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yeojaa · 4 years

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( ROSERAIE. )

What you had - so brilliant and beautiful and bright it was almost impossible to look at head-on - was what was tearing you two apart. It was your love that would be your demise.

pairing. jjk x f!reader.

genre + rating. my take on a hanahaki!au. pretty heavy on the angst. general.

tags / warnings. mention of minor character death, breaking up, soulmates, angst, unrequited love, sick character (hanahaki), bittersweet, non-idol.

wc. 3.2k

beta reader(s). my forever queens, @hobi-gif @snackhobi! you both bring such hope and joy (hahahaha) to my life!!! and of course, the loveliest angels @joheun-saram, @pars-ley, and @ditttiii for reading through and giving me excellent feedback!

author note. this is a part of @goldenclosetnetwork‘s 23 | jungkook’s birthday project. it’s my first time writing a hanahaki au so... i have a lot of headcanons for it but i’m not sure whether it all came across in the story. 😰 eep. anyway, please enjoy and feel free to leave any feedback. i would love and appreciate it! most importantly: happy birthday, kook! 💖

Your parents were a young match. Together from the tender age of eleven, they’d shared pieces of themselves readily, trading secrets in tree houses and blanket forts. Nothing was held back - a childhood crush brought to life by playful ribbing and sugar-coated snacks. Where your mother went, so did your father; she was his light as much as he was her shadow. Two halves of a destined whole, earnest and pure. Friends first.

It made perfect sense when they shared their dreams - the same one they’d had since they could remember - and it was identical: swimming in the ocean with a faceless friend, families on their respective four and three-week long road trips. They’d recognised each other immediately, felt the click the moment they stepped off the camper van. Your father had called it cooties; your mother said butterflies.

It didn’t matter that they’d never seen each other’s faces until that moment. There was the spark. Recognition. The rest was history.

Jungkook’s parents have been soulmates since the early 2000s. His father had lost his wife - his first soulmate - exactly one year prior to their meeting. He didn’t have his recurring dream until a fortnight before he met his wife. Hadn’t expected it, either. He’d been talking about his day in his local support group (it never got easier, he’d discovered) and he’d mentioned it in passing, glossing over the details of the vivid new pictures painted against his eyelids. His second wife - his second chance - had attended after losing her son. A complete chance. Serendipitous.

It wasn’t always simple, though. The heartbreaking endings came just as often as the happy.

There were people who lost their soulmates before even meeting them. They’d never know they’d lost their first one until the next dream came - if it came. If they were lucky enough.

There were message boards and dating sites. Places people stripped themselves bare and spilt their secrets to the world. Desperate for love, they detailed their dreams and hoped that their other half was somewhere out there, reading those same words.

Some, though, never found their special someone. Life came at you fast and from all directions - or it never came at all, caught somewhere across the globe in the form of someone you’d never meet. Those were the most painful circumstances, as if fate was cheating the system. Here’s a love you know you have, but that you’ll never experience. It was terribly cruel.

(But when was life ever fair?)

There were stories about those that never found their puzzle piece and how it felt, whether it hurt. Most said it was a quiet ache, something you never really noticed until you thought too closely about it, like a scar that had healed over or a loved one gone a long time. Painful in an explicable way and only - luckily, miserably - softened by ignorance.

Others spoke about it like death, missing an integral part of themselves. It played a large part of their life, shaping and changing them with each passing day. They couldn’t fully live without their person, even if they’d never met them. It was simply the principal of the matter.

You’d never quite existed in either camp. You’d always wanted to find love but you hadn’t rushed it. You figured you’d meet your happily ever after at some point. Maybe at your work - caught between the shelves or returning an overdue book - or maybe out with your dog, walking the same route you took every day. They’d show up one day. You were sure of it.

Love had a way of surrounding you.

Your best friends - because of course the two of them would fall for each other (it was nauseating) - had found each other young too, on the grounds of the elementary school you all played on. They’d been bonded since the beginning, secrets exchanged in art class and atop monkey bars. You’d cheered them on the whole way, giddy in a way you couldn’t describe. Being around it felt like standing beneath the sun, scorching heat warming you all the way to the core. It didn’t matter that you didn’t have it for yourself (yet).

They’d come. Eventually. You felt it in your bones and later, you’d learn, in your shins.

He’d come around the corner fast as a bullet, headphones in and hood pulled over his head. You’d barely have time to avoid him, poor coordination lending itself to disaster when only one of your feet would make it out of his path of destruction.

BANG!

It was something right out of a campy romance novel. Guy goes jogging, runs headlong into his dearly beloved and nearly gives her a concussion. He feels bad for her scraped knees and falls in love with her dog. His morning runs become theirs and six weeks later, over a late night bite of contrasting gelato flavours - green tea for him, bubble gum for her - they fit the pieces together.

Jungkook’s the faceless boy you’d always dreamt of, one hand on the wheel, the other resting easily on your thigh. He was the one with the slick black AppleWatch and long fingers. You’d never imagined he’d be covered in ink, immaculate designs running the length of his forearm all the way back and across his shoulders. In fact, you’d never thought about tattoos at all.

You get your first and only one with him - intricate red looped around your wrists and over your pinkies. Your own, very real string of fate, sealed and signed forever in rouge.

He was your Prince Charming, your best friend, your bonafide soulmate. You’d done everything together - skydiving, snorkelling, silly photos atop the Eiffel Tower. He’d adapted to your distaste of onions and took them all, meticulously picking them out of stir fries and sauces until not a single sliver remained. You’d learnt to tolerate his unbearably fast driving, white-knuckled and silent when he’d tear around corners too fast in a car too low. You fit perfectly, filling all the spaces he could never, keeping him whole even when he was broken.

Your love was of fairy tales but it was better than that too. Real. Concrete. Solid.

Until it wasn’t.

The two of you had never had any other choice.

That’s what it feels like, at least. He’d done his best - tried every little thing he could’ve possibly imagined - and it’d all amounted to nothing. He’d gone through all the motions, explored every avenue, given everything he had. It wasn’t working. This thing he wanted with every fibre of his being, that he’d hoped for his whole life, just wasn’t working. It wasn’t for him.

“I’m sorry,” he cries, and he knows you know he means it. You can read it between every line of his expression, tucked among the neatly scrawled india ink in faded red, underlining the passages you’d written together. He is sorry. He’d never meant to do this to you, nor you to him. He’d wanted to give you it all - make all your hopes and dreams come true.

Sometimes, fate just had other plans.

Because what the two of you had - so brilliant and beautiful and bright it was almost impossible to look at head-on - was what was tearing you apart. It was your love that would be your demise.

And he can’t bear to hurt the one he loves.

He’d tried so hard. Really, he had. You had too, more than he ever deserved.

There was simply no other option. You’d always come up short. You weren’t the one for him - not anymore - no matter how badly you wanted to be. You weren’t the one meant for him. You’d fumble for that ledge - held so impossibly high, just barely out of reach - before falling right back to where you began. The bottom. He couldn’t stand to see you there, brought to your knees once, twice, a hundred times.

He’d lose count if not for the petals.

Little ones, at first. Tiny pieces of silk you’d found on your pillowcase, outside the shower, in your water glass. They’d been unassuming - reminders you could easily ignore.

Then they’d grown, velvet softness that made it hard to breathe, that had him rubbing soothing circles over your skin, earnest vows winding like vines around your airways. Neither of you had had any idea why it was happening. You were soulmates - bound to each other and destined since the beginning. Your love wasn’t unrequited.

“We’ll figure it out,” he’d said. Sworn. “We’ll get through this.”

Your heart had broken with each promise; his had too, differently, but in perfect tandem.

(Spring still came, steadily, with a rose garden blooming within your insides and freesias in your nose.)

It wasn’t his fault. You would never blame him, even when it was his fist that broke yours, splintered it into a million pieces that cut worse than the thorns in your lungs. You knew this was just as hard for him. He’d had to watch you wither away, even as a patchwork of flowers blossomed in the spaces he’d thought he could keep safe. He hated it - could barely take it. It kept him up all night, tears in his eyes. Even when he slept - managed it, every few days - it’d prompt him awake in a cold sweat.

