#kristen marie schemmenti

[astrallina]

I HAVEN'T SEEN KRISTEN MARIE SCHEMMENTI IN THIS SEASON. QUINTA, WHERE IS KRISTEN MARIE SCHEMMENTI!!!

[gatalentan]

ABBOTT ELEMENTARY S02E16 (Teacher Conference)

[lilalbatross]

[meowmeowhissss]

This is Melissa and Kristin schemmenti core

[church-of-lilith]

guys is melissa’s sister’s name spelled with an ‘i’ or an ‘e’ because I’ve always used an e in my fics and posts. but apparently she’s billed as both spellings, and a bunch of ppl spell it with an ‘i’ in other fics. but I’m pretty sure closed captions use an ‘e’ ?? I need answers.

[aspirationalpeony]

Dark Horse

Summary: As a cameraperson on the Abbott documentary crew, you've always had a good working relationship with Melissa Schemmenti. One flirtatious night at her home sends you spinning as you try to figure out if this is really real—not to mention how everyone at Abbott seemed to know about Melissa's crush on you, long before you ever did. (See author's note at the end for prompt credit.) Content Warnings: Lots of smut, a bit of emotional confusion, and me having absolutely no idea how filming anything works. I just faked my way through it, very horribly. Oops! :) AO3 Link

It all starts with a late shoot.

It's just you and the mic guy and one other crew, and your camera trained on Melissa Schemmenti. She talks, in a way she's done rarely so far. A season and a half and she's always conscious of the stare of the lenses, quick to dart around a corner or cut herself off if she knows the opps are listening.

She takes big sips, almost gulps, from her wine glass. She leads you back and forth across her house, reaching over tables or pointing along walls to find a photo here, another there, and talks. "Me'n Kristen-Marie... This one—" pause for more wine—"from my college graduation." It's the two of them, almost mirror images of each other at that age, with a tall man whose lean face makes you think he has to be their father; on the other side of the girls is their Nana.

There's no trick in this photo: no wedding dress, no blood, no hint of drama between the sisters at all. They just look hopeful and desperately young. This feels private, that Melissa could have been so young—something that shouldn't be content for the show—and you feel an impulse to duck the camera away, hide her secret. When you look at Melissa again, she’s watching you; there’s a glitter in her green eyes you can’t interpret: not hostile, and not the look she gets when she’s hustling someone, either. The gaze she’s giving you is strangely soft.

“Whaddaya think?” she says, to you, not to the camera.

You swallow. Nothing you say will make it to the final cut, but the editors will hear your answer, so you can’t tell her she’s beautiful in that picture. “I think I’m lucky you’re showing me this,” you say at last.

Her eyes move over your face. You feel it almost like a touch, intimate and slow, and you aren’t making it up: her gaze stops at your mouth and hovers there. She bites her lower lip before she lifts her wine glass again for another pull. “Maybe I like ya,” she says. “Maybe you’ll get luckier.”

You’re still blushing when you wrap for the night. You sit on your couch at home—you’re always insomniac after shooting at night, your brain and body still buzzing with the work—and put on Netflix on low volume and you don’t watch, just feel your cheeks still burning, thinking about her lipstick on her wine glass.

Of course, the whole crew knows the story by the next morning. When you turn up, Pedro, your best friend on the crew, says, “Look at you! Dark horse!” and it makes your face sear with heat all over again. He lowers his voice, leans in and nudges you. “C’mon, nothing in the contract about that. You deserve a little fun. Let your Italian mama take care of you.”

You cringe. “Please,” you say, “never say ‘Italian mama’ to me again. Okay?”

“Just sayin’,” he says, and leaves it alone.

Of course, it doesn’t leave you alone. You’ve learned the best way to sneak up on a conversation with Melissa and Barbara is to come at it around a corner, so you’re hovering down the kindergarten hall, camera on the two women, when you hear your name, making you stiffen.

“You said that?” Barbara’s voice is incredulous, sharp. “What did she say?”

“Nothin’, really,” Melissa says, “she was on the clock, y’know.” The smile starts in her voice before it grows on her face. It’s a Cheshire smirk bigger and deeper than you’ve ever seen. “She got all flustered. It was cute. You think she knows I was shootin’ my shot?”

“I think you could have ‘shot your shot’ with a little more dignity,” Barbara says crisply. “Like an adult does. Politely. Pleasantly.”

“Soberly,” Melissa says. “Listen, if it works, it works. I just gotta find out if it did, y’know. Work. She’s kinda shy.”

“I didn’t know you cared for that.”

"What, the quiet ones?"

You have to pull away. You're going to miss the rest of the conversation, but your face is burning again, your heart is pounding, and you're grappling with the reality that Melissa and Barbara are talking about you, that you're subject enough between them to be chatted about so casually, that all this footage is... God, are you ever going to live this down?

You'll go shoot some Janine and Gregory. That's always a crowd-pleaser; the audience loves the sweet tension between them, the way the space between their bodies turns tangible the longer their eye contact holds. You try not to think about Melissa's gaze on yours last night. You try to do your job.

That goes as well as you might expect. Fifteen minutes into some uninspiring quiz-grading ("oh, I never fail anyone," Janine says, "I just give 'em a different colored star—they like the gold ones best, so—") Pedro comes to find you.

"Hey, listen," he says, "I need you to come take care of your Calabrian chili pepper."

"What?"

"You know, your spicy linguini. Your Italian ma—"

"Stop." Your head whips toward Janine at her desk and then back to Pedro. The only thing you can think of to say, your heart thumping all over again, is "She's Sicilian, not Calabrian."

"She's giving us nothing. You got to come do her talking head. She keeps trying to square up to Kai and he doesn't wanna fight her."

"What makes you think she won't fight me?"

He gives you a look over his glasses.

The change in Melissa is instant when she sees you approach. Those folded arms, her squared shoulders, her broad, foot-planted stance—it all melts. She leans into the wall, her head tipping, one booted foot lifting for her toe to play in idle lines along the floor, and, yeah. Whether you picked her or not, this is your Sicilian chili pepper, and you swallow hard as you approach.

"Heya, hon," she says, "who's this clown they got me workin' with? Don't they know I only do this with the professionals?"

You mumble a little as Kai looks between the two of you, rolls his eyes, and backs off.

"We were talking about her Friday night plans," Pedro says. "It's school game night and she's not going."

"Yeah, the kids are too easy to hustle," she says, "it ain't even fun. What, do I look like I wanna spend all Friday winnin' their, I dunno, their Yu-Gi-Oh cards?"

Now's when Pedro should prompt her, ask a question. You glance at him; he nods his permission. "Not sure those are a thing anymore," you say.

"Their Pokemon cards," she says. "Whatever. Point is, it'd be like taking candy from a... Jacob."

You don't look at her; you focus on the camera. It's easier than holding her green gaze. "Is that where you draw the line?"

"Gotta draw it somewhere," she says.

You can't help it. Cautiously you look up, try to make your voice neutral: "So how are you going to spend Friday night?"

She lolls her head to one side and looks at you. She sticks her tongue into her cheek. "Prob'ly practicing tricks," she says.

"Tricks?"

"Yeah," she says. "With my magic wand."

You don't really remember the rest of the interview. You sure you babble some other questions, and she gives you some smirking answers, but your head is full of white noise and a singular image: Melissa Schemmenti with a vibrator between her legs.

You're sure other things happen that day. Pedro definitely ribs you some more, you and Kai go get lunch and he complains for a while, Gregory and Janine have one of their not-flirting conversations where he draws up a tightly-plotted itinerary for game night, trying to prove it's possible to run a children's event without delays (it all goes back to his father, of course), at some point you go home and numbly resume your post on the couch in front of your TV screen, trying to make sense of it all.

That picture won't leave your head. You think of the look she gave you that night at her house—intimate, caressing—and how she'd look deep in her pleasure, drunk eyes half-open, her face pink, her hair wild. Does she get naked when she touches herself? She seems too impatient—more like a jeans around her thighs kind of woman—but for a night she's planning ahead—a night she's set aside, just for her pleasure...

Your head drops back and you shut your eyes to see her more clearly. You can imagine the scattering of freckles over her shoulders and chest, the shift of her heavy breasts and the hard peaks of her pink nipples—how does she like to be touched there? Maybe she grabs one breast while she uses the vibrator, plays with a nipple, imagining the rough, confident hand of a lover. You can see the soft field of her belly, the abundance of her hips, her thighs, picturing her cunt, the head of the vibrator against her clit—she doesn't tease, can't tease herself, you imagine, not Melissa.

You can almost smell her sex, you think, until you realize it's yourself you're smelling. Your cunt throbs. You could shove a hand into your underwear now and just take care of it, but...

Your small toy collection lives in a box under your bed. It's nothing fancy, but you do have a small wand vibrator. You peel off your trousers and underwear and drop onto your bed, back against the pillows, holding the purple toy in one hand. Does Melissa have one this size? Or a big, classic one, the kind that could buzz your clit right off? You click the toy on and draw it up your thigh. As it nears the sensitive crease between your leg and your sex, your thigh twitches without meaning to, your clit aching, and you think, okay, no foreplay.

You can't help but wonder as you delve the thrumming head between your folds: does she know you're doing this? Was that the idea—plant herself in your head, grow over everything, including your common sense and your inhibitions, until your whole world flowers Melissa? Could she be doing the same—getting a head start on Friday's plans—thinking of you, right now? You're normally quiet when you do this, but that makes you groan aloud. Your clit pulses.

How does she do this, on a school night, like tonight? Back to the image of her with her trousers halfway down her legs, her hand and her toy crammed into the space between the fabric and her body. You can't help but see her in the outfit from today, that green, clinging top, the black blazer discarded somewhere, slacks caught just above her knees, her hair mussed and tangling against the pillows as she works the vibrator over her clit. No playing games for her, either; just getting the job done, hard and fast.

You come, watching her in your head, her name on your lips; you hope she comes tonight, too, thinking of you, of what she’s doing to you.

The next day, Janine, Gregory, and Jacob are in hushed conversation by the supply closet. You pick an angle from just inside the nearest classroom and train your camera on the slight crack of the open door and you can hear them, even though they think they’re being quiet—classic them.

“I don’t know, what do you think?” Janine is saying. “I think it’s kind of nice.”

“I think,” Gregory says, “it’s like…” He pauses, picking his words. “Like watching a dog shake a chew toy.”

“I think it’s very brave of Melissa,” says Jacob, and your heart drops into your stomach. “Considering the historical era in which she grew up and started her teaching career, being openly bisexual in the workplace must be a very—”

“Please don’t let her hear you call her ‘historical’,” Gregory interjects.

“It’s cute she has a crush on the camera lady,” Janine says. (“Cameraperson,” Jacob corrects.) “I just want it to turn out nice. You know, the vending machine guy didn’t work out, so. And now he doesn’t stock Gushers anymore.”

“Maybe she’ll be a little more relaxed,” Jacob says. “A little more… Open, fun—”

“She’s not going to start liking you because she’s dating somebody.” Gregory, with characteristic bluntness.

“One can hope,” Jacob says.

“The camera lady—person—is so quiet, though,” Janine muses. “Melissa is so intense.”

“Bet that’s what she likes,” Mr. Johnson says, making them all jump. He steps out from the supply closet; he’s holding a Teachers Without Borders coffee mug you know has to be Jacob’s. He takes a long, slurping sip, making sure everybody sees the logo on the cup. “Melissa gets a sweet little thang to take care of. Camera lady gets an Italian mama.” He says it eye-talian. (Where is everybody getting this phrase from?)

“Please don’t say ‘Italian mama’ again,” Gregory says, giving you a little flush of vindication.

“Why not?” Mr. Johnson says. “When I was on tour in Rome—”

That’s enough for you. You decide the rest of the conversation can go unrecorded. You check the time and it’s nearly lunch—thank God, because you don’t want to make eye contact with any of them for a while; you don’t know how to feel about them all talking about you. You know it’s not you, really, they care about. It’s Melissa, her caginess at odds with how boldly, openly she’s been flirting with you, an attraction so obvious even the younger teachers that she’d never confide in can see it.

Something light and effervescent swirls in your stomach, but there’s a leaden weight there, too. Nerves. And desire. You let Pedro know you’re taking lunch and leave your camera behind, finding Kai a block down, away from the school, hitting his vape. He passes it to you and you take a pull, letting candy-scented vapor out of your nose. You don’t really smoke anymore, but anybody would need a little comfort under these circumstances, you think.

“So what are you going to do?” he asks.

“What?” You didn’t know Kai cared about that. “I mean, I guess I’ll talk to her, maybe give her my number, then see—”

“For lunch.”

“Oh.”

You get hoagies together, eating them over a public trash can, standing up. Back at the school you scrub your hands clean in the bathroom and duck Pedro and your camera and you find your way down the second-grade hall to the classroom that's usually the noisiest. It's quiet now: the kids are at the library doing a reading circle with the librarian. Maybe it says something that you know their schedule.

She's in there, glasses low on her nose, working. You pause just on the threshold of the open door. You try to piece together everything you know about her, to make it all fit into the person you see, just a small woman with a love of pleather and a never-ending supply of high-heeled boots, a baseball bat taped under her desk (you've seen it), a guitar propped in one corner of the classroom (does she ever play?), how now she's focused and reading with scrupulous intensity, doubling back on a sentence from time to time, her manicured hand coming up to twitch away a lock of red hair.

You knock on the open door. You see her hand pass under the desk toward the bat before she realizes who's standing there. She cracks a grin, lifting her glasses up to the top of her head. Her eyes travel up and down your body in another look that feels like a touch.

"I was wonderin' when you'd stop by," she says.

You give a little hum. You cross the room to lean against a student's desk, just opposite hers.

"No camera?"

"No," you say, "I wanted it to be just us."

"Huh." She taps her pen on her paper a few times. "You here to let me down easy?" She lifts her chin. The look she gives you isn't intimate now: it's far-removed and challenging, like the gaze of a duelist across a plain. You've seen this before, the way she starts closing herself off, armoring up.

You shake your head. There's a shift in her expression, but the walls don't quite come down. "I guess I wanted to ask what you want."

"That ain't obvious?"

"I mean..." Your arms come up, folding over your chest. "You know, I was here last season, when you were dating that guy... Hulk Hogan."

It surprises a laugh out of her. "Yeah, Gary."

"You asked him out and it was... Different. I mean..." You can't think of how to say it. At last, you say, "Do you take me seriously?" No, that's not it. "I mean, are you just trying to hook up with me? Because, I..." You're starting to burn up again. You rub the back of your neck. "That's not the kind of... Listen, you're beautiful, and sexy, but that's not what it would—I mean, to me, it—"

"You're so cute when you're all shy," Melissa says, sounding equally mystified and amused. She stands. "Look... Maybe I did this all wrong." She circles the desk. "Kinda treated you like a piece of meat."

"Just a little bit," you say.

"I take you serious, hon." She doesn't cross the gap between you two, but mirrors your pose, leaning on the edge of her desk, arms crossed over her chest. "Look, Gare was a nice guy. But he didn't have, you know... He didn't make me wanna..."

You think of Gregory's metaphor. "Shake him like a chew toy?"

Another laugh. "Yeah, that. And I guess I felt... You know, I'd kinda uncorked the bottle, datin' him, when I thought all that part of my life was done, and when you were at my place the other night, you just looked so good, and I just wanted..."

You smile, eyes down. The cold uncertainty is trickling away and there's warmth pouring into the spaces it's left behind. "Okay," you say.

"Okay?"

When you look up, she's moved a little closer. You can smell her perfume again, warmed on her skin over the course of a long day. You've had the privilege of seeing her in detail, so many times: the fine, thin skin around her eyes, the creases at the corners of her mouth that forecast her smile, the tiny hint of gray growing in at her temples, the mellow warmth of her green gaze, the slope of her nose crooking slightly to her left. It's different with no lens between the two of you, when you're close enough to touch.

"Yeah, okay," she says to whatever she sees in your eyes. She lifts her chin and drops her gaze to your mouth. It's a clear request.

You answer it. You dip your head; there's a moment where your noses nearly bump, but you change your angle, catch her lips with yours. There's a tackiness from her lip gloss and an incredible softness underneath. The warmth of her almost shocks you, vivid past your imagining. Her hand pets at your jaw; you feel the other curl into the collar of your shirt. She pulls you closer by the fabric and you gasp.

You renew the kiss, lips sliding over hers. Your hand rubs down her lower back. You can feel the divot in her spine where it meets her pelvis, just above the generous curve of her ass. Before you can overthink it, your palm is gliding over that curve, your fingers digging into its lushness, Melissa gasping against your mouth as you squeeze.

"Oh," she says faintly when the kiss is over and you're catching your breath. "Huh." Her look is glazed and a little bewildered.

"I, um, I don't want to send mixed messages," you say, "but about Friday..."

"Friday?" she echoes.

"Yeah." You bite down on your smile, watching her try to remember what the hell you're talking about. "I was thinking... I know a few magic tricks of my own."

"Oh," she says again. You watch her eyes spark with understanding, her smile appear slowly, then all at once. "I guess you could come over and show me your stuff." Her hands tighten in your shirt and pull you back in for another kiss.

"Hey, gimme your phone," she says, much, much later, when you're wearing more of her lip gloss than she is. "I want to give ya my number." You don't think before you're unlocking it and passing it into her hands. She lowers her glasses from the top of her head to the bridge of her nose and thumbs her way around your phone, creating a contact for herself.

You have a flash of nerves—what if she opens your Instagram and sees all the stupid accounts you follow? A vision comes of her seeing all the dog-using-buttons-to-talk videos you've liked, her libido instantly withering... Then she's giving you back your phone and smirking at you, wiping at your lip with her thumb. "Might wanna stop in the bathroom before you get back to work, hon," she says.

When you leave her classroom, it's like floating; you've never felt so light. You stop in the bathroom and you wipe all the lip gloss off your smiling mouth. You catch yourself humming as you and Kai catch some footage of Ava pretending to organize game night, Gregory trying to involve himself, Janine admitting to a little competitive streak.

Your phone buzzes, chimes. "Sorry," you say to Janine and Pedro, who's leading the interview. You wait until you can lower the camera lens to check the notification. You always keep it silenced during the day—did Melissa turn the ringer on?

Italian Mama iMessage

Your face burns. You take a corner away from Pedro and unlock the phone.

Italian Mama You made me real happy

Your blush intensifies; something flutters in your chest. The phone vibrates in your hand as another message comes.

Italian Mama Don't know how I'm going to wait until Friday

The echo of your own thought in her words makes your heart flutter again. You bite your lower lip and type back, Me neither. An electric spark of daring moves you, makes you send her, Maybe I'll practice some magic just to make sure I'm on top of my game.

Is that too much? You hope not. You've basically made a sex appointment with her for Friday—sex appointment, you think, and wince at yourself, your own awkwardness; it's a date—and you don't—your breath hitches as three dots appear on your screen, showing that she's typing.

Italian Mama Oh yeah?

Italian Mama Better practice hard

You feel a pulse low in your belly. You're ready to type a little more flirtation when another message arrives and makes you gasp aloud, quickly clamping your hand over your mouth before Pedro or somebody else can hear you.

She's sent you a photo. It's herself pulling down the scoop neck of the hot pink blouse she's wearing today. You can see just the tip of her nose, her chin, the proud line of her soft neck, her freckled sternum, and, holy shit. She's showing you her breasts cradled in a bra made of black lace. And you stare. And you stare.

Italian Mama Little incentive for you

Your mouth is watering. You can see the rosy shadows of her nipples against the lace. You barely register yourself typing back, You're perfect.

Italian Mama Thought you'd like em

You're typing before you can stop yourself. All I'll be able to think about now is what I'm going to do to you.

Three dots appear, then disappear. Appear, then disappear. Your confidence wavers.

Italian Mama I want you to tell me

You've never imagined you'd be turned on in the halls of Abbott Elementary, but suddenly you're so aware of your cunt, you can't stand it. You're throbbing. You peer around the corner; Pedro isn't even looking your way, he's talking something over about the schedule with another producer. You have time. You glance up and down the hall; nobody except an aide going into a room at the far end.

