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#so if this weirdo thinks hes ‘beautiful’ and ‘exquisite’ and ONLY wants to spend some time to draw him
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Hiding the rest of this HUGE comic behind a readmore for ur sanity
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Hes got the keenest eye for these things!
Now that this is hiding behind a readmore i can justify writing an essay in here. Nothing big tho i am just very chatty :)!
Postgame where Peppino still gets visits every now and again from the bosses of the tower. I already drew one for the noise (lmao) but i wanted to draw each of the main four interacting with him in some way.
Pepperman is a refined and well renowned artist. His art is highly sought after and his advice is not taken lightly. He has many MANY fortunes to pull from to make his visions a reality and to influence anyone to do anything. Except for Peppino.
From the very first fight, Pepperman is immediately, overwhelmingly obsessed with this stout little brawler. He is much much more than what meets the eyes. He is initially extremely offput and annoyed that a human so boldly decided to waltz into his domain, and he expects to be able to steamroll and bully this…beast…out of his place of work. He is refined when he wants to be, but he is quick to use his brute strength to get what he wants if only bc he knows he can do it
And so when he decides to fully charge and thrash this little trembling human, expecting him to skitter away the second he gets struck, he is completely unprepared for when he gets launched to the other end of this room. The human looks so incredibly PISSED, like a bull seeing red, and suddenly this little altercation suddenly became a real actual ‘knock your teeth out’ brawl. This human is only like half his height, but his punches and bashes fucking knock the wind out of him.
And like ! To add insult to injury!!! After he wins the fight! He visibly deflates, the adrenaline seemingly wearing off. Hes just this trembling fuckin whelp again !!! Whimpering as he fucking runs back out through the portal to do god knows what. And Pepperman could not be any more fucking intrigued. Like this no name came in, whooped his fuckin ass, and went about his day. Its unreal
While Peppino is running around climbing the tower, Pepperman is in his room losing his mind. Hes obsessed. No one has challenged him in this way. No one has fought him and WON. He is ALWAYS able to bully people into submission either through brute force or with money, and he got his ass handed to him !! He needs to know more. Its quite literally consuming him.
Cut to the final fight, set up for a rematch; and he knows he is going to get steamrolled again but it is SO exhilarating to get another chance to see this humans form up close again. This time he can try to commit everything to memory. Its all such a blur though, and in a quarter of the time it took to end their first fight, its over. He gets to watch the human fight the gunslinger with his bare hands, no gun necessary, and he doesnt even bat an eye at what looks to be a clone of himself. He is a force of nature tearing through every single defense, and when Pepperman watches the actual final fight with the bizarre little pizza man, its like hes caught in a movie. The rain, the storm, the atmosphere. He wishes he could burn the entire scene into his mind.
So when everything returns to normal, he takes the time to travel for days to come and find this little human named Peppino. The memory is still strong and vivid but eventually, details will start to slip his mind. He needs to find this human, convince him to sit and do some still life sessions with him to help cement the humans appearance in his head. He hasnt had to resort to…asking for permission for anything in a loooong time…he bullies people into doing what he wants but Peppino is not your average person, and if he wants something from this man, he’ll have to meet him at his level.
He...can make an exception for Peppino...he supposes.
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nikki-writes-stuff · 4 years
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Beauty in the Blood - Part One
Summary: One day your friend convinces you to join a dating website that matches people based on their search histories, and when you match with Loki Odinson, a handsome, intelligent coroner who’s a fan of your murder mysteries, you’re absolutely thrilled. But there’s something off about Loki, and as your relationship progresses, you discover that his dark side is even darker than you could ever have imagined... 
Pairing: Serial Killer!Loki x Writer!Reader 
A/N: This story is based off of this post! I hope you guys enjoy; this is my first time writing Loki, and this will probably be the darkest thing I’ve ever written. Please let me know what you think as the story progresses! 
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Warning: This chapter contains hints of smut and GRAPHIC descriptions of death and murder. Later on, this fic will also include rape/non con, dub con, kidnapping, yandere/obsessive elements, and even MORE graphic descriptions of death and murder. Please read at your own risk, and as usual, this is only for the eyes of those 18 and older. Thank you, and enjoy!
It was hard to find a decent guy these days. New York was the city of dreamers, artists, and absolute weirdos, and out of the three, you only seemed to attract the latter. You’d been to speed dating events and Singles Night at your local bar, but there was never a connection, never a spark, and every guy seemed to have something fundamentally wrong with him. It wasn’t that you were looking for the perfect guy, it was just that you’d met too many who were demanding, controlling, or misogynistic.  
You’d given up on finding your special someone a year after you’d moved to the city. After all, being single wasn’t too bad. You could do what you want whenever you wanted without having to think about someone else. So what if you didn’t have anyone to kiss on New Years? So what if you cried a little every now and then from feeling so alone? It was fine. It was absolutely fine, you told yourself. Fine, fine, fine…
“I’m absolutely fine, Wanda. I don’t need a boyfriend to be happy.”
You were sat across from your good friend, who was stirring her coffee with one hand while she tapped her fingers against the table with the other. She arched a skeptical eyebrow at you before taking a sip of her drink.
“You’re right; you don’t. But you’re lonely,” she pointed out. “A boyfriend would help with that.”
There was no denying that she was right. Wanda was perceptive, and she was also one of your closest friends. You’d met her during your first week of living in New York, and she’d helped you adjust to living in such a busy, fast-paced place. She probably knew you better than you knew yourself, and that was why you slumped in defeat and threw back the last gulp left of your mimosa.
“God, you’re right,” you bemoaned. “I hate it when you’re right.”
“I know,” she grinned. “But don’t worry; I can help.”
“Wanda, not that I don’t appreciate your effort, but the last guy you sent me out on a date with got mad that I didn’t put out after he paid for my dinner. I don’t want to go on any more blind dates.”
She winced, reaching over to pat the back of your hand.
“I had no idea Kyle was like that,” she promised you. “If I’d known he would be such an asshole you know I wouldn’t have set you up. But I wasn’t going to suggest another blind date.”
You tilted your head to the side.
“What did you have in mind, then?”
She grinned and reached into her purse, fishing around until she found her phone.
“I heard of a new dating app that made me immediately think of you,” she explained excitedly, pulling up the website and passing her device over to you. “It matches you with people in your area based on your Google searches!”
“Pfffft.” You scoffed, taking a quick glance at the screen before looking back to your friend. “That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard of.”
“I know, I know, it’s a strange concept. But it has one of the highest success ratings out of all the dating websites! It’s only been around for six months, but over half of its users say that they’ve found someone they can see themselves spending the rest of their lives with!”
“Statistics can be made up, you know,” you groused. “Besides, one look at my browser history would send anyone running in the opposite direction.”
“Maybe not someone who has one similar to yours,” she pointed out. “C’mon, what’s the worst that could happen?”
“Wanda, you know what I do for a living, right? I could match with some kind of serial killer!”
Your friend just waved you off and ordered another coffee, picking up her phone again and stuffing it into her pocket.
“Just try it? Please?” she begged. “Just give it a shot, and if it doesn’t work out, then that’s that, right? No harm done.”
Several hours later, and you found yourself sitting on your couch, staring at the same website homepage that Wanda had shown you. You bit your lip, letting your fingers skim over your laptop’s keys, not typing anything just yet but feeling their ridges as you considered the “Join Now” button.
There wouldn’t be any harm in it, right? Just like Wanda said, if you hated the kind of people you matched with, then you could always delete your profile. And you didn’t only search things for your research, after all; you also googled recipes and cute animal videos. What if you matched with a gorgeous guy who’d also googled “Try Not To Laugh – Kitten Edition”? Hell yeah.
After taking a deep breath to steel yourself, you clicked on the button, making quick work of filling out the ‘About You’ information. Five minutes later, you’d chosen a profile picture and linked your Google account to the website, and you were ready to sift through your matches. The wheel on the screen turned slowly as your computer processed the information, and you actually jolted when it dinged with the results.
Well. Result. There was only one person who’d shown up with a similar search history as you. You let out a breath you hadn’t known you were holding, and you almost closed your laptop and went to retreat a pint of Ben and Jerry’s from your fridge, calling it a day and forgetting the whole debacle. But then you saw his profile picture and… Holy shit.
He was lean and pale, and your eyes were immediately drawn to his long, black hair. He had it slicked back in the photo with just one strand hanging down over his left eye. In the photo, he was wearing an exquisitely tailored black suit with a black shirt and tie underneath it, and you couldn’t help but let your eyes trail along the lithe contours of his body. He looked as if he were carved from marble; you almost started drooling just from the sight of him.
You jumped again when your computer dinged for a second time, and your eyes widened when you saw that you had a new message in your inbox. With fingers that were just barely trembling, you opened it, skimming over the message from the man you’d paired with.
Good evening. I must admit, I was quite surprised when I got the notification that we’d matched with one another. I’ve had this profile for about four months, and I’d had yet to be paired with anyone.
So he was handsome and eloquent. You clicked on his profile and blinked when you saw his name. Loki Odinson. Wow. Even his name was refined, if not a little strange; it sounded like a name you’d give to one of the characters in your books.
Hello, Loki, you typed out. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I was pretty surprised to find someone else who has such a twisted search history. I don’t know if I should be happy or concerned.
It only took him a few moments to reply.
The feeling is mutual; I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for the morbidity, though. Mine is that I happen to be a coroner for a living. And yours is…?
I’m a writer, you explained, your interest piqued by his profession. I write murder mysteries. So, yeah… Morbidity seems like a fitting way to describe it.
A writer, you say. I happen to be quite an avid reader; would I know any of your work?
I’m not sure; have you ever heard of The Bell Ringer? That’s probably my most well-known book.
You’re kidding.
He sent you a picture, and it was of a pale hand holding a copy of The Bell Ringer, your name glistening in bold font beneath the title.
I’m a great fan of your work, as you can see. I own several of your novels.
Another photo loaded beneath the newest text, and it was of a shelf full of your books. The Shrew Woman, A Night in New Hampshire, The Hanging Woman – nine books in total. The only one that you’d written that wasn’t there was the one you’d just sent out to your publisher, and you suspected that once it was out in stores, it would be joining the ranks of Loki’s shelf.
Wow! It’s always so nice to meet a reader. I’m so glad you like my stuff!
Oh, love, you’re a huge talent. I must say, I’ve found your work rather inspiring.
That’s so kind of you to say!
I know that this is rather forward, but are you doing anything tonight?
You glanced up at the clock you had hanging on the wall – 8:13 pm. It was already pretty late; typically you’d be putting on your pajamas and curling up in bed to do some late night reading here soon. But something inside of you whispered that you should do it; you weren’t spontaneous enough. What if this was an opportunity to meet the One? At the very least, it would be cool to meet such a loyal reader.
It depends on if this guy I’m talking to online asks me out. Do you think he will?
He would have to be a fool not to. I suspect he’ll ask you if you’d like to meet at a café.
Well, then, I suspect I’ll have to say yes.
An excited grin was plastered over your lips as you bantered back and forth, and when Loki sent you an address and a message saying ‘I’ll see you there in twenty minutes’, you jumped off of your sofa and rushed to put on your shoes. You were still dressed in the leggings and oversized sweater you’d worn to brunch with Wanda, and all you had to do was straighten your hair and pull on your boots before you were out the door. The address he’d sent you was within walking distance of your apartment; in fact, you’d been there before, but never on a date.
Your heart was pounding the entire way over, and you couldn’t get over how unlike you this was. You didn’t just get up and meet guys you’d met on the internet on such short notice, much less so late at night. And yet here you were, stepping into the café fifteen minutes after receiving Loki’s message. Your eyes scanned the room, but it appeared that he wasn’t there yet. As you got in line to order, you tried to calm yourself, not wanting to look too frazzled when your date finally showed up. You tried to even your breathing, twisting the fabric of your sleeves between your nervous fingers.
He’s just a person, you told yourself. You’ve been on dates before; everything was going to be fine. Nothing bad was going to-
“Hello, there.”
You gasped and turned around, eliciting a chuckle from the man now towering over you. He was dressed in a set of black trousers with a simple white button-down tucked into them, and his hair was loose and falling around his shoulders. His grin was wide and full of teeth, with just the slightest sinister edge to it. But his eyes were warm and twinkling with excitement and just a hint of mischief. Those clear blue irises brought a smile to your own lips, and you chuckled along with him at your initial fright.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear you walk in,” you explained.
“It’s quite alright,” he assured you, offering his hand. “I know you already are aware, but I’m Loki.”
You grinned and introduced yourself, going to shake his hand, but he smoothly cradled your fingers and drew them up to his lips, pressing a light kiss to your knuckles.
“It’s good to finally meet you in person,” he cooed, seemingly all too aware of how flustered you now were.
You opened your mouth to say something in return, but you couldn’t think of anything to say as silence lay heavily between the two of you. You were saved, though, when the barista called out to you, asking if she could take your order. You spun around on your heel and shot her a grateful glance before ordering your favorite menu item and reaching into your purse for your wallet.
“…And I’ll have a cup of Earl Grey,” Loki stepped in, handing her a card from his open wallet.
“Oh, I could have paid for mine,” you protested, but he waved you off.
“No, no, love. It’s my treat.”
He gave you a tight, close-lipped smile, and you didn’t protest further as he paid for your orders. He led you to a booth in the corner, sliding into the side opposite to yours gracefully. The leather squeaked against your thighs as you shuffled in, and when you were finally settled across from him you caught a flicker in his eye that sent chills up your spine.
It was gone in an instant, though, replaced by the same suave look he’d had while ordering his tea.
“So,” he began, leaning forward with his elbows on the table. “As I said before, I’m a fan of your work. Truly, I have been since your very first novel.”
“’Beauty in the Blood’?” you asked incredulously. “I’m surprised; no one seems to like that one. After reading it, my mom suggested that I start going to therapy.”
Loki chuckled, licking his lips, and your eyes followed his tongue of their own accord.
“Ah, well, whether or not that’s true, it’s still my favorite of your works by far,” he continued. “The parts told by the killer’s perspective were…beautiful. You captured his mind so artfully, it was as if…”
He paused, searching your face for a moment.
“It was as if…you understood him,” he finished.
You furrowed your eyebrows, thinking over his words. He’d skipped right over the small talk you’d come to suspect on first dates, but despite how strange of a direction the conversation was taking, you were…intrigued by it.
“Well,” you started, “I feel like I did understand him.  I mean, sure, he took delight in the killing of others; he saw it as an art form. But as twisted and evil as he was, he was still a person – a person that had come from my mind. Cuz the thing is…”
You paused, gathering your thoughts and trying to find the right words to convey them.
“The thing is,” you spoke carefully, “that every storyteller uses bits and pieces of themselves to tell a story. A story is like a stained glass window – it’s made up of different pieces of an author’s mind and soul, and it comes together to create something greater than the sum of those pieces. So, yes, I think I can understand him; his darkness might be a reflection of my own – deep, deep down.”
You glanced up at him, blinking when you saw the transfixed look upon his face. His eyes were wider than they had been before, and his lips were parted as he listened.
“Sorry,” you chuckled, shaking your head. “I, uh… I got a little carried away. You probably think I’m some kind of freak-“
“I think you’re beautiful.”
His words took your breath away, and when the barista set down your cups on the table, you jumped in surprise.
“Is there anything else I can get you guys?” she asked cheerfully, and a flash of annoyance crossed over Loki’s face at the interruption.
“We’re fine,” you assured her quickly, giving her a polite smile. “Thank you.”
“You’re so welcome!”
You gripped your mug tightly as she walked away, savoring its heat as it warmed up your cold hands.
“So,” you said, desperate to break the sudden silence that had fallen over the table, “you mentioned that you’re a coroner. What drew you to your profession?”
Loki sipped his tea, humming as he thought over the question.
“Well… The conversation has already veered towards the darker side of things,” he mused. “I might as well tell you the story.
“When I was twelve years old, my sister killed herself,” he began.
“Oh, Loki, I’m so sorry-“
“Oh, no, don’t be,” he interrupted. “We weren’t close at all. I was adopted at a young age, you see, and Hella never accepted me. She was cruel, and she took every opportunity she could to remind me of my inadequacies.
“But, as I said, one day she died. At first, we didn’t know how it happened; there were no marks on her body whatsoever. She just looked like she was sleeping as she lay there in bed. We called the hospital, and the police, and eventually the coroners discovered that she’d injected bleach into her arm. Later on, my mother found the syringe under her bed, and all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. We finally knew the how and the when, and I never really cared much about the why.
“…That probably makes me sound like a monster, doesn’t it?”
You sat back, swallowing a scalding-hot sip of your drink before answering.
“No,” you answered, shaking your head. “I don’t think that makes you a monster. She abused you; it’s only natural that you found some relief in her death. I would’ve probably felt the same way.”
He studied you for a moment, tracing the lip of his cup with his index finger.
“I wonder if you would have…” he murmured to himself, so quietly that you almost didn’t hear it.
“Well,” he sighed, plastering a smile on once more and straightening up, “you probably aren’t going to be very keen on a second date if I keep dragging our conversation into subjects like this. Tell me, where are you from? What made you move to the city?”
“How do you know I’m not from here?”
“Love, neither of us have the New York accent, now do we?”
You laughed, and after that the two of you fell into an easy flow; it seemed that the heavy beginning of the date made it all the easier to talk to him. You discussed what you liked about the city and what you didn’t like; you learned that Loki was originally from a small town right outside of London, and that he has an adopted brother named Thor that he was close to.
“He’s an oaf,” he’d said when you’d asked what his brother was like. “Everything about him is literally the opposite of its coinciding part of me. But…he loves me; he never thought of me as the adopted child. I was always just his brother; despite his shortcomings, I think he does mean well. Besides, his IQ level is in the single digits, so I’m afraid I must look out for him for fear of what would happen if he were left to his own devices.”
From there, you shared stories about growing up, about life and ex partners and mistakes and successes. Before you knew it, the happy barista from before was approaching your table again, this time with a nervous smile.
“Hey, guys,” she greeted. “I’m so so sorry to bother you, but we’re closing up…”
Loki glanced down at his watch as you glanced at your phone – 10:30.
“Shit,” you laughed. “I had no idea. Time flies…”
Your date shot a glare at the barista before his eyes flickered to you. He gave you a wide, close-lipped smile and straightened his collar, raising his eyebrows.
“Then I suppose it’s time for us to head out,” he murmured. “May I escort you home?”
“Oh! Of course. If it’s not too far out of your way…”
“Even if it is,” he smiled, “I still want to walk you home.”
Your heart fluttered, and you set a five dollar bill on the table as a tip before standing up. The barista scurried away, and you almost turned to apologize to her for Loki’s cold shoulder. But you didn’t know him well yet; maybe that’s just how he was. Maybe he didn’t mean anything by it.
“You guys have a good night!” she called out after you, and you smiled over your shoulder at her before reaching for the door. Loki’s hand darted out and grabbed the handle before you could, opening it for you with a slight bow.
“After you, my lady.”
“How chivalrous.”
The two of you walked side by side down the street, hands brushing as you strolled down the sidewalk. You glanced upwards, smiling at the scattering of stars overhead as your breath fogged in the chilly air. You shivered, rubbing your arms a little bit to ward off the chill. Loki evidently caught the movement, and you felt his arm drape around your shoulders. You leaned into the warmth of his body, tilting your head up to share a grin with him.
“Again – chivalrous.”
He chuckled, squeezing you for a beat.
“I try my best… It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”
“Gorgeous. Not as gorgeous as you, but…very pretty.”
You laughed and hid your face in his neck.
“Stop… You’re too charming.”
“Oh, really? I was under the impression there was no such thing.”
The two of you fell back into a companionable silence as you guided him towards your brownstone, until he spoke up once again.
“I must say… There’s a question that I’ve been meaning to ask you that I’m just…dying to know the answer to.”
“Go ahead, Loki. I’m an open book.”
He laughed softly again, hesitating before voicing his question.
“If you were to kill someone, how would you do it?”
You paused, thinking over your response.
“Well… Why am I killing them? Is it a crime of passion or a crime of necessity? Am I killing them just for the enjoyment of it, or out of revenge, or because the person needs to die for a bigger cause?”
“That… That is actually an excellent follow-up question,” Loki mused. “Let’s say… A crime of necessity. The person needs to die for a personal reason with no anger or revenge in mind. How do you do it?”
You bit your lip, calling to mind all of your morbid Google searches that might apply.
“Um… Air shot between the toes,” you finally said. “Fill a syringe with air and inject it between their toes while they sleep. It’ll look like a heart attack that way.”
Unbeknownst to you, warmth suddenly bloomed in Loki’s chest, and you glanced up just in time to catch the fond, almost…loving gleam in his eye. He quickly looked away, tilting his head up to look at the stars, but you’d caught it. And it wasn’t that it unsettled you; you weren’t uncomfortable because of the look. You were uncomfortable because you hadn’t been upset by it. You’d felt that same flutter once again as butterflies batted around your rib cage.
Nothing more was said as you turned the corner that led to your street, and you silently ascended your home’s steps with Loki’s arm still around your shoulders. You reluctantly slid your key into the lock, only turning to him once your door was opened a crack.
“I had… A really good time with you, Loki,” you told him, craning your neck to look into his eyes. “I know that this isn’t what you’re supposed to say to a guy after a first date; I know that it might scare you away. But I want you to know that I haven’t felt this way in a long… Actually, I’ve never felt this way. And it’s really scary, but I hope… I hope we can do this again sometime soon.”
Loki’s eyes softened, and he moved his arm from around your shoulders to your cheek.
“I haven’t felt his way, either,” he murmured. “But I know that I don’t want the feeling to go away.”
He was leaning forward, his eyes closing, and your heart leapt into your throat as you met him halfway. His lips were cold, and smooth, and soft as they pressed against yours, and you leaned into his touch when he pulled you closer by your hips. A sound escaped your throat as his tongue darted out, licking past the barrier of your mouth to glide itself against yours. His hands came up to cradle your cheeks, his thumbs rubbing against your cheekbones as your lips moved against one another, and you hummed once again as your chests pressed together.
You don’t know who pulled away first, but you spent a moment just taking in one another’s essence, your foreheads pressed together as the fog of your breaths mingled. You heard Loki let out a chuckle, and you looked up curiously.
“What is it?”
“I’ve just…” He licked his lips and let out another soft laugh before pulling away.
“I’ve just never felt like this before,” he repeated.
You smiled and pressed a peck to his lips before walking towards your door again.
“Have a good night, love,” he called after you, and you paused in the doorway to blow him a kiss.
“You too, Loki.”
You shut your door, missing the way his gaze darkened as he stared at the façade of your building.
“Oh, I will, darling. I will.”
__________
Loki hummed to himself, the leather of his gloves squeaking as he clenched and unclenched his fists. The silver of the table gleamed under the fluorescent lights of his basement, and the air was musty, thick with the smell of iron…and decay. Instruments and tools were lined along the wall in front of him - knives, machetes, a hatchet… It was cliché; he knew that. But he just hadn’t been able to resist the temptation while designing this special room.
A muffled scream sounded from behind him, and he rolled his eyes before turning back to the perky little barista who was currently strapped down to another metal table he’d “borrowed” from the hospital morgue.
“Are you honestly still trying to scream for help?” he snarked, raising an eyebrow at her. “I’ve told you; you’re currently under about five feet of solid concrete. Who will hear you? Who will help you?”
The girl let out a sob, and he watched her big blue eyes flicker to the wall just over his shoulder before coming to rest on him again. They were red and swollen, and he let out a coo of false sympathy.
“Oh, don’t worry, little girl. None of these are for you.” He grinned, turning back to the table behind him. “You can thank my new lover for that. No, she inspired me to take a different direction this evening.”
A small, genuine smile came over his face as he picked up the large syringe, turning it over in his hands.
“She’s been inspiring me for a while, actually,” he mused, ignoring the screams as he sauntered over to his victim, syringe in hand. “She’s such a brilliant writer, my darling is. It truly was fate that brought us together; if I’d had known that my favorite author was a beautiful young woman who also lived in Manhattan, well… I’m sure I would have found her sooner. But I won’t dwell on lost time; I’ll just have to make up for it.”
He ran a hand over the girl’s knee, trailing it down her shin even as she struggled against the strong ropes twined around her wrists and ankles. As his hand gripped the arch of her foot in an iron-like hold, he let his eyes close. This was always his favorite part – the moments right before death. The anticipation was like foreplay; it got him just as hot and eager, and the payoff was very nearly comparable. If he were ever asked to describe the feeling of ending another person’s life, of ripping out the remaining chapters from their story before it could be written, the only thing he’d be able to compare it to was an orgasm. That white-hot pleasure that flooded his veins was addictive, as was the lead up he was experiencing right now.
“You know,” he mused, slowly drawing back the plunger of the syringe, “my girl is so smart… Not a lot of people would think to off someone like this. But it’s not as easy as you would think; you can’t just use any old syringe. It has to be big, has to be a lot of air. And you have to be careful; if you hit muscle, it won’t be fatal, and the whole endeavor would be for naught. But if you hit a vein, and if you get a big enough pocket of air…”
The duct tape on her mouth did little to quell her scream as he inserted the needle into her flesh. A novice might not be able to find a vein, especially not in a foot, but the years of medical school paid off, just as they did every day at his job. He injected the empty cartridge into her vein, groaning and letting his eyes drift shut. He was slow about removing the needle; the separation of steel from skin was slow, intimate… Gentle.
“Hush…” he whispered, drawing out the word with a hiss. “It’s done now, love. It’s done.”
He let his arm fall to the side, and he took a step back, watching the girl start to settle down as he put some distance between them. He gently set the syringe down onto the table before crossing the room to the armchair in the corner. Letting out a soft grunt, he lowered himself into the seat, crossing his legs and letting his head fall back.
“Fuck, what a day,” he sighed. “This isn’t what I was expecting when I woke up this morning.”
Loki lifted his head and gave the young girl a wry smile.
“As you may have guessed, this isn’t my first time doing something like this,” he began. “But I do try to limit myself. I may take…five victims a year. Maybe six or seven if I’m particularly stressed. My last one was on New Year’s, though. I’m not due for a killing for another few months, but… That girl really had me going.