If he’d known then what had changed, maybe he could’ve fixed it sooner. Maybe he could’ve saved you the heartache. (Weeks later and during a coffee break with the new girl at his startup was not how he’d expected to find his answer.)

“I love you,” you tell him, an ocean of sadness. He loves you too, more than anything, more than there are stars in the sky. He loves you with every part of himself - and yet he knows now that’s what’s causing this. He loves you, but not in the right way. Every touch he offers is wrong, leaving you bruised, broken, barely breathing. It’s a disease - a venereal infection that seeps beneath skin and bone, settling within the marrow. It changes you from the inside out, realigns your DNA until you’re mutated and miserable.

The realisation is devastating: his love causes more harm than it heals.

So he stands there now, caught in the distance between you, eyes melancholy blue. His composure is frayed, crippled beneath the weight of your circumstance. He tries to memorise your face in these last moments - the colour of your hair, the shape of your stare. How you sound in the morning - voice raspy with sleep, dust caught in your eyes. The way you hold him close and the feeling of your eyelashes against his neck in the early hours.

Jeon Jungkook doesn’t want this to end. He doesn’t want to lose you, give you - this - up but he has to. He has to, for you. To give you a chance.

Even after having so little - only five short years - you were about to lose the rest of your lives.

You pack your bags - he helps, folding your favourite sweater (one of his, in truth) alongside your toiletries and undergarments - and you prepare to do the thing that you should never have to do. You sign papers, dot I’s and cross T’s, and put all your treasured memories away into cardboard boxes to never be touched again. You label them neatly and dress tape over edges; Band-Aids meant to hold together the deepest wounds.

You’re going under by anaesthetic and he’ll be here, where he has everything he wishes he could give you. A love he doesn’t deserve, within arms he wishes were yours.

He wonders whether he’ll still feel the pull once it’s done or whether his heart will stay there, tucked somewhere beneath the dug up roots. Whether it’ll be safe, undiscovered like a long lost treasure.

It’s best this way. He tells himself that - loops it on repeat until it’s the only thing he can think. It has to be better. For you, for you, for you.

He knows he’ll carry you with him forever. Like the air in his lungs, you’ll keep him going.

He’s snapped back to the present, to the small hallway of the home you’d built together. The traces of you are gone - all the photos hidden away, your row of shoes missing from beside his. It’s strangely bare. He knows it won’t last long. She’ll be here next week.

Your hand pushes against his cheek, thumb caressing along the seam of his bottom lip, right where the freckle sits. He’s a thief - a criminal, a sinner - when he dips his head, presses back into the warmth of your palm. This isn’t for him to take but he does anyway, eagerly and with deep regret.

“I love you.” Your voice cuts through all the white noise and agony - a beacon in the night, guiding him home.

He smiles, half-hearted and weak and not even his. Every part of him screams at him to beg you not to do it, to accept him for the man he is - lost and weak and sorry. He almost drops to his knees - fights tooth and nail against his aching limbs not to - and brings a hand to yours. The red threads looped around your wrists fit perfectly together, the ends of inked rope caught around your pinkies matching when his fingers slot between yours.

Don’t do this, he pleads, without words or hope.

“I’ll love you forever,” you tell him - promise like he had you. “You’ll always be the brightest star in my sky, Jeon Jungkook.”

He almost cracks - seams near splitting, adhesive tearing from skin - when you return his smile and he can see how hard it is. You’re already broken, all the pieces of your puzzle in terrible disarray.

You’re trying, for him.

“I’m so sorry,” he answers, because that is kinder than an I love you that doesn’t mean what you need it to. Because you deserve better - you deserve it in the same way you mean it.

So he’ll let you leave and he’ll pray this isn’t the worst decision of his whole life.

“I’ll see you.”

He hopes so. He can’t bear the idea of losing you again. He doesn’t think even she could fix him if he had to.

“Be safe,” he whispers, in a voice that stutters your stare and shatters what little resolve you have left. He sees it in your eyes - all the crystallised parts of your composure turned to ash. He wishes he could be sorry. He’s not.

“I love you,” you repeat with an air of finality.

Jungkook does the same: “I’m sorry.”

You leave, ushered into the back of your mother’s tiny sedan. She helps you with your bags and your seatbelt, rubbing your shoulder carefully when baby’s breath slips past your lips and falls all over your lap. She meets his stare when she climbs into the driver’s seat. He tries to read her expression. Understanding? Resentment? Gratitude?

The car pulls away with a groan, disappearing down the tree-lined street. Jungkook stands in the doorway for far longer than he should.

He’s moved on - settled down with the girl of his dreams. Literally.

She’s nothing like you, sarcastic and stubborn with a staunch refusal to ever come second best. She laughs maybe a bit too loud, giving him shit when he orders in another car part. She’d eat an onion raw, if she could, and takes showers hot enough to slough the skin from her bones. They have a home together and in a year’s time, he thinks he’ll propose. He’s not in any rush, though, because he knows she’s his forever.

(Knows it, even though you’d once been that same shining star to him. He has to believe it won’t happen again. Life can’t screw someone twice, right? Lightning never strikes the same spot or something like that?)

Still, he tries to forget the feeling of you.

It isn’t as hard as he’d thought it would be. The love exists as it always has, just differently, in the palm of his hand and not the space behind his ribs. You’re his best friend and he is disgustingly, unbelievably lucky.

He’d gotten his second chance. Even if he’d once resented it, he had everything now.

You still go for your morning runs and he still changes your oil because you’d never learnt how to. His parents invite you for Sunday dinners; you’re gracious enough to decline them. You don’t see it as pity - you just don’t want to intrude. (It isn’t your place any longer.) You accept all the changes readily, without regret. You promise you’ll go by one day.

Your parents never speak to him. He doesn’t blame them. At the supermarket, on the street, in passing when he’s coming and they’re leaving - it’s radio silent.

It’s been six months and you haven’t dreamt at all. They’d hoped - prayed - that you’d find someone new after him, someone to treat you right. You don’t mind, you tell them. I’ll meet my special eventually, you say (again, again).

He wonders whether you resent them for it - their concern, perhaps a bit overbearing and offered with a heavy hand. If you do, you say nothing, playing along each time they suggest you meet another friend’s son, another junior at your father’s accounting firm. You don’t understand the sad way they watch you.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles one night, seated at the neighbourhood cafe you’d frequented on your first date. Your idea, because you loved coffee and, in your old words, this was your place. The start of it all, where he’d knocked you hard onto pavement and stolen your heart in the process.

You don’t remember it now. Not in the same way.

This is somewhere you come for their great matcha lattes, where you waste a few too many evenings when you just want to get out of the house. It isn’t the place he’d told you he loved you or where you’d resolved your first fight.

(It’d been stupid. He’d forgotten to pick up groceries for your first dinner with your parents. You’d been so stressed you’d snapped at him, carrying tension into the rest of the evening. He’d apologised with an almond croissant and your favourite green drink.)

It’s like a wall has gone up, splitting your heart in two. The part of you that’d once been Jungkook’s remains out of reach, caught behind a gate neither of you have the key to.

“For what?” You quip, a milk moustache presenting itself over the rim of your mug.

Jungkook shrugs. He can’t make you understand. “Y’know,” he mumbles into his red bean mochi bun. It sticks to his teeth and coats them in soft white flour. “Just— everything.” It’s not enough, either as an explanation or an apology. It falls terribly short, barely worthy of a participation trophy.

“It’s fine.” You say it every time, clockwork in response to the same apology he always gives - out of the blue and vague.

“No, but I’m—”

You level him with a glare. It might’ve hurt once but now it settles like a scolding from a sibling. He reminds himself this is how it should be, you there and him here - two parallel lines.

