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#never written her so bear with me sos
scribare-archive · 7 months
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never felt safe before, not like she had with him over the last couple of weeks. couldn't see his face, didn't even know his name, but there was a part of her that longed for these silent moments that came when sharing this space. perhaps in reality, in the real world, her body wasn't safe, but her mind was. this place they had together, it was safe & she craved these moments with him, no matter how brief they might be. hint of a smile quirk at the corner of lips, slouching back on a makebelieve couch : one leg cross over other. interesting, who he was in all of this, how he fit into it all and how it was still work, still on a mission ( hard habit to kick if she is being honest. ) but it was this too.     ❝   want to tell me about it ?   ❞
@prythaei : if i have to think about one more thing today, my head will explode.
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smolmakerel · 9 months
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Life after the Ghostface killings in New York City was somewhat peaceful. As peaceful as it could be with the entire internet hounding you that you were going to end up becoming a serial killer like your dad.
If Sam had it her way, she would ban the internet. Because, honestly? Most of them were a bunch of incels (whatever that even meant. Sam overheard Mindy saying Richie was an incel and assumed it to mean a shitty person - which, true) who needed a positive social life.
And incels were why Sam usually stayed inside nowadays, because she didn't want to deal with shitty people trying to kill her. Again. For the third time.
Literally isolating herself led to the worst possible outcome.
For Tara.
"Um, Sam?"
Sam didn't bother putting the impact driver in her hand down. She whipped around and grinned at her bemused and annoyed sister coming into the living room.
Tara eyed the power tool in Sam's hand, the few screws poking out of her teeth, and the halfway-put-together hammock limp on the floor.
"Is there a reason why you're drilling holes in the wall?" Tara deadpanned, pulling her arms tight across her chest.
Sam looked down at the hammock as if it was obvious. It was kind of obvious. No, it was really obvious. The hammock was still half drilled into the wall and patiently waiting to be stuck across the room to stretch out. She opened her mouth to let the screws fall into her palm.
"I'm hanging a hammock."
"Why?"
"Because?"
"At 2 in the morning?" Sam went to open her mouth to defend herself, but Tara quickly narrowed her eyes and spoke up again. "When I have a final worth 40% of my grade at 9 in the morning?"
Sam slowly closed her jaw.
Tara held her angry glare for exactly 10 seconds before her shoulders dropped as she sighed. She trudged to the chair and curled up in it, patiently watching Sam watching her. Sam perked up at the silent "go on" from her sister.
"It was supposed to be a surprise for you," Sam admitted. She began to stretch the hammock to the other wall and used her stud finder on the wall. She sighed. "I guess I lost track of time."
Tara raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "So you haven't eaten all day?"
Sam laughed at that, nearly slipping and drilling her hand to the wall. Tara jolted at that but calmed down once Sam continued to laugh.
"That's my line, Tara." Sam tugged on the newly drilled hammock and sighed once she was satisfied it wasn't coming down. "Do you like it?"
"I think I'd like it even more if I didn't have to wake up during the installation."
Ok. Fine. Whatever.
Sam dramatically rolled her eyes and discarded the impact driver and stud finder on the half of the couch the hammock didn't cover. She flopped onto the hammock with a groan, hands behind her head.
"I'll just use it then," Sam teased with her eyes closed, "since someone doesn't appreciate honest work."
She could feel the side eye Tara was giving her, and she couldn't help but feel slightly panicked.
Did Tara really not like the gift? Was it over the top? Did it remind Tara too much of... before?
Before Sam could mentally degrade herself about how she should've known better than to burden Tara with this gift, the hammock rocked.
Sam snapped her eyes open at the tipping of the hammock and immediately threw her foot down to the floor for stability. Tara, from Sam's sudden movement, fell the rest of the way into the hammock.
Tara wriggled around, trying to get comfortable, and Sam laid as still as she could. As soon as Tara relaxed, almost completely on top of her older sister, Sam wrapped her arms around Tara and squeezed.
"Gotcha!" Sam said with a kiss to the crown of her head.
Tara grumbled, exhausted.
It was quiet after that. Sam rubbed soothing circles into Tara's back and hummed whatever song came to mind.
"Sammy?" Tara's tired voice slurred into Sam's shoulder. Sam hummed. "I love it; thank you so, so much. I feel like a kid again."
Sam swallowed. Wow. No one had ever really shown appreciation for the things she gave them. To hear how much Tara loved it made Sam love the gift too.
"It's nothing," Sam tried to downplay how happy she was, but the pitch in her voice gave it away.
Tara nuzzled deeper into her sister's bodywarmth, and Sam reached out to snag the wooly blanket from the couch beneath the hammock and toss it over them. Humming, Tara fully relaxed.
"Dos oruguitas," Sam softly sang, tucking Tara's hair behind her ear, "enamoradas.¹"
"Pasan sus noches," Tara mumbled, not even bothering to try and sing right now, "y madrugadas.²"
Sam snorted. Her foot began to lightly kick against the ground to sway the hammock.
The whir of the heater drowned out the honking outside of people rushing to get home and out of the way of the incoming snow storm.
Tara's shoulders hitched, drawing Sam's attention to them. Her eyes went wide when warm tears began to soak her shirt collar.
"Tara? Mi mariposa, ¿qué ocurre?" Sam lifted the two of them up enough so she could wipe away the tears flowing down Tara's cheeks. Each tear was a punch to the gut, and Sam wanted nothing more than to lightly assault whatever made Tara cry. "¿Estás bien?³"
Tara shook her head. "No es nada.⁴ I was thinking about our backyard. We used to do this all the time." She laughed wetly, full of tears. "I didn't know how much I missed it until now."
So... Sam needed to lightly assault herself. Got it.
At least she could make up for all of those afternoon naps in their backyard hammock she missed now.
"Me too," Sam agreed with a smile. She cupped Tara's face and kissed her forehead, and Tara sank into the action with a tired sigh. "Now -" Sam pulled back with a mock stern glare -"you're going back to sleep. You have your final in the morning. Why are you even awake right now?"
"What? You're the one that -"
"Shh, less talking more sleeping."
Tara huffed, but it sounded suspiciously like muffled laughter.
Sam pulled Tara back down and continued to rub her back and push her foot to move the hammock. The soothing motions combined with Sam's warmth lulled Tara into an easy sleep.
But Sam never stopped rocking her foot. She pulled the blanket higher over both of them before hugging her sister.
With Tara now sleeping, Sam silently dissolved into a mess of tears. She was glad Tara wasn't seeing this moment of weakness from her. What would she think of Sam if she knew Sam cried so easily over her?
"Te amo, Tara," she said as she gathered Tara as close as she could, until the world shifted and the puzzle completed. She was whole again. "Te amo mucho, mi corazón.⁵"
Sam closed her eyes and fell asleep with her entire world in her arms.
— ● — ○ — ● — ○ —
1: Two little caterpillars in love
2: They spend their nights and early mornings
3: My butterfly, what's going on? Are you ok?
4: It's nothing.
5: I love you, Tara. I love you so much, my heart.
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steelycunt · 1 year
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an um. snippet. from me. for the first time since. july :-)
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firendgold · 10 months
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If you're still doing the choose violence ask game: 2 (👀), 9, 10, 22 ?
I got such a rush from finally answering the first ask that I'm doing this for as long as people send me questions. So here we go again!
2. a compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom
anon, I'm at work. I'm seeing this at work. :'D
Okay, serious face. Albus Dumbledore is probably my fave if I have to choose between him and Harry on this blog. I just have to figure out why he would never...
Bottom. Albus would never, I'm sorry. He won't. He can't. Like, maybe when he was having his whirlwind summer romance with Gellert, he bottomed every single time they fucked because he was so in love and this was his equal and his partner and so what if he was a little rough and distant sometimes in the bedroom, and always wanted to top and tug his hair and hiss out orders? This was The Man The Universe Had Crafted For Him, and he would absolutely bottom for him every time... and then the summer of 1899 ends. And Ariana dies. And Aberforth breaks Albus' nose. And Gellert fucks off to go be a fascist.
And Albus, alone and heartbroken, resolves to never trust someone that completely again, never love someone that same way, and never let anyone get into a position of power over him where they might be able to use his knowledge and talents for ill. That means physically, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically... carnally. So he has sex with plenty of other people, and even falls in love with a few of them, but he is in control at all times. He never bottoms again.
That's all I've got for that one.
9. worst part of canon
So the first answer that came to mind is posted here, but for fairness' sake I'll try to come up with another worst thing. (That's not related to ships, because I'm trying really hard not to be THAT violent on the violence ask game.)
I think... that if That Woman was going to introduce international schools, students and characters in the middle book of the series, she should have done more with them than having them vanish after Goblet of Fire, only to come back for either fake romantic tension and one line of exposition about the Hitler allegory Dark Lord of the Before-Times (Krum, Deathly Hallows) or to be married off to a Weasley for an aesop of It's Not About His Looks Now That They're Jacked Up (Fleur, Half-Blood Prince). I'm not saying Fleur and Viktor HAD to be best buddies forever with Harry, but it is weird that they have this unique bond that no other young students have had with each other in hundreds of years, they even lost one of their fellow champions, Dumbledore gives this very moving speech about remaining connected and not letting darkness and prejudice sever new ties, and then... nothing. No side adventures in France or wherever Durmstrang is, no communication from either side, nothing.
Feels like a huge letdown in hindsight.
10. worst part of fanon
Oh, no. That's not fair. There's just so many.
If I had to consolidate what I currently don't like about the HP fandom/fanon into a few lines, I think I would say that I hate the pureblood/Dark side apologism. I do believe in nuance in characters. I do believe redemption and/or walking different paths is an important theme in Harry Potter, and I think it's fascinating to explore that with any and every character you can think of, even characters I may not personally like. But I really, really hate the way the fandom has taken that and twisted it into this idea that we were sold a lie at the start: that the British magical government was fine the way it was, and so was the society around it; that Dark magic Isn't All That Bad, Really, and there are actually Good and non-prejudiced things about a few rich bitches passing down their knowledge and secrets and slurs for generations within the Family, and keeping the Family "Pure" is cool actually, and none of this has any relation to real life ideas about miscegenation and classism and racism and eugenics, what are you talking about?
It's just so worrying. As a minority, when I see people on tumblr/twitter/AO3 gleefully agreeing that we need to eat the rich and fix society and eradicate all the horrid -isms and -archys ruining all our lives, then watch them turn around and write a 200k epic where Dumbledore was the evil one for locking the Horcrux books away and championing marginalized members of society, Hermione is just uppity for wanting to make necessary changes to the darker parts of magical society that That Woman was literally pointing out for a reason, and Tom Riddle is only bad because he took the good segregationist pureblood ideas and added murder to them... and when that fic gets thousands of comments agreeing with them full stop with no examination of any of that... it makes me anxious, at a minimum. The same thing is happening now with Grindelwald now that he's actually a figure on the screen and not just some dude mentioned a few times in the book series: same apologism, same justification of atrocities, same good-guy-blame-games, same blorbofication even.
On the one hand... fiction doesn't always directly reflect or affect reality. On the other... this unironic pro-pureblood meta is a pervasive concept that has popped up in thousands of fics written by thousands of fanfic writers. It's happened for years, and it keeps happening, and I see very few fans speaking out against it or even acknowledging it as a problem. So that makes me ask myself, who actually is willing and able to examine the injustices of our society and build a better imaginary society through the lens of HP fanfiction, and who's okay with the prejudice in the HP world as long as it's coming from the faves they're attracted to?
22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores
Happily, this is a harder question to answer because I've been finding so many like minds in the past 5 years who go feral over the same 20 HP scenes as I do. ^^ But give me a sec, I'll think of something.
...
Okay. Got it.
In order to answer this question, I have to go back to the first time I, young teenager, avid reader, recent reader of the HP series once book 5 was out, realized that Harry and Dumbledore had a much deeper relationship than just headmaster and student. The thing that made me latch on to them and project like crazy, basically.
It's the scene in Goblet of Fire chapter 36 where Harry has been rescued from Fake Moody and he's in Dumbledore's office with Dumbledore and Sirius. Dumbledore asks Harry to relay everything that happened to him once he touched the Portkey in the maze—and immediately Sirius tries to protect Harry from having to relive it now, so soon after it's happened. And then this scene happens.
Dumbledore stopped talking. He sat down opposite Harry, behind his desk. He was looking at Harry, who avoided his eyes. Dumbledore was going to question him. He was going to make Harry relive everything. “I need to know what happened after you touched the Portkey in the maze, Harry,” said Dumbledore. “We can leave that till morning, can’t we, Dumbledore?” said Sirius harshly. He had put a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Let him have a sleep. Let him rest.” Harry felt a rush of gratitude toward Sirius, but Dumbledore took no notice of Sirius’s words. He leaned forward toward Harry. Very unwillingly, Harry raised his head and looked into those blue eyes. “If I thought I could help you,” Dumbledore said gently, “by putting you into an enchanted sleep and allowing you to postpone the moment when you would have to think about what has happened tonight, I would do it. But I know better. Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it. You have shown bravery beyond anything I could have expected of you. I ask you to demonstrate your courage one more time. I ask you to tell us what happened.” The phoenix let out one soft, quavering note. It shivered in the air, and Harry felt as though a drop of hot liquid had slipped down his throat into his stomach, warming him, and strengthening him. He took a deep breath and began to tell them. As he spoke, visions of everything that had passed that night seemed to rise before his eyes; he saw the sparkling surface of the potion that had revived Voldemort; he saw the Death Eaters Apparating between the graves around them; he saw Cedric’s body, lying on the ground beside the cup. Once or twice, Sirius made a noise as though about to say something, his hand still tight on Harry’s shoulder, but Dumbledore raised his hand to stop him, and Harry was glad of this, because it was easier to keep going now he had started. It was even a relief; he felt almost as though something poisonous were being extracted from him. It was costing him every bit of determination he had to keep talking, yet he sensed that once he had finished, he would feel better.
This is one of the best scenes in the entire book, the entire series. It completely refutes the fanon Dumbledore who is often cold, cruel, inflexible and unrelenting in his quest for whatever the author wants him to be inflexible and cruel about at the time. It shows that Dumbledore, the real Albus Dumbledore, is one of the few people who understands what Harry needs and is able to provide it to him, even when others who also care for Harry would rather protect him or shield him from what he needs.
Kid me was particularly taken by how gentle Dumbledore is with Harry here. It made me look back and see how in some ways this scene, this closeness, is the culmination of all the times they've met and spoken before.
(You can imagine how painful it was reading Order of the Phoenix right after this.)
But yeah, that's probably one of my favorite scenes that other people ignore or haven't talked about/drawn/written about much. Which is ironic, because the scene right after that where Harry talks about Voldemort taking his blood and Dumbledore's eyes do the triumphant "lol Voldemort just fucked up" gleam is probably one of THE most talked-about scenes in the fandom (even though to this fucking day in 2023 people still don't realize what the gleam meant, when even That Woman has clarified what it meant in INTERVIEWS).
...And for me, safely at the end of the questions, that's all she wrote.
#fireandgoldposts#thanks for the ask!#choose violence ask game#Albus Dumbledore#not y'all making me put more gr*ndeld*re on this blog :') I forgive you tho#it's my own fault for having that headcanon. and to think I didn't think I'd be able to answer that question#I'm poking a real bear by finally talking about how much I hate the pureblood politics/pureblood supremacy/misunderstood bad guys trifecta#another thing that was perhaps interesting 20 years ago when people first started doing it but is now stale and infuriating#since it's now seen as fact and not fiction#the fiction of fiction even#I can't believe I didn't just write ''the worst part of fanon is every independent!Harry/manipulative!Dumbledore fanfic ever written#that's growth for me#oh god the worst part about no expanded roles for Fleur and Krum is that most fans only give Fleur an extended role#when they're SHIPPING HER WITH HARRY as some kind of ''ooh foreign beauty'' thing where he naturally resists her allure#and oh my god here comes the nausea again because flowerpot is another ship that's been done to death the very same way haphne/wolfstar has#and I love Krum/Hermione as much as the next person but fanon Krum is like NEVER allowed to move on from Hermione unless he's gay/bi#which is VERY rare to see. like please give me Harry/Krum fanfic recs if you have them#or Ron/Krum because that is so narratively satisfying#honorable mention for question 22 would probably go to the scene where Hermione and Ron try to get Harry to go to Dumbledore in year 5#after they find out what Umbridge is doing to him in detention and Harry just. CAN'T. properly explain why he doesn't want to go#but he's thinking about how Dumbledore has ''ignored him since last June'' and it's one of the few times we see him acknowledge that hurts#he mentions it several times throughout the book in his thoughts but that's one of the first times he refuses help from Albus#even though Albus would help him in a heartbeat oh my GOD it's been like 20 years since that book came out and I'm still feral about those#Goblet of Fire#Fleur Delacour#Viktor Krum#pureblood propaganda#and how much I am anti-that lmao#not fireandgold#oh my god having to reformat this every 3 hours because the bolds and italics won't stick is a fucking NIGHTMARE
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heartinhands · 1 year
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@spirestar medraut & haurchefant (i'm subjecting u to wol posting)
Their eyes are a little unfocused as they sit--not that this is especially unusual for them, gaze always swimming in unfocused directions, always seeing a little past everyone. But her smile is still warm as she tugs the blanket over her shoulders, the fire already seeping in past her cold skin and to chilled bones. "Thanks," they say, or really muse, the word somehow warmer than the fireplace before them, "I didn't see the squall coming up on me until it was too late." Adjusting to Coerthian weather had been difficult for the Warrior, being far more used to warmer climates. "I might have perished were it not for your keen eye." It was stupid, travelling alone in the wilderness when they were so unused to blizzards, but Medraut had wanted to explore a little bit--at least just a little bit.
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camscendants · 2 years
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That Jaiden Animations video about her being aroace really messes with me cause it’s way too relatable so it just adds another layer of confusion to me
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demilypyro · 6 months
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So I've seen a few too many people on twitter talking about The Kiss Scene from the new Scott Pilgrim anime. People saying it's fetishistic and indulgent, people calling it male gazey, etc. And while the kiss itself is certainly a bit exaggerated, I felt like writing a bit about why I disagree, and why context is important, like it always is. But it basically turned into an extended analysis on the metatextual treatment of Roxie Richter. So bear with me. It's a long post.
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What really matters about this scene is not the kiss itself, but what precedes it. Not even just the fight scene just before it, but what precedes the whole anime series, really. And that's the Scott Pilgrim comic book, and the live action movie. Because in both, Roxie is a punchline.
She's a joke. Her character starts and ends with "one of the exes is actually a girl, I bet you didn't expect that." Jokes are made about Ramona's latent bisexuality, the movie especially treating it as funny and absurd, and her validity as a romantic interest is entirely written off by Ramona as being "just a phase." There's a fight scene, she's defeated by a man giving her an orgasm which implicitly calls her sexuality into question (come on), and the movie just moves on. It sucks. It really, really sucks.
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The comic fares a little better. It never veers into outright homophobia like the movie does, and while the line about Ramona having gone through a phase remains, Roxie actually gets one over on Scott when Ramona briefly gets back with Roxie. But Roxie is still only barely a character. Like all the other evil exes, she's just a stepping stone towards the male protagonist's development. She barely even gets any screentime before she's defeated by Scott's "power of love." But Roxie stands out, since she's the only villain who is queer, or at least had been confirmed queer at that point (hi Todd). In a series that champions multiple gay men in the supporting cast, the single undeniable lesbian in the story is a villain. She's labeled as evil, made fun of, pushed aside in favor of the men, and then discarded. Her screentime was never about her, or her feelings for Ramona. It was about the straight, male protagonist needing to overcome her. And that was Roxie Richter. An unfortunate victim of the 2010s.
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Fast forward to current year, and the new anime series is announced. Everybody sits down to watch the new series expecting another retelling of the same story, and.... hang on, that straight male protagonist I mentioned just died in the first episode. And now it's humanizing the villains from the original story. And there's Roxie, introduced alongside the other evil exes in the second episode, and she's being played entirely straight, without a punchline in sight. No jokes are made about her gender, no questions are made of her validity as one of Ramona's romantic interests. The narrative considers her important. In one episode, she already gets more respect than she did in either of the previous iterations of Scott Pilgrim. And this isn't even her focus episode yet... which happens to be the very next one.
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The anime series goes to great lengths to flesh out the original story's villains and to have Ramona reconcile with them. And I don't think it's a coincidence that Roxie gets to go first. While Matthew Patel gets his development in episode 2, Roxie is the first to directly confront Ramona, now our main protagonist. This is notable too because it's the only time the exes are encountered out of order. Roxie is supposed to be number 4, but she's first in line, and later on you realize that she's the only one who's out of sequence. She's the one who sets the precedent for the villains being redeemed. She's the most important character for Ramona to reconcile with.
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What follows is probably the most extensive, elaborate 1 on 1 fight scene in the whole show. Roxie fights like a wounded animal, her motions are desperate and pained. Ramona can only barely fight back against her onslaught. Different set-pieces fly by at breakneck speed as Roxie relentlessly lays her feelings at Ramona's feet through her attacks and her distraught shouts. And unlike the comic or the movie, Ramona acknowledges them, and sincerely apologizes. And the two end up just laying there, exhausted, reminiscing about when they were together.
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Only after this, after all of this, does the kiss scene happen. Roxie has been vindicated, she has reconciled with the person who hurt her, the narrative has deemed that her anger is justified and has redeemed her character. And she gets her victory lap by making the nearest other hot girl question her heterosexuality, sharing a sloppy kiss with her as the music triumphantly crescendos.
It's... a little self-congratulatory, honestly. But it's good. It's redemption for a character who had been mistreated for over a decade. And she punctuates the moment by being very, very gay where everyone can see it, no men anywhere in sight. Because this is her moment. And then she leaves the plot, on her own accord this time, while humming the hampster dance. What a legend. How could anything be wrong with this.
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vanderilnde · 5 days
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bury me beneath the basswood tree
pairing: ghost/soap/reader [12k]
rating: 18+ only. minors don’t interact.
tags: non-con sex, kidnapping, stockholm syndrome, size kink, forced fellatio, forced cunnilingus, impact play, brief watersports, double penetration in two holes, forced breeding, implied hybrid/shifter au
Needing time away from her humdrum life at home, she ventures into the woodland for respite. Little does she know, straying into that cabin in the woods will be the worst—or best—decision she’ll ever make. Depending on who you ask.
all my thanks to @/ohbo-ohno! thank you for being the best beta reader and sitting through my abhorrent typos <3
AO3 MIRROR
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The mountain’s breadth of trees and foliage are written with prose. 
It’s repetitive. Mind-numbing. She’s already passed this necrosed tree stump five times before. On the sixth circle, she treks through the undergrowth like it’s curdled milk, the tiny scythes of branches whispering against her arms and slicing her open the same way thumbs tear into oranges. 
Dehydration crystallises like sediment in her mouth. It makes her bones heavy, bending against her flesh as if they’re groceries about to tear through a plastic bag. The balls of her feet are calcified, her thighs chafed. They rub against her threadbare jeans the same way a match reacts with red phosphorus to produce a flame. It burns, and so do her muscles. They feel moth-eaten and spent. Hung out to dry. 
The stench of damp soil and sugar maple impairs her like an opiate. The peal of idle birdsongs grate against her ears. She’s sick of it—she’s been here for three days—and already, she’s sick of it. 
She tries her phone again. It’s unresponsive, no signal. She unfurls her map but it’s mottled with rainwater and mud. Her lungs feel dry, pruney, as the dew drops slipping off fern plants seem to replicate the tears thawing in her eyes. 
Evening mist hangs over the ground, and the sky turns red-bottomed as it progresses into nightfall. It’s as if the mountain is sentient. Nocturnal. Stirring from a torpor once the sun sets and awakening all that lives within it. 
A sob wracks her ribs. It has the same effect of a bullet, ricocheting. She keeps moving even though she doesn’t know where she’s going. She believes that should she continue walking, nothing will be able to catch her. Not the spindly tree branches that take the shape of arms or serpentine shrubbery. She won’t give the mountain any time to fossilise her, if only she keeps moving.  
Her movements are clumsy though. Her eyesight is hindered by panicked tears, turning everything shapeless and blurry. She keeps tripping and skinning her knees like the hide of a pomegranate, her flesh peeling back to show the red pulp of her innards. 
It was a rashly undertaken lapse of judgement that brought her here. To a conscious mountain that lives and breathes and feels her fear. It was her heart, empty, carved out and replaced by brutal loneliness. Her friends back home are heedless and her parents are never satisfied with what she does. She figured that if none of them would listen, the woodlands would. 
And listen, they did.
When she cries out, the wind howls. When she changes her direction, pivoting on her heel, the soil rumbles. She sees things—a shadow spotting her vision, not composed of matter—peeking from behind a tree trunk before quickly slipping away. She witlessly calls out, asking if anyone’s there, and is met with the forest's silent presentiment. She feels the stark pressure of piercing eyes sprawling down her dewy neck, sweeping over her body. 
The longer she spends lost, the more she sinks into Appalachia.
It pulls her down like molasses. Like she’s an innocent fly trapped in glue. Soon, she knows there’s no hope. She knows her scent is written into the bark of trees—supple, sugary. A treat for whichever predator finds her first. 
A brown bear, swinging its claws at her until her entrails are threadbare and striated. A snake, injecting venom in her blood. A bobcat if she’s lucky. It would be a quick death—sinking its loose jowls into either side of her neck until it snaps and she goes slack. 
She’s apt to let go. She’s keen to yield to the alluring call of the woodland to let go, to fall to the forest floor and sit there until she rots. Until the roots worm into her breathing wounds and branches start growing out of her mouth. The urge to stop moving and become one with the mountain is suddenly cogent, leaves no margin of doubt. It comes with the promise of eternal respite and divine mercy. She’s about to find a cliff to jump off of, but before she can, something catches her attention. 
A plume of smoke curling in the air. 
Whorls of slate-grey soot thinning and disappearing into the sky. She looks for the source and follows it blindly, shouldering past pine needles and hawthorn and all but sobbing as a cabin comes into view. It’s made of wood and the tufts of wildflower that sprout from its thin fissures. It looks neglected and eaten by the elements. Its vaulted roof is stained by the off-white assault of bird droppings, discoloured by acid rain. Some of the windows look covered with dewy newspaper, but still, she knows it can’t be vacant. The smoke undulating from the chimney tells her that.
She staggers onto the porch. Her fist rasps against the door, clippings of wood burying itself into her skinned knuckles as she wildly knocks. Silence. Not even the leaves flutter against each other. Fleetingly, a stint of panic seizes her. What if nobody’s home? But she’s twisting the knob and pushing herself inside anyway, dropping her bag to the floor with a thump, stepping inside.
The cabin makes for a liminal space, smelling of sawdust and pine. There’s a layer of dust on every surface, making the air thick. All the furniture is carved from wood and a couple taxidermied deers are mantled above the stone fireplace, looking more like warnings than decoration. The pelt of a black bear is unfurled across the floor, and a few trinkets are strewn around—a bookshelf of spine-cracked novels, dead plants hanging from the ceiling beams. A mountain of used cigarettes, but strangely, no ashtray. 
There’s everything but picture frames. Nothing she can use to humanise the cabin nor the people supposedly living in it.
She guides herself to the kitchen by feeling the walls. There’s a piped stove in the corner and cast iron tools hanging above the counter. Her stomach bubbles, and immediately, she starts scouring for food. 
There’s three barrels by the door, and upon popping them open, the stench of brine sprays her in the face. It’s fish with a crust of salt, preserved. In the other barrel is meat buried in shelled corn, and fermented poultry in the last barrel. 
It’s all raw and bloody. She steps back, gagging, turning her attention to the shelves that line the faraway wall. Jars of pickled cucumber and carrots. Garlic braids hanging from the edge. Rusty milk churns nestled in the corner. 
There’s a galvanised tub full of ice on the floor. She digs through it and almost moans at the jars of jam. She untwists one, sticks her fingers in it, and wipes it clean with her tongue and teeth. It’s tart and tangy but it’s food, sticking to the walls of her stomach, satiating her. And once she starts she can’t stop. She goes back to the wall and finds a stained jar, fishing out a handful of fermented cabbage, stuffing it in her mouth, her face tightly puckering at the sharp sourness.
The juice of the food goes spilling past her lips, sluicing down her chest. It sticks to the chasm between her tits and mixes with sweat, making her shirt cling to her skin, revealing the barest outline of her nipples. She’s so engrossed in keeling over the counter and stuffing her face that she doesn’t even notice the pointed shift in atmosphere. The deer outside stopping their rutting, the trill of birds ceasing. The leaves stilling, as if holding their breaths to hide. Thick, silvery clouds nestling together and eclipsing the sun, casting a thin overcast over the woodland, darkening the already-dim surroundings. 
She’s too preoccupied to recognise the tell-tale croak of the door swinging open. It’s tinny, but bullied by the sound of her smacking on marinated cabbage. She doesn’t notice the dull, throbbing footfalls. Pays no heed to the stench of blood invading her senses because she believes it’s coming from her dry, leathery lips that split open as she widens her mouth to fit the cabbage inside.
