#that he says 'it's disgusting and I hate it' while actively shoveling sweets in his face

[somebodycall911onabc]

More post 4x13, Maddie-centric, a little Madney, a little Buddie. I just want her to be happy. Warning for a lot of emotions in this one, folks.

Maddie is elbow deep in soapy water when her phone starts ringing. She tells Hildy to answer (being a parent has definitely taught her the wonders of technology, unlike Eddie) while she shuts off the tap and reaches for the dish towel.

“Hello?” She asks, seeing Chimney’s name scrawled across the screen. It’s been two hours since he last called—not concerning, but a deviation from the usual.

“Maddie. Are you OK? How’s Jee?”

A bad call, maybe. He could’ve lost someone.

“We’re good,” Maddie says, stealing herself. She hates to lie to him, but she’s being honest in the way he means. They’re not hurting in any way he can fix.

He breathes out a whistling breath over the phone. “Good. Good. Thank God.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No. No, I mean. I’m fine. But… Jesus…” He mutters something too low for her to hear. “It’s Eddie. He’s in the hospital — alive — but, but he got… he was shot, clean through the shoulder. Some psycho opened fire on the LAPD.”

Maddie’s heart drops to her stomach, where it stays for another hour until Chimney walks through their door. She’s holding Jee-Yun, who’s wailing like her little lungs are about to give out, but she and Chimney find each other like magnetic poles. She steps into his arms and wishes that the whole world could just drop away. Just her, and Chimney, and their daughter. That would be enough.

“It’s all over the news,” Maddie says. Jee-Yun seems to have been stunned into silence by the unexpected arrival of her dad.

“Athena says they’ve got some of the best people in the department on it,” Chimney says. “They’re gonna catch him.”

“They’d better.”

“Yeah well, otherwise, they’re going to have Amateur Detective Buck on their hands again.”

Jee-Yun starts hiccuping, picking up where she left off, and Chimney steps back to lift her out of Maddie’s arms. She lets go without a fight. She’s so tired of fighting.

“Don’t even joke about that. I’m sure he’s losing his mind—he hasn’t answered any of my calls or messages.”

Chimney attempts a smile. Or maybe all along he’d been going for that twisted grimace. “Bobby’s corralling him, don’t worry. Your brother isn’t going to do anything stupid.”

“Like drag Athena into an active investigation to chase down the man who stabbed you and kidnapped me?”

“Yeah,” Chimney says. “Exactly like that.”

Maddie turns her head to look out the window. She knows what he’s going to say in answer to her question, and she can’t bring herself to look at him when he does. “So what are you all going to do? What happens when someone targets the entire Las Angeles Fire Department?”

“Our jobs,” he says, and Maddie closes her eyes. “We have to, Maddie. We called in C-shift today, but we go back tomorrow.”

“OK,” Maddie hears herself say. What else can she do? How can she tell him that she’s afraid they’ve avoided tragedy one too many times, that she can see them all running to the end of a line, nothing but a long fall below them?

She feels like someone froze half of her in ice, then told the other half to run for her life. She feels fathoms deep in very dark water, but someone is screaming in her ear to swim up, up, up.

When Chimney pulls on the bullet-proof vest, Maddie doesn’t say anything. The human throat wasn’t made for the drawn-out scream inside her head.

Maddie doesn’t visit Eddie while he’s at the hospital. Between Jee-Yun and her own shifts at work, there isn’t time. She feels a little bad about that, but despite their small social circle, she and Eddie haven’t gotten that close over the years. Buck takes up all the air and space when he’s around, a wildfire that she and Eddie chase around and keep from burning up the furniture. But Maddie feels like she should have been there while Eddie was confined to a hospital bed, watching his friends risk the same fate as him when they pulled on their uniforms—she feels a sort of kinship with him. With that helplessness.

So she shows up at his door a week later with Jee-Yun and dinner.

Buck lets her in, which has ceased to be surprising as a general rule, but seems a little suspicious in these circumstances. She hasn’t heard anyone mention Ana’s name since the shooting.

“Jee-Jee!” Buck shouts, whisking Jee-Yun from Maddie’s arms.