The guilt never goes away.

tag list. @neverthefirstchoice @youwannabelostandnotbefound @snackhobi

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liaswritesrobots · 3 years

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since Tumblr is a webbed site with coding held together with bubble gum and string I may start putting how many asks are in the inbox in the pinned master post bc the description no longer updates on mobile...

#Lias talks #anyway I changed it from firefox it's 44rn

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redseeker · 3 years

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I can’t tell if an ask a while back I sent about what happened with some fics going private didn’t send or you were just choosing not to answer. I’m sorry if it was the latter and I’m bothering you, I just can’t tell because this site is held together with chewed gum and string.

i'm sorry, i probably just forgot 😔 but yes, i was being bothered by a really rude anon so i privated a bunch of stuff i wasn't comfortable having out there anymore

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wingwaver · 3 years

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post+ could be an ok idea if staff hadn't made a porn ban that drove off a lot of artists and sex workers, and even then it's still iffy because like... this is tumblr... this site's coding is held together with string and chewed gum, the rayban hack is still happening so you can imagine why ppl are not enthusiastic about giving this site credit/debit card details...

plus the whole "you can't block paid subscribers" is super dangerous to anyone that may have a stalker or a harasser that has money to blow

there's also the Actual Legal Trouble fandom content creators could get into for trying to monetize their fanart, fanfics, or gifsets

it's a bad idea

#Lias talks

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cruecifymesixx · 5 years

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Love and Leather /part sixxty sixx/

Word Count: 7.7k

A/N: Enjoy! a soft and emotional chapter that is well needed in the saga of Van and Nikki!

Warnings: nothing. maybe a little smuttish?

Taglist: @brideofdraculana , @xstarryeyesx , @aryssav , @miserablecunt , @dangerous-like-a-loaded-pistol , @fandomshit6000, @anntheboneless@venus-calum, @justjodeye, @hi-my-name-is-riley, @extremesadnerding, @thatbandchick39, @awkwrdcait, @countrygirlswonderland, @awesomealmostdopestudent @romanticvengeance , @tashy-bear, @krazykatkay456, @terror-triplet, @shouttatthedevill @beachystars, @rodriguez025, @kickstart-myheart-sixx, @s-outhie, @anxious-diabetic, @awkwardblackgirls, @rockersbox, @brooklyn-antiques, @shamelessobsessions, @jerseytaint, @lilytalebi, @criminalyetminimal, @motley-queen, @trapt-in-a-dream, @lunamadhatter99, @broke-n-bitchy @thanks2pete, @slowandangry, @lovesick-heart0, @keepcalm-and-beyou, @miriampraez, @teenwolflover28, @lilyhw1 @motherloovebone, @random-internet-user-4471, @falcon-arrows, @talranocchia2001, @wheresmyvodkabitch, @waywardprincess666, @iluvmesomemarvelndc, @zoenicoles, @vamprlestat, @supersoldierballerina, @primal-screamer @electradestiny, @marshbev, @n0-sh0rtage-0f-faults, @cruebaby, @ggorehorror, @valentines-in-london, @miss2001babe, @nassauartist , @cmft-jr-winchester, @bokkie92, @notworthyofyou1120 @xrosegoldwolfx, @lauravic, @mgkobsessed, @chaoticvybe @kellysimagines @thoughtsoftheantagonist @marvelismylifffe, @sleepyjunhong @lovemythsworld @meetthesixxter @sparxx27 @gingerspicetalks @kaitieskidmore1 @unknownoblivion @siliwanoel @nevergoodenuffbutokaaayyy @sublimeprincesswasteland @kylieinwonderland @haileynicoleseavey17 @lavendersoundbarrier @ijustwanttokiss70srogertaylor, @duffshairdye, @xpoisonousrosesx, @m0rnlngstar, @cranberrirolls, @oskea93, @love-struck-aries, @idumpyourgrass, @minxtruck, @i-want-to-shoot-myself, @cruesixxlover1991, @arianareirg,, @fentitrbl, @dogmom2014, @sinningsixx, @motleycrueprincess

-June 27th, 1995-

The sound of dings and pings of carnival games, the laughter from children and adults alike surrounded the dysfunctional family. The sweet delicious smells of freshly dipped caramel apples, kettle corn and cotton candy flew through the air. It was a whole other world that was found completely within the confines of the city that never sleeps.

The anti hero and sometimes hero of this story walked side by side of our princess. They watched as Arianna ran around in front of them, but she knew better and still stuck close to both of her parents. It was the last family outing for a few weeks while Nikki returned back home to California to tie up a few loose strings. He had suggested a day spent at Coney Island even if Arianna wasn’t tall enough to ride most of the rides. For the first time in a long time, the two actually agreed on something.

Nikki glanced over at Vanity, who had a smile on her face as Arianna dragged her over to every game stand in an attempt to win a giant stuffed animal. She seemed happy to him.

Of course, being the man he is, his eyes wandered down the contour of Vanity’s body. She was wearing a cute little red sun dress with yellow flowers on it, it hugged her so god damn well. He prayed that a gust of wind would just magically sweep through and cause the flowy fabric to lift up to see if she was wearing panties or not. His guess was that she wasn’t. He hoped that didn’t change. He laughed at himself silently with that thought in his mind. Her hair was in loose curls as it laid on her left shoulder naturally. Her eyes were covered by jet black sunglasses as she was wearing a tiny gold nose ring. Vanity turned to look at him, completely ripping him from his pleasant thoughts.

“We should grab something to eat before the fun starts. She’s yet to have lunch.” Vanity spoke, his eyes staying glued to her lips.

Nikki nodded, “Yeah, Maybe after we’ll start giving Ari a sugar rush.” He chuckled a little bit, as he knew She was rolling her eyes under those shades.

“You’ll be dealing with her when she doesn’t listen then.” Her lips pulled into a teasing smirk as she ran her black painted nails through her hair, “There’s a cafe over there.” She says, pointing to a carnival decorated shack as she glances over to him.

Vanity watched as Arianna went over to Nikki and held his hand before he scooped her up into his arms, making her erupt into a fit of giggles.

Vanity was happy this whole co-parenting thing was working in her favor. Because we know when it involves one Nikki Sixx and one Vanity Blackwood, it’s as if the universe has stacked the cards against them.

It was quite a site to see when it came to Arianna and Nikki. Arianna had Nikki wrapped around her little finger. Pig tails, a vibrant yellow shirt and light up shoes was a huge contrast compared to the silver chain hanging out of the pocket of his black jeans which was paired nicely with a half buttoned red and black plaid shirt. Vanity noticed he was wearing the same bulky chain and padlock necklace she had gifted him years ago for his birthday.

A young waitress guided them to a booth as Arianna and Nikki slid into one side while Vanity slid into the other. The waitress brings them water and menus to hold them over before rushing off to someone else.

Nikki looked down at Arianna, “You can get whatever you want Princess.” He spoke, kissing the top of her head.

Her eyes went wide as she stared up at Nikki, “Can I have a ice cream sundae!?” She was overly excited as Nikki mentally face palmed himself.

“Lunch first, then maybe you can have a sundae after.” Nikki attempted to bargain, but Arianna had perfected the pouty look that was a spitting image of Vanity, and boy, did he fucking hate it.

Arianna’s eyebrows scrunched together as she stared at him with her big brown eyes, “I want ice cream.” Vanity tsk’d, shaking her head as she looked over her own menu.

“Well-“ Nikki scratched the top of his head as he glanced over at Vanity for guidance. She in return, gave him a look, practically saying to figure it out yourself. He needed to learn when it was the right time to be the bad guy and when he could be the good guy.

It applied to both the relationship with his daughter and with Vanity.

“...Would auntie Clem let you? No. I doubt that.” Nikki quickly came up with a solution, knowing Arianna absolutely adored her aunt. Even if he despised her.

By the expression on her face, Nikki noticed she was attempting to think of how she could get what she wanted, “Daddy, Auntie Clem isn’t here and, and I think she would let me.” Vanity let out a laugh as she watched the two interact. It was amusing.