“I was hoping that she’d invite me in tonight,” he confessed. “Though I wasn’t expecting it. It was our first date, after all. But a man can hope, can’t he? If she had invited me to stay the night, you wouldn’t be here right now. Alas, though… I had all of these pent up feelings that I had to do something with. And you were so…obnoxious back at the café. I couldn’t tell if you were being genuine with your disgusting, overbearing cheerfulness or if it was as fake as your blonde hair. But, god, did it get under my skin…”
The girl let out a sob, and he noticed that she was beginning to shake. He chuckled, feeling himself grow hard in his trousers as he thought of you. You’d come up with this idea, this beautiful, drawn-out murder. Such a sweet, innocent looking girl on the outside. But such delicious, pure wickedness within.
“Fuck,” he huffed, palming himself through his pants. “Despite the nuisance you made of yourself, today was so perfect… She’s the One, you know. The one and only girl who can ever complete me. I didn’t even believe in this sort of thing this morning, but for the first time in my life, I’m glad I was wrong.”
He forced himself to still his hand, moving it to his knee as his jaw clenched. In the past, he’d done this in front of a few of his victims; male or female, if they were pretty, young things, the act of killing them made him so hard that he had to touch himself as he watched them squirm on his table. But not tonight, not after you. That part of himself was only for you, now, and he was strong enough to resist the urge until his was the only heart beating under his roof.
And so he sat back and watched. At first, the girl only shivered, and after thirty minutes he was afraid that he hadn’t injected enough air into her. But then he noticed the way she was breathing; it was like she was a fish out of water, and the slope of her furrowed eyebrows betrayed the pain she was in.
“Does it hurt?” he asked, voice thick. At first she didn’t answer, but then, almost imperceptibly, she nodded. He hummed in understanding, hiding his grin behind his hand as he scratched his chin.
“How marvelous.”
He knew she wouldn’t last long when her skin started to turn blue. After an hour, the seizures began, jolting and shaking her body as if she were a ragdoll. He watched in fascination, his cold, blue eyes never leaving her tied-up form. Soft, strained whimpers were leaving her throat, and he let out a purr as her eyes rolled to the back of her head.
His joints popped as he stood up, and the heels of his shoes clicked against the concrete floor as he rounded the table, making his way to her pretty blonde head. He slowly, deliberately pulled the duct tape away from her mouth, and he chuckled at how blue her lips had become.
“This is a much better look on you,” he observed. “This is so much more real than those saccharine smiles.”  
She finally went still 84 minutes after the injection. Even after her heart stopped beating, he stood over her, watching the unnatural stillness of her chest. Despite all of the corpses he’d created over the years, and despite the years he’d spent in his profession, it was still something that he’d never gotten used to. People weren’t supposed to be that still; people were supposed to blink, and smile, and talk, and breathe, but the things they became after death did none of those things. They didn’t move, and they didn’t feel, and there was always a moment of disgust when he first laid eyes on a fresh corpse.
But it passed quickly, even quicker than normal tonight. The disgust faded away and left behind pure, unadulterated lust as his thoughts strayed once more to you. Typically, he would stay behind, lingering in the basement to dispose of the body. Sometimes, if he wasn’t too tired, he would actually drive out and deposit them in whatever spot he’d predetermined to be the one the police were to find them in.
But tonight, he left the corpse there on the table. He flicked the lights off and climbed the first, then the second set of stairs, peeling off his gloves and petting his cat on the way to his bedroom. He showered, then combed his hair, then settled down between his silk sheets completely naked. Then, and only then, did his hand travel down to his cock, and his mind once again, indubitably, trekked back to you. Your face, your voice, your beautiful fucking mind…
The thought that finally made him cum was the picture of him fucking you in a pool of blood on his basement floor, of the bright crimson painting your skin as he let his hands worship your body. The thought followed him into his dreams, ruby red and throbbing to the beat of his heart as he slept deeply into the night.
_____________
Detective Romanoff stood side by side with her partner in front of the dead body, hands planted firmly on her hips as she chewed her lip.
“How old did you say she was?” she asked the coroner, her eyes flicking down to the rope burn on the woman’s – the girl’s – wrists and ankles.
“Twenty,” was Dr. Odinson’s accented reply. He turned around, glancing between the two detectives before taking a deep breath and turning his attention back to the body. “I’m afraid that there won’t be much investigating for the two of you to do here. The cause of death was a heart attack, pure and simple.”
“A twenty year old girl having a heart attack?” Detective Rogers scoffed. “I think you got your wires crossed, there, Loki.”
Natasha watched as a muscle in the coroner’s jaw twitched, and he let out a frustrated huff as he peeled off his medical gloves.
“Detective, this sort of thing happens all the time – freak accidents that can strike even the healthiest of people. They are…unfortunate, but they’re also a fact of life.” He tossed the balled up gloves into a trash can and whisked past them, bending over to type something into the laptop resting on his desk as he continued speaking to them.
“After reviewing her medical records, I found out that her father died two years ago from a heart attack; if I were a gambling man, I would say that a bad set of genes were the only culprit here.”
“What about the marks on her wrists?” Natasha asked. “They gotta mean something, right?”
“Oh, I’m sure they do,” Loki smirked, cutting his eyes over at her before straightening up. “It probably means that little Miss…” He paused, glancing down at a paper resting beside his computer. “Miss Allison Berry was into bondage before her untimely demise.”
“A woman is lying dead, Odinson,” Rogers spat. “Show some respect.”
Loki raised his hands up in surrender as he sauntered towards them.
“I apologize if I offended you, Detective,” he replied coolly. “I meant no disrespect. But I’ve run all the tests in the book. There were no signs of sexual assault, no signs of foul play. I’ll type up a proper report for the two of you, but I’m telling you now – the girl died of a heart attack.”
Natasha and Steve shared a look before turning back to the doctor.
“Have the report ready for us before the end of the day,” she ordered, patting Steve on the shoulder and gesturing for him to follow her as she made her way out of the cold morgue.
“Whatever you say, Officer.”
Natasha froze mid-step, feeling the hairs on the back of her neck bristle as a thousand images flashed through her mind after hearing him say that word. She gulped, oblivious to the confused look Steve was giving her, and she kept walking without turning back around.
“It’s Detective, now, doctor.”
The door clicked shut behind them, cutting off Loki’s dark chuckle as he was once again was left alone with Allison Berry’s body. His smile didn’t fade as he pulled on another pair of gloves; if anything, it grew as he finished the young woman’s autopsy.
“I was being honest with them; you know that, don’t you?” He winked at the girl’s unseeing eyes, his hands moving of their own accord as he stitched up the clean line he’d cut through the skin, bone, and muscle of her chest.
“It was just a heart attack.”
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totalvibration · 4 years
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55 Albums Released in 2019 That Splash Oat Milk In My Earl Grey
This year felt like slo-mo, a holding pattern and a fast-forward button stumbling towards unknown ends. I spent the early months in paternal bliss and sleep deprivation, caring for my newborn daughter, then spent the rest of the year running to slow down… to make the most of small moments with my family, to juggle that thing every lifestyle magazine calls the work-life balance, to know when I need help and being willing to ask for it, to making priorities with loved ones. 
Also, after years of oolongs and a staunch no-milk-in-tea-except-milk-teas policy, I started putting honey and oat milk in my Earl Grey, an old tea standby that's felt warmly familiar in colder months. Similarly, I dug my heels into familiar-to-me gnarly metal, deep drone and abrasive punk this year, uninterested in poptimist takes on indie-rock. In an effort to maximize more time with new family and less with bulls***, I leaned hard into my Viking's Choice column at NPR Music (which went weekly!) to shout out underground debauchery and beauty to anyone who would listen. 
Below are 55 albums (and a few reissues and archival releases) that hit me in different ways over 2019. No ranking, just links out to Bandcamp where available. They come paired with emoji because that's a thing I do on Twitter. 
See also:
Viking's Choice: The Year In The Loud And The Weird (my annual year-end episode of All Songs Considered)
20 Punk Albums Released In 2019 That Flip Eggs, Pick Up Chains
20 Metal Albums Released In 2019 That Bluurgh Over Sick Riffs
A nine-hour playlist of 2019 jamz 
But first, some stray thoughts:
Ta-Nehisi Coates' still-ongoing Captain America run has been extremely rewarding. A beloved superhero comes to terms with the line between patriotism and nationalism as Coates underlines that American progress often comes from reluctance. 
Daniel Warren Johnson's Murder Falcon spoke to me not only as a metalhead who loves cartoonishly kick-ass violence, but also as a dude with a tender heart… that final issue still gets me in the feels. 
Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colours is secretly a trilogy of movies about the loving, painstaking process of creation, specifically music. I'd never seen any of them until paternity leave (and a sleeping baby) gave me hours to binge long-neglected to-watch lists. In 1993's Blue, in particular, a composition mirrors the grief of Juliette Binoche in an exquisite performance. 
Tiny Desk concerts I produced for NPR Music in 2019: American Football (with a children’s choir!), Thou, Erin Rae, Carly Rae Jepsen (sort of), Jimmy Eat World and Mount Eerie (videos coming in 2020). 
There’s a gallery at Glenstone, a truly stunning museum experience, that’s literally just a room full of books, a sculpted wooden bench and a large window that looks out on the rolling hills of Maryland. I could spend hours there. 
The second season of KCRW's Lost Notes, hosted by Jessica Hopper, built episodes like albums, sequenced with eureka moments throughout. See: the story of a teenage Farsi New Wave sibling duo and a difficult and necessary reassessment of John Fahey through the women in his life.  
High Spirits (May 7, Atlas Brew Works) is such a force for good. Heavy metal singalongs about love, friendship and positivity. I feel like this band needs to tour with Sheer Mag to be fully appreciated by an unknowing audience. 
Has your baseball team ever won the pennant with the sleeping baby on your chest? So many silent screams of joy in our household as the Nats not only won the National League, but the whole dang World Series. I haven't lived in a city/state with a baseball team that's gone to the World Series since 1995. 
Circuit Des Yeux's Haley Fohr (Dec. 5, Hirshhorn) tuned her voice to feedback hum and the rest that followed felt like a wordless eulogy for 2019. I felt renewed by it. 
I can't think of a prettier song released in 2019 than "This Time Around" by Jessica Pratt. It is saudade whispered into the wind.
This was my Linda Ronstadt year. Heart Like a Wheel, Canciones de mi Padre, her records with the Stone Poneys — the Queen of LA, with a voice that both bursts out of and melts into dusk, softened the edges of long days with an equally adventurous and easygoing spirit.
🚙 Petrol Girls, Cut & Stitch: In 2019, it was crucial — life-affirming and -saving, even — to make your own noise. "This is the sound / It moves in our bodies / It passes through time / Brings what came before us," Petrol Girls' Ren Aldridge screamed at the top of a turbulent punk record filled with compassion. That boundless philosophy resonated with me this year — to listen and absorb more deeply, to excavate the traces of memory in music.
👽 Blood Incantation, Hidden History of the Human Race: Simultaneously exists in the gaping maw of death-metal tradition and the galaxy brain of its future. 
💾 Kali Malone, The Sacrificial Code: Seeks the solemnity of the drone in the pipe organ, but leans into the vulnerability pushed through the air.
🕹️ billy woods & Kenny Segal, Hiding Places:  An album-length self-excavation that crawls through moldy memories in a brutal poetry that is at times darkly funny but mostly wrestles with personal and societal truths that'll leave you touched, shook. 
📟 Holly Herndon, PROTO: One of our deepest thinkers went to the past to make music from the future. 
🚨 Rakta, Falha Comum: Creepazoid emanations from a subterranean plane.
🐣 Sunwatchers, Illegal Moves: Ecstatic protest music summoning the beauty and rage of Alice Coltrane, Sonny Sharrock, Rhys Chatham and Hawkwind. 
🏞 Bill Orcutt, Odds Against Tomorrow: The most engaging, radical, but surprisingly accessible solo guitar album of the year. Bill Orcutt's ragged-yet-tender guitar skronk gives shaggy texture to rapturous melodies.
🍕 Control Top, Covert Contracts: This hits some dance-punky Erase Errata sweet spots for me, but with the technical finesse of a power trio. 
🚟 Real Life Rock & Roll Band, Hollerin' the Spirit: Applies minimalist techniques to rumbling, dueling guitar histrionics with a reckless, but locked-in energy. Never woulda thunk American Football and Henry Flynt could hoedown together. 
🐠 Caroline Shaw & Attacca Quartet, Orange: Balances austere beauty with rumbling earth. Riveting music for string quartet. 
💥 Mdou Moctor, Ilana (The Creator): Where ZZ Top bombast, Black Sabbath riffs and Tuareg trance rhythms swirl into an acid-rock stomp. 
👑 Vagabon, Vagabon: Goes so many places, yet always returns home. 
🎭 JPEGMAFIA, All My Heroes Are Cornballs: A neon-freaked feast blasted in slow mo and fast forward all at once.
🌆 Denzel Curry, ZUU: Dude's a metal rapper without a metal band, but if he ever started one, I'm down 100 percent. 
💨 Whistling Arrow, Whistling Arrow: An avant UK supergroup of prepared guitar, violin, electronics and hypnotic percussion drinks deep of dark lagers and mossy earth.
🐸 101 Notes on Jazz: Things are getting hard around the boloney hole...
🐳 M. Sage, Catch a Blessing: Warm, fuzzy world-building from blocks of sound stretched and warped into a new nostalgia.
🚇 Mizmor, Cairn: Deliberate and patient in its annihilating pace; lumbering, yet regally melodic riffs echo into a chasm of feedback.
🌅 Takafumi Matsubara, Strange, Beautiful And Fast: Next-level grind from the Gridlink mastermind and friends. While No One Knows What the Dead Think picked up where Discordance Axis left off, Takafumi Matsubara shreds into the future.
🐎 American Football, LP3: A reunion that keeps on giving and growing. Impressionistic in its quietly bursting arrangements and attuned to the individual talents of its vocal guests, especially that stunning duet with Hayley Williams. 
🔋 v/a, Seitō: In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun: This compilation does for modern Japanese women in experimental music what P.S.F.’s Tokyo Flashback comps did for the Japanese psychedelic scenes of yore. 
👗 Carly Rae Jepsen, Dedicated: Didn't hold together as much as I wanted, or play like E•MO•TION's late-night mixtape, but every time one of its singles popped up on a friend's playlist -- "Julien," "Want You in My Room," "The Sound" and especially the slow-burn synth-pop exhaustion of "Too Much" -- I'd think, "Carly Rae Jepsen is the Queen of the Song I Needed Right Now."
🌕 Rong, wormhat: Just bonkers. Boston's Rong channels the joyous chaos of Japanese punks Melt-Banana and the aggro skronk of Brainiac with a tad of Deerhoof's weirdo-pop hooks.
✊🏿 Sounds of Liberation, Sounds of Liberation / Unreleased Columbia University 1973: Free jazz and funk band deep in spiritual grooves. Killer performances all around, but such a trip to hear more from young vibraphonist Khan Jamal during his Drum Dance to the Motherland era. 
🐬 Great Grandpa, Four of Arrows: If Sixpence None the Richer made an emo record, but only had Return of the Frog Queen on the mood board. 
📳 Sarah Louise, Nighttime Birds and Morning Stars: One of my favorite guitarists right now. Digitally processes melodies and single notes in an electronic elation landing somewhere between Robert Fripp, Alice Coltrane and Terry Riley.
📮 Sarah Hennies, Reservoir 1: An immersive sound cycle in constant motion, a quiet rumble that slowly transforms in and out of a glorious clatter. 
👣 Psychedelic Speed Freaks, Psychedelic Speed Freaks: Munehiro Narita essentially picks up where High Rise left off, still plays the guitar like it's about to blow up. 
🍩 Town Portal, Of Violence: Most instrumental post/prog-rock puts me to sleep, but this Danish trio illustrates just how dynamic and sound-rich this music can be. 
🛀 Jim O'Rourke, steamroom 45: An electronic excavation from the deep abyss. The 37-minute "Sigaretstraat" is a master class in patience, dynamics and sublime dissonance.
🎀 Cristina Quesada, I Think I Heard a Rumor: Multi-lingual, ultra-chic dance-pop with super-smart synth arrangements. Think: Tiki drinks and mod dresses. 
⏹ John Luther Adams, Become Desert: Truly time-less music; as in, music without time. 
⏏ Julia Reidy, brace, brace: Late night, longform excursions that offer an alternate Blade Runner soundtrack with frenzied 12-string, fuzzy synth glossolalia and an Auto-Tuned bummer haze.
🚞 A Million Dollars, I Love Your Voice and I Love You: Weird and warped twee-pop that woulda headlined Silent Barn. 
📠 Priests, The Seduction of Kansas: Truth-telling and truth-seeking through a mangled disco haze and bleak New Wave romanticism. 
🏭 Werner Durand with Amelia Cuni and Victor Meertens, processions: Majestic drones capture an undulating wonder with enveloping somnolence.
🎳 Sheer Mag, A Distant Call: The denim-and-leather-jacket-wearing standard bearers of truly independent rock and roll double-downed on their sound, but opened their hearts a bit more. 
📒 Susan Alcorn / Joe McPhee / Ken Vandermark, Invitation to a Dream: Illuminates the flickering motions of exploration. 
😱 Serpent Column, Mirror in Darkness: Pitch-black metal chaos with forceful melodies twisted into the tableau. Honestly? Deathspell Omega but skramz.
🏅 Pernice Brothers, Spread the Feeling: Joe Pernice digs into his '80s record collection to return with some of his most delicately written, winsome guitar-pop in years and tons of one-liners: "Love is a shoeless charlatan, a silver-tongued huckster with a sadist’s lipless grin."
🍓 Kalie Schorr, Open Book: Whip-smart, hook-twanged country-pop raised on MTV2 pop-punk and Sheryl Crow. 
📀 Angel Olsen, All Mirrors: In a year where we lost Scott Walker, this felt like a torch passed from 1969. 
😪 Mount Eerie, Lost Wisdom pt. 2: Phil Elverum draws us in evermore, revisiting a beloved album, mode and collaborator (the remarkable Julie Doiron), and molding them into his ever-changing songwriting and circumstance. Contains the most tender couplet of the year, which I'll carry with me always: "If ever the bonfire that I carry around could warm you again / I will be out here in the weather for you glowing."
🙉 75 Dollar Bill, I Was Real: Serious hypno-grooves from these drone excavators. 
👢 Karen Marks, Cold Cafe: The early '80s artist behind the Sky Girl comp's broodiest track gets a few more songs of existential synth-pop and jangly post-punk. Just wanna put them on mixtapes for friends. 
🍻 Haunt, If Icarus Could Fly: Synthesizes an earnest, studied love for '80s heavy metal with tons of guitar harmonies and can-crushing anthems, yes, but also a ton of heart.
🍖 Bob Dylan, The Rolling Thunder Revue: The strangest, most mystical and wild Dylan persona in all of its face-painted glory. 
🌹 A Pregnant Light, Broken Play: Damian Master's endless creativity and shameless bravado coalesce into a rugged beauty. As always, riffs for days. 
🦄 Fire-Toolz, Field Whispers (Into the Crystal Palace): Clashes New Age synthscapes, clubby raves, jazz fusion and metal shrieks into an idiosyncratic master's pure creation.
🌇 Maria W Horn, Epistasis: Quiet, yet forceful acoustic elements are wrapped in the sinews of technology to blur composition. A stirring mix of icy string drones and minimalist piano. 
🐲 Soul Glo, The N**** in Me Is Me: Distills the rage and terror of living in America while being black with blunt force.
🍢 Mára, Here Behold Your Own: Snapshots of a time before parenthood rendered in garbled organ, ambient guitar loops and echoing lullabies. Felt this one deeply. 
🚙 The Go-Betweens, G Stands for Go-Betweens: The Go-Betweens Anthology - Volume 2: There's a live KCRW version of "Quiet Heart" that just absolutely destroys me. Deeply thankful for the presentation and preservation that's gone into these box sets. 
😈 Bat for Lashes, Lost Girls: A coming-of-age concept album about a teenage vampire gang that was somehow severely overlooked. Some of Natasha's most tender songwriting and a rich synth-pop world that'd make M83 jealous.
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shannaraisles · 4 years
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Comfort & Ploy - Chapter 6
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Carver Hawke needs a girlfriend for the festive season. Filipa Trevelyan needs an excuse not to spend Satinalia with her parents. Best friends pretending to be lovers … what could possibly go wrong?
[Read on AO3]
*****
"Remind me again why Pip and I had to be dressed up and driven separately to this farce?"
Garrett eyed his brother with a wry quirk of his brow, still adjusting Carver's bow-tie as they waited on the steps of Fort Drakon for their respective dates to arrive. They weren't the only ones in limbo - several other men and women were also waiting impatiently for their evening escorts to arrive.
"You really think 'Bela was going to let the opportunity to see your jaw bounce off the ground pass her by?" he pointed out, gently slapping his younger brother's shoulder. "You did good, Carver. The two of you match up perfectly."
Carver glanced away, unused to being praised by his older brother without some ulterior motive. He rubbed at the back of his neck, rolling his shoulders to make the tuxedo jacket settle more comfortably.
"I can't believe it took so long for me to notice how much I - how important she is to me," he said, not ready to admit to that out loud in front of Garrett. Ideally, that initial confession belonged to Filipa. If he could bring himself to express it.
"Well, you've never been quick on the uptake, baby brother," Garrett pointed out with a grin, laughing as Carver shook his hand off his shoulder.
"What are you up to?" he asked his older brother suspiciously. "You're never this nice without an ulterior motive."
"Me?" Garrett endeavored to look shocked and only half managed it. That grin was not helping matters. "I am as innocent as the driven snow, I assure you."
"Driven being the operative word there," Carver said. He would have liked not to be quite so suspicious of Garrett, but a lifetime had taught him never to trust unsolicited praise or open approval from the eldest of the Hawke children. "I'm fairly sure Isabela has driven every ounce of innocence out of you by now."
"Cruelly mocked by my own flesh and blood!" was the dramatic response. "I'm hurt, Carver. Look, this is my hurt face."
"Shut up."
Despite himself, Carver cracked a smile, chuckling as Garrett slapped his back encouragingly. All right, so their relationship had never been exactly cordial, but things were definitely improving as they got older. Having different lives in different cities was definitely helping. The only thing that would have made this Satinalia better would be having Bethany here with them, but she was busy in Starkhaven, being the prince's betrothed to a court full of weirdos who were stuck in the past. That wasn't how she described it, but that was what Carver had taken away from his twin's explanation of Sebastian's day job.
A familiar throat was cleared behind the two men, urging them to turn around, where they found Isabela and Filipa standing side by side, both wrapped up tight in highly inappropriate coats for their evening attire. Carver had to bite down a snort of laughter at Filipa, who appeared to have twinned a long red dress and exquisitely twisted updo with the more familiar and definitely more worn padding of her quilted parka. It was quite the look.
"Ah, my dulcet darling, there you are," Garrett announced, offering his arm to Isabela.
The gorgeous woman winked at him as she took it, glancing over her shoulder at Carver.
"She says you're a gentleman, pup," she challenged with impish good humor. "I think you should prove it."
"I do know how to do this, thank you, 'Bela," he complained, offering his own arm to Filipa, who took it gratefully.
The reason for the gratitude became immediately obvious, given the sheer amount of leaning on him that was required to get her up the steps and into the Fort. High heels had never been her thing, but arguing with her sister seemed to be a case of picking your battles. It didn't take more than a few minutes to check their coats, and finally Carver got a good look at the woman he loved.
As Isabela had predicted, his jaw dropped like a stone.
Filipa had been talked into an ostensibly modest dress in the rich red of the season - a dress that twinned long sleeves with a deep V in the back and front, and a slit that flashed her thigh if she moved too fast. She looked ... Utterly stunning. I am the luckiest man here, no doubt about it.
Flicking a stray lock of dark hair out of her eyes, she met his gaze challengingly.
"Well, don't you look gorgeous," she informed him, smiling as he unconsciously straightened up, all but preening at the praise. "And incredibly uncomfortable."
He laughed, offering her his arm once again as his brother headed toward the ballroom with a gold-clad Isabela on his own elbow.
"That makes two of us," Carver answered Filipa. "You look beautiful, but I am never going to let you wear heels again. You feel like you're going to topple over at any second."
"That's why I have you, to keep me upright," she countered, wrapping her arm through his. "I feel ridiculous."
"Trust me, you look far from ridiculous," he promised, smiling down at her. "Ready to go and be grumpy at every stranger who dares look at us sideways?"
"Gosh, what fun!"
Laughing together, they followed in the wake of Garrett and Isabela, joining the line to enter the main hall, from which came the sound of music and many, many people talking and moving around. A formal ball was not their scene at all, but since this was his brother's chosen activity for Satinalia Eve, Carver couldn't complain overmuch. He was genuinely looking forward to the more traditional, less stuffy family Satinalia planned at the Rutherfords' house for tomorrow.
"So, big boy, doesn't she look delicious?" Isabela asked when they finally found the other couple again. "Don't you just want to lick her all over until you find the cherry sweet center?"
"Maker's balls, Isabela, can you lay a filter on it for one evening?" Carver managed in a strangled voice. He didn't need thoughts like that in his head when he was wearing a tuxedo whose pants had been rather more fitted than he was used to.
"Oh, where would the fun be in that?" Isabela chuckled her rich, silken chuckle, absently, adjusting the hang of Garrett's jacket. "You look particularly delectable yourself tonight, pup."
"Oh, I absolutely agree," Filipa piped up, and again, Carver felt himself straighten, proud to be praised by the gorgeous woman on his arm. "But then, you could put him in glittery dragon boxers and fairy wings, and he'd still look amazing."
He looked down at her, surprised and more than a little pleased to hear her say something like that. Maybe there's hope for me yet, he mused. Sweet Andraste ... what if she likes me, too? Was that too much to hope for? It would be amazing if it was true. He could already feel himself edging toward being tongue-tied, and that had never happened around Filipa. He couldn't let it happen now, not when he actually had something of substance to blurt out.
"There you are!"
Another familiar voice caught his attention in time to see Mila Rutherford slide her arms around her sister's waist from behind and grasp Filipa's breasts, jiggling them as she said,
"Doesn't she look gorgeous?"
Filipa's face was a picture. He had no idea how she managed to stay so calm as she answered her sister.
"Mila, get off my tits, would you?" she said politely. "There's every possibility I might just step backwards and accidentally impale your foot with one of these spikes you made me wear."
"So combative, Pip."