It’s only when the room darkens, a box-shaped shadow sweeping over her vision, does her blood run cold. She freezes with a handful of vegetable raised halfway to her lips, the brine rolling off a cabbage leaf like it’s an awning, dropping to the floor—drip, drip, drip—the rapid succession of shedding liquid hitting the floor sounds similar to the beating of her heart against her fickle, feeble ribs. 
The saline spray in her mouth gets soaked up by her tongue, making it puffy, too big for her mouth. She turns around clemently—treating the shadow like a wild animal—no sudden movements. She goes rigid. 
It can’t be human. 
It’s huge. Bigger than anything she’s ever seen before. Sweeping shoulders, broad thighs. Its neck is bent uncannily because it’s too big to fit in the doorway. Its chest rises heavily like a bull.
She tries to find a face, and when she does, the blood is drained from her.
It just makes her feel… uncomfortable. Its face is the poor imitation of a human, as if someone tried drawing one from memory but scarcely failed. Failed to capture the humanity, the animation, leaving it looking like a half-convincing resemblance. Its tapetum lucidum glows yellow, burning in the thin mist of moonlight that penetrates the newspaper sticking to the windows. 
It stares blankly at her. The hair on her arms stick up, a bead of sweat slices down her neck. 
“I’m sorry…”
The creature raises an arm and pulls on a hanging bead-chain, tugging on the light, which is simply a naked bulb in the middle of the kitchen. The kindle is weak but does more than the delicate moonlight. Just barely illuminates its face. His face.
She tries not to let her fear show. Tries not to preen under his depthless eyes, the mean twine of his lips. His hair that seems to have been shaved too closely to his scalp, if the nicks and small cuts on the shells of his ears are anything to go by. 
He grumbles an idle prusten. He rolls his elbows back—his shoulder blades unfurling like folded wings—and twists his thick neck.
“What’re you doin’ in my home?”
“I’m so sorry,” she repeats, her words stifled around a wad of cabbage. “I– I’ve been lost for three days. I came up for a hike but lost my way and I saw your cabin and I’m sorry, but I’m just so hungry and–”
A deep, guttural voice peals from the living room. 
“Simon!” It says. “Where should I chuck the deer? It’s too big for the livin’ room.”
The aforementioned Simon, she presumes, doesn’t answer the unobserved voice. He keeps his eyes on her, face twisted into a puckered, mean mug.
A string of footsteps precede the face that appears behind Simon’s shoulder. A rounder, ruddier face. A salt-and-pepper stubble and eyes so blue they glow like bioluminescence. 
Johnny acts surprised as if Simon hadn’t smelled her from miles away. Her honeyed scent roiling off of her, curling into the air and thinning between the trees. Her sweat pooling in the gusset of her panties, raw and pungent. 
He’s purposely coy. It’s written into the furrow of his brows and the caper of his cupid lips but the girl is too disoriented to catch on. She looks at him and beseeches, but almost faints at the deer hanging limply over his shoulder. He holds it like it weighs nothing—a sack of sprouting potatoes.
He coos. “Who’s this?”
“Lost bird,” Simon grunts. “Found her diggin’ through our food.”
“Oh, poor lassie,” Johnny hums. More so to Simon than the girl, which makes her squirm. “She didnae mean any harm, Simon. She’s just hungry… tha’ right, lass? Are ye hurt?”
She stutters out a nod, gesturing to how her jeans cling to her knees, sun-bleached and darkened with blood. She rolls her shirt over her ribcage, showing them her wounded torso. How her skin sticks to her bones.
Johnny bristles. 
“The lass needs a place to stay, Simon,” he whispers. “And she’s hurt. Bleeding.”
They talk of her as if she’s advertised merchandise in a magazine catalogue. She squirms.
Simon turns to look at her. The depression in her cheeks due to her hunger and the split skin of her mouth. The pert curve of her breasts. The desperate look in her eyes. 
He grumbles, looks over his shoulder at Johnny. “I’ll start the fire. You take the deer out back and drain it ‘fore it hardens.”
“Aye,” Johnny says. He thumps away in clunky boots and a thin t-shirt and jeans. The deer sways with his gait and disappears behind the screen door when he steps outside. 
She redirects her attention to Simon, who’s already looking at her. More specifically, at her pulsing neck. His jowls are slightly unfastened, his pupils blown out and eclipsing his irises. 
Presentiment settles in her stomach. She blanches. 
Suddenly, Simon is grunting and gripping her arm, heedless towards her whimper of fear and fleeting stint of resistance. His nails are sharp, digging sickle-shaped impressions into her arm. He drags her down the hallway and into another room—a bathroom—and tugs the flickering light on. It lacks sheen, barely illuminates the room from its moss-covered nooks to the tiled floor caked with crusted dirt. 
(The lightbulb is so dull. It doesn’t reach the farthest corner of the bathroom where the radiator is placed. The radiator bathed in black, hidden beneath the lip of shadows, so she isn’t able to see the forgotten handcuff hanging limply from one of the pipes.)
Simon works his heavy body around the bathroom. He leans over the clawfoot tub—which he dwarfs—and twists open the spigot, watching as brown-coloured water slowly ripens into something clear, gushing out of the faucet. He stuffs a plastic plug into the rust-ringed drain. 
He straightens back into his full height. All-encompassing, panoramic. Simon is so impossibly large that it’s a wonder he has so much muscle packed under his skin. Rustic, hard thighs. A shirt that bends against his arms, about to snap. 
“Take a bath,” he commands. “Get y’rself cleaned up.”
Simon shoulders past her and ducks to exit the bathroom. There’s no door separating it from the rest of the house, but a multitude of beads hanging above the threshold to imitate one. She keeps her eyes trailed on it while she strips—peeling off her jeans, pulling her shirt over her head. Rolling down her panties and consciously hiding them beneath her other clothes. 
She clutches the lip of the bathtub for leverage and dips her toes into the water. Immediately, she melts. The hot water swallows her foot and travels like a spool of thread to the rest of her, weaving itself into her wounds, licking her open like the first thaw of spring. 
She submerges herself fully, bringing her knees to her chest. Her neck hoists backward and into the water, soaking all the grit and dirt knotted into her hair. It’s like plying through syrup as she lifts an arm, retrieving a homespun bar of soap, clutching it to test her grip. There’s coily hair knotted into it and sticking to the dried bubbles. She brings it up to her nose, sniffing. Hesitates before rubbing it into her skin and around her throbbing wounds. 
The water idly sloshes as she cleans herself. It’s a hollow sound, amplified by the echoey room. She trails her hand below her waist, slipping her sudsy fingers between her lips and stroking, rubbing herself clean. 
Beneath the tinny sounds of water surrounding her like a petticoat, something else peals out. Something like a whine. Her fingers cramp above her warm cunt and she goes taut. She turns her head to the threshold of the bathroom and nearly screams but her throat puckers before she can, blocking it, her mouth hanging open in a soundless screech instead.
It’s Johnny. He stands in the middle of the hallway, peering into the bathroom and staring at her, half-obscured by the bead curtains. He looks like a sit-and-wait predator like this—silent and unassuming, if not for his blindingly-white smile shining through the curtain like strobes of sunlight breaking past trees. He steps inside now that he’s been spotted, and that causes ice to lick her organs—she sinks her breasts below the water’s surface, squeezing her thighs together. She bristles as Johnny strides impossibly close, the lip of the tub cutting into his thighs.
He stinks of sweat and iron and wood. His t-shirt clings to his skin, darkened with deer blood, outlining the barest hint of his bulky chest.
He grins. “Brought ye some clean clothes.” 
“Oh. I… thank you,” she mumbles. “You can leave it on the toilet if you don’t mind?”
Johnny sets it down. A folded flannel and a pair of sweatpants. He idles a little longer, still smiling, before leaving the bathroom. She counts the minutes in her head and tries to find the right time to leave the tub, outstretching her hand for the towel once it comes to her. But the towel is just scarcely out of reach. The terrycloth grazes her fingertips, teasing her. It’s like it was methodically placed there. Bait at the end of a fish hook to ply her out of the water and stick her ass in the air, reaching over to grip the cloth and tug it over her breasts, stepping out of the tub.
Her eyes stay locked on the crude door while she changes. She buttons the flannel up to her neck and takes heed of the pointed absence of any undergarments, slipping her legs into the gauzy sweatpants, tying them at her waist.
Johnny bursts in as if on cue. He’s still slick with blood, his mohawk odd-angled, spun-thread and matted to his head with sweat. His cheeks bulge around another grin.
“Too big for ye, is it?” He pants. “Might as well take it off. Might trip and hurt yerself again. Wouldn’t want that happenin’, right honey?”
Johnny shortens the space between them in one stride. His fingers, thick and jaded, are already fumbling around the knot she tied, pulling it out of its bow and letting the sweatpants fall, pooling into a crimp around her ankles. 
The flannel is big enough to reach her thighs. Still, she clenches her fingers around the hem and tugs it lower, preening under Johnny’s smouldering gaze. It’s almost paradoxical how it works—his eyes are icy blue, yet they have the same effect as basaltic molten. Burning hot. He’s fixated on her skinned knees, gnawing on his bottom lip.
“Simon’s got the fire goin’,” he says. “Let’s go get yer wounds cleaned too, aye?”
Johnny’s walking out before she can blink. She follows after him, flustered, stumbling into the living room lit by a dulcet fire. Simon’s kneeled beside it, sticking his hand in to adjust a lopsided stock of wood, unaffected by the flames that eat away his arm hair. Johnny takes the girl by the scruff of her neck, guiding her to a hand-crafted chair placed conscientiously in front of the fireplace. He presses on her—the sensitive divot between her shoulder and her neck—and pushes her into the seat, unzipping a first-aid kit. 
Johnny takes her feet and pulls them into his lap. The angle makes her flannel hitch up, exposing her bare cunt to the hot embers of the fireplace, and the equally hot embers of Simon’s prying eyes. She squeaks and covers herself, averting her gaze as Simon’s stare darkens into the colour of midnight splash hanging over the sky.
“You’ll feel a wee sting,” Johnny warns. He rips the corner off a rag and drenches it in vodka, poising it over her flayed knees. “Should probably give my hand a squeeze or somethin’, ye ken? To lessen the burn, o’ course.”
She hesitates but slips her hand around Johnny’s all-encompassing one, her fingers barely meeting whilst wrapped around his palm. She winces when the ethanol meets her wound, shooting through her veins, and tries recoiling into herself. 
But the amplitude of her pain swells, and her muscles girdle. 
It’s Simon’s massive hand splitting itself across her thigh that keeps her pinned to the chair. His fingers bite rivets into her skin, the pinch overriding the sting of her tissue soaking up the alcohol.
“Stay still when he tells you to,” he grumbles. “Otherwise it’ll hurt.”
She wriggles uncomfortably. Tries not to flinch when the rag meets her knees again and burns her wound. Simon’s hand doesn’t leave her thigh until he’s throwing another block of wood into the fireplace.
Johnny hums. “So, what’re you doin’ up here? Religious retreat? Mental health?”
She smacks her lips, unsure if she should answer that. She chances a glance towards Simon and bristles because for some reason, she just knows that if she lies, somehow, he’d tell.
“Um. Just stepping away from home, I suppose,” she mumbles. “Friends. Family.”
“Oh. They dinnae care about you?”
She flinches. Not because of the vodka against her skin, but Johnny’s implications. 
“No,” she says. Her words are so fickle, so distorted by misery that not even she believes it. “They do care about me. I just needed space.”
He nods. Slowly, his eyebrows press together. “I don’t remember much of my family. It’s a wee bit odd. Can’t say if they liked me or not…”
Simon squeezes the back of his neck. “Enough of tha’. Pay attention.”
Johnny makes a sound like he’s humiliated. It’s only when he unrolls a spool of gauze, wrapping it around her kneecaps, is he afforded mercy when Simon changes the topic.
“Where’s the bird gonna sleep?”
“We’ve still got a cot in the root cellar, aye?” Johnny replies. “For hurricanes and tha’. Figured she wouldn’t mind it there. Wouldn’t ye, lass?”
Clemently, she shakes her head.
Simon grunts. He stands up, towering over them both. “The deer’s there, Johnny. What kind of hosts would tha’ make us? Puttin’ her up with a corpse?”
Johnny blushes as if he’s been scolded. His bottom lip curls out, petulant, a waspish colour flooding his cheeks. 
“Aye…” he grumbles. “Tha’s right. The livin’ room, then?”
The girl is sitting, her head oscillating between the two men like a pendulum as they talk. 
“No,” Simon says. “We’ll move the cot to our room.”
Johnny nods. He scratches his stubble, pretending to think. “It’s important we keep an eye on her wounds, too.”
“Exactly,” Simon says, petting Johnny’s head. “Smart boy.”
He clicks his tongue and Johnny shoots up, scurrying out of the living room to retrieve the aforementioned cot. Muffled sounds peal out from the root cellar below them. Johnny comes stumbling back up in mere minutes with a rickety cot fitted under his armpit and disappears into a dark room.
“Best get to sleep before it’s too late,” Simon splays his hand over the small of her back. “Y’must be tired.”
She submits to Simon’s touch, letting him guide her through the cabin and into the darkest room lit only by a lone oil lamp. 
Johnny is finishing up the cot when Simon releases her. He drapes a cable-knit blanket over the surface, fluffing up a pillow. She doesn’t point out how close it is to their bed, the lip of her cot almost touching their rickety mattress.
“Fair warnin’ lass,” Johnny begins, peeling off his shirt, kittening into bed. “Simon snores quite a bit. Dinnae be feart to smack his gob if he gets too loud, aye?”
She stiffly nods. She climbs into the cot and bunches the blanket around her, making a conscious effort to hide her bare legs. Simon crawls between them, the mattress sinking with his weight, and throws their whisper-thin blanket over his legs. 
Darkness penetrates the room when he blows the lamp out. The only smoulder is the silvery glow of moonlight invading the curtains and the reflective light in Simon’s eyes. 
He sits up impossibly straight, staring at her like a cryptid caught on a trail cam. It causes discomfort to congeal under her flesh, but slowly, the longer she looks, a bristle of sleepiness lays hold of her. She closes her eyes and falls into limbo. Her breaths thinning into a short, even pattern.
———
She’s between the threshold of awake and sleep when she hears it.
She can’t tell if it’s a dream or the amplified sounds of Appalachia. She feels as if she’s underwater or stuck in syrup, able to hear the rushing brook of her blood against her ears but unable to distinguish the sounds around her.
There’s a grunt. And a moan. The wail of the bed next to her snapping then creasing. Heavy breathing. Sprinting hearts. 
Her head is so muddled she can’t register anything. Her mind tells her that the violent slapping of skin against skin is the crack of thunder. That the strangled whimpers are the call of a cottontail. 
“Right there, Johnny?” A voice asks. “Takin’ my big cock so fuckin’ well. Greedy lil’ bitch, you are.”
A long, drawn-out whine chases after it. A choked-out scream as if something hurts, succeeded by a wet squelch. 
“Look at ‘er,” that voice jeers. “Think she’d take it? Better than you? Think she’d bleed all over it like– fuck… how I smelt it on her?”
The other voice—broken in, wispy—chokes on a response. It sounds a little stifled, as if speaking through something shoved in its mouth.
“No… nae better than me,” it mumbles. “Nae better than me…”
It’s like she’s drowning in purgatory. She can’t move, can’t speak. She’s caught in a phantasmagorical limbo between reality and fantasy. She can feel the serpentine hands of something with no material existence wrap around her and stain her slick with sweat, sweeping over the space between her legs, licking a wetness up her pussy. 
A dewy sound peals out. It’s a predator loosening its jowls, stringy and frothy, flaying its lips to bare its teeth. A rumbling roar rips out of its throat, animalistic. She can hear the popping of teeth sinking into flesh. The dull sound of skin breaking.
“Ah!” A squeal. “Simon, tha’– it hurts.”
She feels a vortex in her belly, an ache in her clit.
It’s like she resurfaces the water. All at once, she hears clearly. It’s a lone word whispered in a guttural cadence so close that she swears it’s mumbled against the hot hull of her ear.
“Good.”
———
She wakes the next morning with her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth and a damp heat between her legs.
Sunlight filters through the gauzy curtains, hitting the bed next to her. The bed is starkly empty she notes, as she crawls out of her cot and pops the stiff muscles in her back, stretching. 
She pokes her head out of the bedroom and tiptoes around the cabin as if avoiding a barrage of landmines. There’s a downward force in her bladder that tells her she’s been in torpor for the better half of the morning, and a heavy crust in her eyes that shifts when she blinks. She finds her way to the bathroom and shucks the flannel over her hips, lowering herself on the toilet seat, emptying herself.
It’s the only stint of respite. The closest thing she can get to calm since losing her way in the mountain three days ago. She relishes in the idle birdsongs outside and the sound of overnight frost melting into the dew that slips off tree leaves, pitter-pattering to the ground. Listens to the stream of her pee peter out, and the ruffle of folding fabric as she tosses the flannel back over her thighs. She listens to the–
“How’d ye sleep, pretty girl?”
She flinches at the gruff voice. It’s written with sleep, barely lucid under a Scottish lilt. Her hands freeze under the running water of the tap as she watches Johnny waltz inside the bathroom, shucking his pants to his thighs and pulling out his cock, pissing in the toilet. 
She’s stiff. Fixed to the cold clay tiles of the floor, unable to be bent. She tries not to let her eyes wander, tries to block out the chubby mass of muscle swinging between his legs. 
“Oh…” her words are stifled by shock. “F-fine. I slept fine. Thank you again for opening your house to me.” She thinks back to last night—the whimpering, the croaking—and rashly decides to tack on, “But I did hear some weird noises. I could have been dreaming though.”
Johnny chuckles. “...Aye, it’s almost matin’ season ‘round these parts. I think you’ll be hearin’ more of that. It’s best to ignore it.”
Her body girdles when he sways his cock, shaking away the liquid on the tip. He stuffs himself back into his pants and pulls the flush, grinning. 
“Bet you’re still hungry. Simon’s wrappin’ up breakfast. Let’s go.”
He pats her bum and makes her squeak. He grips the hem of her flannel and reels it around his knuckles like a leash, tugging her into the dining area—which is more of a nook nestled into the living room—and pulls out a seat.
“Hope ye fancy porridge,” Johnny chuckles. He splits his palm across the top of her head, pushing her into the chair. 
She huffs and hoists her neck up, grimacing at the acrid scent of animal hide burning against the base of a cast iron pan. It takes a conscious effort to not crinkle her nose in disgust.
Simon ducks as he emerges from the kitchen threshold. He wields two bowls of food. One for her and the other for Johnny. She takes heed of how—despite his stature—Simon doesn’t have anything to eat.
However it’s a cursory thought, because she’s quickly pulling her lips into a weak smile and examining the bowl in front of her. Food is a generous word, since it looks more like coagulated milk than porridge and smells sour. Simon places a chipped plate of bacon alongside it. It’s curled because it’s overcooked, crusted with charcoal.
She swallows as Simon takes a seat next to her. Johnny, on the other side of her. 
“Looks delicious,” she hums. She turns to Simon, “Are you… not eating?”
He picks an off-white tendon from his canine tooth, flicking it away. 
He answers in a rigid tenor. “Don’t hurt your head over me. You eat your food.” 
She marginally shrinks into herself, embarrassment licking up her spine. She feels like a chided puppy, but perhaps that’s the sentiment. 
When she opens her lips and raises the spoon to her mouth, her flannel curls like a wisp of hair off her shoulder, baring her bruised albeit supple skin. She hastily pulls the sleeve back up. 
She speaks around the stale porridge and her rising apprehension. “Uh, do you have my clothes from yesterday?” She asks, squirming as her sweat glues the back of her thighs to the chair, sticky. “It’s just, uh, they fit me better.”
“Oh,” Johnny blinks, “o’ course.” 
She watches him stand up and slip through the backdoor. He walks towards a clothesline hitched between two trees and retrieves her clothes, returning with them tucked under his arm.
“Here ye go sweetheart,” he grins, setting them on her lap. Petting her head.
She slowly peels through her clothes. Her fingertips drag against her threadbare jeans, her overripe shirt, but never touch the sweat-imbued gauze of something more… intimate. Her maw tenses around the hot porridge. 
“Where are my… um…” she lowers her voice even though it’s redundant—Johnny is leaned in close, practically huffing against her ear, sniffing her neck. “... Undergarments?”
Johnny tilts his head, puckering his lips in confusion. He’s written with the innocence of a puppy—whether it’s real or fabricated, she can’t tell. The words have begun bleeding together, blotchy and unintelligible. 
“Panties, ye mean?” He laughs. “Ye never had any of those.”
She swallows thickly. 
“No, I… I did. I wouldn’t go hiking without–”
“Ye must be goin’ crazy, lass,” Johnny says. “This was all you gave me. Nae panties.”
He stares at her with large, intercosmic, unassuming eyes. His gaze flickers towards Simon. It’s so fleeting that she almost misses it. The sweep of his blue irises widening, eclipsed by his pupils. She tenses. Omniscience hits her like a brick.
Her tongue goes heavy in her mouth, melting her words. The porridge turns frothy in her gut, nausea sticking to her organs and presentiment curdling in the air. She tightens her throat around a gag.
“... When can you drive me into town?”
Johnny reaches over and grips her thigh. He digs divots into her flesh like a fish hook caught in a flayed gill.
“You’re welcome to stay as long as ye want, pretty. There’s nae rush.”
She feels bile crawl up her throat.
“Oh, well, I just don’t want to overstay my welc–”
“He’s excited to play host,” Simon growls. His words are marked by firm determination, leaving no room for objection. He leans over the table, his wifebeater clinging to his muscle, his wiry chest hair pressing against the soft cotton. “We rarely get visitors ‘round here and he’ll be upset if you leave. Y’wanna make him upset?” 
Finally, warnings blare like strobe lights in her mind. She fidgets in her seat, sweating, shooting a cursory glance to the backdoor. Calculating her chances of survival should she break through the mesh and make a run for it. 
“O-of course not. Not after everything you’ve done for me,” she stutters, feeling a bead of sweat travel down her neck. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for asking.”
Simon settles back in his seat. Johnny, too, frowning around his porridge. 
“Good,” Simon grunts meanly. “Now shut your gob an’ eat.”
She clemently chews away at her breakfast, preening under their smouldering gazes. Throughout her polishing off her bowl, she’s reminded Simon doesn’t have one. It’s unseemly for a man so sturdy to not be eating, but as Simon’s lips peel back, sated while he watches her take her final bite, she spots a spray of red liquid washing the spire of his fang tooth, glistening in the sunlight. 
“How’d you like tha’, pretty?” Johnny asks. He collapses whatever thoughts—whatever inklings—begin to seize her about Simon as he smiles and their bowls, disappearing into the kitchen.
Right away, Simon is hooking his foot behind a leg of her chair, using it to pull her closer. 
He’s centimetres away from her face when he says, “How ‘bout you start pullin’ your weight?”
Her eyes flicker up to see Simon hovering over her. He’s dewy with sweat, big and burly and drifting above her like the closet-dwelling monster from everyone’s childhood.
“You’ve caused enough trouble in my home,” he continues. “Ate a lot of our produce. It’s time you make up for tha’.”
She resists the urge to snarl. She doesn’t even want to be here yet Simon is insisting she fill her role—whatever that role may be. 
But as she hoists her neck up at him, she gets skittish and looks away, her tongue knotting. She knows it isn’t smart to upset Simon again. He’s a beefy man with sharp canines and vertical pupils, with more hair sprouting from his forearms than what’s considered normal. A man who expels deep tonal flutters instead of regular breaths. Who—despite his size—can’t ever be heard approaching.
So she smiles instead, asking, “What is it you need help with?”
“Floors need scrubbin’.”
He shoves a rag in her hand and holds out a bucket of sudsy water she hadn’t noticed before.
“Kitchen, livin’ room… just get to work.”
The water sloshes over the lip of the bucket when he sets it down. Simon stands to his full height and stalks out of the room, leaving her alone with her multitude of thoughts. 
Slowly, she stands up. She hauls the water bucket to the middle of the living room and is starkly reminded of her strength—or lack thereof. Simon had picked the bucket up so naturally, but with the weak tendons lacing her arms, she struggles. It doesn’t help that her vision is still spotty. 
She lowers to her knees, wincing at the chord of pain beneath her bandages. She awkwardly drenches the rag in the water and wrings it dry, poising herself above the floor, working the rag into the floorboards. 
She tenses when Johnny walks back in. He’s behind her. Unlike with Simon, she can feel him creeping up. She can feel his eyes on the lips of her pussy where her flannel hitches up while she’s bent over, scrubbing the floors. 
Her cheeks burn. She blindly reaches behind her to tug the hem down, covering her warm cunt. 
Johnny chuckles. “This is wha’ Simon has you doin’ out here?” 
She looks over her shoulder, her skin prickling when she sees an axe in his hand. 
“We’re goin’ to the yard to chop some wood,” he says, “but I see you’re already busy bein’ our bonnie housewife.” 
She stutters. That operative word, housewife, burns a hole in the snail-shaped cochlea of her ear. “No, Simon j-just asked me to. He asked me to.”
“I know, sweetie,” Johnny replies. He squats next to her and rubs her back in slow circles, trying to hike up her flannel again. “Simon’s just takin’ the piss. He’s a meanie like tha’.”
She tries shouldering him away but Johnny only holds her tighter. Simon reappears in the doorway, watching with his arms crossed. 
Johnny clears his throat. “Thought we’d spend time in the yard today. Doesn’t tha’ sound sweet?”
She looks at Simon who’s already looking at her through hooded, brutish eyes. She realizes that her autonomy is divested—that she has no choice but to follow what they say because something is very, very wrong here. 
Perhaps this is what the mountain had warned her of. In all of its howling and breathing, the branches gripping her and the delirium written into her psyche, maybe, it was all a warning. 
She hangs her head. “Mhm… sounds great.”
She has no time to process what’s happening before he’s folding his hand into the cavity of her armpit and dragging her up and out of the door, into the backyard. 
It’s more of a cleared grove than a yard. Dead tree stumps litter the small expanse, grass the colour of ripe lemons because it’s been seared down. There’s a block of wood sitting on a stump, split down the middle. Sun-bleached clothes hanging over the clothesline.
“Y’can watch here,” Johnny says, gesturing to one of the tree stumps. “We’ve got to chop wood for dinner tonight.”
He pulls her down on the makeshift seat, finally letting her go. And just as Johnny pivots, slamming the spire of the axe into the block of wood, she sees him scrunch his nose as he sniffs his hand, drinking in the sweat from her armpit. It goes up his nose and through his nasal cavity, making him quiver as if her sweat is an opiate. Disgust slams into her, sinking in her stomach and settling there like sediment. She doesn’t even notice Simon walking out of the cabin and reaching for the axe, raising it over his head, until the resounding sound of wood snapping peals out, and she’s jumping in her skin.
“No need to be feart,” Johnny laughs. “Just his usual routine.”
She watches Simon work. He looks like a beast on its hind legs like this—impossibly large and splayed out with his arms over his head, growling whenever he brings the axe down on the tree stump, splitting it in two. Sweat burns through his wifebeater and turns the fabric translucent, revealing the barest outline of his chest. His chest hairs are matted with sweat, his sinews straining with each chop of wood. His face is curled meanly into itself, his trimmed hair nicked in different places from at-home shaving and washed with sweat.
Every time he brings the axe down on the wood, expelling a guttural groan, something stirs in her. He does it with such force, such strength, it makes her wary. He fractures the wood along the grain without so much of a blink, without any stifling in his muscle.
All those horror films she watches alone—when her friends say they’re too busy to join, when they lead her on after planning a get-together that doesn’t come to fruition—finally catch up to her, sowing the thought in her head that if she stays, she’ll become the tree stump. Impotent beneath Simon’s hacking and eclipsed by his behemoth-like body. 
Her missing panties. Johnny’s sticky hands. Simon’s less-than-human behaviour. It all slams into her like whiplash. 
Her fear rears its head as a rashly undertaken announcement tumbling out of her mouth.
“I have to pee.”
She ignores the way Johnny perks up, as if that activated something in his brain. His ocular vein goes large, rapt, his pupils blowing out as he looks at her and then her navel where her bladder sits, suddenly grinning. 
“I can come with–”
“I’ll go in the woods,” she says. “Behind a bush or something, okay?”
Simon grunts. It’s a deep prusten sound as he splits another block of wood. Johnny pouts but lets her go, watching with those imploring eyes as she disappears behind some foliage. 
It’s now or never, she decides. 
She makes sure she’s concealed by the flowering of a tree before speeding up her walk. She moves like an unoiled machine, rusty, as her walk ripens into a run.
She doesn’t know where she’s running. She doesn’t know how far the nearest town is or how to find the trail she lost herself on, but she knows she needs to get far away from here. 
The woodland is labyrinthine. Everything looks the same. She hopes she isn’t sprinting deeper into the heart of Appalachia and straight into her new grave, but still, she doesn’t stop running. Not until her lungs wilt into themselves and turn pruney, not until her heartbeat plateaus. 