Your fingers fly over the keys. If you stop to think, you'll psych yourself out, so you blurt out every thought, the iMessage equivalent of babbling—what you'd be doing in Melissa's ear if you could have her right now, in your arms, again...

You're so fucking sexy

I've thought about you so much

I touched myself thinking about you the other night

I'm going to kiss you until you go crazy and you're so turned on you can't take it

I'm going to undress you and I'm going to kiss every fucking inch of you

I'm going to play with you until you're begging

Do you like it rough or gentle?

Three dots.

Italian Mama Little of both

You're typing again in a flurry. You can feel your heart pounding, your breath coming in harder. You probably only have a couple minutes left to really make her feel it.

I'm going to be so gentle with you until you beg me to be rough

I want to bite you

Do you like being bitten?

Italian Mama Yeah

I know you do

On your neck, on your breasts

I'm going to bite your thighs before I eat you out

"Homie, you coming?" Pedro says, with the best and worst timing—and phrasing—he could possibly have.

"Yeah, one sec," you say, and you're proud of how your voice doesn't wobble at all. "Let me just send this. Sorry."

I have to get back to work

Italian Mama Fuck you

Italian Mama How am I supposed to teach like this

Italian Mama Come here and finish what you fuckin started

You laugh, breathless and surprised. You text her, YOU started it! If she hadn't sent you that picture... You scroll back up and look again. In the bit of her face you can see, she's smirking, because of course she is. The luscious curve of her breasts—you can almost feel them, what it would be like to drag your nose down between them, mouth at the soft skin...

Pedro's waiting. You send her a bunch of blowing-kiss emojis and put your phone away again. You're still buzzing with arousal, but you feel a strange satisfaction, knowing that Melissa is a few halls away, squirming behind her desk, thinking about all the promises you've made.

The day passes, somehow. It's a strange mixture of slow, syrupy boredom and electric, frenetic activity as more preparations are made for game night, and your phone periodically buzzes with another message from Melissa. Thankfully (for your pussy—you think it might fall off if it keeps aching like that), the two of you leave the subject of sex, and just talk.

She asks you your birthday, your favorite food. Where did you grow up? What's your favorite color? Each one makes you smile. You feel like you're on the receiving end of a Schemmenti interrogation, a mob boss with her goons behind her. You get her answers back in turn: July 19. (You respond in shock, You're a water sign??? and you can almost hear her voice when she dryly responds, I got no clue what that means, hon.) Pasta con sarde. Grew up here in South. Pink.

Your heart flutters with every new thing you learn. Even though you go home (and rub one out) alone, she's a presence with you, not just in your fantasies; you find you're texting her until you fall asleep, phone sliding out of your hand onto the bedspread. And when you wake up the next day, preceding your alarm by a bit, you find a text from her waiting for you, just a few minutes ago: Good morning, baby.

You levitate all the way through Thursday. You spot Melissa a few times that day, but it's a packed day for her two classes, so mostly it's in the hall as she marches lines of students to and fro. She gets you back for yesterday, though: pauses in the doorway of her classroom as she's filing the kids in after lunch, and gives you an up-and-down look of such searing intensity that your body heats, scalp to toes. She smirks before she vanishes into her room.

She makes you crazy. God, she's incredible. You're texting her every chance you both can get, though she's sparser while she's with the kids; it's all light stuff. Get lunch here today, she tells you, Shanae made beef patties, and when Shanae slips you a couple of golden-crusted pastries, you bite into them, smelling warm, floral curry, savory beef on your tongue, and think of how Melissa it is, feeding you from a distance.

That afternoon, just after dismissal, she calls, "Hey," to you from her classroom door. You try not to jump to attention. "I gotta do a lot of work," she says, playing with the strap of her Apple Watch, "or I'd ask you over, but..." Strangely, her eyes drop. It's a hint of shyness and it makes your heart patter, tenderness and affection for her pouring into your chest. "I was thinkin', why don't we go out and get, like, food or a drink or somethin' tomorrow? You know, before you come over."

"Okay," you say. Her eyes flick up and as soon as she sees your goofy grin, her shyness melts away, turns back into the smirking self-assuredness you're more familiar with.

"You pick the place," she says, knocking the wind out of you at once.

Oh, crap. You remember what it was like with her and Gary: he tried to take her to a shitty spot for their first date, and she flicked him away from her like a bug. She's challenging you, you think, asking to be impressed.

You can do that. Dark horse, right? "Okay," you repeat. "I'll pick."

She leans back against the doorframe. All at once she's in that lolling, casual, flirtatious posture that she assumes for you and only you, her face tilted up, gaze intimate and a little sly. "You headin' out? I get a goodbye kiss, or what?"

"Okay," you say a third time, and you can barely kiss her, you're smiling so widely. You take your fill of her, in every sense, one more time before you leave for the day, nerves and excitement and that thread of arousal all tangling together, like a knot of live wires.

You're texting her later, because of course you're texting her later. Do you want it to be a surprise?

Italian Mama I dunno

Italian Mama Surprises never seem to work out for me

That gives you a little twinge. You find yourself running the tip of your finger up and down the side of your phone, the way you'd touch her hand or her cheek, if you could. How about just this one? you ask. And if you hate it, I'll never surprise you again?

You wish you could see her face. It would help you know if she's resigned or wary or scared. You don't want her to be antsy or nervous going into tomorrow; you want her to feel like she makes you feel: like you've got balloons and not bones, like a wind could catch you and carry you off, you're so light and so happy.

Italian Mama Ok

Italian Mama I'm gonna trust ya

It makes your heart do its now-familiar flutter in your chest. It's like there's a bird in there, some delicate fledgling thing eager to start flying. It wants to soar, holding its precious cargo: Melissa Schemmenti's trust.

The next day. Friday. Friday. Somehow, the school day rockets past you. Game night preparations have gone disastrously, and it's time for a patented Ava save, with the help of Janine and Gregory.

"Wow, who could've guessed," Kai mutters to you, and fidgets in the pocket you know holds his vape.

Your hand fidgets in your own pocket, around your phone. You and Mel exchanged good morning texts, a few kiss emojis, promises to meet up before dismissal to solidify your plans, but you haven't had a chance to see her at all.

"I don't know," you say, "I think they'll get it figured out."

"I think she's probably going to use it to mine Bitcoin somehow," Kai says.

Honestly, that sounds plausible. You shake your head anyway and make an excuse and scoot past Pedro. He's not encouraging Ava to stream game night live on Instagram, per se, but everybody knows that will guarantee some Coleman-style silliness, so he needs to get her there somehow. (Can you mine Bitcoin through Instagram?)

You don't need to send any directions to your feet; they're already walking you toward the second grade classrooms. Mel doesn't have lunchroom duty today, so you know she'll probably be catching up on two classes' worth of quizzes, or restocking art supplies, or prepping the next lesson's props and tools. Her door is shut and you peek in through the window.

She's writing on the whiteboard, looking back and forth from a worksheet in her hand, glasses on her nose. You knock. When she sees you, the narrow-eyed look of interrupted concentration melts away; she gives you a smile that shows her teeth, the kind that changes her whole face, turning her girlish, almost a little goofy. It makes your heart melt.

You open the door. "Hey," you say as she puts her glasses on top of her head and caps the marker. Being in the room with her, after not seeing her all morning, feels like coming out of the cold to a blazing fire. "Uh, hi. You look beautiful today." Then, for the third time, stupidly, adoringly, "Hi."

"You missed me, huh?" she says, putting down the marker and paper. "C'mere."

As soon as you're in grabbing distance, she takes two handfuls of your ass and pulls you in for a kiss. You're lost in it for long, long seconds.

She pulls back after giving your lower lip a bite that makes you squeak. She tucks her hands squarely in the back pockets of your jeans, holding you against her. "You look beautiful today too."

"Thanks," you say, barely registering the compliment, the way you're chasing more contact, kissing the corner of her mouth, nosing at her cheek. She's so warm in your arms. She's wearing one of her tough-girl outfits, a blazer and matching top in military green, and you sneak your hand under the jacket, finding a little stripe of bare skin between her shirt and her slacks. You touch her there with a teasing trace of your fingernail.

She shivers. Is she sensitive on her lower back? You file it away to investigate later tonight. The thought of being able to have her all to yourself tonight—hours and hours—sends sparks skipping through you. You have to kiss her again.

"You think it's unprofessional, doin' this at work?" Mel asks you breathlessly when you part again.

"I don't know," you say, "but whatever Gregory and Janine have been doing is worse, kind of."

"Yeah, that's for sure," Melissa says, and gives you a third kiss; this time, the delicate muscle of her tongue laps at you, little frissons of heat that go right between your legs.

"I came to talk about dinner," you say at last, when you think you can survive without kissing her.

"Oh, yeah," Mel says, "right. What am I wearin'?"

"Uh..." You hadn't considered it. You're just going in your usual date outfit—a button-up, a nice pair of trousers. "Business casual?"

"Okay, easy. Do I get a hint where we're goin'?" One eyebrow goes up. Her gaze acquires a competitive glint, one you've seen a hundred times through your camera. "I bet I can guess it."

"Here's your hint," you say, "it's not Italian."

"Smart cookie," Melissa says, which leads you both into another kiss, and then another. "It ain't a sandwich shop, is it?"

"No," you say, "I can't beat cousin Rocco."

"Soul food," she says.

"No. I'll come pick you up, is that okay?"

"Yeah, come, like, at five. I gotta change and do my face and stuff." She leans back, giving you a squint-eyed look of scrutiny. "Tell me it ain't French."

"It ain't," you promise, and seal it with a kiss. "I have to go. I'm pretending to be in the bathroom."

"Oh, shit," she says, eyes going wide, "we gotta catch up on this freakin' math unit and I forgot, I haven't peed in, like—"

"Go, go," you say with a laugh, letting her extract her hands from your pockets.

When you return, Kai narrows his eyes at you. You shrug at him and you're ready to get back to work, when he reaches across and plucks something off your shoulder: a single red hair. Crap.

"Damn," he says. "Dark horse."

"What's up?" Pedro glances over at you two. Fuck, you don't know if you can take his teasing today—you know he'll want all the details, and you love him, but you want to just get through work and get to Melissa...

"Nothing," Kai says, and drops the hair. He gives you a nod.

You nod back, warmth and gratitude making you smile. He doesn't smile back—you don't think you've ever seen him smile, actually—but you think you see the corner of his mouth curve up, just a little, as he peers into his camera.

Dismissal, a quick goodbye kiss with Melissa, home to get ready. You're normally an all-black kind of girl—it's just easy—but you pause in your closet and find a pink button-up. It's a mellow, soft shade, the same color as a silky blouse you've seen Melissa wear.

You put on your cologne, you style your hair. You look at yourself in the mirror. It’s funny: this is the same face you’ve always had, but three days of Melissa have done something to you. Your eyes look larger, softer; there’s a smile on your lips, small but persistent, that’s been there all day.

You haven’t always been lucky with women. You have love in your heart—God, a lot of it. Sometimes it feels like the water of an ancient lake, going down almost infinitely deep, and yet somehow about to overflow. You spent years going around offering it to anyone who would take it, and once they’d drunk their fill, they just moved on, satisfied, never giving a thought to you, never thinking you might want something back, even just gratitude.

So you pulled away. You just hurt too easily: keep them at arm’s length, never close enough to bruise. The quiet one, the shy one; that’s who you became over time, knowing that if you gave out of your abundance, you’d only be depleted. No one’s ever filled your cup.

You find yourself chewing your lip, staring at yourself. You want this to be different. You want this to be something else. Can it be?

You park your car in front of Melissa’s and find yourself wondering: text, or knock? You’re starting to get out of the car when the front door opens, and a rush of surprise and pleasure comes at the thought of Melissa waiting, watching for you. Then your breath catches hard in your throat.

She’s wearing a little red dress that… “Wow,” you say, before she’s even close enough to hear. The square neck of the dress is cut lower than her usual wear, and shows an abundance of skin that makes your mouth water. There’s a princessy quality to the cap sleeves, a delicate detail that’s perfect for Melissa: blazing, challenging red, with a hint of sweetness. The hem stops just above her knees. The fabric shows her body in intimate detail, the delicate rounding of her stomach and the flare of her hips, straining across the perfect shape of her thighs.

Her hair is down. Even late in the day it has a bit of curl. Her green eyes are like gemstones in the early evening light. Her heels have got to be four inches, but she walks with the steadiness of a queen. She’s the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen.

You circle the car to get the passenger side door. “Hey,” she says, surprised, coming closer, “it’s pink,” and touches your sleeve. It’s not even contact with your skin, barely contact, period, but it sends tingles up and down your arm. “That’s my favorite color.”

“Yeah, I know,” you say, grinning like a fool.

Her eyes drop—that hint of shyness again, that tenderness that makes your heart strain against your chest, trying to reach her—before they flick back up. “How do I look?”

“I could look at you for hours,” you tell her honestly.

"I'd kiss ya, but you'd mess up my face," she says. "Here, you get one." She turns and offers her cheek.

You're smiling as you lean down to kiss the offered skin. She's soft and warm, and you get the powdery scent of her makeup, the richness of her perfume.

"Now, c'mon, feed me," she says, and you laugh and open her door.

You drive. She's exactly the kind of passenger you expected: "Hey, check it," every time she sees a car nosing out past a stop sign, or "On your left," when you're trying to merge. "Hey," she barks when somebody cuts you off, a gesticulating, accusatory hand in the air, "cazzo, you wanna watch where you're fuckin' going?"

Melissa. Abrasive, loud, bossy, and you don't feel bulldozed at all. You feel charmed. The smile won't leave your face. You don't know if she could be more herself than right now, in your ancient Volvo, wearing the sexiest outfit you've ever seen on her, looking simultaneously bold and delicate and delicious, and hollering out the window like an angry truck driver.

She's checking her phone as you pull up outside the restaurant, and doesn't look up again until you're opening her door. "Oh," she says, surprised, looking at the place: it's a red brick building, no sign; just a single hanging red lantern beside a white door. You can see her trying to puzzle it out, glancing at you and back to the door.

"It's a bar," you explain. You open the door to your favorite izakaya. Low, golden light and warmth spill out with the Jrock playing over the speaker system.

Melissa cocks her head and looks at you curiously. You only notice that her hand's in her clutch purse when she draws it out again; you hear the rattle of her keys dropping back to the bottom. "Thought you might'a been about to take my other kidney," she says. "I was gonna fight ya."

You blink. It's one of those Melissa-isms, delivered in her dry voice, that you think might be a joke, but it might not be, either. "I wouldn't win if you did."

"You sure as hell wouldn't, baby," she says, and lets you hold the door for her as she steps inside.

You love this place. It feels a bit like your first apartment after you left home, a lot of exposed brick, shoddy white paneling creating an accent wall, and decor that's a little vintage, a little silly: a big, ornate mirror that might have once decorated a cheap theater, brass sconces for lights, Gojira posters in the style of classic ukiyo-e. There's booths on one side of the room and a mirrored bar on the other, with a wall of sake and Japanese whisky.

The hostess recognizes you, waves hi, gestures toward the room for you to seat yourself. It won't start filling up until a little later, so you have your pick of the booths; you take the side that puts your back to the door, letting Melissa have the sightline to the exit.

The low light flatters her. Any light flatters her, but there's something about the dim, intimate, golden warmth of it that makes you stare as she studies the menus, first the drinks, then the food; her eyelashes cast delicate shadows on her cheek, the curve of her lips carving lines there.

She looks up and catches you. The thoughtful twist of her mouth turns into a smirk. The question, though, isn't what you were expecting. "What made you pick here?"

Huh. "I..." You rub the back of your neck, dropping your gaze. "I really like it." That's a start, but not all of it. "I thought you might not have this kind of food all the time. I never see you eating it and I wanted you to have a nice change. And..."

"I come here alone a lot." You shrug. "I have... Good memories here." They are good memories: people-watching, trying new drinks and food, chats with the bartenders, a karaoke night where you fell in with a group of laughing, drunk women who all worked at the same office, who tried to persuade you to bar-hop with them until last call.

But it's always been you, alone; sometimes folded in with somebody else out of goodwill, sometimes noticed for your familiar face and your generous tips, spared a few more minutes of a busy mixologist's time, but always a separation, a glass wall between you and the rest of the room. No one's been on this side of it with you before.

"I wanted you to have a good memory," you say, finally. "I wanted to share it with you."

You glance at Melissa. She's watching you with a look you recognize. It's the one she gave you that night at her house—just earlier this week, but it feels like a lifetime ago. It's tender and intent. It's encouraging. Like she's watching a flower bloom.

"It's already a good memory for me, hon," Melissa says. Something nudges your ankle. It's her foot in its killer heel, gently insinuating between both of yours. You feel her knee against yours, your calves aligned together. She smiles at you. "We're here together."

Your heart does one of its aerial flips.

"You sure get shy for somebody who was talkin' about suckin' my tits before, though," she says.

You choke on nothing. Your face and ears burn. She laughs, her head dropping back, the light glinting on her saints' medals.

"Biting," you squeak, when you can get air. "We were talking about biting."

"Biting," she says, "right. How come you can say all that to me but you're nervous tellin' me you like a bar?"

It's not a bad question. You trace the grain of the wooden tabletop for a second or two, eyes down. "I'm used to giving other people what they like," you say. "I don't mean—it's not that I was lying or faking. No way. I meant it, I mean it, everything I say to you. So much, Melissa." You dart a look up to make sure she understands. "I mean, it's easy for me... For other people, I can express..."

Her hand finds yours on the table and stills it. Her manicured finger gently swipes along the curve below your thumb, down to the sensitive inner skin of your wrist, and traces slowly there, back and forth. She's giving you that look again, gentle and focused and intimate. "I get it," she says simply.

A rush of relief fills you, settling the rattle of your anxious nerves. You turn your hand over and hers settles into yours.

The server appears for your drink orders. You order the house sake, and Melissa says, "Yeah, me too." With your small glasses of sake, the two of you pore over the menu, picking a few things Melissa knows, a few things she's never had before.

The first few plates come out: shumai, hamachi, a bowl of spicy pickle. She gets pieces of toro, unagi, and salmon, and you get a roll and a plate of chashu buns. She gives those a look of pure lust.

"Take one," you say, and push the plate toward her.

She doesn't hesitate. At her first bite, she lets out a guttural moan that goes right between your thighs. You're suddenly much more aware of her ankle still caught between both of your own.

"You think I could get this recipe?" she says of the chashu after the bun has vanished.

"I think you can get whatever you want." Especially from you, especially if she keeps making those noises.

"I sure can," she says with a flirtatious bat of her eyelashes.

You've seen Melissa eat before, scraping the last bite of salad out of a tupperware or sipping from a Stanley Tucci mug, but it's different like this, sharing a meal. You love watching her small, plump hands with her chopsticks, her drinks; you love her expressive eyes, the way they widen or flutter shut at a perfect bite. Everything she tries she makes you try—insistent, "Here, you taste," like you're not the one who's had the whole menu before, and you oblige, trying to taste it for the first time, like her, letting each one blossom over your tongue, letting yourself fall under her spell.

The bar is packed by the time you're through and she's nibbled her way through a couple of frozen mochi. "We gotta come back here," she declares as the two of you leave, hand in hand. "I wanna try more. You got good taste."

"Yeah, I do," you say, looking at her. It's full dark now, but the streetlights and the moon illuminate her, outlining her red hair in silver, the shape of her hips.

"You gonna take me home now?" she says. She moves closer. "You made a lotta promises, you know."

"I know." Your hands settle on her hips. She tilts her head up; you catch her lips, tasting the plum wine you two shared. It's your first real kiss of the night, and she's mellow, soft, delicious. Still, you tell her, "We don't have to, tonight. I want to, but I don't want you to think..."

"I know," she says, and gives you another kiss. "If I thought you were buyin' dinner to make me put out, I would'a had way more food." Another kiss. "Come on, let's go. Or maybe you don't wanna get lucky?"