“Oh, hi, how are you,” she mutters, watching Buck as he kisses Jee-Yun’s nose and grins. He looks like he needs a long shower and an even longer nap. But Jee-Yun giggles at him as he makes faces and smacks his lips. It’s sweet. It only hurts a little, seeing how good Buck is with her, when sometimes Maddie still thinks of him as that little kid she stitched up every time the world knocked him down. It only hurts a little that for Maddie, getting Jee-Yun to smile is like pulling out her own teeth with rusty pliers (i.e., really goddamn difficult).

“Hey, Maddie,” Eddie says, reaching the door. He nudges Buck aside to make room for Maddie to come in. “It’s good to see you.”

Maddie looks at his cast, at the way Eddie hunches in on himself and the blue-black bruises beneath his eyes from exhaustion and blunt-force head trauma, and feels so goddamn guilty. She should have come sooner. She should have tried harder.

“Hey,” she replies, wiggling the takeout bag, “I come with nourishment.”

“By all means,” Eddie says, sweeping his hand out to the hallway. Maddie leads the way to the kitchen, Eddie slumping behind her, Buck cooing at Jee-Yun and somehow managing not to walk into a wall.

“I figured something light and healthy would be best,” Maddie says, dropping the bag on the counter.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much doctor’s orders,” Eddie agrees. He peeks inside the canvas tote and pulls out a container, opening it up to reveal a big, green salad. “Oh, you shouldn’t have.”

“It was no problem—“ Maddie starts, but she realizes Eddie is wrinkling his nose in disgust, not gratitude. “Oh, shut up and eat your veggies. There’s chicken in it,” she adds with a laugh.

“Where?” Eddie snorts, eyeing the salad like it might come to life and strangle him with leafy hands.

“Chris! Guess who’s here!” Buck, who hasn’t heard a word of their conversation, barrels into the living room where Chris is sitting on the floor with a host of action figures.

“Don’t—don’t let her put anything in her mouth!” Maddie calls after him.

Eddie chuckles and takes a seat at the table. “How’s it going with her? With Chimney?”

“Us?” Maddie keeps her eye on the living room situation while she sits down across from Eddie. “We’re fine. How are you? Buck seems to be living in your back pocket lately.”

“Yeah, he’s been…” Eddie trails off, and Maddie glances over to see him looking at the living room. She turns her eyes back to see Buck sitting cross-legged on the floor, cradling Jee-Yun while showing Chris her tiny fingers. The first time he held Jee-Yun, Buck had lost his mind over her fingernails. They’re so small, he’d said reverently. How could anything be so small?

“I wouldn’t be here without him,” Eddie finishes. “I think I’m going to ask him to move in.” The way he says it isn’t a joke, isn’t something light-hearted about being down an arm or how Buck is free labor. He sounds contemplative. Wondrous.

“Oh,” Maddie says. “But what about… I mean, won’t that be kind of weird for Ana?”

“Buck didn’t tell you?” Eddie asks, turning back to face her and fishing a fork out of the bag. “Ana broke up with me.”

“Oh, my god.”

“I know. But it wasn’t like what happened with Chimney. Ana had the guts to say it to my face.”

“Jesus, Eddie, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was the right call. I’m not upset, actually.” Eddie pokes around the container until he finds a piece of chicken, throwing Maddie a smile as he picks it up. “It was the easiest breakup I’ve ever had.”

“Well, that’s… good.” Maddie pulls the bag toward her and lifts out her own salad. She’d gotten Chris chicken fingers and fries, but Eddie doesn’t have to know that. Not until he finishes his grown-up, post-ballistic-surgery food. “Then should I ask what your intentions are towards my brother?”

Eddie chokes on his lettuce. She flashes him a smile while he struggles to swallow. “He is a strapping young man,” she adds. “Very… able-bodied.”

“You’re evil,” Eddie says, laughing.

“No, just observant,” she counters. “Every time I called Buck this week, he was either with you or Chris.”

“I keep telling you people that Buck’s suspension wasn’t my fault. I was unconscious when it happened.”

“All I’m saying is, my brother wouldn’t risk losing his job for just anyone.”

“You think so?” Eddie asks, smiling down at the table.

Maddie takes a delicate bite of spinach and pomegranate seed. “My brother spent a long time running, Eddie. I always thought he was just running away, but he was running toward something. The 118 is his family. But you and Chris are special. He would bleed himself dry if it meant keeping the two of you safe.”

Eddie’s fork is paused halfway to his mouth.