Mila laughed, but she did release her sister, coming around to give her a proper hug before bestowing one on a genuinely surprised Carver as well. Cullen wandered out of the milling crowd a moment later, apparently not at all ill at ease with the fact that his wife had essentially run away to find their friends without him. He nodded to Carver, expertly fielding Mila as she stepped back, and tucking her against his side.
"Play nicely, sweetheart, we're in public."
"How much has she had to drink already?" Filipa asked, edging carefully into Carver's side until he had to put his arm about her waist or risk being knocked sideways into the mingling crowd around them.
"I'll have you know I'm sober as a judge," Mila objected in amusement, only for Garrett to butt in.
"I don't know, ravishing Mrs. Rutherford," he mused, "I've known a few judges who couldn't get through the day without a stiff drink or twelve."
"Darling, that was usually because you were the one driving them to drink," Isabela reminded him sweetly.
"They didn't need to know that part." Garrett rolled his eyes at his lover, unable to keep himself from laughing at her innocent expression. "You're just as bad."
"And proud of it, I'll have you know," was Isabela's shameless response, drawing a warm laugh from their little group. It was hard not to enjoy yourself when Garrett and Isabela got started.
A waiter passed them by, pausing to offer them each a glass from his tray. To Carver's surprise, both Filipa and Mila politely declined with almost identically awkward smiles.
"Do you have anything other than champagne?" Mila asked the waiter.
He nodded reassuringly, gesturing over the heads of the chattering guests toward the far wall.
"Of course, ma'am. There is an open bar, at which you may obtain wines, spirits, beers, ales, and soft drinks."
"Thank you."
As the waiter moved on, Isabela beat Carver to the obvious question.
"You don't like champagne, ladies?"
"We're allergic to champagne," Mila told her with a smile.
"And wine," Filipa added.
"Oh, and beer, too," Mila finished up, much to her husband's amusement. Cullen, however, buried his laugh at the rather childlike back and forth in a sip from his flute.
"How dreadful," Isabela said mildly. "You can't spend the whole ball sober, you'll have a terrible time."
"I'll go and get you some drinks," Carver volunteered, but was prevented from rushing off by Filipa's hand on his arm.
"Don't worry about it," she told him firmly. "We can get our own drinks. You hold a table somewhere so I can sit down once I have enough liquid courage to walk in a straight line without help."
He chuckled, conceding her point. After all, he had no idea what Mila liked to drink, and she struck him as a woman who would order a complicated cocktail just because it was free and she could. Cullen took Filipa's place beside him as the sisters headed off into the crowd toward the tighter gathering around the open bar on the opposite wall.
"You didn't know about the wine thing?" he asked curiously.
Carver fought down the urge to blush, as though he had been caught in a lie. There was no lie. He had known Filipa over a year and, yes, he'd noticed that she didn't drink wine, but he had never thought to ask her specifically about it.
"It never came up," he told the older man. "I know she prefers spirits, but not why."
"It's the sulfites in certain types of alcohol that gets them," Cullen explained, suddenly lurching to one side to claim a briefly unoccupied table as their own. "Don't ask me quite why it's just that, but apparently it runs in the family."
"Don't they make wine, though?" Carver asked, confusion touching his mood even as he glanced over the heads of the crowd to locate the ladies. He found them in the middle of the crush around the bar, apparently doing wonders at getting close enough to order without having to do any bodily harm at all yet.
"Their uncle does," Cullen told him. "He employs people he trusts to do the taste testing and such, as I understand it."
"But if I drink this, won't I give her an allergic reaction later?" was Carver's next query, gesturing with his champagne flute.
Cullen shook his head.
"Keep it to one glass and follow it up with whisky, that's what I do," he suggested. "Mila's never caught hives after a champagne kiss from me, I know that much."
"That brings up all kinds of questions about where you've been kissing her after drinking champagne, you know," Isabela began, breaking into laughter at the resigned look Cullen offered across the table. "You always shut me down before I reach the punchline!"
"I know you too well," was his response.
Carver chuckled, sipping his own champagne as the others settled into conversation. He couldn't quite bring himself to sit down, wanting to keep an eye on Filipa as she maneuvered through the crowd. She seemed to have made a friend at the bar - a tall gentleman whose smile looked just that little bit too friendly for Carver's liking, even from this distance.
And why shouldn't the man be interested? Filipa was beautiful and easy to talk to, and if he didn't pull his finger out, Carver was going to lose his opportunity to convince her that she really wanted this pretense to be the real thing. He could feel the panic rising in his chest, worsening when he saw Filipa take the man's arm to allow him to escort her back toward her party. It made sense that she would, of course - she wasn't exactly steady on those heels, and having a man to lean on who didn't mind was a sensible thing to do, but Carver could feel his teeth grinding at the sight of the man's too friendly gaze taking in the view that was tantalizingly visible from his loftier height.
A firm hand gripped his elbow. His head snapped around, ready to bark at the gripper, only to find Garrett right beside him with a warning expression on his face.
"Don't let it bother you," his brother advised. "Her opinion is the only one that matters, and trust me - he's nowhere near as interesting to her as you are."
Biting down his instinctively harsh reply, Carver frowned, glancing to the advancing Filipa, and her escort. He'd completely forgotten that Mila was trailing them closely, too.
"I know, I just ..."
He trailed off, disappointed in himself for his jealous reaction. Garrett released his elbow and gently patted his back.
"You'll get better at it," he predicted. "Especially once you tell her how you feel."
Carver jerked, startled by the comment, turning a searching look onto his brother.
"How did you ...?"
"I'm not a complete idiot, Carver," his brother assured him with a grin. "Like I said, you're a good match. Get on with it."
Just as Carver opened his mouth to ask how, exactly, he was supposed to do that, Garrett plastered on his best smile, reaching out a hand toward the arriving newcomer.
"Teagan, good to see you," he declared, drawing Carver's rival into conversation at their table and away from Filipa with smooth expertise.
The younger Hawke blinked, impressed with his brother's surprisingly apt social skills, automatically stepping back to let Mila slip past him and into the chair beside Cullen.
"You look like you just swallowed a whole lot of humble pie," Filipa commented, lifting his arm up and sidling into the space she had created for herself. "What did I miss?"
Absently tucking his fingers into the curve of her waist, Carver blinked down at her for a moment longer, making a brave attempt to drag his thoughts back from where they had flown to. One, that his apparent rival was Teagan Guerrin, brother of the Arl of Redcliffe; two, that Filipa seemed to have completely forgotten the man now she was back beside him.
"Can I talk to you for a second?" he asked abruptly. "In private?"
It was her turn to blink up at him, curiosity warring with concern in her pretty eyes as she considered him.
"Uh ... sure," she agreed. "If you can find somewhere private around here."
"Try the balcony," Cullen suggested, though he looked for all the world as though he was talking to his own drink. One hand gestured in the right direction. "Should be a few private places out there."
Carver flashed the man a grateful smile, squeezing Filipa's waist gently.
"Thanks. Come on, Pip."
"After you."
She smiled, leaving her glass with her sister to join Carver in attempting some kind of smooth motion through the mingling guests toward the balcony. Thankfully, the doors were already open; once they were in the right sort of area, the Brownian motion of the crowd ushered them straight out and onto the balcony that overlooked the city, heated with discreet lamps to hold the snowy chill at bay. A few others had left the main hall to brave the chill, but Cullen had been right - they were few and far between, offering space for a relatively private conversation.
Carver swallowed as he drew Filipa over to the furthest corner, where an overhanging honeysuckle heavy with fresh snow cast them into deeper shadow. She was still smiling, her expression more curious now than concerned, more amused than worried. It was a good look on her, he realized, releasing her waist to catch her hands in his and pull her about to face him. He supposed he had never really paid attention to how expressive her face really was; she couldn't hide anything.
"So ...?" she prompted, green eyes bright with encouragement.
"So, yes. Talk." He drew in a deep breath, looking down at their joined hands for a moment. "Pip, I, um ... I think we should stop. The pretending, that is. I mean, it's pretty obvious that Garrett's rumbled us, you know?"
He was surprised to see her expression suddenly droop, a flash of hurt in her gaze before she covered it with a smile that he knew was nothing more than a mask.
"So I suppose there's no point in keeping it up then," she said.
Carver frowned, tilting his head to keep her eyes on his as she made a move to look away. He had a feeling he had missed something here, but if he didn't make headway, he was never going to  get this off his chest. He'd make it up to her another time. Right now, he had something to say, and if he didn't say it now, he might actually explode with jealousy every time she so much as looked at any man who showed an interest in her.
"No, there isn't," he agreed, tightening his fingers about hers at the merest suggestion that she might be about to pull away. "Because I don't like lying to you, Pip. I know this might destroy our friendship, but I'm hoping it won't."
He hesitated, watching her forced smile fade into watchful interest once more.
"I haven't really been pretending," he admitted, feeling awkward just saying it out loud. "I didn't realize until a couple of days ago. I, um, I like you, Pip. Shit, no, that's not what I mean ... I don't like you, I-I -"
He stuttered into silence, mumbling for a moment behind the fingertips she pressed against his mouth to shut him up. And there was her smile - her real smile, the soft quirk of her lips that lit up her eyes and made her shine. The smile he had always taken for granted, all these months, suddenly in front of him, holding up the flame of hope that he hadn't just made a terrible mistake.
"I love you, too," was all she said, gentle words in a moment of stillness that nonetheless deafened him with their impact.
He actually felt his knees threaten to buckle, dropping the one hand she had left in his grasp to clasp her about the waist in an attempt not to sink to his knees in front of her. She wobbled, laughing as her arms snapped up about his neck and shoulders, both of them tottering on the edge of a very ungainly collapse for a moment before he pulled himself together.
"But I never ... I didn't say it," he muttered, almost annoyed that she'd got there first.
She raised a brow, and he felt a shiver ripple deliciously down his spine as her fingertips teased their way into the short hair at his nape.
"Does it really matter who said it first, when we both feel it?" she asked softly.
He couldn't have stopped his smile from becoming a grin even if he had wanted to, for the first time utterly unashamed of how goofy he might look in this moment. She was absolutely right.
"No," he said, laughing with quiet good grace as he hoisted her up off her feet, nose to nose with him in the shadow of the honeysuckle. "I love you, Pip."
"Good," she responded, brushing the tip of her nose to his affectionately. "Because ravishing is definitely on the cards tonight, Carver Hawke."
"I feel like I should salute," he teased, all the tension and worry sweeping from his body in the face of a confession he had actually been afraid would not be reciprocated in the slightest.
"If you drop me, I will leave a mark somewhere embarrassingly obvious," she informed him sweetly. "I'd much rather you kissed me. Properly, this time."
"Oh, last time wasn't proper enough for you?"
He didn't give her an opportunity to argue, pressing smiling lips to hers in a kiss that promised to wipe the lie of their first kiss clean from his memory and lay the foundation for every other kiss to come. And this time, he felt no shame in coaxing her lips to part, in tasting her breath on his tongue as her fingers combed into his hair, her feet dangling several inches off the floor. How much trust did she have in him to let him hold her up and kiss her, he wondered. Then the thought fled as she delicately nibbled his lower lip; Isabela was going to be so proud of herself for having his tuxedo jacket cut a little longer than was usual.
What was it they said about Satinalia wishes? Carver couldn't quite recall, and, if he was honest, he didn't care. His Satinalia wish had just come true, and there wasn't a damned thing anyone could do to make his holiday any better now. She loved him.
"Mmm ..."
His lips vibrated with her voice as she drew back just far enough to meet his gaze, smiling impishly as her fingers smoothed his hair.
"Took us long enough, didn't it?"
He laughed, lowering her down onto her feet, delighted to feel her press herself into his arms in a warm embrace.
"You know my brother is going to be insufferably smug about this," he murmured, careful not to put her hair into too much disarray or risk the wrath of Isabela.
"Let him be," Filipa said, lifting her head to match his smile to her own. "I have everything I want right here."
Carver didn't think his smile could get any broader, yet in the face of that confident statement, there he was, stretching his smile beyond all limits. He gathered her closer into his arms, stretching his neck down to kiss the tip of her nose fondly.
"Let's go and watch him drown in his own smugness, then," he suggested. "And then we can skip out on this ridiculous night out."
"Oh, not a chance," she insisted, straightening up and wrapping her arm through his. "You and I are going to dance at least once. I did not get all dressed up just to leave at the first opportunity."
She cast him a teasing flicker of a grin as they walked back toward the main hall.
"The ravishing comes later."
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submissivelyxxshea · 4 years
Text
Belle/Shea - 5/4/20
#5-4-20
@dommebelleg
Belle turns Shea into her little bitch. Cuteness ensues.
Shea was more than thrilled for an evening with Belle, loved how she talked to him and respected his wishes to be called a girl. He still knew he was a boy, but there was so much more he desired and wanted out of where this was going. But he focused on the evening of pampering, having no idea how this was supposed to go. Still, he arrived on time and dropped to his knees at the door, adjusting his pink skirt and matching blouse, hoping he looked  pretty for her. He finally knocked, ready to meet her face to face. He looked up, waiting patiently for her to answer.
Belle was definitely looking forward to spending some time with Shea. He'd been a perfectly polite submissive, not to mention he was so damned cute she wanted to eat him up with a spoon. She wasn't super sure of his preferences when it came to people he wanted to sleep with, but a part of her hoped he liked women, because he would look so incredible bouncing on her lap. She smiled down at him when she opened the door, unable to keep from running her fingers through his hair. "Hello there, sweet girl. You can get up and come in, and do a little spin for me," she said, clearly pleased with the outfit he'd chosen. She was only in a short, silky robe to cover her underwear, wanting to be comfortable for their spa evening.
Shea stood up and couldn't help but look over  how beautiful and sexy Belle looked in her chosen attire. He bit down on his lip, blushing a little as he spun, her focus seemingly directed on only him, and he loved that attention. He stopped after a turn and shifted uncertainly, scratching the back of his leg with his flats. "Should I have dressed down?" he asked shyly, still unsure she'd think he was sexy or just another weirdo in girl's clothing. He released a breath to ease his thoughts, knowing she hadn't shown any reason to find him weird or odd. "You look really sexy in that," he finally spoke, feeling bold as he spoke the words but couldn't help himself, not when she looked like that.
She liked the way his eyes lingered on her, and the way his flirty skirt draped around his legs when he twirled. The comment only made her smile grow wider, and she licked her lips as she stepped closer to him. "Mm, thank you, lovely. You look beautiful just as you are. But I have a robe, if you'd like to borrow it? I think it would look cute on you," she said, fluffing the ends of his hair, standing a bit closer to him than strictly necessary. "I'm all about the casual girls' night in."
Shea bit into his lip again, nodding his head eagerly at the mention of a robe to wear, making him wonder what she had on underneath hers. He was wearing a light corset underneath his blouse, but was shy about what it might look like to her. It matched his lacy black panties, though, and it was his reasoning for wearing it at all. "I'd like to wear one too," he said eventually, his heart pounding with how close she stood to him and he loved how submissive he felt in that moment. A part of him wanted to reach out but didn't, knowing he didn't have that permission  yet. Lifting his head to meet her gaze, he smiled and let go of his lip. He licked them slowly to ease his nerves and boldly spoke, "Would you like to watch me undress, Miss?"
His nerves were obvious, but god, she loved it. The power trip was so heady. Shea was playing into every facet of what turned her on, and he didn't even know it. Belle smirked, reaching up to touch his bottom lip once he'd let it go. "I would, sweet girl. Mm. Don't bite these though," she whispered, thumb stroking his lip lightly. "They're far too pretty to ruin. Yet." Belle leaned in, as if she were going to kiss him, but instead pecked a kiss to his nose and took his hand in hers. "Come on, pretty thing. Before you undress though, I want your safeword. Just to be on the cautious side."
Shea didn't know how to breathe properly with this, having been so long since he'd been truly dommed, and she exuded everything he longed for and desired. He loved his time with Teddy, but the man didn't dominate and he knew, deep down, that it was something he truly craved. He released his lip, loving her attention and, even though she hadn't kissed him, it kept him on the edge and he didn't mind at all. He followed her into the room and spoke softly but firmly, "Carburetor, Miss." He cleared his throat and spoke again, "I like humiliation and bondage and toys and pain and-and... yeah, all those things," he spoke and then realized she hadn't asked for kinks. He sighed and looked down, "Sorry, you hadn't asked for those yet. I'm just... a little eager."
Belle let go of his hand and crossed to her closet, pulling out another short, silky robe in pale blue, her own a deep hunter green. She turned as he continued, her smile wide, delight written all over her face. How had she been blessed with such a sexy little plaything? "Oh you don't have to apologize at all, pretty girl," she assured him, eyes skimming him as if he were a particularly tasty snack all laid out for her to devour. "You and I are going to have so much fun together, I can tell... but first, I want to see more of you," Belle said, sitting down on the edge of her bed to watch him undress.
Shea grinned when she wasn't upset with him, unable to control how good it felt to be desired by another. At the mention of showing more, he could feel himself already growing aroused and she'd be able to tell through his thin, lacy panties. He resisted the urge to bite on his lip as he unbuttoned his blouse, revealed the corset fit for his size that covered his torso and chest, and then unzipped the skirt and let it fall to the floor, leaving him in the undergarments and knee socks. "Do you want me to take these off too, Miss?" he asked, growing harder with the prospect that she might be able to tell. He picked up the discarded clothes and folded them neatly and set them aside so they wouldn't wrinkle. Fuck, he wanted her so much already, wanted to climb on her lap and rub off on her thigh, but he had to restrain himself, knowing he had to be a good girl and obey.
Watching him undress was delightful. He had good taste, that much was obvious in the corset, but seeing the bulge in those pretty panties was just the icing on the cupcake. Belle licked her lips. "No. Leave those on. But do another twirl for me before you put on the robe. I want to see how cute your ass looks in those panties," she said, twirling her finger. She couldn't resist reaching out to cup one barely covered cheek in her hand when his back was to her, giving it a firm squeeze. "You, darling, are exquisite," she purred.
Shea gulped slowly, doing as she said, twirling but stopped when she grabbed his ass, groaning softly from the touch. He ached to be touched, ached for more but couldn't ask for it just yet, not when she was so clearly in control. "Thank you, Miss," he said when he faced forward again, and took a step towards her, despite how obvious he was in the panties. He released a soft whimper, and still wanted to reach out for her, but wasn't ready to cover up yet, enjoying the gaze she had on him. "Can I come closer? Pretty please?" he asked, looking her in the eye, "I would love you to touch me, Miss. Please?"
She loved the obvious need in his eyes, the whimpers, the sweet tone of him begging for her. Belle stood up and stepped close, skimming her hands over his shoulders and down his arms. "Trust me, pretty thing. By the end of the night, you will be panting and begging for me," she promised in a low voice. "But first, we are going to have a bit of pampering, to take care of our lovely skin and gorgeous hair. Can you be patient for me, sweet girl? It'll be even nicer when you're so relaxed," Belle promised.
Shea didn't want to wait, wanted to have a taste of her now, but frowned a little as he nodded his head. "I can wait," he said, even though he wasn't sure how patient he could really, truly be. He liked that she was touching him, her soft skin so much different than a male and he didn't know what was in store for him exactly. He was still hard, but maybe she wanted him that way. "I'll be good, Mistress," he promised firmly, taking a moment to squirm before straightening up again.
Belle smiled softly at that. "Good girl. I like the way that sounds coming from your pretty lips. Mistress," she commented, framing his small waist in her hands. "And I also love that you're all squirmy and needy for me, pretty thing. Don't even think of trying to hide that from me. Now, get on your robe, we have treats to snack on and a hair mask to start." She reached down to smack his ass playfully, giggling before stepping back so Shea could put on the robe she'd laid out for him.
Shea hadn't meant to use the full on term, but now that he'd said it, he couldn't help himself. He wanted to use it more. "Thank you, Mistress," he said at her compliment, hearing the wonderful things only made him feel more blissed out than he already did. "Treats and masks," he repeated in a low voice, trying to focus his thoughts from anything sexual. He groaned when she swatted his ass and leaned over the bed for a moment to get some control of his desires. This wasn't going to happen straight away. He grabbed the robe and put it on, tying it around his waist and almost laughed when he released his bulge was still obvious.
God, he was fun. Belle was nearly bouncing on her toes with how excited she was to play with him. But first, a little pampering. She was eager for him to try her baking, as she always was with new people. "You look perfect," she said, clapping her hands happily, then taking one of his to lead Shea back towards her kitchen. "I made a lemon tart and some chocolate cupcakes - gluten and lactose free, I promise. I wasn't sure if you liked fruity or chocolatey, so I made both, and I won't be offended if you only want to try one. The recipes are on the counter if you want to check. And I also sanitized everything I used before baking so there wouldn't be cross-contamination, I wasn't sure how severe your allergies might be."
Shea wanted to play already, but she was so sweet and he wanted to be good for her. He walked with her to the kitchen, smiling at the sight of the goods he hadn't noticed when first entering the dorm. "Wow, you didn't have to do all this," he said softly, impressed she'd done it at all. He knew he had to be careful, but he hadn't had a reaction since before Sebastian left, so he thought he'd be okay with her being so cautious for him. "It can be severe, but if you used the right ingredients, I'll be okay," he assured her, grinning widely as he looked over to her. "Thank you, Mistress," he said shyly, taking one of the lemon tarts. He wasn't used to anything sweet, so he wasn't going to overdue it, but he didn't want her to think he didn't appreciate the effort.
The smile on Shea's face was more than worth the effort she'd gone to to make the treats - which really hadn't been hard, and also allowed her to flex her gluten and lactose free baking skills. "You're very welcome, darling. I hope they taste all right," she said, taking one of the cupcakes for herself. "Now, I thought we might start with a face mask first, and a conditioning mask. I can put yours on first so you know how to put mine on." She ran her free hand through Shea's hair, fingertips rubbing against his scalp. "How does that sound, pretty girl?"
Shea ate a few bites and nodded his head, smiling at her, "They're good, Mistress. Trust me on that. But you might not like them, because you're not used to my kind of diet." He was honest about that and knew he couldn't have the traditional foods that so many were used to. He nodded his head in agreement, setting the rest of the treat on a napkin on the counter. "That sounds wonderful," he breathed out slowly, loving his scalped scratched and hair played with and tugged. It seemed she was teasing him with this attention, and he only wanted more of her. "It won't take too long, will it?" he asked, his eagerness shining through his words.
Belle flashed him a knowing smile, her eyes crinkled in delight. "Both masks should be on for about fifteen minutes each before they're rinsed off, darling. Which leaves me plenty of time to get to know my pretty plaything," she purred, tugging his hair to force his head back before leaning in to brush a kiss to his neck. He was just so damned fun to tease, she couldn't help it. "Come on, sweet. I want to pamper you before I wreck you," she said casually.
Shea nodded his head and followed her commands, knowing it was what was right, if he was to get what he desired. A moan escaped him when she tilted his head like that, breathing caught in his throat and he knew he was getting all worked up once again. The kiss to his neck sent tingles down his spine and he squirmed in her hold. "Please, wreck me, Mistress," he groaned, unable to help himself from the quiet begging with what she was doing to him. Facemasks. He knew those were first, but fuck, he didn't want to wait. "Please, now," he pleaded with her, but knew he had to control his desires. "Sh--," he caught himself, "Sorry, sorry. Pampering first. You already said it. Sorry."
She was about to remind him that patience was a virtue, but she had to admit, the way he squirmed and pleaded in her gentle hold was definitely making her panties feel a little damp. Her fingers loosened in his hair, stroking once more. "Right, pretty. Good girl. I quite adore how eager you are for me to wreck you, but I promise, you'll like being pampered too - and good girls definitely deserve to be pampered and well-fucked as often as possible." Belle brushed a kiss to his cheek, taking his hand in hers once more to lead him to her bathroom. "Have a seat on the stool for me," she instructed, a padded stool set in front of the sinks.May 4, 2020
Shea loved how she was talking, wanting desperately to be wrecked and fucked like she said, but knew he had to try harder to restrain himself. "Yes, Mistress," he responded to her instruction, sitting on the stool neatly and placed his hands in his lap to cover his bulge. He had a moment to look at her and couldn't believe someone as beautiful as her wanted anything to do with him. He focused himself and stared ahead, waiting for what was coming next.
She knew she was frustrating the hell out of Shea, but Belle couldn't help but love it. She was so incredibly pleased to have run into such a perfect, eager sub like this. Humming softly to herself, she slipped a soft headband onto Shea, making sure all of his hair was out of his face before reaching for the conditioning mask she'd put together. "Just close your eyes and relax, pretty girl," she murmured, encouraging Shea to lean against the low back of the stool as she worked the mask through his hair, gently massaging his scalp as she went. "Doesn't that feel good? I know you're so needy for a different kind of pleasure, but I know you'll be a good girl and take whatever pleasure or pain I give you, won't you, lovely?"
Shea had thought this was going to calm him down, but it did anything but that when she started talking again. The mask itself was soothing, but hard to focus on when she mentioned him being good, and not just for this. "Fu-- yes, Mistress. Your best girl," he promised slowly, trying to keep his voice even as he spoke. "I'll love it all, I can assure you," he continued, not sure if he was supposed to stop or not, "Wh-what are you going to do to me today? I mean, after this...?"
Belle hummed, trying hard to keep her very obvious glee at the situation under some semblance of control. "We'll discuss that in a little bit, darling. I need to know more about what you like and don't like before we can get into that, so we're going to have a nice chat once our skin and hair are all covered in gloop," she told Shea gently. Finishing up with the hair mask, Belle carefully twisted and smoothed his hair back to catch in a clip and washed her hands. "Now turn to face me, so I can get your face mask on," she instructed, subtly loosening her robe to offer Shea a better view of her cleavage and flat stomach, the matching hunter green lingerie stark against her lightly tanned skin.
Shea bit down on his lip and then quickly released, recalling that she didn't like that. She told him he was to wait longer and he held in the urge to groan at her, but turned when indicated, facing her gorgeous body. It was hard not to stare when her cleavage was right there, in his face. He didn't say anything, his eyes moving from her face down to her body and back again, feeling uncertain what he was supposed to be looking at. He was so intimidated by her beauty and he desperately wanted to be good for her. He wanted to earn her special treatment, but knew he had to step it up to do that.
She stepped in close, gently beginning to smooth the mask on his face with a small brush. "Do I make you nervous, darling?' she asked after a few quiet moments. "I want you to be honest with me, please. I'm not trying to make you nervous. Hot, needy, bothered, desperate, aching for me... those are all the things I hope you're feeling, but not nervous," Belle murmured.