You drive back to Melissa's place, her hand on your thigh the whole way. Back over the welcome mat that reads GO AWAY, into the picture-lined place where it all started over a glass of wine.

Melissa takes your coat and her own and gives you her back, hanging them up in a closet by the front door. "I can get you another drink," she's saying, but all you can see is the back of her dress: the silver line of the zipper running from collar to hem, almost invisible.

You move closer and she stiffens when she feels you there, your chest to her back. You gather her hair, move it aside. Above the collar of the dress you can see the line of her nape and the muscle where her neck and her shoulder join. You lean down and kiss it.

Breathing in, you can smell her perfume again, her makeup again. Now, her skin. It's a scent you couldn't begin to describe, something living and animal and sensuous. And her hair: warm, intimate, a little bit of hairspray. You kiss the side of her neck.

"You have no idea," you say quietly. You nose against the shell of her ear. Its soft cartilage is cold from the night air outside, but warming quickly, flushing pink as you kiss it. "You have no idea how gorgeous you are. You don't know what you've been doing to me."

You lift your hands and find the tongue of the zipper. Her breath hitches. You slowly draw it down. The rasp of it is loud between your bodies.

The band of her bra. Red lace. Down her back to the luscious curvature of her hips. You're holding your breath. Her panties are red lace, too, a high-waisted thong that hugs her belly and hips but, oh, fuck: leaves her ass almost totally fucking bare. Of course, in that clinging dress. Couldn't risk panty lines.

"Jesus fucking Christ," you say, and slide the dress fully off her body. It's a puddle of red fabric on the floor. You push her chest-first against the closet door and drop to your knees.

"Oh my God," she says weakly as you hold her hips and kiss your way up the back of one thigh, then the other. The flesh here is dimpled with cellulite, a mark of her perfect abundance. You nose over the curve of her ass and bite one cheek and she squeaks and gives a weak, "Huh," afterward, like she'd surprised herself, and you bite the other cheek and her hips rock back into you.

She's still in her heels. You're starting to smell her sex. You think about having her bend over and put her hands against the door and let you eat her from behind until her knees shake and give out. Fuck, you want to, but you've been making promises; you have plans.

You straighten back up, brushing kisses up the line of her spine. "I want to see your bedroom."

"Fuck," she says dizzily. "Okay. Uh..." She starts to step away from the closet door and for the first time all night, she wobbles in her heels. She gives a little growl of frustration that's so Melissa you can't help but laugh, making her glower your way as she toes out of the shoes.

She leads you up to her bedroom. The big bed is made, but there are plenty of signs of life: the vanity against one wall, scattered with makeup; the bedside table with a dog-eared book and a pair of her glasses; there's a bra tossed over the cracked closet door.

She turns to face you, unself-conscious, and grabs you for another kiss, deep, dirty, her tongue licking into your mouth. "Can't believe you wore my favorite color," she says breathlessly, and starts fumbling with the buttons of your shirt. "God, you look so hot."

Your shirt's halfway open when you get your mouth on her neck. She groans, hands loosening on the fabric. Soft, right along the line of her jaw, under her chin, down her throat where you feel a moan vibrate through the skin. "Harder," she says.

You stay soft. The hollow of her throat, her clavicle. You nose one strap of her bra. She whines, "Harder," and grips your hair.

"I told you," you say. "I'm going to make you beg." She gasps. Your cunt pulses. You wonder if the same thing happened in her classroom that day, if she sat at her desk squirming, little hitches of her breath betraying her.

You squeeze her ass and she sways into you. Your hands shape her hips, up her sides, over her back, feeling the landscape of it, the valley of her spine. You trace the band of her bra. It's so pretty, you almost don't want to take it off.

"Where's your vibrator?" you ask.

"Huh?"

"Your vibrator," you patiently repeat, and lean back. You see in her eyes when it clicks. She leans away from you toward the nightstand, pulling open the top drawer. Inside, there's a pack of melatonin gummies, a lavender and chamomile room spray, a mini bottle of Jack Daniels, and a hot pink wand vibrator. Her sleep aid drawer, you realize.

You pick up the toy. It has a good weight, and the silicone is almost as soft as her skin. You find the power button, click it on, and cycle with a few presses through the three strength settings. You settle back on the first one and test it against the inside of your wrist, feeling the rumble against the sensitive skin there.

You look up again and Melissa's sitting on the edge of the bed. She's breathing hard, staring at you, and she's blushing.

"Lay back against the pillows for me, baby."

She scoots back, gives you a challenging look, and spreads her legs. You can really smell her, a thick, rich, saline scent that makes your mouth water. The drawer's still open and you spot a small bottle of lube; you take it out just in case, then slide the drawer shut.

"You gonna get naked?" she says as you join her on the bed.

"Not yet," you say and kiss her again. And again. The vibrator sits on the mattress, turned off, and you want to make her forget it's there. You take your time, licking at the serrated edge of her teeth, sucking on her lower lip until she's whimpering.

You couldn't have imagined that sound coming from Melissa Schemmenti. You chase it, have to have it again. Her lipstick is smeared, almost gone. She keeps tugging on your hair as you kiss her, starting to squirm beneath you, saying things like "More," and "Harder," but not please—not yet.

She slides down against the pillows, laying herself more fully under your body, and the motion makes the vibrator roll down the mattress to bump her side. Her breath speeds up all over again, and her eyes flick from it to you.

You pick up the toy and click it on. "Keep your legs spread."

"Oh, fuck yes," Melissa says, then whines aloud when you touch the vibrator not to her clothed pussy, but to the inner crease of her thigh. "Fuck, c'mon."

"C'mon, what?" You trail the vibrator up the inside of her thigh, toward her knee, and back down again.

"You know—" her breath stutters when you switch legs. "You know what I want."

"And you know what I want."

That makes her moan. Her head drops back, her chest heaving. You lean down to kiss her sternum, to finally nose against one perfect breast, the way you've hungered for it since that photo. The lace of her bra scratches your cheek. You can feel her nipple through the cup, taut against the fabric. You bring the vibrator up and tease its rumbling head over that peak, making her shudder, then replace it with your mouth, letting her feel the heat and wet, just barely, still separated from you by her bra.

"God, fuck," she says, "fuck you," and you switch breasts, teasing her other nipple to aching stiffness. You nuzzle the skin that her bra offers up, the plump perfect roundness of her breast, part your lips, drag your teeth over it. She's so soft here, so much, and it's perfect. Your hand drops with the vibrator and you trace it over her hip toward her sex, making her squirm, as you busy yourself with soft bites and sucks.

You change your angle a little, propping a hand against the pillows so you can lean over her. Your body casts a shadow and her green eyes look up at you from beneath it, somehow both pleading and mutinous. You idle the vibrator back up along the waistband of her underwear and then slowly down toward her cunt, playing it over the plumpness of her mons.

"Fuck," she says, "fucking fuck you, okay, please," and you smile. "Please, I said please, will you fucking please—"

You bring the wand down over her pussy. Her head rolls back and she groans, starting to squirm. "Pull down your bra for me," you say.

"What?" Her voice, face, are foggy and vague, but after a few seconds she understands, lifting her hands to tug down the bra's cups, showing you her perfect breasts. They're begging for your mouth, and you promised her you'd give her what she wanted when she begged, didn't you?

You drop your head. Kiss over one breast, then the other. Mouth at the flesh—so fucking soft, so good against your lips, sucked into the wetness of your mouth. The tops of her breasts have a small scattering of freckles that you have to dust in turn with adoring kisses. Her hard nipple brushes your cheek and you draw it past your lips as you trace the wand vibrator up and down, from her clit to the entrance of her cunt, back again, never letting it linger.

You switch to her other nipple, leaving her breast damp and reddened from your mouth. Her head tosses back and forth against the pillows as she whines, squirms, moans, says, "Fuck," and, voice breaking a little, "You're still fuckin' teasin' me—please, please, I said it, please—"

The words, her need, are electricity surging straight to your aching clit. Your voice is a rasp to match her own when you lift your head and breathe in her ear, "You sound so good like this, Melissa." She gives a broken whimper. "You're so perfect. I'll give you more. I promise. I'll take care of you. Take your panties off for me, sweetheart."

With a grateful sob she lifts her hips and shoves her underwear down her thighs, no further. You flash on that fantasy you had of her, getting off after a school day, slacks and panties around her knees as she fucked herself. Looks like you were right.

"You might need," she starts to say, but you're already reaching across to pick up the bottle of lube. You click off the vibrator and let her watch you drip the lube over your fingers, slicking them up. She's panting harder and harder just watching you.

With your other hand freed from the vibrator, you can pull the thong all the way off her legs, leaning back on your knees to do it. You push one thigh then the other wide apart. Her pussy is plump and gorgeous, red and swollen, her own wetness gleaming from between her spread labia. You add to it: the softest touch of your fingertips against her sex, trailing up and around the peak of her clit, not touching it directly.

She makes a noise you can barely describe, a groan of misery and arousal and desperation. Sliding your fingers back down toward the heat of her cunt, slipping one slowly inside, watching her as you do it. Her eyelashes flutter, her lips parting. Once you're sure she's wet enough, you add a second finger. The lube and her own gathering wetness makes a slick, dirty sound as you begin to stroke inside her, all delicacy, all torment.

"Oh, fuck," she says, "don't stop, Jesus Christ, please, don't stop, I need it, I, I..." Now she's babbling, the way she's made you do, one hand fisted in the bed covers, the other grabbing your wrist. "I need it so bad, I need you to fuck me, I've been waitin', please..."

"You've been waiting?" It occurs to you that this version of Melissa, already begging, might be willing to tell you some embarrassing truths. "How long?"

"Since we met," she gasps. "Since—oh, fuck..."

Since you met? That was the very first day of shooting—getting all the establishing shots, the very first moments and interviews. She intimidated you—her and Barbara both did—but Barbara, at least, gave a little, showed a bit of herself to the camera. You remember how Melissa was, arms folded over her chest, cool and hostile with Pedro as he tried to coax her out, get her to introduce herself.

Her eyes had moved from him to you, looking past the camera. "You Sicilian?" she'd asked you. She smiled at you that day and it transformed her sullen, cagey face, turned her, however momentarily, sweet. "Italian?" she'd continued, then her eyes darted from you to Pedro, over to the boom mic guy, trying to get a read on all of you. "You from South?" Her smile vanished. Her voice tightened up again: "Okay, you guys workin' with the cops? 'Cause you gotta tell me."

You reward her for the honesty with a press of your palm against her clit. Her hips jerk up. "I remember that day."

Her head drops back again, her eyes squeezing shut. The words leave her in a breathless rush: "You were so cute'n I hated the cameras but whenever you were there I would just—and you were always so, you were gentle, and—I always knew when you were lookin' at me—"

"I was looking at you every chance I got." You watch her face as you begin to ease a third finger inside her. This one has to burn a little; you can feel her body, resistant at first, starting to stretch to take it, and you don't push; you wait to see her eyes open again, their needy, yielding look. She lets go of the covers to grab one leg under her knee and pull it wider apart to help you. You add a little more lube, just in case, not wanting to hurt her.

"I was always looking at you, Melissa." She stares up at you. There's a crease between her brows, her swollen lips parted; she looks stunned, overwhelmed, face pink, as you slide that third finger inside her.

"I was always looking at you," you repeat, and begin to gently fuck her. Her cunt opens for you and desperately clenches against your fingers, grasping and irregular, trying to keep you. "You're so beautiful. I always wanted you. I thought you were the sexiest, meanest—" that surprises a panting laugh from her—"woman I'd ever seen. You were so smart, so funny—you protected everyone, and you took care of everybody—" her eyes squeeze shut. "Let me take care of you now."

You reach over and pick up the vibrator. You click it on. Her eyes open again at the sound of its buzz. You press the button again, then a third time, bringing it to its strongest setting. Melissa's eyes are huge. She's panting, staring, knowing what you're about to do, and the look of vulnerability and desire on her face, her smeared lipstick, her messy hair, she's perfect, so perfect, and you need to make her come now.

"I need it," you tell her, holding her gaze. "I need it. Let me feel it, Melissa." You bring the vibrator to her swollen, begging clit.

A moment of nothing but her breath caught in her chest and her wide-eyed gaze on yours. Her pussy clamps down around your fingers and you feel the ripples of her orgasm start before she drops her head back and gives a wounded, animal cry.

You chase the waves of her climax, fucking her through them, coaxing them toward you; you rub the head of the vibrator along her slippery clit. Her head tosses back and forth on the pillow like it's too much, but her hand still grasps your wrist, keeping you right where you are, and her hips are working, riding your fingers.

"I can't," she starts saying when she can heave a breath back into her lungs, "I can't, I can't, oh, please—" you click the vibrator off and throw it aside; it nearly rolls off the mattress. You spread the lips of her pussy wide and you lean down and bite one shaking thigh, then the other, then seal your lips over her swollen, tender clit.

Fuck the vibrator: this is your new favorite toy. You play with it and play with it and Melissa comes again, or keeps coming, you're not sure which. One leg goes over your shoulder and her hips twitch and writhe until you have to hold her down.

"Oh my G—oh my God, oh, baby," then, just chanting over and over again, like you could ever tell her no again, like you can deny her anything in the world: "Please, please, please..."

Anything she wants. The whole fucking world, if it were yours to give. You suck and lick at her cunt as her hands find your hair and yank.

How long can she go for? How many times can you make her come? You want to know. You want to fuck her until she faints. But that's not for tonight—not without planning, not without her consent—so when she starts making airy noises that are weak and almost pained, you ease off, slowing your mouth and fingers, letting her come down.

You rub her hips and thighs and her soft belly, and give light kisses to the mound of her pubis. She stops pulling on your hair, grip going slack at first; then, as she comes back into herself by slow degrees, she scratches her nails gently against your scalp.

Kisses for her stomach, her ribs. "Here, baby," you whisper, and reach under her body; she lifts up so you can unhook her bra, sticky fingers brushing her skin. You ease it off and drop it to wherever her panties went. She's nude under you now, flushed all over, body loose and relaxed against the mattress; you pet every inch of her you can reach.

You cup her cheek. Her head turns into the contact. There's sweat gleaming along her hairline and her upper lip. Her eyes, mascara and liner blurred, open to meet yours; her gaze is bleary at first, then sharpens.

You expect another fuck-you, or a joke, or even a "thanks, I needed that," but what she says is, "Now you sit on my face."

Your mind whites out. It's possible you forget the English language for a second or two. When you're back from wherever your soul departed to, she's pulling on the buttons of your shirt, brow knit and wearing an impatient little scowl, yanking the last ones open. "What?" you say weakly.

"I said," Melissa says, fully herself again, no longer the begging, needy, squirming creature of minutes ago, "now you sit on my face. C'mon. Get this off." She grabs the buckle of your belt and works the tongue out of it with a metallic clink.

"I," you say, "I," and she drags your trousers down your legs. You have to lean back off her to get them and your underwear all the way off. Your shirt still hangs open, showing your bra, your bare stomach. She leans up to kiss your sternum with an open mouth, tongue flickering hot against your skin.

"I told you," she growls against your neck, "to sit on my fuckin' face," and there's no more of anything in your world but her, you scrambling up onto your knees, spread wide, her sliding down the bed to get under your cunt.

You falter for a moment; she grabs your hips and yanks you down. There's no playing, no teasing. She drags the flat of her tongue up the folds of your pussy and takes your clit into her mouth and sucks. Her green eyes are open and staring up at you and you see your own dazed pleasure reflected in them.

It takes about five embarrassing seconds before you come in her mouth. She moans loudly against you and tries to hold you where you are, but your legs are shaking badly; imagine if you broke her nose the first night, God—you lift one knee so you can get off of her and drop onto your back.

She follows you. Clambers on top of you intently but unsteadily, still wobbling from her own orgasms, and kisses sloppily down your stomach to get back to your pussy.

"Melissa—" you're gasping, and she's putting her tongue inside you, angling her head to get it in as far as she can. She licks, sucks, wraps her arms around your hips and holds you against her as you try to buck away. The wet noises of her mouth against your cunt are obscene.

You come again, and maybe one more time, you're not sure; your mind blanks again. When you can think, feel, process again, she's giving little kitten licks to your sensitive sex that send shudders up your whole body.

"Okay," you say. Your throat hurts a little—how much noise were you making? You clear it. "Okay. You win." You tap out on the mattress like a boxer. She's wearing a look of supreme satisfaction as she lets you go, her face covered in slick wetness, her makeup a disaster, her hair a messy tangle. She's so beautiful. Your heart does a now-familiar backflip.

She crawls up your body and flops onto her side next to you, curling onto your chest. There's long minutes of just you two breathing, the sound filling the room, a tingling starting in your pussy that you know is the herald of after-sex soreness, her damp fingertips tracing idly on your skin.

You start to smooth out her hair. It'll take a shower and a comb to really fix—maybe you'll suggest it. You trail your fingers down and follow the freckled curve of her shoulder, the roll of flesh on her side along her ribs, the dip of her waist before it opens onto the perfect field of her hips and ass.

Her eyes flick up to yours. They're softer and happier than you've ever seen them; the look on her face is gentle and content. You bring your questing hand up to cup her cheek. She kisses your thumb.

"I'm hungry again," she declares.

A laugh bursts out of you, full of affection. "What?" she says, clearly about to be offended, but before she can go any further, you pull her fully into your arms, wrap around her and squeeze.

You press your face into her neck and inhale, smelling her sweat and skin and sex. "You're perfect for me," you say into that warm curve, muffled against her skin. "You're just perfect." You peck a kiss onto her jaw and lean back to touch her cheek again. "Should we make something? Do you want pasta?"

She grins at you. It's that big, Cheshire smile you saw on her face a few days ago, telling Barbara about how she shot her shot, full of preening satisfaction. She leans in and brushes your nose with hers.

"I knew I picked right," she says, simply, happily. She laces her fingers with yours. "Come on, I got a robe you could wear. You like carbonara?"

She leads you off the rumpled bed. You can see you've left a blurry pink bite mark on one cheek of her perfect ass. She brings you a fuzzy shortie robe ("I like your legs, baby, lemme see 'em") and puts on a silk one herself, and takes your hand again as she opens the bedroom door.

You feel good. You're happy. You realize as she brings you to the kitchen, to the very heart of her home, that you're not alone anymore.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Author's Note:

I received the following prompt from an anonymous reader on Tumblr:

"can you write some fluffy smut for Mel x reader where everyone thinks Mel would be in charge in the bedroom because she’s so tough and reader is so shy. but actually reader takes care of Mel."

Back when Season 2 was airing, I saw a few fan posts saying that Lisa Ann had suggested there was a cameraperson on the crew that Melissa thought was cute, which led to the rare scenes where Melissa opens up to the camera. I'm not sure if this is accurate to what she said, but that idea has stuck with me. When I received the above prompt, it went into a blender with that thought, and this is the smoothie that resulted.

I hope I've done justice to this lovely prompt!

[janeyseymour]

Won't You Be... My Neighbor?- pt 1

@schemmentis threw out the idea of a reversal of LTN, so... here it is. I hope it delivers.

WC: ~3.3k

When Melissa Schemmenti had said “for better or for worse, til death do us part,” she had wholeheartedly meant it and believed it. She had seen the way that her parents had fallen out of love and divorced, and she swore that she would learn from their mistakes and find a real and true love- that she would fight for her love and her life, and that she would never end up the bitter divorcée like her mother, cursing the father of her child in front of said child. 

But here she was doing everything she promised herself she wouldn’t and packing her bags along with her son’s after she caught Joe in bed with his babysitter. And then he had the audacity to tell her that they needed to divorce- that he was in love with Alyssa and couldn’t keep this charade going.

“Fuckin’ asshole,” Melissa grumbles as she hold her son on her hip. “Sleeping with the nanny… fuckin’ babysitter fucker.”

“Momma.”