Nikki doesn’t budge, “Lunch first Princess, then you can rot your teeth with a sundae.” Arianna quickly became frustrated with him. So she went to the next best thing. Mom.

Vanity saw the tiny wheels turning inside of Ari’s head. She raises an eyebrow and gives her a stern look, “You pick something or I will pick it for you. And it might be one big bowl of peas.” Vanity said, showing her the kids menu. Arianna’s eyes wandered to the picture of a kid sized menu, pointing at it as she smiles at her mom.

“Arianna.” Vanity said her name sternly as she was finally defeated, slumping back into the booth as she picked up a crayon and started coloring in the little art book the waitress had gave her, “Chicken strips.”

Vanity looked over at Nikki, “And that’s how it’s done, Sixx. Take some lessons.”

Nikki pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head by using his middle finger. Vanity smiled at him before flicking the trash from the straw wrapper at him. Vanity continued glancing over the menu as Nikki picked up a crayon and started coloring with Arianna.

“No daddy, you’re making it ugly.” Ari spoke as she snatched the crayon out of his hand. Nikki rolled his eyes, “Well excuse me. Was just trying to help.” He chuckled a bit before he picked up the rolled up piece of paper Vanity had flicked at him prior, just for him to throw it down her cleavage.

“Goal!” He mimics a crowds cheers as Vanity glares at him and digs it out from between her tits. Vanity shook her head and picked at her nails before she decided to have some fun with him, for old times sake, or something like that.

She took off her sandal and propped her foot up between Nikki’s legs. She pretended to look at the menu that was just so interesting as she felt him glaring at her. She was humming along to Mariah Carey’s ‘Always Be My Baby’ as it played at a low level throughout the cafe. Vanity moved her foot long the inner seam line of his jeans, inching closer and closer until Nikki jumped in the booth and grasped her ankle tightly. She finally looked at him, a shit eating grin on her lips as Nikki warned her with a head shake.

He let go of her ankle as he tried to focus on finding himself something to eat. Vanity glanced around at the cafe, seeing guitars hanging on the wall with pink wallpaper laying behind them. She made a funny face towards Ari when she caught her looking at her. She looked over at Nikki, eyes narrowing when she felt his hand moving up her leg and then back down to her foot. She smirked, running her nails through her hair as she pressed down on the zipper of his jeans before running her sparkly pink toes down the outline of-

“Hi folks! Do we know what we’re having?” The over exuberant waitress questioned. Vanity nodded, smiling at her as she took her foot away from Nikki’s crotch.

“I think I’m going to have the chicken tacos with rice and extra guacamole please and she’s going to have the kids chicken strip meal.” Vanity handed over her menu. She looked at Nikki, who looked like he needed a cool rag over his head.

“Um, can I uh...Um. Just a turkey club with fries. Is it hot in here to you?” The waitress gave Nikki a strange look as she wrote down the orders before walking away.

“Are you okay Nikki?” Vanity asked, voice sickly sweet as she sipped on her drink.

“Never been better V, you okay?” Nikki choked out.

“I’m okay too.” Arianna butted in, giggling as Vanity reached across the table and colored on the page she was working on.

“Well, how come mom can help you color but I can’t?” Nikki questioned, trying to pick up another crayon but Arianna grabbed it again before moving all the crayons away from him, “Cause mommy knows how to color.”

“I was thinking we just let her pick the rides she wants to go on. Not force her on anything that might terrify her. I don’t need her having any nightmares.” Vanity suggested as Nikki agreed with a head nod. Wow. Two things they agree on in less than in an hour? Wow.

Nikki noticed as Vanity chomped on her gum and looked around the joint again. He also noticed how she watched some brown headed guy walk past them, giving him a smile when they made eye contact. Nikki had a sour look on his face before he smirked and kicked Vanity in the leg.

“Ow.” Vanity mumbled as she finally looked at Nikki, “Don’t kick me.”

“Sorry, long legs.” He smiled at her as she rolled her eyes and looked away from him. He sighed before he brushed his hand over Arianna’s braids.

Please just look at me for longer than two seconds. You use to spend all day and night looking at me.

Nikki tapped his fingers against the leather booth, his eyes falling on a middle aged dude wearing board shorts and a black wife beater.

“Oh no.” He mumbled as the guy had a disposable camera in hand as he came towards their booth. Vanity eyed the guy as he stood at the edge of the table.

“Dude! You’re Nikki Sixx! Can I get a picture?!”

Dude, I’m going to fucking rip you limb from limb if you don’t get away from me and my girls.

Nikki forced a smile, “Yeah man, not a problem. Van could you...” He glanced over at her, seeing she was visibly irritated with the fan.

Princess, you know this stuff happens. You know I can’t control it.

Vanity nodded, taking the guys camera with a smile, “I saw your show in New York last time the band was here. It was gnarly bro.”

Nikki nodded, “Thanks man. Glad you liked the show. Let’s uh, be quick. I’m here with my family.” Vanity raised an eyebrow as she looked through the camera and snapped a picture for the fan before handing it back to him. The fan thanked Nikki before he left to go back to his own table.

Family? Vanity tried wrapping her head around that simple little word. On one hand, it confused the ever living hell out of her. Were they a family? A weird, dysfunctional family? On the other hand, it made her heart skip a beat and made her insides turn to complete mush with the idea of the three of them being one little cute happy family.

See! And then you do stuff like this that confuses me! !Vanity huffed as she tapped her nails against the table. She noticed Arianna kept glancing at Nikki and then back over to that fan across the way.

“Daddy, you have a lot of friends.” She spoke softly.

Nikki laughed, “Well, your dad is important.” Vanity let out an amused grunt before rolling her eyes, Nikki glaring at her as she did so.

“Daddy just makes a lot of people happy with his music. That’s all babe.” Van explained softly as Arianna nodded and continued coloring for a moment before lunch was served to them.

“You’ll come to one of my concerts one day.” Nikki reassured as he stole one of Arianna’s french fries.

Vanity looked over at Nikki, “Don’t you think a Mötley Crüe concert is a little inappropriate for a small child?”

Confusion riddled Nikki’s expression, “I’ve seen fans bring their kids? Why couldn’t Arianna come? I think she’d enjoy it a lot.” Nikki mumbled before taking a bit of his food.

“Because she’s my kid. That’s too loud of music and too provocative.” Vanity expressed her concerns as Nikki glared.

“She’s our kid.” Vanity rolled her eyes, “Jeez, you sound like the same people who tried censoring us. Rock n Roll builds character. I want her growing up around the music and the band.”

“She’ll never have a normal life, Nikki.” Vanity mumbled but shook it off, “We’ll talk about it more when the concert thing comes.” Vanity continued eating her lunch, glancing over at Arianna who went back and forth between eating and coloring.

“Maybe you need a little Rock n Roll in you too, doll.” Nikki smirked, raising his eyebrows in a titillating manner. Vanity only smiled before stealing a piece of his steak.

After lunch, Arianna was already bouncing off the walls. She finally got that sundae she wanted and absolutely demolished it. Arianna was giggling and screaming as Nikki chased after her before scooping her up and putting her on his shoulders.

Vanity watches them as she tries to keep up with Nikki’s long strides as they head in the direction of the carousel, “Daddy I want the rainbow one!” Arianna yelled as Nikki handed over a few tickets and placed Arianna on top of the horse she pointed out.

Vanity held her sundress down while carefully trying to get on the one besides Arianna. What? It was laundry day and she didn’t put on any underwear and she was not about to put on a show for Nikki or any other guy for that matter. She watched as Nikki stepped off the ride, “What? Too heavy metal to ride a fake sparkly horse with your daughter?”

Nikki felt his face heat up, “No, it’s too small for me and I don’t want to squish her.”

She rolled her eyes and called him out, “Then ride your own horse or stand by her. Don’t be lame.”

“I’ll give you something to ride.” He mumbled under his breath before he opted for standing between the girls as they spun around.