Shea sucked in a breath when she began to touch him, aching for more, but she was so gentle despite her promise for pain and he loved it. "A little, Mistress," he said softly, careful not to move his mouth too much while she worked. "We don't know each other well and you're teasing me so much. I'm so eager and I haven't been this worked up like this in ages." He didn't want to mention Sebastian or the claim he'd thought he'd scored, but wanted to focus on the now. When she spoke again, he couldn't help the whimper that escaped him or how he squirmed in the seat, his cock achingly hard between his legs. "Mistress," he whined, "You can't say stuff like that and expect me to not beg for you."
Belle clucked her tongue in disapproval. "Well, clearly the Dominants at this school don't know a prize when they see one, if you haven't been teased like this in ages. Which is their problem, and not yours, because you have been a very good girl for me," she quickly assured Shea. "I understand the nerves, but please know it is my intention to get to know you much better, because from the little I know and have observed, I believe you and I could have quite a bit of fun together. And I'm teasing you so much because you are quite gorgeous all hot and bothered, and I want you desperately needy by the time I get you into my bed," she said with a bit of a wicked smirk. "Mm. I can and will, but I know you will be a good girl and wait until I decide it's time to give you what you're begging for, right, my sweet?" Belle tapped his lip lightly once she set the bowl aside. "Now up, it's my turn. Start with the hair mask, it's in that blue bowl, and make sure to get all the way to the ends, darling," she instructed, waiting for Shea to get up before taking her spot on the stool, sliding on a headband of her own before easing the robe off of her shoulders under the pretext of not wanting to get any of the mask mixture on the silk.(edited)
Shea nodded his head as she spoke, loving the way she was so attentive to his needs and what he'd been lacking at the school. "I do have Teddy, who is dear, but he doesn't believe in the system, Mistress," he explained as he began with her hair first, trying to ignore how beautiful she looked in just the lingerie. The very amount of it was making him squirm as he stood behind her. "He's special to me, but I think we both know there isn't a real future when I still need things like this." He sighed softly but focused on her hair, continuing to lather the conditioner in completely, right down to her ends like she'd instructed. "I am hot and bothered, though, Mistress. You're very good at what you do," he laughed lightly and leaned forward to place a soft kiss to her shoulder, "You're beautiful, Mistress. I can't wait to play together. I'll be your best girl."
Her eyes slid closed as Shea began working in the conditioner, enjoying the careful movement of his fingers. "I'm very proud that you recognize your own needs in that situation, darling. So many people our age can be swept away by love and emotions and such, but such things are second to basic needs when it comes to our futures. If deeper submission is what you need to make you happy and content, you should have nothing less." Belle hummed, pleased at the feeling of his lips on her shoulder. "I have no doubt, my sweet. I'd like another, please. Right here," she said, tapping the side of her neck, meeting his eyes in the mirror with a grin.
Shea knew he'd had his share of love and wasn't ready to give into that emotion just yet, still lost in the hurt of what happened with Sebastian. "I learned the hard way that love doesn't equal a claim, Mistress. I'm still recovering from that, and part of that is why there's been me not trying so hard to get scenes," he said honestly, the hurt still evident in his tone even as he tried to hide it. "I mean, I need it. I know I do, but I wanted to be ready at the same time. So I don't do something stupid, like drop." He smiled at how she spoke, so confidently about submission and it was how he felt about it too. He didn't want to give up his needs, even though he'd been working towards it for a long time. It was no need to settle yet. He had time before slavery would be close. He grinned as she tilted her neck and he happily obliged, placing the lingering kiss to her warm, lovely throat.
Belle couldn't help the soft, pleased noise that escaped when soft lips touched her sensitive neck. She let him linger there for a moment before turning to face him, regarding him with a slightly more serious expression. "And do you? Think you're ready? I'm very eager to play with you, pretty girl, but if you're still unsure and recovering, I can wait. I don't want my predilections to come before your mental health. I expect honesty here, I won't be upset if you're not sure," she assured Shea.
Shea nodded his head, looking her directly in the eye, so she'd know he took submission seriously. "It took me a long time to be okay with submitting and admitting what I need. I know I'm ready and okay now, Mistress. I promise," he assured her, a small smile forming on his lips. He leaned forward and stole a kiss from her lips without permission, pleased her sweet words. "I'm honestly okay, still getting over the loss of love, but I'm honestly good." He knew he was repeating himself but he didn't want to lose this opportunity if she doubted his words. "I'm certain, Mistress," he grinned, dropping to his knees to show how much he meant it.
The kiss surprised her, but Belle was quite pleased. Though she might restrict the opportunity to touch and kiss during a scene, for some reason she didn't want to limit that right now during this sweet time together. She chuckled lightly at his assertion, loving how his instinct was to kneel for her. "All right, good girl. I just wanted to be sure. I'm hoping our time together will be endlessly positive," she said. "Now come on. The sooner you can get my face mask on, the sooner you can sit on my lap and tell me all of the deliciously naughty things you want me to do to your body," she teased.
"I think it will, Mistress," Shea said, standing up again and clambering into her lap with a wide grin. "If how worked up I am has anything to say for it." He knew with his legs spread over her thighs, his hard cock was more than evident, but this time, he didn't try to hide his arousal. "I think I want some humiliation. I like to be a good slut, Mistress, if you're into that. I like pain, like paddles and crops. Um, denial even though I'll whine and beg to come. I like bondage and use of toys, however you decide. It doesn't have to be all of those things, though," he said softly, not wanting to seem too eager, but he wanted her to know everything he could think of.
He was so eager and knowing it had been a while since he was used like this, Belle was willing to overlook how he climbed into her lap without getting the mask on her skin. She would be stricter in time, but this poor sub needed attention - and her own patience was wearing thin, admittedly. She draped her arms around him, fingers idly running over his thighs as he spoke. "Good girl. Now what kinds of things don't you like? Penetration wise, pain wise... any names to avoid? Any sexual acts you don't enjoy?" she asked.
Shea squirmed impatiently, but tried to be a good girl and answer all her questions appropriately. She was touching his thighs and he appreciated the feel of her fingertips over his sensitive skin, needing it more than he even realized. "Any names are fine. I haven't run across any I don't like, Mistress. I can tell you if it's too much though, like call out yellow if I need you to slow down," he said, reassuring her. "I don't do scat. Any penetration is good. I've been double penetrated before, Mistress. Um, no needles or try not for blood. Knives are okay, though. I think that's it? What about you, Mistress?"
Belle nodded as he spoke, enjoying the way he squirmed on her lap. "Good girl. What about you penetrating me?" she asked bluntly, not sure if it was a limit for him but she couldn't get the thought of bouncing on his lap while he was tied to her bed out of her mind. "As for me, I'm a sadomasochist. I enjoy giving and receiving pain, so scratch and bite all you want when it's allowed, darling," she said with a crinkle of her nose. "I'm not... a big fan of knife play, I prefer impact and the occasional genital torture. I love humiliation and bondage as well, nothing gets me hotter than a pretty little bitch begging me to fuck them harder," Belle commented almost offhandedly, though she had a feeling the comment would have Shea whimpering with need.
"Yes, please, Mistress. I'd love to be inside you, if you'd allow it," Shea answer immediately, unable to stop squirming in her lap. "I wouldn't be able to scratch and bite if I'm tied up though," he said softly, hoping for the bondage, but wanted to do everything on her terms alone. "It's okay that you don't like knives, but the rest sounds amazing from you," he insisted. When she spoke again, Shea whimpered loudly, leaning his forehead against her shoulder as a moan escaped him, lost in the desire of having everything from her. "And my nipples, Mistress," he whispered, "They're very sensitive and I love having them played with. And anything you want, I know you'll follow the limits. Please, can we play? Pretty please, Mistress." He felt light-headed with all of this on his mind and he was already drifting with the need and ache to have her toying with him.
His obvious desperation had her giggling, though she shushed him soothingly. "Easy now, sweet. We have to rinse everything out first. You've been such a patient girl for me, and I need you to be patient for a few more minutes. Why don't you get up and rinse off your face, and then I'll help you with your hair?"
Shea nodded his head, trying to focus on anything but how she'd mentioned a little bitch in her bed, but it was so distracting. He reluctantly climbed from her lap and instead of walking, dropped to his knees and crawled to wash his face, needing the feel of it. He did what she asked and waited on his knees for her to wash out his hair, biting down on his lip to keep from moaning as she did so.
Belle made quick work of rinsing out Shea's hair and her own. They were both more than ready to move on to the kinkier part of their evening. Once her hair was rinsed, she slipped out of her robe completely, letting the submissive take in the sight of her body, only covered in thin lace. "You've been such a patient girl, Shea. I think you've earned a little taste before we go to my room. Come see how happy you've made me already, sweet... though you're not to move my panties at all, understood?" she said, tapping Shea's nose. He'd gotten her so aroused that he would definitely be able to taste her even through her skimpy panties.May 6, 2020
Shea loved the feeling of Belle's hands in his hair and sighed softly, taking in how good it was going to feel to have her doing this to him all over. Every touch sent shivers down his spine and he was nearly trembling in anticipation. When they were finished, he moved to his knees and stared up at her with a a needy gaze, so happy to do anything she'd want of him. "I have?" he asked in surprise, but nodded quickly, taking in her orders not to move her panties. But he was going to get a taste of her arousal. It'd been a while since he'd pleasured a woman and he was nervous, but moved forward quickly, bringing his mouth over her clothed sex. He immediately moaned at the scent of her need and the moment the taste hit his tongue, his body was on fire with the arousal flowing through him. He licked and sucked eagerly over here panties, knowing it wasn't as good as he might've done in the past, but he wanted it so damn much. He didn't stop, wanting to keep going until she stopped him.
He didn't disappoint with how damned eager he was. Belle shivered and moaned softly as Shea lapped over her panties so hungrily. Her hips shifted slightly with the movement of his mouth, and although it was tempting to order him to strip off her panties and make her cum right there - she had other plans first. "Mm, good girl," she praised, winding her fingers in his hair to tug his head back. "Now, does my needy girl want to play?" she asked with a smirk, knowing the answer before she even asked the question. "Crawl to my room and lay on the bed on your back. Take off your robe and corset."
Shea groaned unhappily when she tugged him back by his hair, but moaned at her words, unable to respond coherently in that moment. He nodded quickly when she gave more orders, knowing without a doubt that he'd obey her exactly. He cleared his throat, trying to think through his foggy thoughts, "Thank you, Mistress." He moved away and crawled into the bedroom quickly. He took off the robe and corset, folding them and placing them neatly on the floor. He climbed onto the bed and lay on his back like instructed, hands stretched above his head. He was more than hard in the panties and he knew how obvious it was in this position, but this time, he didn't hide. He spread his legs wide as he lay back, so eager to be her toy for the evening.
Belle took her time straightening up the bathroom, trying to get her own raging hormones in place. Shea was such a pretty toy. She didn't have to do everything all at once - though she desperately wanted to. There was time to play in the future. But the trick was getting Shea to stay hungry for her - there was nothing Belle loved more than someone desperate for her attention. She strode into the bedroom, smiling at the sight he made. "Look at this pretty little slut all spread out for me," she crooned. She stroked one fingertip up the center of his chest, teasingly flicking one nipple. A quick search in her nightstand had a few things she wanted to start with laid out, then she climbed up on the bed, straddling Shea. Leaning over, she fixed padded cuffs around his wrists, the cuffs themselves attached to thin chains long enough for him to tug and turn over if she wished. Belle lingered there, enjoying teasing him with the soft curves of her breasts hovering just above his face, and once he was secured, she leaned back, gently resting her soaked panties on the bulge in his. "Oh, my pretty slut is very eager, isn't she?"
Shea hated having to wait, hated when he was alone in this state and by the time she entered the room, he was nearly trembling with need. He groaned at the slut talk, loving it thoroughly and he couldn't help the squirm of desperation that followed. The touch was what he needed, yet not enough, but when she flicked his nipple, his entire body reacted, able to feel the sensation everywhere. His back arched into the touch, groaning impatiently when it was gone again. When she moved over him, it was  like he couldn't breathe properly, even more so when she started placing the cuffs. His eyes were wide and searching as he stared up at her as she worked, wanting more of her, but trying to be a good girl and wait. "Mistress," he cried out when she sat directly on his hard cock, able to feel her wetness against his own, from his leaking cock, "Please, I want you so much." He tugged at his restraints wanting to reach for her, but the realization he couldn't had him a moaning mess on the bed.
She stroked a hand down his chest. "Breathe, my sweet. Take a big deep breath," she coached. Sure she wanted Shea desperate - but not desperate and panicking. Her hips rocked gently against him, teasing the bulge under her for a moment more before she relented, lifting up a bit to give him some relief. Of course, it didn't last long before she was leaning over, sucking and biting at one nipple, then the other, getting them stiff enough to fix a pair of jeweled clamps to the swollen buds. "Oh, look how pretty that is, slut... you're going to sparkle so nicely while you're writhing for me," she crooned, clapping her hands in delight.
Shea obeyed Belle, taking some slow deep breaths as he adjusted to the feel of her moving over his hard length, trapped in the panties he'd worn. She kept teasing and just when he thought he'd get some relief, he devoured his nipples, and he couldn't help the reactions of his body, writhing beneath her beautiful body. "Oh, Mistress," he cried out in pleasure, unable to help himself. The clamps were a surprise, his eyes wide and filled with lust, thoughts clouding as he began to drift to that wonderful place he desired. "Oh, christ," he moaned, his hips bucking with need as he tried to get used to the clamps, but every movement, every time she spoke had him lost in the moment. "Thank you, Mistress. F-f-feels so good."
His cries and whimpers were everything she craved, the sweet sounds sending bolts of lust through her. Her panties were a mess at this point, her body humming with need. "I want to see how they look while I'm taking my pleasure from your body, slut. Because that's what you're made for, isn't it? Being a good girl, a good pain whore and giving pleasure," Belle murmured. She flicked each clamp lightly to send a fresh wave of pain through the sub under her, before moving to ease his panties down his legs - leaving the socks, because who didn't love the knee sock aesthetic? The sight of his swollen, dripping cock had her sucking in a breath, and she reached for the last thing she'd pulled out for now - a thin leather strap that wrapped firmly around the base of his cock, snapping into place. "How does that feel, darling? Not pinching in a bad way?" she asked, lightly teasing her fingers over his length while she waited for the answer.
Shea moaned continuously when she spoke to him like that, every word leading directly to his leaking cock. "Yes, yes," he said quickly, trying to respond accordingly but words were difficult when he was in this state, "Your s-slut, Mistress." The flick to the clamps sent waves of pleasure soaring through him and his back arched, wrists tugging once again in the restraints. He opened his eyes, looking at where she was tugging his panties away, eyes wide and blown with lust and desire for everything she was giving and doing to him. He wasn't expected the strap that went around the base of his aching length and he writhed with it in place, the very touch of her finger so much and not enough at the same time. "Goodgoodgood," he ranted, head tilted back, eyes closed tightly as he took everything in. "So good, Mistress," he slurred, lost in the evening of pleasure. "Fuck, please," he gasped, forgetting not to use the curses in his needy state.
Belle shivered happily as she watched Shea writhing for her. Her finger swept over the tip of his cock, wiping away some of the fluid gathered there, making sure Shea was watching as she slid her finger into her mouth to taste. "Mm... such a sweet little bitch," she purred. Her gentle exploration continued, teasing the shaft down to his balls, cupping them lightly in her palm. Shifting slightly, she slid her panties off before straddling him again, her slick folds teasing along his cock. "Want to hold these for me while I bounce on your lap, slut?" she asked, twirling her soaked panties on one finger as her hips shifted. "I want to cum all over your hard clit before I fuck you..."
Shea thought he'd reach a point where she'd stop, but she kept going and it was perfect and wonderful and overwhelming all at the same time. He opened his eyes, mouth parted in awe as she licked away some of his precum, barely breathing at the sight. "Mistress," he whimpered, unable to say more. "Your bitch. Your toy," he said with a whine, wanting all of this and everything it meant to submit to her. She teased his balls and he knew he was shaking for sure, and he could nothing but watch her tease his body. But when she stripped and climbed over him, he wasn't expecting the feel of her soaked sex against his leaking cock. "Ooh, Mistress, please, please," he begged her instantly, the feeling overwhelming but he could stop bucking his hips upwards against her warm sex. "Please, pretty please," he continued, gasping with how much he wanted this, wanted her cock inside him. All of it. "Please," he whispered roughly, eyes wide as he watched her. "I'll hold them for you. Please."
God, she wondered if he had any idea how much he was turning her on. Hearing those whimpers, his desperate voice... his stiff cock sliding against her aching pussy, everything was driving her insane with the need to absolutely wreck the gorgeous sub under her. Belle leaned forward, pushing her wet panties into Shea's mouth with a smirk. "Don't drop them, bitch," she warned in a firm tone. Then she reached for his cock, holding it up so she could sink down onto his length, groaning deeply as he filled her up. "Oh god, that's good... such a good toy to play with," she moaned, starting to ride him hard, her need for release overwhelming.
Shea was expecting her to put them in his hand, but his mouth stuffed with the panties, he could smell and taste her sweet pussy and he was gone. Soon she was filled with his aching cock, but he couldn't focus on her when she rode him as hard as she did. He loved being used like this, just a body, a toy to get her off. He tried to buck his hips, thrust upwards to make her feel good, but couldn't get the right leverage for it. He moaned and cried out at the wonderful sensation of her pussy surrounding him, and tears nearly fiilled his eyes with how overwhelmed he was. But he didn't want her to stop, all of it filling his senses. Every time she rode him, it shook the nipples clamps sending even more pleasure through him.
Belle completely focused on her own pleasure for the moment, knowing Shea was thriving on this. So she rocked back hard on his cock, leaning forward to brace herself on one hand beside his shoulder, the other going between her legs to rub her clit as she fucked herself on his length. She was so close, so incredibly close already just from playing with him, she knew it wouldn't take long before she was falling over the edge - and then she could concentrate more on him. "So... good... oh my god..." She inhaled sharply, surging up to sit completely on his cock, giving Shea a perfect view of her whole body as her orgasm ripped through her, her legs shaking, high moans pulsing from her throat with each new wave of pleasure.
Shea couldn't believe how hot this was, how worked up he felt to have her riding him and he didn't know how he was going to handle being fucked by her. She felt so amazing as she used his body for her own pleasure, and he wanted to be an even better girl for her. His cries through her panties were only echoed by hers as she used him to get off. Suddenly she stilled on his cock and his eyes were wide as he watched her cum, her shuddering pussy around him had him lost in awe of it. His head fell back, hips bucking upwards without control. He gasped and found it hard to breathe as she shook over his body, able to feel every pulse of her orgasm through his aching length.
She leaned forward again as she fought to catch her breath, her chest heaving and once again teasing the soft curves of her breasts against his cheek. She still had her skimpy bra on, but there was enough flesh exposed to tease him. "Oh my god," she breathed again, blinking down at Shea and smirking lightly, nipping his bottom lip. "You look so hot with your mouth stuffed full of my dirty panties, slut," she whispered as she leaned up, carefully pulling off of his cock. Belle tugged the scrap of material from his mouth, then knelt over his face. "Lick me clean, bitch, then I think it's about time to put some color on your cute little ass."
Shea thought she might be done with him and he was reluctant to do anything that might make her want him to come down from this, but she was so close, her breasts in his face and he wanted to taste her but couldn't through the panties. He still hadn't cum and he felt so close, but knew the strap on his cock would make it impossible. "Your slut," he whispered roughly when the panties were removed, soaked with his spit from his moaning and continued cries of pleasure. When he was given the chance to clean her juices up, he was more than eager to obey, especially with the reward of pain and her cock coming. He lapped at her eagerly, pushing his head up as much as he could take all of it into his mouth, licking and sucking every inch he could reach.
Her hips rocked slowly over his mouth. She was still so sensitive, but his eager mouth felt good against her swollen, soaked folds. "Such a good slut," she crooned. Belle let him taste for a few long minutes before she reluctantly got up, stretching leisurely and sliding her bra off so Shea could see her properly nude for the first time. "Turn over, and get up on your knees," she ordered, knowing the chain was long enough for him to move. Belle went to the chest at the end of her bed, tapping her chin as she perused her toys, and finally selecting a riding crop and a paddle, as well as a thick plug, lube and one of her favorite strapons.
Shea turned when she told him to, too lost in the thought of not obeying, knowing he'd do exactly as instructed for her. He moved onto his knees, keeping his face in his hands  with his ass perched high in the air, knees spread wide so she'd have easy access to his hole, if that's what she desired. She was away from him but the image of her fully nude and coming down from an orgasm caused by his cock was fresh in his mind. He was whimpering with need, his aching cock hanging between his legs and he knew better than to try and thrust and rub against the blankets like he wanted to. "Mistress?" he called out when it felt like a long time but may have only been seconds, "Please, Mistress. I need you."
She climbed up on the bed behind him, smoothing her hands over his ass and laying a firm slap on one cheek. "I'm right here, pretty toy. You think I could walk away with such a delicious little bitch tied up for me? And such a tight pussy just waiting to be filled," Belle mused, spitting over his hole before rubbing the saliva over his tight entrance, wanting to watch him squirm.
Shea felt the bed shift and he sighed with relief, groaning softly at the prospect of her touching him again. The spank to his ass caused a loud moan to rip through him, the pain of it sending shivers down his spine. "Yes, this little bitch wants everything you're offering, Mistress," he said roughly, voice torn from use. The feeling of the wetness against his hole and the touch against his sensitive entrance, his needy cunt solidified his desire and he was easily writhing on the bed, struggling to keep his ass poised for her use.
Oh he was just so fun. Belle kept teasing his hole with one finger, picking up the lube to drizzle some of the slick between his cheeks. She slowly worked him open, loving the way he squirmed and whined for her. "I forgot how needy a little bitch like you could be... so hungry for something buried in your cunt," she teased, thrusting two fingers easily into him, her free hand shifting to scratch firmly over the backs of his thighs.May 7, 2020
Shea loved this form of attention and couldn't help but moan and cry out for more than just the tease against his aching hole. He was so sensitive and worked up, anything she might do was going to make him crazy, but she seemed to be so in tune to his needs, and she was doing wonderful. The drizzle of the lube was enough to have him arching his back and pushing into her touch, especially when she finally moved inside him. His entire body rocked with desire, the mixture of pleasure from one hand and pain from her nails. "Please, Mistress, please, more," He begged and pleaded with her.
The heat in her belly was already beginning to build up again as Shea squirmed and begged for more. Belle delivered another swift slap to his ass before flicking her finger firmly against his swollen balls. "Such a needy bitch," she said, tsking, though her tone was clearly playful. She slicked the plug she'd chosen, then pushed it into his stretched hole, sitting back to admire the sight of it. "Your pussy does look pretty all filled up though, slut. Now to put some color on that ass..." Picking up the crop, she teased the leather bit along the back of his thighs, then brought it down sharply over his cheeks in four, quick strikes.May 10, 2020
Shea's cries and moans increased with every ounce of pain he received, even more when she struck his balls, his entire body rocking forward on instinct. It wasn't a heavy touch, but enough for him to feel it everywhere. As she filled his hole, he whimpered, lost in the arousal and desire to have more of this, anything she was willing to give and he knew he'd do it. He wasn't sure what was next, but it didn't prepare him for the sting of the crop, tears filling his eyes with the pain, but he wasn't ready for her to stop. "Mistress," he whined, unable to say more in the moment, just her name on his lips.
Belle kept going, heat tingling through her belly as she watched the marks bloom on his skin. She added another half dozen blows over his ass and thighs before pausing, sucking in a breath at the sight he made like this. "Pretty little pain whore, you'd do anything for a crop to your ass and a cock in your cunt, wouldn't you?" she murmured, running her palm over the red marks before cupping his balls lightly. Belle added another five licks of the crop over Shea's thighs before lightly tapping it against the swollen sac, her free hand on his waist to hold him steady just in case.
Shea had tears down his cheeks, but held on from sobbing, the pleasure so much mixed with the intensity of the crop. "Your pain whore," he managed to gasp, "Christ, yes. I want it all from you." The feeling of her soft hand over his marks had him shaking with need, but knew he couldn't cum without her removing the strap. He pressed his chest against the bed, rubbing the teasing clamps and making it even more intense as they tugged at his nipples. He was so worked up that he didn't expect the slap to his balls, and his entire body shook and writhed, his hips jerking and he ached to rub his cock against something, anything to get off.
She tossed the crop aside, groaning as she watched Shea writhe and squirm on her bed. God, he was a vision. Her thighs were already damp again with how incredibly turned on she was. Keeping one hand on his hip, Belle slipped the harness on for her strap on, easing it into place, the toy configured so she had something inside of her as well, perfectly made to stimulate her clit with each thrust. Picking up the paddle, she walked along the side of the bed, tapping the toy against his cheek. "You want my cock, whore? Show me," she ordered, pressing the tip to his lips, the paddle smoothing over his ass - not striking just yet.
Shea parted his lips when prompted, completely blissed out and unable to do anything but obey. If there were words to say, they were lost on him in that moment, sucking her cock like his life depends on it, while he was bound, filled and all those wonderful toys all over his petite frame, making him perfect for the Mistress. He hummed happily, slobbering over the thick length as it filled his mouth, uncaring how messy it was making him with the desire to have more of her inside him.
She licked her lips, watching him slobber over the toy. Grinning, Belle tapped the paddle against Shea's ass lightly before laying a harder strike over his cheeks, keeping the strikes firm but slow as she watched him suck so eagerly on the toy. "Such a messy slut... four more hits with the paddle and then I'm going to fuck that needy cunt of yours so hard," she promised in a low voice.
Shea moaned around the cock in his mouth as she spanked him, reacting wildly as he struggled to keep his ass in the air. He kept up the eager pace, not willing to leave his mouth empty, just another hole for her to fill. It was so good, along with the plug and everything else but he wanted to cum so badly and she wasn't speaking of it yet. The final hits were the hardest to take because he knew now she was going to fuck him, and he clenched around the plug in response, arching his back and began to thrust his hips as though he could fuck something other than air. He groaned and whined around the cock, so eager to be fucked like a good girl.