It’s as if she’s working against a rip current. She feels as if a part of herself is already woven into the woodland soil, feels herself written into the rotting, wet trees. It’s like she’s treading water instead of sprinting. And it’s like a supernova has erupted in her ankle as it gets caught under a root, sending her face first into the dirt. 
She reorients as quickly as she can. She raises to her feet but winces at the flaring nerves in her foot, and looks around for a stick she can use as a crutch. 
But something else catches her attention. 
A dog-eared paper taped to a Basswood tree. It’s been eaten by the elements, mottled, barely hanging on. She steps closer and reads the blocky letters across the front, her blood running cold in her engorged vessels.
MISSING PERSON
Fleetingly, hope seizes her, but she soon remembers nobody back home is heedful enough to report her missing, let alone realize she’s missing in the first place. Additionally, the year suggests that the flyer is three years old. Her eyes slink down, trailing over what’s still intact.
LAST SEEN: CLIFF TRAIL
$3,000 REWARD FOR INFORMATION
Foreboding clings to her flesh. She quivers, her knees weakening.
FIRST NAME: J-
The tail-end of it is smeared, the ink bleeding and thinning into the paper. It’s unintelligible, so she trails her gaze lower, heeding the victim’s last name instead.
MACTAVISH.
“Sweetie!” Peals out from behind her before she can read any more. “What’re you doin’ all the way here? Had me and Simon thinkin’ ye ran away or something. Hah.”
Johnny hurries close and swallows her flinch with a tight hug. He frowns at the flyer. 
“Why’re you readin’ this silly stuff?” He asks. He tears it off the tree and crumples it up, tossing it away. “That shite gives y’nightmares.”
“Johnny, I–”
“You went pee?” Johnny asks. Nearly makes her screech when he dips his hand low and cups her cunt, feeling around for any dregs of liquid. He buries his fingers unnecessarily deep between her puffy lips, blindly massaging.
“No…” he clicks his tongue. “No. You didn’t. Did ye lie to us? It dinnae matter, sweetie. Here. Do it here, pretty. I’ll wait.”
She musters whatever pluck she has left to shake her head.
However her spine is fickle. All it takes is Johnny glowering, his eyes darkening, his pout upending and curling into something meaner, to force her back into submission.
“Simon’s already angry ye pulled this stunt, sweetie,” he says. “I’m helpin’ you out.”
A tear escapes her. It rolls down her gaunt cheek like the dew that dribbles down trees. She’s quickly crying, expelling howls that burn her energy. She trembles as she squats to the forest floor and pushes pee out of her. She sniffles as she stands back up and lets the liquid sluice down her thighs. 
“Good girl,” Johnny hums. “You’re so much sweeter when ye listen, ye ken?” 
She sobs into her palms, her ribs so brittle they rattle together. Johnny coos vacantly at her, rubbing her all over the same way one rubs stone fruit to test their ripeness, and croons at her swelling ankle.
“See what happens when you’re naughty?” He asks, picking her up, carrying her close to his chest. “Let’s get you home, honey. These woods are no place for a bird like you.”
She hates how she curls into him. It’s her repressed underbelly fighting its way to the surface because the accumulation of neglectful family and friends has soured her, carving a chasm in her heart that forces her body to respond to Johnny’s affections. He’s a warm body for her, a pair of listening ears. It’s scraps, but it’s more than she’s ever gotten.
They make it back to the cabin in what feels like minutes. Simon’s waiting next to the door with his arms tightly crossed, his face meanly pinched. He growls like a provoked animal. He hovers like an executioner. He’s the living antonym of light at the end of the tunnel, huffing like a bull as Johnny carries her inside. 
“How about you rest?” Johnny asks. He sets her down on her cot and pulls the blanket to her quivering chin, tucking her in. “Want some tea? What kind do you fancy?”
She purses her lips, trembling. Johnny sentimentally hums as if he’s sorry. As if he isn’t a part of her plight. Her piercing fear and deep-seated fatigue.
“Garden mint…” he says to himself. “I’ll be right back, bonnie.”
He disappears and returns a few minutes later with a cup dwarfed in his hand. Steam curls over the rim, thinning into the barren bedroom. He tilts it into her mouth, nursing her. 
With every sip she feels herself slip more and more back into the familiar territory of limbo. Her eyelids become heavy, her cognizance slackening.
She peels her tongue off her gums to muster a whisper. It’s so weak. Barely audible. 
“I wanna go… home…”
Johnny croons. He cups her cheek. “Honey, those people dinnae care about you. Not how me and Simon do. This can be your home.”
He raises the cup to her mouth again, stifling any protests on her tongue.
She hiccups around the drink, her eyes warm and wet.
That’s how she falls asleep. 
With hypnotic tea invading her bloodstream, turning her eyelids heavy. Turning her helpless.
———
She wakes with a start. 
It’s a crack of thunder that had stirred her, she realizes, instead of the enigmatic sounds of bed springs snapping.
The bedroom is dark and bathed in midnight light. She can barely see anything, save for the barest outline of Johnny in the bed next to her. When lightning strikes, illuminating the sky with a blinding impact crack, she’s able to see the swell of his body beneath his sheets and the shadow of his spun-thread hair. His chest rising and falling steadily. 
She’s caked with sweat. Her perspiration soaks her flannel and makes it cling to her flesh, which is flared up as if she rolled in a pile of poison ivy. Her mind is so cluttered she almost folds over as she stands up, testing the grip of her toes on the wooden floor, testing her ability to balance herself. 
She’s in limbo. A border space between heaven and hell, awaiting her execution. That’s how it feels as she tiptoes her way out of the room, reaching for an oil lamp, holding it out in front of her. 
It’s almost worse like this. A weak flame that barely illuminates her peripheral. She fears that should she turn too fast, an aberration will materialize from the margins of her view and tear her to ribbons. 
At this point, she supposes that’s a kinder fate. 
She slips into a pair of large boots because she can’t find her hiking shoes anywhere. She opens the door and pokes her head out, immediately met with the spray of rainwater on her face, the wind running through her ropes of neglected hair.
Sheets of heavy rain fall from the awning, creating another divide that keeps her trapped inside the cabin. She steps onto the porch, listening for any incongruous noises. Even if there were any, they would be bullied under the assault of rainfall. She can’t hear her own thoughts like this, can’t formulate a plan to get away from here once and for all.
So of course she doesn’t hear the floorboards settle behind her. Of course, she doesn’t hear the heavy drumming of feet closing in on her.
She doesn’t heed the body behind her until Johnny is sniffing up her neck and snuffing out the oil lamp, laying hold of her in a grudging grip. 
“You just dinnae listen, do you?”
He takes her by the scruff of her neck and pulls her back into the cabin, knocking the lamp out of her grip. It falls to the floor and flares into a crash, louder than the rain. Almost louder than her sprinting heart and the blood rushing to her ears.
She wrestles against his grip. “Fuck you both—you sick fucks!”
She almost vomits when her insults make Johnny moan, his cock fattening against her back in a crude Pavlovian response. Each time she struggles against him, his grip tightens. It reminds her of the mountain itself. The more she tries escaping its soporific arms, the deeper it drags her down. It’s fruitless for her to fight it—the whistle of the branches, the tight sinews of Johnny’s grip. 
He swings his arm around her neck, pinning her against his chest in a headlock. Her lungs stutter and her eyes turn dewy, her deep-seated fear ripening into paralyzing terror.
A web of lightning shatters the sky, and she almost dies right there.
It’s Simon but worse. A mutation gone wrong. A changeling, perhaps. He’s squeezed inside the threshold, breathing wildly. His wifebeater is torn in different places across his body, split around tufts of fur. Fur that is matted with thick ichor, wiry and sprouting from the spot behind his ears.
Another flash of lightning ignites the cabin, revealing the shaggy coat of hair on his chest. The sheet of fat over his stomach that flutters when he puffs, growling under his breath. He clenches his jaw because he can’t clench his hands, because his thick fingers have turned into claws, sharp spires covered in gore.
Simon snarls. Blood and spit drip from his bloodied teeth as if he’s a rabid animal with a limp maw. He rolls his shoulders and cracks the cartilage in his neck, the sound pealing out so loudly, it’s more like the popping of bubble wrap in rapid succession. 
She can barely see him through her tear-filled eyes. It’s the epilogue to her life as he strides in close, biting his talons into her hips and drawing out blood. A snarl of satisfaction escapes him when he smells it—her blood, sweet, albeit stale due to her dehydration. 
“Anyone ever told you you’re an ungrateful mutt?” He growls. “I give you food to eat an’ clothes on your back but here you are, tryin’ to sod off.”
Her cheeks dimple when he grabs her jaw. She opens her mouth to protest, but her grievances get smothered beneath Simon’s claws. He stuffs his fingers down her mouth, stunting her complaints. She gags and coughs around the taste of metal and mire crusted under his claws, bile shooting up her throat.
“Dogs don’t talk,” he tuts. 
He hoists his arm back and she puckers, preparing for an attack. However, instead of her cheek, Simon’s hand slices against her shirt. He tears her flannel into ribbons, making the fabric slide off her like water from a milk bath.
She stands naked, her skin pocked with fear. She shivers despite being pressed between Simon’s furry chest and Johnny’s warm arms. 
“‘Bout time someone taught you some manners,” Simon mumbles. “I was in the middle of my dinner you know? Fuckin’ rude to interrupt.”
She blanches when she sees a limp coyote behind him, splayed out on the porch. She recognizes it as the orpiment-coloured fur to the hair flossed between Simon’s teeth.
She screams as he wrestles her from Johnny’s grip, pulling her towards the bedroom. Simon throws her onto the stiff mattress, her spine shuddering from the impact. She tries covering herself, tries wrapping her arms around her body, but Simon is having none of that. 
He pounces, taking her hips and pinning them to the bed. He hovers over her, rainwater dripping from his broken nose, impossibly large as he makes up her whole world. Simon swallows her entire view, leaving her with no chances of escape. 
Her gaze flutters down to the chub outlined by his sweatpants and decides she’s left with no chances of survival, either.
She flails her legs as Simon slithers low, flattening his nose against her cunt. She lets out a protracted cry as he hitches his lungs and inhales, breathing in the musk of her bare cunt. The sweat stuck between her fuzzy hair, the sticky arousal that spreads as he forces her legs open. 
Simon hisses. It rides the ruck of his throat, expelled from his nose. It’s not in any capacity a human sound. It seems more like a bear flaring its nostrils, poised for attack.
Johnny notices the confusion between her eyebrows because he’s leaning in and murmuring against the shell of her ear, licking it.
“Remember wha’ I said about matin’ season, kitty?”
Johnny leans away, leaving it at that. Equivocal and cryptic and calcified into the furrows of her brain. She isn’t allowed to wade in her confusion though because Simon’s tongue is lolling out, sweeping a fat stripe over her pussy.
It’s like the first thaw of spring. Simon licks her open, spreads her out on his tongue. She can’t help the immediate warmth that courses through her, swathing her in silk. 
She cries out. Her back bends off the mattress when Simon pulls her lips into his mouth to suck. 
She looks to Johnny for help. She twists herself and tries reaching out, tries crawling off the mattress, but Simon is gripping her ankle and popping the gauze of her bandage with his claws, pulling her back down, wrapping his lips around her engorged clit.
Johnny’s face doesn’t show contrition, but is pinched in jealousy. He watches with a fat mass growing in his sweatpants.
She splits her hand over Simon’s shaved head, using the cauliflowered shell of his ear to try pulling him off of her. That only makes him growl, the vibrations quavering up her spine, his claws digging into her flesh. 
She folds her arms over her face, sobbing. Simon’s tongue is wet and hot against her pussy, lapping between her soft folds, slurping her juices. She flushes at how wet she is. At how pleasure leaks through the cracks in her resolve and spreads all over her, reducing her to a panting mess. 
Simon releases her clit with a pop. He raises to his knees, towering over her, and now she’s unsure if his glistening chin is because of the rainwater outside or her arousal. 
“Hold her down, Johnny.”
Her heart drums against her chest. Johnny crawls onto the bed and kneels behind her head. He pins her wrists down with his kneecaps, keeping her from squirming.
“Will ye let me put my cock in ‘er mouth?” Johnny asks. “Simon, will you–”
“Shut it,” Simon snaps. He shoves down his sweatpants, his cock springing out. All of her nerves bristle like rope, her heart sputtering to a stop.
Simon’s cock is fat and heavy. It droops between his thighs, drooling with precum. It’s stiff but hangs because he’s so large, the engorged tip angling downward, his balls plump, ruddy.
He chokes his hand around it, tugging it. Her throat closes in on itself but her legs instinctively peel apart. Her puffy lips spread open and she flushes at the sticky sound, hoisting her neck back to look at Johnny.
He has his cock out too, pumping it. He grins when they lock eyes and smacks his dick against her cheek. Johnny presses his cockhead into the corner of her mouth, using it to tilt her lips into a repugnant curl. It’s reminiscent of a smile, but it isn’t one. 
She wails.
They both make up her beginning and end. They trap her between themselves, leaving her with no escape. Simon at her feet, Johnny at her head. Each of the men are more intimidating than the other, both inspiring fear in her feeble heart. Both inspiring unwanted arousal between her legs. 
Simon slaps his flaring tip against her clit. She mewls and hates herself for bucking her hips into him. She’s dew-skinned as Simon pushes her knees to her ears, thumbing her clit.
He deeply inhales.
His chest expands, tugging at the steel-wool hair felted against his big chest. He quivers as he expels his breath, his mating call, and finally feeds her his cock, pushing past her first ring of muscle.
Her body tries curling in on itself like a Venus flytrap, but Johnny is quicker. He bites his fingers into her wrists and pins her to the mattress, keeping her still while Simon stuffs himself deeper. Johnny kisses her tears away while he does it. It’s oxymoronic and it’s betrayal—a Judas kiss—while he wraps his lips around sweet encouragement against her cheeks.
“Got so much fight in ye, sweetie,” he whispers. “Just stop strugglin’ and it’ll feel good.”
Simon leans over her, his cock slipping deeper into her warm cunt. The blood and saliva from his maw drips onto her chest, the blood is so fresh there’s still steam, hitting her like scythes.
Johnny’s getting restless. He watches raptly as Simon starts slamming his hips into her. Johnny ruts against the chafe of her brittle hair and hopes it will give him satisfaction by proxy, but it does little to offset the ache in his balls. His lip warbles.
“Simon, please,” a voice crack, “can I put my cock in ‘er mouth?”
“Fine,” Simon growls. His hips are piston-paced against the girl’s skin, unrelenting and uncaring to how her nails scratch striated lines down his chest in her struggle. “Just stop interruptin’ us.”
Her jaw cramps when Johnny cups her chin. He puppets it open and forces his fingers down. They’re caked with dirt as he swirls them over her tongue, coaxing up the warm spit from the furrow of her throat to be used as a natural lube. 
The only mercy she gets is the stint of time between Johnny pulling his fingers out and gripping his dick, laying it on her tongue. He forces her lips apart with the tip of his cock, smearing himself all over her. 
“So pretty like this sweetheart,” he hums. “Simon smelt it on ye. Hundreds of klicks away. How sweet y’are.” 
She doesn’t have the energy to decipher that. Most of it is being wrung on trying to fight the two men off, but it’s fruitless. Johnny is already slipping into her mouth, and her cunt is already stretched around Simon’s plump cock. 
Johnny starts pumping in and out, his cock embroidering a burn in the hinges of her jaw.
She lies there limply, but as Johnny’s wiry hair meets her nose, she realizes there’s one thing she can do. In her thrashing, she undertakes the lapse of judgement to clamp her teeth together, sinking them into Johnny.
He yells and pulls himself out. Johnny wraps a hand around himself, squeezing, placating the sting. A warm wash of tears twine his eyelashes together, long and babydoll-like. He looks to Simon, preening, imploring. 
“She bit me.” 
Simon slows his hips, only scarcely so. Only enough for her to fill her lungs halfway before he’s dragging himself out agonizingly slow, burying himself back inside. 
His eyes, hungry, flutter down to her. His lips wind back, revealing his sharp fangs. He snickers. 
“Now you’ve pissed him off, hm? Dumb girl. This is why puppies need owners.”
He pinches her clit, softly tweaking it between the pads of his fingers. He looks at Johnny and condescendingly smirks. 
“C’mere, boy. If she won’t suck you off, why not take a go at her other hole?”
She tenses. Fear washes over her like a rip current, all the way down to her ass that squeezes in protest. Her heart feels too big for her chest suddenly. She can’t even see Johnny’s blinding grin through her cloudy eyes as brine tracks down her cheeks, mixing with her sweat. 
She whimpers. “No–“
A palm whistles through the air, exploding into a crack of thunder as it breaks against the skin of her cheek. 
She lapses into silence. Little hiccups escape her while she peers up at Simon, sniffling. 
“Yes,” he says. 
He grips her by her hips and flips her over. This way, Simon’s on his back and she’s on top of him, his cock digging deeper. The position is etched with a degree of intimacy that causes heat to pool in her belly—she can feel his hot breath fanning over her face, she can see his feline-like eyes better.  
She almost jumps out of her skin when Johnny presses his fingers into her ass, trying to break her in. He thumbs at the puckered muscle, chuckling when it tries squirming away from him. 
“Cute little thing,” he says. “She ever been fucked?”
The way she sobs when Johnny forces his forefinger inside gives him his answer. He almost comes right there. At the sound of her slick lubing her up, at the sound of her being torn open like a stone fruit and her pitiful cries for mercy. 
“Stop…” 
“Stop?” Johnny repeats, “Sweetie, if I stop it’ll hurt when I fuck you. Ye need prep, silly.”
That only wracks her ribs harder. The patrionizing lilt in his voice, the way he pats her bum like she’s nothing but a dumb puppy. Johnny sinks another finger in, knuckle-deep, and curls himself into the walls of her ass, massaging it.
Simon starts thrusting again. He takes one of her tits in his mouth and tongues at her nipple, snapping his hips into her. It only adds more pressure to her other hole, the one being fingered open by Johnny.
“Y’think she’s ready, sweetie?” Johnny asks. He slaps his cock against her hole, teasing her. “I think she’s fuckin’ hungry. Look at ‘er winkin’ back at me.”
Johnny collects the saliva moulded into his gums and sputters out a wad of spit, wetting her tight asshole. He presses his cockhead against her opening, pushing himself inside.
She buckles, doubling over. Her cheek falls on Simon’s chest, chafing against his coarse hair. She’s never felt so full. Folded between the men and being fed two big cocks, left with no space to breathe. She isn’t given respite. No mercy. No time for her to stretch around their cocks.
Johnny splits his hand across the divot where her spine begins and shoves her into Simon. Her jaw hangs loose, her lips parted dumbly, her drool trickling onto Simon’s chest. She’s limp. Letting them have her way with her. Letting them brand her with their fingers digging sickle-shaped scratches into her skin. Letting them break her open with each of their jackhammering thrusts, letting their pants of encouragement and degradation swirl around her like whistles from the woodland, causing goosebumps to arise and her head to pound.
“Do ye feel it, Simon?” Johnny pants. “Is it comin’ on?”
His words sprawl by like a lazy river in her mind. Desultory, like lukewarm water. They don’t click into the empty chasm of her cognizance until something else happens. Something inhuman. Something that has her choking on the raw bile that scratches her throat and the spit coaxed into the rivets of her tongue by Johnny’s assaulting fingers.
Simon’s ramming gets shaved into stunted thrusts. It isn’t due to a loss of energy, but is due to something else keeping him from slipping out. A balloon pushing against the walls of her pussy, swelling inside her. It isn’t fat but is chubby enough for her to feel it, flutter around it.
The knot snarled into Simon’s cock plugs her up. She can’t pull herself off him because it’s puffed up past her cunt, keeping her stuck on top of him. It doesn’t help that Johnny keeps slamming his hips into her, riling the thin skin that separates her cunt from her ass, bending it to the shape of Simon’s cock.
Johnny gasps. “I’m close– shite, I’m close.”
She doesn’t want to admit it, but she is too. She feels her nerves begin to fray at their edges, her stomach wearing thin. Johnny slips his hand low and blindly sweeps at her clit, nibbling on the husk of her ear.
He only gets three more pumps in until he’s emptying his balls in her ass. He grabs her hair when he comes, puppetting her head back so her mouth falls open and he can spit inside. His thrusts are slow and deep and peter into something calm, his cock softening inside her. Johnny grins.
“Say thank you, kitty.”
It crosses her tongue as an unintelligible mumble. She can’t speak properly with Simon’s cock still in her.
Johnny chuckles at that. He wraps his arms around her and pinches her nipples. Twisting them, pulling them.
Simon’s so big beneath her, lounging like a bear. He fucks into her, his thrusts curtailing into sloppy snaps of his hips.
“He’s close, bonnie,” Johnny says. “Kiss ‘im when he comes. It’s what he likes.”
Finally, Simon’s knot unravels, his thick ropes of come sticking to her walls. He makes sure that the warm come dressing her is so deep, it’ll have no choice but to take. 
Her body betrays her when it crests and crashes into her orgasm. She’s flashbanged with blinding light, gushing out an off-white liquid that coats Simon’s thighs. It seizes her so deeply it hurts, the panoramic pleasure. An orgasm that makes her brain melt, makes her feel otherworldly.
Belatedly, she remembers Johnny’s order. She leans down to kiss Simon, her lips leathery against his. She only wants a modest peck—something to sate Johnny—but she can’t pull away because her bottom lip is caught between Simon’s teeth, pinched, and being sapped of its blood.
He laps it up before letting her go. 
He slips his softening cock out but keeps his come inside her with two fingers, his claws having retracted.
He huffs like a bull. He presses his heavy paw into her abused cunt, palming it. He reeks with a carnal musk, the aftertaste of his rut heavy in the air.
Suddenly, it all makes sense to her.
Simon is the crux of all cautionary tales. The mountains aren’t sworn off because of rabid raccoons or feral fishers but because of something eldritch, whose reputation and folklore precedes any proof of its existence. Whatever Simon is, it can’t be put into words or into anything material, so he’s condensed into the urban legends that have haunted the woods for centuries. The stories that keep hikers off needle-covered paths and unmarked trees and make them carry crucifixes in lieu of bear spray.
She doesn’t even realize she’s softly sobbing. It feels like that’s all she does these days.
Johnny hugs her as if he hadn’t taken a part of her dignity. 
He kisses her, kittening into her so that Simon is able to wrap his arms around them both, hugging them. 
The calm that lolls after the storm only bruises her further. They act so normal after they’ve stripped her of everything. Johnny massaging her thighs, Simon igniting a cigarette between his lips. 
“Will you ever let me go?” She mumbles against Simon’s chest. 
He exhales the smoke. “Go where, love? You came into my house, remember?”
Johnny won’t stop kissing her. He’s a pest that’s attached itself to her dewy flesh, trying to lick her clean. Simon curls his fingers in her and makes sure that’s where his come stays.
Simon takes another drag of his cigarette. “Not like anyone back home would miss you, anyhow.”
———
She watches with a smile on her face as Johnny roasts the flank of a moose on a homemade grill and as Simon chops some more firewood.
She lounges in a chair, swathed in her caribou-hide coat. Winter is at its height, laying a skin of pillowy snow across the mountain.
The cubs wriggle in her lap, pawing at the loose tendrils of her hair and trying to pinch her nose.
“Lookin’ so pretty today, mama,” Johnny hums. She giggles when he kisses her, scratching at the cubs’ bellies. 
“Ain’t she bonnie?” Johnny turns around and prompts Simon, “Our wee looker.”
Simon pauses his wood chopping and nods. He grips the hem of his lumberman’s jacket and raises it to his forehead to wipe his sweat away, revealing his chest and his hair that disappears into the waistband of his jeans. The cubs yip when he resumes his chopping, splitting a tree stump in two. 
She grins. 
She loves her family. Her providers and the offspring of their seed. She loves the cubs’ fine hair rubbing against her cheek when they jump on the bed to wake them up in the mornings, their blunt fangs biting her when they’re hungry, and the tiny chines on their back where their sharp spine will eventually grow in, just like Simon’s.
Briefly, she tries to remember her other family. The one that came before this one. But all that encompasses her mind is a supermassive black hole in place of memories. For some reason she can’t delineate them. The face of her father is blurry and the features of her mother fit together like a crudely sewn patchwork quilt.
She doesn’t remember much of her family. It’s kind of weird. She can’t remember if they liked her or not.
But she knows that doesn’t matter. Not when she has doting men around her and their litter hanging off her hips, another one currently swelling under her belly.
She pays no heed to the missing person posters taped to the fringes of the mountain that look eerily similar to her. Not to the K-9’s that try tracking scents but fail because she’s written with Simon and Johnny’s musk. She ignores the odd helicopter passing through each month, scarcely flying past their ramshackle cabin.
None of it matters because she knows she’s where she needs to be.
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luveline · 1 year
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𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐬𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐝? | 𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧
Your best friend Eddie tries to explain what a hickey feels like and finds he doesn't have the words. He could show you, though, if you want? [3k] 
fem!reader, shy!reader, implied inexpereinced!reader, friends-to-lovers, pining, mdni heavy petting, hickeys, lots of hickeys, marking up, neck kissing, shoulder kissing, heat of the moment confessions, eddie being flirty but also a good friend, requested here
𓆩❤︎𓆪
Eddie strokes down the length of his guitar neck almost tenderly. You're focused on his hands rather than his mouth as he recounts last night's date to you, distracted by the deft movement of his fingers, which aren't exactly small. It's an oxymoron —paradoxical, even— that his thick fingers would move with such gentle precision. 
You shift around where you're sitting on his bedroom floor, criss-cross applesauce with an uncomfortable heat rising from the bottomless pit of your stomach to your tight collar. The white button up you'd worn under your sweater vest is a size too small. You're really starting to notice. 
You peel out of the vest and hope it'll help you calm down.
"She wasn't exactly sweet," Eddie says, plucking a string, listening to the sound, and tuning it this way or that depending on how he liked it. "I think she wanted to get it over with, which isn't really my thing. She was in my lap before I could make it clear I wasn't interested in anything quick." 
You lift your gaze from his hands. He must feel you watching his face. He looks up in tandem and smiles reassuringly. "It's fine. I kind of thought she was getting into it, she was like a vampire on me at one point, but I wasn't feeling it and it's clear she wasn't either. Drove her home. How was your night, d'you watch that tape?" 
You trace the coil of a black curl down to his shoulder, and can't force yourself to meet his eyes as you ask, "A vampire?" 
"What?" 
"She was like a vampire at one point, you said." Eddie's arm goes still. "What did you mean by that?" you ask.
He puts his guitar down on the floor. You worry you've said something truly dull for him to place his sweetheart in such a rush, but Eddie's like that. He can tell you're embarrassed no doubt, and he's giving you the answer to your question as swiftly as he can to soothe the wound. 
"Here, look," he says. He pushes his hair away from his neck on one side and tilts his head, bearing a wine-stained curve of skin to you unabashedly. "She kissed me. She gave me a hickey, used a lot of teeth. That's why it's bruised so much on the edges." 
Warmth you've never felt rushes in, like your blood has superheated, and it's written on your face. Eddie's room feels suddenly a thousand times smaller than before and more intimate, his poster wallpaper curving in, the space between you inching closer. 
"Sorry," he says, "I know it's kind of weird to show you." 
"No, I'm sorry," you say, mortified. "I shouldn't have asked you." 
"Yeah, you should. You didn't get it and now you do. I don't mind telling you." 
Eddie lets his hair fall back against his neck, a kinky curtain that looks ridiculously soft in the orangey light of his lamp. There's a butter smoothness to it, and the way he moves as he does is worse, his hand open and reaching for you. He doesn't hold your hand, doesn't even try, just lets his upturned palm hang off the edge of his knee as if to say, Ask me whatever it is you want to ask me. It's cool. 
"Why would she do that?" you ask, gesturing to your neck.
"It's not her fault, I was flirting with her a ton trying to make it work."
"Not like that." 
Eddie's hand turns toward his knee. "Like what?" 
Your hand drifts to your own neck absentmindedly. You get kissing, wanting to be kissed and wanting to give them. You understand why she kissed his neck; if you'd been in her position, alone in the car with Eddie laying his charm on thick, you might climb the console and push aside his hair too. 
"I know why she kissed you. I don't see why she…" You rub your lips together, your embarrassment turning sharp. You hate how humiliating this feels. "I know what a hickey is, Eds, but why would you want one?" 
His turn to fluster. The tiniest tinge of pink paints his cheeks. "Are you asking me why I enjoyed it?" 
"Did you?" 
You despise yourself, truly. Worse when Eddie laughs, his chest forward, hair falling in his face as he chuckles sincerely. 
"Yeah," he says, smiling at you "I liked it. Before she started trying to kill me I was having a good time." 
He doesn't put you through the agony of asking what you both know he wants to. 
You've never had one?
"It feels warm, and it's– you know how being kissed gives you butterflies, right? It's better than that. It's hot, and all her weight is on you and you have your hand on her back trying to pull her in, and she's as close as she can be without, you know." Something flickers across Eddie's face. Not longing, but a remembered pleasure. It makes you squirm. 