“Don’t take advantage of that,” Maddie says. “If you can’t say the same for him, you need to let him go. I’ve seen him hurt too many times, Eddie.” And she doesn’t mean just Abby—she means their parents. She watched Buck drag himself through hell for a love he shouldn’t have had to fight for. She means herself, too, because she knows that the years he spent thinking she’d chosen Doug over him had cut him deeper than she had any chance of healing. Even now that he knows the truth, there’s a scar.

“You’re a good sister.” Eddie lowers his fork and meets her eyes. “I wasn’t really expecting the shovel talk a week after getting shot, but I promise you that I feel the same.”

“Well, good,” she says. Then, “Oh god, I really did corner you while you’re—I apologize. That was thoughtless and rude of me.”

Eddie just laughs. “Please, Shannon was a wreck the whole first year. She actually forgot my birthday.”

“Oh, Chimney would never let that happen,” Maddie says, feeling a genuine, soft smile cross her face. This is the first time in a week she hasn’t felt the weight of the entire world on her shoulders. It’s an unexpected, but welcome, break. “He starts dropping hints at least three months in advance.”

“I wasn’t really around to remind her,” Eddie says. “That’s my biggest regret, really. Not being around more when Chris was little.”

Ah, there’s the familiar, soul-crushing weight of the world again. It was a nice minute, while it lasted. “It must have been hard to be away from him. I can’t even imagine…” Maddie swallows, but her food tastes sour, acrid. She can imagine. She has. She’s fantasized. About walking out the door. About not coming back.

“That’s the thing,” Eddie says, “it kind of... I mean, I missed him, and I missed Shannon. And now? I would rather get shot a thousand times than leave Chris. But at the time, it was easy. Ridiculously, insanely easy.”

Maddie watches as Eddie runs his hand through his hair, a twisted smile taking over his face. “What kind of fucking father chooses a war zone over his own wife and kid, you know? I kept telling myself it was for them, it was for us. But really I was just scared. I was terrified of it, of being a husband, a father. I didn’t know how to be those things.”

There’s something unfolding inside Maddie’s chest. An old hurt, an old fear, unraveling for her to finally grasp at its edges and see the bloody, wretched mess. “I don’t either,” she admits. She hasn’t said that to anyone. Not Buck, not Athena, not Josh. Certainly not her parents. Because that thing inside her, that little girl curled in on herself to hide away her broken heart—her parents had a lot to do with it. “I’m so scared. All the time. She’s tiny, and perfect, and I’m… I’m not good enough.”

“Yeah, I get it,” Eddie says.

“No,” Maddie says. “I’m going to ruin her, Eddie. I’m a horrible mother. I don’t know what I was thinking. I can’t do this.”

“Whoah, whoah.” Eddie reaches his hand across the table to grip hers, tight. Maddie raises her other hand to her face to wipe her eyes. “You’re doing great, Maddie. You’re really good with her.”

“No, I’m not. Not really. I mean, Buck is more of a natural at this than I am.” He’s in the living room, letting Jee-Yun chew on the collar of his shirt, while Chris is talking and gesturing wildly with his hands. Buck looks happy. He looks rapt, focused. All in.

“I don’t think anyone’s naturally a good parent. I think it’s supposed to be hard. That’s how you know you’re doing it right.”

“I just don’t want to hurt her,” Maddie says, watching Buck, watching Jee-Yun, watching Chris. This beautiful tableau of a family that she wants so desperately to be part of.

“That’s normal. That fear is… hell, Maddie. That’s parenthood.”

“How do you deal with it? How do you walk around with that, knowing… knowing any moment, you might fail?”

Eddie tightens his hold on her hand, pulls on it slightly to bring her focus back around to him. “I’m going to tell you something I told Buck a long time ago,” he says. “You’re going to make mistakes. It’s not like there’s some test you can study for and get the perfect kid at the end. What matters is that you love them enough to keep trying.”

Maddie remembers Buck, what feels like a lifetime ago, staring down their parents. Love me anyway, he’d said. “It’s that simple?” She asks, feeling hollow. Feeling like she failed before she even crossed the starting line.

“Of course not,” Eddie says. “It’s hard work, loving someone. But you’re not in it alone, either. You’ve got all of us.”

He’s right. Maybe she can put a little bit of the load down, once in a while. Maybe she doesn’t have to be crushed by all that weight.