“I’m sorry Joey,” the redhead mumbles as she presses a kiss to the little boy’s head. She curses the day she let her idiot of a husband convince her to name their son after him. “I’m sorry… Momma’s just… mad.”

“Really mad?” the newly four year old asks.

Melissa just nods once before continuing to pack their bags.

“Momma?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re getting out of here,” the teacher sighs. “Daddy decided that we aren’t good enough for him anymore, and you know what? We’re better than him… so we’re leaving, and we’re goin’ to be real happy.”

The last thing that she packs before they leave for the night is the divorce papers. She shows up at Kristen Marie’s doorstep praying that her sister will be kind enough to let the two Schemmenti’s stay on her couch.

“Melissa? Joey?”

“Please don’t say his name,” Melissa groans as she rubs at her temple with the hand not holding her four year old. “I- I can’t right now without wanting to take my bat to that rat bastard’s car.”

“Rat bastard?” Joey echoes through a yawn. He reaches over for his aunt.

“Don’t repeat what Momma just said,” the blonde Schemmenti sister sighs as she takes the little boy into her arms. “What happened, Mel?”

“Asshole slept with the nanny, and then even after I forgave him for the sake of our son handed me divorce papers at dinner,” the redhead huffs. “Can we crash here on the couch for the night? If I have to look at him one more time tonight…”

“Stay as long as you need,” Kristen tells her sister as she roams further into her townhouse. “And you damn well know I ain’t letting you sleep on the couch when I have a perfectly good guest room.”

“You’re a lifesaver,” Melissa sighs softly. “Thank you.”

That was three months ago. In those three months, Joe had promised to give Melissa absolute hell when it came to the divorce and settling everything, claiming that Joe Jr. needed to be with his father. The redhead was adamant that their son, who she now called strictly “JJ”, would be staying with her. This divorce was getting intense and messy, and everything that the second grade teacher had hoped it wouldn’t be- but when there’s a small child involved, of course it would get messy.

In those three months though, the Schemmenti sisters had used their powers of knowing many different guys who were able to help throw together a decently sized apartment for cheap, and she was able to get a steal in terms of rent.

The two had just finished setting up JJ’s bedroom when Kristen Marie finally called it a day. And that leaves Melissa and her son. Her son who is absolutely starving and exhausted and not yet used to this new place that he was supposed to call home.

“Love,” the redhead sighs as she tries to soothe his wailing. The second grade teacher is positive that this place had thin walls, and her neighbors are going to hate her if he continued to cry like this.

“I want to go home!” JJ cries into his mother’s shoulder.

Melissa lets out a shaky breath. “This is home now.”

“No!” his little balled up fist collides with his mother’s shoulder blade. It takes everything in the redhead to not groan out in pain.

“JJ,” Melissa warns. “We do not hit Momma.”

“I don’t care!” he shouts as he does it again.

“Joseph Alexander,” the mother says sternly. She hates that her son shares a first name with his father, even more so now that they’re in the midst of a dirvorce.

The redhead closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “Maybe we need to go on a walk. What do you think? I think that sounds like a great idea,” she thinks aloud. The woman knows that walking around with him while humming softly is almost a sure fire way to get him to fall asleep and stay asleep for at least thirty minutes while she makes dinner, and it has been the perfect way to lull him to sleep since he was born.

She steps out into the hallway and begins to bounce him gently as she walks up and down the hallway, mindlessly singing her favorite tunes softly. When she starts to sing “You Are My Sunshine” though, something else takes over in her body, and she can’t help the tears that form in her eyes. They fall down her cheeks so delicately, and with her son in her arms, she is unable wipe them away. There’s something different about the song now that her marriage had turned into a failed one, and Joe is truly trying to take her little boy, her sunshine, away.

And that’s when you just so happen to be making your way out of your own apartment from down the hall. You immediately hear the soft and sad tune that you’ve had memorized since you were little, and your gaze follows the voice. Your eyes land on a stunning redhead that you’ve never seen before who is holding a now sleeping little boy- and then you see that her eyes are sparkling with tears. Deciding not to overstep and say anything when it looks like this woman is clearly in distress, you simply wave at her gently with an encouraging smile before heading for the elevator.

Once Melissa is sure that JJ is out for at least a little bit, she heads back into the apartment and sets him on the couch. The mother drapes a blanket over her dozing son before pressing a soft kiss to his chubby little cheek and making her way into the kitchen.

It’s much later when you return back from the gym and freshen up in the shower. As you go to sit on the couch with a glass of wine to unwind for the night, you frown. Maybe you should check on that neighbor of yours. You’re familiar with everyone else who lives on your floor, so you know which door to knock on in order to find that beautiful emerald-eyed woman from earlier in the evening with a second glass of wine in hand to offer to the woman that you don’t know the name of.

Inside the apartment, Melissa is sitting on her new couch with a bowl of popcorn and a rather heavy pour of red wine as she watches her reality television show that she hasn’t had time to watch in the midst of the move. 

Your knock startles her. It’s loud enough to get her attention, and she grabs the bat that sits next to her for protection. She approaches the door with her bat in hand.

“Who is it?” the redhead yells just loud enough for you to hear, but not loud enough to wake the little boy in the other room.

“You the woman that just moved in?” you call back.

“What’s it to you?!” she asks, and her grip on the bat just gets tighter, although she knows it’s probably nothing worth worrying about. Your voice was light and sweet, even at the volume you were using.

“Saw you had a kid. Was wondering if you needed help with anything. You looked real stressed.”

At that, she opens the door just a crack, and she recognizes you as the woman she saw a few hours earlier. Her bat lowers, and she opens it a bit more.

“The help would’ve been nice while I was moving in,” she retorts.

“Trust me, if I were around this last week, I would’ve offered to help,” you sigh softly. “Away for work… but it’s nice to meet you now.” You offer her the glass of rosé wine that you had brought from down the hall.

“I’m already ahead of you there,” she sighs with a bitter chuckle. “Thank you though.”

“Yeah,” you laugh softly as you tuck a hair behind your ear. Now that you can see her up close and personal, you see that she really is stunning- beautiful red hair, sparkling jade colored eyes, straight teeth, and you would be lying if you hadn’t stolen a glance at her figure. “I thought it might be a nice way to introduce myself and welcome you to the second floor. If I- If I had anything for your little boy, I would’ve brought it over too, but I wasn’t aware that the new neighbor had a little boy.”

She purses her lips. “You don’t gotta act like you care about the new neighbors.”

“I don’t,” you give her that. “But I always go out of my way to try to make the newbies feel welcome- especially when I see that the new neighbor is upset in the hallway with her little boy on my way to the gym.”

That gets Melissa’s false bravado to break just slightly. “Sorry if that disturbed you. It’s the only way I can get him to go down for a nap when he’s like this- all riled up from the move.” 

You just raise a hand and shake your head gently. “No need to apologize. Your singing is a lot less disturbing than the sex I can hear my other neighbors having.”

The redhead can’t help but laugh at the ridiculous comment you just made. “I more meant his crying.”

“Little kids cry- my sister’s kid cries all the time. I’m used to it,” you chuckle softly. “Now seriously, do you need anything? How can I help?”

“I think I’m okay,” she tells you. “But I do appreciate the check in… Sorry I approached the door with a bat.”

You wave a hand in dismissal. “I get it. Being in West Philly by yourself as a woman can be scary- I have to admit I would’ve done the same thing.”

She just smirks at you.

“Well,” you sigh. “Have a good rest of your night, neighbor. Welcome to the second floor.”

You turn on your heel and start to head back down to your own apartment when her voice stops you. “Wait!” You turn back to face her. “I- I never got your name.”

“Y/N,” you smile at her.

“M- Melissa,” is all the redhead can stammer out as she takes a moment to memorize the name to the face. “And my son is JJ.”

“Well, it was really nice to meet you, Melissa. If you need me, I’m just two doors down at 208. Don’t be a stranger,” you wink at her before heading back into your own apartment.

The redhead stands there for a second, not quite knowing how to feel about you. You’re odd- the only Philadelphian who has given her the time of day, and then you wink at her? It’s different, and entirely the opposite of how most Philadelphians are, and somehow, she’s intrigued by you.

It’s the next day when you’re heading back from work that you stop at the Target on your way home to pick up groceries. When you pass the children’s section, you pause before turning your cart down that way. You throw a thing of Play-doh in before continuing down. If you run into Melissa today, you’ll give it to her for her son.

You do end up running into her as she’s trying to unlock her door. She has her son on her hip again, but she’s on the phone this time. She’s shouting into the phone as you pass her with the bags you’ve brought up. You dig through your bags before you hand her the little container filled with the clay for JJ, and she gives you an odd look. You just nod and smile before making your way into your apartment and unloading your groceries. 

When there’s a knock on your door, you jump just slightly as you pull the handmade pizza out of the oven. You set the dinner on the stove before making your way over to the front door. You glance out of your peephole, and there is Melissa with JJ on her hip and giggling with glee as he plays with the Playdoh you bought for him.

“Hey,” you open the door with a smile.

“We thought we would just stop by and say thank you,” the woman bounces the little boy on her hip gently. He giggles, but his eyes don’t leave his hands. “JJ, say thank you to Miss Y/N.”

“Thank you!” he grins as his eyes finally leave the dough in his hands.

Your smile only gets softer as you see how adorable the little guy is. “You’re so welcome. I’m glad you like it!”

“Like it?! I love it!” JJ squeals and kicks his legs with glee. “It’s my favorite color too! How did you know I loved blue?!”

“Thank you,” Melissa tells you gently. “You really didn’t have to do that.”

“I didn’t have to,” you shrug. “But I wanted to.”

The emerald-eyed woman doesn’t quite know what else to say, so there’s a bit of an awkward silence that washes over the two of you.

“Would you two like to come in for dinner? I made homemade pizza,” you offer, hoping to cut the tension and perhaps get to spend a bit of time with your new neighbors from down the hall.

“Pizza?!” JJ’s eyes light up at the word.

Melissa looks down at her son. “Baby, I thought you wanted pasta.”

“But Momma, pizza!” he shouts with enthusiasm.

Green eyes meet yours, as if she’s trying to find whatever game your playing. But you look genuine with your invite. “Are you sure we wouldn’t be intruding?”

“Positive,” you tell her softly. “I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t sure.”

Dinner is nice. Melissa is guarded at first, but her walls slowly come down as she truly sees that you have no malicious intention inviting her and her son in. JJ adores you immediately, telling his mother that he’s never had such good pizza. She has to admit too, your pizza is one of the best she’s had. She doesn’t know that your cousin owns a shop down the street, and you’ve tweaked his recipe to be better than the pies he sells.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” you chuckle softly as you start to clean up the meal. Then you glance to his mother. “Care for another glass of wine?”

“As much as I would love to,” she sighs. “I’ve gotta get my little man to get bed.”

“Ah, yes,” you smile. “I totally understand. Well, thanks for coming over.”

“Thank you for having us,” the redhead says genuinely as she wipes the four year old’s face clean of the sauce that’s spread all over. She wipes his hands, and then holds out her own for him to take.

He doesn’t take her hand though, and he instead runs over to you and hugs your leg. Your hand immediately goes to his back and pats it gently with the softest smile on your face.

“Thank you, Miss Y/N.” JJ looks up with you, and his eyes sparkle the way his mother’s do.

“Of course, sweetheart,” you tell him gently, voice warm and smooth like butter. You crouch down to his height and hug him properly.

Melissa watches the two of you with a bit of a twinkle in her eye. She’s in awe of how well you handle him. You’re definitely younger than her, but you have such a way with JJ- maybe it’s because you have a niece or a nephew, she remembers.

You give him one last gentle squeeze before letting him go. “I think your momma’s waitin’ for you, hun.”

He giggles before running over to the redhead and lifting his arms up with a soft request for, “Uppy.” Of course, the mother settles him on her hip with ease, and she tosses a thank you over her shoulder as she makes her way towards your front door. Something stops her though, and she turns back around into the kitchen where you’re washing dishes.

“If you want, you can pop over any time after 7:30 for a glass of wine,” she tells you. “JJ will be down for the night by then.”

“I’ll see you at eight,” you tell her softly, and you wink at her again. 

As Melissa tucks her son in for the night, she can’t help but wonder if you’ll show. There’s a big part of her that hopes that you’ll make your way down the hall, although she can’t quite place why she’s taken such an interest in you. She indeed has taken up an interest in you- you’re meek and mild, a sweet lady who has nothing but the best intentions from what she can see (and that’s quite hard for her to not be pessimistic about you, but you’ve managed to make her believe that you might just be good at the root of it all). You’re completely the opposite of her ex-husband and entirely not her type.

And at eight o’clock sharp, you show up at her door, a bottle of wine in hand.

“Hey,” you sigh softly when she opens the door for you. “I brought wine.”

“Wine’s on me, hun,” the redhead rolls her eyes. “You make dinner on a night where I really didn’t want to cook, so I provide the drinks after. What do you like?”

You shrug. “I’ll drink whatever.”

She pours a glass of red- and while you aren’t necessarily a fan of any type of red blend, you take it and sip on it. It tastes much better when it comes from someone as beautiful as her. 

“So,” you start as you settle on her couch. “Do you wanna talk about that rather heated phone call I caught you in the middle of earlier today?”

She closes her eyes and takes a shaky breath.

“Hey,” you say gently, and you reach a hand out to lay over hers. “If you don’t wanna talk about it, we don’t gotta.”

“Shit soon-to-be ex-husband,” is all she says, and you immediately understand. The frown that washes over your face is one that you can’t hide.

“I’m sorry,” you tell her immediately.

She shrugs. “Caught him fucking the babysitter. He handed me the divorce papers three months ago, and now I’m in a damn custody battle over my son… like hell is he going to get JJ.”

“Custody battle?”

“Yeah,” the redhead groans. “And my lawyer is taking his sweet ol’ time, so right now, I’m shit out of luck.”

“I- I may be able to help you with that one,” you tell her. Her brows raise, and that’s when you reveal what you do for a profession. “I’m a lawyer… specifically in family court.”

TAGS: @schemmentis @thesapphictimelady @marvel210 @itisdoctortoyousir @morgana-larkin @thesamesweetie @doesthatsuggestanythingtoyou @marvels--slut @gwennybriggs @megamultifandomtrashposts @lemz378 @http-sam @melissaschemmentisbranzino @imaginesmultifandoms @sexysapphicshopowner @lilfartbox1 @maybe-a-humanbean @imlike-so-gaydude @sapphicxrat @a-queen-and-her-throne @sunsol-22 @notinmyvocab @melanielaufeyson

[fadingdaggerr]

Hii!! I hope you've had a great day!!

So, I had this idea and I can't stop thinking about it, it's like rotating in my brain like a Rotisserie Chicken. IDK if you're still taking requests but I just had to send this.

Anyway, Melissa and reader are in someone else's house (R parents or idk some kind of sleepover with the teachers) and for some reason they can't sleep together in the same bed/room, like they're used to, which is concerning R because Melissa doesn't really sleep well alone.

But Mel tries to ease R saying she'll be just fine for one night, and very reluctantly R agrees.

Well, it turns out she can't. R and obviously a few others in the house wake up to Melissa's screaming in the middle of the night and R runs to her, shes is sobbing, shaking and clutching R for dearlife, just absolutely terrified and not even letting R move. R calm her down and take care of her, like with a lot of fluff and comfort.

I'm just obsessed with R taking care of Mel and being really sweet.

Yeah that's it. I love your stories, they are really really good. And I could only think of you when this thing came out of my brain.

+ I absolutely loved what you did in "Know I'm Alive", I was kicking my feet and internally screaming. (I sent that anon 👉👈) So thanks, I enjoyed it a lot, like a lot a lot, like, if I could I would eat that it.

You're really talented!! <3

by the sun, by the moon

pairing: melissa schemmenti x gn!reader

summary: request above! | 4.8k

includes: no pronoun use for r, fluff, hurt/comfort, family play fights/sibling banter, r’s family adores mel, probably ooc!mel oops

warnings: unhealthy relationship dynamic (short), attempted violence (short), mentions/insinuations of sex, one outdated traditional value, sleep difficulties/nightmares, anxiety/panic attack

note: please feel free to skip the section that discusses the unhealthy relationship dynamic/violence. it begins after the first section divide with the line “for her entire childhood…” those topics are only explicitly stated there and only referenced one other time. please do not feel as tho you need to read triggering material to understand the story, i tried to make it understandable without having to read potentially distressing content :)

Melissa’s head tips back when she hears you coming back downstairs, having been waiting for you since your mom called during The Real Housewives time. The way you’re watching your feet with furrowed brows makes her fully turn until she’s kneeling on the couch, leaning over the back to get closer to you.

“Something wrong?” Melissa asks, reaching to grab your hand to pull you closer.

You shake your head, “no, no.” Warm hands rise to cradle the redhead’s face, “how would you feel about spending the night at my parents place Saturday? They’re hosting Jonah’s birthday, wanted our help to set up the night before.”

Her eyes widen, “just Saturday night?”

“Just Saturday,” you reaffirm, tucking a loose hair behind her ear. She cautiously nods, barely moving. “We don’t have to if you’re not comfortable with it, I’m not going to make you.”

“I know, I know,” she says through her breath, “we’ll stay the night.” The kiss you press to her forehead feels heavier than just a silent thank you.

—☽—

For her entire childhood and through her marriage, Melissa slept like a rock. She slept through Kristen Marie’s and Joe’s snoring, her college girlfriend’s sleep talking, her parents having a screaming match so loud the cops got called. Before starting teaching, she even had to train herself to wake up at the sound of her alarm, knowing that being late to the school was ten times worse than being late to JC Penney.

Two years after she finally left Joe, Melissa met Eric.

Tall, charming, nice-smelling Eric with his salt-and-pepper beard always tidy, a covered up Marine tattoo on his forearm. He’d bought her drink after his friend accidentally knocked hers off the counter of the bar, and two hookups later, she was agreeing to a real date. Three months later, she was his girlfriend and allowed him into her apartment. He got to know where the spare key was hidden after a year.

Eric was everything Joe was not. During arguments, Joe would shut down and leave, only returning when he smells like cheap liquor and some other woman’s perfume. Eric always stayed, told her his point of view, listened to hers, calmly told her when she was overreacting. He was smooth, never raised a hand towards her or threw things at the walls. Melissa always knew when she was in the wrong, but he never made her feel bad about it.

Eric was particular. He liked his shirts folded a certain way, beer only from a glass, and silence when he worked. If she was excited about anything, he only ever allowed her to speak about it until he’d lost interest, almost always by the time she paused to take a breath. When he properly introduced her to his friends, his hand on her knee would tighten when she spoke. Quickly, she learned that the tighter the grip, the less she should speak. Four hours at some sports bar and Melissa had only been able to say a total of six sentences. Eric liked Melissa quiet. Melissa became quiet.

He started to prod about meeting her family, and she shut him down. Again and again. The fourth time, he banged his fist against the table, the end of his fork creating a small dent. Green eyes fixated on the dent as he began to calmly explain that he had introduced her to his family, it was her turn. Mumbling those were your buddies got her stuck on her own couch that night, clutching the blanket Nana made her before she started college.

Two months later, she began to slowly bring back Eric’s clothing to his apartment on the off-chance they went there for a night. Grading her student’s assignments began to take longer and she triple-checked the scores to waste more time, suddenly too tired to have sex or even talk before going to sleep. Otherwise, she listened to his rules, spoke when spoken to, cooked when asked.

The morning he narrowly avoided calling her a moron to her face when she made the eggs over-medium instead over-easy, she officially made her choice. That night, at the Italian restaurant he brought her to, she called it off.

“Why?” Eric asked, eyes stone, unwavering from hers.

She took a deep breath, “you treat me like a pet. Speak when spoken to, move when told, I’m sick of it.” Her grip on the table cloth tightened, “tomorrow, I will put your stuff outside. You’ll pick it up when I tell you to, and then you will leave.”

He sits back in his chair, tongue poking at his bottom lip, “and if I don’t want to break up?”