"I don't see how it doesn't just hurt." 
The hand that hadn't been reaching for you holds a pick. He flashes it between his fingers, a party trick, a nervous tic, his eyelashes tangling together as his eyelids inch closed. He scrunches his face up for a second. 
"Don't hate me if I ask you something weird," Eddie says, eyes shut tight. 
You don't think you could. You watch Eddie's face, knowing he can't see your analysis, and feel a shock of pins and needles in your hands when his eyes open and immediately lock on to yours. 
"Do you want me to give you one?" he asks. 
Your lips feel like they've been glued shut. You're aware of your breathing, how shallow each inhale has become, but you can't do anything about it. 
He has the decency to acknowledge what position his question puts you in, "I know it might be weird but I can't describe it to you if you don't know what it feels like." 
You surprise him. You surprise yourself. "Uh, yeah. Okay." 
"Yeah?" 
"It doesn't hurt?" 
"Not unless you want it to." A hint of a smirk plays on his lips, though it fades quickly. "It doesn't hurt. That's not the point. But it can feel… foreign." 
You nod jerkily, wishing you knew what to do. 
The atmosphere is thick enough to cut through. Neither of you like it. Eddie gives you another type of smile, a familiar one that says, I'm your best friend, I always will be, so please chill out. 
"You're gonna have to sit in my lap." 
You actually laugh. "Eddie," you chastise, thinking it's a bad joke. 
"Sorry, sweetheart, but it's that or the bed." His teasing tone is light, but he still adds, "I mean, we can do it sitting next to each other but it's difficult. Whatever you want, though." 
You climb up on your knees. You're shy, absolutely, you always will be and especially when Eddie's teasing, but he really is your best friend, and the bed isn't happening.
He doesn't scare you. 
He grins and ushers you toward him. "Alright, come here." He tugs one of your thighs over his lap and your breath catches. He grabs the other and any laughter between you abruptly dies. 
You settle over his lap with an expression not far from pained. Eddie's hands rest against your thigh and your hip. He has to look up at you now, and he does as he encourages your weight firmly downward. You're more than conscious of where you're positioned. 
"Do me a favour?" he asks. 
"Yeah." You put your hand on his chest tentatively. 
"Don't suffer through it if you hate it, okay? All you have to do is say something and I'll stop, but if you feel like you can't, a good right hook would work too." 
"I'm not gonna hurt you," you protest. 
"Me neither," he says. His hand lifts from your thigh to your neck, and he brushes his fingertips down the curve of it ineffectually. It would feel good if you weren't choking on air. "Relax, sweetheart. Please." 
"I'm really warm." 
"Your shirt's too tight anyway," he says, hand at your collar. He thumbs open your top button, a second, and exposes the flat of your chest. His fingers slide across your neck as he folds back your starched collar. They're cool compared to the raging heat he finds there. 
You take a deep breath. 
"You could put your hands in my hair," he says. Wishful thinking has hope colouring his tone. 
You put your hands on his shoulders. The very tips of your fingers partition his curls. 
He raises an arm above your mess of limbs to weave a hand behind your ear. It's then that you feel his callouses, so rough against the delicate skin of your scalp. Despite their texture, you find it feels good. He tucks his hand in tight, and slowly, slowly turns your head to the side. 
"Look up," he murmurs. 
You lift your head and stare at the ceiling with widened eyes. 
He can't know but he does, and he says, "Close your eyes." The heat of his breath kisses your neck.  
You shiver at the suggestion of his lips, and again when they press to your skin. Close-lipped, Eddie kisses the skin just under your ear where on the opposite side of your head his thumb strokes quarter circles. You're quickly overwhelmed by the duelling sensations. You don't notice his lips have parted until he's kissing a sloven path downward, his spit cooling in wake. 
This isn't a hickey, this is straight up kissing, and you don't know what to do with how you feel. You hide your hands in his hair. 
It tugs him forward. He reads your hands for enthusiasm, and if it is or isn't he pulls you closer still and opens his mouth against your skin. His teeth are impossible to ignore. 
Your hand works further into his hair, getting caught in a tangle as he sucks your skin between his lips. His lazy mouthing turns insistent but still gentle, his teeth scratching ever so slightly at your pulse as it capers beneath his ministrations. You gasp at the warmth blossoming under your ribs. You cup the back of his neck a touch too tight. 
He doesn't stop kissing you, only grabs your wrist to stop you from choking him out. You make a sound you've never made with him before, a mewl, all breathless and teary as the sensation worsens. Which is to say, betters. 
He breaks a particularly rough kiss to suck in breath, his nose sliding up the curve of your neck as he leans back. "You okay?" he murmurs, half-lidded eyes locking onto your flushed face. 
"Why does it feel like that?" you ask. 
He drops his head, his nose level with your chin. "I don't know," he says, punctuating with a kiss right there, the closest bit of skin he can find. "Want me to do it again?" 
You swallow and he must see it. He says nothing, wrapping his arms around your waist as he waits for you to respond. Your stomach pushes into his, your arms braced on his shoulder so you don't collapse into his front, limp with touch. 
"Sweetheart, can I do it again?" he asks.
"Yeah," you say, quiet but enthusiastic. "Please." 
He's slower this time. Eddie leans into your neck and doesn't kiss you at first, his lips so close to your skin that you can feel their phantom. You skin tingles from his previous scandalising, and it doesn't beg, skin can't beg, but you can, you curl your arm behind his neck and hook his head there, crushing his hair to the crook of your arm. He doesn't take much convincing beyond that. His lips smush against your neck and you feel every millimetre as they part, heat and warmth and wet spreading like budding flowers come to bloom. You melt into him soon after, and Eddie takes your weight in stride, hand at the small of your back and pulling you in so hard you can feel his ribs. 
When you think you're used to it —not used to it, but expecting what can be expected— Eddie nips you. Tiny dainty kisses broken up with a nibbling you'd couldn't describe as anything but playful. He laughs at your gasping and does it again, again, giddy hot laughter mixed with one of the strangest feelings you've ever been subjected to. You're molten. You're dizzy with it.
Eddie pulls back enough to ask, "I'm gonna undo another button, okay? Just one. Is that alright?" 
"What for?" 
"So I can kiss your shoulder. Just your shoulder." He sounds pleading, desperately excited in a way you've never heard him and you want to know what it'll feel like, so you let him. 
This next button unveils the top of your bra and the soft hills of your breasts. He doesn't look, barely glances at his hand as he tugs your shirts down your arm, diving into the juncture of your neck like he needs it to breathe. His kisses are proper compared to some of the stuff he's been doing, but then he opens his mouth and the flat of his tongue wets your skin as he kisses kisses kisses down your shoulder. His hand is somewhere under your shirt, fingers slipped under your bra strap and pulling teasingly at the elastic as he eases you down in his arms. You're shorter than him where you'd started taller, totally compressed in his arms and at his mercy.
When he pulls back, the slimmest ribbon of spit shines between your shoulder and his lips. He wipes his face with the back of his hand, his eyes glassy, and that hand cups your face. He pretty much grabs you, but there's not a lick of cruelty in his touch. Eddie's rough. Never cruel. 
"You're on fire," he says. It's objective rather than joking. "You're so hot. Do you want to stop?" 
"Not– not unless you want to," you say, trying to quieten your breathing. You sound like you've run a marathon. It feels like it. 
"I'm gonna give you a real one, cool?" 
"I didn't know they weren't real." 
"Oh, sweetheart," he says, and his eyes are damning, a loving pity in the black of his blown pupils, "I was just warming you up." 
Your mind blanks. 
"Make sure I can hide it," you say. 
You aren't thinking straight, concerned about hiding his hickeys but not what this means for the two of you. His unexpected hunger, and your willingness to let him eat you whole. 
"I don't think you can hide it anymore," he says, stroking your cheek with his thumb. 
You look down at his lips. They're rosy, swollen from the pressure.
He sees you looking. 
He yanks you in by the waist and sizes you up, almost, like he's calling your bluff, not spiteful but something mean about him as he stares at your mouth in return. 
Like he doesn't want you to make the mistake. Like he knows you won't. 
His hand tips your chin up high and he ducks his own down. An inch and you'd be kissing. That's all it would take.
"Is that really what you want?" he asks.
"I don't know," you say. Is it what he wants?
It has to be. 
"Have you wanted to, before?" He draws a line down your cheek with his marriage finger. Fast as a heavy tear. "You want me to kiss you?" 
"Yeah," you whisper, trying to make sense of this, your sudden confession, a secret want pushed into the light. 
Eddie turns his hand and strokes down your cheek with the back of it, pushing any dampened baby hairs away from your skin. His gaze softens. 
"Was that so hard?" he asks. 
"You knew?"
He kisses you. He's smiling, and he doesn't take just one. He must kiss you four or five times, your lips parted enough to know he could push it further if he wanted, but he doesn't. These kisses are unhurried, missing the ravenous passion of his hickeying but not the fondness. 
"You don't know how hard it is," he says after he's broken away, his forehead tipped against yours, "how hard it is to have someone look at you like you look at me everyday, like I'm something you can't have." 
"I didn't know–" you knew. You felt the same. His kissing is evidence alone. it's confessional.
"I know. Guess I thought nothing good would come of it, but– but I don't want good. I want you." 
He pulls back quickly, like you've said something confessional rather than him. He surprised himself. 
"I'm not good?" you ask. 
"You're good. You'll ruin me, that's all." 
You don't have time to ask him what he means by that. He kisses you again, kisses your cheek, draws a line of crescent moons down along your neck to the mess he's made of you. He kisses– he sucks your neck so hard, so sudden, that goosebumps erupt and you can't stop yourself from saying, "Ohh," as you cling to his shoulders. 
This is the vampire thing he'd talked about, the points of his teeth stark against your skin even now. There's another layer of vulnerability unveiled here, knowing that he could really hurt you and knowing he never would. He kisses you until you're overwhelmed by him. Heat everywhere. Sweat shining on your skin. You don't want anything else but this.
You squeak as the pressure turns from pleasurable to too much. Eddie hears the pain in it and pulls away, instantly sorry and willing to prove it, his hands cradling your face. 
You pant. He shushes you gently.
"Sorry, baby." He pets your cheeks. 
Your head falls back, too heavy on your sore neck. You feel wiped. 
Wiped, but good. Lax. 
"That was nice," you say breathlessly. 
Eddie sits up and drags you with him, hand behind your neck to prop you up. He's laughing again, his awful sweet laugh that you've heard a thousand times before. It never fails to make you smile. 
"You're like a dead fish." 
You cover an eye with your hand. "I take it the romance is over." 
"You thought that was romantic? Babe, I'm only getting started." 
Eddie gives you a quick peck. Where his hickey had felt like the heart of a star growing hotter with each passing second, his smaller kiss feels like the sun through blinds, a dappling of warmth. 
"Are you messing with me?" you ask.
He pushes his arms over your shoulders for a hug. 
"No. Not messing with you." His nose rubs against the shell of your ear. "It's about time we talked." 
You let your hand drift down the dip of his back.
"Okay," you mumble. Talking. You need to talk about whatever it is that just happened. 
"...Maybe I'll get you a glass of water first," he adds.
"That's a good idea." 
𓆩❤︎𓆪
Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed, and if you did, please consider letting me know/reblogging, it means the world to me and makes a big difference!! ♡ NOTE: Eddie def pines back if that isn't fully clear, I tried to imply it with his date where he could've hooked up with someone but didn't go through with it, it was cos he's too in lurve
14K notes · View notes
sinofwriting · 1 month
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I ❤️ MILFS - Max Verstappen
Words: 9,747 Summary: Max wasn’t too sure who the woman was that was always with Logan, but he was sure that he wanted to get to know her. Note(s): Sargeant Reader, Age Gap, Older!Reader, Logan and Oscar are both 20 during the 2023 season, not 22. The 2023 driver standings are different (I am giving Logan the season he should have had). Reader has the nickname Pan (short for momma panther). Logan is sweetheart, Max is head over heels in love. I’m gonna be honest I never thought this fic would get written or finished. I got the idea for it back in December but only started writing it on March 16th. And it would have never happened without @burningcupcakefire & @pucksandpower. Thank you both so much for all your help. (also if anyone wants to see more of Max and Pan, let me know)
Taglist | Masterlist | Emergency Dental Fund
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Max remembers the announcement of Oscar’s arrival to F1, the drama and hilarity of it. Sometimes he sees the kids name and has to stop himself from laughing. No nineteen-year-old had any business being that funny.
Max doesn’t remember much of Logan’s announcement to F1. Only that he was young as well, being the first American in forever, and Williams' quick admission that they hadn’t wanted to sign, had wanted to wait another year.
He wishes now that he had paid more attention.
There’s a woman standing in the William’s garage, on Logan’s side. She’s clearly there for him, with the similar pass that his trainer has around her neck, and the way her eyes intently follow Logan’s movements around the garage as he talks to the mechanics and engineers.
She also happens to be the most beautiful woman Max has ever seen.
She can’t help but clutch at Benny’s arm the whole race, terror gripping her along with pride.
Benny chuckles when the race comes to an end, Logan doing his cooldown lap and she finally lets go. “And just think you’ve got over twenty more races of this.” Her nose wrinkle and a hand goes over her heart that’s thudding. “Please, Benny.” He chuckles again but pats her shoulder. “You’ve got this.” “Not gonna tell me it gets easier?” He snorts. “No. This is far worse than F2 or F3 and we still were both scared watching him out there. We’ll never know a day of peace now.”
She sighs, watching the screens as it shows the top three getting interviewed and in the background you can see some of the drivers getting weighed. “He’s going to be sore and in pain.” It makes something clench inside her, the knowledge that Logan would be in pain. It was part of the job, the aches and the bruises, but it didn’t make it any easier for her to know. “I’ve already got everything set up as soon as he’s back and debriefs are done.”
Her eyes catch on the screen showing where all the drivers placed and tears prick her eyes and she shakes her head. “Twelfth in his first grand prix. I can’t believe it.”
The garage is filled with chatter as the team celebrates getting their first points of the season and their rookie driver performing better than they expected. The way they don’t even try to whisper it makes her jaw twitch. She was grateful that Williams was giving Logan his dream, but she didn’t like how they were going about it. Quickly and publicly stating that they didn’t want to sign Logan yet, wanted to wait a year. And now this.
A light nudge to her ribs makes her unclench her jaw and she gives Benny a grateful smile.
Both of their attention is quickly drawn however to the two Williams drivers entering the garage, the space filling with cheers.
She smiles as Logan grins at the team, basking in the smiles they have on their faces for him and Alex, the pats on the back he’s getting. The grin turns to a beam when he spots Benny and her and he quickly bounces over to them.
A laugh leaves her at the way Benny pulls him into a bear hug, lifting him off his feet a little. “Proud of you, kid.” He murmurs. She can’t hear what Logan says, but he’s put down and it’s her turn.
She wants to bundle him up in her arms, hold him and not let go, but doesn’t want to embarrass him in front of his team, so she raises a hand and pushes his hair out of his face. “You did amazing, baby.” He smiles at her, all bright and shiny eyes and then he’s wrapping his arms around her, hugging her tight and she’s quick to return it, rubbing his back. “You did so good, Logan. So good. I’m so proud.” She tells him again, pressing a kiss to his sweaty head. “Thank you, momma.” He tells her, hugging her tight for another moment before letting her go. She smiles up at him and god, that makes her heart ache. Her son, her baby, taller than her somehow. She woke up some days and still wasn’t sure where the time had gone and how he was taller than her shoulders. “Go shower and debrief and then Benny and me will take care of you, yeah? And I’ll get your favorite ordered to the hotel, ready as soon as you get there.” He beams at her again, darting forward to press a quick to her cheek before starting to rush away. “Best mom ever!” He calls over his shoulder and she laughs.
Y/N Sargeant will never forget the first time she held her son, only then at nine years old, he had been her cousin.
Logan was small, wrinkly, pink skin, and full of small cries. She could remember staring at him with furrowed eyebrows, trying to understand how he could be what her baby dolls were made to be like. She remembers her mama having her sit on the couch after asking her if she wanted to hold him and how she had quickly nodded, hoping that maybe holding him would somehow make him look better.
She remembers the sudden nerves that built in her stomach as her mama started to hand him to her. Remembers being scared that she would drop him, remembers thinking how stupid it would be if he was still weird to look at like this.
And she remembers finally holding that and it disappearing. His small cries, no more, his  wriggling calmed down, and his wrinkles no longer looked weird but cute. She remembers holding him for the first time and feeling unconditional love for the first time in her life.
She’s twelve when she realizes that her uncle and aunt don’t like Logan much. It didn’t make sense to her then, still doesn’t know. Because they liked Dalton just fine, but not Logan.
She remembers asking her dad about it. Asking him why they didn’t love Logan, but loved Dalton and worse, she remembers the pained look in his eyes as he realizes that his child picked up on what he and his wife had as well.
It’s the first hard adult conversation she has with her parents and it’s fitting that it’s about Logan, as they sit her down and talk to her about how not all parents love their kids, and how sometimes that includes them only loving one child and not the other.
She remembers clearly the first time Logan calls her mom.
It’s her fourteenth birthday and she’s got the four-year-old in her lap as she sits in a rocking chair, reading her English essay aloud for him. Logan’s eyes are closed, head resting on her chest, over her heart, and his little fingers of his one hand are curled in her shirt right by his head.
She wants to sit there forever, reading to him as she rocks back and forth. But she wants another slice of cake before Martha puts it away and Logan needs to sleep in his bed where he can stretch out fully and drool on his pillowcases and not her shirt that Martha will surely tut over but then smile fondly when she sees Logan doing it all over again.
Setting the essay down on her dresser, she runs her now free fingers through his blond hair. “C’mon Logan, time for bed.” He grumbles, fingers tightening on her shirt and she can feel it being pulled slightly. “You can put on your new race car jammies, cuddle with Ello.” He shakes his head, squirming a bit in her lap as he tries to shove himself closer. “Stay with you.” “Oh, baby.” She whispers, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Y’know I’ll stay with you until you fall asleep.” His head shakes again and she has to bite her lip as his head hits her collarbone. “Want cuddles, momma.” Her heart thuds painfully in her chest at the name he called her, tears pricking her eyes. “Okay, baby. Let's get you in jammies, grab Ello, and you can stay with me tonight.”
She’s only been eighteen for ten hours when she asks her father for the near impossible.
“I want custody of Logan. I want to adopt him. And I need your help to make that happen.” He stares at her, no expression on his face, not even shock. “He’s,” She pauses, jaw twitching and tears springing to her eyes. “He wants to do karting, just like Dalton. And he’s good at it. I’ve taken him. They told him no. They haven’t bought him clothes in two years. They don’t know a single thing about his school, his grades, his teachers. He hasn’t called David dad since he was six and he hasn’t called Madelyn mom since he was four.” Her hands are formed into fists, nails digging into her palms as she speaks. “I have money, I can provide for him. I’ve got my shares of the company now and I’ve got my inheritance from Grandma Talls. But I know that a judge won’t sign off without some influence.” “Madelyn and Daniel?” She leans forward in her seat, a spark of hope filling her. “I already talked to them, they’ll do it.” One of his hands comes up to rub at his mouth, sighing. Then it drops to open up one of his desk drawers and he’s pulling out a bunch of papers, dropping them on the desk in front of her.
“I figured this was gonna happen and I knew after you talked to them and they called me. They signed away their rights three hours ago. Michael and Lily are waiting outside to come in so you can sign the papers.” Tears slipped from her eyes, joy wrapping itself around her entire being from his words, the fact that he called their family lawyer to be on standby, that he and her mother were so supportive. “Thank you. Thank you so much.” He smiles at her. “I couldn’t say no to you. Not when it comes to Logan. I’m way too young to have a grandkid, let alone one that’s eight, but I made my peace with that years ago.” “Thank you.”
Max watches the free practice session coverage intently as they focus on the Williams garage, nose wrinkling when they focus on Logan’s trainer, Benny and then James Vowles. Could it really be possible that they never once caught a shot of her? He starts to get a sinking feeling in his stomach that he's gonna have to go on Twitter when the camera moves and suddenly she’s there and he’s scrambling for the tv remote, pressing the pause button just before the camera switches to an overhead shot of the Bahrain track.
His heart skips a beat as he gets his first good luck at her. Her pretty eyes and smile. His eyes then travel down, wanting to know her name and his heart drops.
Y/N Sargeant, Mother of Logan Sargeant.
Fuck.
“Momma Panther!” Oscar greets to the confusion of other drivers as Logan and a woman enter the room.
Lando’s eyebrows are raised as he watches Oscar stand. Watching as his teammate claps Logan on the back, before giving him an actual hug. Before he then hugs the woman as well, whispering something to her that makes her laugh.
Pulling away from her, Oscar grins when her hand comes up to pat his cheek for a second. “Thank you for the invite, Os.” “Of course.” He sends a fond look to Logan, who's standing awkwardly by the table. “Y’know Logan and you are always welcome.” She makes a humming noise. “C’mon, let me introduce you to everyone.”
Turning around, he smirks at the table. “Everyone, Logan.” Charles lets out a laugh, as the others chuckle. He gestures to her, “This is Momma Panther or Pan.” “Y/N or Pan.” She corrects, playfully shaking her finger at Oscar. “I only let the F2 boys call me Momma Pan.” He sighs. “Okay, this is Y/N. Logan’s mom.”
Lando coughs, water going down the wrong pipe. Fernando’s eyes are wide as he looks at her. Charles, George, and Alex are all nodding. Max has a weird expression on his face and Carlos looks dumbfounded.
“She,” Carlos points at her. “Is his,” he points at Logan. “Mother?” Logan moves away from the table to stand by his mom, easily melting into her side at all the attention. The action makes Oscar smile, all too used to the easy affection between the mother and son. “I got pretty lucky right?” She shakes her head. “I’m just happy you weren’t a difficult child.” Logan both blushes and preens at the same time. Carlos shakes his head, disbelief still clear.
“Please, sit.” George says after a moment. “We haven’t ordered yet.”
The seasoned drivers and her watch amused as both Oscar and Logan usher her to sit first. Oscar easily then lets Logan sit next before sitting beside the American. The two of them sharing a grin after.
It makes her shake her head as she turns her attention to the menu, tuning out the sound of conversation picking back up.
The gentle sound of a throat clearing makes her glance to her left.
The current two time world champion smiles a bit awkwardly at her. “Have you been here before?” She shakes her head, turning her head a bit to look at him better. “No. To Australia of course, for Logan’s races and to visit Oscar once, but not here.” He nods and she can’t help but notice the way he swallows harshly. “We started coming here in 2021, it’s good food. Good drinks.” She laughs, “good gin and tonic?” He flushes a little, but laughs. “Yes. Very good. Heavy on the gin.” She nods, “I think I’ll have one of those then.”
Her eyes drift back to the menu, not even wincing at the prices next to the dishes. This was nearly cheap compared to where she had been forced to eat growing up.
“Momma, can we,” “Yes.” She answers before Logan finishes, already knowing what he’s asking. “Also you two, no hard liquor. We have plans tomorrow.” She continues, still looking at the menu.
They wouldn’t get drunk from a few drinks, but she had a feeling that Lando would try to instigate something again with Oscar, making the poor kid so drunk he could barely walk, again. And she didn’t mind people thinking that she was overbearing with Logan and even Oscar. The boys knew that if they really wanted to do something they could, even if she said otherwise. It was one of the nice things about being an adult.
Logan wrinkles his nose, glancing at the drinks part of the menu, before grinning. “They have it.” Oscar glances at what he’s pointing at, shaking his head. “You and your goddamn obsession.” “We come here like once a year.” Logan defends. “And no other country sells it.”
It’s not until after the server leaves, all of their orders taken, that conversation starts again.
“So, Mrs. Sargeant,” Lando starts. “Just Y/N or even Pan.” She sends a fond look to Oscar who had made that nickname stick. “And I’m not married.” She says, amused. “Ah.” “Not married.” Fernando shakes his head. “Now that doesn’t sound right.” She looks at him amused. “Don’t believe in premarital sex?” She teases. The older driver laughs and so do the others. “No. Just hard to believe that you aren’t married. You are a very gorgeous woman.” “Thank you.”
“So,” Lando starts again, giving Max a weird look seeing how his friend is gripping his glass of water. “Will you be coming to all the races?” She nods. “Yes, I have since Logan started his career. Haven’t missed one.” Logan shakes his head, grinning at her. “Nope, not one.” “Your work allows you to do that?” Her lips press together for a second to try and hide her smile at the gentle but obvious fishing they are doing. “I have shares in some companies and a very generous inheritance. So, no true, real work.” “You do some work for Grandpa when we’re in the states.” “I organize his desk for him, which he then messes up as soon as he sits back down at it.”
“You do not mind the constant travel? It is quite tiring.” Charles asks, curious. “No. And once I got Logan in karting, I promised him that I’d make it to all of his races. Maybe in a few years, I’ll stop going to all of them, but I am part of his team as well.” “Manager?” “God, no.” She shakes her head at Carlos’ assumption. “Cook slash nutritionist. Benny, his trainer is amazing, also doubles at being a physiotherapist for Logan, but he doesn’t know how to cook to save his life. So I make their meals.” “Mine as well.” Alex pipes in. “They’re truly amazing, by the way.” “Of course.” “Can you make mine again?” Oscar asks, leaning over Logan a bit to look at her. “I’ve missed having them.” “Sure.” She laughs. “Get me your new sheets before the next race, yeah?” “Done.”
Max watches from the corner of his eyes as she takes her first sip of her gin and tonic. Her brows raise a bit when the drink hits her tongue and he has to force his eyes up, to not focus in on her lips, to think about them and what they’d feel like on, he shakes his head. Forcing the thoughts, the ideas away.
“Very heavy on the gin.” She whispers, turning a bit to look at him. He rubs his hands against his jeans. “Do you like it?” “It’s nice.” She smiles. Relief fills him. “Good.”
He continues to look at her, wanting to tear his eyes away but being unable to. She was simply lovely. And getting this closer look at her, he can’t believe that she’s a mother, or at least a mother to a twenty-year-old. It didn’t seem possible. She looked barely older than him. Not at least thirty-five. She was probably more like Fernando’s age as well and he glances at the fellow two world champion, more disbelief filling him. Because how could the two be close in age at all?
Logan sighs as he collapses face first onto Oscar’s bed. Laying there for a solid minute before groaning and turning his head.
“Dinner was nice.” Oscar hums and he can feel the bed dip beside him. “You seemed a bit more relaxed.” “No media, and you and Pan were there. A bit more relaxed.” Logan scoffs. “Yeah, because you were so tense with media before.” As he speaks, he reaches out to lay a hand on Oscar’s thigh, giving the muscle a squeeze. “It’s nuts, isn’t it? I mean we all got told that the media was so much more, so different, but…” He trails off, shaking his head. “Yeah.” Oscar sighs and then he’s laying beside Logan, the American luckily moving his hand off and away from the other’s thigh before he lies on it.
“Y’know I have no personality, apparently.” Logan snorts, eyes opening when he hadn’t even realized he had closed him. The Australian driver also has his head turned so they’re looking at each other. “What? Have they never seen a Prema video?” He shrugs as best as he can. “I’d take that over my apparent frat boyness.” “You? A frat boy?” Oscar laughs. Logan sighs as he thinks a bit more about it, the mood turning a bit serious. “I just hope momma hasn’t seen it.” “What happened?” “She’s just worried. Thinks I haven’t noticed, but she’s wondering if she did a good job with me, done enough for me. And she’s given me everything y’know. I can’t imagine what I’d be like with them as my parents.” Oscar moves a bit closer, just a few inches between their faces now. “You’d still be amazing, still great. Maybe a frat boy.” The American rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling.
“I think Fernando has a thing for her. For Pan.” He clarifies. “What?” “I mean, just during the dinner y’know, he kept looking at her. And him calling her gorgeous.” “Well, he’d be dumb and blind to not notice that.” Logan scoffs, rolling onto his back and turning his head to the side, keeping his eyes on Oscar. “I’m being serious.” The younger laughs, poking him lightly. “I think Alonso has a thing for her.” Logan’s face scrunches up in disgust. “Dude, no. That’s gross. Momma isn’t even thirty and Fernando’s like forty-three. And isn’t he dating that journalist?” Oscar’s brows press together. “What journalist?” “The one that gave Fred shit.” “I thought she died?” The two look at each other, both baffled.
Logan thinks again of the journalist he’s seen around Fernando and the one that all of the Prema drivers, former and at the time current, had avoided or given shit statements too. They did look a bit different now that he really thought about it. Fernando’s journalist slash girlfriend didn’t have a fucking complex.
“Different journo.” Logan mutters. He then blinks, “wait, she died?” “Mate, you didn’t hear about that?” “No!” “She was supposed to be at Spa, remember. And we all were relieved when she wasn’t there. She died, car crash or something, I can’t remember.” “How do I not remember this?” Oscar shrugs as best as he can while laying down. “I don’t know.”
It’s silent for a moment, “you don’t think,” “No.” Oscar shakes his head, but he doesn’t sound too sure. “I mean, yeah no.” “Right.” He looks up at the ceiling.