“I’m sorry,” she says, cracking a smile, “all we’re doing is talking about me.”

“Trust me, it’s a relief,” Eddie says, smiling back. “All anyone wants me to do is talk about how I’m feeling. I’m sick of talking about myself.”

“It’s nice to know you’re not the only one with problems?”

“Yeah. Exactly that.”

They share a raw, honest smile, and Maddie does feel a little bit lighter. “I’ll be sure to come back for more sage advice,” she says, pulling her hand away.

“Next time, bring pizza,” Eddie says. It makes Maddie laugh.

When she gets home, she puts Jee-Yun to bed and looks at her. Just takes in that fragile nose, the impossibly delicate eyelids, her perfect, untidy mouth. She thinks about how she’s been scared her whole life—of upsetting her parents, of hurting Buck, of losing Doug, of leaving Doug, of finding love.

But all those fears, they brought her here. So maybe this is just another journey, and maybe it’s OK to be scared.

When Chimney gets home the next morning, he crawls into bed with Maddie and Jee-Yun. Their daughter had started fussing at three in the morning, and now they were both exhausted. But Maddie holds on tight, holds Jee-Yun close, and when Chimney wraps his arms around them and drops a kiss into her hair, Maddie hears him say, "my two best girls. How did I get so lucky?"

And she thinks, this. This can be enough.

[misssquidtracy]

Noble Intentions (Part 2).

My slightly belated ongoing contribution to Gordo’s FabFiveFeb week. Apparently, this is now going to be a 3 chapter doohickey of sorts. My boi has made it quite clear that any plans I had about length matter very little here.  

All credit for FabFiveFeb goes to the amazing @gumnut-logic 💚

Prompt: You did what?

Warnings: Mild strong language.

Genre: Humour.

Characters: Gordon, Scott, Virgil, John, Alan. Heavy on the Gordon.

-x-

Two months, seventeen hours, and eleven minutes earlier…

“You did what?”

Gordon winced as the mouthful of water Scott had been storing in his cheeks was spat clean across the table.

“What?” the aquanaut challenged, indignation creeping into his voice as he reached across Alan for another spoonful of sweet potato mash, “They were looking for models and I signed us up. It’s for a good cause!”

“A nude calendar?” John quacked, his eyebrows shooting up to his hairline, “Gordon, we’re a professional rescue organisation. We have a public image to maintain!”

“Not to mention better things to be doing with our time,” Virgil grumbled, scraping the last of his peas onto his fork, “What if an emergency call were to come through while we were…ahem…mid-pose?”

A scowl infected Gordon’s face as he metaphorically searched for a metaphorical shovel to metaphorically dig himself out of the metaphorical hole he was metaphorically digging, “I didn’t sign us up for all twelve months. Just our birth months.”

Another mouthful of water was ejected across the table, eliciting a gasp of disgust from John when he discovered that he was sat in the splash zone.

“You signed Alan up as well?” Scott all but squealed, “He’s a minor, Gordon!”

“Okay, okay,” the aquanaut sighed, wincing at the volume of his eldest brother’s voice, “I’ll take his place and do two sittings for both February and March. Problem solved.”

Disbelieving stares were exchanged across the table as Gordon polished off his dinner and traipsed to the sink to refill his glass.

“You’re off your onion!” Scott snapped, striding after the aquanaut and lobbing his plate in the dishwasher with more force than was necessary, “Well, we’re not going. You’ll have to go back on whatever promises you’ve made and cancel everything. And don’t think that order excludes you. International Rescue has a professional behaviour framework that we’re duty-bound to follow, and pasting our naked assess across couches and bales of hay doesn’t feature in it anywhere.”

Water was sloshed across the counter as Gordon rinsed his glass out and tried to contain his frustration. Typical Scott, always so hung up on appearances. He hadn’t even bothered to ask what the calendar was in aid of.

“We’ll send over a generous donation instead,” Scott placated, as if somehow reading Gordon’s mind, “Is it someone we’ve worked with before?”

“Children of Colombia,” Gordon replied, “They operate out of Bogotá and channel all their money into educational programmes and residential homes instead of advertising. That’s why I signed us up. I thought our ‘famous’ faces might help them a bit in that department.”

Moved by his younger brother’s kind hearted gesture, John opened his mouth to ask for more details, only to have his questioning tongue silenced by a glare from Scott.