Once the final hit struck against Shea's upturned ass, Belle dropped the paddle and stepped back, the toy between her thighs shining with spit. She twisted her hips, slapping the length against Shea's cheek again, her own flushed with desire. "Looks to me like you've earned this cock, whore," she murmured before moving to kneel behind Shea. She slid the plug from his hole, not moving the strap - yet. She had plans for his orgasm after all. Belle slicked up the toy with lube, not bothering to tease this time, just pressing the stiff dildo into Shea firmly and moaning when it moved against her as well. "God, you're tight for a cockslut," she hummed, gripping his reddened ass to hold him open as she began to fuck him in long, deep thrusts.
Shea felt the wet cock against his cheek and he gasped when she said he'd earned the cock, unable to respond beyond whines of pleasure. More noises escaped him when she removed the plug, his body writhing and aching from use, but he was so eager to have her inside him. When he felt that thick toy filling him, he went wild, bucking his hips, entire body wrrecked from the feeling of being stretched and filled completely how he'd ached for the entire time. "M-Mist..." he managed to say, whining when she didn't remove the strap, but his body was weak with the continued pleasure, sensitive everywhere and he could feel how good her thrusts were, but it wasn't enough yet. He tried to focus, "Please, Mistress... fuck... me...," he said, wanting it as hard as everything else had been. He wanted to see her while she fucked him, but couldn't get the words out right.
Belle shivered, hearing those desperate cries and pleas from the wrecked sub under her. She felt almost out of her mind with how turned on she was, how Shea seemed to hit every single trigger she had. Leaning over him, she grabbed his damp hair, forcing his head back. "What was that, you needy bitch?" she growled, still rocking her hips to move the toy inside him. "You need more of this cock insight your greedy cunt?"
Shea cried out when his head was tipped back and it was easier to find words with her forcing it out of him. "You, Mistress," he managed to say through the way she was holding his head, continuing to fuck him through this, "Wanna see you." He moaned, long and drawn out as she pushed in a particularly good thrust, making him shake where his hands were stretched against the restraints and he clenched, struggling to push back against her cock to receive more from her.
"Good girl," she purred, biting his ear. Belle leaned back and eased out of him, urging Shea to turn onto his back. Eagerly, she pushed his thighs up and apart, easily plunging back into him. "This better, pretty bitch?" she crooned, running her nails over the backs of his thighs again, not even pausing in her punishing rhythm. "I'm going to take the strap off your cock, pretty girl. I want to see that ruined face of yours when you cum for me," Belle growled, unsnapping the leather strap from around Shea but holding his cock firmly. "But you have to wait until I say so..."
Shea was weak and whined when she pulled out, but then was positioning him as he'd wanted, and he released a noise of contentment, so happy to be able to see her now. His thighs were stretched, pushing towards his chest as she fucked him, scraping her nails over his abused skin, and he loved the continued mix of pleasure with pain, his aching cock laying hard against his stomach. When she spoke again, he gasped in surprise, knowing he'd cum so quickly for her. "Nonono," he whined when she said he'd still have to wait, "So close, Mistress." He was bucking his hips wildly, seeking more relief with the impending orgasm and he didn't want to hold back any longer. But he did. He couldn't cum without her say, and he obeyed, fighting against the delicious urge.
His protest only made her smile, and she leaned up, gripping his thighs as she pounded into his abused ass. She was close herself, her peak gathered in the bottom of her belly, ready to explode. A few more hard thrusts, and she leaned over, tugging one of the clamps from Shea's nipple roughly with her teeth. "Cum for me, bitch," she ordered, sitting back up and thrusting in deep to watch the beautiful sub under her come undone.
Shea grinned despite it all and fell into everything she was giving him. Her thrusts felt amazing, every push against his prostate bringing him closer to the edge and he loved it. A loud cry fell from his lips as she surprised him with the removal of one clamp, his entire body reacting to the spread of pleasure from his swollen, sensitive nipple. She gave the order and it only took one more thrust before he was obeying, his entire body on fire as he released spurt after spurt of his built up orgasm, lost in the daze. His eyes fell shut and he lost himself as he cried out, overwhelmed and he was drifting for several long moments.
Belle moaned in unison with Shea, watching the sweet sub lose himself, making a mess all over his flat stomach and chest. She couldn't help it - she had to add to that mess. Pulling out of him, she quickly stripped off the harness, moving to straddle his torso, her hand moving between her thighs. "Oh god... oh..." Her voice broke on a high moan, fingers flying over her aching clit as she found her peak. Belle arched and shook over Shea, her own fluids splashing hot over his skin, her hand shaking when she finally pulled it from her swollen sex. "Oh my god, pretty girl," she whispered, trying to catch her breath, her clean hand running through Shea's hair slowly. "Do you want to taste again, baby? Taste how good you made me feel?" she offered, not sure if Shea was with her enough to want something like that.
Shea came down slowly, opening his eyes in time to watch Belle come over his chest and he loved it, loved having her juices spilling over his body. "Thank you, Mistress," he said softly, voice worn from so much use, but when she spoke again, a loud moan escaped him without meaning to. "Yes, please, Mistress," he said quickly, hoping to make her cum again from his mouth. His hands were still restrained and she was in complete control as he parted his lips in anticipation of having another taste of her.
She was still trembling when he spoke, her hand combing through his hair again. "That's my good bitch," Belle murmured. "Gentle, darling," she instructed as she shifted to straddle his face, her dripping folds right over his eager mouth. It wouldn't take much to get her to cum again, not with how sensitive she was. One hand braced on the wall behind her bed, the other going to tug at one of her swollen nipples, hips moving slowly over Shea's slick tongue.
Good bitch. Shea grinned when he heard that from her, and moaned when she straddle his mouth, able to breathe in her delicious scent of just coming. He lapped eagerly and sucked at her clit, forgetting to be gentle with how eager he was. He switched between lapping at her folds and sucking he perfect clit, especially when she began to ride his face. He moaned and whimpered, loving this and he his hips bucked, already getting worked up again, his own sensitive cock working on growing the more he tasted her juices and cum, groaning with urgency.
Her thighs clenched with how hungrily he lapped at her, despite her warning. But god, it felt so good, and she wanted to cum again so badly. Belle whimpered as her orgasm built fast and hard, the hand on her chest abandoning her nipple to wind in his hair and hold his head in place. She rode his mouth, moaning loudly, shaking all over when her peak hit once more. "Oh yes, yes, yes baby, keep... fuck!" she screamed out, gushing over his mouth, her hips pulling up when even the slightest touch was too much on her overstimulated flesh.
Shea moved more readily against her sex when she held his head so roughly, he was moaning and his body wracking with the intesity of the moment. She rode his mouth so roughly and he didn't stop sucking at her clit, the bud swollen between his lips but he flicked his tongue continually against it, wanting her to mess up his face completely, just as she'd done with his chest. Her juices were thick as he swallowed what he could from her. She pulled away and he whined, his own hips bucking wildly, his cock hard once again from the taste of her orgasm.
Her body quaked with aftershocks of pleasure, but she managed to shift off of him, easing herself down to lay beside the shivering sub. "Oh, does my hungry slut want to cum again? Your little clit is all swollen," she whispered, running her hand down Shea's body to wrap around his hard cock. Belle watched his face with half-lidded eyes, dazed and sated. "Someday soon, I want your cum inside me, pretty bitch, and I want to watch you lick it from my pussy. I want to wreck you, over and over and over again, and hear you thank me for it," she whispered, stroking his length hard and fast. "Cum again for me, whore, scream for me..."
Shea watched as she moved away from his mouth, so eager for her once again. Her words went straight to his needy length, "So wet for you, Mistress," he moaned softly. He groaned at the touch to his cock, still sensitive from his orgasm not long before. His moans continued as she talked, wanting everything she was saying. "Please, please, Mistress," he pleaded, words falling over each other in his state of need. She wasn't gentle as she stroked his length, moaning over and over. When he finally came, barely anything came out, but his high pitched scream could be heard by all. "Thank you, Mistress," he cried out, lost in the pleasure of coming again.
Belle hummed happily, stroking him through his second orgasm. "That's a good girl," she praised, pressing soft kisses to the side of his neck, nuzzling into the sweaty skin. She felt incredible, exhausted but incredible, and she wanted nothing more than to dote on the sweet sub in her bed. "My sweet little bitch, you are so, so good," she whispered, leaning up to kiss him softly.
Shea gasped and whimpered as he slowly came down, her soft touch such a contrast from the entire scene and he mewled in response, curling what he could into her. The restraints were still in place, but he felt reluctant to have them removed, loving how it felt to be in her arms right now. "Your little bitch, your whore, your slut to use as  you see fit," he said roughly, voice nearly lost from the scene. He kissed back eagerly, loving every moment of it.
"Does my pretty thing feel better now?" she asked, idly teasing the one nipple she'd freed, the poor bud red and swollen. "God, you are so perfect, Shea," Belle whispered against his lips, still in awe that this incredible sub had fallen into her lap, like something out of one of her most perverted fantasies.
Shea nodded his head, but whimpered at her touch, enjoying it immensely. He was so sensitive but wanted nothing more than her to keep playing as long as she pleased. He wanted to be good and obey, no matter how much it was. "Am I?" he asked, opening his eyes, a soft moan escaping at the jolt of pleasure from his swollen nipple.
She met his gaze, smiling gently at him. "You are. There are so, so many things I want to do to you, pretty thing... but we have time," Belle murmured, kissing him softly again. "Right now, I think it's time for a shower before we go to bed... I might use you for one more orgasm after our shower though. Helps me sleep," she teased. "Are you ready to take these off, darling?" she asked, touching the cuffs on his wrists.
Shea nodded his head slowly, not wanting to speak or for his time with her to end. "I want you to do them, Mistress," he said softly, leaning in to steal a kiss from her lips. "I don't want to move," he whined a little, knowing he had to, considering what a mess he was, and he knew he'd do whatever she wanted.
Belle hummed, running her hands over Shea's arms. "I know, darling. But I can't keep you chained to my bed forever, as much as I would like to," she teased. She reached up to unhook the cuffs, easing his arms down slowly since they had been stretched over his head for a while. "So we'll have a shower together, get some water and relax for a while, hm? I'll walk you back to your room in the morning early enough to get ready for classes."
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plagueofsquid · 6 years
Text
Head Over Feet
My secret santa fic! For @anime-imagines-galore. Here’s some sweet giomis.
@jjba-secret-santa
“You guys can keep a secret, right?”
The Pistols stared back at Mista with their best approximations of innocence, and he sighed. “Okay,” Mista said. “If you tell, no food for a week.”
“No fair!” No.5 whined. “We’ll starve!” The rest erupted into a chorus of similar complaints and theatrical crying and why couldn’t Mista just have a normal Stand, one that didn’t talk back?
“Shut it!” No.1 screeched, loud enough to drown out the others and leave Mista’s ears ringing. “I wanna hear the secret!” One by one, the Pistols quieted down, looking up at Mista expectantly.
Mista swallowed hard. His mouth was dry all of a sudden, and he was probably blushing again. Fucking emotions. “You promise not to tell?”
All of the Pistols nodded, suddenly the pictures of honesty. Bullshit. The little shits may technically also be Mista, but they’d sell him out for half a slice of salami, no question. But he needed help, and there wasn’t really anyone else he could talk to. Not if he wanted to keep it a secret. Turns out there were downsides to only having gangsters for friends.
“Fine. I’m taking Giorno on a date.”
It was pandemonium. Mista hadn’t asked for this. Stands were supposed to be helpful, like a ghost buddy or a Pokémon or something. Not annoying little fucks who spent half the time yelling and the other half sleeping. But at least they seemed happy with the development, even if the celebrations were a bit much.
No.7 tried his best to shake Mista’s hand. “Fucking finally! When are you two gonna get hitched already?”
Mista was definitely blushing now. “Shut up! It’s just a date!”
No.6 rolled his eyes. “Puh-lease! Just a date?”
“Yeah!” No.3 chimed in, unhelpfully. “You’re crazy about him!”
“It’s like ‘Giorno, please! Please fuck me!’” No.2 collapsed in an exaggerated swoon into No.1’s arms, fanning himself with his hand like a lady in an old movie.
“That’s you,” No.5 added, just in case Mista hadn’t gotten the message.
Could he kill his own Stand? It would probably kill him as well, but at this point that sounded like a relief.
The worst part was, they weren’t entirely wrong. Mista had certainly had… thoughts about Giorno. Entirely inappropriate thoughts to have about his boss, but that hadn’t stopped his stupid brain shoving them in his face. Giorno was just too damn pretty. And smart. And confident and beautiful and determined and maybe the Pistols did have a point after all. Mista definitely had a thing for Giorno. And it should have just stayed a mysterious, undefined ‘thing’, but someone up there had it out for Mista.
Giorno was a strange boss to work for. Mista was supposed to be his bodyguard, but this was Giorno they were talking about, he didn’t need a bodyguard. People didn’t fuck with Giorno, at least not more than once. So Mista’s job was more like moral support. Not like Giorno really needed that either, but he seemed to enjoy it anyway.
And every so often, he would make some comment about being free over the weekend or wanting to see a new movie or did Mista know that the flowers were blooming in the plaza, maybe they should take a walk sometime, just the two of them. But Mista couldn’t proposition his boss, men got murdered for much less, and anyway he wasn’t good enough for Giorno.
Mista had hooked up with girls miles out of his league before, but Giorno was on a whole other planet. Everything about him shone, like the stained glass windows of a cathedral, all colors and sharp, defined shapes. And if Giorno was a beautiful picture of some holy thing, Mista was the floor. Useful, but made to be that way and not much more. Giorno deserved someone as perfect as he was, not just regular old Mista.
But yesterday Giorno had looked him straight in the eyes and said, “You’re taking me out tomorrow night,” like that was a thing people did, just asked someone on a date out of nowhere. No, not even on a date. Giorno had asked Mista to ask him on a date, which was a total Giorno move. And like most Giorno moves, it didn’t really make sense but happened anyway. So now Mista was taking Giorno out on a date.
The Pistols were having a great time, just laughing up a storm, the little fucks, and Mista was no closer to a solution. So as the laughter finally died down, he gave them a serious look. “C’mon, guys. I need your help.”
That got their attention, and they all hastily stood at attention, like they hadn’t just been mocking him a second ago.
Mista sighed. “I don’t know where to take him.” Sure, he’d been on dates before, but Giorno was something special. He wasn’t just some girl Mista wanted to fuck. The regular stuff wouldn’t do. “Any ideas?”
Turns out that was a mistake.
“The movies!” No.7 yelled.
“Yeah!” No.3 added. “Go see some romantic shit! Get him in the mood!”
“No!” No.1 screeched. “The beach! Swimsuits!”
“A carnival!” No.2 offered.
“A restaurant!” No.6 hopped in place, waving his arms. “A really fancy one! Giorno likes fancy shit!”
The suggestions devolved into a mess of sound, and in the middle of it all there was No.5, quietly raising his hand like this mess was a really annoying classroom.
“No.5,” Mista said, raising his voice just enough to be heard over the others. They got the message, and grumbled into silence. “Do you have an idea?”
No.5 stared at his feet. “Don’t take him anywhere. Just hang out together in your apartment. You know, keep it real casual.”
“Okay, that has potential.” Mista wasn’t going to impress Giorno with a fancy meal or a carnival. There were very few things that could impress the Boss of Passione. But a quiet evening at home sounded… pleasant. Like something he couldn’t fuck up too much.
Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad.
Six o’clock. Mista had said six o’clock, and Giorno was never late. And that meant he had four minutes left, because of course it was four.
His apartment wasn’t much, comfortable enough for one person but not anything impressive. Mista liked it that way. He didn’t spend much time at home anyway, so a smaller space suited him.
Mista had tried his best to clean up, but it hadn’t done much good. He was naturally a bit messy, and that was only amplified by the fact that he hadn’t bothered to put his stuff away for like a year. Came with living alone, along with plenty of leftovers and the ability to be naked whenever he wanted.
But now that was biting him in the ass. Giorno would be there in three, no two minutes, and Mista’s apartment could be charitably called a fucking wreck. So the date wasn’t going great so far and it hadn’t even started yet, which probably wasn’t a good sign.
And just as Mista realized he had forgotten to put the dishes away again, there was a knock at his door. There wasn’t any avoiding it. Mista took a deep breath and opened the door.
Giorno looked like a dream. He wore an exquisite suit, probably some designer label that Mista had never even heard of, all black with gold details, and there were flowers woven into his blond hair like a crown. Living flowers of course, but they shone like jewels, like nothing Mista had every seen.
Mista stood there, staring like a fucking weirdo for longer than he’d like to admit, before he realized he should say something. “Wow.”
“Too much?” Giorno looked down and nervously fiddled with the hem of his jacket. “I can get rid of the flowers.”
“No. It’s fine.” It really wasn’t. Mista was still wearing his usual sweater and jeans and Giorno looked like a fucking Greek god. “Come in.”
Giorno stepped into his apartment and holy shit, Giorno was in his apartment, where he most certainly did not belong in his tailored suit and his leather shoes. Mista’s apartment, where he had once gotten a wad of half-chewed gum stuck on the ceiling for like a month (long story, hanging posters was hard). Why had he thought this was okay? Because it wasn’t. It super wasn’t.
“This is nice,” Giorno said and smiled, because he was always so polite, even when telling lies.
“Oh. Thanks.” Mista could feel his face turn red. “Do you- do you wanna sit down?”
“Sure.” There was an expression on Giorno’s face that Mista hadn’t seen before. It looked so alien on his delicate features.
Mista gestured at the couch. It was mostly clean, except for a stack of magazines on one end, which Mista realized with a sinking feeling, contained a few titles that Giorno definitely should not see. Mista couldn’t really be blamed for having those, he was a teenaged boy living alone after all, but Giorno didn’t need to see them. So he hurriedly scooped up the pile of magazines and ducked into his bedroom. They could hide in his closet for now. Surely Giorno wouldn’t look in there.
By the time Mista returned to the living room, Giorno was sitting comfortably on the couch like a king on a throne because that was really the only way Giorno sat anywhere. He had something commanding about the way he held himself, and he didn’t seem able to turn it off. Like the curls in his hair, it just happened.
“I like your apartment,” Giorno said. “It smells good.”
“What?” Mista’s apartment didn’t smell like much of anything.
Giorno’s eyes went big. “Nothing.” There was that strange expression again. Was he afraid? “Rounding up the drug teams is going well. I think we can finish the task over the next few months.”
“Yeah.” Mista sat down next to him and stared pointedly at his own hands. “I think so too.”
“And Buccellati is handling the trafficking ring in Sicily. He said he won’t need backup, but I’m thinking about sending some anyway. Just to be careful.”
“Good idea.”
“Thanks.”
The room was about quiet enough to hear a pen drop. It could be going worse, Mista supposed. Giorno could have actually murdered him. But it could also be going a lot better.
Giorno was the one to break the silence. He pointed at the console by Mista’s TV. “Is that a Famicom?”
“N64,” Mista answered. “Narancia gave it to me last Christmas. Not sure where he got the money.”
“Do you play games on it?”
“Yeah.”
Thankfully, the most uncomfortable conversation Mista had even been in was interrupted by the buzz of his doorbell. He stood up and answered it. Pizza. Mista couldn’t cook very well, not well enough for someone like Giorno, so he’d thought it was a good idea to order pizza. Everybody liked pizza. But now, as he handed over the cash and shut the door with the box in his hands, he realized that was a mistake. He should have at least ordered something fancy.
There wasn’t really any backing down now, so he put the box down on his rickety little kitchen table and got plates out of the dishwasher and pulled up an extra chair. If Giorno was offended, and surely he was, he was doing a great job of hiding it.
Over dinner, Giorno talked about business and things started to seem normal again. He had recently met with the head of operations in Southern Italy, and there was a lot to explain about the trouble with the hierarchy. The previous boss had left Passione in a tricky position with power was divided between regional leaders and Giorno’s reforms required a strong centralized system and that made things difficult.
Giorno was so interesting to listen to. He saw things that no one else did, the little connections and loopholes that he could exploit. Where most people would see a closed door, Giorno saw an opportunity. The way he explained things, it was like uncovering a whole new way of thinking, like he wasn’t describing the same stuff Mista knew and understood. He could listen to Giorno for hours, just talking about the simplest shit.
This was how Giorno should be, confident and smooth and not the least bit scared. But whenever the conversation left business, he got that look again and struggled for words. Mista wasn’t much better, but at least he was consistently terrible.
When they were done eating, they returned to the couch, and Mista floated the idea of a movie. Giorno seemed more than willing to quit worrying about conversation for an hour or two. Mista chose at random, and that ended up being Dirty Harry because why not the least Giorno kind of movie out there. But once it started, Mista realized his choice hadn’t really mattered. Neither of them were watching.
Giorno made the first move. As the old TV flickered to life, he grabbed Mista’s hand like he was trying to steal it and held on tight. It wasn’t quite romantic, but it was somewhere close. And by the time the movie really started, Giorno was practically sitting in his lap. The flowers in his hair tickled Mista’s nose and Giorno laughed when he sneezed and it was the only thing in the world that mattered. Giorno didn’t laugh very often, but there he was, wrapped in Mista’s arms and giggling like a schoolgirl.
The next hour and a half was maybe the best of Mista’s life. Giorno was warm and beautiful and now that the initial barrier had broken, he was brave. Nothing dirty just cuddling, and somehow that felt more intimate than sex. So even if the date was a failure, at least Mista had gotten to hold him for a little while. And that wasn’t enough, but it was better than he deserved.
The credits rolled and Giorno checked his watch. He sighed when he saw how late it had gotten, and sat up. “I have a meeting in the morning.”
“It’s fine,” Mista said. “You’ve got work to do.” Of course Giorno didn’t want to spend the night. Mista had proved himself a shitty potential boyfriend.
Giorno fixed the collar of his jacket. “This was nice.”
“Really?” Maybe that was going too far, but Mista was a fucking idiot and maybe Giorno was telling the truth.
“Yeah,” Giorno said. He bent down and kissed Mista on the cheek. “Let’s do it again tomorrow.”
And he left Mista sitting on his shitty couch in his shitty apartment, wondering how in the world he had gotten so lucky that maybe, just maybe Giorno loved him back.