“Okay, so Fernando is out of the running.” Logan groans, “Os, no.” “Look he clearly has eyes, but if he’s dating someone he’s out. He wasn’t the only one looking.” “Oscar, please, it’s my mom.” “She’s like my mom too, which is why we have to talk about this.” Oscar insists, wriggling closer to Logan. Their sides completely pressed together and when Logan turns his head to look at the other, their noses nearly brush. He looks at Oscar’s face, all earnest and caring and sighs. “Fine. Charles was looking, but he only dates one type, so safe from him.” “Lando was looking.” Logan snorts, “I thought this was for potential dates, not another kid.” He laughs, their noses brushing together from the movement. “Okay, no Lando. Max.” “He kind of looked weird when you introduced her.” He frowns. “I saw that too.” “But he also got all blushy when they talked.”
“The drivers do know, I mean Alex knows that she didn’t like birth you, right?” Logan’s frown deepens. “Of course. I mean, it’s not super well known, but it’s a little hard to believe that she naturally had a kid twenty years ago.” “Thought so.” Oscar then chuckles. “Imagine, them thinking that she did, though. Just thinking she’s got some sort of insane skin care routine.”
“How in the hell does she look like that with a twenty-year-old kid?” “I know right?” Alex says, looking at Carlos. “It’s insane.” Charles pokes at his own cheek. “I think I need to ask her for advice, what products she uses. I want to age like her.” “We all want to age like her.” George agrees. “What are you saying?” Fernando frowns. A few of them share a look, but Charles and Max share a different one. “Mate, you’ve got wrinkles and all these lines.” Max says. “I mean those are natural, but look at her. The skincare helps.” Fernando frowns, “Lines?” Charles touches at his own lines, “see lines. From smiling, laughing, frowning. All good things, very nice. Just not uh,” his brows furrow drawing a blank. Lando snorts at his struggle. “You just want to help your skin. Keep it healthy.” The older driver makes a humming noise, considering.
Her breath is caught in her throat, eyes wide as she watches the screen. Her heart feels like it is beating in double time. She wants to look away, doesn’t want to watch in case something horrible happens, but she can’t. Because Logan just overtook both Magnussen and Ocon in the same lap. Logan is in 9th. Logan is in a point scoring position with only five laps of the race left. Logan might score his first formula 1 points at his home race, at his actual home race, at his first ever home race.
Her hands are shaking, fingers locked together as she presses them against her mouth, trying to breathe, praying that Logan won’t fall back out of the points.
She doesn’t even notice that he’s lessened that gap to Pierre until suddenly he’s overtaken the other French driver, just three laps later. “Oh my god.” “Fuck.” “Benny,” she whispers, and one of her hands is dropping so she can clutch at the older man. “Benny, I think,” “He’s gonna do it.”
And sure enough he does it. Logan holds his place in front of Pierre and finishes in 8th.
“Yes!” The whole garage is cheering and she’s wrapping her arms around Benny, laughing when the trainer lifts her. “He did it! He did it!” She cheers. The garage quiets though as Gaetan starts to speak on the radio.
“Logan, you are on your cooldown lap.” “Got it. Where’s Alex?” She winces at the question, one of her hands grips at Benny’s shoulder as he sets her back down, the other holding onto her headphones that miraculously didn’t get thrown off her head or disconnected when celebrating. “Alex is P14, P14.” It’s quiet for a moment. “Okay, I’m sorry we didn’t get any points today, next race is ours right? The car felt great.” Both of her hands fly up to her mouth. “Logan.” Gaetan’s voice is full of disbelief and laughter. “Mate, you finished P8. You got us points. You got your first points.” She can see him react to the news, the car jerking underneath him for a second, before he wrangles it back under control. “What? What do you mean?” “You finished in P8. Clean race, finished ahead of both Alpines and Magnussen.” “Holy fuck.” The garage fills with laughter at his reaction and tears start to build in her eyes. “You guys,” his voice breaks. “Thank you guys so much. This was you guys, the car felt great, really.” She watches as James hops on the radio. “This was you as well, Logan. Amazing drive today.” “Thank you, James. Thank you so much for this.”
His mechanics, Benny and her, quickly go over to where the cars are parking, watching as Logan slots it into place. He’s a little shaky as he gets out of the car and he’s about to dart towards them but someone from the FIA, is ushering him to the scale.
His reluctance is clear even with his helmet on, but he goes. Letting them take his weight and as soon as it’s written down, he’s stepping off and away, fumbling with his gloves and then his helmet.
There’s an awed grin on his face, tears in his eyes, and seeing it makes the tears that have built in her own fall.
His gloves and helmet tumble to the ground as his mechanics and Benny surround him, celebrating his points.
Logan laughs when they finally let them go and his eyes light up when he sees her and he darts to her and she easily welcomes him into her arms.
“I’m so proud of you.” She tells him, squeezing his sweaty body close before running a hand through his hair. “You did amazing.” “I did it, momma.” His voice is weak and she can feel tears hit the skin of her neck where his head is buried. “You did it.”
“Logan did amazing, it was a good drive.” She blinks in surprise at the voice, turning in her barstool to look. “Max?” He smiles at her, cheeks flushed. “He did really well.” “He did.” She agrees before patting the stool next to her. His smile widens as he takes the seat. “I didn’t realize that Red Bull was in the same hotel.” Maybe she should have since she had spotted a few Red Bull polos, but she figured it was fan gear. “I think Aston is here as well. You aren’t celebrating with Logan?” She shakes her head. “We already celebrated. Him, Oscar, and a bunch of his friends here are throwing a party. I wasn’t really interested in watching them all get wasted, so this,” she gestures to the hotel bar, “is me having a drink to celebrate before going up to my room and ordering some room service.” “Could I join you?” His cheeks redden at the words, at the way her eyebrows raise. “Not like that. But for food? I’ve never actually eaten anywhere in Miami that wasn’t catering.�� She stares at him for a moment before nodding. “Yeah. And I have the perfect place to take you.”
“Did I actually score points yesterday?” “You did.” “Sweet.” “Very. How’s the head?” Logan shrugs, “I mean, I drank a lot, but like I’m just dehydrated.” She shakes her head, “That will change in a few years.” “Not gonna tell me to not drink underage?” He teases, bending down to press a kiss to her cheek before grabbing her glass of juice and draining it. She snorts. “We’re in Europe most of the time and I gave you your first drink. I don’t think I have a leg to stand on. And you were celebrating.” “True.”
He sits across from her, refilling the glass and taking another drink from it before setting it down and starting to help himself to her pancakes, which she just pushes closer to him. “How was your night? You could have joined us. We wouldn’t of minded.” “I’m your mom, Logan.” She laughs. “I think the me going to your friend's parties ship sailed a few years ago.” “Yeah, but you're awesome. We like having you around.” “I know.” She smiles. “I wasn’t in the mood to watch all of you get wasted.” “Fair.” he says around a bite of pancake, which she sends him a look for and he quickly swallows the food. Giving her a smile that says sorry.
“So, how was your night?” “It was good.” She tells him, spearing a piece of fruit with her other fork. “I came back to the hotel, had a drink, and then got dinner with Max.” His brows press together. “Max?” “Verstappen.” She clarifies. “Red Bull is staying here as well, he saw me at the hotel bar and asked if he could join me for some food.”
“You went on a date?” Her eyes narrow at him. “It wasn't a date.” “You went on a date.” He scrambles for his phone. “Oscar is never gonna believe it.” “I go on dates.” “Momma, you’ve gone on like five dates. And two of those were before you turned eighteen.” She scowls at him. “It wasn’t a date. We just got dinner.” She insists. “Uh huh.” He says, clearly not believing her. “Did he pay?” “Yes.” “Pull your chair out, help you with your coat, anything like that?” Her mind flashes back to Max helping her get out of his car, his insistence on opening doors for her. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean,” Logan continues. “Did he walk you to your hotel room? Say that he had a good time and he’d like to do it again?” “Oh.” Logan grins at her, smug, as he finishes typing out a text to Oscar. “You went on a date last night.” “I went on a date last night.” And she doesn’t mention the fact that a new number resides in her phone.
“Logan!” He stops at the sound of his name, turning to look behind him, where Max Verstappen is nearly jogging to catch up with him. “Max.” He greets, when the older driver is next to him, nerves filling him at the eyes of said driver on him, along with how a few other drivers are also looking at the pair, shock and surprise clear on their faces. “Hey.” Max grins. “How are you feeling about the track?” He looks at the older driver in confusion. They had just left the drivers briefing, why was he asking him this? Alex had already spoken about how the team was feeling about Monaco. “The car won’t be the best here, but we said that in Miami, so we’re hoping to repeat that here. Alex has a good chance at ending in a point scoring position.” He reiterates what he's been told and what he’s been telling the press. “But how are you feeling about it?” Logan stares at the Dutchman, eyes flickering around trying to see if cameras are there, if his momma is there, but there isn’t anyone. The other drivers are already gone, so are the FIA people. It’s just him and Max. “Y’know you don’t have to talk to me because you went out with my mom.” He expects relief, like that one dick Jase, and really who puts that on a birth certificate, but Max just frowns. “I know, I don’t have to.” Logan swallows around the lump in his throat, “right.” Turning around, he starts to walk, somehow knowing that the other driver will join him. “It’s a tricky track, it’s Monaco. I was here last year and I barely got in the points.” “P10 and P9.” He throws the driver a look, because that was too much to know, but Max is just looking at him, encouraging him to continue. “The car isn’t suited for it. I mean it wasn’t for Miami, but this is different. And I’m still not managing my tyres correctly, so even if I did manage to gain positions, I’d get called in to pit and lose them.” Max huffs out a laugh. “You are a rookie in a Williams, it’s impressive that you’ve already gotten points. If you could manage your tyres, when sometimes even I struggle, well I’d put you in Checo’s seat.” “Not yours?” He laughs again, “No. I’m a bit better at it than Checo.” Logan couldn’t really deny that.
“Do you want some advice? On the tyres?” Logan quickly nods. “I’ll take anything I can get.” “Don’t fight the car too much on the turns. If you need to get it to turn properly or without going on the brakes too soon, fight it. But when you don’t, let the car be stable, keep it fluid. When you come out of the corner, press harder. It might feel like you’ll go into the wall, but you won’t.” “And if I go into the wall?” Max laughs, clapping him on the shoulder. “I think you're a better driver than that mate.”
“How are you doing that in the turns?” Logan looks up from his notebook, where he’d been scribbling a bunch of random words. Looking at the screen, he watches his own onboard. He thinks about saying that it was Max that told, but no one at Williams liked hearing about Red Bull, especially with Alex in the room. “Just something I thought I’d try.” “Well, it was good, continue doing it. We may have ended up out of the points, but we got close.” Logan nods. Even with his five-second penalty, he had still kept fourteenth, and Alex ended up in twelfth. “Will do.”
Max had thought about her in his apartment a lot, an embarrassing amount. He had also pictured it very differently. A nice dinner, wine, even though a majority of it made his nose wrinkle, perhaps some kissing on his couch as a movie plays that they both don’t care about.
He hadn’t expected lunch, with juice that he’s trying to figure out how he’s never had it when he’s lived in Monaco for so many years, and a somewhat serious conversation, though maybe he has been expecting that one or rather anticipating it.
“I like you, Max.” He flushes, “I like you too.” He really did, even though his mother was going to have a heart attack when she found out how much older Pan was than him. “And I want to continue doing this.” She gestures between them with her free hand that isn’t being held in his. “So,” sensing that there’s something she wants to say. “I’m a mom.” He blinks at her words, panic starting to fill him. He thought he’d made that clear that he knew that, understood that. He always made sure to ask about Logan. He even had Logan’s number now after talking to him about how he felt about the Monaco track. “I know.” “Logan is important to me.” Oh, god, did Logan not like him? “The most important thing to me. And if we're going to continue to do this, I just need you to know that. He’s always going to be my first priority.” “Of course.” Relief fills him, his heart slows from its frantic beating. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.” She stares at him, trying to gauge how truthful he’s being before nodding. “Okay.”
“Did you think that I didn’t know that?” She shakes her head immediately. “No, it’s just. I don’t really do this.” She laughs. “Dating, relationships. Logan pointed that out to me, so I don’t really know how this goes and I just had to make it clear, put it on the table now.” “I don’t really do this either.” He hesitates to ask his next question, but does. “Logan’s father. What was your relationship with him like?” Her face screws up in disgust. “Ew.” He laughs, not expecting that reply or that word to sum up a relationship. But fair enough.
“I mean the idea of a relationship between me and Logan’s father is gross. Logan’s,” she pauses, seeming to settle on a different word. “Birth parents are my aunt and uncle.” “His what?” He could have sworn she said birth parents, but that couldn’t be right. “His birth parents.” She looks at him, concerned. “I adopted Logan when I turned eighteen. Did you think I gave birth to him?” “No.” He says, shaking head and clearing his throat. “Of course not.” She stares at him, lips pressed together. He sighs, slumping in his seat, eyes closing. “I may or may not have thought you were just a really, really young looking forty-something year old woman.” She immediately bursts into laughter and his eyes fly open at the sound. “You thought?” “The graphic for the race footage says you are his mother, I did not think otherwise. I just thought you looked great for your age.” He defends, a little embarrassed, but delighted by the expression on her face and her laughter that is still filling his ears. “I am his mother, just adopted.” “Not that either of you see it that way.” “No.” She shakes her head, laughing one last time before calming down.
“No. Logan’s mine, he’s been mine practically since he was born. It just wasn’t seen that way legally until I was eighteen and custody got signed over to me.” “Of course.” He then flashes her smile, “So can I ask how old you are?” She laughs, nodding. “Yes, Max. I think just this once it’s better to ask a lady her age than assume it.” “How old are you?” “I’m twenty-nine.” He looks at her with new eyes, the age making much more sense. “I would’ve said twenty-five.” “Really? I think you would’ve said forty-something.” “How was I to know?” He throws his free hand in the air at the tease, his other still holding hers.
“Hi, baby.” She greets when Logan stumbles out of his room, practically still asleep, as he drops onto the couch. “Momma.” He whines, resting his head on her lap and turning his face to press it into her stomach, trying to block out the sun. Her fingers brush through his hair as she forces her body to stay relaxed. It was always a fight when he did this.
She hated that her body didn’t bear any signs of being pregnant before, no stretch marks around her belly. She hated that she hadn’t actually gotten to carry Logan no matter how impractical it was, unless of course she was as old as Max had thought she was. She smiles at the memory of how flustered Max had looked when he realized her actual age.
He mumbles something and she turns his face away from her stomach. “What?” “How was your date last night?” Her smile widens. “It was good.” “Yeah?” She nods. “Did you see Jimmy and Sassy?” “No.” She runs her hand over his forehead, knowing that he’s thinking of Sooty. “We should talk though after you’ve had some breakfast.” “About what?” “Breakfast first.”
“What do we need to talk about?” Logan asks nearly thirty minutes later, his fruit bowl all gone and his coffee on its way to be there as well. She swallows, hands flexing. “Max.” “What about Max?” She sighs. “Well, baby, him and I talked about becoming serious last night. But that’s not gonna happen until I know how you feel.” “You know, I’m okay with it.” “I know you're okay with me dating, but this is a bit more complicated. Max is on the grid with you and we’re talking about a relationship.” Logan eyes widen a bit at the word relationship. “I mean, how does Max feel about it? About being with someone who has a kid on the grid?”
He asks knowing it will give him time to figure out how to tell her how he feels and because he wants to know, he kind of wants Max to be okay with it. He likes Max, and not just as a driver. The older driver is kind and funny, he also looks at his mom like she’s the sun, he makes her happy and that’s enough to put him in Logan’s good books. His mom deserves the best and he thinks from what little he’s seen, from how much more happy his mom has been (and god that was weird, because it wasn’t even like she wasn’t happy before) that Max might be the best for her. And Max now every time he sees Logan is always stopping to talk to him even if it’s just for a second to say a quick hi.
“Max is good with it. He knows that you're my number one and that’s never going to change.” Logan flushes at the words. “He also likes you, thinks you're a good kid.” She lets out an amused huff as the word kid leaves her mouth. It was odd to hear Max describe Logan that way, with only five years between them. But at the same time she knew it came from being practically a veteran in the sport. Max was coming up on ten years in Formula 1 despite his young age. He flushes even more. “Really?” “Yeah.” She smiles. “He always asks about you, it’s really sweet. And he knows to that if you aren’t comfortable with this or need more time then that’s what will happen.” “I am an adult.” “You are.” She was sadly well aware of that fact. “But you are my baby, my kid. I couldn’t be in a relationship with someone if you didn’t like them or if it made you uncomfortable.” He nods. “I’m okay with it. Max makes you happy, he’s nice.” “Yeah?” “Yeah.”
She lets out a giggle as arms wrap around her from behind, lips pressing against her cheek. “Hi.” “Hi.” Another kiss is pressed to her cheek. “Can I help?” She glances down at what she’s finishing up. “No. You could set the table, though?” “Done.” A kiss is pressed to her temple and then the blanket of heat that covered her back is gone. “What cabinet?” “First one entering the kitchen on the left.” She says, turning her head a bit to watch as Max pulls the dishes out.
Her mouth goes a little dry as she watches him. His t-shirt is tight around his biceps and chest. His skin is a little tanned after their date a few days ago on a friend's yacht. She forces her eyes to not look at his hands, instead trailing them up to his strong shoulders and neck and then to his face. Max, she thinks as he starts to put the plates on the table, is unfairly attractive. Before he can catch her staring, she checks on the final thing on the stove. “Perfectly done.” She mumbles with a smile.
The sound of the front door opening makes her smile grow wider as she grabs a pot holder. “Am I late?” “Just on time.” She tells Logan as he steps into the kitchen. “Can I,” She stops him before he can continue. “No, go wash up.” “Alright.” He bends a little to press a kiss to her cheek before turning on his heel, offering a wave to Max. “Hi.” “Hi, Logan.”
Picking up the pan, she shakes her head as Max goes to try and take it from her. “Logan and you are both going to get on too well.” “Why’s that?” He asks, a twinkle in his eye. “You both don’t like when I lift anything.” “What’s the point of having a son or a boyfriend, then?” Logan says, clapping Max on the shoulder as he comes back. Max grins at the younger, delighted as he claps him back. “Exactly. We feel a bit neglected.” She rolls her eyes, shaking her head, though a smile is stretching across her lips.
Max watches amused as the mother and son argue.
“Mom, it would be for two races, two, that’s it.” “One race, really.” Max chimes in, smiling when she glares at him. “Spa is nice, but Zandvoort is really what I consider my home race.” “See, it would be one race. Max wants you in his garage.” Logan says, looking at the other driver, begging for him to help but at the last sentence Max shakes his head. “I never said that. Well, I would like to see Pan in my garage, not for the whole weekend, or even a day. She’s part of your team.” Logan looks at him, bewildered. “But, it’s your home race.” He shrugs. “I’d like for her to stop by, you as well. I already have it cleared with the team. Staying for even a whole session though just doesn’t make any sense. I don’t need her on my side of the garage to know that she’s supporting me, wanting me to do well, not when you are on the grid.” “Are you sure?” Max smiles at Logan, because yes he was sure. Did he want her there, supporting him? Maybe even dressed in something with his number? Of course. But, he liked seeing her in Logan’s garage. Supporting him, wearing his merch, being a mom. “I’m more than sure.”
“Besides,” she says, drawing both of their attention. “Max and I haven’t gone public yet. Or really told anyone yet.”
“Well, this is a bit of an odd one.” Laura says as they stop in front of the Red Bull garage. The cameraman focuses on what she’s looking at. “Both Logan Sargeant and his mother, better known as Pan from Formula 2 fans, are in the Red Bull garage, currently talking with our current championship leader Max Verstappen, his engineer GP, and Daniel Ricciardo.” “Shall I see if I can steal one of them away?” Will asks, smiling at the camera as he holds the F1 TV microphone loosely. “Please.” She gestures.
Will steps towards the garage smiling at the small group hovering just inside. “Could I steal one of you for a quick minute?” The five exchange a look and Will stops himself from rolling his eyes at the way they all look annoyed at the idea, but Logan nods. “Sure.” “Thank you.”
He watches as Logan says something quietly to them, getting nods from them all. His brow furrows when Max squeezes his shoulder before the younger driver gives his mom a quick hug, making him shake his head. Logan Sargeant was an absolute mommy’s boy and it was embarrassing as all hell to see. He couldn’t imagine being twenty and hugging his mom in public, let alone all those videos and photos of him reaching for her hand.
Will ignored the part of him that did think it was sweet and felt bad for the kid. He couldn’t look all sappy while filming, especially not when in front of the Red Bull garage.
“Hi everyone.” Logan greets, taking the third mic from the newest crew member. “Hello, Logan. How are you feeling about this weekend?” He smiles at Laura. “I’m feeling okay, I’ve raced here before, obviously not in an F1 car, but I do have some experience with this track.” “And you and your mum’s visit to the Red Bull garage, should we expect an announcement of you switching teams?” She teases. “No.” He laughs. “No, uh, just visiting for personal reasons. Saying hello to Daniel, wishing Max a good home race.” “I mean, I’m not sure, he needs it.” Will jokes, gaining a few laughs. “So, no business to be done at Red Bull? Just saying a hello and wishing a good race to a fellow driver.” “Yeah,” he pauses, looking back at the garage where it’s just Max and his mom standing now watching him with smiles on their faces. It’s only that he continues when his mom gives a brief nod, one barely able to be seen by the camera. “And I wasn’t just wishing a fellow driver good luck.” “Oh?” Logan grins, looking pleased with himself. “I was wishing my new dad good luck.”
“Carlos Sainz is a cunt.” Max freezes at her words, hand still on the doorknob from just stepping into the room. “Hi, schat.” “Carlos Sainz is a cunt.” She repeats. His brain is scrambling because what exactly had Carlos done but also why was it so attractive to her say the word cunt. It had to be the accent, he decided quickly, still trying to figure out the Carlos thing. “And why is Carlos a cunt?” He finally asks, releasing the door knob and stepping further into the room.
She’s on her laptop, rapidly typing something, and he can feel anger radiating off her.
“That bullshit he spewed, blaming Oscar’s inexperience.” She scoffs, pausing her typing as she shakes her head. “It was an incident, a racing incident, something he knows a lot about. There was no inexperience fault.” “Oscar’s okay?” He already knows that he is, but knows it's good to ask. “He’s good. He knows that it's a racing incident.” Max winces. Wonders for a second if he should warn Carlos to keep his mouth shut, but shrugs. It wasn’t his fault that Carlos was getting in trouble because he couldn’t watch his mouth or correctly look at footage. “Can I help?” She sighs, hitting close on whatever she was writing in. “No.” She then closes her laptop, turning to face him, with a smile. “Hi. Congrats on the win.” “Thank you.” He bends to kiss her. “You okay?” “Yeah, just,” she waves her hand at her laptop, “stuff.” “Anything I can help with?” She starts to shake her head no as he sits on the edge of the bed, but she stops. “Actually, could I get your insight on something? Not just as a driver, but as someone who lives and breathes racing, loves data, really knows how the sport works.” “Of course. What’s going on?”
Another sigh leaves her, hand coming up to rub at her mouth for a second before it drops. “Why would a team not resign a driver?” His eyebrows furrow, because she knows the reasons, but he answers. “Not performing well, they want out of the team or sport, sponsorship issues.” “The driver wants to stay in the sport and the team.” Her lips turn downwards a bit at the word team. “And the driver brought new sponsorships to the team.” “They have to be not performing well.” “They’re a rookie in a back marker team.” “They have to be really performing badly.” Max says, trying to think of who in Formula 2 or 3 she’s talking about. “They already have six points and have placed ahead of their experienced teammate three times.” His mind is scrambling again, trying to find a reason, because what? “How many does his teammate have?” “Nine.” “I have no idea. Not unless there’s conflict within the team.” She shakes her head. “Is there potentially a more experienced driver for the spot?” She shakes her head. “They’re looking at another rookie or maybe someone who stepped away from the series for a year, though they’d rather take a rookie than him.” “I don’t have an answer for you. It doesn’t make sense to me.” She nods, expression falling and she’s rubbing at her face.
“What’s going on?” He asks, standing up just to crouch down in front of her, taking her hands in his. “The driver’s Logan.” “What?” “Williams isn’t sure they want to offer Logan another year.” Max stares at her. “How?” “I don’t know.” She shrugs, laughing. “There’s talks of them signing whoever wins this F2 championship or even the runner-up depending on who it is. Logan’s making too many mistakes.” “He’s costing them too much money.” Max fills in the blank, shaking his head. “That’s ridiculous. Don’t take a rookie if you can’t afford it. You are supposed to account for the worse. And he’s doing well. It’s not his fault that they built a shit car.” “I don’t know what to do.” She admits, voice just a whisper, and his heart clenches painfully at the sound of it, at the tears in her eyes. “This is his dream. I don't know what to do if that gets taken away from him.” “It won’t. We’ll figure something out.” He tells her, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
“I think I’m spoiled.” Max says, watching as she gets ready for bed. A faint feeling of arousal pooling his gut as she pulls on one of his shirts. He absentmindedly wonders if it would be weird to wear it tomorrow to the track, the scent of her lotion clinging to it. “Why’s that, honey?” He smiles, cheeks a bit pink, and that arousal builds a bit more at the pet name, at the way she shifts in the vanity chair to loosen some tension in her back. “You come to every race, you see me win, you celebrate them, you got to see me win my third championship today.” Those words feel weird off his tongue, today, but totally sober to celebrate. He wants desperately for tomorrow to come, for the race to finish so they can celebrate, him, her, Logan, the team. “I guess you are a bit spoiled.” He gasps, clutching at his heart, making her giggle. “That’s okay though.” She says, getting up and moving onto the bed, straddling him. “I think I like you spoiled.” He groans as she dips her head, pressing a kiss to the flutter of his pulse. “Schat.” It's a warning to stop and a plea for more. “I know.” She kisses the spot a bit firmer. “Celebrations will have to wait just a day longer.” She then rolls off him, his arm immediately lifting so she can press against his side.
“It’s cruel to win with a sprint race.” She snorts, “A sprint race never stopped us before.” “It’s cruel to win with a sprint race in Qatar.” He amends. “Very true.”
He sighs, staring at the ceiling as he calms down, luckily the feeling of her fingers tapping along his stomach not making it harder. “How’s Logan feeling?” Max asks, remembering how pale he looked when they got dinner. She sighs, moving somehow closer. “Not great. No fever, but his stomach is still a bit upset.” He winces. “He gonna be okay tomorrow?” “I hope so. The team knows that he’s sick, they’ll make the right choice.” “I hope so.” He echoes, wishing that Logan felt better, hoping that he feels better by the time the race starts.
“We are confident in him.” Max scoffs, tossing his phone aside. “I know.” “Logan still wanting to do his new routine.” She nods, lips pursed. He shakes his head. “He did good.” It wasn’t the rookie season that Oscar had, but it couldn’t be. Oscar got lucky enough to get a seat in a near top team, while Logan got one with a back of the grid team that was sometimes midfield.
Logan scoring ten points, getting himself to sixteenth in the standings, tied with Bottas in the standings, was very good for a rookie. It was a shame that Williams seemed to think he could’ve and should have done better. At least, Max thinks, the 2025 grid was wide open for possibilities.
“Are him and Oscar still joining us?” She throws him a look. “Us?” “You.” He amends, knowing that despite him joining her, he’d get caught up in Redline and different things. He was just happy she didn’t mind that. “Only for a few days and then they both are off to Australia.” “Will Logan be joining us for Florida?” “Yes. My mom has been asking the next time she’s going to see her only grandchild.” Max laughs at the eye roll. “So, Belgium first, then Monaco,” “You go to Milton for a day after.” He nods, “then Greece, Florida, Monaco.” “Not bad for the first few weeks of winter break.” “Not bad at all.” He agrees, wrapping his arms around her waist, chest pressed against her back.
It’s quiet between the couple as Max sways them.
“Max.” “Yes?” “Your mom, she does know that I’m not in my forties right? Or thirties?” She figured that the woman did, but she also had only briefly gotten to meet her at the one race, and there had been an odd expression on her face when Max introduced her as his girlfriend. He freezes. “Max.” “I knew I forgot something.”
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@ohtous @cixrosie @darleneslane @fanboyluvr @teti-menchon0604 @eugene-emt-roe @quackquackhun @rewmuslupin @copper-boom @stopeatread @crashingwavesofeuphoria @jointhehunt67 @namgification @asphalstead @poppyflower-22 @racingheartsposts @gemofthenight @peachiicherries @lpab @hiireadstuff @iloveyou3000morgan @boiohboii @bibliosaurous @skepvids @elliegrey2803
3K notes · View notes
pawnshopbleus · 6 months
Text
On Top
Young!Coriolanus Snow x Fem!Plinth!Reader
Warnings - Smut, Penis in vagina sex, Cunnilingus, Squirting, Abortion is mentioned once, Angst with a happy ending. Not beta read :0
Authors Note - I think this is the first time I’ve written p in v sex so please bear with me.