If there was one thing that always made the eldest Tracy’s emotional kayak run aground, it was guilt.

“Well, they’ll have to make do with a fat-ass cheque instead,” Scott muttered, kicking the dishwasher shut and needlessly throwing a tea towel into the sink, “You can hate me all you want, but I wasn’t the one who made the rules. One day of disappointment isn’t worth us losing all of our credibility, plus our rapid response service would be redundant if all five of us were there at the same time. Nope, you’re going to have to tell them no, Gordon. And if I catch wind of you honouring the agreement beyond the aforementioned fat-ass cheque, I’ll suspend you from active duty for a week. Capisce?”

Without giving the aquanaut a chance to reply, Scott retrieved a banana from the fruit bowl and marched off in the direction of the lounge, his expression reminiscent of a pissed off camel.

“You saw that, right?” Gordon demanded, waiting until Scott was a safe distance away before stabbing a finger accusingly in the direction he’d walked off in, “I was minding my business, and he threatened to ground me! This is all because he knows I’d pull the whole thing off way better than he would.”

Both Virgil and John were smart enough to neither confirm nor deny their younger brother’s claim to nude fame. Alan had questions, oh so many questions, but was thankfully prioritising a text on his phone over his desire to seek answers.

“I’m telling you now,” Gordon continued, abandoning his glass and stomping off towards the pool, “If Poseidon appears before me and asks me to make a blood sacrifice, he’s gone. Gone, I say.”

-x-

“Hello?”

“Gabriela!” Gordon tried to keep his tone as upbeat as possible, “How are things?”

“Mr Tracy!” came the delighted response, “What a lovely surprise! I have some excellent news. We officially sold out of tickets for the International Rescue Calendar Class three days ago and, as a result of popular demand, will now be selling the resultant paintings off at a silent auction to raise money for a tutoring programme aimed at local women fleeing domestic abuse. Our forecasts show that we’re set to exceed our original target by almost eight five percent, and it’s all thanks to you!”

Great.

Lovely.

Wonderful.

Magnifique.

“Yeah, about that,” Gordon began, his tone hesitant, “You see the thing is, I now can’t make it. Something’s popped up and I’m kind of needed here. I’m so sorry.”

There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the phone, “Okay…well, that’s not ideal. I won’t lie. But I’m sure we’ll be able to make do with four out of five. Which reminds me, do any of your colleagues have any dietary requirements or allergies that my team should be aware of?”

“Sorry, I wasn’t very clear,” Gordon clenched his fist as guilt began to gnaw at his insides, “What I meant to say is that none of us can come anymore. I’m afraid I was impulsive and signed us up before consulting with the rest of my team. I’m so sorry. We will of course compensate you for the losses you’ll incur in the form of a donation, plus an extra twenty five percent on top for the inconvenience caused.”

A silence that somehow managed to hurt Gordon’s ears descended over the line, punctuated by the odd stifled sniff.

“B-But I can certainly send a substitute over in our place,” the aquanaut gabbled, cursing the lack of a link between his brain and mouth, “He’s not an emergency responder per se, but he’s an integral member of the team and the one responsible for designing the Thunderbirds.”

The line crackled to life again as Gordon’s offer refreshed Gabriela’s composure, “Really? Oh, yes please. It’ll be a disappointment to everyone who’s already bought a ticket, but I suppose we haven’t technically misled them so long as there’s at least one representative from International Rescue there.”

“Perfect!” Gordon chirped, setting an immediate course for the hangers, “I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, don’t cancel anything. See you on Friday!”

Of all the brothers, Gordon liked to think of himself as the most strategic when it came to picking his battles. He’d grown up watching Scott, Virgil and John jockeying for position, and had then had Alan to sharpen his own claws on. All in all, being the fourth born wasn’t as bad as it sounded. He’d been exposed to both subservience and dominance in equal measures, and was acutely aware of how far he could push each of his siblings before they tipped into Bitch Fit Canyon.

Alan was a cinch so long as no references were made to his height.

John was manageable if bagels were in the immediate vicinity.

Virgil could be tamed with tears of remorse, fake or genuine.

As for Scott…well, what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.

TBC.