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mollyohmolly · 6 years
Text
the first half of age 26
(now five years ago, last half of 2013)
26 overall: not a banner year. I briefly toured a bit of the world, and I’ll keep that as my solace, but overall this will be remembered as a year of grave missteps. And will I ever learn? Yet to be determined. For the sadsack rundown, this year I: -gained 40+ pounds -moved back to Seattle for a sad, sort of humiliating summer -got two telephones stolen off of me -had a few falling outs -remained single for the duration -did not advance my career (read: begin) at all -drank myself into oblivion many, many nights -spent a stint homeless and broke -got fired -borrowed money from my folks -shipped my dog off to my folks since I was too much of a deadbeat to take care of him -am now laid up in my room because I tumbled down a hill blind drunk and rolled my ankle out and don’t have health insurance There were beautiful moments nestled in there, but they are momentary delusions at best. Began my year in maybe my favorite place on earth, a stretch of coastline along California Highway 1. I was living in a hippie home in Lower Pacific Heights in San Francisco with a ragtag group of weirdos, and I was working at a rock venue in the city’s trendiest/most rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. I was sleeping with a chatty blonde boy -- the lights tech -- half because we laughed a lot and I was lonely at the time, and somewhat because he lived around the corner from the venue. I convinced a Canadian boy I had met the previous summer to fly down for a birthday adventure, so he booked a WestJet. If you want something, ask for it. We had a great story if left adbriged - we met dancing in Vancouver one warm August night; lost track of my friends, got locked out of the house I was staying; he stayed up with me all night in a diner; took a bus back to the house as the sun came up over the (?) mountains. (Leaving out making out against a car, sleeping together.) I moved to San Francisco that autumn, and the next March I flew back up to Seattle to get Adderall/show off my California tan, he bussed down from Canada, and we had this idyllic weekend with friends and laughter that in some ways made me idealize Washington all over again. From there, we moved on to Skypes and sexts and adorable phone calls where I just listened really for signs of that damn Canadian accent in my lonely little bunk. My best friend from high school decided to move down to San Francisco from Portland, chasing the sun and good times and whiskey. Laura arrived the weekend of Bay to Breakers, a veritable bro fest. Our friend Lisa was there that weekend with her bro boyfriend Jeff, and we did the whole brunch/Dolores/Divisadero bar thing. I took her everywhere; things were not going to be so lonely. One night, Laura and Todd the light tech and I went to see Akron/Family show at the Independent on Divisadero. I was really the only one stoked for it, as that band had provided the soundtrack to many forlorn rides on the 595 from Olympia to Tacoma to Seattle during college, staring out at the gray Northwest. Turns out their sound had changed from foresty to bad electronica. Laura bailed and Todd walked home, and as I was walking home Nick the Canadian sent me a series of beautiful text that stirred my weary little heart after months of near-despair in San Francisco. “I don’t know what it is, but you get me in a way I’ve never been gotten,” is maybe the last thing I read before I felt plunged forward onto the concrete. So that was the night I was mugged, and the next day my mom and aunt flew into town, and there I was with bruises up and down my knees and thighs and a busted-up hand from punching a grown man in the nose with a strange shock of untapped strength. My heartsick mother replaced my phone with the newest model and we spent the weekend by her pool and exploring the city somewhat. She hated my house, but loved the wharf. Rented a Mercedes and careened down Lombard. Took a duck out, wore a sailboat shirt. Nice time, glad to have had it. I picked Nick up at the Oakland airport in an Audi we had rented for the weekend. He picked me up, he spun me. My hobby, as Stephen said, is importing boys. Tim, Hadleigh, Andrew, Brian, Jake: my favorite moments are at airports. I wore this white summer dress, he wore bright shorts. Went back to my house, my roommate Ryan called him a “Canadian ken doll.” We packed up the car with some tent, some muenster, and off we drove. Highway One is maybe one of the most magical places on earth, a stretch of impeccable California coastline. Craig and I first drove down years and years ago now, had dinner at Orson Welles’ old cabin, sat by a fire on a ledge at the end of the earth. So that’s how I wanted to spend my birthday, figuring that would set the tone for the rest of the year. Put on a playlist, drove into the sunshine, down long expanses of exquisite coast, his hand on my leg, his sideways smile in my periphery, all lips and hair and restless energy. Stopped in Santa Cruz, had lunch on the beach. Felt like we’d been together for years, a wonderful illusion. Bit of his temper towards others was cropping up. Didn’t care. His arm around me, always. He ran up behind me on a ledge. Stopped at coves, watched sea lions. Fell in love for a few days. Put up a tent alongside Big Sur River, then drove to the Henry Miller Library, got into a bottle of Bulleit and some Arnold Palmers. Watched a very formative band, one of my favorites, Two Gallants, play their melodies under soaring redwoods. Nick wrapped his arms around me while the singer smiled that golden smile, elbows rubbed off of his sweater, a brilliant perfect night, drove back, built a campfire, felt like it would never get better, and it never did. So for a weekend, we were this brilliant couple. We never could be: he lived on the other side of a border and it wouldn’t work. But we got along just fine, had the same sense of humor, had a great time because it was fleeting. The next day we took our time getting back to the city, stopping and climbing along bays and ravines in Carmel and old churches in Davenport and everything was wonderful. Met Laura at al our regular bars on Divis on Saturday night, got daydrunk with all my coworkers at the Chapel on Sunday, went to a fancy cocktail bar in the Haight, blacked out, made out, bought a grab bag of bullshit from the bodega for dinner the last night, made out, cuddled, cursed, laughed, cried, bonded, Monday morning my birthday came around and we rented another car called “Maple Syrup” and drove to Crissy Field and he took me to lunch at a French restaurant in an alleyway downtown -- drove him back to Oakland and after he checked in at the desk he came back out of the airport door and instructed me to give him “one more hug” before he flew away. Everything in California fell apart all at once. My $550/month sublet ended and housing was bleak. My parents wanted to ship Brogan back, but he had nowhere to go. Washington State wanted $800+ for my stint on unemployment. The Chapel was giving me a few measly shifts a week, and the money wasn’t stretching, and I couldn’t afford a down payment on lease in this tech-rich city. By fluke, I saw a Facebook posting for a $667/month sublet in Seattle with a group of Seattle University alumni that I somehow had ended up friends with. If I could reverse any decision, it would be this one. But I’m not sure; the summer that followed was one mistake after the next and the regrets would only stack and marinate, but maybe I’d have ended up worse. Maybe moving into Laura’s new apartment would have strained our friendship, maybe a lesson in humility was necessary, maybe it was just nice to have my dog around for a summetime and maybe I wouldn’t be in the apartment that I’m in now if not for a series of disasters. Or maybe had I stayed I would have met a great lad and had a great adventure and now I’d be splitting finances and writing for a living or I’d have lucked into some office job that I’d grow to resent, but wondering gets me nowhere. The fact is, I made a terrible choice, one that I thought would fix everything but just launched me into an awful, unshakeable depression that I’m only now beginning to see the other side of. I decided to move back to Seattle for the summer. With money that my grandmother had left me after her passing, I had booked a plane ticket from New York to Reykjavik to Amsterdam, and then a return ticket from Copenhagen a month later. It was very financially irresponsible, but fuck it, I figured. I doubted my ability to ever have my feet on steady ground, so I may as well get something out of the messes I make. So I moved back to Seattle for the summer. I can’t think of this past summer without cringing, fully. Everything I did was wrong. Everything was bad. I lived in Judkins Park, which is a good mile or two out from Capitol Hill, where I drank and worked and hung. I had all of these illusions of life back “home” after forgetting that I did leave for a reason; there was nothing left for me. It took me a few week to find jobs, and when I finally did, I took anything I could get. I got a job through my old manager at a new high-end restaurant called the Old Sage; the only job left was a fucking host. For weeks, we had to come in in the mornings to train and get the restaurant ready for open, taste scotches at 10am, and for what? So I could work the door at a total dud of a restuarant that was priced above what anyone was willing to pay on 12th avenue? They threw me a few shifts bartending at The Coterie Room down in Belltown, which was painful in its own way. The other job was a fucking GRAVEYARD shift at a hipster DINER that just opened, Lost Lake. Embarassing. So for 8 hours a night, from 10am to 6am, I would sling fucking breakfast food to drunk people who would have to wait upwards of an hour for the stoned cooks to put their mush on a plate and then I’d tip out every goddamn person in that terrible system and walk with like, $150 maybe, and then I’d walk home the 40 minutes to Judkins Park to save money and I’d try to make it interesting by trying to listen to a new album on the walk home every day, but all I’d hear is the familiar chorus in my mind: you’re 26 and walking home from a diner and you live a sad life and you should quit it all you fucking desperate idiot. And they’d do first call at 6am so there’d be this group of fellow idiots on the bar side at dawn and then I’d walk home listening to Wolf Parade: “I’m a disaster. I could not be burning faster. I walk into webs, and take my meals with weirdos.” Then I’d walk Brogan and sleep through the sunshine and hope it all would end. I did not end up with Nick. I was honest with him when he left San Francisco, saying I would not pine for him and that I couldn’t promise anything but that I’d of course love to see him again. We made plans to go to Banff for his birthday. A few weeks later, I was moving a few hours from him but it was too late. He went home to the girl he’d previously quit. She was plain, fit, dull but probably sweet, into yoga and beer and running, 27, and more importantly, local. I think they live together now. Well, fuck. My romantic life was one dud after the next and mostly didn’t happen because I worked around-the-clock for very little pay. Zach Tyerman returned home from med school briefly and we met up at Manhattan Drugs for drinks, then Poquito’s for dinner. We met on my roof the night Craig stole my passport to see me again; a few weeks later Craig and I were dating, and we did that for a few years. Zach moved in around the corner with a guy I had once dated, Ryan Calderon. He hit on my friends, he flirted with me. He was a goofy fellow; Craig and I would joke about it. Zach and I would study at Vivace or Roy Street a lot during the wintertimes. He brought me to dinner to meet his mother and all his aunts, and I won them over easily since I wasn’t dating him so I wasn’t nervous impress them. His parents would come visit me for brunch at 22 Doors. I wrote his essay for med school; he got in. Our friendship was predicated on never sleeping together, so as I got dressed and drank the first few whiskey lemonades of the night, I promised myself: don’t sleep with Zach. When I saw him, he looked sort of great. He had a new haircut, more gentlemanly, and he was dressed well, and age seemed to have softened his features in a nice way. And it was way he treated me: he had flipped the switch to on, and without the usual teasing contempt he reserved for women with boyfriends. He used to say I had some frustrating charm. And I only frustrated him further that night. In assuming sleeping with him might ruin our friendship, not sleeping with him was probably more damaging. We went to Carly’s going away party at Big Mario’s. She was flying off to Hawaii for the summer to be with her parents, who were negotiating a divorce. I’d be taking her room in the third floor of the condo until she got back, the very week I was leaving for Europe. Kaitlyn had decorated the bar with palm trees and tiki lights, and I showed up drunk, and I regaled Zack Bolotin and Shaun Callahan of the story of my very last night in San Francisco. While waiting in a bar on Mission Street, I was approached a man who offered me CINCUENTA for “in-house” services. Mostly I was offended by the price. (Also that night: left my purse with the keys to my apartment with all of my luggage in it at another bar. Right before my flight, while all of my roommates were out of town. Always a fuckup!) Anyway, between dinner at Mario’s we had segued briefly to Linda’s and picked up a friend of Zach’s from highschool, a kind, outdoorsy guy named Alex. And now at Mario’s, Alex had his hand on my leg underneath the table and Zach stormed off into the night. Sent some wild texts. Trying to make amends the next day, Zach seemed to take the whole thing very personally. “He should have read the situation!” and “I feel like you were doing this to hurt me for some reason.” It seemed a lot like when Zac found out about Andrew, so maybe it runs in the name. But anyway he didn’t miss much: Alex and I went back to Judkins, fooled around, and somehow when Kaitlyn and Carly got home, Brogan got out and bolted, and I ran FULL SPEED down Norman Avenue -- never sprinted so fast in my life -- and across fucking Rainier Avenue through traffic BAREFOOT and eventually cornered him and scooped him up by a parking garage maybe a half mile from my house and then realized I wasn’t wearing shoes. Alex invited me to a bonfire at his house the next day, to which I responded (sort of joking? but kind of not?) “I’m not going to Ravenna.” To this day, Zach kind of rudely alludes to this whole situation via text. Fourth of July was my first day at Lost Lake, so I went down and began that awful chapter. While there, I ran into Eric, a thirty-something man I had met the previous summer at a soul night at Chop Suey. We had exchanged numbers, but I ended up with a friend of his, a real weirdo named Aeden. There was still something about him that made me incredibly nervous. And our story had a very loose end. But not to worry! We tied it up that night. Todd flew up to Seattle for his birthday and we had an okay time. I picked him up and he was so incredibly chatty and I realized this was a terrible mistake and I was so irritated the entire ride up from the airport. But it was his birthday and he had flown up, so I figured I’d just show him the town and try to have a good time and not give him any illusions about this being a lasting relationship. So we did. Went to the docks, some bars, Belltown, walked Bro, had some good adventures, rented some cars, did poppers with Tim, made him dinner, he had the time of his life and he still waxes poetic about the week so all in all, I’d say it was his version of my weekend in Big Sur. Then I met Party Bro, a guy who came into Lost Lake at 5am in a puffy vest and a shiny cap and ordered chicken fried steak with a kind friend, then conned me into staying by offering to buy my Uber home if I stayed for first call. He was a real douche and I knew it and he knew it and that was that, I guess. He was unapolegetic about being a party fiend and in love with his own damn life. But I guess I figured that was what I needed; I was leaving in a month and I wasn’t trying to find a reason to stay in Seattle. This was a guy I had 0% chance of falling for. He tried to kiss me getting into the Uber. Then he came to a bar, Montana, where I was hanging with Drew and Brian who’d flown in and tried to kiss me. Then I figured I wouldn’t put out for him, because that’s the way to keep these guys around for a good time. He asked me on a date, a real date. He made reservations, he picked me up in his car, it was a warm summer night. I wore a little black dress and heels, he wore dress shoes, we looked great. He ordered a big platter of food on the back patio of Poppy, and I decided not to tell him how picky of an eater I was, and gamely tried the salmon. I’d like to think we both brought our dating a-game. Then we went to one fancy cocktail bar after another, and he didn’t let me pay a dime the entire night, and Doug Wargo saw us and whispered, “Whoa” to me. We went to Sun Liquor Distillery and then plain ole Sun Liquor and it was a great first date, and I could tell he was very well rehearsed at first dates. So that was an okay thing to distract me from the bullshit of the rest of the summer, there was some dancing, some nights at dives, a canned bullshit speech the night he introduced me to his friends, and of course after I slept with him it sort of petered out. On his birthday at Havana, Kaitlyn let him buy us shots and then told him she was not a fan, and then her and Carey and I sort of ran off into the night, so that was that. During Block Party -- all the roads in Capitol Hill get blockaded off and a bunch of bands perform -- I worked all three nights at Lost Lake, so I got to go all three days for free. It was okay. Not what it used to be, or I’m not who I used to be. It ended spectacularly: Party Bro came in to say hello and kiss me good luck at the beginning of my shift, and towards the end of the night he came in blackout drunk holding hands with a rando girl, and then tried to text me some bullshit - so I put my phone down on the counter behind the bar, never to see it again. Felt like a real fuck up - hadn’t had the phone for more than a month or so since the last one got mugged off of me, and now it was gone again, and for what? Some scumbag I was just hanging on to so I could feel a little less lonely for a little while? Cool. Spent some nights with Nicholas, as has been our way for years and years, but by now it meant less than ever. Whenever I look back on a bad time, I try to rationalize it by considering maybe some good came of it. I did this for San Francisco round one: at least I got to ride out my crippling loneliness in solace, and also I got a great friendship with Drew. Out of this summer, I got a surprisingly great friendship with Carey. The first few weeks in Seattle, I stayed in his room downstairs while he was on a motorcycle trip through Southern California. It was great because the doors opened to the yard, where Brogan could frolic. I spent those weeks with Kaitlyn, a solid friend, and Carly, a peripheral friend. They complained about weird passive-aggressive text exchanges with Carey, a weird poster he’d hung in the bathroom, and the general living situation with him. He wasn’t so bad, I countered. “You’ll see,” they forewarned me. He returned, I moved upstairs, we shared some whiskey, and then we just sort of got along really well. He got along with Brogan. We had the same interests in life, although despite being a stoner, he was way more motivated than I was. Not a hard feat. We were into the same music. We cared about similar things. Liked the same beer and whiskey and bbq food and that made for a good summer hang. We had met summers ago, had practiced our Spanish on each other at cafes, and then had a fairly unspectacular session together before a Weakerthans show, so all of that was out of the way. Things were cozy. Kaitlyn was getting involved seriously with a guy, and so it was just me and Carey a lot. We’d hang on our computers, stay in an watch TV, ride his bike to the bank, grocery shop, share car2go’s to the hill, grab drinks or dinner, catch shows, drink beer, plot our lives. Spent a lot of time on the T-docks along Lake Washington. It was like the best parts of coming home to someone without any of the messiness of a relationship. One night at Judkins Park, I felt this weird desire to just tell him everything that made me tick somewhat incorrectly, just because I felt like at that time it wouldn’t affect his opinion of me really because it didn’t matter, but at the last moment decided against it. I didn’t know how to begin to phrase it. We were in a car2go, headed to the hill like usual. Fuck it, I figured, I like this friendship at the very basic, well-functioning level that it is. All of this would ultimately implode while I was in Europe, but for a few months Carey was one of the people I was closest to, if only from proximity. I do remember nice nights: -Tim got tickets to Hairspray! and it was weird and we almost left and it was raining hard but we were dressed up and it was fine -Seeing Elway with Carey and Peter at El Corazon - the pop-punk soundtrack to our summer -Brian came to town for Block Party weekend in July -One night at Montana with Tim & Drew & Brian and then also Party Bro -Wandering around the hill with Feven -Going to Fisherman’s with Kaitlyn, where we used to work, and getting the tour from Jim -Seeing a lot of sunrises -Seeing a lot of sunsets -A lot of days spent at Madison -Block Party with Kait and Carey -a lot of cab rides -Drew packing up my room -kareoke at Pony with Tim & Stephen and then also Ryan McMichael, in town from Paris -Dom sleepover -SubPop festival in Georgetown -weird rose wine night at some fancy place in Eastlake with Kait and Erin -Marc driving up from Portland and little adventures - exploring Seattle -weird perpetual flirtation with weird Linda’s bartender - a loose end that will likely never get tied up -knowing it was all fleeting But mostly I’ll remember how weird it all felt. Saying farewell to Seattle was all too easy. My illusory trip in March had been washed out by a stale, sad summer. My time there was dead and gone. So I did what I’ll look back on as truly idiotic: I left with absolutely no plan, and not enough resources to return to anywhere. The government had tapped my bank account and drained some money for my unemployment debt, and living in Judkins Park had cost more than the $666 rent, with storage, cabs, and general well-being. I was bloated from eating diner food all summer, and had maybe $1200 amassed after everything for my trip. I quit my jobs with very little notice, so as to burn the bridge and not tempt me to just return to them when I got back. I planned on bringing Bro to NY while I was away so my folks could watch him, but Carey offered to watch him for help with the next months’ rent. Because Bro was acclimated to the house and oddly adored Carey, I figured it was best to leave him be rather than hurtle him across the country. This decision maybe would come to overshadow my summer in Seattle as one of my worst decisions of the year. So off I went. I flew to my parent’s house in upstate New York, and Tim arrived the next day. We hung with our old friend Erika, who had since had two children with one more on the way, and had also gotten married. It was strange. I was sleepy. We spent all day gathering last minute supplies, like locks and weird sheets and walking shoes. (The locks were too small, the sheets were pointless, and the shoes were only broken in by the end of the trip.) Then we packed up our bags, they drove us to JFK, and we boarded our Icelandair plane. Look, I won’t ever regret this trip. There’s a million minute things and some very large ones that I would absolutely change, and a lot of it is within me. I went on this trip very, very lost. I went without a plan, and even less of a game plan for when I returned. I didn’t expect to find the answers out there, but I was hoping that it would at least give me some perspective, or I’d gain some interesting experiences. I’m getting old and I’ve got to get out there any way I can, and I did. All that aside, I went about a lot of things the wrong way. Timothy and I agreed from the get-go that this trip would almost certainly at times try our friendship, and it certainly did. But this friendship’s endured bouts of bullshit before and it will again, oh well. First stop was Iceland. I had become transfixed by the place via Google Earth many moons ago; I’d spun the globe and found this strange land where people actually lived, and a little lagoon where people swam, and it seemed otherworldly. (Years later, my sister would become transfixed and sully my interest a little, but nevermind that.) So we booked the free layover and a hip hostel by the water. Got my first passport stamp at customs. Bought a few bottles of liquor at duty-free. Took a shuttle to our hostel, and our very first night, things went awry. I was anxious to explore, but Tim was cranky and didn’t like the taste of his vodka and just wanted to Skype with his boyfriend. The hostel was a ghost town -- off season in September -- and I sat in the dead but beautifully curated lobby and wondered how the trip would go. We had absolutely none of it planned, minus a few vague ideas: for me, Barcelona was a must; for us, the labyrinth in Berlin was a long-time plan; and for sure, our flights were leaving out of Denmark. It was fucking freezing in our hostel room that night and the next and the next. The next day was better, we explored downtown Rejkjavik -- a small town by any stretch of the imagination -- all of the magical street art and skate parks and rad dads in thick sweaters and the whipping wind and the little shops and cobblestone walks. Then we took a shuttle with a nice Canadian couple to the Blue Lagoon, and it shot straight up to one of the more surreal, magical moments of my little life. The drive there looked like we were scaling the moon, and we drank vodka 7up out of Icelandic water bottles. We changed in futuristic locker rooms where I shared awe with an older Canadian woman. “Look at where we are now,” I must have repeated several dozen times to Tim. And then I spun around in the warm water memorizing every curve of each hill and every plume of smoke and the expression on every placid face, like I used to when I was young, and I filed it all away for when everything else gets bad. We drank some expensive beers and paid via our wrists, and then I had a truly spectacular exit: we ran to catch the bus, Tim pulled my arm to lead us to the correct one, and down I went, headfirst into a beautiful glacial spike. Boarded the wrong bus and then the right bus with a bleeding head gash and napped the whole ride home. Tim fed me water and ibuprofen and made us friends for the night, and then I went out dancing with a fresh head bump. I’d eventually fall in every country I visited, but the first fall is the deepest, and I gashed a hole in the only pair of jeans I’d brought with me, day two. Same ole story, different backdrop. But Iceland was weird and magical and met got my first taste of traveling life, where everyone hails from far-flung places and asks each other, “How many months have you been out?” Met a cute girl from Baltimore - danced all night - drank water - Haarlem - dance clubs - regulars - beautiful intriguing blondes as far as the eyes could see - winding streets, whipping wind - met some rando, deliriously stylish Icelandic students in a closed-up Mexican shop/drank their tequila - the next day was one of the most painful mornings of my life: hungover to hell, freezing, massively dehydrated, and with a gaping head wound. Veronika from Baltimore left a bottle of alcohol and a note in her wake, off to drive off towards the Northern Lights, never to be seen again. But that’s how it goes. And later I got drunk on that traveling life and also a Mexican writer’s Mezcal - walking down the hall to a huddle of chairs by the window, seeing their silhouettes in the light from the water and the mountains - seemed unreal. Some Canadians, a German girl, two English blokes, the Mexican, and once we drank everything up, we went downstairs to where a man named Magnus was hosting a bunch of beautiful, sweatered musicians grown and raised and grisled up there, with a set by a man named Snorri. And so the night went - up a hill just following along, a feeling I felt once in the Hollywood Hills - in a corner of a bar with a softspoken man who studied caribou in Greenland - dancing to a song I vowed to remember as I recorded the moment away in a small room - every moment stranger, colder, kinder than the last. We barely made it out of Iceland. I stayed awake all night, just Tim, the caribou man now, and me in that cold 8-bed room. Got us up for the 4am shuttle to Keflavik. Babysat Tim the entire time, nausous and obnoxious. Got on our flight to the Netherlands, Tim vomited while we were taxiing. Then again. Cruised in to another odd world, this one with long swathes of colored fields (tulips!) and long rings of canals. Then we got to Schiphol and my card was rejected at the ATM, despite forewarning my bank of impending travel. Also, despite paying the $25 for international service, that was also a fluke. Exchanged some cash at an exchange to get by, Tim bought us Burger King in Schiphol for being such a baby, and I secured a place to stay via Couchsurfing. The address was maddeningly confusing and the directions even murkier, but we got on a train and winged in and finally things were feeling foreign, with all the gibberish on the signs. I’d found a nice Scottish lad to put us up for a few days, and he had a flat on a canal in Leidseplein that his corpo job put him up in and he let us stay in for free. It was lovely: white walls, exposed beams, two floors, very modern. It looked exactly like where Craig would live and how he would keep it.  