“Too bad,” she shrugs. Standing from the table, Melissa leaves him with the check and the sad excuse of Italian cuisine on the table.

At work the next day, it takes all morning, lunch, and prep to fully debrief Barbara on everything that had been going on. It made sense to the kindergarten teacher why she had yet to meet this Eric fella, but after hearing this, she knew Melissa wasn’t proud of getting herself in this situation. A promise of a wine weekend and greasy food makes Melissa truly smile. Barbara hadn’t realized how fake every little grin had been until now, she missed her best friend.

That afternoon, Melissa came home to the loose brick that hid her spare key ajar. The blood in her veins runs cold. Opening the unlocked door, glass scratches across the wooden floor, crunching under her heels. Every picture frame, the television, the radio, the coffee table, the stovetop, the tea set from her grandfather, all smashed to pieces. Holes were in nearly every wall, the stair railing broken. The entire first floor was destroyed, only upstairs was left pristine, as if nothing had happened at all. Bat in hand, she checks every closet, under her bed, in the bathtub, everywhere. He was gone.

Leaning against the wall, she slides down and sobs. Melissa is forced to make a choice she didn’t want to make. Opening her phone, she calls Joe.

Joe, despite everything he had done, was at Melissa’s house within the hour. In one hand he held a bag from the hardware store, containing new locks and keys, the other hand had his very own bat, nails pounded through the wood. Like he said when they signed the papers, just because he wasn’t in love with her, doesn’t mean he didn’t care.

Three weeks later, after things had settled and locks were changed, Melissa felt more secure. Still every night, she woke at every sound, wind and the smoke detector quickly became her mortal enemies. Bundled in her soft pajamas and thick comforter one night, she finally fell into a hard, deep sleep forced from pure exhaustion.

Paperclips, a screwdriver, and a small sheet of flexible metal are all someone needs to pick a lock and shift the deadbolt. Eric surely knew that, always the smart man, yet never the brightest. Slowly, he moved up the stairs, bourbon fueling his motions as well as his heavy steps.

A particularly loud thunk wakes Melissa, hand flying under her pillow to the bat Joe had made her promise to keep there. Another thump made her jump out of bed and to the side of her dresser with an iron grip around Edith Houghton. When her door opened, she stayed pressed into the corner, hoping she stayed hidden just long enough for him to leave so she could grab her phone.

Liquor breeds stupidity, worsens it when it is already present, and Eric had left to check the bathroom. Quickly, Melissa called the police, shakily texting Joe as she whispered to the operator. At that point, she didn’t care who got there first. She just wanted to be free of him.

She moved to a new apartment before the month even ended. Barbara insisted on cameras, which Gerald installed. Joe insisted on a nailed up bat, which he made himself. Not a night has gone by since then where she didn’t have it within arms reach of the bed.

It took six years for her to sleep again.

—☽—

The light tracing of nonsensical patterns on her abdomen is what wakes Melissa, eyes cracking open to the bright sun peeking through the curtains. She wishes now, more than ever, that she had agreed to the blackout curtains, groaning into her pillow. With the knowledge she’s now awake, several soft kisses press against her shoulder, traveling to her neck. With a sleepy grin on her face, Melissa turns to face you.

“Morning,'' you mumble against her lips, hand traveling up to her hair to separate the knots that you created. “Sleep good?”

The only response you get is a little huff that almost sounds like yeah, her face burying in your neck to hide from the light. You lay there with her, finishing your detangling mission as Melissa’s nails trace up and down your arm. A final, sound kiss lands on the crown of her head before you shuffle out from underneath her, reaching for your previous discarded university shirt and sweatpants. The redhead watches through droopy eyes, scanning over you before your pajamas cover everything she adores.

“Gotta get up, beautiful,” you say through a yawn as you walk out the room, “we need to be leaving for one.” A tiny groan escapes her lips as she rises from the bed, though a small smile crosses her lips when she sees your sweatshirt thrown over the chair in the corner, just waiting for her.

Not even halfway down the stairs, there’s a clatter from the kitchen and a quiet exclamation of fuck. “You’re not even awake and you want me up,” Melissa says as she walks to the coffee maker. She’s met with a small slap on her ass in return, not even caring to be embarrassed of the girlish giggle she lets out.

Whose fault it is that you’re late leaving, who could tell? Between the forgoing packing and wrapping your cousin’s present last night for a taste of Melissa and her lack of pants this morning, it’s hard to say. Nothing that going a gentle twenty over on the highway can’t mend.

Driving up the dirt road, the dense trees thinned and your parent’s yellow house came into view. Your father’s questionably functional truck sits in the front of the garage, your mom and brother’s cars parked close together on the lawn. Seeing the way your hands tighten on the steering wheel, Melissa slides her hand from your elbow to the free hand on your thigh, playing with your rings to calm you. Being at your parents house was always overwhelming, fun, but overwhelming.

Narrowly avoiding scraping the side, you pull in next to your brother’s car. Looking at each other, you and Melissa give each other a nod of we got this. She’d been over here before, she’d been to three family reunions and almost every birthday party, but never had you two stayed the night, always being some of first to leave to sleep in your own bed.

With a little grunt, you hop out of the car and jog to Melissa’s side to open her door. She gives you a half glare when you tap her hand away from helping carry the bags in, you never let her lift a finger, if you can help it.

“Well, look who decided to show up!”

Both you and Melissa jump at your mother’s yell from the porch, bangles clanking together as she widely waves to the both of you. Gravel crunches under her feet as she rushes over to the two of you, immediately pulling Melissa into a hug. Before you were banned from saying it, you used to joke that your parents preferred your girlfriend to their own child. The giant smile on Melissa’s face when she interacts with your family makes it worth it.

Tumbling upstairs, you bring your bags into your childhood bedroom with Melissa close behind. Even with every time she had been here, she loved being in your room. It was a time capsule of your life before college, all the posters of bands and movies still hanging on the walls, trinkets covering every space. She particularly loved the little collection of rocks on your bookshelf, clearly in order from favorite to least favorite.

The bed bobs as you both drop onto the mattress, groaning at the comfort after three hours in the car. You turn your face towards her, leaning to press a kiss to her shoulder, “I love you.”

Melissa leans in closer, “I love you, too.” She watches your eyes flick to her lips, beating you to the chase and pressing her lips to yours softly. It takes every ounce of effort to not moan at your tongue tracing her lip, her hand coming up to grip your shirt and keep you close. Stomping up the stairs makes you both jump apart, feeling like teenagers getting caught, not that the room was helping.

The door opens to show your dad, boots trekking in dirt that will inevitably get him in trouble with your mom. The hand not on the doorknob is over his eyes, “you two better be decent. Ma has lunch ready downstairs and clothing is probably mandatory.”

“Knock it off,” you mumble as you shuffle towards him so he can give your head a gentle noogie. Neither of you were big on hugs, only really being physically affectionate with your partners, but the love is always clear in every fistbump and hand on your shoulder.

You and Melissa trail behind your father as he goes to the kitchen, both fighting laughs after nearly getting caught by your dad. However, the second your mom peers over at the two of you, you both act like you had been silent the whole time, eyes flicking around in feigned innocence.

Lunch is a mismatch of all the foods your mom made for the birthday party the next day, making you all be her taste testers, even if she only really wants Melissa’s opinion as the other cook in the family. Pasta salad, potato salad, mac and cheese, shortcake, even some chicken with her new lemon pepper recipe. You and your brother fight over who gets first dibs on the pasta salad, ending with his wife taking the serving spoon from your hands and grabbing some for herself.

“Act your age,” Kennedy says to her husband, making you laugh, before she gives you a sharp glance, “that goes for you, too.” Melissa turns away to unsuccessfully hide her own laugh from you.

Lunch ends with your mom and your brother arguing over another serving of macaroni, “we need food for tomorrow! Fuck’s sake, Marcus.”

—☽—

Your father divides everyone into groups to set up the backyard. Your mother takes Melissa and Kennedy to help set up the tables and lights, forcing you and Marcus to help your father with the tent, bonfire pit, and yardgames.

Getting all the yardgames for the little cousins was the easy part, even if it took a while because the three of you had to play a game of cornhole before you could do anything else. None of you got a single one in after two turns, making you all set into defeat, the game was agreed between the three of you to be stupid now. With your father taking a break now, getting the tent together was a doomed venture with you and Marcus.

“If you don’t let me hold it up, it’s gonna keep falling.”

“Fuck off! No, it won’t,” Marcus says with confidence, trying to stand the tent all at once before securing it. Four had already fallen, and a job that should only take twenty minutes was taking nearly an hour.

“How is it gonna stay up if nothing’s holding it, huh? Thought you knew everything?” He flips you off and doesn’t answer, continuing putting the spike in the ground, though without the other end being held up, the weight pulls it down again. Giving up, you walk away and attempt to find your dad for something else to do. You stop in your tracks, just step from the patio.

Watching Melissa with your family always makes butterflies erupt in your chest. She used to be so nervous around them, uncharacteristically quiet and meek, but now she’s almost as carefree with them as she is with her own. The sunlight makes her hair shine, and it’s damn near impossible to look away. It seems you’re of similar mind, her head turning towards you, fighting a grin when she sees the dopey grin on your face.

You almost start to walk towards her, but a strong hand pulls you back. Your dad pushes the hatchet into your hands, “you’re on firewood duty.”

“Bu-”

“Nope, you’re not slinking off to your girl. Go chop the wood, Casanova,” he says as he walks back to help Marcus with the tent.

It’s hours before you even get a chance to see Melissa again, as if your parents were keeping you apart. Which they were, knowing that you’d ignore everything you had to do if it meant you got to just look at Melissa. By the time you got back inside, the button up you’d been wearing was abandoned on a lawn chair and you were out of breath. How much firewood does one bonfire even need?

Walking in the backdoor into the kitchen, Melissa is leaning against the counter, her eye on the mixer filled with what will be cheesecake going to your tanktop clad form as she chats with Kennedy. Creeping up beside her, you wrap an arm around her waist and press a lingering kiss to her cheek, mumbling a greeting into her skin before trudging upstairs to shower the sweat and dirt off.

—☽—

By the end of the night, everyone is half-awake and struggling to keep their eyes open as a TV movie drones on. Neither you or Melissa are paying attention, too wrapped up in one another in the arm chair. Legs dangling over the arm, Melissa is seated on your lap, head tucked into your shoulder as you mindlessly play with her hair. The hand on the back of your neck stops its soft ministrations, her breathing slowing as she fights falling asleep.

You speak quietly for only her to hear, “you ready for bed?” She just nods against you, and you tap her legs to prompt her to move. Her hands hold onto your arm to steady herself, wavering where she stands.

“Alright, we’re calling it. Night guys, we’ll see you in the morning,” you announce into the room as Melissa starts going towards the stairs, not trusting her ability to speak when she’s this tired. You get a quiet chorus of night before you walk to the stairs, but your mother’s voice stops your movements.

“Jellybean, could you do me a favor and take the trash out before you head upstairs?” she asks without taking her eyes off the TV.

You internally groan before nodding, turning to Melissa, “go up, baby. I’ll be right there.”

This catches your mother’s attention, immediately moving to face you, “you mean to say ‘goodnight,’ right?”

“What?”

Her eyebrows rise, “you’re saying goodnight, then going to your room. Right?” Melissa’s blood immediately runs cold, color draining from her face. If she was tired two minutes ago, she was wide awake now.

“No...” you say slowly, confused, “why would Mel not also be in there?” You peak over your shoulder to Melissa, giving her a look before your attention is back on your mother.

“So, you’re staying in the guest room? Or is Melissa?”

Your face screws up, “Neither of us? My room’s got a full, that’s fine for us.”

“No.”

“Hell you mean ‘no,’ Ma? Marcus and Kennedy are sharing a full, it’s not a huge deal,” you hear Melissa step down from the stairs, her shaky hand holding your elbow.

“Marcus and Kennedy are married, unlike you two. I know you live together, but my roof, my rules. You know that,” she says matter-of-factly. The other three people in the room pointedly avoid looking at you, not wanting to get on your mom’s bad side.

You argue back, “that’s fucking ridiculous, Ma. We are grown adults, in a relationship.” The arched brow on your mother’s face tells you that you shouldn’t be arguing, but she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know about the panic that is starting to eat away at Melissa’s veins at the sudden thought of sleeping without you, something she hasn’t done once in over three years now.

“No rings, two beds. Don’t think I won’t be checking.”

Not wanting to make more of a scene, Melissa tugs on your arm to gain your attention. Turning to her, you can see the silent plea in her eyes for you to give it up. Shoulders sagging, you let out a grumbled fine. Breaking away from her, you go to the kitchen and roughly pull the trash from the bin. It takes a great deal of effort to not slam the door as you stomp to the garage. When you come back in, you don’t bother saying anything to anyone, just wrapping an arm around Melissa to guide her upstairs.

When you get into your room, you shut the door and lean against it with a huff. The two of you silently change into your pajamas, moving slowly from exhaustion and an attempt to prolong your time together. Melissa turns away to fold her clothes on the bed, and you move to wrap your arms around her waist, propping your chin on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” you say, “I’ll stay in here tonight. Not like she can’t ground me anymore.”

Melissa turns in your arms, loosely wrapping her own around your shoulders, “it’s alright, I’ll be fine. I don’t want her mad at you for my sake.”

“Baby-”

“Don’t do that,” she says, though the sigh in her voice gives away her uncertainty, “I’ll be okay, amore.”

Your eyes scan over her face before you nod. Her arms pull you closer, noses brushing before she presses a sound kiss to your lips. Melissa’s arms shift and her hands cup your face, moving your head to press kisses to your cheeks, forehead, and chin, until the sour look on your face disappears.

Tugging her into you, you bury your head into her neck, pressing a long kiss there. From her neck you mumble, “I’ll be in the room right next door.”

“I’ll survive in the guest room, this is your bedroom,” she says, though she doesn’t fully mean it.

“What’s mine is yours. Plus, this one’s more comfortable, you’ll thank me later,” you hug her tighter, “so... I will be next door.”

“I told you, I’ll be fine,” she says. It’s more for her than you this time. Three years. Three years of falling asleep with you still awake beside her and waking up with you already looking at her.

You walk her back towards the bed, getting in with her, though not under the covers. With everyone, especially your mother, you don’t think it’ll hurt to stay until Melissa falls asleep. Her back presses to your front, hand holding yours to her chest, fast beating heart beneath. In a hushed voice, you speak about little things that don’t matter in hopes that it will calm her enough. Slowly her breath evens out, face burying into the pillow as it always does when you hold her like this.

Carefully, you detangle yourself from her and press a kiss to her hair, “I love you.” Stepping out of the room slowly, you leave the door cracked just a little and eye Melissa before turning. At the top of the stairs is your mother, brows raised.

“You better be going to your own bed,” she says quietly, though her tone is hard.

Rolling your eyes, you respond, “I am. Just had to make sure Melissa was asleep first.” You try to go into the room next door, but your mom’s face is silently asking for context, “she doesn’t sleep well. Different place, different sleeping arrangement, it’s difficult.”

You don’t particularly appreciate the dismissive way your mom just nods before walking towards the master bedroom, clearly thinking it was just an excuse, but it’s too late to fight about it. The sooner you sleep, the sooner you can wake up and crawl into bed with Melissa before she wakes. You watch the crack in the door and listen for Melissa until sleep comes over you.

—☽—

Something wakes you just past three in the morning, an ear splitting scream coming from next door. At first, you think it’s just your own anxiety, closing your eyes slowly. A second scream, this time of your name, and you’re springing out of bed, throwing the door open hard enough to bounce off the wall and slam shut. Four steps bring you to your childhood bedroom, rapidly swinging the door open to run in, not noticing the others joining you in the hall.

When you get into the room, moonlight illuminates Melissa where she’s sitting up with a hand gripping her shirt as she breathes in quick, panicked pants, eyes flying around the room until they land on you. Before she can even reach for you, you’re practically pouncing on the bed to get in front of her. Your hands go to her shoulders, her own gripping your forearms, her watery eyes darting around your face. Taking in deep breaths and letting them out slowly, you motion for Melissa to mimic you, trying to slow her rapid breath and heart.

Short gasps become slow, shaky breaths as panic begins to fade and tears form. A whimper of your name makes you pull her into you, her arms gripping your shirt and she cries into your neck. Between broken sobs, only the words window, knife, and everywhere and mention of a him come through, but you understood. This wasn’t the first time Eric’s actions haunted her at night, though it had been nearly two years since she’d woken up in a sweat.

Peeking over your shoulder, you see your parents and brother in the doorway. The look you give your mother is filled with anger and a raised brow that says I told you to listen. The clear fury makes your father pull her back towards their own room, pushing your brother to his. Some level of courtesy hits your mom, closing the door fully before she gets tugged away.

Attention back on Melissa, you alternate between playing with the ends of her hair and lightly dragging your nails over her back under her shirt. You tuck her hair behind her ear, tacky from tears, “you’re safe, Mel. Nothing and no one’s going to hurt you, I promise. I wouldn’t let them.”

Rocking side to side gently, you feel her breathing return to normal, body no longer shaking from tears. Trying not to jostle her, you turn your body to lay down with her, keeping her tucked into your neck with your arms around her. Pressing a kiss to her head, you slide an arm down to grab her hand, lacing your fingers together.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, just below your ear.

You squeeze her hand, “you never have to apologize for this. If anything, I’m the one that should be sorry. I should have stayed.”

She sniffled, “I’m a grown woman, I should be able to sleep alone.”

“And I should be able to stand up to my mother about sleeping in the same bed as my girlfriend, yet here we are,” you say jokingly, trying to lighten the mood.

Thankfully, she chuckles, the vibration on your skin making you smile, “so it’s all your fault.”

“I’ll gladly take the blame,” you mumble as you settle into the bed more, relaxing as you feel the redhead relax against you.

In a sudden move, Melissa props herself up over you, hair dangling in your face. Leaning down, she kisses your forehead, then each cheek, and finally your lips, long and loving. It’s a quiet thanks that she will never owe you.

“I love you,” she whispers.

“I love you more,” you whisper back.

It takes half an hour for sleep to creep back in, Melissa’s breathing growing slow where she rests on your chest, your heart beating under her ear. When she eventually falls back asleep against your chest, you stay awake and trace lines on her back. You’ll gladly stand guard if it means she sleeps peacefully, stay awake if it means she’s safe.

note: solaris write a fic under 3k like u planned challenge good lord man. also thank you thank you for the compliment, it’s an honor to be the first person u thought of to write this. i hope i did ur vision justice <3

as always, feedback appreciated <3

[jessicaslittlelovesickmess]

Out of Hell

Pairing: Melissa Schemmenti x Reader, oc x Reader, Melissa x Joe

Warnings: Adoption, sex work, drugs, alcohol,murder, disgusting men, homophobia, hints of molestation, absent fathers, shit fathers, pregnancy, character death, bullying, let me know if I’ve left anything out. Unedited

Pt.1 Pt.2 Pt.3 Pt.5 Pt.6

My inspo for Y/n is Maria Brink the lead singer

I was sixteen, I dreamed for a life too out of reach a life of the white picket fence before I stood on the corner and sold myself to the streets. My mother needed help and I was all she had so that became my life until college, my father was a no good man who touched who he shouldn’t and then he left.

I had already become a mother to a child I couldn’t care for with no choice but to give her up for adoption with the name Maria. The hardest decision I would ever have to make and unable to hold her for dear life before she was passed over to parents who could raise my darling.

The world let me go, my mother and I were never the same when I got back from the hospital she had given up on me just as everyone else and just as I would myself. I was only fifteen when Maria was born, I was only sixteen when things took place how was I too know how cruel the world really was?.

Liam was fifteen when his father killed his mother so he turned to drugs for comfort before the drugs took over and he was left alone. His father kicked him out after he came out of the closet and the world seemed to shun him out so he gave up on himself too.

He began sleeping on the very corner I stood almost nightly, that’s where I met him we were just two kids with a bad run at life. He smiled up at me patting the ground beside him “I’m Liam” he introduced “Y/n” I spoke quietly as I took a seat.