After the ride, Arianna looked back and forth between all the games as Vanity and Nikki strolled behind her. Nikki quickly wrapped his arms around Vanity, resting his chin on her shoulder, “You know, I didn’t appreciate that little stunt back at the cafe.” He whispered in her ear as Vanity attempted to pry his arms off her body.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She smiled before giving up and resting her hands on top of his, “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Nikki smirked, “Remember all the times you’d tease me and what I’d do about it? You know how I am with these stupid games you like to play with me.” He moved away but left one of his arms wrapped around her waist.

Vanity stopped walking and stood in front of him. She placed her hands on his hips before standing on her tip toes and whispering in his ear, “I don’t remember, would you like to remind me?”

“Maybe later. I think our daughter found a game.” Nikki pointed as Vanity looked over her shoulder and saw Arianna standing by a booth. Nikki propped Ari up on the barstool as Vanity sat beside them and handed the carny some cash.

It’s a moving target game that you have to shoot with an air rifle full of metal beads. Nikki crouches down behind Arianna to show her how to play and she quickly gets it down and hits all the targets. Vanity on the other hand, is having a bit difficulty as her targets are moving in a circular motion. She quickly drains the clip before shaking her head, “Stupid rigged game.” She mumbles under her breath as Arianna gets awarded a small little plush toy.

“Mom! Look!” Arianna cheered as she showed off her toy. Vanity forced a smile before getting off the barstool, “How about we go to the darts and balloon one?” She pointed across the walkway, “It’s easier...”

“No! I want the big bear!” Arianna points at the humongous white bear hanging from the top of the booth. Vanity groans before she sits back down on the barstool, she reaches to give the guy more money until Nikki hands over his own cash for all of them to play again.

Nikki leaned over her, putting his hands on hers and his mouth near her ear, “Just point and relax.” He speaks softly as Vanity stiffens up as he wraps his hand around her wrists and has her hold the toy gun.

“Ye-yeah, Okay..”

Nikki moved one of his hands down to her hip as he rested against her back more, “Don’t listen to the noises. Those are meant to distract you from aiming, just block everything out.” Vanity breathed out heavily, how could she focus when his cologne hit her like a brick wall and the feeling of his warm, minty breath invaded every pore in her body, “Find the center of the target and just pull the trigger.”

She nods, attempting to relax against his touch as she pretended to miss some more. Her lips pulled into a sly smirk, “Maybe I need more help, Nikki.”

He laughed in her ear before his lips pressed a gentle kiss to the side of her jaw, “You’re teasing me again.”

She leaned back into his chest, “And if I am?” She chuckled a bit before taking his hands away from her and sitting up straight. She glanced over to the guy running the game. She bats her eyelashes and gives him a sinful smile while reaching across and traces her nails over his hand, “Can I just buy the bear?”

“Watch it.” Nikki growled in her ear before stepping away from Vanity.

If she wanted to play this game, he could do it better, “Look man, I’ll give you an autograph plus some money for the bear.”

Vanity narrowed her eyes at Nikki, glaring before she turned to the guy again, “I’ll buy the bear for whatever amount, plus give you a couple hundred bucks. Name your price.” Vanity then leaned over a tad bit more, showing off her tits as Nikki let out a scoff, “And if you’re lucky, maybe I’ll even give you my number.” She eyes the guy, tilting her head to the side in an almost innocent way before sending him a wink.

He smiled at her, “Alright, the big bear goes to the lady.” Nikki groaned loudly as Vanity stuck her tongue out at him, rubbing it in even more. She handed over a hundred bucks to the guy before giving the bear to Arianna.

“You’re the best mommy!!” She chimed with glee as she attempted to drag it away.

“Nice try.” She smiled at at Nikki’s scowl, patting him on the face before getting off the chair.

“Hey! What about your number?”

Nikki turned back to the guy, “Not that lucky pal!” He laughed before he threw his arm over Vanity’s shoulders, pulling her to his side.

After a few more kiddie rides, more rigged games with countless amount of money spent between the two of them, Arianna was finally crashing out as the three of them sat on a bench overlooking the ocean sunset. Arianna sat between the two, giant cloud of pink cotton candy in her hand as she nodded off before waking up in a jolt to eat again. Vanity chuckled a bit as she took a bite of her own caramel apple covered in rainbow sprinkles.

“Thank you Nikki.”

Nikki glanced over and smiled at her, “Anything for you and Arianna, I think she’s out for the count..” He mumbled as Arianna was leaning on Vanity sound asleep but still holding on to the cotton candy with a death grip.

As the three of them arrived back to Vanity’s place, Nikki held Arianna in his arms as she slept soundly against his shoulder. Vanity unlocked the front door, letting them in first before she took her from him, “C’mon angel, we gotta wake up and get ready for bed.” She spoke softly as Arianna sleepily reached out for her mom. Vanity took her to her bedroom, quickly getting her pjs on and wiping off the remaining coating of cotton candy from her lips and cheeks. She kissed her forehead before tucking her in and turning on her little fairy lights. She closed her door as quietly as she could before walking to the living room, seeing Nikki sitting down with his black boots propped up on the coffee table.

“Did you still want to stay the night?” She questioned him since his bags were already packed and the rental car was ready to be returned to the airport come the next day.

He gave her a weak smile, “Yeah, I can sleep out here. Just give me a pillow and blanket.”

You dumb idiot. I ask you to spend the night, do you really think I want you to sleep on the couch?

Vanity forced a smile, “Yeah, I’ll get you some.” She quickly turned around, walking to her bedroom as she grabbed one of her own pillows and a blanket from the closet before heading back out to him. She stopped walking, staring at him throwing a black shirt over his head. He smiled at her and took the blanket and pillow from her hands.

“Thanks. The couch is pretty comfortable so I think I’ll be good.” He reassured as she nodded and looked away from him.

“I’m gonna take a quick shower.” She mumbled as Nikki nodded and sat down on the couch and flipped on the tv.

Nikki sighed heavily when she walked away from him. The thought alone of her in the shower made all of his fantasies he’s already acted out with her spur to life with in the confines of his jeans. Nikki would like to think today was successful in that department, there was plenty of flirting and teasing that came natural, just like it use to. He hated himself and Brandi for having to leave all of a sudden. He was ready to have his shit moved out here and buy a penthouse at the top of a sky riser, or so he thought. It was only going to be a few weeks away from the girls, but he’d already spent so much time away from them. Nikki didn’t want to miss a single second.

Maybe he could convince Vanity to move back to California. He enjoyed New York, but his home was in Los Angeles, that’s where his work was, the band, the music. He sighed as he got off the couch and raided her fridge and grabbed a bottle of whiskey. He unscrewed the cap and took a long swig of it before putting it back. He twiddled his thumbs, glancing down the hallway towards Vanity’s bedroom when he saw her sitting on her bed with wearing a shirt and her hair wrapped up in a towel.

Since when do you take that quick of a shower?

Nikki walked down the hallway with light footsteps. He tapped on her door quietly before going into her room. He looked around at the pictures on the wall, the black metal bed frame and the dark red sheets and Vanity, who was lathering up her legs with lotion.

“Still like to play dress up I see.” Nikki laughed as he motioned to the clothes thrown all over the floor. He checked out the matching dresser to the bed frame, Seeing hair ties, clips, jewelry and loose money. He smiled a bit when he saw a picture of the two. That same one he threw at her years ago...

“That’s my favorite picture of us.” Vanity told him as she sat criss cross on her bed and watched him hold the frame in his hands.

“I was higher then a kite and so were you.” Nikki retorted as he put the picture down and sat on the bed with her.

“Yes, but we were happy and we had so much fun together..”

He smiled, “Yeah, we did.” He yawned as he laid back on her bed, “Kids are exhausting. I give you props for doing this by yourself for so long.”

Vanity turned her cheek to look down at him, “Welcome to my life for the last five years. She’s a constant ball of energy and it’s always different with her everyday. It’s never the same thing.”

Nikki ran a hand over his face before sitting back up, “You’ve done a great job raising her, Vanity. I’m serious, I couldn’t have picked a better woman to be the mother of my kid.”