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Standing in front of the door to the Snow residence, you made sure you had everything. The basket you brought over for Coriolanus and his family was filled with food, gifts, and roses for Grandma’am. You wanted to celebrate Coriolanus’s historic win in this year's Hunger Games. Well, Lucy Grey won, but she wouldn’t have done without your Coriolanus. 
Your knuckles tapped the door three times and you patently waited until the door opened to reveal Grandma’am’s signature snow-white hair. She smiled at you and embraced you. She stepped aside and let you enter the home you had become so familiar with over the years. 
“Grandma’am, I wanted to bring this little gift for Coriolanus’s big win. The flowers are for you, by the way,” you winked and placed the basket on the table. “Speaking of, where might he be.” 
Grandma’am's eyes softened at your comment. “He’s with the dean,” she said, “He will be here any moment. You can wait for him in his room if you’d like.” Grandma’am rushed over to examine a particularly pretty white rose. 
You sat on Coriolanus’s bed tracing hearts on his pillow for what seemed like hours before his door opened. He looked frantic as if someone found out something they weren’t supposed to find.
“Come on, Coryo, you’re supposed to be smiling. Lucy Grey won. Aren’t you happy?” 
“I cheated,” he sighed. 
Your heart stopped. He what? Never in a million years did you think that he would do such a thing. With strong women like Tigris and Grandma’am raising him, you would have thought that he had the decency to break up with a woman before he did that.
Coriolanus shook his head as soon as he realized that you might have been taking his comment in the wrong way. “I cheated in the games. Not on you. I would never do that.” 
Your body relaxed and then it shot back up again. “Wait, what do you mean you cheated in the games? Is that even possible?”
Coriolanus explained what he did in order to get Lucy Grey to win. The compact mirror that used to belong to his mother had been packed with rat poison, poisonous to anyone who came in contact with it. He also put his father's handkerchief which was covered in Lucy Grey's scent in the snake's cage. If the snakes were familiar with her scent then they wouldn’t kill her. So it wasn’t her singing that saved her, it was Coriolanus. 
“What are they going to do to you?” Your eyebrows scrunched together with worry. You couldn’t lose Coriolanus for his stupid, yet chivalrous actions. 
“I don’t know yet. I don’t want to think about the future. Right now, I want to live in the moment with the prettiest girl in all of Panem.” Coriolanus smiled at how your face heated up so quickly, but deep down he was hurting. He knew what his punishment was. Twenty years of service as a peacekeeper in the Districts. He would leave the Capital and everything he’s known since he was a baby. That he could deal with, but losing you would be the hardest thing he would have to deal with. 
He knew that you would run to your father and beg him to get Coriolanus out of serving, but he didn’t want you over-exhausting your father's resources. He was a big boy and he needed to learn how to deal with his consequences. He would be fine. After all, Snow lands on top.  
He wanted to live in this moment with you. He wanted to memorize every inch of your body. He wanted to hold onto that memory and make it last. 
Your smile calmed him. “Can I kiss you?” he asked, eyes focused on your lips.
You nodded your head and smiled into the kiss. It was soft and sensual, vastly different from the kisses that the two of you usually share. Your lips brushed together as your bodies got closer to each other. By the time the two of you broke apart, you were under him, his forearms caging you underneath him. There was no need for him to do that. This is where you wanted to be, with Coriolanus. The toxic and tyrannical world that you lived in was long forgotten as she swooped in for another kiss. 
His lips traveled down to your cheek, then your jaw, and settled on your neck. He spent the majority of his time kissing and nibbling at the skin on your neck. There would be pretty little marks on your skin later, reminding people that you belonged to him. Coriolanus doesn’t remember when he got this territorial, but he sure loved the fact that Strabo Plinth’s beautiful daughter was his girlfriend. His girlfriend to mark and fuck and love whenever he wanted (with your consent of course.) 
You laughed as Coriolanus licked the sensitive patches of skin that he nibbled raw. “My parents are going to kill me when they see what you’ve done.” 
Coriolanus kissed your lips one more time in response to your comment. He then resumed his exploration of your body. His hands traveled down to the hem of your shirt, lifting it up to reveal the bra that he unclasped in less than five seconds. He threw it on the floor of his bedroom, letting it get hooked onto the pile of books in the corner. 
Coriolanus kissed in between the valley of your breasts. He flicked his tongue over your sensitive nipples. It was cold in the Capital of Panem and unfortunately, the Snow’s didn’t have indoor heating. Maybe it was because they didn’t want to melt. 
You sighed in pleasure as Coriolanus continued to explore your breasts. After five minutes of teasing, he began to travel south to the part where you needed him the most. He hooked his fingers into the belt loops of your pants, “may I?” 
You nodded, “Ever the gentleman.”
With your permission, he ripped your pants off of you and threw them on the floor. They were lost in the pile of clothing that had gathered on the floor. Coriolanus had shed some of his clothing as well. His ripped body was adorned in nothing but his white underwear. 
Coriolanus spread your legs apart, “Look at how wet my girl is.” He traced a finger down the cotton of your underwear and slowly slid it up your legs. He wanted to drag this on as much as possible. You let out a grumble of frustration, getting tired of his constant teasing. Coriolanus gave in and got rid of your underwear. 
The same finger that was used to skim the fabric of your underwear was now being used to gather your slick and spread it across your sensitive pussy. You took a deep breath of air into your lungs. The feeling was new, but not unwelcomed. Coriolanus flicked his tongue over your sensitive clit. Your clit was pulsing with need. You needed Coriolanus to drop the act and eat you out like he was a starving man.
“Coriol-” Your word was cut off by a moan as his mouth did exactly what you wanted it to do. Coriolanus delved into your pussy, tracing shapes onto your clit with his tongue. Your back arched off of the bed again. Coriolanus’s fingers teased your hole, trying to find the perfect time to ease into your channel. 
Coriolanus’s fingers weren’t thick, but they were long making it easier for him to tease your G-spot. He fucked his fingers in and out of you as he sucked your clit. You had to bite your lip in order to keep quiet. Your lips were sure to be chewed raw after this, but they would serve as a reminder that you had a man who was willing to do this for you. Many high-society women told stories about their husbands not pleasuring them when they had sex. It sounded like a horrible life to lead, but they were rich and beautiful so they needed to sacrifice something. 
Coriolanus curled his fingers up, letting them knock against your G-spot. He continued to kiss and lick at your clit. You were close. By the way you were clenching down on his fingers, he could tell that the waterworks were coming. Your naked chest rose and fell as you played with your nipples, increasing the pleasure that you felt. Your head fell even deeper into the pillow as a chill ran down your body. That chill eventually led to where Coriolanus was currently still working. He ate your pussy like a starved man, just the way you liked it. 
Without warning, your juices painted Coriolanus’s face. He wasn’t surprised that you came so fast. The last time you had sex was two months ago. You were burning for him and he was burning for you. 
Coriolanus wiped his face with the back of his hand and laughed. That was the first time he had actually made you squirt. It had always been a personal goal of his after Tirgis explained to Coriolanus how a woman's body works. At first, he was traumatized. He didn’t want to have the sex talk with his dear cousin, but when he laid eyes on you for the time, he wanted to do everything Tigris said and more. 
His cock was hard. You could see the outline of it through his white underwear. You would tease him about his tighty whities later. Right now, you were laser-focused on the fact that Coriolanus hooked his thumbs under his waistband and lowered them, exposing his cock to the cold air. His hard cock slapped against his lower stomach. He jerked his cock off, spreading his precum all over his length. He wanted to make sure that it went in as smoothly as possible. The last thing he wanted was to hurt you. 
He lined himself up at your core. He slid his tip up and down your pussy, gathering your slick with his dick before he pushed into you. Your insides welcomed him with little to no problem. The stretch felt good. You were all slicked up and ready for him.
Contraceptives weren’t a problem for you. Coriolanus was always careful and made sure to come somewhere that wasn’t your vagina. You didn’t want to have a kid just yet. First, you wanted to study at the University and travel back to District Two if you were given the chance. Then you wanted to get married. Pereferabbly to Coriolanus, but you didn’t know if that was possible yet. With his fate still undecided, your plans to marry the love of your life dwindled. Besides, even if you were to get pregnant your father would have enough money to get you an abortion
Coriolanus’s head fell forward as he buried his cock in your tight pussy. Two months and he had forgotten how good you felt. Your insides fluttered around him as he bottomed out. 
Coriolanus began to thrust his cock in and out of you. He was methodical with everything he did. Coriolanus set a rhythm as he fucked into you. He fucked you hard and fast. The side of his bed slapped against the wall and his mattress cracked and groaned as he fucked into you. You prayed to the heavens that Grandma’am and Tigris were in a deep sleep. Or that the walls of the Snow residence were thicker than Coriolanus’s cock. 
Coriolanus peppered your mouth with kisses in order to muffle your moans. He kept his pace as he did this. Your breasts jiggled as he fucked into you. Your hands found their way down to your extra-sensitive clit. You circled it with your fingers and moaned in pleasure at the feeling. 
His balls slapped against your ass as his strokes became more deep and labored. He was going to come soon. He needed to come soon. He couldn’t hold on much longer. Two months with no sex had gotten to him. “Fuck,” he said under his breath as your pussy clenched around him. “Where do you want it?” He asked, his voice was strained from trying to keep his composure. 
“Inside me,” you said. You were close too, the feeling of your finger frantically rubbing your clit and the feeling of Coriolanus's cock buried deep inside of you spurred your orgasm to come out from the woodwork.  
You have come a second time, your pussy fluttering and squeezing Coriolanus cock that was still inside of you. A string of curses fell from Coriolanus’s lips as he came inside of you. His pulsing and throbbing cock pushed his come deep inside of you as he continued to fuck you as he came. His thrusts were slow but intentional. He would have lasted a few more seconds, but with the way that your pussy squeezed his sensitive cock, he came instantly. 
Coriolanus slowly eased his cock out of you. The both of you were breathing heavily as Coriolanus went to grab a towel from his closet. He eased your legs open one more time as he cleaned you up. He was slow and gentle with it. He knew that you were still sensitive after two orgasms.
His come eased out of you and onto the towel. The sight almost caused him to get hard, but he didn’t feel like tiring you out even more. 
Once he was done cleaning you up, he tucked you into his chest and covered the two of you with the blankets on his bed. He kissed your forehead and your cheek. Coriolanus’s love language was kissing. He loved kissing you. He loved doing anything with you, but kissing was his favorite. 
Your eyes closed, but you weren’t falling asleep. Not yet. Sex might have been a clever distraction, but now that you were coming off your high you needed to know what will happen to the future of your relationship. 
“Coryo, what is going to happen to you? I know that you know what your punishment is. I'm not stupid.” 
Coriolanus sighed as he tried to keep his voice from waving. He rarely cried, but in moments like these, he did. Just you and him shielded away from the rest of the Capital were his favorite. “Twenty years as a peacekeeper.” 
You let out a shuddering breath as you tried not to cry. Your body ran cold as you repeated those words in your mind. Twenty years as a peacekeeper. Twenty years without your Coriolanus. Your Coryo. 
“My dad can-” 
“No,” Coriolanus said. “I don’t want your dad to get me out of this one. I need to learn how to do things on my own.”
“What if I had a crazy elaborate plan to get you out of it?”
“Nothing could be crazier than this.” Coriolanus got this crazy idea. It has been sitting in the back of his mind ever since you agreed to be his girlfriend. “Marry me?” 
This isn’t how he wanted to propose to you. He had already gotten your father's approval months ago. You were perfect for him and you deserve a perfect proposal. He wanted to take you to a fancy restaurant, get down on one knee, and ask you that way. Traditional and expected of Capital people, but things never go as planned when you’re a Snow. 
“Seriously?” You were in disbelief. Of course, you wanted to marry him, but this all seemed a bit rushed. “I mean, yes, I’ll marry you, but Coryo. You’re about to leave.” Then, your brilliant mind comes up with the perfect plan. 
You’ll marry Coriolanus, making him one of the heirs to the Plinth fortune. Thus making him more valuable to the Capital. This way you get to marry the love of your life and keep him within arms reach. Were you being possessive? Maybe, but it was better than the dean having to deal with an angry Plinth. 
And your plan worked. You and Coriolanus got married a week after he proposed to you. It was a bit rushed, but the two of you were ready. He was going to be a loving husband, and you, a loving wife. Coriolanus’s punishment would be reduced to two months of training in District Two. He would then return to the Capital as a peacekeeper. He would keep the peace during the day and return to you at night. 
Turns out Snow does land on top.
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Time to study up on straight people sex!
4K notes · View notes
pathologicalreid · 7 months
Text
buried alive | S.R.
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in which the BAU races against the clock to rescue you from a killer team
who? spencer reid x fem!BAU!reader
category: angsty
content warnings: kidnapping, case stuff (murder yk), suffocation, being buried alive, hospitals, blood, nausea, CPR, funerals, use of pet names, guns, and drugs. i think that's all.
word count: 2.9k
a/n: okay, so i've been reading so much spencer fanfic and i started writing it and yesterday i realized i have 20 fics written and they're doing no one any good just sitting on my computer. i decided to finally try posting one. i wrote fanfic in high school (so like seven years ago) but this is my first time writing for a TV show. i've also never really posted on tumblr so please bear with me while i try to figure out formatting. tysm for checking out my post.
part two part three
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You walked into the conference room and dropped the file on the table, allowing it to land on the wood with a satisfying splat. “The unsub’s burying them alive,” you said, letting the rest of the team know the conclusion you had come to with the medical examiner. “The M.E. found metal shavings and satin threads under the nails of our last victim. The most common materials to make up a casket.”
“There’s no way someone could bury someone alive in a casket alone, we’ve got to be dealing with a team, at least three people,” Emily concluded, standing in front of the evidence board.
It was the team’s third day on a case in Nebraska, four women had been discovered dead. Asphyxiation by hypoxia. Carbon dioxide poisoning.
“Approximately 420 people in the United States die from accidental carbon dioxide poisoning every year,” Spencer said, grabbing the file off of the table and flipping through it, taking a few seconds to read through it.
Rossi looked over Reid’s shoulder to look at the file, “but there’s nothing accidental about these deaths. Who would have access to these caskets?”
You shook your head, placing a hand on the back of Spencer’s chair, “A funeral director seems most likely.” You looked around at the Omaha field office, different agents running about in an attempt to solve these very murders. “They’d have the most access, write it off as displays. It could be hard to match the materials since they’re so common.”
Hotch leaned over the table and pressed the conference phone, “What can I do you for?” Garcia’s bright voice rang through the speaker.
“Garcia, I need you to look into funeral homes within the comfort zone. Look for a director who’s ordered more caskets than they’ve had funerals. Find anything, nothing is too small.” He told her.
“Absolutely, I’ll hit you back when I’ve got something,” she said, hanging up the phone.
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There ended up being four funeral homes in the unsub’s comfort zone, so the team split up. You went with two locals to a family-owned business, Garcia had sent you all of the files you’d need on the location. “It looks like the Varn family has been in the funeral business since the seventeenth century,” you read aloud to the two agents you were in the car with.
“Does it mean they’re more or less likely to be the killers if they’ve been in business for so long?” One of the agents asked you, a younger man named Harrison.
You pursed your lips as you continued to look over the files, “I’m not seeing any glaringly obvious stressors before the murders started, but over the years I’ve learned that’s no reason to write someone off. Psychopaths can be tipped off by the slightest thing. Things none of us would bat an eye at.”
Harrison nodded in the passenger seat, looking over to his partner Jimmy, “You and your guy sure do make an interesting pair.”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment, so thank you.” You and Spencer never explicitly stated to the field office that you were dating, but you walked into the precinct this morning holding hands. The agents must have drawn their own conclusions.
The younger officer cleared his throat, “It is a compliment, ma’am. The two of you are very impressive, your whole team is.”
You smiled, “Thank you, Harrison.”
The funeral home was run by a mother and her two sons, you held up your credentials for the mother when you knocked on the door. “Are you Sheila Varn?” You asked her, raising your eyebrows.
“Yes, what’s this about?” She inquired. She didn’t really look the part of a serial killer, a middle-aged woman who was running her family business.
Pocketing your credentials, you spoke, “We’re investigating the recent murders in the area and we were wondering if you had samples of the materials your caskets are made out of. Might we be able to come in?” You asked, adding a charming smile for effect.
Something flashed across her face before she returned your smile, opening the door and welcoming the three of you inside. “Hold on, let me get my boys up here. They’re so much more versed in the goings on of the town than I am,” she said, opening the door and calling for her sons. Felix and Joss came up the stairs from the basement, now they definitely had the physique to load dead women into caskets and bury them alive.
“Why don’t you two men come with me? I’ll get you those samples,” Sheila said, motioning for the agents you were with to follow her. To your horror, they followed her around the corner. “Felix, Joss, show this young lady what you know,” she instructed.
You took a deep breath before you looked up at the two men.
They were tall, maybe Spencer’s height, but they were built like wrestlers. There was no way you could physically subdue them on your own.
You passed out before you even had the chance to pull your gun.
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Hotch was in full Unit Chief mode, Spencer watched from the corner of the room as he separated people into groups and gave them specific instructions. JJ and Morgan walked into the precinct, “What’s going on?” JJ asked looking around the room.
“The Varn Family is the team; two agents were found drugged on the side of the road and when we went to the funeral home Y/N was missing. Her badge, gun, and phone were all there, covered in blood,” Spencer said morosely, watching as Hotch finished giving orders and called the rest of the team over.
Your picture was up on the evidence board with the word “missing” written in bold letters beneath it. All of your belongings had been put into evidence for the time being. “Reid?” Hotch said his name, causing his head to snap up. “Are you okay to keep working?”
Spencer nodded affirmatively, “Yes.”
“Good, I need you to estimate how much time we have, I want a clock on these screens,” he ordered.
Morgan turned to Reid, “What do you think she has, kid?”
“The tidal volume for the average adult is point five at rest. That ends up being about six liters per minute. The average casket is approximately 886 liters in total volume and the average volume of the human body is 66 liters, leaving 820 liters to be filled with air for her to breathe. If she’s been gone for half an hour already, I’d estimate she has less than five hours of breathable air left.” Spencer explained, doing all of the math in his head while Emily put a timer on the screen next to the evidence board.
After a moment, Hotch continued, “Rossi, JJ, go back to the funeral home. Tear it apart, there has to be something there we haven’t found yet. The rest of us will split the list of cemeteries in the comfort zone and search them.”
“That’s a lot of ground to cover, we don’t have anything else to go on?” Morgan asked, looking at the list of burial sites he had been handed.
Hotch looked at Spencer, but Spencer stayed silent. “That’s all we have right now,” Hotch responded, “hopefully we’ll come across leads as we go.”
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It smelled like a garden around you. The memory reminded you of spring with your mother, tending to the vegetable garden.
The only difference was that instead of the sun beaming down on you, it was pitch black. The space surrounding you was so dark that you weren’t totally sure your eyes were open.
Your head was throbbing just above your right temple, and you observed your surroundings. Slowly, you lifted your arm until it hit a ceiling.
Not a ceiling. A lid. You were in a casket. You pressed one hand to your chest and tried to slow your breathing. Chances were that the casket was already buried beneath the surface of the earth, trying to open it could be catastrophic. You patted the pockets of your jeans, only to find your phone missing, so the team wouldn’t be able to trace the location.
Even if you had it, there likely wouldn’t be service six feet under.
Your team would find you. They had to find you.
They found Spencer, they found Emily, and they would find you.
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Spencer shifted in the passenger seat of the SUV, “You know, carbon dioxide poisoning is a rather peaceful way to die.”
“Reid,” Morgan said, turning the vehicle onto the main road, they had just finished scouring over another cemetery with still no sign of you.
He sighed and stared at his hands, “No, it’s good. We see so many people killed in so many different ways that it’s good that she won’t be in pain when she runs out of air.” He tried to convince himself.
Morgan cleared his throat, “We aren’t out of time yet, kid. We can still find her. Y/N’s smart, I’m sure she found a way to make more air or something.”
But they were running out of time, less than an hour remained on the timer set on all of their phones.
They pulled into the next cemetery, “There’s some fresh dirt over there, what are the names on the graves of people who were actually recently buried?”
Spencer starts to recite the names, and the two of them start to comb through the cemetery.
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You had done enough research on this case to understand what was going on. The light-headed feeling had started not long ago, but now you felt like you were spinning, despite the knowledge that you were stuck in place.
It was a high. Not unlike the good kids high. Except instead of trying to chase a feeling, you were dying.
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The timer went off when they were still scouring graves, shovels in hand. Derek stopped in his tracks, but Spencer kept going.
“Wait,” Spencer called out, reading the name on the card next to the fresh grave he was standing at, he moved to start digging. “Essie Dunbar was a thirty-year-old woman who was mistakenly buried alive in 1915,” he said, digging. “This has to be it.”
Derek called Hotch, putting the call on speakerphone so he could help Spencer dig. “Hotch, we got her, but she’s buried.”
“We’re on our way, Omaha police have one of the brothers in custody,” Hotch told Emily to have an ambulance dispatched.
What Reid knew that Derek didn’t was that it could take four hours to dig a grave by hand. The soil had been overturned, so maybe call it three. Your odds were still negligible. He didn’t stop, he didn’t stop when a caretaker came running at them, and he didn’t stop when Derek told him to get his digging equipment out here now.
Derek flashed his FBI badge to get what they needed. He had to physically pull Spencer back from the grave so the backhoe could dig, only going until there was less than a foot between them and the casket.
Spencer crudely attached a chain to the casket and the caretaker's vehicle. Carefully, the caretaker dragged the white container out of the earth and up a slant they had dug. It was locked shut, “Reid, move,” Derek ordered.
He leaned back and Derek fired at the lock, taking it off and opening the casket. Spencer gasped, there was blood on the side of your head, dried and raked through your hair. He was vaguely aware of Hotch and Emily arriving as they pulled you out of your satin prison. You had no pulse, but you were still warm. Immediately, Spencer started CPR.
“Reid let me do it,” Derek insisted.
What he was trying to say is that he shouldn’t have to be the one to try to save your life.
Morgan repeated himself and Spencer pulled away, allowing the other agent to immediately take over. There was a siren in the background, an ambulance. More people showed up, Spencer heard their voices, but he just kept watching you. CPR was effective if it was done shortly after your heart stopped, and even then, permanent brain damage was likely.
It had been eight minutes since they pulled you out of the ground. Clinically, you were dead for eight minutes before you gasped.
Spencer smoothed your hair back, away from your face, while you desperately tried to catch your breath. You weren’t moving, and Spencer started running through symptoms of hypoxia. His biggest fear was brain damage, that they had done more harm to you in bringing you back than they would have had you died.
The EMTs came running over to where everyone had gathered, dispersing the crowd, and placing an oxygen mask over your face. As they were loading you on the stretcher, you started trying to talk, reaching your arm out to your side. “Wait, what’s she saying?” JJ asked.
“Sometimes it’s hard to talk after CPR,” the male EMT said as they moved you closer to the ambulance. He listened to what you were saying, “It’s not coherent.”
Spencer didn’t move, all of the adrenaline that had been coursing through his body all day was leaving.
Aphasia. They were saying the lack of oxygen to your brain was causing aphasia. “No,” Emily said, realization dawning on her features as she strained to listen to you. You were whispering, rasping the same word over and over again. “She’s saying ‘Spence.’”
He stood quickly and looked at you, sure enough, you were reaching out your hand and whispering, “Spence, Spence.” Your voice no more than a whisper.
Grabbing your hand, Spencer squeezed it, “I’m here,” he answered. “It’s okay, it’s over,” he told you, moving your hair out of your face. Spencer secured your oxygen mask over your face as you tried to take it off, “You have to keep this on, angel.”
To his relief, you squeezed his hand back.
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You had been instructed to get some rest, but you couldn’t close your eyes. You asked Spencer to go back to the hotel and change his clothes because he smelled like dirt, and it made you nauseous. Your head had been bandaged, you’d been run through an MRI, and you did an EEG, so far, the only brain damage that had been incurred seemed temporary.
According to the doctors, the nausea and fatigue should wear off, but they hadn’t been able to fully assess if any permanent damage was done. At this point, the worst of your injuries had been caused by being given CPR, resulting in cracked ribs.
Despite your headache, you kept most of the lights on in your hospital room, not quite ready to be left in the darkness again. “Hey,” a voice called from your doorway, Spencer stood, waiting to be invited in. He was wearing different clothes, a button-up with a green cardigan thrown over it, and clean pants. “How are you feeling?”
A nasal cannula slightly restricted your movement, but you were sat up in the hospital bed, “Better than I was, but not perfect.”
He shook his head, walking in and taking a seat next to you, “No one expects you to be perfect right now.” Gently, he reached out and took your hand, skimming the pad of his thumb over your knuckles. “They found the mother and the other son, and all three of them are going to go away for a long time,” he told you, speaking in the kind of hushed, reverent tones that are reserved for hospitals.
You sighed and tilted your head back, “Good,” you maundered. “That’s uh, good,” your voice was barely audible.
“So why do you look so worried?” He asked, leaning in closer to you.
In an attempt to dismiss his concern, you joked, “I think I owe Morgan some sort of life debt now.”
Spencer offered you a soft smile, “The two of you tend to trade those off, I’m sure you’ll find some way to make it up to him.” He inclined his head towards you as if to silently say, So what is it really?
You swallowed thickly, “I’m scared to close my eyes, Spence.”
His shoulders dropped, “oh, Angel,” he breathed. “Is there anything I can do for you?” He asked, looping a loose strand of your hair behind your ear. “Wait, what are you doing?” He asked, watching you as you lifted yourself, so you were on one side of the bed.
Shyly, you patted the new empty half of the bed, inviting him to sit next to you.
He had no choice but to comply, he had the hardest time saying no to you. Leaning the bed back slightly, Spencer kicked off his shoes before he laid down next to you, wrapping an arm around you as you set your cheek on his shoulder.
Your body relaxed into his and you sighed, “Spence?” You murmured.
He pressed a gentle kiss to the crown of your head, “Yes, angel?” He whispered back to you.
“Thanks for coming to save me,” you mumbled, slowly relaxing enough to fall asleep.
Spencer exhaled, “I’m always going to come to save you.”
part two
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theostrophywife · 9 months
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written in the stars.
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pairing: theodore nott x reader. song inspiration: until i found you by stephen sanchez feat. em beihold. author's note: boyfriend theo is the best theo. if you're wondering, then yes writing this hurt me as much as it hurts reading it but like in the best way possible.
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Theodore Nott has always had an affinity for the stars. 
When he was younger, Theo's mother used to take him to the rooftop of Nott Manor and point out the constellations to him. The stars told stories, his mum had said. Theo listened with rapt attention as she recounted the tales of Aquila, Heracles, and Orion as they glittered against the backdrop of the English countryside.
The two of them would make an entire evening out of it. Laying on his back atop a nest of blankets and pillows, little Theo watched as the stars climbed higher and higher, filling the horizon with hope and light. Stargazing had been their special secret. The one thing that wasn’t tainted by his abusive father. Theo guarded the memory of those nights in his heart like a priceless treasure.
After his mother’s passing, Theo continued their tradition of stargazing. Even if she was no longer alive, all he had to do was look up at the sky to feel her with him. For that reason, the stars were special to him and he’d never shared its meaning with anyone. 
Until tonight. 
“Watch your step, cara mia.” Theo said as he guided you by the small of your back. 
The dark cloth covering your eyes prohibited you from seeing, but you trusted your boyfriend to keep you from falling. Though you weren’t a fan of surprises, Theo was impossible to resist. All he had to do was flash those pretty watercolor eyes at you and you were an absolute goner. 
For you, Theo had always been the exception. 
He guided you up a staircase, keeping a firm grip on your waist as the two of you ascended. Wherever you were going, it was pretty high up. You smiled as Theo took hold of your waist, knowing that you weren't the biggest fan of heights. Sometimes it felt like he knew you better than you knew yourself. When you reached the top, Theo unfastened his tie from behind your head. 
“You can open your eyes now, sweetheart.” 
You blinked, letting your eyes adjust to the dark. The wind whistled through the stone arches of the Astronomy Tower, framing the starkissed night with its marble pillars. The soft glow of the moon illuminated the nest of blankets and pillows arranged in the middle of the wooden floor. 
“Did you do all of this for me, babe?” 
Theo smiled. “I thought you might like to go stargazing with me,” he said, his voice soft. “Do you like it, my love?” 
“I love it, Teddy.” You beamed, standing on your tiptoes to kiss his nose. “But not nearly as much as I love you.” 
Theo grinned before pulling you in for a proper kiss. His lips were soft against yours and he tasted like peppermint. Butterflies erupted in your stomach as your knees buckled slightly. Theo never failed to make you feel like a lovestruck school girl. It never stopped feeling like this despite how many times you kissed this boy.
As if reading your thoughts, Theo smiled against your lips. “Come on, Y/N. I want to show you my favorite constellations.” 