That night all we did was sit and talk as people passed by throwing dirty looks our way little did we know how life would turn out. We would meet at the same corner each night and talk we would plan out our lives, I no longer wanted to use myself and he didn’t want to depend on drugs.

Out of Hell we would climb

We would go from club to club for a while chasing an imaginary high we could never achieve always ending up somewhere else. Like doing coke off some womans boobs in a cramped up apartment full of men gazing at us like we weren’t just people.

It took some time before we got there, we both got part time jobs working at a bar for my uncle, I sang ignoring the mens hungry stares. Liam waited the tables staying by my side throughout everything with the kindest smile I had seen.

I’m not sure if we would tell our past so easily

Out of hell we would climb

We both wanted better, more than the bar we wanted to go to college and we worked tirelessly to get there where we met Melissa. I had accidentally bumped into her at the gates causing her to quickly turn our way with a fist ready “I’m sorry” I apologised softly.

Something in her eyes changed as she lowered her fist and smiled “Melissa Schemmenti” she nodded “Y/n Y/l/n and this is Liam Davids” I introduced. “Pretty name for a pretty girl” she flirted with a wink before a guy came towards us wrapping an arm around her shoulders “this is my boyfriend Joe”.

I hated him already with his stupid smirk, Liams hand wrapped around my own while I rested my head on his shoulder. We stood and spoke for a few minutes more before Joe dragged Melissa away with a promise to catch up later.

The redheads eyes never seemed to move from me even when her attention was on her so called boyfriend that was checking every chick that passed by out. He disgusted me in a way I doubt Melissa ever could the way he just existed nauseated me, smug prick.

Melissa’s life hadn’t been kind to her either after her mother passed when she was nineteen her father couldn’t look at her anymore. Her younger sister Kristen-Marie relied on her, Nonna did all she could for her granddaughter’s but Melissa had always been out of reach.

Melissa had never been like the other girls not one for frilly dresses she had been bigger than the other children so she made sure to hide herself. She knew how to throw a ball and to land a punch it became her, she embraced different as much as she could but looking around made her shrink back.

Her differences disgusted her

The people around her didn’t help, children were harsh their words harsher as they cut deep into Melissa’s skin, she couldn’t change who she was but she could hide, she would pretend.

She couldn’t stand the feeling of some guys hands on her body, their lips on hers no she enjoyed women. Beautiful women with soft skin and bright smiles.

“Someone has a crush” Liam sang as we entered my dorm

[spoilmesweetieforficssake]

Hii!

If I may I would like to send a Melissa Schemmenti x Reader request your way! <3

With the plot being: Reader wanting to surprise Melissa with being the one to cook dinner. So reader goes out one night to learn a Schemmenti family recipe from Kristin Marie without Melissa knowing.

Hi yourself! You may indeed - and once again I am immensely flattered that you would want to!

I didn't feel I had a great handle on Kristen Marie as a character so I'm afraid there is minimal KM content, but I hope you like it!

~*~

You clutch a recipe written in an unfamiliar hand along with your notes and a Tupperware container full of the fruits of your evening.  “I swear, if you’ve given me the wrong recipe or you’ve sabotaged me you’ll regret it.”

The blonde in front of you smirks.  She very different from Melissa, you’ve learned, but there are certainly some similarities, and plenty of sass.  “Threatening me already?  You’re clearly well matched.”  She holds up her hands.  “You stood and cooked it with me and watched me copy out the recipe.  You’d have tasted it if there was something wrong.”

You nod.  It had taken a bit of minor deception, mild threats and persuasion but Kristen Marie had agreed to teach you a proper Schemmenti family recipe.  It would go down as one of the stranger evenings in recent memory, but it hadn’t been a disaster.  She had been curious, if not always kind in her questions as to what you were doing with her sister.  You, in turn, had been honest.  There was nothing to hide, as far as you were concerned.  You were there because you loved Melissa and wanted to cook a special meal for her, simple as that.

As you drive home, you consider the evening a success.  Kristen Marie had written out the recipe for you and as you had cooked alongside her, you had taken your own notes.  Despite being more of a baker than a cook, you felt semi confident for your dinner date with Melissa the coming week.

*

“You sure you still wanna cook?” Melissa asks as you pour her a glass of wine.  Her eyes flicker over the ingredients laid out by the stove, trying to guess what you’re making.  “Not that you can’t cook!” she adds hastily.  “Just, you know, you normally bake.”

“I know,” you smile.  She’s right.  “But I wanted to make something special.  I’ve been practicing.”

The red head smiles at your thoughtfulness.  “Do you want me to do anything?”

Shaking your head, you pull out a stool at your kitchen island.  You know she won’t just relax on your sofa and let you work and there’s no point in trying to make her.  “I want you to sit and relax.”

She settles herself on the stool and you enjoy her little wiggle as she does.  Conversation is light between you.  It has to be really, as immersed as you are in the recipe and getting everything right.  Melissa doesn’t seem to mind, however, as she watches you begin to bring things together.

“Where did you learn this recipe?” she asks, a new tone to her voice.  It feels familiar.  Too familiar. 

You glance up, but her eyes aren’t on you.  They’re slowly taking in every ingredient on your work top, calculating what you’ve done, what comes next.  “I learned it for you.”

Her face is contemplative as she gets up from the stool on which she’s been perched, coming around to your side of the work surface.  Again, she lets her eyes rove over the gathered ingredients before reaching for your notes.  You had copied out the recipe in your own handwriting, knowing she’d recognise her sister’s hand in a heartbeat.

“Kristen Marie,” she says quietly, a slight frown on her face as she reads over the recipe once more. 

Your eyes widen.  You hadn’t realise she’d also recognise her sister’s influence on the recipe quite so easily.  “Please don’t be mad!”

She turns to you, putting the recipe down and taking in your slightly panicked expression.

“I was going to ask Nonna, but I didn’t think she’d tell me,” you offer as almost an excuse.  You had met the woman a couple of times and while she had seemed to like you, you didn’t feel you were in a place where you could ask for a sacred Schemmenti recipe, and didn’t want to risk the tentative relationship you had by pushing too far.  “But I figured I could probably bribe or threaten your sister,” you admit with a blush, dipping your head.  “How did you know it was her?” you ask without looking up.

“She puts the garlic in too early and always gets impatient with letting the sauce thicken,” she replies, adjusting the heat under your pan as she stirs. 

“You’re not mad, are you?” You ask nervously, still not looking up.

She reaches out a hand to lift your chin, bringing your eyes to meet her own.  She’s smiling, you realise.  “No, I’m not mad.  This was your ‘thing’ last Friday?

You nod, shyly.

She shifts, leaving the sauce to bubble as she slips an arm around your waist, pressing herself to your side.  She grabs the pencil still laying among the ingredients and debris on the work surface, annotating the notes you’d made.  “I actually find it very sweet you’d threaten my sister just to cook for me,” she admits, finally laying down the pencil, happy with the additions she’d made to your recipe.  She turns her head to press a kiss to her cheek.  “But how about next time you wanna learn a Schemmenti recipe you just ask me?”

[the-bad-batch]

Reader Masterlist

Melissa Schemmenti 

Make you Feel My love -  Set after Season 2 Episode 18. You go home to find Melissa upset and angrily sorting her closet after the events of the staff room argument. You comfort her as she confides in you with a new insecurity.

Coffee Mugs & Cronuts -  Melissa has a bad weekend, unfortunately for you, you catch her on a bad day. After breaking her coffee mug and spilling the coffee all over yourself, you argue. Melissa says things that break your heart and you spend the rest of the week avoiding her. Both of you unaware of the love you share for each other.

Finding Happiness with You -  Jacob and Janine are back at Melissa's for further cooking lessons. Neither know that you and Melissa live together, after falling in love when you join the school as the new third grade teacher.

I was meant to love you - You were seven when your soulmate tattoo appeared.

"You’re bleeding, are you alright? I’ll kill him."

You’re the only redhead I want -  Melissa overhears a conversation between you and Jacob and mistakenly believes you're in a secret relationship and unwilling to tell her. She begins to avoid you until you're forced to take action.

She’s everything I’ve been prayin for -  After a one night stand with a beautiful redhead, you rush out of her home and to your new job only to find her sat in the staff room. To your delight she seems to have enjoyed the night before just as much as you do and can't help teasing you about it.   18+ 

What We Do In The Dark - Melissa x OC

Forced to take time off work after a breakdown, Melissa finds herself taking her sisters advice and going to an sex club which her sister had mentioned, just to prove that Kristen Marie has terrible ideas. There she finds a new place to let loose and a woman she only knows by the name of Ell, who will change her life forever.   18+ 

I think this is when I set myself free - A year ago, you left your home with Melissa, leaving your engagement ring in her hand after she'd told you to leave. Now, you stand in front of her at the annual Schemmenti party, ready to finally get the closure to leave before you try to move on from her.

If only moving on from her was possible.

Bo-Katan Kryze

She will change everything series: 

A Future Uncertain - You find yourself following Din to Kalevala to check in on Bo-Katan after her home is destroyed. You're yet to take the creed and get your armour. Having been told to take time to discover yourself and see if the Creed is meant for you. You're Certain of your future until the former Princess of Mandalore stands before you.She's going to change everything.

Show Yourself -  Mandalore is being restored. Bo has rebuilt on Kalevala. You're now a Mandalorian having finally taken the creed but you can't get Bo off your mind. So you find yourself stood in front of her palace, unsure why you can't get the former Princess off your mind.

Hit me with your best shot -  Satine’s mark is simply “Duchess.

”She’d begged Bo to show her the moment it had appeared and she’d refused until her pleading got too much. Satine had smiled, big and toothy like she always did whenever she was truly happy. All she’d uttered was how appropriate.

Lady Bo-katan Kryze, people have always told me of your beauty, wish they’d warned me about how hard you hit.

One under the light of Mandalore -  You organise a party at the palace and invite the new republic cities, as well as those who you believe will benefit being aligned with Mandalore. Your wife sits upon the Throne and you find yourself playing diplomat when you run into an old friend. 

I want you Mentally and Physically -  After Bo confirms that all you are is fuck buddies, you decide to wind her up by flirting with your closest friends. What could possibly go wrong? 18+ 

Bo-Katan Kryze & The Armorer 

Forever & Ever Series

I think I could love you forever -  A nomad former Jedi, you find yourself on Mandalore after saving a Mandalorian child from Storm Troopers. There you meet the Manda'lor and her adviser plus a friend from your past you thought was lost. Convinced you would be better off on your own, your thrown into turmoil when you realise your connection the Manda'lor and her Advisor is more than just attraction.

Ghosts of our Past -  As your relationship with both Bo and The Armorer continues, your past continues to haunt you. You can't forget the night everything changed for you, when your friends and family were killed by the Empire during Order 66. Luckily for you, you have supportive partners and friends.

In My Dreams -  Although you're married to Bo, you can't help but wonder what it would be like if you both introduced Ahsoka and The Armorer into your bedroom and Bo, ever the perfect wife wants to make your dreams come true. 18+ Only

Fennec Shand

You can confide in me - The first time you see Fennec, she hasn't slept for days. Slowly, you manage to get her to confide in you and eventually, you begin to confide into you.Jedi/Book store owner reader.

Agatha Harkness 

May Angels Lead you In -  Agatha mourns the loss of her lover after her lover has lost the battle with her mental health. She receives comfort from the one person who can understand her loss. *Trigger Warning for Suicide here* 

Miscommunications and M&MS -  “Are you jealous?” You can’t help but be amused as Agatha continues to move around your room in the new and improved Avenger’s compound.

“No, I’m not!” She huffs and you lean against the sofa as you continue to watch her pick up her books and pile them on one of the many small tables scattered around the room.

“Oh, you really are jealous!” You let out a laugh, before your smile fades slightly. “Wait, why would you be jealous?”

Lin Beifong 

Stop Talking -  You are Zhu Li's little sister. You've managed to get a job as Lin Beifong's assistant and are tired of watching her work herself into the ground. It had nothing to do with the giant unrequited crush you'd got on her right?

Are you Mine? (I’m yours) -  You bring Lin her dinner but she's not in the mood to eat. *Explicit Smut* 18+ 

You don’t see me (Not how I see you) - You've been with Lin for years but you've never been her priority. So you leave.

Desperate for you -  Lin's tied up in front of you, desperate for you and you've never seen anything sexier. *Explicit Smut* 18+ 

Maria Hill

I can’t lose you -  You're injured as the Avengers battle Abomination, Maria reacts.

I’m Home (In your arms) -  Maria returns from Space after a year and you're just happy shes home.

[neuroprincess]

Crying Over Broken Pasta - Melissa Schemmenti/Female Reader

Melissa Schemmenti/Female Reader

Summary: A romantic evening cooking together. Melissa overloaded. Y/N commits the crime of breaking the pasta and things go wrong after that. A fight brings out insecurities.

Classification: Light angst, Fluff

Warnings: Some harsh words, Swearing

Note: Idk, Melissa might seem a little exaggerated in this situation and out of character? But I would be super pissed off if someone broke the pasta, just saying

Word count: +2600

Unrevised

There would be no better date for Melissa than cooking with her partner, the kitchen being a very intimate and important place for her, where she grew up, watched her parents fall in love again and again, made her first lasagna with nonna, had her first wine drunk with Kristen Marie, where she used cooking to take out her daily frustrations. Nothing better than a Pomodoro Penne after an exhausting and stressful day, to forget it all by enjoying the family recipe. But she never considered it a place of romance until Y/N, Joe, although he loved Schemmenti food, never shared this space with the redhead, much less in a romantic way. He ate, he complimented, sometimes he washed the dishes, and that was it. The arrival of this new person in her life also brought her a new vision for the sanctuary, she simply loves to see the girlfriend sitting on the countertops having breakfast, preparing the teacher's tea wearing only short pajamas, almost melting completely when she offers help, either to cut some ingredient or stir the pot. It's just adorable, very special, especially since there are dozens of kisses and hugs exchanged as they prepare breakfast/dinner. This is why, staging a romantic setting, Melissa has prepared the kitchen for the site of a monthly date with her girlfriend. There are fresh tomatoes scattered on the cutting board, bowls full of freshly cut ingredients, the kettle of water boiling behind the couple, while the teacher stands next to her girlfriend, one hand firmly on her waist as the other instructs Y/N how to cut the tomatoes in a correct way.

- Great, amore mio. - she celebrates seeing the little cubes, all the effort was worth it and this would be perfect on spaghetti, she decided to teach the simpler Schemmenti recipes first, hoping it would become a routine couple program - You are a good student. - and left a gentle kiss on the other woman's lips, taking a long time to purposely leave her lips.

- Thanks, Mel. - Y/N laughed, feeling happy and heartwarmed to have such a captivating and patient girlfriend, the task had taken more than five minutes and at no point did she get upset, not showing any irritation - What should I do now?

- The water's already boiled, you can put the pasta in the pot. - the redhead smiles and moves away, making room on the counter to prepare the rest of the ingredients for the sauce. - Meanwhile I'll finish chopping the onion. I should have prepared the pasta, but you know, this week has been really crazy. So we'll have to make do with the store-bought stuff, the fresh ingredients will save our recipe. - she shrugs, taking a sip from the glass of wine she had left there, trying to pretend not to be upset, but feeling guilty deep down for not being able to give her girlfriend the full experience.

- It's okay, love. Seriously, just the thought of tasting your family's sauce makes my mouth water. - Y/N tries to reassure her and walks by Melissa, giving her a half-hug along with a kiss on the cheek - Let's have spaghetti tonight! Made by us!

- Made by us! - this cheered her up again, after all, this dinner has been scheduled just to spend some time together in the kitchen and that's what matters - Amore mio, do you want to wi...? - Melissa turns to ask if she doesn't want more wine and can't finish the word, disbelieving in what her eyes see, the pasta is broken in two in Y/N's hands, that anguishing sound unmistakable for any Italian - What the hell are you doing?

- Putting the pasta in the pot. - she answers simply, not realizing what has just happened, and puts the pasta in the boiling water - Now I stir?

- Yes, you stir. - the redhead controls herself not to sound rude, suddenly very upset and offended by what she has just witnessed. SHE BROKE THE PASTA! And Melissa can't handle it. - It was supposed to stir anyway. - she whispers turning her back, low enough not to be heard, trying to control her own personality in order not to make Y/N upset and sad for cooking the pasta absurdly wrong. But not being able to express herself made her even angrier.

Minutes later they start the sauce when the pasta is ready, Melissa no longer asks her girlfriend for help, putting in and cooking the ingredients on her own, in her own way. No matter how much Y/N offers help every minute, she refuses every time, too focused on not letting her indignation show. She doesn't even respond when her girlfriend appreciates the smell of onions frying at the bottom of the pan, when she is hugged from the side no reaction is shown either, she just rolls her eyes and goes back to watching the sauce.

- I'm ready to eat our spaghetti Schemmenti. - the youngest celebrates, gesturing to the dishes on the table, perfectly presented except for the... incident - Wine? - she offers, shaking the rest of the liquid at the bottom of the bottle, they were sipping until Melissa drank the rest practically by herself.

- No, thanks. I need sobriety for this.

- What?

- Nothing, Y/N. Let's eat. - the two sit down, facing each other, the candle placed there earlier has been forgotten to be lit, Y/N takes a big gulp enjoying the spaghetti, groans that would once have been sinful to Melissa, but now it irritates her. She just stares at her own plate, being sure that her nonna would disinherit her if she ate that.

- Something wrong, love? - Y/N asks, finding her silently staring at the plate.

- Who taught you how to make spaghetti? - the redhead asks rhetorically on automatic, not expecting a real answer.

- A college roommate, I think, I don't remember making it before...

- I get it. - Melissa throws herself back in her chair and takes a generous sip of wine from her girlfriend's glass, sighing. The tension has taken over the environment.

- Did I do something wrong?

- You broke the fucking pasta! - Melissa's voice came out louder than she expected, almost like a scream, and as she gestured with her hands she ended up bumping into the plate, throwing it to the floor, smashing in pieces. - Oh, shit!

- Mel, why didn't you tell me anything? - Y/N asks staring at her girlfriend kneeling on the floor and cleaning the pieces angrily, carelessly - I...

- You don't know how to make a simple spaghetti correctly, that's it. - she rolls the eyes and watches the orange stain start to form on the floor, which frustrates her even more, the night that should be perfect is going down the drain faster than she can keep up with it - You are not from Philadelphia, not Italian and now spaghetti... My family would....

- Oh! - Y/N chokes in realization and looks away, trying not to look at her girlfriend who rubs the floor fervently, knowing that if he saw her in that state any more, she wouldn't be able to stop the tears from falling - I'm going to... I'm sorry. - she picks up her bag from the coffee table and leaves the house, unnoticed by the woman, too busy taking out her frustration on the cleaning to notice.

Walking back to her own apartment, since she is without a car because Melissa used to give her rides from work to her house and from her house to work, Y/N reflects on the night's events, mentally cursing herself for having done that stupid thing, she should have paid attention to the pasta and not taken the easy way out, although she was loving the night, the girl was as tired as Melissa after the school chaos and automatically broke down to save time, without thinking about her girlfriend's culture and much less her reaction. When she didn't show any reaction, Y/N didn't even realize what she had done. She wondered if she should send a message apologizing for the culinary crime or let her calm down first before making any moves, rare were the times she saw the redhead act this way, never a behavior directed at her. At the end of her ramblings she thought it best to give the woman some time to calm down.

And then Melissa's words came into her mind. She had talked about family, about how she is different from everything the redhead expected in a partner, Y/N still remembers the teacher's face when she admitted she wasn't from Philadelphia and had no Italian blood (or just distant family), a smile that died halfway through followed by another that didn't reach the eyes. Still, two months later a relationship began, secret both to her co-workers, except Barbara, and to the Schemmenti. Insecurities began to surface, some that she drowned out so many times so as not to affect the nearly two-year relationship, and some new ones. Several "What if..." took over. What if she is ashamed of her? What if being from Philadelphia is that important? What if dating a non-Italian bothers her? Y/N sighed and decided to try to let go, the tears already dry on her face, leaving a smeared trail of makeup. When she gets home that's the first thing she notices as passing by the mirror in the entryway. And she feels miserable.