Vanity laughed as she playfully punched his shoulder, “You’re such a kiss ass. What time is your flight in the morning?”

Nikki frowned, “Seven.” He much would’ve rather picked a later flight, but he had a meeting with his lawyers in the early afternoon.

“Oh. That’s really early. Arianna doesn’t wake up till about nine.” Vanity explained as her bottom lip stuck out in a pout.

“I’ll sneak into her room in the morning and say bye to her.”

Vanity nodded as she let out a deep breath, “I’ve had fun with you the last few weeks or whatever.”

Nikki smiles and placed his hand on her bare thigh, giving it a slight squeeze “I’ve been the happiest in years being here with you and her. It’s like my life has a new purpose in being a good father and a better man to you, or for you, or whatever.” Nikki cleared his throat, cursing mentally at himself.

Vanity shook her head, putting some distance between them as she put her lotion back on the dresser, “You’ve been a great father and I know you’ll continue to do so even if you have to go back home for a little bit. Ive been trying to prepare her the last few days for it anyways.”

Preparing her. Preparing myself.

Nikki scratched the top of his head, looking over at the clock on her nightstand, “I guess I should get to bed. So I’m not grouchy with TSA and the flight attendants in the morning.”

Either one of two things was going to happen.

“Do you want to sleep in my bed? The couch might feel comfortable but I promise you it isn’t.”

And that was one of them.

“I think I’ll stick with the couch.”

And that was the other.

“O-oh Okay, well goodnight Sixx.” Vanity mumbled, avoiding eye contact at all cost as she pulled the blankets down. Nikki watches her a moment as he takes note of the cheeks reddened with embarrassment she was currently sporting.

“Goodnight doll.” He was quick to leave the bedroom, physically palming himself in the face as he walked back to the living room and plopped down face first into the pillow. It smelt like her light floral perfume mixed with laundry detergent.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid.” Vanity muttered to herself as she turned off the side lamp and got in bed. She couldn’t believe she put herself out there just for him to turn her down. She didn’t actually think he’d say no to sleeping in a bed with her, but yet here she was all alone in her king sized bed. She attempted to get comfortable, pulling the blankets over her head. She personally wasn’t ready for Nikki to leave. Vanity honestly had fun with him. She chalked it up to her getting comfortable again and now he’s off. She was sad about it but she knew from the get go he’d eventually have to go back to California. What more could she expect? He’s Nikki Sixx for Christ sake.

Vanity closed her eyes and tried falling asleep until she heard shuffling around her room, thinking Arianna had woken up and wanted to sleep in bed with her. She peeped her head out from under the blankets, “What are you doing?” She questioned, seeing the perfect smirk even in the dark with only city lights barely illuminating the room through her window.

Nikki slipped out of his pants and he got in bed beside her, “The couch is actually really uncomfortable.” He muttered as he fluffed up the pillows before laying on his back and staring up at the ceiling.

It was quiet for a few moments between them. It wasn’t awkward or anything, it was a peaceful type of quiet.

Vanity turned on her side to face him, thinking of something to say until he glanced over at her, “Yes?” He questioned, hands behind his head as the natural smirk never left his lips. Vanity took a leap of faith, scooting closer to him and resting her head against his chest while she forced his arm to wrap around her waist.

His laughter rumbled through his chest as he pulled her tighter against his body, “If you wanted me to hold you, you could’ve just asked.”

“Well, if you wanted to hold me, you could’ve just asked.” She copied, adding a laugh as his fingers pinched her hip lightly. Vanity sighed in contempt as she relaxed in his arms, tracing over the ink on his chest as she saw goosebumps rise.

“Thanks for letting meet my daughter.” He mumbled, putting his hand under her shirt and letting his knuckles run up and down her spine slowly.

Vanity breathed in the scent of a woodsy cologne and cigarette smoke, “Don’t mention it. I’m sorry I kept her from you, I was just angry.”

“Rightfully so, I do understand why you did it though. I just wish you told me. I wanted to be there for you regardless if we were together or not. But that’s all on me and my fault, I am sorry doll.” Nikkis voice was soft as he adjusted their position and turned on his side, smiling when she draped her leg over his thigh.

Vanity studied his face as there was only mere inches separating them. “You don’t know how sorry I am Vanity. I’ll do anything, whatever it takes to prove it. I want my girl back, I want both of my girls.” His voice was almost a whisper as he brushed his finger against her cheek. There was just enough light coming into the room for them to see one another.

”I was just, I don’t know. I don’t know why I cheated on you. You’re everything I didn’t know I wanted, Brandi isn’t. She’s just every groupie I’ve ever met rolled into one.” He continued his monologue, rough finger tips dancing along her back as he talked. It was the most comfortable Vanity felt in a very long time.

Vanity stared at him, mumbling “Do you love her?”

Nikki nodded, “In a way, yes I do or I did. It was a slow burn but I did fall for her. But I fell for her because I was scared, depressed and highly emotional. The love I felt for her is nothing like the love I feel for you. I will never love another woman the way I love you.”

Vanity shook her head, trying to pull away from their embrace but Nikki gripped her hips to keep her from moving. He was tired of her running from him.

“...And you can hate it all you want, hate that I’m making you listen to me for once. But I do love you, I still love you. I haven’t stopped loving you since the day you drove out of those fucking gates. But what’s funny is, I was doing fine. Yeah, you’d pop into my head sometimes and I’d think of you and us but then eventually it stopped. And the night I walked into that strip club you were all I could think of. All I could think about was what you were doing, if you were with someone else. If you still wear the same perfume, and you do.”

Vanity furrowed her eyebrows as she listened to him. This was the first time in a long time she had heard him express something so deep. She thinks the last time he was this vulnerable, expressing everything was the night of Tommy’s wedding and he was a strung out, crying mess as he listened to Deanna’s voicemail on a never ending loop.

“And, if you hair was the same…it s not, but it still smells the same. Like coconuts or some tropical shit. And if you had outgrown your temper, but you haven’t.” Nikki laughed as she tried pulling away from him again but he held her in place.

“And if you’d still look at me with pouty eyes and you do. Your lips still form into a smirk that drives me fuckin nuts. And if you still sleep on the left side of the bed. I thought about all of that, and there you were. Standing behind the bar, staring at me with those big golden pouty eyes of yours and that signature deep red lipstick you always wore and left prints on my skin with. It was like the universe was listening to me. I think it’s our second chance.”

Vanity shook her head, chewing on her bottom lip as she felt tears at the brim of her eyes the longer she looked at him, “We were suppose to end up together.” She cried as Nikki wrapped his arms around her, hand brushing over the loose braid she had done and kissed the top of her head.

“I know darling, I know. But look, we made a beautiful little girl and we’re here together now. That should count for something. I am so sorry for everything. I sound like a broken record at this point but Van, I am so fucking sorry for ruining our relationship.”

Vanity trembled in his embrace as the tears kept falling, only for him to hold her closer to his body, “Shhh, Princess please stop crying. Fuck. I’m so sorry Vanity.”

“I-I needed you Nikki. I wanted you. You fucking had me, you had every part of me and you still went out and cheated on me.” She choked out, moving away from his embrace finally as she covered her face with her hands, sobbing into them as she tried to catch her breath.

Nikki felt his heart lurch out of his chest as he watched her hyperventilate, “Vanity, look at me.” His voice was stern as he wrapped an arm around her waist, “No!” She shouted, pushing his hands off her body.

“After all we’ve been through, I forgave you for everything! I stayed and I was there for you and I loved you, even without knowing I loved you. I stayed when I shouldn’t have but I did because I wanted you!” Vanity croaked as she shoved blankets off of her and wiped her face, “We were going to get married. We had a life together. I went through every scenario in my head over and over again! Was she prettier than me? Was he bored of me? Was he having cold feet? Was I too much for him and he finally had enough of it?! All of that, Nikki! On top of being pregnant with our kid, giving birth and raising her while you were off marrying her because you loved her so much. That possibly, just maybe, you loved her more than you ever loved me.”