[filthshotgun]

2Moons The Series ming/kit domestic pwp, vanilla with a dash of size kink of various types 1.2k

Kit's sweating and moaning and gasping for breath underneath him, wrists pinned to the bed, eyes half closed and practically rolled back in his head. He'd been so cute in the beginning, back when he was still insisting he was straight. He's still cute, but now sometimes he goes the extra mile of begging and whining for Ming's cock. That, Ming's decided, is the cutest.

"Kitty," he groans into Kit's ear, pushing in slow and deep to make him moan. "My little Kitten."

"Don't - d-don't call me that," Kit whines. "I'm not little." He's breathless, his voice hoarse. He says not to call him that but he shivers, blushes all down his perfect slight body, finds Ming's mouth with enough want and desperation to make it clear that he doesn't mean it and he doesn't want him to stop.

(They've had a lot of discussions regarding how smart it is to act all tsundere while being actively fucked. Something's been worked out, but mostly what Ming knows is that if Kit says they're done they're done. He's fine with that. It's always been true.)

"Kit Kat," Ming murmurs. He adjusts, pulling Kit's hips a little farther up his thighs so he can fuck him even deeper. He curves over, licking a stripe up Kit's throat as though tasting his pulse. "You taste so sweet. Like candy."

Kit's dick is small even erect and Ming loves it. He loves taking the whole thing in his mouth, stroking the length with his tongue and bringing Kit to the edge over and over and over until he's threatening to not only leave the room but also him. (He's always lying.)

Ming fucks hard into him and Kit's dick jerks as he cries out, knees practically by his ears. His cock, (his adorable cock - even though he hates it when Ming calls it his Sweet Little Friend), hard and flushed dark, smearing precum over the sloped convex plane of his lower stomach where he’s filled out a little with chocolate (courtesy of Ming) and rich food (also courtesy of Ming).

("I'm going to get fat," he'll say sometimes, shoveling food into his mouth. "Then you'll see."

Ming always just looks him up and down, from his bony ankles to his knees to his soft waist to his broad, stocky shoulders, to his curious fox eyes and expressive mouth and dimples so beautiful he almost wonders if he really is dating the moon.

"Shut up," Kit says every time, going pink from the tips of his ears all the way down past his collar. It doesn't matter if Ming says anything. The look on his face is enough. "I'm eating. You'll ruin my appetite.")

These days when Ming sneaks up behind him to fold him up in his arms Kit squawks but doesn't resist, instead settling surreptitiously back against Ming's chest and taking a deep quiet breath of relief that he probably doesn't think anyone notices. It's cute. Kit's cute. His body used to be so hard and unyielding under Ming's hands but he's gotten softer. Maybe it's just that he's more relaxed, but these days Ming can wake up his boyfriend with a series of increasingly obnoxious tummy raspberries whereas before there wasn't that much to raspberry. (Sometimes he gets two tones. Kit yells at him when he laughs triumphantly but he's easily quieted with kisses.)

"I'm so close," Kit moans, whines, his voice twisted with effort and ecstasy. "Ming, I - come on--"

Ming could almost come just from hearing Kit's voice like that, sex-drunk and desperate, but the fun isn't over yet.

"What do you say?" he asks, slowing his pace and pounding heavily into him.

"Fuck you," Kit gasps.

"Not quite. Try again."

"Ming, Ming I will - fuck - when this, I'm - Ming--"

"Ask nicely," Ming says, punctuating his words with a series of deep thrusts following the rhythm of his syllables.

"No," Kit hisses. A drop of sweat trickles down his forehead and into his hair. "Just let me come. Let me - oh god--" He sucks in a deep breath and writhes. "Lemme at least touch myself," he amends. He's already sounding humbled. He's feeling weak today. (Ming can't say he minds.)

Ming squeezes Kit's wrists in his hands. "What, you mean with these?"

"Asshole," Kit spits at him. His whole body clenches and for a second Ming's the one at his boyfriend's mercy.

"Such dirty words from such a beautiful mouth," Ming croons. He's close too, practically seeing stars as he pushes over and over and over into Kit's soft, warm, welcoming body. "What do you say?"