The lad was nice, his speech very garbled. He gave us the entire top loft, which led to a garden patio. Spent about four days in Amsterdam. It was my first European city, so I drank it all up - the bikes, canals, flower shops, buildings from the 1500s on, cafes, languages. I had never visualized Amsterdam much. The Red Light district was disarming, fantastic looking women framed in little windows offering themselves up. Not sure what I expected there. In some windows, they were doing mundane tasks, like snacking or texting or removing nail polish. Went to the photography museum and saw a photograph of Newburgh, New York. By a canal, flipped through an entire photo book of self-portraits over several decades; watched a man’s body degrade, shift, had to briefly confront my own terror of aging, already felt. Ate an expensive breakfast and realized we ought to start scrounging around grocery stores to save our cash - hated having to give so much consideration to money but necessary. Smoked in a weed cafe, but all the weed in Europe is cut with tobacco. Tim found a massage chair, changed his world. Found a really old cafe, felt really weird in it, got lost on the way back. Still a lot of fresh panic from that mugging last spring. Didn’t go to any of the big museums or the beer tours because I don’t know. I’ll save that for when I’m older. This trip was, as I’ll repeat often, the sampler platter trip. It seems like a very American way of saying I’ll dip my feet in a few seas or whatever. Went out with Iain, our host, nice bloke. Kind of was over Amsterdam and the cold after a few days and ready to journey on though, and convinced Tim the sun was what we needed. Years ago, I planned to do a semester in Barcelona. I had spent a semester in New York studying art, which consisted of just going to galleries and museums and plays and ballets and operas and concerts for a few months and somehow getting college credit for that. I lived in the ground floor of a classmate’s fucking $7 million dollar brownstone while there, and I split the roommate with my classmate Kate, and we plotted replicating the program in Spain. And we hammered out the details and I saved up several thousand dollars to do it and then when the time came Kate -- working parttime as a florist in Olympia -- did not raise the funds and then my relationship fell apart and I moved into a terrible apartment in Capitol Hill and postponed the trip to the winter, then the spring, and then by summertime my grandmother had passed and my cousin was getting married, so I spent it back in New York instead, and I never went to Barcelona. So if there was one fucking place I was going on this trip, it was Spain. It seemed like the place where I belonged, if that’s such a thing -- I loved the language, and I loved all the stereotypes -- the siestas and the long nights and the lax sense of time and the beaches and the dancing and the casual drinking and the small plates and it seemed like it would fit well with my idealized self. So we went. Tim chose the hostel, I whined, it was kind of the worst -- a lot of younger kids, a late-night hallway brawl, not much charm, but a big patio and, you know, a place to sleep I guess. Food was cheap. All was well. We arrived unexpectedly the first day of Barcelona’s biggest festival, La Merce. Just a wild party in the streets waiting for us. I’d met a South African bro on the plane ride, who at first weirded me out because he never moved from the middle seat when the aisle was open, but was rather nice, spoke with a vaguely British/Afrikaans accent. We ventured out on their relatively simple train system to where the festival was, along the way met a cute guy from Seattle, now studying mathematics in upstate NY at Cornell. Brilliant! The festival was brilliant as well and perfect and wonderful and all else, and beer was a euro on the street, and we wound our way through these little alleyways to find a bizarre dance with a bunch of gigantic puppets, and children building human towers in white with red sashes, and drank Manhattans in some pub, and danced to this African woman who was intensely wonderful and I promised I’d look up though  I had no reference. We caught a train back - walked the wrong way drunk - Tim was pissed and drunk and weary of me probably - furious - walked ten paces from me and I’ve never felt such weird tension, disappointed - ended up getting in a cab and it was playing this British kid Jake Bugg - “Broken” - his voice was wobbly, maybe a little contrived - but at that moment it broke my heart in a million little ways and I couldn’t shake it and I felt rejected kind of cruelly by a friend and it was sort of crushing - this came at a time when I felt wholly rejected, kind of cast off, adrift, and I needed something, anything, because I was not enough for myself. We acted the next day like nothing had happened, as we do. We met up with the South African, Stephen, at Barceloneta, and for the first time I swam in the Meditteranean, and it was warm and lovely as beaches tend to be. We agreed to meet up again, and a memory burnt into my mind is meeting up again at the Arc de Triumf for the festival that night - Stephen in his backpack, but further off, for some reason a perfect image: Sam Hopkins, the Cornell baby genius, leaned up against the ark, one foot up, with a bar of dark chocolate tucked into his flannel, hair askew. We had a lovely night and then another and then they, too, were gone from our lives, with vague promises to meet again in Capetown or Seattle. On a Sunday we climbed Montjuic for another part of the festival that allegedly included a circus, but instead ended up at an EDM festival. I was out of sorts with Tim and it was weird when maybe it could have been wonderful if I didn’t live so much in my goddamn head, or wasn’t so sensitive, or maybe if I took more of the molly that our new Swedish comrades offered up. There was another girl named Ally that only fueled my crumbling spirit, although I can’t place why. But there was a bunch of sweet humans, and we had a good night, a Pernilla and a and a, should have took more drugs maybe, should have let go for once, but the fear was burrowing into me and I felt it hard that day and that night and even at some dark salon bar I would have loved, I felt so entirely out of sorts. I felt wholly undefined. And it’s not easy to snap out of it in a communal room with three German guys. We decided to slow our pace because the time we had already spent in transit was irritating and who ever is in a rush to get out of Barcelona? So I found the next hostel and it was a damn good decision. The next week was long and wonderful and cozy. Within a few minutes of settling in, we met a Slovakian girl named Nina and a French-Canadian boy named Dominic, and set off to the beach with them, and collected other friends that week. We found L’Ovella Negra, a little pub for travelers that offered sangria by the five-gallon bucket, and the hostel offered a full slate of activities mapped out on a chalkboard. That night we went to La Merce and then a club and there Dominic the young French Canadian, off to southern France in the morning, kissed me and we kissed again among all the characters along Las Ramblas and then I told him he should stick around a few more days and when we got back to the hostel he booked his bed for a few more days and then we made out in a space made for hanging out clothing to dry. Should have left it at that night, but no. He stayed. We collected more friends, had more adventures, went to more clubs and bars, went off to Sagrada Familia, insane and intricate. Connor came along, a big, moody young guy from San Luis Obispo. The “tour guide” for the hostel was a Polish girl named Kate, but she was so casual about her role, it actually made for a way better experince. Kind of a rather beautiful weirdo. A few more. I settled in with Dominic because, I don’t know, looking back I needed affection, and he was sweet and simple, and he liked little things like going to the Dia  market together to make a simple breakfast, and maybe I just wanted that feeling of someone wanting to be around me so much. Ended up kind of hating myself for it, but not til later. For now everything was nice. Dominic and I went to Park Guell. We took naps, woke up at odd hours, drank one-euro wine by the bottle. Gave Tim and I the airing out from each other that we needed. Easily one of the best feelings was when we all decided to stay even longer, and lined up by the desk, and rebooked our rooms again. So Barcelona will always exist as this time in my life when reality was suspended and I was maybe the maximum amount of cozy one can be before death. Could never list half of what we did there. Decided on Berlin next, since we were eating up a lot of time in Spain. We only had a few bad moments in Barca. One night we agreed to go to a gay club for Tim, and everyone backed out, but Dominic and I still went and shored up enough euros for cover and drank shit beer in a musty room while Tim whined for a good half hour that no one would do gay things with him when we did, in fact, come hang. Another night we all took Adderall, and Tim became kind of a dick, and Dominic was kind of a youth about it and reacted poorly to his now-racing mind, and Connor disappeared for a solid 24 hours in the Barri Gotic, and I just felt elevated and chill like I always do when I take it. And while he was grouchily coming down, Tim and I squabbled a little bit about our tickets to Denmark, because sharing finances AND making travel decisions together was kind of becoming a burden. There was also the morning we left for Germany, because we hadn’t actually communicated about getting to the airport after the ticket-booking showdown, and when the time came Dominic, now claiming he loved me, took awhile to say goodbye to, and we had to run to Plaza Catalunya to board a shuttle, didn’t speak to each other once during that ride, and then RAN across the entire airport with our fucking backpacks, while all the while thinking: If we don’t make this plane, this might be the end of our friendship. So then there was Berlin. I broke down that night in my hostel, the Heart of Gold. Finally everything caved in. It dawned on me that I was heading “home” soon but that I actually did not have a home; my parents were in NY, my dog and belongings in Seattle, my best friend and a few solids and a job I guess were in SF. But they all felt like I was going backwards, without any forward momentum. I had an 8-bed room, but I was alone in it, and I slept for a solid day, and when I woke up I had no concept of where I was, and it was one of the eeriest feelings I ever felt, though peaceful. I had created nothing meaningful to return to. So I wallowed a bit. Berlin was cold and drab and I felt like I was coming down from Spain, and that familiar yearning for a sense of belonging. So a dull panic washed over me. Germany’s history is bleak, so attempting to distract myself playing tourist was futile, so I just wrote by the River Spree. A group of deaf people sat around me, the only person occupying a bench, and one stood in front of signing to them. Felt surreal, like a joke I’d laugh at later. I sat up late and read the internet in the lobby, also a 24 hour bar, the only area with wifi. It was meant to promote interaction over technological addiction, but in actuality it caused everyone to gather in the lobby to plot out their days on their devices, alienating everyone. One night, a lovely moment: a rando group of travelers gathered together playing music, a quiet performance of “Fly Me to the Moon.” My aircraft was grounded, and they offered to rebook me. “I’ll meet you anywhere in the world,” Dominic wrote from Toulouse. So I contacted my parents, upset, and they booked me flights to Paris, and I told Tim. Discouraged, I posted on FB about my flight being grounded/being bummed in Berlin, spoke with Carey about the delay, and got a message from Dana putting me in touch with some friends of hers. Had another bad moment with Tim the next day nearing the Berlin Wall, but kind of getting tired of telling those stories now. Doesn’t matter. Later he tried to make amends when he found a festival -- it seems we arrived just in time for their Reunification festival -- and I tried to muster up some excitement, but I’d been so weirded out in my hostel and with Tim it was difficult. Rode a ferris wheel with a Syrian, watched the poppunk band The Wanted perform, got a scarf for the cold, drank an Irish coffee. Taryn told me that if ever I feel weirded out while traveling, to find an Irish pub, and she was right. They’re the same everywhere. Checked in to Tim’s hostel since he convinced me it was better, but switched rooms to an all-girls rooms to allow us more space. Somewhat bolstered by the promise of Paris, and not ending the trip on such a sour note. But then Dana’s friend Warwick contacted me, and I met up with him and his wife and their friends in a little smoky pub in Nuekolln. In high school, I had a penpal named Colin, and he spent a semester abroad in Copenhagen, and he’d written to me about the Dutch concept of hygellig. Cozy. And I’ve been chasing it ever since. And then there it was, at Leidak. I drank nearly two liters of wine, got reamed at by the old German cashier in German, got on a random train, wandered around in a wino daze, and then there it was. I hadn’t taken to Berlin the way people told me I would - it was quiet and cold and harsh and bleak, and I used those descriptors to exhaustion - but a quiet, simple sort of night changed my mind, because it was so quiet and simple, and because the humans were so kind, and because I knew they had endless strings of quiet, simple nights drinking Dada cocktails at little smoky pubs and talking about this or that and maybe some nights were wild but all I ever wanted were the mellow nights I knew they experienced in abundance. I looked around: I would have loved to be a part of any circle of humans in that bar, and I heard snippets of their languages and laughter and I wanted in. I guess it’s that simple: I wanted in. I didn’t feel so much as I belonged with this particular set of humans as I felt I could belong somewhere, a feeling I hadn’t had in a long while. I made eyes with a bright-eyed boy across the way, and my next memory -- this one clear as fucking day -- was being held against him at a U-bahn station in Kreuzberg -- I remember because when we momentarily broke off from me I asked “Wait...where the hell are we?” and he answered, with his sloppy smile, “We’re in Kreuzberg” -- and note I don’t think anyone has ever kissed me quite that fervently -- he reminded me of a schoolyard bully, can’t place why -- and we ended up back at his large flat in Kreuzberg via taxi -- and goddamn if I hadn’t sifted through this night 200x since -- Laurence, you ruined Paris for me. I awoke in his bed with all my stuff back at the hostel in Mitte, but it was settled, I would stay with him for the rest of the weekened - “Now let’s go get you sorted” - since I was just wandering through, there was no pretense about a relationship, no bullshit. And so we went, and we got sorted. Found Tim. I made shit hostel breakfast with what leftovers I had, some stale bread, some scrambled eggs, and while I cooked he came and put his arms around me, a simple movement, but I still riding that high of a fleeting sense of belonging. He was a writer, teaching English, approaching 30, a bloke from Manchester. We napped at his place after wandering around Kreuzberg, and then he went and fucking kissed the top of my head just when “Slow Show” came on, unknowingly, and he held me the whole time as I promised not to fall for the loveliness and novelty of this stranger, but by then it was too late, si claro, he could easily shoehorn into being the next Nick: a beautiful taste of something I’d always want to drink some more of. Nick had done a similarly absentminded thing -- he’d wrapped me up into his sweater with him while waiting for the bus that morning in Vancouver -- and even then my heart was like oh no, oh no. And ever since, I’ve been giving up on decent guys whose only real fault is they never caused my dumb little heart to spike in some silly way. We met Tim at the labyrinth, a plan we hatched long ago. We drank in the corridor for awhile, then got the gold coin - a woman spun me and sent me off - first fright was own damn reflection popping up - crawled around in that wild, haphazard maze for awhile - standing there was Laurence, taller, eyes bluer, hair wilder - found Tim and the other Laurence, crawled on the floor to a neon-white room and danced and crawled back and went upstairs and kissed Laurence for awhile. Everytime you access a memory, it degrades like a shitty jpeg, so I try not to tap into these things anymore. We had dinner back in Kreuzberg at some Italian place and then fell asleep together again and woke up; I had a flight to catch and he had a match to get to, so he walked me to the bus stop and I said farewell and he went, nearly offended, “Wait a minute, kiss me goodbye.” So I kissed him goodbye and went to Paris to meet Dominic “under the Eiffel Tower at sunset.” Paris was doomed from the start. Never agree to meet anyone under the fucking Eiffel Tower at fucking sunset. Never flee to Paris as a means to delay figuring out your damn life. I never gave it a fair shake. Don’t even feel like thinking about it. Flew to Orly and stopped at a McCafe to charge up, got an awful message from Carey, checked my depleted bank account, I don’t even really want to go through this part of the year right now. It’s like a cloud fogged me over from the inside out. Blood went tepid. Can’t explain it. First few moments in France: I don’t know, what the fuck ever. You know what, Paris was beautiful, and odd, and winding, and I had some great nights, drank some great wine, met some weird humans, and maybe some other time in my life I’ll process it, but not now. Point being, by the end of the trip, I was a mess. And I had to catch a flight to Denmark from de Gaulles. McMichael had taken me to the train and bid me well - I fell one last time in the square before leaving. Gave me a strange smile, like we both recognized how fucked up it was, and I remembered him in his apartment on Melrose years ago, and again in his apartment in the first arrondisement of Paris playing “Life is a Pigsty,” wearing the same face. On the plane, tucked into a copy of a The Big Sleep I’d picked up at Shakespeare & Company at Laurence’s suggestion, I found a series of post-its written haphazardly by a drunken Dominic from his last night in Paris and it all slowly dawned on me. Between those and Carey’s increasingly agro messages, man, I crumpled. I’m weak enough as is, but damn. So Copenhagen was weird. Caught the train to the hostel Tim suggested in Norrebro, only to find it all booked up and in fact, every hostel in Copenhagen all booked up. Sent out some flairs on Couchsurfing from an Irish pub where the barman had a vague Manchester accent. Can’t explain the daze I walked around Copenhagen in, carrying my full backpack, feeling utterly defeated. Knowing that all of this navel-gazing and sorrow was overinflated and bearing down on a good time, but maybe necessary, no I didn’t realize that at the time. I just wanted to drift off into the sea and let go of it all. The trip was over, my escape was over, and reality was even bleaker. I could not have charted a rockier landing. And where to? What next? What did I have now? I saw so many lives pass in front of me that I wanted to try on for size, but not this one any longer. Melodramatic, sure, but I suppose in a foreign land all alone there’s some lenience on grand, sorry self-pitying. A Taiwanese man found me on CS and I met him and a few others at a lovely pub after being berated by my taxi for not having a chip on my card. Threw all my krona at him and ran in, backpack and all, to a rather nice place. Had a lovely night with another host and his surfer, a blonde book publisher out of Helsinki. Taoi ended up being kind of a weirdo, but nevermind that. Everything faded away for a little while. Called Dominic to apologize, and perhaps explain myself, wished him the best on his travels. So by the end of the trip, I was a real mess. I hadn’t combed my hair in a month, and it was curly as hell and nearly dreadlocked. I took my flight to Norway, where everyone has blue eyes and everything is polished nicely and beer is nearly 20 bucks a bottle and I was hungry and weary and broke and tried to sort of bathe in the good nights, the good humans, the good stories, the good hours, the good moments I’d memorized from every angle. There was no shortage, and I tried not to let the fear leak in to those, quarantining them to a kinder home in my mind. Took an 8-hour flight back to JFK. Was alerted at customs that it seems I now had two pink eyes. Rushed to the bathroom to clean up before seeing my parents, and there was my mother, and there was her vision of her lost-at-sea daughter: two pink eyes, matted hair, unwashed clothing, torn jeans, kind of gaunt and very tan. They fed me and let me sleep for a day or two and then I broke down in my parent’s bedroom and admitted I had absolutely no plan for what came next and not even an idea of what I wanted out of life and very little money and no way to take care of my pup adequately and all of this came from their 26 year old daughter. They went to work and when they came back, they offered me a bailout: I could come home for a little bit while I got back on my feet. Safe and sound in my bed, I almost considered it. But you know what, fuck that, fuck all of my whining about poor decisions, I love my parents and I know this offer was put on the table in order to help me out and ultimately get me back on the east coast and away from my haphazard nomadic ambling, but thank the LORD I did not take them up at them. It would be like redacting the past near-decade of my life. Ultimately, they gave me a grand as a loan to sort my shit out with the promise I’d repay it from a paycheck at a financially lucrative, upstanding job, and soon, but as it so happens I’m not that on it, but at least I’m not living at home. The following winter was one of the most depressing periods of my life. I entered into a phase of homelessness, unemployment, couchsurfing, meandering, freeloading, and just being a general degenerate while I tried to get my ducks in a row. And I pitied myself, dear lord did I pity myself. More, I despaired every decision that had led me to this life. Couldn’t pin it on any one thing - I was pretty consistently irresponsible. Realized early on I’d have to cash in on every ounce of good fortune I could, cash out really. So I did. I stayed with Nicholas for two weeks in Seattle while I collected Brogan, paid off Carey, paid Tim the remainder for our trip, moved my stuff from one storage locker to a cheaper unit, collected leftover checks, whatever. Got to Seatac, then to SFO. Stayed with Todd for a few weeks on 19th & Valencia in SF, WITH Brogan, but didn’t sleep with him so as not to make it any weirder, eventually he got weary of that arrangement. Shipped Brogan back to New York, stayed with Laura for a month. That took us the holidays. Couldn’t afford to go home for either, for the first time in my life. Thanksgiving Laura and I ate mashed potatoes at an Irish pub, and then drank at Pop’s. Christmas we ate at a Chinese restaurant, and then drank at Casanova. She left from Makeout Room to see about a boy, and so did the others we were out with, so it was just me and this stoner bro, so spent the night with him. Picked up every shift I could at the Chapel, working 6-7x a week. Agreed to a $900 sublet on 26th & Folsom for the month of January while I worked on setting up a living situation. New Years Eve was my last night at the Chapel though; worked the mezzanine bar alone, and when 12 struck I was just sort of there to watch it happen, stayed up into the wee small hours of the morning with my coworkers and then disappeared off of the schedule. Had to go in not once but twice to ask if I was fired, and finally Keith told me: yes, we’re letting you go. Per the owner’s requests. Cool.
favorite moments of the year: -blue lagoon -sam - arc de triomf -cab - pigalle -party bro - poppy -hallway @ kex
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tumbalumps · 7 years
Text
Metal Gear Weevil: Code Monsoon
Up in his penthouse suite at World Marshall HQ, Monsoon lay on his bed bored and fed up. He had just taken a pasting from Raiden on Revengeance mode, which had severely dented his pride and his dome. He needed something to cheer him up. Normally he would have amused himself by polishing his magnets, in particular his wheel and Distopia but he was that annoyed that this time, these things would not suffice.
No, I have to fight these urges, he thought to himself as dark thoughts crept into his mind.
He had tried to fight them before and managed to supress them with super strength Nanomachines. If people knew about the feelings he had, he would be cast out as a disgrace to all Desperado. He would be fired from his position and branded a weirdo, a freak, an abomination. Nobody would ever speak to him again, if they ever found out about the hideous fetish he longed for…
Mutation.
No!
"I can't," he whispered to himself.
At that moment he felt his codec buzz: a message from Mistral. He groaned in displeasure.
'Hey sexy, fancy some company tonight? I want to feel you deep inside me again.'
Oh God, that terrible night at the office party, she had got him drunk and they had done things… the Geckos… oh dear god those little dwarf Geckos… NO! He felt sick even at the blurred memories of it. It was horrible. But it had made him realise one thing for certain, cyborgs definitely did not excite him. In fact other cyborgs repulsed him, he longed for other things to satisfy his… 'urges'. He hastily called her back telling her, 'No thanks. I'm polishing my wheel,' and switched it off. His endeavour could not be disturbed.
It was the push he needed. He double checked the door was locked, closed the curtains in case of any peeping sliders, and pulled out his personal laptop. Nobody knew of its existence. They couldn't. He felt guilty and disgusted at himself for what he was about to do.
Mutation.
He didn't know why it turned him on so much.
T-virus, G-virus, Uroboros, T-abyss, Code veronica virus, C-virus… Oh yes!
He felt all his magnets tingle as he typed in the website . Oh yes… the images on the screen pleased him. Hunters, Majinis, J'avo's, Ogroman, Ustanak and those lickers… Damn. Mutation was his guilty pleasure. It was frowned upon in the society he lived in and his reputation would be destroyed if anyone even had an incline that this was how he got his kicks. Soon all feelings of guilt were gone as he was overpowered by lust and fierce desire. Looking at pictures wasn't enough anymore. He wanted to touch. He was not normally one for crudeness but he really longed to fuck some poor virus ravaged, mutated soul until they screamed his name in the most inhuman monstrous tone.
He searched for singles profiles. Maybe there was a mutant out there who harboured feelings for cyborgs. If she was out there, he would find her. After trawling through countless pages, he came across his dream date by the name of Alexia Ashford. He rubbed his chin and mused, "Exquisite."
She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Those tantalising tentacles, sexy scales, her burning red eyes… Monsoon was head over heels in love. He hungered to taste her sweet body. Boldly, he sent her a friend request and hoped she liked him too. Generally, mutants went with mutants, cyborgs with cyborgs and the two never crossed. It was an unwritten rule in life. Only the deep, dark and disturbed ever entwined them and Monsoon qualified for all three. Hopefully Alexia would too. She certainly looked like a twisted individual.
To his delight, she responded immediately.
'Hello my dear. How are you?'
Now Monsoon's magnets were well and truly buzzing. He shivered as they vibrated and he typed back, 'I'm fine. You're a pretty mutant.'
'Thank you. Are you worthy of my power?'
'I hope so. Let me show you nature's law so we can find out.'
'Oh what fun!'
They chatted at length, Monsoon's magnets now on red alert and vibrating like crazy. His cyborg heart was racing as was her virus ridden one. From their Internet conversation, it soon became very clear to Monsoon that Alexia was indeed into cyborgs.
Her message, 'I want to ride you like a donkey eeoorrhhh!' confirmed this.
Monsoon concluded that they were meant to be together, their souls were entwined. Never before had somebody sent him such a delightful message. He desperately wanted to be next to her and show her all his moves, maybe even introduce her to Distopia and Lorentz the Wheel. Perhaps he would even let her stroke them. He was also eager to see some of her moves too. Then suddenly, a new message:
'To meet or not to meet? I would love for you to come and serve me.'
It was as if she had read his mind! He told her nothing would give him greater pleasure. She told him her address, a castle on a place called Rockfort Island. He would have to catch a boat to get there! What a mission, plus he was a little nervous at being the only cyborg there but he knew that she would be worth it.
Early the next morning before the sun had even rose, he woke and polished himself up to be exquisite and stuffed his pouches full of 'essentials' for his meeting with Alexia, chuckling sinisterly to himself. At long last, he would be able to act upon his fantasies. He pulled a cheeky sickie with work, telling Armstrong that he felt too weak to come in, he was suffering with the dreaded glitch, and would need a few days in bed to recover.
"Huh, candyass, you need better nanomachines, son," Armstrong grunted at him.
Monsoon grinned silently to himself; if he only knew. He said goodbye to his beloved wheel as it was too big to take with him but he would take Dystopia, just in case of trouble, and scurried out to the port under the cloak of darkness.
He arrived at the port and looked at the destinations:
'Skyrim' hell no, 'Silent Hill', tempting but maybe some other time, 'New Vegas' definitely when he had more caps to spend, ahh 'Rockfort Island' – Gate 666 for the Queen Zenobia.
Monsoon waited in line to board and realised that in his rush, he had forgotten to book a damn ticket! How could he have been so stupid? Head was all clouded up with Veronica virus! However, he knew there was no need for panic – it was a mistake that was easily rectified. Thinking of his motto for life, 'the strong prey upon the weak' he spotted a young woman, Jill Valentine, standing alone in the queue. A smoke grenade would have been useful here but there were too many other people around, he had to try something more discreet. He sidled up to her in his purple aura, detaching all his parts and glitching ever so slightly to shock her and throw her off guard.
"Err… can I help you?" she asked, a hint of distain in her voice.
Cyborgs were very rarely seen in these lands, especially one as freakish as Monsoon. They were often met with hostility, born from fear. Weaklings deserved everything they got he figured. At least his darling Alexia was not so narrow minded. And Jill was not even mutation… eurgh. Humans repulsed him even more than other cyborgs.
He stared over her shoulder at nothing, a false look of horror slowly descending on his face and began to point with his one hand, while slyly detaching the other.
"What… what is that? Good god is that a wheel?" he asked, a staged quiver in his voice.
As predicted, Jill turned and looked at the fake distraction, giving him chance to quickly send his free hand into her back pocket and snaffle her ticket. Was she that stupid? On realising there was nothing there, she turned back and asked him, "What the hell? There's no wheel there what are you talking about?"
"Oh, I do apologise," he smiled back at her falsely. "As you can see, my eyes are not the best. In fact I don't have any. I must have been mistaken."
Jill's expression changed while Monsoon felt smug; she hadn't even realised she'd been robbed. The smugness soon turned to anger when he saw the pity in her eyes. Damn, if she knew the power he wielded! He did not need her pity!
"It's OK, don't worry about it, you do look like there's something wrong with you; you're awfully glitchy," she said and pulled out some kind of plant from her pocket… "Here, take this."
What was this? A blue herb? What the hell was a cyborg meant to do with a herb and why on earth was it blue? Was he meant to eat it or smoke it? He thanked her anyway; perhaps it would come in useful later. Maybe he could give it to Alexia as a token of his love. And he really resented the comment about there being 'something wrong with him'. And as for 'Glitchy'? How rude! He wanted to snap back 'at least I'm not laggy' but knew better than to lower himself with such childishness. He quickly moved away before she noticed her ticket was missing, shaking his head at her ignorance.
Little did he know, Jill's extremely possessive boyfriend was working as head of security and had seen on CCTV what he had done. Seething with rage, Nemesis vowed revenge.
Aboard the ship, Monsoon began to feel even more out of place. It was teaming with BOW's alike. He was definitely the only cyborg. He sat on the deck, attempting to be discreet, and watched them intently as they crawled, slithered, scurried and stomped past. They looked so much more endearing in the flesh; the screen on his laptop did not do them justice. And to see the many different ways they moved and hear the grunts and groans enchanted him in ways he had never thought possible. His magnets were vibrating again and his purple glow was exceptionally bright – damn it could be embarrassing sometimes, he may as well have had a beacon above him saying 'Turned on cyborg right here!' Of course, he never had this problem at home…
The view of the choppy waters soon put a stop to his arousal as a wave of seasickness hit him. Missing the bright lights of Denver and his precious wheel didn't help either, and neither did not being able to flaunt his powers. It would freak them out and he didn't want to run the risk of being thrown overboard. His appearance was unnerving enough for them, they couldn't handle him in his terrifying true form. Weaklings.
He went inside before the seasickness made him do anything unpleasant and headed for the bar. If ever there was a time for some Nanopaste it was now. The barmaid was a gorgeous blonde named Rachael who was oozing with T-abyss virus and Monsoon's mood was immediately uplifted. Wow, she was stunning. Not quite as stunning as Alexia but still hot enough to get his magnets going.
"Hiya, what can I get you?" she giggled flirtatiously at him.
"A double shot of Nanopaste please," he smiled at her.
"Nanopaste?" a look of confusion spread upon her mutated face.
"Yeah, you know, Nanopaste! White putty stuff that makes you feel good."
"Oh, amphetamines?"
"No!" Monsoon snapped impatiently. "NANOPASTE!"
Rachael glared at him angrily, "Do not raise your voice at me, cyborg. I am sorry but we don't do this Nanopaste you speak of."
She practically spat out the word 'cyborg'. Monsoon composed himself, they were bound to hate him if he lost his temper so quickly and yelled at the staff. He had to be polite.
"Forgive me, I'm just a bit on edge, what would you recommend then sweetie?" he grinned extending his hand across the counter in an attempt to offer his friendship as a disguise for a cheeky feel of her slimy flesh.
She swiftly pulled away intimidated by his glow and the strange humming sound his magnets were generating, and went on to show him the top shelf. Of course, this was BOW land. He had to drink whatever they did. The top shelf boasted a string of vials containing all manner of strong viruses, some of which he had never heard of.
Rachael looked him up and down, the corner of her upper lip curling in disgust at him.
"Well for you, I would say the G-virus."
"Is that your best?" Monsoon asked.
"Yes. Hurry up and stop wasting time with your unnecessarily long cut scenes."
"I'll have that then."
Again, he decided to take advantage of his abilities and detached his hand. If she wouldn't let him touch her innocently then he would cop a feel of her ass when she turned around to get his beverage. That would teach her. Oh, it felt good… so slimy… yes. His first touch of mutant!
"Eek what was that?" she shrieked.
Monsoon quickly returned his hand and smiled innocently, "I don't know. Nothing."
"Here," she said abruptly slamming the purple vial down on the bar. "That's 1000 exp."
The taste of the shot of G-virus was vile, resembling feet and armpits. Monsoon tried not to shudder as he necked it down in one. A big smirk was now on Rachael's face, like she knew the effect it would have on him. Within minutes it started to surge through his body.
To his horror, bits of his leg began to detach all by themselves and move away from him. Arh! What was this madness? He felt extremely dizzy too and was in dire need of a comfy place to sit down. He saw a sofa on the other side of the room and staggered to it, leaving a trail of pieces of his thighs behind. He collapsed on it and shattered all over the place, squealing. A foot rolled over to Ustanak who had been enjoying a quiet pint of C-virus, which infuriated him greatly. He snarled and booted it back towards the metallic mess and landed it in the side of Monsoon's head, turning it to face his violently twitching arm, as if it wasn't bad enough being kicked in the head with his own foot.
He stammered to himself, "No, not the glitch. Please don't let me get sick with glitch!"
"Pull yourself together!" Ustanak bellowed at him. "Nobody wants to see that weird shit around here! You may be able to do that fucked up stuff where you come from but we will not tolerate it on this ship! If you can't handle your G-virus then stay the fuck out of the bar!"