The two of you laid down beneath the stars, making yourself comfortable amidst the blankets and pillows. Wordlessly, Theo pulled you into his arms and you nestled into the crook of his neck, breathing in the familiar scent of sea salt spray and sun kissed skin. 
“Tell me the story of the stars, Teddy.” 
He smiled, brushing your hair back. “That one right there is Ursa Major. Otherwise known as the Big Dipper, but if you look at the entire constellation, it actually forms a bear.” 
“I remember learning about that when I was little,” you said, gazing up at the sky. “Didn’t it have something to do with Zeus?”
Theo nodded. “In Greek mythology, the Olympian God Zeus fell in love with Callisto and got her pregnant. After she gave birth to the child, Hera was so mad she turned Callisto into a bear.” 
“That hardly seems fair,” you responded with a frown. 
“Zeus was a bit of a wanker,” Theo said in agreement. “Hera was even worse. She cursed Callisto to wander the forest for years in bear form until she was hunted by her own son Arcas. Just as he raised his spear to strike her down, Zeus stepped in and sent them up to the heavens. Callisto as Ursa Major and Arcas as Bootes.” 
“The Greek gods were truly a piece of work,” you replied. “But at least we got those constellations out of them."
You squinted, pointing at the cluster of stars hovering in the east. “What’s that one?” 
“That’s the constellation of Leo,” explained Theo. “Named after the Nemean lion that Heracles defeated during the first of his twelve labours.” 
“Didn’t he make a cloak out of the lion’s pelt?” 
“Smart girl,” Theo said proudly. “The cloak made Heracles invincible and more fearsome than he already was. The Nemean lion’s heart is made up of the star Regulus, which is associated with the arrival of spring.” 
“The Little King. I read that it burns hotter than the sun.” 
Theo couldn’t help but smile. Before he met you, he never thought he’d find someone to share such a special and intimate thing with. He was worried that no one else would understand his love for the stars, but as he watched you peer curiously up at the sky, your nose scrunched in careful concentration, Theo felt all of his doubts fade away. 
“Regulus is unique because it can be seen in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres.” 
The blue star glittered brightly above your heads, as if it was showing off for the occasion. “It’s beautiful,” you breathed. 
Theo stared at you, at the childlike wonder shimmering in your eyes, and he felt like the breath had been knocked out of his lungs. The gravity of what he felt for you hit him all at once. 
“Yeah,” Theo said softly, still looking at you. “Beautiful.” 
You grinned, intertwining your fingers and kissing his knuckles. “How do you know so much about the stars, Teddy?” 
“My mum taught me.” Theo answered, drawing circles on your hip. “When I was little, she used to take me to the rooftop of the manor and tell me the story behind each star. She was fascinated by them. Before she met my father, she wanted to teach astronomy at the Stati Magia.”
“The Italian School of Witchcraft?” 
Theo nodded. “My mother attended the Stati Magia, just like her mother and her mother before her. A tradition that I unintentionally broke, as nonna Lucia loves to remind me. Sometimes I think the old bat wishes that I was born a strega instead.” 
You giggled. “You would’ve been a very pretty witch.” Theo chuckled as you propped your head up in one hand. “Did your mum end up becoming a professor?”
“No,” Theo said sadly. “After I was born, my father said that her place was at the manor. He refused to move to Florence, even though he knew it was my mother’s dream.” 
You stroked his hair, nodding emphatically. Theo rarely talked about his mother. You knew that her passing was a painful subject for him, so you never pushed him to talk about it unless he wanted to.
“That’s awful. I’m so sorry, my love,” you said. “But at least she was able to pass down her love of the stars to you. In a way, she lived her dream by teaching you.” 
A soft smile tugged at your boyfriend’s lips. “I suppose she did.” 
You laid back down, but this time you cradled Theo against you. He rested his head against your chest, listening to the calming sound of your heartbeat. Talking about his mother will always be hard, but you helped ease the pain. 
“What about those stars?” You asked, pointing to the north. “What did your mother tell you about them?” 
“Perseus and Andromeda,” Theo answered. “Those are actually her favorites.”
“The chained maiden.” 
Theo stirred, inclining his gaze to the horizon. “Andromeda was the Princess of Aethiopia, the daughter of King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia. She was said to be very beautiful. Her mother bragged that Andromeda was fairer than the Nereids, which angered Poseidon. As punishment, the Sea God sent the creature Cetus to ravage that coast of their kingdom.” 
You nodded, recalling the story. “King Cepheus chained her to a rock and offered her as a sacrifice to appease the sea monster.” 
“Luckily for Andromeda, the hero Perseus found her before Cetus could attack again. Perseus fell in love with Andromeda and defeated the monster so he could free the princess. They ended up marrying and became king and queen of Mycenae. When they died, the goddess Athena placed them side by side in the heavens so that they would never be parted, not even by death.” 
“A love written in the stars,” you said with awe and wonder. “I can see why it’s your mother’s favorite.”
“When I was a boy, she told me that she hoped I’d experience a love like theirs, minus the sea monster of course.” You chuckled. Theo knit his brows together like he did when he was deep in thought. When he spoke again, his voice was barely audible. “It’s sad to think that she never found her Perseus.” 
You brushed his hair back, running your fingers through his curls gently. “She might not have found her Perseus, but she did have her Theo.”
Theo turned over and looked at you. The intensity in his gaze made you shiver. He was so ingrained in your heart that it felt inaccurate to continue calling it yours.
“After she died, I never thought I’d share her stories with anyone again, but I’m glad I shared them with you.” 
“Thank you for trusting me, Theo.” You said as you placed a kiss on his temple. “It means the world to me that you not only shared your mother’s stories, but her memory as well. I would’ve loved to meet her.”
The tender smile on Theo’s face was heartbreaking. Then softly, he whispered. “She would’ve loved you, Y/N.”
Your heart cracked open, his words spilling like sunlight over every crevice, warming you from the inside out.
Tears formed at the corners of your eyes, but you forced yourself to give Theo a watery smile. “Because I’m a nerd who memorized obscure mythological facts?”
Your boyfriend smiled. “No,” he said gently, caressing your cheek. “Because you made her wish come true. You are my love written in the stars, cara mia.” 
The moonlight kissed Theo’s tan skin, the silver beams caressing his face like a lover as if the moon and the stars craved to commit his beauty to memory as badly as you did. Gods, he was breathtaking. 
This was the Teddy you knew and loved. Your Teddy.
Those watercolor eyes shimmered with emotion. “Sometimes I think the gods made you just for me, like our souls are linked in a way that neither logic nor magic can explain. Whatever it is, I think I’ve loved you since before the heavens and the earth existed and I’m fairly certain that I’d still love you even after the last star falls out of the sky.”
“You’re the love of my life, Theodore Nott.” Tears streamed down your cheeks as this boy—this beautiful boy ensnared your mind, body, and soul. “I’d find you in any universe and in any galaxy. Maybe someday we’ll be immortalized in the stars too.” 
Theo held your face in his hands. His expression was open and vulnerable, like he wasn’t afraid to lay himself bare before you. As if it was the most natural thing in the world. 
“We’re two halves of a whole,” Theo said. “I loved you yesterday. I love you today and I’ll love you tomorrow. You’re it for me, Y/N. You and no one else.” 
“You and no one else, Teddy.” 
Under the constellations of the star crossed lovers, Theo kissed you so gently that it made your heart ache. As Andromeda and Perseus kept watch over the horizon, Theodore Nott knew one thing for certain.
Someday the stars would tell your story too.
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sixx-sixx-sixx · 30 days
Text
LADY BRIDGERTON - Anthony Bridgerton x wife!reader (smut)
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Summary: Reader has been married to Anthony Bridgerton for too long, it feels, although it has only been a few years. In that short time, not only has he only touched her naked body once, but he comes home most nights smelling of sweat and another woman’s perfume. Lady Whistledown has caught wind of this, and the gossip sends Lady Bridgerton over the edge. Anthony takes the time to give his wife exactly what she’s asking for.
Warnings: smut; badly written smut lol; infidelity; arguments about infidelity; possibly out of character anthony; I’ve only watched season 1 of Bridgerton; breeding kink; unprotected sex (wrap it before u tap it but this is a married couple); female reader/use of she/her pronouns; as always, proofread to the best of my ability
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“Do you wish to make a fool of me?” Anthony leaned down to whisper in his young wife’s ear, a firm hand grabbing her elbow as he interrupted her conversation with a young man from Russia, or Hungary. He didn’t pay much mind to the boy so much as the woman who bore his last name, fully aware of the way she had been subtly flirting with many men that night. Taking count of the glasses of bubbles she had — she was nursing her fourth flute, Anthony had decided it was enough.
Don’t make a scene.
Lady Bridgerton felt an intense urge to strike her husband across his cheek, how dare he accuse her of making a fool out of him. All evening she had overheard whispers of Anthony’s name from nasty gossipers. The young Bridgertons had been the central characters in the latest edition of Lady Whistledown. Rumor has it that Lord Bridgerton had continued an affair with a certain singer, without bothering to hide it from his young wife. Even worse? Lady Bridgerton knew, as they all knew, and never seemed to let the truth affect how she presented herself to those around her.
“Would you like me to answer that truthfully, my dear husband?” She turned her gaze towards him, her eyes alight with a burning fury towards the unfaithful man she had devoted her life to. She jerked her arm away from his grip and started to lift the glass to her painted lips. Anthony grabbed the dainty piece of glass and shook his head, “I think you’ve had enough. It’s time for you to go home.”
A bitter laugh escaped her mouth before she could stop it, as a few heads turned to observe the titular couple. “If that is your wish, Mr. Bridgerton.” She turned on her heel and started to make her way out to the cold air, cursing herself for leaving her coat in the carriage. She didn’t even bother to wait for her husband to catch up as she informed the valet they would be leaving.
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The carriage ride to the estate wasn’t anything special. She would sit and seethe in silence during the ride, her eyes burning a hole through Anthony’s forehead as he sat across from her. The argument began once the couple was behind the safety of their bedroom door, standing in front of each other with defenses up. “We have been married for two years, Anthony! Two years and the only time you have touched me was on our wedding night. Yet every night you come home, to OUR bed, smelling like some whore’s perfume! I am left to listen to the ton gossip about MY empty bed!” She nearly hissed the words to punctuate her accusations. Anthony had never seen such an outburst from the young woman, she had never spoken to him like that before. She was standing before him, the drinks she had at the ball fueling her anger and simultaneously allowing the anger to sober her head.
“I know that I wasn’t who you wanted to marry, I understand that this was just a beneficial arrangement for you. But I expect that as the woman who now holds your family name, who will one day bear your children, that you could at the very least respect me!” She was angry that he had just stood there and watched her yell, but at the same time, she wouldn’t let him get a word in.
“You cannot expect me to be a dutiful wife and lady if you refuse to grant me at least the tiniest shred of dignity. You, sir, make a fool of yourself, I am merely seeking that same kind of attention you seek from Siena.” Her voice dripped with sickly sweet venom as she spat the woman’s name.
Anthony allowed the woman to speak her mind on his infidelity, finally admitting to himself that he had been unfair to her. He frequently came into their room in the middle of the night when he expected the woman to be asleep. In the beginning of the marriage, he had at least tried to hide the evidence, changing his clothes before he climbed under the blankets next to her. Now, she was accustomed to him laying down beside her without even taking off the shirt that was stained with Siena’s stage makeup and that reeked of her pungent perfume.
“I do not understand, Anthony. I can come to terms with a loveless marriage, but I am so exhausted by knowing you’re giving her that kind of attention, and I have remained loyal to you despite the obvious signs of your affair-“ her rant was abruptly cut short when Anthony floated over to her, his hands gripping her cheeks with fervor as he crashed his lips to hers. Taking only a moment to stand in shock, she pressed her lips back against his, her hand reaching to grip onto the front of his overcoat. Desperately reaching for more, trying to edge him closer to their bed but ultimately allowing him full control over her mind, body and soul. She let out a disappointed whimper when his lips parted from hers, his face inches from her own.
“What is it that you want from me, woman? You wish for me to touch you the way I touch her? Or do you believe my hands to be too stained?” She hated how close his lips were, desperately trying to reach forward as he spoke his mind. She didn’t really care how improper the words sounded as they came from his mouth, because she DID want him to touch her- not just touch, she wanted him to fuck her the way he fucked his mistress.
She took a moment to find her words, not expecting her confrontation to lead to this moment. “Anthony, I am your wife. All I want is for you to- to fuck me the way a husband fucks his wife.”
Understanding that he had a year’s worth of missing passion to make up for, and seeing that deep down he had no other choice than to obey the woman before him, he easily obliged. In this moment, Siena didn’t exist to him. He was purely focused on making sure his duties as a husband were thoroughly taken care of. Tonight, he would go to sleep smelling of his wife’s soft scent, making sure to cover the woman in marks of his affection.
Little time was wasted in getting their clothes off. A mess of hands clashing together to try and undo buttons and layers and loops, the couple grasping at each other as though they were desperate for the other as a life source.
Anthony paused for a moment to admire his lady’s body in the soft candlelight, letting his hands first run over the delectable curve of her hips, trailing up her sides before settling on her supple breasts.
“I’m sorry that I have spent so long torturing you, making you only imagine my hands touching you like this. I promise, my lady, I will do a much better job at attending to whatever it is you wish from me.” Anthony promised as his eyes stayed locked with hers. Her pupils were blown wide, and he realized he didn’t even know what color her irises were meant to be. He told himself he’d be a better husband to her after this, wanting to ensure her place in society as his wife. He’d fuck her full of his seed tonight, and every night after that, to make sure that Lady Whistledown could never accuse him of neglecting his wife’s desires again.
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“Please, my lord, please--“ Lady Bridgerton sounded deliciously desperate, and it excited Anthony in a way that he had never experienced in his years-long affairs with Siena. It spurred him to plunge his cock deeper into his wife, his hand pushing her thigh down to her shoulder as he positioned her to angle himself deeper. She would probably think about the pressure against her cervix for the rest of her life, praying to God that she’d be able to experience this side of her husband for the rest of their lives together.
“What is it that you want, Lady Bridgerton? Tell me with words, my love, I want to hear you say it.” In this close position he could make sure she could look into his eyes to see he was genuine in this moment.
She was surprised at his stamina and determination tonight, focused more on her body than chasing his own release. A complete contrast to their wedding night, she felt like he treated the consummation as a chore. This was a much, much better experience. She had lost count of the times he had made her cum tonight, and the ways he had coaxed her orgasms from her.
“Anthony- Christ! Please don’t stop, want you to fuck me full til i’m round with your child-“ her voice was ragged and on the verge of giving out after not holding back a single sound. She didn’t care how pathetic she sounded begging for what seemed like the bare minimum from her husband.
Anthony leaned down to capture her lips in a messy kiss, reaching down to grab her hand that was tangled in the sheets beneath her. He caught any noises that escaped her, the sounds muffled against his own mouth, moving to hold her hand above her head. She clutched at his hand and whimpered his name as his hips stilled after a few sloppy thrusts, thick ropes coating her walls.
Anthony stayed put for a moment so as to not waste a drop, pulling his lips from hers before ghosting them over the hammering pulse in her neck. He gently maneuvered her pliable body into a resting position, slowly pulling himself from her and getting up from the bed.
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After he had gently cleaned up the mess he had made of the woman, Anthony peppered soft kisses over her stomach as he made his way up to lay down next to her. She instantly curled into his chest and closed her eyes, taking her time in coming down from the cloud she was on. She could feel his fingers gently combing through her mussed hair, the sensation slowly bringing her back to earth.
“Are you alright, Lady Bridgerton?” Anthony spoke softly to not spook her, his arms locked safely around her keeping her pressed to his body. Her lips quirked into a smile and he took notice of the way her cheek dimpled, his thumb moving to stroke over the small impression.
“I am absolutely content, Lord Bridgerton.” She opened her eyes to look up at her husband’s face. Anthony smiled as he kissed her again, a kiss so tender that nearly brought tears to her eyes.
“I may not be the perfect husband, but I vow to do better by you. I will end things with Siena and tend to the parts of you that I’ve been neglectful of.” Anthony made a promise to her after he had pulled away. His wife reached up to grab his hand in hers, moving it to press a gentle kiss to his knuckles before she spoke.
“You can use all of the sweet words that you want, you’ll still have to prove yourself with actions.” She squeezed his hand gently, “But I think this has been good start.”
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lovebugism · 3 months
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Shy!reader who has never had a valentine and Steve who pulls out alllll the stops to make up for this—flowers, chocolate, jewelry, candles, a nice dinner, even stuff like a teddy bear and those cheesy kid valentines
happy love day <3 — steve helps his shy gf celebrate her very first valentine's day (shy!reader, established relationship, cw for brief mentions of anxiety, 1k)
Valentine’s Day afternoon is grey and gloomy, but your beaming makes up for it. You’re smiling wide and sparkling with it the second you see Steve waiting for you in the parking lot outside your work. He’d promised to pick you up, yes, but you’re always giddy at the sight of him.
“Hey, babe,” the boy greets with his own grin, crooked and perfectly pink. 
He looks all cool, leaning against the driver’s side of his car. Pristine sneakers crossed over one another, sweater sleeves pushed up to his elbows, strands of cinnamon hair draping his forehead — how are you supposed to do anything but melt for him?
“Hi,” you respond in a tinier voice, walking closer to him now. You duck your chin to your chest and peer at him through your lashes, always so painfully shy.
“Did you have a good day?”
“It was alright,” you shrug and plant yourself in front of him. The deep scent of cologne staining his shirt combines with the earthy scent of impending rain. The concoction makes you dizzy. “Kept thinking about seeing you the whole time, though.”
Your confession makes the bridge of his chiseled nose scrunch. 
“Well, that makes two of us,” he quips before revealing the bouquet of flowers hidden behind his back. A small thing wrapped in pale pink tissue paper — pastel lavenders and pale baby’s breath — as pretty and delicate as you are.
You light up instantly, eyes glittering as they flit from the bushel of flowers to Steve’s proud grin. “You got me flowers?” you wonder, quiet with disbelief. You take them with a soft, trembling hand.
Steve shrugs. “‘Course I did.”
You bury your nose in the perfumed florals and flash a sheepish look over them. “No boy’s ever gotten me flowers before…”
Steve knows this. He knows you’ve never had a valentine before him — that you’ve never been with anyone the way you’ve been with him. It’s why he’s always so soft and perfectly patient with you.
“‘Cause other boys are stupid,” he says, grinning when it makes you giggle. He takes another step closer to you and smooths his warm palms over your arms. His thumbs rub gently along the outsides of your elbow. “Do you like them?”
“I love them,” you insist, smiling so wide it hurts. “They’re gonna look so pretty in my room.”
“Want me to take you home then? So you can get ready for tonight?”
Your brows pinch at his mischievous tone. “What’s tonight?”
“Dinner. I wanna take you to that fancy, new Italian place in the city.”
“Oh.” Your panic is subtle but still written all over your face. You’re not good at going out — you’re worse at trying new things. Steve’s certainly made you braver, but you’re always a little timid at heart. 
Steve knows this and assures with a soft smile, “But we don’t have to if you don’t want. It was just a suggestion.”
“I want to,” you hear yourself say.
His brows raise, visibly shocked. “You do?”
There’s something about the way he looks at you, with a glimmer in his deep brown eyes, that makes you bold. You nod once, firm and foreignly confident. “Yeah.”
Steve tries not to be too obvious about his smiling, but he wears his love for you all over his face without trying. “Then let’s go.”
—————
Rain beats heavy against the window of the candle-lit restaurant, a wild and delicate cadence. The flickering flame paints Steve’s smile golden while his eyes glow a shining amber. He tries to woo you like you’re not wearing the pretty dress he bought you — like you’re not wearing his initial in a pendant dangling between your breasts.
“You’re the Obi-Wan for me,” he jokes before taking a hearty bite of his steak. He chews through the mouthful and gestures with his fork. “You know. Like only one—”
“I get it,” you assure with a sickly sweet smile.
He’s been doing this for a better part of an hour. The Valentine’s Day crowd rushed in, and your waiter got your order wrong, and the whole thing spun you into a tizzy. Steve’s been trying to distract you from your nerves ever since. And it’s worked. Mostly.
“Well, you’re not laughing!” he retorts, playful in his solemnity. “That one was good— you gotta give me some credit.”
“It was,” you assure with a quiet nod. You don’t say it like you mean it, but more like you’re trying to appease him.
“Are you saying you can come up with a better one?” he teases.
You think for a moment, doe eyes flitting across the droplets sliding down the window beside you. Your glossed lips purse all pretty to the side with the weight of your pondering. A smile tugs slow at your lips when you turn back to him. “Obi-Wan Ke-bone-me.”
A laugh sputters from Steve’s mouth. As pure and innocent as sunshine. He nods with a proud, lopsided smile. “You’re right. That was way better.”
“I Obi-Want you tonight,” you follow, giggling still.
“You are on fire tonight, you know that?”
You laugh again, louder this time. Steve beams at the pretty sound and waits until you’ve scooped a too-big bite of pasta in your mouth to compliment you. “You’re so pretty…” he murmurs in a low, honeyed tone. His eyes sparkle with amber, warm and visibly fond.
You stop mid-chew to scowl. You’re too cute to look threatening — especially when you’ve got spare sauce dotted on the corner of your mouth. “Stop…” you scold after you’ve swallowed down the mouthful.
Steve laughs, loud and boyish. “You are!”
“You’re being too nice…” you grouse with your nose scrunched.
“I’m your boyfriend. I’m supposed to be nice.”
“But not this nice,” you insist, smiling despite yourself. You twirl noodles around your fork to busy your fidgeting hand. Your sheepish gaze flits from the half-empty plate to the beautiful boy in front of you. “I think you’re starting to ruin everyone else for me, Stevie…”
His chest sparkles with a warmer feeling. “Well, yeah,” he shrugs. “That was kinda the plan here, babe.”
“Was it?”
“Uh-huh,” he nods and folds his arms over the white-clothed table. He grins wide and leans in close.  His cinnamon eyes sparkle with a mixture of adoration and mischief. “You fell right into my trap.”
You smile back at him, so happy that you did.
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Rumoured Nights | S.R
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This was written for the lovely and wonderful @foxy-eva milestone celebration. Congratulations love! 💕 I used the prompt - “someone has to unexpectedly share hotel room with their favourite coworker - who apparently really likes to cuddle.”
Set during 5.21 Exit Wounds - this ep just lends itself perfectly for a one bed fic.
Summary - a case in a small town in Alaska forces you and your favourite coworker into sharing a room and a bed. And according to Morgan, Spencer likes to cuddle.
Pairing - Spencer Reid x Fem! Reader
Category - smut NSFW Minors DNI
Warnings - one bed trope, friends to lovers, sex dream, cuddly Spencer, swearing, making out, Spencer is touch starved, canon compliant death, meddling BAU team, interruptions, fingering, handjobs, penetrative, protected sex.
WC - 7.5k (don’t ask me how, she’s wordy)
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“I’m not sleeping with Reid.” 
The comment was probably meant inoffensively, an off the cuff remark to make his coworkers laugh but instead only caused the youngest member of the team to blush furiously. 
Spencer Reid shrunk down in the armchair, attempting to hide his embarrassment from the eyes of his fellow team members who now all looked upon him. 
As far as he was aware, Morgan had never told the team what happened the one and only time they’d shared a room during a case. The confused looks being sent his way went to further that, thank god. 
It happened a few years back when they’d been on a case in a town equally as small as Franklin, Alaska where they found themselves now. Like tonight, the BNB was small and they’d had to double up. 
And Morgan had woken in the morning to find Spencer’s arms wrapped around him like he was the genius’s oversized teddy bear, and one of Spencer’s legs draped across him. 
Morgan had pushed the younger man off of him and apparently Spencer hadn’t even so much as stirred. It wasn’t even until a while later Morgan had filled him in on what he’d subconsciously done in his sleep. 
It was perfectly innocent. There was no more to it other than the fact that Spencer was painfully touch starved. He didn’t allow himself to dwell on how long exactly it had been since he’d had another warm body to share his bed with, but if he did he would be able to recite how long it had been down to the minute. 
It was an involuntary reaction. His subconscious must have gravitated him towards the body in his bed and held them without thought to who it was. In his unconscious mind, it didn’t matter who it was, just that he needed the comfort of holding somebody. 
He was glad Morgan hadn’t woken him because he would have been a hundred times more embarrassed if he had to remember his inappropriate middle of the night cuddle. 
While he relented to his own mortification, the rest of the team silently paired off. Garcia was quick to place her hand on Morgan’s arm, nabbing him as her roomie before anyone else had the chance.
Hotch and Rossi exchanged a look of understanding and JJ smiled at Emily, the brunette nodding back at the blonde in response. 
Spencer felt his stomach coiling into thick knots as he let his eyes glance across the room and land on you who had also noticed the non-verbal agreements taking place. You met his gaze and offered him a meek half-smile.
“Guess you’re with me, Doc.” You got to your feet, grabbing your bag off the floor. 
You tried to hide the look of sheer delight from your eyes, tried to pretend that this wasn’t the best outcome to you. There had always been something about Spencer that you found magnetic, his brain intrigued you and he wasn’t at all hard on the eyes. 
Through five years of working together you had kept your little crush underwraps, your poker face was second to none. 
So you had to play it cool. You couldn’t show how utterly thrilled you were that the chips had fallen in your favour. 
One by one the rest of the team stood with their bags and collected their room keys from the kindly innkeeper and headed towards the staircase. 
You hung back for Spencer while he procured the key and with an awkward smile he followed you to the stairs.
“Good luck, mama.” Morgan smirked at you, clapping a hand down on your shoulder as you went to pass him by. “Pretty boy here is a secret cuddler.” 
“Morgan!” Spencer’s voice pitched, around five octaves higher than his usual cadence. 
“She’s gonna find out sooner or later, kid.” Morgan winked at the younger man, causing Spencer to turn beet red again. 
You shook your head with a soft laugh, averting your eyes away from Derek and towards the bottom step.
“Uh, thanks for the heads up. Goodnight.” You started up the stairs, hearing Spencer following behind you. 
You met him at the door to your room and stood aside so he could unlock it. Like the gentleman he was, he held it open for you to enter first. 
It was you who first noticed the initial problem. When Spencer sidled up next to you a moment later he saw it too. 
One bed. There was only one freaking bed. 
“I’ll sleep on the floor.” He was quick to speak, dumping his go-bag on the dresser. 
“You’ll put your back out.” You rolled your eyes. 
“I’m not Rossi.” He scoffed, indignantly. “I’ll be fine.” 
“Spencer, your knee still hasn’t properly healed. I cannot in good conscience let you sleep on the floor.” 
“I’m fine,” he waved a dismissive hand. “I’ve been walking without my cane for months.” 
“With a limp.” You clucked. “If it makes you uncomfortable to share a bed, let me sleep on the floor, please?” 
“It is statistically improbable that I will let you sleep on the floor, Y/N.” He folded his arms across his chest in defiance. 
“Fine,” you shrugged. “It’s one night, Spence. We can share a bed can’t we?” 
For the third time in ten minutes, Spencer’s cheeks burned bright red with his embarrassment. 
“I, uh, you see…” he swallowed. “Morgan wasn’t lying about the cuddling thing. We had to share a bed once on a case and apparently I cuddled up to him in my sleep.” 
A smile tugged at your lips and you felt a little guilty given how mortified he looked. But honestly you thought it was incredibly adorable and plenty endearing.
Spencer was known for having an aversion to touch, always citing how many germs could be passed in a single handshake and how it was actually safer to kiss. So the thought of him hugging anyone made you smile, even if it was when he was asleep. 
“I just so happen to not totally hate that idea.” You tried to encourage him, not wanting him to be embarrassed. 
“Y-you don’t?” He stuttered with a frown. 
“It’s cute.” You smiled.
“I think the word you’re looking for is pathetic.” He sighed. “Who knows it might have just been a one off anyway. If you’re lucky, I’ll leave you alone.” 
Lucky? Some luck that would be. 
You hid your expression from him, the one that desperately loved the idea of him snuggling up to you in his sleep. You pushed it down, simply offering him a nod. 
You just might be disappointed if he didn’t cuddle you.
***
The two of you took turns in the bathroom, brushing your teeth and changing into your respective pyjamas. Usually you slept nude, or at the very least just in your panties, but thankfully you kept a pair of shorts and a tank top in your go-bag in case you ever found yourself in this position.
You were already in bed scrolling on your phone when Spencer stepped out of the bathroom. He wore a set of dark green flannel pyjama pants and a matching long sleeved top, buttoned right up to his neck. You smiled in amusement at him as he padded across the room.
“Why does it not surprise me one little bit that Doctor Spencer Reid even sleeps in a button down?” You giggled a little as he sat down on the edge of the bed.
“I get cold easily.” He shrugged, his back now to you. “And we are in Alaska.” 
You didn’t reply, simply watched him as he slid his legs under the sheets, his mismatched socks still adorned on his feet, and laid his long, messy hair on the pillow. He kept his back to you and he reached out and switched off the lamp.
“Goodnight, Y/N.” He whispered, tucking one hand beneath his pillow. 