"Let go of my wrists I'm your senior." The words tumble out of Kit's mouth like marbles from a bowl. "Ming." (His name in Kit's is barely a breath and he's so close. He's so close.) "Stop teasing me, I'm--" Here it comes. "Please Ming, Ming, please just let me come I'm begging you--"

He doesn't always push Kit until he begs, tears shining at the corners of his eyes, but he does when he's been woken up with a boner poking him in the leg and Kit insisting resolutely that he's Fine he's just full of Nervous Energy as he reads his class notes over and over again with color in his cheeks and the attention span of an aroused jellyfish. (Ming had even asked him what class he was studying for and Kit didn't seem sure.)

Ming pulls out suddenly, (Kit whining weakly when he's left unexpectedly empty), letting his boyfriend fall flat on the bed and releasing Kit's wrists and straightening up and jerking his cock two, three more times to splatter cum over Kit's chest and throat.

"Asshole," Kit moans, "that's not what I asked for, you - that's - Ming--"

Kit's small cock sits on Ming's tongue, throbbing and salty-sweet, and he gives it a long, thorough suck like he's eating a brand new popsicle. Kit chokes, both hands tangling in Ming's hair as his hips kick upward involuntary.

He comes. Ming swallows, coddles his boyfriend through his release, marvels at how beautiful Kit is when he arches up like this with his sweet mouth open in a perfect oh.

Sometimes Kit says Ming's name when he comes. Today is sometimes, and Ming could be ready for round two in minutes just from Kit sobbing something in the shape of his name.

Kit just lies there for a while, splayed a little to keep from touching himself as he stares wall-eyed at the ceiling and tries, naked and beautiful, to catch his breath.

"What are you doing," he says after a bit. His voice is so broken, Ming's gonna get it later.

"Cleaning up after myself." Ming glances up from where he's hanging low over Kit's belly. "Why?"

"You've got cum on your nose," Kit says. "That's disgusting."

"I'm disgusting," Ming says back. He doesn't tend to the jizz on his face, instead opting to dip back down and continue the careful work of licking his own cum off of Kit's body.

"Well at least you're self aware," Kit grumbles. "You're the worst, you know that?"

"Mm. You love me."

"Shut up," Kit says, and Ming doesn't even have to look up to tell he's blushing.

[solomonfiore]

Pigs

We’d been corralled into a muddy pen from out of the back of a truck. The pig next to me led by example on what not to do. He stood up on two legs to announce that a mistake had been made. He was not a pig at all, he said, but a human being.

This behavior was unsettling to the pigs around him. A few of them approached him nervously. They comforted him with fake smiles, wiggling their snouts against his cheeks. He was just confused, they assured him. He’d adjust to his new quarters and soon accept that he was a pig after all. He’d just been traumatized from being so suddenly relocated.

This coddling was squelched the instant the more hardened hams came to address the new arrivals. Flaunting their bigotry and ethnocentrism like trophies, these alpha pigs went down a list of rules to us, shouting them in our faces.

As we were being grilled about the do’s and dont’s of the pigpen, one of the lady pigs snuck away from the crowd to report to her superiors. A newcomer was already trying to incite panic at the campsite, she told them. He had the gall to tell everyone there that he wasn’t a pig at all, but a human being!

It wasn't the first time this offense had been committed. Numerous pigs had tried to get away with disguising their true identities in the past, inciting discontent within the male ranks, anxiety amongst the females. Gang activity was associated with this misconduct. In other words, it was intolerable. It had to be dealt with swiftly and harshly if order were to be maintained. To curb this rising epidemic, a rule strictly forbidding the use of species’ aliases was enforced.

Death would be the penalty for the malefactor who’d transgressed this rule within merely ten minutes of our arrival.

Some of the pigs wore uniforms. They were the only pigs permitted to speak to our corporate captors. The man who’d spoken out of turn was led away by these pigs. The buzz of a circular saw was heard shortly thereafter, the horrid bellows of a freshly slaughtered prisoner groaning beneath the sparks of the enormous blade.

As the screams from the execution simmered down to a gurgle, a clove of cabbage bounced off my cheek. I was pelted with carrots seconds later.

From the other side of the fence, a man in a suit and tie had thrown some rotten food at me.

“Look at that filthy pig grunting in the mud,” he said to his followers behind him, all of them tall, white, upstanding citizens like himself. With their heels and shoulders pressed close together, the crowd formed a wall that towered high above us in the sky, blotting us out as we stood around in our own waste.

The asshole in the suit directed his entourage back to the farmhouse to complete some business transactions.