The angry yells of a huge, lumbering BOW snapped Monsoon back to reality and he did indeed pull himself together. Now everybody in the bar was staring at him. Two hunter children were that traumatised, they were in tears.
"I can take it," he said defiantly.
Thank god, his arm had stopped glitching. That was a relief. A nasty glitch infection would not look good in front of Alexia. It was of little comfort against the sheer embarrassment of falling apart in public, especially in front of such judgemental BOW's that he wanted to impress.
"Obviously you can't!" Rachael taunted from the bar. "Anymore of your freaky glitchy cyborg shit and I'll call security!"
Monsoon dusted himself off and muttered, "Ridiculous."
Why did these creatures hate him so much? Bad memes, it must have been. He could break this ship in two if he wanted, maybe he would once he was off it just to teach them a lesson. Parts of it would make lovely additions to his wheel…
Monsoon needed some time to recover from his shot of G-virus. Despite being able to hold himself together, there was still something not quite right. His fingers were tingling and he had a weird sensation in his arm. Urh. Hopefully it would ware off soon. He would certainly stick to Nanopaste in future, virus did not agree with him.
Feeling increasingly angry that his trip was going downhill, he needed something to pick his mood back up. The Queen Zenobia had a casino; he could have lots of fun there.
On his way there, he attracted lots of stares and whispers.
"Look at that!"
"What the fuck?"
"Oh my god, stay away from it children!"
"Holy shit, I knew cyborgs were gross but that one… EURGH!"
"Hope it doesn't get near me, it has a nasty disease."
This vexed Monsoon even more. Did they think just because he had a big dome on his head that he was deaf? Or were they so arrogant they didn't care? He wanted to scream in their faces to stop referring to him as 'it' and 'cyborg' and that he did not have glitch! He had a name!
"My name is Monsoon of the Winds of Destruction!" he triumphantly told the cashier at the casino.
"I don't care who you are, behave yourself and none of your weird coming apart shit," she responded, flinging his chips across the counter.
How did she know what had happened in the bar? They must have been contacting each other on codec. Damn these BOW's, they were really starting to get to him. Despite starting to hate their ignorance and downright racism, he was still shamefully attracted to them.
He made his way to the slot machines, where he spotted Jill again. How did she get on the ship without a ticket? It didn't matter. In fact he was glad; she was weak and he could toy with her again.
She was piling all her coins into slots and getting increasingly frustrated. Every time she lost, not because of her bad luck but because Monsoon was using his magnetic power to rig the wheels. He laughed maniacally to himself as Jill put the last of her coins in and lost again.
"That's enough of that," she muttered bitterly and stormed off.
Monsoon swept in on the abandoned machines and used some of nature's force to drain it of its contents.
"I have won this," he giggled to himself as he filled up his pouches.
It was a big mistake on his part. Again, his dastardly deeds had been spotted by Nemesis, who was following Jill around on the CCTV.
Up in the security office, he slammed his fist down in rage.
"Who is this freak who keeps picking on my lovely Jill? I am going to blast it into the middle of next week," he fumed patting his rocket launcher.
At that moment, Rachael entered to report the incident in the bar.
"It is a freak. It touched my ass. It thinks I didn't notice but I did. Then it OD'ed on G-virus and went to pieces! It was gross," she vented.
"Right. That's it, I'm going to blast it," Nemesis vowed, picking up his weapon.
"No!" cried Rachael. "Don't do that! It can control metal! It might fire it back on you or something. We need to think about this."
Nemesis tapped his huge mutated fingers on the desk as he thought, "We need more information about it. I know."
He called down to the cashier in the casino and asked, "That metal thing over by the slot machines with the fishbowl on its head, can you go over to it and ask for some ID? I need to Google it."
"It said it's a Mongsoon with Wings in Construction."
"Thanks."
Nemesis tapped this into Google and after correcting the mistake managed to find some information: annoying, frustrating, powerful, throws helicopters, hard. This concerned him. One could not simply blast him with an RPG. Maybe he should speak to someone… who did he work for again? Winds of Destruction… Nemesis figured the cyborg must have had one hell of an ego to announce where he worked and then go on to cause mayhem. Either that or he was stupid.
Nemesis made a few calls and soon he was through to none other than Senator Steven Armstrong.
"Hello. I wonder if you could help me. I've got one of your Monsoons on board my ship and it's been causing a lot of trouble."
"Oh really? Well I'll cause a lot of trouble for that pansy when he gets back," Armstrong was not impressed. Monsoon had called in sick! What was he doing on a ship?
"His behaviour violates Umbrella policy you see. I was wondering if you had any tips for dealing with him?"
"As a matter of fact I do…"
Monsoon continued to play the slots, genuinely now just for fun, blissfully unaware of the approaching danger. He was starting to enjoy himself now! Plus he had loads of money that he planned to treat Alexia with. She wanted to be worshipped like a queen and he was all too happy to do that. Suddenly, all his fantasies were shattered when he heard a dark, menacing growl of not 'Stars' but:
"Desperado."
That voice could only belong to one person… Nemesis! Monsoon laughed, feeling cocky and full of himself because he'd won on the slots. Nemesis – that weakling? Ha! That rocket launcher he carried, he would dismantle that and throw it in his face and his punches would be easy to dodge if he came apart. He wouldn't even need his Sais. It was almost too easy. However he didn't bank on the inside knowledge Nemesis had, which taught him of his weakness…
The trudging footsteps came closer to him and Nemesis let out a bellowing roar, ruffling his hair a bit. Monsoon turned and flashed him his trademark arrogant smug grin, "What?"
"Why are you picking on my little honeypot Jill?" Nemesis shouted in his face.
That was a dumb question. Monsoon was done being polite to these mutated freaks when they would not extend him the same courtesy. He sneered back, "Wind blows, rain falls and the strong prey upon the weak!"
"What kind of bullshit answer is that? Don't try to confuse me with your cyborg waffle!"
Nemesis attempted to grab him but when this didn't work he reached into his pocket and pulled out…no… could it be? AN EMP GRENADE!
"No… Stop it!" Monsoon squealed and raised his arms in defence but it did nothing.
Nemesis pummelled him with three grenades just to make sure then landed him a tremendous blow to the head. Monsoon yelped as his body began to shatter and his vision became distorted and snowy with the message:
Error.
Erorr. Meme.
Errorrrr.
Eeeewheeleerr
E.
Darkness took him. The darkness being an angry Nemesis stuffing all his pieces into a potato sack and marching off to the depths of the ship…
When he came to, he felt bleary and disorientated. Three EMP's in one go? Was that really necessary? They had given him a very bad headache and he had no clue about how long he had been unconscious. And where the hell was he? There was a huge flag hanging on the wall in front of him with some weird symbol of a dog and the word Veltro on in, whatever that meant. No time to wonder about such petty things, not once he realised what a terrible mess he was in!
He was strapped to a wooden chair with gaffer tape and his entire body was… no... those monsters from Umbrella… They had stuck him back together the wrong way around! His kneecaps were where his elbows should be and his leg and arm had been swapped. His other leg was where it should be but facing the wrong way round. His only limb that was in the right place was his left arm but there was a piece missing out of it. The worst part about this travesty was that there was nothing he could do about it! He was totally covered in gaffer tape!
He squirmed trying desperately to break free but to no avail. There was nobody in the room with him but a huge CCTV camera was pointed right at him. Monsoon glared at it in defiance and summoned all his power to blow it up. How dare they! Now to get out of this prison and off the ship; he was so sick of all the nonsense that he was willing to swim the rest of the way. It was utterly ridiculous. With all his raging thoughts, he regained his strength and was able to summon his Sais, which were placed on a table a few feet away, and tear his way out of his gaffer tape prison and reassemble himself correctly, only his left arm was shorter than his right because of the piece missing. Where it had gone remained a mystery. It was too far away to even magnetise back. He was annoyed at having to peel the bits of gaffer tape off his body parts too. To think they could stop him with such pathetic tools; they had no idea of the power he had. BOW's were not known for their intelligence. If they thought he was causing trouble by fiddling a measly slot machine then what would they think of the hell he could really unleash?
He sensed the ship had stopped moving. Had they arrived at Rockfort Island? He hoped so. If only he had just taken his own transport, his Modded Metal Gear Ray but Armstrong would have surely noticed it was missing and questioned his sick day.
He removed the padlock on the door with ease, again chuckling to himself at Nemesis' lack of intelligence. EMP grenades… cheap tricks, he thought. Stereotyping wildly though, BOW's were dumb; it simply was the way things were.
As he headed down the corridor, Nemesis appeared, blocking his way.
"Where do you think you're going cyborg?" he asked, sternly looking down at Monsoon, who was tall but nothing in comparison to him. He raised his hand and began sprouting his tentacles, preparing to make him OD again on his own personal brand of virus.
"Come on… Hit me!" Monsoon taunted him, doing his tornado move and firing one of his kneecaps at him at full force.
Not only was Nemesis bewildered at the metallic piece pounding him in the forehead but he was horrified and sickened by Monsoon disassembling himself in such a way. Sickened enough to gasp and stagger back so the fully-charged, angry cyborg could whiz past him and hastily get to land. If it meant leaving a part of his arm behind then it was a sacrifice he would have to make. Again, even though regrettable, it was just the way things had to be. Luckily, he had a spare body back at World Marshall. He hoped Alexia would still find him attractive with one arm longer than the other.
Nemesis stomped his foot in complete and utter rage as he paced the staffroom of the Queen Zenobia. Never before had he been so mad! That damn robotic monstrosity! The ego on it was unlike anything he had ever seen, of all the video game characters in all the land. Who in their right mind would have the nerve to taunt and mock the Nemesis? Who was he anyway? All he had was one short chapter and a bit of DLC to his name, Nemesis had an entire game named after him! He was a legend! The fact that Monsoon had gotten away and made a mockery of him had really gotten under his lumpy, slimy deformed skin. And to pick on Jill - the object of his desire, his one true love, his obsession… well that was the straw that broke the camel's back.
"Calm down babe, I don't like it when you get mad," Jill pleaded with him.
"I won't have it! Nobody makes a fool out of me and hurts you, especially not a weirdo, hippy, glitching cyborg with no eyes! I am going to crush him," Nemesis fumed.
He altered his main target: Monsoon. Objective: Annihilate!
"Desperado," he growled.
Monsoon took in his new surroundings and drew a deep breath, so happy to be off that wretched ship. In the distance at the peak of a hill, stood the majestic Ashford castle. He smiled lustfully as his magnets gave a slight buzz. He could almost taste Alexia's sweet mutation. Once she was in his arms, all the anger and sorrow he had endured on the Queen Zenobia would be washed away.
Meanwhile, Alexia Ashford was skipping around her bedroom in her castle joyfully singing to herself. She could hardly contain her excitement over going on her first date with the lovely Monsoon. She had endured relations with many a BOW: Ustanak, Tyrant, William Birkin, Albert Wesker, her brother, even Nemesis… Yet none of them satisfied her hunger for something different… Cyborg. Like Monsoon, she had kept her fetish a secret. She was so happy when he had contacted her online and on looking at his Facebook profile, found they had so much in common. They were both annoying, difficult, frustrating, hard to S rank yet also intelligent, arrogant, obsessive, enjoyed waffling about their beliefs, hated the rest of the world and could do freakish things with their bodies that defied all logic. They were so different yet so alike… a paradox. How beautiful… exquisite even. She wanted to make love to him so bad. The sex they would have would be… unique, unduplicated by any other couple in the universe. Oh god…
She sprayed herself in pheromone perfume, brushed her hair and applied her make-up while her servants carried out her orders in setting things up for the game she had in store for him.
Although it was nowhere near as much of an ordeal as the boat trip, Monsoon's short journey to the castle did not run smoothly. Every now and then he would feel a strange sensation in his missing piece of arm that would send an odd surge through his body and temporarily paralyse him for a few moments. It was nothing as bad as an EMP grenade to the face yet still uncomfortable. Plus, he had to stop to vomit on the way, which was also unnerving as technically he did not have a stomach. What also bothered him was that there seemed to be some kind of thing in what he brought up, a weevil type creature… He hoped it was just a side effect of the seasickness and that there was not something seriously wrong with him. If he happened to throw up a weevil in front of Armstrong, the consequences would be dire.
"Please don't let me be diseased," he prayed to nobody because religion was a joke. "I'm not like the rest of this world… I'm unique and downright amazing. I can't die."
It seemed his prayers were answered and the sickness passed. He hopped along the walls up the hill passing by the faff in the training facility by leaping over the roof. Finally, the castle was near. With every jump he took, his glow grew brighter and his smile wider.
Before he knocked the front door, he gave himself a quick polish, brushed his hair and checked everything was in order. It was, aside from the missing piece of arm, which maybe he deserved after cheating Jill twice. It was nature running its course. He was fine without it anyway. It didn't stop him feeling nervous though.
On tapping on the wooden door, he was greeted by a hunter dressed as a butler who said, "Ah… Cordial greetings Mr. Monsoon, the queen has been expecting you. Do come in."
"Just Monsoon is fine, thank you," he smiled feeling grateful that the mutations here were not as ignorant and vile as the ones on the Queen Zenobia. Things were looking up.
The butler led him to a magnificent dining room set up by candlelight where his date awaited. Monsoon was awestruck. Her unmatched beauty rendered him totally speechless. Despite her Facebook pictures being stunning, they did not do her justice. He still could hardly believe how lucky he was to be here. The horrible journey had been worth it for this moment alone.
"Hello my dear," Alexia beamed, obviously she was equally as pleased to see him.
She got up from her chair to embrace him in a welcoming hug and kiss him on the cheek. Monsoon buzzed and wrapped his arms around her, inhaling her sweet perfume. She was wearing a long purple dress so he would have to wait to touch her flesh. He couldn't wait to get her naked in bed.
The meal was gorgeous. Alexia had done her research on cyborg food and Monsoon was delighted to be served with Nanopaste and Electrolytes! How thoughtful of her. They held hands over the table and chatted about memes, bioweapons, magnetics and ants.
"How many retries do you take to S rank on very hard?" Alexia asked, affectionately stroking his hand.
"I know of someone who used hundreds," Monsoon answered, a slight smirk appearing on his face. "I'm the hardest, most frustrating boss in the game."
"Me too," she giggled back at him. "I'm almost impossible to hit with a linear launcher. Hehe. Think of the power we would have if we teamed up. Imagine how infuriating we would be! We could have world domination."
She winked playfully at him and he felt a slimy tentacle rub his foot under the table. He gave her a cheeky smile, "Oh, you wanna play footsies do you?"
Removing his hand he sent it underneath and naughtily up her dress to caress her thighs. Hopefully she wouldn't freak out or think that he was being too forward but he wasn't going to waste time; she should know what his intentions were.
Alexia loved it. He was vibrating ever so slightly and gave off a soft yet electrifying tingle. She was intrigued by what else he could do.
"How does that feel?" he smiled seductively giving her leg a little squeeze.
"Oh, it's amazing," she gasped. "I am so intrigued by your abilities. You are a magnificent specimen."
"Thank you," Monsoon blushed. "Shall we go upstairs and I can show you nature's law?"
Alexia's face lit up, "Yes, I'd like that very much."
She took him upstairs into a secret attic that was full of toys and had a carousel in the middle of it. Cute, he thought. They lay on the floor gazing longingly at each other. Alexia couldn't keep her hands off him, drawn by his magnetism. With every stroke of his chest his purple glow grew stronger.
"It's cool that you're in touch with nature but there's nothing natural about you," she said.
"I know. I'm a paradox. Nothing about me makes sense," he said, a smug tone in his voice.
"I like that. There are things about me that don't make sense too. There's this thing with my brother but I'll explain that another time…"
"Leave the past where it is. I have no interest in whatever you and your brother got up to. We have both committed terrible crimes but needs must in this cruel, diseased world. Tonight is about us and the pleasure we can give each other. Tomorrow we can kill, or we might be killed."
"Oh Monsoon you say the sweetest things. Can I ask you a question?" she giggled nervously and her cheeks heated up.
"Ask me anything your heart desires my love."
"Erm… would you mind if I… umm… touched your dome?"
Yes! He thought she would never ask. His smile widened as he took hold of her wrists and guided her to his primary erogenous zone on his head. As soon as her palms touched him, he gave her a pleasurable electric jolt. She looked at him with eyes brimming with passion and lust and climbed onto his lap so she could get a better grip on his dome, circling her thumbs to massage him and gently stroking him with her fingertips. He felt so aroused that his purple neon glow intensified enough to light up the entire room creating a romantic soft lighting effect. They shared a passionate kiss, adhering to their pasts when they were both human. Alexia ran her hands down his back and settled them on his Sais, her curiosity spiking.
"Can you show me?" she asked.
Monsoon happily obliged and performed some of his tricks with Dystopia, teasingly twiddling her hair around it.
"How amusing," she giggled then asked enthusiastically. "Can I have a go?"
Begrudgingly, Monsoon parted with one of his Sai, warning to be careful with it so she would not hurt herself or the Sai. Alexia simply laughed and used her own powers to enchant it with fire, creating a beautiful improved weapon entwined with dancing purple flames. There was no doubt about it, Monsoon was falling in love.
"Definitely exquisite," he gasped.
Alexia kissed him again. Monsoon kissed back while running his fingers through her hair and using his abilities to unbutton her dress. It was about time she showed him some of that beautiful virus addled skin. He took charge, demonstrating how bossy and dominating he could be, and lay her back on the floor to straddle her.
"You're mine," he said licking his lips.
He teased her, running his tongue along her neck and caressing her breasts. Alexia moaned gratefully in ecstasy, enjoying the foreplay. She lifted her leg up and lovingly rubbed her foot against the side of his head. For both of them, it felt like paradise. Monsoon felt her body heat up. Oh god… was she? Yes! She was starting to mutate!
He gazed in fascination and euphoric wonder as her dress became engulfed in flames before his eyes and her skin transformed into her true form… The sheer magnitude of his arousal was almost shameful. No cyborg could thrill him like this. It was like a dream come true.
"You… you are beautiful," he whispered, so enthralled by her that he could barely speak.
Alexia looked at him expectantly and commanded him, "Serve me, my sexy specimen."
Monsoon obeyed. He liked it that she was ordering him around and giving him a taste of his own medicine. Like him, she was no pushover and fiery in more ways than one. He ran his tongue down the middle of her body, sucking and kissing as he went while placing his hands on her breasts and giving her a warm, sensational vibration. His face between her thighs, he prepared to feast on her. Only in his wildest fantasies had he done this, never, ever had he imagined that he would be doing it for real with such a stunning and powerful BOW. He was in heaven. He flicked his tongue on her, enjoying her taste as she was pleased by him.
However as his love muscle burrowed in deeper he felt something nip him so he looked down and saw an ant crawl out of her moist love pot! He leapt back, not because of the ant (that didn't bother him) but because he could feel something in his throat. No… was he going to be sick again?
"What's wrong my sweet cyborg?" Alexia asked sounding alarmed.
He spluttered clamping his hand over his mouth but it did nothing to contain the spew that came out and splattered over her leg. Mortified, he apologised repeatedly but all Alexia could do was smile seductively… did she actually like it? Surely no species could get turned on by being vomited on? He looked down and to his surprise, saw that he had thrown up another weevil only this time, it was made of metal and giving off the same purple magnetic aura that he was! He watched, stunned, as it scurried up her inner thigh and entered her.
She let out a cry of pleasure, "Oh Monsoon that feels so good!"
"Do you like it?" he asked.
"Yes!" she squealed.
He grinned at her, making out that he meant to do it. She sat up and began caressing his dome with her tentacle, exciting him very much. It wouldn't be long before he climaxed. Alexia sensed this and intensified her actions, pressing her body against his, savouring the gentle hum and vibration he gave her… It was hard to know who was getting the most pleasure! Monsoon guided her to the sweet spot on his dome as their lips locked together again. The sensation of her scales against his head was pure paradise and unable to contain himself any longer, he moaned and unleashed oil all over her, before falling to pieces in ecstasy.
"Oh Monsoon," Alexia sighed dreamily as she lay down beside his disassembled parts. "That was amazing. I think I'm in love with you."
Monsoon tenderly stroked her hair with his detached hand, feeling so relaxed in her company that he didn't need to put himself back together, "I love you too, my queen."
He leaned in for a kiss but their beautiful moment was shattered by a loud hammering on the door. A distinct growl could be heard with the undisputed utter of, "Desperado."
Monsoon hastily reassembled himself and drew Dystopia, now on red alert. There was no mistaking that voice… Nemesis. That stubborn freak was still after him! He had to admire his persistence…
"Calm down my love," Alexia attempted to reassure him. "He'll never get you. My men will stop him. Come back here and hold me."
Anxiously, Monsoon lay back down but kept one hand on his Sai, just in case.
"I would very much like you to come to Denver with me," he said, clutching her hand, sensing that his time on Rockfort Island was running out.
Nemesis' thuds on the door grew louder and were answered by Alexia's butler. Sure enough, the noise ceased and Nemesis seemed to retreat… Monsoon breathed a sigh of relief. Not that he couldn't fight him off… he just did not want his time with his beloved Alexia interrupted. He began to recharge himself in preparation for round two, when there was a tremendous crash from above.
Nemesis!
The great beast came thundering through the skylight and landed next to them, his presence shattering their warm embrace.
"Desperado," he growled, glaring menacingly at Monsoon.
Monsoon stood to attention and whipped out both Sais, ready to fight.
"Don't even think about it cyborg!" yelled Nemesis and took out an EMP grenade as a warning.
Monsoon hesitated then lowered his weapon, hoping they could negotiate a truce. At that moment he felt the missing piece of his arm tingle… it must have been close! Nemesis smirked at him and pulled out the piece of metal from his pocket.
"Here, you left this on my ship!" he bellowed hurling it back at him.
"Erm… thank you I guess," Monsoon answered sticking it back in its rightful place.
He should have known all would not be as it seemed. As soon as it was reattached, he felt a sudden pang of hunger for flesh… He looked at his newly acquired arm and to his horror found that he had sprouted an eye!
"What have you done to me?" he yelled.
"You're infected on a massive level," Nemesis said smugly. "There's no cure for you now."
With every breath, he could feel his powers slipping away from him as the infection spread from his arm to every inch of his body. His purple glow was diminished. He fell to his knees in despair and annoyance that he had been thwarted by something as stupid as a Nemesis. A stinging sensation came over his back as the beginnings of tentacles began to sprout. The letters on his shoulder no longer spelled 'Desperado' but… 'UMBRELLA'!
"No! Nemesis how could you do something so horrid?" Alexia cried despairingly wrapping her arms around the distraught Monsoon.
"Shut up Alexia, what are you doing with it anyway?" Nemesis shot back. "Eurgh gross… is that oil on you? You actually had sex with it? You'll catch glitch for sure now."
"He doesn't have glitch! He's a real gentleman and he's amazing in bed!"
Monsoon took a little comfort in hearing his lady defend him but Nemesis' response made his blood run cold.
"Well I bet he didn't make you moan in bed the way I did last night. That threesome we had… man that was good."
He turned and glared at Alexia who did nothing to deny it. He brushed her arms off him and pushed her away. The past was the past… but last night they had been chatting online and promised themselves exclusive to each other! Alexia had betrayed him! If he had eyes in his head, they would have been filling with tears, although sadly it came as no surprise to him. He was used to heartache.
Nemesis roared triumphantly and took out his rocket launcher.
"Now that you're mutation, I can blast you with this," he said pointing it at his head.
Monsoon feebly attempted to use his powers but the mutation was too strong and had taken over.
"Hmph, do as you please," he said glumly, ready to accept his fate with what little dignity he had left.
As Nemesis was about to pull the trigger, he suddenly had a flashback to just before he boarded the Queen Zenobia… Jill had given him a blue herb! Although he couldn't recall at the time, now he remembered reading online somewhere, blue herbs were used to cure poison! Yes! Reenergised, he swiftly threw a smoke grenade to temporarily blind Nemesis, crushed the blue herb in his palm and snorted it. Within seconds, his tentacles dropped off and the eye on his arm withered away. By the time the smoke cleared, his glow had returned and he was fully charged and seething with rage!
"You're dead," he snarled at Nemesis as he blew up the rocket launcher then launched a full scale attack with Dystopia.
Alexia watched in awe as he pummelled him until he lay unconscious on the ground. Nemesis never stood a chance. Monsoon stood proudly over his triumph with his smug grin all over his face.
"Oh baby you're so strong," Alexia gasped. "Come back here and make love to me again."
Monsoon looked at her in disgust. He had no interest in her anymore, he'd had his way with her and she was a filthy cheat anyway. His lust for mutation satisfied, he came to the conclusion that she was not worth his life. Nemesis had almost killed him; he had to look out for himself. He would have to try and learn to love cyborgs!
"I'm sorry," he said regretfully to her. "But it's back to the earth for you."
She began to protest that Nemesis meant nothing to her and it had been a mistake but it was too late. He threw a smoke grenade at her so she would not be able to follow him and disappeared, leaving her sobbing and broken hearted. He couldn't wait to get home and be back in his apartment!
Before he even got to the port, he was confronted by something he did not expect to see… Metal Gear Excelsus! Nevertheless, he was more than happy to jump in. The consequences of Armstrong were the lesser of two evils; he'd just have to take his punishment for pulling a sickie.
"Pansy," Armstrong grunted at him. "I am disappointed in you Monsoon. I did not know you were into such disgusting things..."
"It was a mistake, I should not have tried to fight nature, I let myself down," he answered glumly hanging his head in shame.
"Damn straight. I hope she was worth it. You know I can't let you go unpunished."
Monsoon shrugged; whatever punishment he had lined up for him would be nothing compared to what he had already been through. But of course, Armstrong was one step ahead and called upon his new found friend who he had picked up along the way… none other than Nemesis!
NO!
"Desperado," he grinned, launching an EMP grenade at him.
Armstrong appeared smug and handed out a cigar to Nemesis as Monsoon shattered into pieces.
"Fancy a game of football?" he asked picking up his head.
Nine months later…
"Congratulations Alexia! You have a...a… oh god what is that!"
Alexia held her newborn baby girl in her arms as she gazed adoringly up at her with a grin clearly inherited from her father and burning red eyes from her. She had silver hair, scales, tentacles stumps of wings and her limbs were in segments… was she magnetised and able to come apart too? Alexia looked down at the abomination, a splice between cyborg and T-Veronica virus that would grow and have unimaginable powers… With her and Monsoon as parents, how would she be anything else?
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