davis for the game-winning touchdown with nine seconds to go. Given all the crap Smith went through dating back to 2005, this game felt like a catharsis for him and the fans.

It was particularly great for me because I had a chance to be down right at the goal line when he ran in his touchdown, and then again when Vernon Davis caught his game-winning touchdown. After the Davis touchdown I found myself jumping up and down hugging the 49ers team president on the sideline. It was an amazing day of football.

- David Fucillo

Seahawks-Saints, 2010 NFC wild card game

The Beast Quake game. I can't do it justice in so few words, please read about it here.

- Matt Ufford

Wizards-Celtics, 2016 NBA Playoffs Game 6

The greatest moment in sports I ever witnessed was game 6 in the Wizards vs. Celtics series last year. I covered the game and, as a Wizards fan, it was a heart attack. But at the same time, it was entertaining as hell. There were lead changes galore, but John Wall hit the eventual game winner to force a game 7 in Boston. I graduated from grad school the next morning a few hours after I finished my column on the game.

- Michael Sykes

Here are some of your answers ...

What's the best sports game you've ever seen in person?

— SB Nation (@SBNation) August 1, 2017

Kick Six. This was my view (pic taken with 0:06 left) http://pic.twitter.com/OpzBtTdIgK

— Barrett Sallee (@BarrettSallee) August 2, 2017

2015 AFC Championship - seeing Peyton Manning's final touchdown pass & @Broncos beat the Patriots!!! #PeytonManning #PFM http://pic.twitter.com/nFxuY9QFl6

— Courey (@CoureyPMarshall) August 2, 2017

As a UCF football letterman I'd have to say the '14 Fiesta Bowl. Watched in amazement sitting in that stadium with former teammates. http://pic.twitter.com/TOsg5tfm5t

— Neil Beasley (@NeilBeaz) August 2, 2017

OSU vs um 2016. http://pic.twitter.com/kJ8s0FAJmu

— Green Gold Buckets (@GatorsRaysCavs) August 1, 2017

Game 7 @Timberwolves vs. @SacramentoKings 2004 #NBAPlayoffs a.k.a. The KG game. http://pic.twitter.com/OZuaTh9lwA

— Josh Braaten (@JoshBraaten) August 2, 2017

UNC vs. Michigan State on the USS Carl Vinson in 2011 http://pic.twitter.com/g0oPd9zC2L

— Luke Myer (@LukeMyer1) August 2, 2017

[mellyisbest-blog]

The hierarchy of hearbreak is menacing. I’m not heartbroken now, I’ve talked about how the in between parts are the writers lipstick. I’m not so sure how much I believe that anymore, the stagnant world is around me, moving from place to place with a low drum, nothing really passing by my lips, my heart does not flutter. I am bored - a sentence fragment that chills me to the bone and the excruciating truth of it all. Bound up inside me; I lay here at 3am wondering about all the bad shit I can get up to like a barn cat graceful in the shadows. I think of the label you gave my youth - misspent. I think of all the regrets I have from my time as a teenager and realize there are none, I called out to the moon each night with a howl and did whatever felt right. I was alive, I was fearless. I am in the middle of trying to recapture the true essence of that freedom, bottle it up and pour it inside me, make me alight. I have illuminated truths for so many out there and have yet to recapture my own spontaneity, my own lustful intolerance for the steadfast and true. I want to be wide awake with the world and turning on my own axis each day deciding whether to rain or shine, awaking the wonderment for each day. I used to be alive with that and now all i know is my own jaded misconception - the idea that I’ve already seen it all. I know I know nothing but this contradiction keeps spinning inside me. like the jealous boyfriends I used to have, angry I could smile outside of their presence. God I love love and wish I could find it in myself to do that again, maybe one day someone will throw a Molotov cocktail in my mouth and I will feel what all of this felt like again. I will live regret-less and free, my wrinkles will disappear and I will be reborn from my hag-like exterior. awakened by the jovial sounds of birds chirping, or the sweet scent of the spring air, the imagination lifting with each appearance of a firefly - beckoning me towards it and onward to a path more fit for a wild eyed feral girl like me.