Nikki sighed, beating himself up as he rested his forehead against her shoulder, letting his lips brush over her skin. Vanity gasped for a sharp intake of breath, feeling everything hit her at once. There was no bottle of booze and no blow to block it out and it fucking hurt.

“Doll look at me, please look at me.” Nikki spoke in almost a whisper as he removed her hands from her face. Her eyes watered more as his thumb brushed across her cheek to wipe them away, “Just…just tell me you love me.”

Vanity closed her eyes, trying to turn her head to the side but Nikki caught her jaw and forced her to maintain eye contact, “Tell me you love me still-“ He cooed, “And if you do, great. If you don’t, that’s fine too. Just tell me.”

Vanity held his hand that cupped her jaw not to pull it away, but to keep it there “You’re leaving.”

Nikki smiled just a bit, “Yes, but I’ll be back. You know I’ll be back. I’ll be gone for maybe two or three weeks, that’s it. I’ll come straight here after my flight lands.”

Vanity still needed more, “And what if you don’t come back?” She felt like a fucking idiot for feeling this insecure around him, but in reality, it was all because of him.

“You worry too much princess. I will be back, I have a family now. I have you and Arianna. I know it might be hard for her to understand why I have to leave now and in the future when I leave to be on the road, but she will be fine.” Nikki reassured as Vanity reached up and ran her nails through his hair

“I just got you back.” Vanity whispered, almost incoherently but she knew he still heard her regardless.

His thumb brushed across her bottom lip, “And you’ll always have me from now on. I’m not going anywhere, Vanity. You’re my home.”

Vanity’s eyes fluttered closed when she felt his lips on hers. Feeling every rush he’s ever caused to run through her veins. Every memory, both good and bad played inside her head every single god damn emotion Nikki Sixx has ever made her feel: anger, happiness, sadness, lust, love, excitement. Just one simple little kiss brought everything back to the surface.

He deepens the kiss, forcing her mouth to open with his tongue as she tasted every ounce of love he has to for her. She wrapped her arm around his shoulder, bringing him closer and feeling his weight shift on top of her, but not all of it at the same time.

Vanity opened her legs up, to accompany the body between hers as she put her hands under his shirt, attempting to pull it off of him. Nikki took the hint and did it himself before quickly coming back to her lips, cupping her jaw as he did so.

“I love you.” She whispered against his lips, feeling them form into a smile, “I love you. I haven’t stopped.” She muttered as she felt a low, needy moan fall off of Nikki’s tongue and on to her own.

Nikki’s lips moved to her neck, letting his hands travel up and down her body. Fingertips running over every curve like he memorized them and never even forgot how her body felt underneath his. He forced a quiet moan to fall from her lips as his teeth dug into that little sweet spot that laid under her ear lobe. The arrogance that dripped from him showed in that natural smirk she felt across her skin.

One hand reached down between her legs but Vanity quickly grabbed his wrist and held his hand at her her side, “Nikki…” His name rolled off her tongue in a breathy, lustful moan as Nikki’s lips trailed down to meet her clavicle. Nikki adjusted his weight, now laying between her welcoming thighs as his hands entangled themselves in her hair. His growing desire pressing against her, letting her feel exactly what she’s been missing.

Nikki’s hand reached between her legs again, his fingers curling into the waist band of her panties as she reached for his hand again, only for him to intertwine their fingers together and pin her hand to the bed.

“N-no, Nikki. S-stop.” Vanity put up a weak protest the exact moment she felt his lips abuse the skin of her neck and leaving a deep red mark in their path.

“Baby, please. I need you.” Nikki whined, bunching her shirt up in his fist as he kissed her abdomen.

”I-I don’t want too.” Vanity declared, giving his chest a slight push away from her own. She stared at him, both of their chests heaving up and down as they stared at one another. Vanity moved pieces of hair from her face, licking her bruised and swollen lips as she pulled her shirt back down.

Nikki closed his eyes, trying to control his breathing as he nodded before moving from between her legs and taking the spot next to her on the bed, “I’m sorry…” Vanity mumbled as Nikki lazily slung his arm over her waist.

“Don’t apologize darling. It’s-it’s too early and I got caught up in the moment.” He exhaled deeply as Vanity pulled the blankets up over them. She relaxed into the bed, resting her hands on his arm.

“You’re my home too, Nikki.”

*Nikki’s POV*

I woke up to my phone buzzing by my ear, “Yeah?” I rubbed my face, glancing down as Vanity was laying on my chest with her arm wrapped around me.

“Mr. Sixx, I am downstairs waiting to take you to the airport.”

I sighed heavily, “I’ll be down shortly.”

I hung up as I closed my eyes and laid in her bed for a few more moments. I quietly got out of bed, leaving her in the middle as I sat on the edge and looked out the window, the sun was barely rising. A small smile formed on my face as I felt nails running down my bare back.

I stood up, joints cracking as I turned around and leaned over the bed, chuckling when Vanity sleepily ran her hand across my face, “It’s early.” She mumbled as I kissed her temple.

“Go back to sleep, Van. I’ll let you know when I’m leaving.” I whispered to her, running my knuckle over her cheekbone as she closed her eyes and relaxed into the bed.

I put my clothes back on before slipping out of Vans bedroom and going to Arianna’s. I slowly crept into her room, trying to avoid the toys that were scattered on her floor. She had kicked the blanket off of her as I put it back on her. I knelt down beside her bed, running my hand over her mess of brown hair as her nose scrunched up.

“Arianna…” I whispered quietly but she only pulled the blankets to her chin. I quietly laughed as my heart felt like it was breaking for leaving her, “I gotta go, but I’ll be back okay? I love you.” I mumbled before kissing the top of her forehead.

I headed to the bathroom to splash some water on my face, my teeth would just have to wait until I’m on the plane. I went back to Vanity’s room, seeing she was sitting up in the bed with the blankets wrapped around her, she frowned when I reached for my jacket and put it on.

“Time to go?” She muttered as I weakly nodded.

Vanity followed me throughout the house as my heart, again felt like it was breaking into pieces for leaving.

“Call me when your plane lands, okay?” She spoke softly, resting her head against the door as I nodded.

“Of course, doll.” I gave her a smile as I reached for her hand and pulled her towards me. I held her hand in mine, letting my thumb brush against the back of her palm.

“Do you really have to leave? Can’t you stay for a little bit longer?” Vanity’s voice was riddled into a begging tone as I tried forcing a smile.

“We both know I won’t ever leave if I don’t go now. I’ll be back, okay? I promise. I’ll call you every day and think of last night when I’m alone in the bed.” I chuckled as Vanity rolled her eyes and took her hand from mine.

“Tell me you love me.”

I quirked an eyebrow, “Tell me you love me.”

She smiled and shook her head, “I love you, rockstar.” Vanity took a step forward, closing the distance between us as she gave me a sweet parting kiss.

“I love you princess.” I whispered as I pulled away from her, seeing a single tear fall from the corner of her eye. I pressed my lips to the top of her head, eyes tightly screwing shut. Don’t start crying now, Sixx.

“I’ll be seeing you, sweets.”

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serpentmythos · 4 years

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Can I ask what ‘cherp’ is? I tried to look into it a little while ago and didn’t find anything conclusive. It’s something about roleplay I think? Anyway, thank you for your time and have a good day <3<3<3

Basically it's a reboot of the old anonymous rp site called Cherubplay. And it's a fucking shit-show tbh.

The users are entitled pieces of crap, and the mods can sometimes be very impulsive when it comes to rule enforcement, as well as power trip-y (basically "The site is only up because I allow it to be") and they have no idea how to handle PR issues despite having claimed to have "had some training" regarding the matter.

At this point the whole thing is held together by chewed gum and silly string and I absolutely would not be surprised if it gets shut down within the next year or so.

#cherp #cherp.chat #anonymous asks

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jonesgirl88 · 4 years

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I just checked out your fandoms page and I did not expect to see all the superwholocks listed there. Not that its surprising (i like them too) but I haven't seen those in flipping forever. Been around tumblr awhile too I take it?