“Goodnight, Spence.” You smiled to yourself as you closed your eyes.
***
It was still dark out when you stirred in your sleep, eyes fluttering slightly as you pulled the duvet further up to your chin. You would have fallen straight back to sleep if it hadn’t been for the sensation of something heavily draped over your ribcage. 
You were on your back, the ceiling staring back at you when you opened your eyes. It was then you realised there was something hard between your head and the pillow. 
You looked to your side and blinked against the darkness, trying to adjust your vision. A messy head of hair was next to you on your pillow, so close you could feel the soft breath coming from parted lips tickling your face.
It was then you pieced together that the thing that was under your head and across your torso were one in the same: Spencer’s arms. One was tucked beneath you, holding you close to him while the other cautiously rested over you, just below your breasts. 
His right leg was bent at the knee, slung over your bare thighs. His whole body was pressed up against your side and it was then you registered that something hard was digging into your left hip…
Oh, your eyes widened. Oh. 
You looked back at the ceiling, body going rigid in Spencer’s arms. It certainly did not take someone with a genius level IQ to figure out what it was. 
You tried to ignore it, willed yourself to go back to sleep and put it behind you. Maybe you were still asleep, perhaps this was just a really vivid dream. In the morning you would pretend it never happened, not wanting to embarrass the poor man. 
But then the situation somehow grew even more awkward, if that were possible. Spencer nuzzled closer to you in his sleep, his face buried against your neck. His breathing started to grow frantic and his hold on you tightened. 
And then he moaned. 
Your stomach tightened at the delicious sound, equally trying to commit it to memory and forget it at the same time. But then it happened again, the sound deeper this time. There was no denying it was a moan of pleasure. 
The third time he made the sound it was followed by the whimpered utterance of the word fuck. 
And when his hips started to gesticulate, grinding his hardness against your hip, you had to do something. 
“Spence?” You hissed, wriggling in his arms. “Spencer, wake up!” 
His eyes shot open suddenly and he huffed out a breath. His eyes were hooded with his sleep, his plump lips parted in confusion. 
For a few moments he just laid there, not registering his position or the bulge in his pyjama pants. He simply stared blankly at you. 
“What happened?” He groaned sleepily. “Another body?” 
“No….no. Not work.” You swallowed. “I uh, I don’t really know how to say this so I’m just gonna say it…I think you were having a sex dream.” 
His eyes got really wide, really fast. As your words registered with him he also realised he was holding you, snuggled tightly against you. And at the same moment he also realised the part of his anatomy that had woken up long before his brain had. 
And it was pressing right against your side. 
He scrambled away from you suddenly, drawing all of his limbs close to his torso and burying his face into the pillow. 
“Fuck,” he mumbled against the cushion. “Fuck, I am so unbelievably sorry. I’m going to…” 
He trailed off and quickly rolled to the edge of the bed but you were faster and you managed to grab his arm before he made it out. 
“Spence, it’s fine. These things happen. Let’s just go back to sleep and forget it ever happened.” You gently guided him back to the mattress and he flopped onto his back. 
“This is somehow more humiliating than when I cuddled Morgan. At least then I didn’t have a, uh…yeah.” He shook his head, not willing to finish that sentence. 
“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, Spencer. You were dreaming, and apparently it was a very good dream.” You couldn’t help but laugh, trying to cast light on the situation and make him feel less uncomfortable.
It had the opposite effect.
“I really don’t see how this is funny. I’m lonely ok? I’m so painfully lonely that the only kind of physical contact I can get with a woman is in my sleep.” He blurted out, his brain not quite awake enough to stop the words coming out of his mouth. 
The room fell silent. Spencer stared at the ceiling, you stared at the side of Spencer’s face. 
It wasn’t exactly a surprise to hear. Spencer never talked about dating or anything of the sort and although Morgan had speculated he just kept his exploits quiet, you were never so sure. 
Spencer was awkward and shy and had a hard time talking to anyone he didn’t know unless it was in statistics and facts. 
So it didn’t surprise you to find this out, but it did surprise you that Spencer was offering that information out to you. 
“I, uh…” you croaked. 
“It’s ok, you don’t have to say anything. I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable. I’m sorry that I had a sex dream about you but in my defence I can’t control my-”
“Hold up,” you cut him off, leaning up on your elbow so you could look at him properly. “Did you say you were dreaming about me?” 
His cheeks turned impossibly redder and he buried his face further into the pillow. 
“I assumed you knew that part. I thought you said…'' he wracked his brain.
No, you didn’t tell him he’d said your name. He’d added that part, assumed that you knew who he’d been dreaming about. Fuck. 
“You were dreaming about me.” You croaked, staring at what little of his face wasn’t covered by the pillow. 
“Y-yes.” He whispered. “As if the situation wasn’t already awkward enough. I can just go and sleep in the bathtub or something. The lobby even.” 
“Spence,” you gave his hair a gentle tug, trying to get him to look at you. 
Reluctantly he lifted his head and his eyes were wide and guilt ridden, his bottom lip cushioned between his teeth. 
“Yes?” 
“Do you…have you…” you couldn’t seem to finish that trail of thought. 
“Yes.” He clearly knew what you were trying to say. “It has happened before. More times than I care to admit right at this present moment.” 
“Oh.” You swallowed thickly. 
“So bathtub or lobby? How bad is this situation exactly? Does the bathroom put enough space between us or do I seriously need to leave the room entirely?” 
“My preference would be that you don’t go anywhere.” You confessed, causing Spencer to frown. “I mean, unless it’s closer to me.” 
“I…I’m not sure I understand.” 
“Sure you do.” You smiled, shuffling closer to him when he wouldn’t move. “The real thing will be so much better than even your wildest dreams, Spence.” 
An air of confidence washing over you, you finally got the chance to do something you’d been imagining for years and pressed your lips against his. 
He whimpered at the contact, momentarily dumbfounded by what was happening. But he soon managed to snap himself out of it and quickly took hold of your face and parted your lips with his tongue. 
As he deepened the kiss he rolled himself on top of you, already straining at the front of his flannel pants again. This time he was happy to roll his hips against you, really allowing you to feel him. 
You gasped into his mouth and he swallowed the sound down into his lungs. He held your face with care but the kiss was all frantic tongues and the clashing of teeth. 
It was years worth of pent up sexual tension for which neither of you had ever realised the other felt too, all spilling forth against the others lips. 
You wrapped your arms around his waist, fingertips brushing beneath the hem of his pyjama shirt, he moaned into the kiss when your hands glided over his back, across his shoulder blades and back down his spine. 
His own hands wandered at the same time his tongue hungrily explored every crevice of your mouth. His touch was featherlight down your biceps and forearms before falling towards your torso and following your lead, under the hem of your shirt. 
His finger brushed delicately over the sides of your ribs, up and down and up and down the skin, his fingertips making a mental note of how every dip and curve felt beneath them. 
His teeth grazed against your bottom lip before nibbling on it lightly and then pulling away. He sat back and looked down at you, your hands dislodging from under his shirt.
His pupils were blown out wide and his lips were puffy and red. His chest heaved his haggard breaths while he fought for air. 
You smiled up at him, reaching for the top button of his pyjama shirt. He let your deft fingers do their work, popping each button in turn and moving lower and lower down his abdomen. 
When the final button was undone he shucked the material off his shoulders and tossed it aside. His long curls hung around his face, framing him perfectly and you didn’t think anyone had ever looked as delicious as he did right now. 
His own hands brushed under your tank top again, palm flush against your stomach for a moment or two before he hooked his fingers in the fabric and started drawing it upwards. 
He let out a feral moan as he peeled the top away to reveal your bare breasts beneath. You helped him get it over your head and it soon joined Spencer’s shirt on the floor. 
He was open mouth staring at you, not even trying to hide it. You rolled your eyes with a soft chuckle, reaching for him and pulling him close.
“What’s the matter, Doc?” You spoke as you kissed him again. “Never seen a pair of tits before?” 
“None that magnificent, that's for certain.” He mumbled in reply. 
“Flattery will get you everywhere Doctor Reid.” Your hands moved to cup his clothed ass. 
“Fuck,” he hummed, rolling his hips against you. “Keep calling me Doctor Reid and it’ll be over before it begins.”
You laughed at the insinuation, wrapping your arms around him and expertly managing to flip you both over so his back was to the mattress and you were straddling his hips. 
His hair splayed out against the pillow and from this angle you were able to get a good look at what the good doctor was hiding in his pants. 
You involuntarily hissed at the sight and his eyes never left your chest. His hands were pawing at your hips, cloying at the fabric of your shorts. 
You raised your eyes to his face and waited for him to meet your gaze. When he did you made a show of grinding down against his lap, his mouth falling open as a moan erupted from his lungs. 
The friction caused by his pants rubbing against him was nice in a way but he would much rather a different kind of friction. 
He reached for your neck, pulling you closer so your bare chests crashed together and he kissed you deeply. 
You continued to grind against him, feeling his hard member between your legs and wishing for fewer clothes to be in the way. 
But before you could think about helping him undress further, Spencer’s hungry fingers were trailing up your thigh and grazing beneath the leg of your shorts. 
His hand wove higher, he could feel the heat emanating from your core. His fingertips lightly brushed against your pubic bone and you whined into his mouth. 
“Is that what you want?” He spoke against your lips, his other hand gripping the back of your neck tightly. 
“P-please…” you whimpered, nibbling on his lip and trying to move yourself closer to his waiting fingers.
Spencer chuckled almost darkly, brushing his fingers over the same spot. 
“Do you have any idea how long I’ve waited for this?” He whispered as your lips latched against his neck, sucking deep marks in his flesh. 
“About as long as I have. Please Spencer, please for the love of god!” 
The way you moaned so desperately for him made his head spin, no one had ever reacted like this for him. 
He inched his fingers nearer to where you wanted them, but as he was about to give you everything you’d been waiting for, an ear piercing scream reverberated in the room. 
You fell back as Spencer sat up, ears pricked and waiting in silence that now shrouded the room. Seconds passed that felt like hours until you both heard it again. 
“Help! Somebody please help!” 
“Is that…?” Spencer’s chest heaved in panic. 
“Penelope!” 
The two of you were suddenly out of bed and on your feet, scampering around to dress as quickly as possible. You threw a pair of jeans over your shorts, foregoing your tank top and tossing on a sweater instead before your coat. 
Spencer grabbed his pyjama shirt and fought with the buttons whilst stuffing his feet inside his converse. He grabbed his jacket and scarf on his way to the door, before quickly doubling back and picking up his revolver. 
You got your firearm as well, toeing on your boots as they two of you quickly dashed from the room. In the corridor you saw Morgan ahead of you, running towards the stairs. 
“You heard it too?” You asked as you ran to catch him. 
“You bet your ass I did.” Morgan hurried down the stairs with you in hot pursuit. “Pretty boy, wake the others. Y/N and I will check it out.” 
Spencer nodded though no one was looking at him. He fell back, his hand holding the gun dropping to his side as he made his way back to the other rooms.
His head was still spinning, dizzy with the lust from previous moments ago. Maybe this was a sign to him not to cross that line with his friend. The line was blurred, sure, but not yet so much as it couldn’t be rectified. 
All he could hope was that he hadn’t destroyed your friendship to the point of no return. 
You followed Morgan hurriedly towards the front door of the inn, guns pointed in front of you. You could still feel an electric current pulsing through your veins from Spencer’s touch, your lips still tingled from his kiss. 
You pushed it aside as a blast of frigid air hit you when Morgan opened the door and the two of you descended the front steps. 
“Help! Someone help!” Cried Penelope off in the distance. 
Morgan’s head whipped around almost three hundred and sixty degrees, eyes taking in the dark landscape to find what he was looking for. 
“Over there!” He barked, nodding his head towards two silhouettes in the trees. 
He quickened his pace, so did you. 
You found Garcia on her knees on the ground over the dead body of a man. She had tears streaming down her cheeks, her mouth hung open.
“I…and he…and then…”
“It’s ok baby girl,” Morgan crouched down next to her, stuffing his gun in the back of his jeans and helping her to her feet. 
You tucked your own gun away, leaning over the body and placing your index and middle finger to the side of his neck. 
No pulse. You didn’t think it needed to be spoken out loud. 
Garcia was sobbing, head buried against Morgan’s strong chest while he held her. The sound of crunching leaves alerted you to your company and you spun around to see the rest of the team running your way. 
Hotch and Rossi still wore their usual daytime attire but JJ and Emily wore sweats under large coats. Spencer looked an absolute picture in his pyjamas, coat and scarf hanging limply from his neck. 
He briefly made eye contact with you, but you broke it swiftly, glancing over at your boss who looked even more annoyed than usual. 
“Get her inside.” Hotch spoke to Morgan. “Someone call the sheriff.” 
Emily pulled her cell phone out and stepped away to make the call. 
“He knew we were staying here. This was a big risk.” Rossi huffed, glancing at the faces around him and lingering a little longer on Spencer. “Kid, why do you look so flustered?”
Spencer’s eyes widened and you saw him swallow thickly. You looked away, focused on the body on the floor. 
“I…” he squeaked, rolling his lip between his teeth. “I’m fine.” 
And if anyone noticed his voice was several octaves higher than usual, they kindly didn’t say anything. 
***
Over an hour later you all trudged back inside from the cold. The coroner had taken the body away and you would continue your investigation in the morning. 
Penelope was fraught, never having seen a dead body in real life let alone having to witness someone die. Morgan tried to keep her calm but even he couldn’t bring her back from this spiral.
When she stormed upstairs you all watched her go. Morgan looked over at you, his eyes asking you questions before his words did. 
“Can you…?” 
“Yeah.” You nodded. 
You moved past the others towards the stairs, you hadn’t so much as looked at Spencer in the last hour. He tried to make eye contact with you as you walked by but you kept your gaze forward.
Once you were up the stairs, Morgan sidled up to Spencer who was still watching you walk away. 
“You gonna tell me why you’ve been looking like a lost puppy for the last hour?” He cocked an eyebrow at the younger man. 
“What? I’m not! I’m…tired. I was sleeping when I heard Garcia.” Spencer averted his gaze.
“I hope that isn’t true.” Morgan scoffed. 
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Spencer frowned looking back at him. 
“It means,” JJ stepped forward, an amused smile on her lips. “We’ve all spent the last five years trying to get you and Y/N to see what the rest of us can see.”
“And what’s that?” He turned to JJ. 
“Oh please.” Emily chuckled. “You think we don’t notice the tension between the two of you? Morgan’s been single handedly trying to get the two of you to bone for years.” 
Spencer’s cheeks instantly turned red and he felt his chest tighten with his embarrassment. 
“I…I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He turned his back on them and headed for the stairs.
“Go get her lover boy.” Morgan called after him and they all fell about laughing while Spencer shrunk away. 
He was at least glad you hadn’t been privy to that. But he didn’t relish the idea of seeing you right now, that would surely be one awkward encounter. 
***
You found Penelope pacing the length of her and Derek’s room, muttering under her breath frantically. 
You cautiously entered, not wanting to startle her. 
“I watched him die.” She spoke when she saw you. “I watched him take his last breath, Y/N.” 
“I know.” You nodded slowly, coming close to your friend and placing your hands on her shoulders. “I can’t imagine how scary that was for you.” 
“I just…” she whined a little. “When I was shot, all I could think was that if I die the last face I’m ever going to see is the man who killed me. I didn’t want that for him.” 
“You’re too good for this world, Penny.” You squeezed her shoulders. 
“I don’t know how I’m ever going to sleep again.” She pulled free of your hold and started pacing again. “Tell me something, anything. Something to distract me.” 
“Uh…” you scratched the back of your head. “You did everything you could to help him?” 
“No, not that. Not about this.” She quickened her pace, arms flailing about as she walked. 
“Uh…I’m pretty sure after tonight you can get Morgan to spoon you. All you need to do is tell him how scared you were.” You tried again. 
“As delicious as that sounds, I don’t think Kevin would be too pleased about that.” She was a blur of colour, like a rainbow flying through the sky. “Please Y/N, I need to think of something other than this horrible night.”
Goddamnit. 
You had the exact thing she was looking for, the perfect piece of information to take her mind off of this. 
Goddamnit, here goes nothing. 
“I almost slept with Spencer tonight.” You blurted out before you could change your mind. 
As expected she immediately stopped pacing, halting in her tracks and glaring wide eyed at you. Her mouth hung open like she wanted to speak but couldn’t find the right words.
You rolled your lip between your teeth, awkwardly waiting for her to say something. Slowly she stepped closer to you, eyebrows raising towards her hairline. 
“You…and boy wonder?” 
“Yes.” 
“It’s about time!” She slapped your bicep and you growled at the impact. “Wait…did you say almost?” 
“Yeah, we didn’t quite get that far.” You rubbed your arm from her assault.
“Why not?” She sounded incredulous. 
“Because…the screaming? The cries for help?” You huffed. 
“I…I ruined your first time with Reid?” She gasped. “No, no that won’t do. You are going to march back to your room and resume all previous activities. Right now.”
“I don’t think that’s gonna happen.” You shook your head. 
“Why?”
“It was a dumb idea, Pen. We’re friends, we work together.” You sighed deeply.
“Friends who are utterly infatuated with one another and have been for the past five years.” She clucked. 
“Guess my poker face isn’t as good as I thought it was.” 
“It is not. You make heart eyes at him every time he walks into a room. And he’s just as bad!” Garcia sounded exasperated. “Go to him. Finish what you started. For the love of all things pink and sparkly.” 
“Penny, I love you but it’s not gonna happen.” You shrugged. “I’m not ruining one of my closest friendships for one night of passion.” 
“Ok…I do not like thinking of boy genius and the word passion in the same sentence.” She pulled a face. “That’s like thinking of my brother…gross.” 
You couldn’t help but laugh at the way her body shuddered at the thought. You were pleased at least you had managed to get her to calm down. 
“You gonna be ok if I go?” You smiled at her. 
“Morgan will probably be up soon, I’m sure he can protect me.” She smiled back. “Just let him down gently ok? Reid is fragile.” 
You rolled your eyes, backing away to the door. 
“Goodnight, Penelope.” You blew her a kiss as you opened the door and stepped out into the corridor. 
Across the hall your own door loomed. Your chest tightened as you pushed forward, hoping Spencer may already be asleep so as to avoid an awkward conversation. 
But you knew he wouldn’t be and that was confirmed when you entered your room and found him sitting on the edge of the bed as if waiting for you. 
He looked up from where he’d been staring at his lap when he heard the door close. He pushed himself to his feet, his jaw set tightly. 
“I don’t want to ruin our friendship.” He blurted out suddenly. 
“Me either.” You agreed, stepping closer to him as you got out of your jacket. 
You unsheathed your firearm and laid it on the dresser next to Spencer’s. 
“But uh…” he frowned, fighting an internal battle with his own thoughts. “Friendships are overrated right? I have plenty of friends…”
“Way too many friends.” You smiled and nodded as he reached for you, large hands cupping your face. 
“I don’t want to be your friend.” He whispered and then proceeded to crash your lips together. 
You immediately parted your lips and his tongue slid inside of your mouth while he pulled you back to the bed. You both fell to the mattress, you on top of him while never breaking the kiss. 
He didn’t want to waste a second, didn’t want to risk being pulled away from you again and so his hands quickly found the hem of your sweater and helped you out of it. 
You got his buttons undone and he guided you with a hand on your back, down to the mattress. He slipped the garment off of his shoulders and rolled himself on top of you, kissing you again. 
His hands wandered down your torso to the button of your jeans. His lips trailed to your neck and brushed along your collarbones. 
They moved lower, down to your right breast where he placed kisses on the swell of it before moving on and taking your hard nipple in his mouth. 
You moaned and bucked your hips to meet his erection in his pyjama pants. He popped the button on your jeans and you helped him shimmy them down your legs. 
When his lips moved to your neglected breast, you reached out and blindly groped him through his pants. He grinded against your hand, moaning around your nipple. 
His large hand glided back across the plains of your stomach before inching lower. His fingertips brushed over the waistband of your panties before disappearing beneath the fabric. 
His index finger located your clit and pressed firmly against it, another moan erupting from your chest. He pulled back from your nipple and looked down at you with a sinful smirk. 
He started rubbing deft circles between your legs, his nimble finger a thing of magic. Wanting to return the favour, your own hand slipped inside of his pants and you grasped the base of his cock in your hand. 
He moaned deeply, his finger working more frantically as you started to stroke him. He met your gaze, his lips parted and soft moans escaping between them. 
“F-fuck.” He stuttered, moving his finger from your clit and running it through your folds, collecting your arousal on his digit. 
His middle finger joined his index and pressed against your entrance. You increased your movement on his shaft as he pushed them slowly inside of you. 
“Jesus Christ.” You muttered as you clenched around him. “Jesus fucking Christ.” 
“Why the fuck have we never done this before?” He whined, pushing his fingers as deeply inside of you as he possibly could.
You whimpered, bucking your hips against him as he moved in and out of you hurriedly and your strokes of his member were becoming frantic. 
His head was already leaking with pre-cum and you swiped your thumb through it causing an animalistic growl to leave Spencer’s mouth. 
It was too much and not enough all at once. You needed more, you needed everything. 
His fingers slammed into you roughly, the sounds of your slickness filling the room. You twisted your fist as it moved up and down his cock and he was snapping his hips back and forth, practically fucking your hand. 
“Fuck…I don’t suppose you have a condom?” You panted, desperate to feel more of him. 
“Uh, embarrassingly yes I do.” He nodded, his cheeks flushing a little. 
“Why is that embarrassing?” You slowed your pace and Spencer slowly removed his fingers from inside of you. 
“It seems…presumptuous? It wasn’t like…I didn’t think…it’s not like that I swear. It’s, uh, a long story.” He stood up, locating his wallet on the dresser and unsheathing the small golden foil packet from inside. 
“I believe you, Doc.” You smiled at him as you shimmed out of your panties. 
Spencer’s mouth fell open at the sight of you laid bare for him. His hands started to tremble as he moved them to the waistband of his flannel pants. 
He wouldn’t look at you as he pulled them over his hips, down his legs and kicked them off of his feet. 
When he did look back at you, you were staring right at his crotch. 
Your chest heaved with frantic breaths and you were rolling your lip between your teeth. 
“Good god, Reid.” You smirked. “I need you like yesterday.” 
He shuddered at the desperation in your voice and shakily ripped the condom wrapper over. He moved closer to the bed again, holding the base of his shaft in one hand and rolling the rubber over his tip with the other. 
You spread your legs for him, welcoming him between them and wrapping them around his waist. He leant on his hands either side of your head, the veins in his arms pulsing as he held his weight above you. 
He eyed your face, an almost delicate smile on his lips and you weren’t sure what it meant. 
“What is it?” You asked him, reaching up to tuck his long hair behind his ears. 
“You’re sure about this?” He asked softly. 
“Very. Aren’t you?” 
“I’ve wanted this for so long.” He breathed. “But I really don’t want things to change between us.”
“Spence,” you brushed your knuckles across his cheek. “Things have already changed between us. But not in a bad way.” 
Linking your hands at the base of his neck you drew him close for a kiss. He moaned into your lips and you felt him finally pressing between your legs. 
He held his shaft again and guided him where he needed to be, his blunt head penetrating you, stretching you to accommodate him. 
He slowly sank into you, a long and shaky breath leaving his lungs. Inch by inch he ebbed deeper, your walls fluttering against him as your body made room for him. 
When he bottomed out he stilled, glancing between your bodies at where he was now sheathed inside of you. The look on his face was pure bliss, as though nothing in the world had ever felt this good to him. 
He lowered himself onto his forearms as he drew his hips backwards painfully slowly. But then he surprised you by roughly thrusting back into you. 
After that there was no holding him back, like a man possessed he started fucking you hard and fast into the mattress. 
He pounded against your cervix with each thrust, kissing you with a newfound ferocity. The room was encompassed by the sound of skin slapping against skin and your moans which were being swallowed by the other's mouth. 
He already knew he wouldn’t last long, but that was ok. He didn’t plan on this being the only time he fucked you tonight. 
It was completely unexpected, out of the blue for the mild mannered doctor to be such a stallion. But it was electrifying, dizzying, the way in which he pounded into you like his life depended on it yet kissed with such gentle passion.
Resting all of his weight on one arm, his other hand manoeuvred between your sweat slicked bodies and his finger pressed deftly against your clit again. 
He started rubbing intricate circles on your bud, hips still snapping back and forth, stretching your walls around his length. 
He had a few beads of sweat trickling down his forehead which was scrunched up much like his nose was. 
His chest was flushed beet red and his left arm which was holding him up shook with the exertion. 
Your legs tightened around his waist, walls clenching around his cock. A combination of his rough thrusts and ministrations on your clit we’re bringing you rapidly spiralling towards your orgasm. 
You assumed by the look in his face that he was close too and by the way in which he started to lose his rhythm a little, his thrusts becoming a little frantic. 
You drew him in for another kiss. It was slightly messy, teeth clashing together and tongues fighting their way into the other's mouth. 
He moaned deeply against your lips, his finger now rubbing against you rampantly.
“I’m s-so close.” He mumbled. “Can’t…don’t think I can…”
“Me too.” You agreed as you felt the tightening in the pit of your stomach. “Don’t stop. So close, don’t stop!” 
And he didn’t. 
The pressure was building and between his cock burying deep inside of you and his finger never letting up on your clit, you teetered on the brink. 
And then as if a volcano erupted, you reached your peak, moaning into Spencer’s mouth as your body convulsed beneath him. 
He felt you clenching around him as you came, causing a pressure to shoot through his member. He thrust deep one last time and whimpered as he felt the come shooting from his head in ropes, filling the condom. 
His hips continued to buck lazily as if he simply couldn’t get enough of this feeling. His hand fell from its spot between your legs and he collapsed on top of you, panting and sweat slicked. 
You could feel his heavy breaths as his chest moved against yours, could feel his heart erratically beating at his rib cage. 
He nuzzled his face into your neck, his breath fanning across your skin. His hips were still rolling, grinding against you not ready to stop despite how worn out he was. 
You stroked his cheek and moved your head so you could kiss him sleepily. He mumbled something incoherent against your lips. 
Eventually his movements stilled briefly before he cautiously pulled out of you. He rolled onto his back and peeled the condom from his softening member, tying a knot in the end and tossing it lazily in the general direction of the trash can. 
He shuffled a little, his arm finding his way beneath your head how you’d found it when you woke up in the night. 
You curled into him, resting your head on his chest and listening to the still slightly erratic beating of his heart. 
“I never like being friends anyway.” He mumbled, making you giggle. 
“Me either.” You slung your arm around his waist. “Whatever this is, it’s so much better.” 
He placed a kiss of agreement in your hair and snuggled closer to you as his eyes fluttered closed. 
He decided, as he drifted off to sleep, being a secret sleep cuddler maybe wasn’t so bad after all. 
***
Down the hall, Morgan flopped on the armchair in his and Penelope’s room, eyeing the blonde as she stared at her laptop screen. 
“What a night huh?” He ran his hand over his head. 
“Yah huh.” She nodded, bouncing a little in the bed as she did so. 
“You seem oddly chipper. Y/N manage to take your mind off of things?” He cocked an eyebrow at her. 
“Something like that.” A small smirk played at the corner of her mouth.
Derek sat up straight, scrutinising her curiously. 
“Spill.”
“What?” Her eyes snapped away from the screen and over at Morgan. The guilt was written all over her face. 
“You think I don’t know when you’re hiding something, baby girl? Spill.” He sat forward, leaning his elbows on his thighs. 
Penelope huffed out a breath, chewing on her bottom lip. 
“Promise not to tell anyone?”
“I promise.” He frowned. 
“I think…I think Y/N  and Spencer might be…you know.” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. 
Morgan’s eyes widened as he stared at her. 
“No way.”
“Yes way. Apparently they almost and then, you know, everything happened. But I’m hoping that they picked up where they left off.” She was grinning from ear to ear and it must have been contagious because a smile broke out on Morgan’s face too. 
“My man.” He smiled brightly, a glint of something in his eyes. 
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
“I too know when you’re hiding something Derek. Now you spill.” Garcia eyed him up, Morgan’s smile only grew. 
“I’m just happy is all,” he beamed in amusement. “And I’m really glad I made up that story about him cuddling up to me in his sleep now.” 
“You did what?” Garcia gasped, wide eyed. 
“It started as a prank, just to wind him up a bit, embarrass him. And I thought if I brought it up tonight it would put ideas in his subconscious. Guess it worked.” Derek looked exceedingly pleased with himself. 
“Derek Morgan, you are evil! Pure evil.” Penelope cackled, shaking her head at her chocolate thunder and his mischievous ways. 
“I was just giving him a nudge in the right direction, he needs all the help he can get.” He grinned happily, pushing himself up and sighing wistfully. 
“True, I love Reid and Y/N but they are so oblivious sometimes.” Garcia shut her laptop screen and laid back against the pillows. 
Her eyes closed and as such she didn’t see the playful look spread to his eyes as his smile somehow grew, encompassing his entire face. 
“And with any luck,” Morgan shuffled to the bed made up on the floor. “Pretty boy still had that condom I gave him.” 
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