The next day, Sunday, she is awakened by the doorbell ringing several times in a row and as she walks to get it she hears the wood being punched, almost getting accidentally punched as it opens. Melissa controls her arm to avoid hitting her and backs away, being very embarrassed by the desperation. Even trying to be rational the fear took over, Y/N hadn't answered any message or call, the redhead is trying to communicate with the girl since the night before, at first she thought it was grief and decided to give her time, but when she didn't get answers in the morning she started to get worried, finally deciding to run to the apartment to check her.

- Amore mio...

- What do you want, Melissa? - Y/N asks rubbing the eyes and then tries to stop Mel from touching her, failing, as she has a thorough check for Melissa to be assured that she is physically okay, she would never forgive herself if something happened to the girlfriend because of her, feeling extremely guilty for letting her go home alone and walking late at night.

- I... I should have come after you as soon as you left our house. - she takes the girl's face between hands and stares into her eyes Y/E/C, noticing the redness and swelling pointing out that she had cried the whole night, she knows this face very well - I made you cry, My God! Y/N, please forgive me. My reaction was disproportionate, there was the stress of school, the kids.

- Melissa... - Y/N quickly corrects herself - Mel, I can't say it's okay, but I understand you. I just didn't realize I broke the pasta. On automatic.

- It's okay, I made a mistake, if I could go back in time I would never say what I said. Nor would I act the way I did. I just wanted our night to be perfect and then everything was going wrong, I was frustrated, I didn't know how to act. - Melissa steps forward and hugs her lovingly, carefully, tenderly, as if her lover were made of glass. And closes the door behind them with a free hand, placing her against the wood, deepening the hug.

- So you're not ashamed of me?

- Where did that question come from? - the girl tries to get out of the woman's arms, but the redhead pulls her to herself again, a confused expression on face.

- You grumbled yesterday about me not being from Philadelphia, not being Italian, and that made me think about it all night. About the secret relationship and the reasons why. - she let the words flow and felt a little more relieved, finally speaking out loud and not in whispers to herself in the middle of the night.

- I was frustrated, it doesn't matter to me, I don't care where you come from and your blood. Well, at least not anymore... - Melissa confesses - If you weren't such a piece of work you wouldn't have convinced me. I'm serious. Forgive me.

- I know... - Y/N whispers and bites her lips, which does not go unnoticed by the teacher - Forgive me for breaking the pasta.

- All right, but I still can't believe you were eating spaghetti like that. You have to roll it on the fork, when you broke it, you can't do that, it's just wrong, unnatural. A crime! - both laugh and Melissa advances a kiss, pinning the other against the door again - I want to teach you again, properly.

- I wouldn't deny it, you're a great teacher.

- Amore mio, does keeping our relationship a secret make you unhappy? Insecure? - Y/N just nods positively and stares at the floor - Then let's tell everyone.

- What?

- We can organize a dinner with my family, formally introduce you to them. - a quick kiss - We cook together. - Another kiss - My parents will love you.

- Are you sure about that?

- Yes, they'll see what I saw in you. - Melissa interlaces her fingers and kisses her girlfriend's hand - And I will officially make you mine.

- Really? - the girl held her breath trying to think about the meaning of these words, when Melissa says "our home" is because she sleeps more at the teacher's house than at her own apartment, there is a space in the closet for her, they even share the dressing table and in the kitchen Y/N has a cup for herself, matching another one belonging to the teacher. But officially making her Melissa's could mean many things, including putting a ring on the ring finger and saying yes at the altar.

- Seriously, I'll make you a Schemmenti, but first you have to learn how to make spaghetti. - they laugh - It's almost noon, sleepyhead. We can try again today...

- I'm not in the mood now... - Y/N caresses the corner of the woman's lips and deposits a not so innocent kiss, pulling her lower lip between the teeth as she finishes, then finds a pair of green eyes staring at her hungrily - We have better things to do now.

- I think I understand you... - she is pushed against the wall by Melissa and feels a pair of hands grab her by the thigh, easily lifting her against the wood while coral painted lips wander up the neck, kissing and biting the skin carelessly, not caring about marks. Not anymore.

  Communicating better was something they both learned from this situation, Melissa hated herself for making the woman she loves cry and felt extremely guilty for every word, when frustration took over she didn't know how to handle it, so it's something she plans to work on and improve. For the sake of their relationship. Y/N, on the other hand, may have learned not to break pasta, but she would definitely come to repeat it if it led to reconciliation sex, which she found to be one of the best experiences. Even though she had to walk awkwardly the next day and hide the hickeys for weeks.

[murkyhazed]

someone needs to write kristen marie schemmenti so i can have that fun frenemy sisters thing going on.

[multifandomfix]

Who I Write For

Abbott Elementary: Barbara Howard, Melissa Schemmenti

Absolutely Fabulous: Claudia Bing, Edina Monsoon, Lulu, Patsy Stone // Eddy x Patsy x Reader

Alice In Wonderland (2010): Iracebeth, Tarrant Hightopp

American Horror Story (Seasons 1-5 & 8): Constance Langdon, Countess Elizabeth, Dandy Mott, Elsa Mars, Fiona Goode, James Patrick March, Jude Martin, Stevie Nicks, Wilhemina Venable

A Series Of Unfortunate Events: Count Olaf, Esmé Squalor, Georgina Orwell, Justice Strauss

Big Sky: Alicia Corrigan, Beau Arlen, Ren Bhuller, Sunny Barnes

Bosom Buddies: Henry Desmond, Kip Wilson, Ruth Dunbar // Henry x Kip x Reader

Bridgerton: Agatha Danbury, Anthony Bridgerton, Portia Featherington, Queen Charlotte, Simon Basset, Violet Bridgerton

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Anya Jenkins, Drusilla, Joyce Summers, Rupert Giles, Spike

Call The Midwife: Chummy Noakes, Jane Sutton, Patrick Turner, Patsy Mount, Shelagh Turner, Sister Hilda, Trixie Franklin, Valerie Dyer, Violet Buckle

Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina: Ambrose Spellman, Hilda Spellman, Lilith, Mary Wardwell, Zelda Spellman // Hilda x Zelda x Reader, Lilith x Zelda x Reader, Lilith x Mary x Reader

Cinderella (2015): Fairy Godmother, Lady Tremaine

Clue: Blanche White, Jocelyn Scarlet, Wadsworth // Blanche x Jocelyn x Reader

CSI: Catherine Willows, David Hodges, Gil Grissom, Heather Kessler, Sara Sidle // Catherine x Sara x Reader

Dark Shadows: Angelique Bouchard, Elizabeth Collins, Julia Hoffman // Elizabeth x Julia x Reader

Dead To Me: Jen Harding, Judy Hale // Jen x Judy x Reader

Death Becomes Her: Helen Sharp, Lisle Von Rhuman, Madeline Ashton // Helen x Madeline x Reader

Doctor Who: Donna Noble, Eleventh Doctor, Jack Harkness, Jackie Tyler, Jacobi!Master, Kate Stewart, Missy, Ninth Doctor, River Song, Simm!Master, Tenth Doctor, Thirteenth Doctor, Twelfth Doctor // Missy x Simm!Master x Reader

Downton Abbey: Cora Crawley, Edith Crawley, Elsie Hughes, Isobel Crawley, Joseph Molesley, Mary Crawley, Thomas Barrow, Violet Crawley

Enola Holmes: Eudoria Holmes, Miss Harrison, Sherlock Holmes

Evil: Bishop Thomas Marx, Kristen Bouchard, Leland Townsend, Sheryl Luria

Frasier: Daphne Moon, Frasier Crane, Niles Crane, Roz Doyle // Daphne x Roz x Reader, Frasier x Niles x Reader

Friends: Janice Litman, Joey Tribbiani, Monica Geller, Phoebe Buffay, Rachel Green, Richard Burke

Game Of Thrones: Brienne Of Tarth, Bronn, Catelyn Stark, Cersei Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, Davos Seaworth, Jaime Lannister, Jorah Mormont, Melisandre, Petyr Baelish, Tyrion Lannister

Ghosts (BBC): Fanny Button, Julian Fawcett, Kitty, Mary, Pat Butcher, Thomas Thorne

Glass Onion: Benoit Blanc, Birdie Jay, Claire Debella

Good Omens: Aziraphale, Crowley, Madame Tracy, Shax // Aziraphale x Crowley x Reader

Grace And Frankie: Brianna Hanson, Frankie Bergstein, Grace Hanson // Grace x Frankie x Reader

Green Wing: Caroline Todd, Guy Secretan, Harriet Schulenburg, Joanna Clore, Mac Macartney, Sue White // Joanna x Sue x Reader

Grey's Anatomy: Addison Montgomery, Amelia Shepherd, Arizona Robbins, Catherine Fox, Cristina Yang, Derek Shepherd, Erica Hahn, Mark Sloan, Meredith Grey, Miranda Bailey, Teddy Altman, Tom Koracick // Cristina x Teddy x Reader, Derek x Mark x Reader

Halloween: Laurie Strode, Lindsey Wallace

Hannibal: Bedelia Du Maurier, Frederick Chilton, Hannibal Lecter

Harlots: Lady Repton, Lydia Quigley, Margaret Wells, Nancy Birch // Lady Repton x Nancy Birch x Reader

Harry Potter: Barty Crouch Jr, Bellatrix LeStrange, Draco Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy, Minerva McGonagall, Molly Weasley, Narcissa Malfoy, Rita Skeeter, Severus Snape, Sybill Trelawney // Bellatrix x Narcissa x Reader

His Dark Materials: Lee Scoresby, Maggie Costa, Marisa Coulter, Mary Malone

Holes: Kate Barlow, Louise Walker

House MD: Gregory House, James Wilson, Lisa Cuddy

House Of The Dragon: Daemon Targaryen, Rhaenys Targaryen

I Dream Of Jeannie: Amanda Bellows, Evil!Jeannie, Jeannie, Roger Healey

Insatiable: Bob Armstrong, Coralee Armstrong, Regina Sinclair // Bob x Coralee x Reader

Just Shoot Me: Dennis Finch, Nina Van Horn

Killing Eve: Carolyn Martens, Eve Polastri, Villanelle // Villanelle x Eve x Reader

Last Tango In Halifax: Caroline Dawson, Gillian Greenwood, Judith Tyzack // Caroline x Gillian x Judith x Reader

Legends Of Tomorrow: Damien Darhk, Gideon, John Constantine, Leonard Snart, Martin Stein, Mick Rory, Rip Hunter, Sara Lance, Zari Tarazi // Leonard x Mick x Reader

Mamma Mia: Donna Sheridan, Ruby Sheridan, Tanya Chesham-Leigh // Ruby x Tanya x Reader

Marvel: Agatha Harkness, Ayesha, Bruce Banner, Clint Barton, Eleanor Bishop, Everett Ross, Hela, Helmut Zemo, Jeri Hogarth, Kilgrave, Loki Laufeyson, May Parker, Natasha Romanoff, Pepper Potts, Stephen Strange, Steve Rogers, Thena, Thor Odinson, Tony Stark, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, Wanda Maximoff // Everett x Stephen x Reader

M*A*S*H: BJ Hunnicutt, Charles Emerson Winchester III, Francis Mulcahy, Hawkeye Pierce, Henry Blake, Margaret Houlihan, Maxwell Klinger, Radar O'Reilly // Henry x Radar x Reader

Merlin: Arthur Pendragon, Gwaine, Merlin, Mithian, Morgana Pendragon, Morgause, Uther Pendragon

Mom: Bonnie Plunkett, Jill Kendall, Natalie Stevens

Mrs. America: Gloria Steinem, Phyllis Schlafly

Nanny McPhee: Cedric Brown, Mrs. Blatherwick, Nanny McPhee, Selma Quickly

NCIS: Abby Sciuto, Ducky Mallard, Jenny Shepard, Jethro Gibbs, Tony DiNozzo

New Amsterdam: Elizabeth Wilder, Iggy Frome, Lauren Bloom, Max Goodwin

Nine Perfect Strangers: Frances Welty, Masha Dmitrichenko

Ocean's 8: Debbie Ocean, Lou Miller, Rose Weil, Tammy

Once Upon A Time: Archie Hopper, Cora Mills, Cruella DeVil, Killian Jones, Maleficent, Regina Mills, Rumplestiltskin, Victoria Belfrey, Zelena Mills // Regina x Maleficent x Reader, Regina x Evil Queen x Reader, Regina x Zelena x Reader

Only Murders In The Building: Charles Haden-Savage, Cinda Canning, Loretta Durkin, Oliver Putnam // Charles x Oliver x Reader

Orange Is The New Black: Aleida Diaz, Alex Vause, Carol Denning, Linda Ferguson, Lorna Morello, Natalie Figueroa, Nicky Nichols, Red Reznikov

Peaky Blinders: Aberama Gold, Alfie Solomons, Arthur Shelby, Luca Changretta, Polly Gray, Tommy Shelby

Penny Dreadful: Evelyn Poole, Vanessa Ives

Pirates Of The Caribbean: Hector Barbossa, Jack Sparrow

Prodigal Son: Edrisa Tanaka, Jessica Whitly, Malcolm Bright, Martin Whitly, Vivian Capshaw

Ratched: Betsy Bucket, Edmund Tolleson, Gwendolyn Briggs, Lenore Osgood, Mildred Ratched // Gwendolyn x Mildred x Reader

Rizzoli & Isles: Angela Rizzoli, Jane Rizzoli, Maura Isles // Jane x Maura x Reader

Sanditon: Alexander Colbourne, Arthur Parker, Charles Lockhart, Sidney Parker

Scandal: Mellie Grant, Olivia Pope, Sally Langston

Schitt’s Creek: Alexis Rose, David Rose, Moira Rose, Ted Mullens

Scream Queens: Cathy Munsch, Gigi Caldwell

Sex Education: Colin Hendricks, Erin Wiley, Hope Haddon, Jean Milburn, Maureen Groff

Shameless (US): Claudia Nicolo, Frank Gallagher, Helene Runyon, Lip Gallagher, Monica Gallagher, Sheila Jackson, Svetlana Yevgenivna

Sherlock: Irene Adler, John Watson, Martha Hudson, Mary Morstan, Sherlock Holmes // Sherlock x John x Reader

Suicide Squad: Amanda Waller, Harley Quinn

Supergirl: Alex Danvers, Brainy, Cat Grant, Kara Danvers, Lena Luthor, Lex Luthor, Nyxly, Winn Schott

Supernatural: Abaddon, Amara, Bela Talbot, Bobby Singer, Castiel, Crowley, Dean Winchester, Ellen Harvelle, Jody Mills, Lucifer, Mary Winchester, Pamela Barnes, Rowena MacLeod

Sweeney Todd: Judge Turpin, Nellie Lovett

The Addams Family: Debbie Jellinsky, Morticia Addams // Debbie x Morticia x Reader

The Good Doctor: Audrey Lim, Shaun Murphy

The Good Place: Janet, Michael, Tahani Al Jamil

The Magicians: Eleanor Lipson, Eliot Waugh, Fen, Margo Hanson, Zelda Schiff // Eliot x Margo x Fen x Reader

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: Midge Maisel, Rose Weissman, Sophie Lennon, Susie Myerson

The Nanny: CC Babcock, Fran Fine, Maxwell Sheffield // CC x Fran x Reader

The Parent Trap: Chessy, Elizabeth James, Meredith Blake

The Politician: Dede Standish, Dusty Jackson, Georgina Hobart, Hadassah Gold // Dede x Hadassah x Reader

The Prom: Angie Dickinson, Dee Dee Allen, Karen Greene

The School For Good And Evil: Clarissa Dovey, Leonora Lesso

The Tudors: Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Catherine Of Aragon, Margaret Tudor

The Umbrella Academy: Five Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves, The Handler

The Witcher: Calanthe Of Cintra, Geralt Of Rivia, Jaskier, Tissaia de Vries, Yennefer Of Vengerberg

Three's Company: Helen Roper, Jack Tripper, Lana Shields

True Blood: Arlene Fowler, Bill Compton, Eric Northman, Ginger, Jessica Hamby, Maryann Forrester, Pam Swynford de Beaufort, Rosalyn Harris, Russell Edgington, Sarah Newlin

Two And A Half Men: Alan Harper, Charlie Harper, Evelyn Harper, Judith Harper

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Andrea Baydon, Jacqueline White, Lillian Kaushtupper // Jacqueline x Lillian x Reader

Wednesday: Larissa Weems, Marilyn Thornhill, Morticia Addams

What We Do In The Shadows: Lilith, Nadja, Nandor // Lilith x Nadja x Reader

Will & Grace: Beverly Leslie, Jack McFarland, Karen Walker

Xena: Warrior Princess: Alti, Aphrodite, Ares, Autolycus, Callisto, Gabrielle, Joxer, Xena // Xena x Gabrielle x Reader

Yonderland: Debbie Maddox, Imperatrix, Negatus // Debbie x Imperatrix x Reader

3rd Rock From The Sun: Dick Solomon, Mary Albright, Sally Solomon, Sonja Umdahl, Vicki Dubcek // Mary x Sally x Reader

30 Rock: Diana Jessup, Jenna Maroney, Kenneth Parcell, Liz Lemon, Lynn Onkman, Nancy Donovan // Jenna x Liz x Reader

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

Other Miscellaneous Characters

[aspirationalpeony]

Finding Beauty

Summary: You accidentally uncover an insecurity of Melissa's one night when you're in bed, and reassure her just how perfect she is. Content Warnings: Lots of body image talk, references to weight, and a brush with misogyny (thanks, Joe). Also, lots of smut. AO3 Link (also contains an author's note!)

Melissa Schemmenti isn't shy.

You can think of a lot of things she is: brave, intense, smart, intimidating, sexy. But shy? No, never. Still...

There are some times when she withdraws from you--almost cringes away, like you've touched some invisible bruise. A wall comes up between you then, and her eyes--their volatile green always so full of close attention and fierce emotion--go sallow and gray and remote. Her chin ducks to her chest. Her smile vanishes.

Then she hides it, or tries: "What, you think I'm an idiot?" she'll say, bluffing, embarrassed, and you'll understand you've accidentally nudged that hurt child who thought she was stupid for years. "Oh, yeah, thanks for your opinion," she'll tell you dryly on another occasion, when you've told her that you love the way her blouse shows the soft curve of her belly, and you'll know she's thinking of all the times Joe and Kristen-Marie and everyone else in her life called her fat.

Those moments are rare at first. Just a glimmer, here and there, quickly forgotten in the early fun of your relationship. Then more. More, because you're getting closer to her. More, because Melissa Schemmenti never lets anyone in, and she's letting you in, and you can see how much that scares her.

In bed, though, you've never seen that version of her, retreating, nervous, afraid. When Melissa has her hands on you, it's heat and lightning. Her confidence is unreal. She initiated your first kiss, not the cautious thing you'd have given her if you were in control; she'd just grabbed your face and gone for it, straining on her tiptoes to meet you and slotting her mouth against hers, and all you tasted at first was the slippery gloss on her lips. Then you felt her tongue, and you melted. You were hers, right then.

There was never any time for you to be timid about it. From the first night you spent together, she just yanked off your clothes and went for it, the same way she'd kissed you, touching you with intent and urgency and focus. Her fingernails scratching lightly at your scalp, her mouth biting and sucking at your clavicle, her breasts pressed hard against yours, her hips rocking, rocking, and you couldn't get enough; you could never get enough of her fingers buried inside you, of her lips on your nipple, her cunt riding your thigh, drowning in the mingled scents of skin and hairspray and perfume and sex.

Then, one night--then, she gets shy.