While sitting atop a hill of feces below the sunny window of the family farmhouse, I heard the tip of a pen scraping across a sheet of paper on a desk. The chief executive had just signed our lives away. For the week to follow, we’d be taken away one by one, being told we just had to go over some minor preliminary or other with the boss to keep everyone calm. Inquiries were never made as to why he or she had never returned after having been taken away. No one seemed to know or care about the absence of their fellows and the dwindling population. I knew we were being exterminated. Unfortunately, everyone else had been brainwashed. It was inexcusable to question the superiority of the human beings and the uniformed pigs. Every indication had been given to the pigs that their best interests were always being kept in mind by administration. I knew this was complete bullshit. But I’d be assassinated on the spot if I said this.

I kept my jaws clenched tight together, clamped around my churning mind as I sketched out a course of action.

‘You cannot tell them,’ said a voice in my head. ‘You must show them.’

A scuffle in the mud distracted me. A female pig was being harassed by some male pigs. I wanted to intervene but felt so helpless at the time. I’d become hopelessly disgusted with this entire dump. I hated myself for having gotten caught up in this mess and not knowing what to do.

Though losing more and more belief in myself as time went on, I still stuck to my plan of sneaking out of our pen at night when the moon was at its highest point in the sky. From the farmer’s shed, I’d pilfer one tool a night and hide it near the main gate. I prepared myself to get at least one cold konk in before they dragged me away, choosing equipment I thought would do the most damage.

While returning from the shed on the third night, a shadow in the twilight cast itself on me - a great female figure. The lining of my belly froze. My scheme had surely been implicated by a farmhand or one of the other pigs.

“You too?” came a voice from out of the darkness, instantly calming in the sweetness of its cadence. I recognized it as Vita’s, the only pig I hadn’t written off as full of shit. Indeed, she’d been the only one to extend a non-judgmental word to me since I’d arrived. She’d caught me standing on two feet - a violation that held the same penalty as using the “h” word. But what was this? She’d also risen up from off all fours. Standing quietly by the fence beside me, she wiped the mud away from her face to reveal that, not only was she a human being like me, but a strikingly beautiful one at that.

Our predicaments were the same. Both of us knew perfectly well we weren’t pigs but couldn’t share this secret for fear of being implicated for treason. The plot had thickened. Now I had an ally.

We came up with a plan. This is how it all went down:

I got around behind one of the pigs in uniform when two of them came for Vita. They weren’t used to insubordination. It was easy to get the copper’s revolver out of his holster. Before the other one could even think of drawing his piece, I’d shot him in the stomach. As his intestines poured out of his ruptured gut, I emptied two more shots into his face. The thick skull of his partner retained the remainder of the clip. He’d still been absentmindedly patting down the empty holster on his belt as his buddy was being dispatched.

The farmer arrived to discover the bluecoats laid out in the dirt, the gate to the stable left wide open. He didn’t see me hiding behind it. From my secret stockpile I’d withdrawn a metal rake. It glinted in the sun before descending, its rusty teeth penetrating the denim of the farmer’s overalls to sink into his breastplate. His lungs and heart pierced, his final breaths dribbled out of his mouth and into a ravine of dung.

Vita had managed to exit the open gate during this commotion. Distracted by the massacre of their masters, the others failed to notice her escape. We bid each other ado and she fled across the cornfield.

Her escape would prove successful. I wish I could’ve joined her. Were it not for her I might have died in this world believing I truly was a pig, laid out on a chopping block as the circular saw cut its lethal grooves into the back of my head.

I’d been throwing pearls before swine, she’d said. Just because we’d refused to bow down to the will of the ignorant oinkers surrounding us didn’t mean that they were in the right by insisting we weren’t human. They were the pigs, not us.

My end of the strategy would also prove successful. The goal?

Let’s just say that none of those motherfuckers had bacon that day.

Investigators would later find the blood of the deceased farmer’s wife splattered all over the kitchen walls. I’d bludgeoned the fat cunt to death with a shovel.

Sliced, diced, and hacked up with an axe, all three of their children’s bodies would be deemed too unrecognizable for open caskets at the funeral.

I’d be shot down by police on the porch an hour later. What mattered was that I hadn’t died on all fours at the hands of my captors.

I’d been forbidden from telling everybody I wasn’t a pig.

So I had to show them I wasn’t.

Solomon Fiore - July 2, 2018