You've always reciprocated in bed with her, but usually after she's put you through a few pulverizing rounds; when you're exhausted and the lights are already low and it takes little for her to come. She usually needs a little lube to help her along ("when you're my age, hon...") but it's not a detraction; far from it. You like trying flavors and letting them mingle with her taste, or slicking your fingers and stroking her so slowly that even with that hair-trigger clit, she can't quite come, not until she's cursed you out to hell and back.

Tonight, though, you're hungry for her; craving in a way that speaks to the long weeks of standardized test prep that have eaten both of you alive with mental load and exhaustion. You need her. You need to have her, in the same way she usually has you, turn her pliant and desperate and needy and make her melt across the mattress. The overhead light is still on when you're peeling her panties down her legs and kissing her belly and hips and ready to settle between her thighs, to lick her until she passes out. Then she squirms. Not in the sexy way.

You look up her body. She's picture-perfect like this, all plump hips and thighs and belly and her crinkle-tipped breasts, so sexy you can't get enough, but she's staring up at the ceiling like she's lying in the chair at the dentist's office.

"Mel?" you say.

She looks down at you and you see the closed door behind her eyes. She's gone shy.

"What is it, baby?" You push yourself up on one elbow and her leg slides off your shoulder. "You okay? You want me to stop?"

Her eyes go back up and search the ceiling. The pink in her cheeks isn't all arousal, you know that. "Maybe we can turn the light off?"

You frown. She loves fucking you with the lights on: lets her map every inch, every freckle, coo over old hickeys and leave you some new ones.

"You know, just, you're gonna be..." She clears her throat. She's struggling, you can see: can't smother her vulnerability with bravado, that old war between honesty and tactical retreat showing on her face. "You're gonna be lookin', and, well..."

"I love looking at you," you say.

"I mean," she says, "at my--you know, you're gonna be lookin' at my pussy, and--"

"What's wrong with your pussy?"

She groans, putting her hands over her face.

You imitate her a little, trying to coax her out from behind those hands, voice tender and warm with humor. "Still works, don't it?"

"That's not what I mean," she says, voice muffled by her palms. "I mean you're gonna be lookin' at it, and I know it's sort of--busted-lookin', I mean, Joe always said, all the guys before him, you know, kinda fucked it up, so it's ugly, and--"

"What?" You gape at her. You know she's really scared, really humiliated, when she peeks at you from behind her hands then swiftly retreats again, burying her bright-red face in them. "You--what?"

"It's ugly," she repeats. "I don't want you to have to... See it."

Something clicks into place. You've had sex plenty of times before--on her terms. That always seemed natural to you; she was older, her personality stronger, and she loved to boss people around. Why not you, too, especially when you enjoyed it so much? But suddenly you're realizing just how stage-managed sex has been between the two of you: moments picked by Mel, lingerie sets under her daily clothes, her toys, her lube, usually her bed, too, and she decides when the lights go off. Rarely anything in broad daylight, rarely her getting off first, except when she'll take your hand and tuck it into her jeans or rub herself on your hip for fun. Usually she wears you out before you ever touch her.

Because she thinks this intimate part of her is ugly? Because Joe told her something--and maybe other people in her life--and it's stuck, about a part of her body that should only bring her pleasure. All that planning so you'd never be face-to-face with a piece of her that might repulse you.

Anger flows down your body in white-hot rivulets. You hate Joe. You're going to rip his stupid dick off. You hate him and every person who ever told Mel something so stupid, like having sex could alter her body that way, could make her look busted, as if there was any wrong way for her pussy to look.

She peeks at you again from under her hands. The look is so un-Melissa, so sensitive and uncertain, that your anger dies all at once. Suddenly all that matters is protecting, loving, that tender piece of her that's showing on her face right now; a little node deep inside that's vulnerability through-and-through, her secret, sensitive heart. The feeling swells inside your chest.

You lean back down and slide your arms under her thighs, slotting yourself back into place, right where you want to be. She makes a little "uh" sound, surprised and uneasy. Now you're where she was so scared to have you, face to face with her cunt. You've explored it before, but in the dark, by feel or in glimpses.

She shaves, but keeps a patch of curls on her mound; it's as much gray as dark auburn, hinting at the real color of the hair on her head. Below is her flushed, swelling cunt. You can smell her, musky and saline. The lips of her pussy are big and plump; they have a natural spread, showing their tender interior like the open petals of an orchid. Her clit crowns them, already reddening. You know from experience how incredible this part of her body is, made for pleasure.

Maybe Joe meant her labia, that they were too long or something. Busted. Fucking busted? You lower your head and rub your face right into her. She gasps aloud and her hands go to your hair, grabbing hard. She's not dripping--won't be without the lube--but she's plenty wet enough for you to know she's turned on, to have slick to ease the way you drag your nose up through her folds and against her clit, making her buck and whimper.

"Oh, shit," she says feebly as you run the flat of your tongue up the same path, flicking her clit with the tip. "Oh, shit--I--baby--" you start to play with those labia, sucking them into your mouth with a hum, one then the other, tasting and feeling, loving their texture, the delicacy of the skin. Then you have to put your tongue inside her, even if all she feels is the drag of it over the sensitive nerves at the twitching entrance to her sex, have to feel her from the inside, velvet walls gripping you hard.

"I, I," she's saying, but you're not paying attention. You can't help it. Everything's focused to a fine point right where your face and her pussy intersect.

You love this part of her. Every part of her, even when she doesn't--all those parts of her body that are soft instead of taut and slim, all the places where cellulite shows on her thighs and her perfect ass, the way her stomach folds into tender rolls, how the delicate skin of her neck records her age--and you love this perfect pussy, how much of her there is to fill your mouth, how sensitive she is, how you don't even need to touch her twitching clit for her hips to buck and her body to writhe.

You drag your tongue up and circle her clit. She arches like you've touched her with a live wire. You moan into her and nose that little bud; she keens. Her hips start to grind, trying to find a rhythm against your face. It's classic Mel, trying to take control. You shift so you can throw your arm across her hips and pin her down and you feel more than hear the way she gasps, your face still bracketed by her soft thighs. Her hand scrabbles at yours and when you offer it up, she grips it hard.

Love you, you think, trying to paint the words into her with your tongue, to make her feel loved in a way she'll believe. Love you, love you, love you... You have mercy and suck her clit into your mouth. The hand still in your hair yanks hard. It won't take much for her to come: get her worked up far enough and Mel barely needs anything to go over the edge. Someday, maybe, when she feels more okay about this, you'll play with that--play with working her up and up and up, denying her the thing that will tip her over.

You suck on her, rock your mouth against her twice, three times, and she's gone. Her thighs close around your head but you can still hear her wail, loud enough to wake the neighbors, voice cracking, going hoarse halfway. You tilt your head and try a few more experimental sucks, feeling the jump of her hips in answer. She starts babbling somewhere over your head, "Baby, baby, I, oh, oh--" and you've never heard her like that, ever, voice faint and airy and desperate, so you keep going. "Oh God!"

She's over the edge again; you can tell by the way her back arches and strains, and that powerful grip she's still got on your hair. You hum into her and she answers with a broken little sound you want to hear every night for the rest of your life. You give her clit an experimental lick--third time's the charm?--but she lets go of your hair and pushes a little at your forehead, feebly, so you take the hint and move back down to slide your tongue back into her.

She's so delicious, so good. You just want to taste her like this forever, tease her and play with her until she can't take it. She's giving you little moans and whimpers from above, but her body has relaxed down onto the bed, the tension wrenched out of her by two orgasms. You can't help it, you give her clit a little kiss before you let go--it makes her squeak--and let her legs slide off your shoulders.

She looks so good when she's just-fucked, her hair damp at the hairline and starting to frizz a little, her face bright red and glistening, a patchy blush showing on her chest. She has a look on her face, though, that you can't interpret, almost like the person sitting up between her legs wasn't who she expected--like you're a stranger. She's panting, staring at you, green eyes full of all that feeling, and a little knot of doubt starts to tie low in your belly. Did you cross a line?

"C'mere," she croaks. You move up the bed. She reaches up to take your shoulders and pull you into her and she licks a broad stripe up your wet chin--her juices, your saliva--and puts her tongue right in your mouth. It's so sudden, so direct and intense, so Mel that you moan aloud.

She wraps her legs around you to hold you securely against her body. For good measure, she grabs your ass, too, and her nails prickle at the soft flesh. You relax against her. You could spend forever like this, right here, cradled against the abundance of her curves, her breasts pushing against yours, her teeth on your lower lip.

You part for air. The look of bewilderment on her face has eased, mellowing into something that's still a little confused, but tender and open, too. She might close up again soon--that's just Mel, and you understand it; she can't be vulnerable for too long, can't let her weakness show. You know there are stories to explain it, and someday she'll trust you enough to tell you all of it; the same way she trusted you, tonight, to hear what she really felt. To let you help, even a little, and make it better.

"I love you," you tell her. Her gaze stays on yours, trusting. "I love you so much." You peck a damp kiss onto her jaw. "And for the record," you add, sliding into your gruff imitation of her thick South accent, deepening your voice to do it, "this thing--" you drop your hand between her legs and cup her swollen pussy, squeezing; she actually squeals. "Is so pretty, Georgia O'Keeffe would'a begged to paint it."

She laughs aloud. You don't know that you've heard that exact laugh from her before, so free and happy. You turn it into a gasp when you thread your fingers into the coarse curls on her mound and gently tug. "Okay, okay," she says weakly, breathlessly. Obligingly you stop; she follows up with a slap to your ass that makes you squeal and laugh.

Her head rolls back onto the pillows. She looks exhausted, as much by the emotions of the night as by the sex itself. Exhausted, but happy. You lean down and nuzzle her cheek.

"I really love ya," she says, very softly, like a child whispering their secret. Her hand rubs up your back. "Th--thank you." She says it even more timidly, like you might make fun of her, reject the simple gratitude she's offering.

"It's okay," you tell her gently. Her eyes search yours. You see her smile start there, before it comes to her lips, when you tell her, with all the love in your heart, "You're safe."

[janeyseymour]

Tough Philly Girl- pt 2

Summary: Melissa has always been tough. Why? She'll tell you.

Part 1

WC: ~2.2k

“Well,” you sigh as Melissa stares at her feet now that she’s in the hotel room. You’ve since given her a towel to dry off, and she’s sitting across from you at the desk while you sit on your bed. It’s been five minutes since either of you have said anything. “I’m waiting.”

“I know, I know,” she grumbles. “I’m just… nervous.”

“For what?”

“My vulnerability,” she admits quietly. “That I’m going to tell you all of this, and you’ll still leave.”

“Have some faith in me, Schemmenti,” you roll your eyes. “Or don’t. I don’t really care anymore. This better be good.”

“It all started when… when I was little,” she starts.

—

Melissa was four years old. Four years old when this all started. Kristen Marie had just been born, and Melissa Ann was no longer the baby of the family. Her parents were always exhausted and preoccupied with the baby, and all the little redhead wanted was her father to play tea party with her like he usually did.

“Not now, Melissa,” he would say as he cracked open a beer. Being a persistent little girl, she continued to ask. “I said, not now,” he would grit through his teeth.

Melissa shriveled away, tears blooming in her eyes as she made her way to her bedroom. Her father came into her room a few minutes later to chastise her for crying.

“You’re not a baby anymore, and big four year olds don’t cry,” he huffed. That only made her cry harder.

Melissa was used to being the center of attention in her family when it came to gatherings at Nonna’s house. But now nobody gave her a second glance as they all gathered around her mother to fawn over Kristen Marie. 

“Nonna!” the little redhead squeaked, trying to get her grandmother’s attention. She couldn’t get it though, and she immediately burst into tears- despite her willing herself not to cry. She couldn’t help it. Her small body held a lot of big emotions. She stormed off into the other room, grumbling as she went, and before she could stop herself, she threw her doll. It hit the wall with a loud thud before crashing down to the floor.

“Stupid Kristen Marie,” she muttered to herself. She heard footsteps approach, and it was Nonna. The warm loving eyes that were usually looking at her granddaughter were filled with fire though.

“Melissa Ann Schemmenti,” her grandmother barked, and the redhead immediately knew she was in trouble. After quite a stern talking to from Nonna, and a few punishments, Melissa knew her place- she was no longer the baby of the family. She was a big girl now- and big girls don’t cry. 

From that day on, Melissa knew to put her walls up and knew not to shed tears around her family, even with all of the drama. And as she got older, she would only realize that her family held way more drama than she could ever imagine. 

—

At five, Melissa was diagnosed with dyslexia. Her reading skills were never quite up to where her peers were, and she realized the words and letters moved around on the page to the point that she couldn’t make sense of anything. Letters were upside down, they were backwards, they were all over. Her eyesight was tested, but she could see just fine. When they did the different benchmark tests, her score in knowing the sounds for each letter was perfect, but she could hardly identify the looks of the letters. So they had her tested for dyslexia.

She overheard her father and mother talking one night.

“Stupid kid,” her dad grumbled.

“She isn’t stupid,” her mother argued. “She’s just challenged, and she’ll need to hunker down to be like the rest of her peers.

“That shit won’t work,” he groaned. “We’ve just got a dumb kid on our hands. Hopefully Kristen Marie will be the smart one in the family.”

She should’ve been in bed, and had she, she never would’ve known what her father thought of her. But that night, she vowed to herself that she would fight to be able to read, and even excel. 

—

Growing up in an Italian family when you were expected to be a small, stick thin girl (even at a young age) was tough. Nonna fed everybody like it was her job, and Mom made sure her girls ate hearty servings of everything. Melissa kept the weight, while it didn’t matter how much food Kristen Marie was given- she never gained a pound. She was a stick, even at the young age of four.

The redhead was eight when she wanted to join dance classes. Of course. Kristen Marie also wanted to do dance because, “If Melly is, I wanna too!”

So, Mom signed both girls up for dance lessons, despite Dad saying that it was a waste of time and money. The girls went down to the thrift store to find some used dance attire, and then they headed for local dance studio that their own mother went to.

Upon entering, Melissa couldn’t be more excited. She was practically bouncing on her toes with excitement as she walked through thee front door to the studio. That was the first and only time she would enter that place with a grin.

“The little one can dance,” the Russian woman looked over Kristen Marie. She then glanced at the redhead with a look of distain. “She cannot. She is too big.”

“But you have classes for eight year olds,” Mom pointed out.

“She is too big,” the teacher stressed again. Now Mom understood. She gave Melissa a shrug. The redhead acted like she couldn’t care less despite that fact that her chest was aching and her heart was breaking inside of her little body. Her mother marched the older sister out, but left Kristen Marie to attend the lesson. Her younger sister quit two weeks later. 

—

At nine, Melissa’s parents got divorced. She took it hard. But big girls don’t cry. So she didn’t mourn her parents’ marriage ending. And with the divorce went the house. That meant moving into two different apartment complexes and being shuffled from one place to the other every other week.

Her parents weren’t home as often, and she rarely saw either of them. She was forced to take care of Kristen Marie more and more often. Her comfort food was bread and butter with cinnamon.

—

At ten, she realized if she didn’t learn how to cook, she and Kristen Marie would starve- or survive off of bread, butter, and cinnamon. So Melissa taught herself how to cook. It was easy, in all actuality. The redhead had watched Nonna cook for the longest time. Quickly, Melissa and Kristen Marie were eating well again- so long as Mom and Dad were stocking up on food. She would make sure the two of them were fed properly- and thus began her love of cooking.

—

When Melissa was fifteen, she started dating. The boys in her school had started to take notice to the fact that she had quite a body for a young thing. Repeatedly, she would be pressured into various activities that she did not particularly want to partake in. She never let it get to her though. She allowed herself to be used, abused- she saw Mom handle it, so she could too. She was a Schemmenti after all. 

With one particular boyfriend, he would constantly point out all of her quirks- things she didn’t even realize she did until he pointed it out.

“Jesus, Mel,” the teen rolled his eyes.

“What?” she asked.

“Can you stop doing that?”

“Doing what?” she glared at him.

“That.” He pointed to the way that her knee was bouncing incessantly, and she was playing with the fraying ends of her denim jacket.

“I’m not doing anything,” she sighs.

“All I’m trying to do is hold you, but you can’t keep your damned body still!”

“Sorry,” she mumbled. It took everything in her to stay still for the rest of the night. She fought every instinct in her body, every itchy feeling, to sit still 

(You don’t mind that she can never sit still. Usually, you’re bouncing right along next to her and are playing with her hands so the two of you can focus together. If that doesn’t work, the two of you go for a walk.)

The redhead was telling a story, but she lost track of where she had started off and was now off on a tangent about god knows what.

“Can you make your point already?”

“I’m getting there!” She scrunches her nose while she tries to figure out what made her start talking about cooking pasta the right way in the first place (it was the idea of feminism).

(You love when she does this. She gets so passionate about everything that she’s talking about, and it makes you grin when she finally figures out where her story was headed in the first place.)

“Why do you constantly mumble to yourself?” he rolled his eyes once again at her.

“What?” she breathed as she made dinner for herself, her boyfriend, and her younger sister that night. She mutters a few things under her breath as she stirs the contents in the sauce pan.

“Like that!”

“I-” Her face turned a bright shade of red. “I don’t know. I just- have to get my thoughts out, and sometimes it helps if I say what I’m doing so I stay focused.”

“You’re so weird.”

(You don’t mind when she does any of this. You know it helps her stay on task, and her voice mesmerizes you anyway, so the more you get to hear it, the better.)

For the rest of that relationship, she fought to hold back those little stims.

Two months later, she would be tested for ADHD and come back positive. 

—

Melissa and Joe had married when she was young. It was foolish love, but it was love nonetheless. About a year in, they began to have issues. 

She suggested couples counseling because she was going to fight for this marriage- leave it to Melissa to always fight the fight. 

Joe flat out refused. He came clean and told her that he was sleeping with Jolene, and that he was in love with Jolene. 

Melissa had the divorce papers the next day. She also had a good amount of gasoline.

Barbara was there to pick up the pieces- to convince the redhead to continue on with life and to be the badass woman that Melissa Schemmenti was- is. 

—

Nonna got sick. And Kristen Marie ran.

“It’s too hard for me to see her like that, Melissa!” her younger sister had yelled at her before turning on her heel and leaving.

So Melissa stayed. She took care of Nonna until her last days. She stayed right there with her family.

And then at the funeral, her sister showed up with a dish that would quite literally end up in flames. Melissa fought that fight. Kristen Marie had gone too far. First, leaving when it got too hard- not very Schemmenti-like if you asked the redhead. And then she had the audacity to show up at the funeral with her beloved Nonna’s signature dish- and it was wrong. 

She wouldn’t speak to her sister again until their paths crossed through the schools. And even then, she fought that pretty hard. And then, when they had to… the Schemmenti sisters would join forces again and fight the fight together.

—

Gary was a joke. But she still fought that fight. She lost.

—

And then you came around. You shook up her whole world and changed her life. She fought herself and her feelings for you for about six months before you finally said something to her. She fought the different stims that had slowly made their way back into her life- convinced that you would leave her or think she was weird for always having to bounce her leg, never being able to sit still.

Slowly, with a lot of reassurance from you, you told her to stop fighting it all. Stop fighting against herself and the things that made her who she was. So she did, and the two of you fell absolutely head over heels in love.

—

“And now you’re trying to leave me,” Melissa whispers. “And I don’t want that. So, I’m fighting for you. I don’t want you to be the one that got away.”

You stare at her for quite some time. It makes sense why she was always so guarded now. Her life was tough, from the start. You had no idea.

“Mel,” you sigh softly.

“Please,” her voice cracks just slightly, and she has tears welled up in her eyes. “Please let me fight for you. This is one fight I actually want.”

This is the most emotion you’ve ever seen from your girlfriend, and you honestly hate seeing it. It’s shattering your heart in your chest.

You stand from your bed and make your way over to the chair she’s sitting in before wrapping your arms around her gently.

The dam breaks, and your girlfriend softly weeps into your chest. “Please don’t go. Please.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” you promise her gently. “I’m fighting for you, my tough Philly girl.”