Hey! I didn’t realize people went on desktop. I think that’s the only way to access that fandom section? Anyway, I still love superwholock as the best crossover. It has so much potential as a great story.

According to my first post, I’ve been around this blue hellsite since 09/2012. I remember when it was hipsters vs fandom and everyone made fun of how this site was held together with gum and string. I saw the transition of bios from hipster/fandom to political and gender politics. It’s been a wild ride.

How long have you been around?

#asked and answered #xccoaster

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poeticsandaliens · 6 years

Text

Magic Numbers

Pairing: Debbie Ocean x Lou (Heist Wives; fight me on that)

Rating: PG-13

Summary: The numbers tattooed on Lou’s arm are milestones and memories, most of which involve Debbie in some romantic capacity.

Someone on this site noticed Lou’s tattoo and wondered what it meant (@awomanontheverge I think), and so I made something up to supplement the lack of information.

Find it here on AO3.

Lou sauntered lazily about the beach house in a robe that Debbie Ocean was definitely wearing the night before. She leaned against the kitchen counter, snapping spearmint gum and sipping coffee untainted by the bulk box of Splenda in the pantry. The mug literally had her name on it—Daphne’s idea, and since it was Daphne’s house they were invading, no one protested the labeled coffee cups. (Secretly, she liked the gaudy purple lettering. She liked the idea that certain things are hers and hers alone.)

“Yo.”

She looked up to find Constance standing in the doorway, toothbrush lodged between her teeth, beanie askew. The kid eyed her expectantly.

“What?” Lou raised an eyebrow.

“Nothin.’ Thought I heard someone awake.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s just early, that’s all,” Constance shrugged.

Lou’s skepticism multiplied. Constance was a notoriously heavy sleeper, and she’d never seen her awake before noon. Her watches read five AM and six AM respectively, but since Daylight Savings, the six AM watch was correct. “What’re you doing up?”

Constance grinned. “Surfing.”

Holding her coffee to her chest, Lou looked her up and down—oversized t-shirt, hat, sneakers. No surfboard in sight. “You sure about that?” she challenged.

Constance lifted her hands and backs away. “Chill, alright,” she said, palms to Lou. “I gotta change first. I didn’t say I was leaving right this second, Mom. ”

Lou rolled her eyes and downed the rest of her coffee.

“Besides, what are you doing awake?”

Lou smirked. “Can you keep a secret?” That got Constance’s attention. Lou watched her eyes widen as she slid across the kitchen floor and leaned into the older woman’s personal space.

“Yes,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows.

Lou narrowed her eyes. “No you can’t. No dice, kid.”

Constance groaned. “Fine. There is no secret, is there?”

“God no.” Of course there wasn’t—Lou didn’t have secrets. Secrets dangled over people’s heads and lent her private life unnecessary drama. If she didn’t want people to know something, she simply didn’t tell him, and she never made them ask.

Constance huffed and made to leave, but before she could slip out the kitchen door, something caught her eye. She looked down at Lou’s wrists, then up at her impassive expression, then back down again. “What’re those numbers?”

Lou glanced down at her forearm. Those numbers, spiraling down her forearm in an easily overlooked tattoo.

“15, 6, 23, 11,” Constance read aloud. “That from a fortune cookie or something?”

“They’re dates,” Lou said, because the truth was definitely better than the absurd notion that she’d etched her lucky numbers into her skin for eternity.

“Okay. Well there were only three last time I saw it.”

“I added that last one after the Met heist.”

Constance eyed the ink for a moment before meeting her eyes. She folded her arms over her chest, pint-sized and defiant, staring Lou down. “You wanna talk about it?”

Lou sighed and checked her watches again. “Why the hell not?”

“Sweet.” Constant clapped her hands and hopped onto the counter, dangling her legs over the corner. “I like stories.”

“The first one is the day I left home. November 15th, 1990. I’d finally saved up the money for a one-way ticket to Melbourne, worked there for a couple years, and then got another ticket to New York.”

“Why’d you leave?”

Lou ignored her. There was only so much she’d say to Constance. The rest only Debbie knew, and some things weren’t even for her ears. “The second one is the date of my first real hustle. August 6th, 2002. I rigged high stakes blackjack in Atlantic City. Fifty thousand dollar payout.”

Constance whistled.

“Doesn’t compare to a hundred and fifty million, though,” Lou reminded her nonchalantly. “The third one is the day Debbie got out of prison. March 23, 2018. I drove her back to the ballroom loft, and we danced for hours to all the music she’d missed.”

“What’s the newest one?”

“July 11, 2018. I was sitting in a diner in some rest-stop town between Los Angeles and the Valley of Fire. I ordered a Godawful omelet, and I was about to dive into it when a jet black Maserati pulled up. Debbie got out the driver’s seat. I hadn’t heard from her in a month, and I don’t know how she found me, but she sat down across from me in the booth and said, 'I love you to the moon and back, and I'm sorry it took me so damn long.'”

“Awwwww,” Constance crooned. “Damn, I love happy endings.” She hopped off the counter and waved as she marched out the kitchen door. “Cool tattoo. I’m gonna go surfing.”

Lou rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t wipe the friendly little smile from her lips. Constance was a lot some days, but she meant well. She lifted her watch to check the time and—

“Shit.” Only the five AM watch remained.

* * * * * * * * *

“Two years,” Tammy sighed in disbelief, shaking her head and sipping from a flute of champagne.

“You can’t do that until we toast,” protested Daphne. “To the second anniversary of me puking my guts out at the fucking Met Gala for thirty eight million and some friends.”

Tammy rolled her eyes spectacularly. “Well we can’t have a proper toast without Amita and Debbie, and I want my champagne.” She turned to Lou (of course she did.) “Where is Debbie; I thought she’d be here by this morning?”

How would she know? Debbie’s ‘on time’ had always been an hour late. Just because they were an item, people seemed to think she’d know where Debbie was at all times. Hah. As if anyone but Debbie decided where Debbie was going.

“Beats me.” Lou sprawled in a sleek adirondeck chair on Daphne’s ocean-view balcony. The party seemed to have gathered around her, everyone present and smelling of sea-salt. Everyone except Debbie, who’d sent a mass text promising she was just picking up hors d’oeuvre and desserts on her way. At the promise of food, no one had complained.

Lou fiddled with her watches. Constance had disappeared yesterday after their conversation in the kitchen, and she’d waited until this morning to demand the return of her second wristwatch.

“Well,” declared Rose, “I would like to be inebriated by the end of the evening, so I’m drinking my champagne.”

“Seconded,” Nine Ball said, and gulped down her flute. “Debbie and Amita will live.”

Lou held the fizzling glass in her hand. She supposed she would wait for Debbie, not out of moral obligation but because she and Debbie were responsible for the heist that set them all for life, and it seemed fitting to them to drink together. They always drank together, whether they were celebrating, drowning sorrows or making heady love on their sofa while Law & Order reruns droned in the background. It was a tradition, one of the many little things that kept her grounded.

“Gee, thanks for waiting. Knew we could count on you guys.” Debbie’s voice rang through the beach house. Her heels clicked across the floor—apparently, she’d decided tonight was a special occasion worth stilettos and a slick black dress that made Lou do a double take. Both of them laden with grocery bags, Debbie and Amita stepped onto the patio and took in the sight of them all, and their obnoxious excess of wine and Dom Perignon.

“Snoozers are losers,” said Constance, holding up her empty glass.

Debbie fixed Constance with her best (and not particularly intimidating) glare. “I can’t believe you want to be drunk for this.”

Daphne held up her hands in mock surrender. “I withheld for my manners,” but Debbie ignored her.

“Why wouldn’t we want to be drunk?” Nine Ball was half-way through pouring herself a glass of white wine. “Second anniversary of the greatest heist ever executed.”

“Drop the bags and have a drink.” Lou handed Debbie her glass. “You seem tense, darling; did you have a run-in with FoodMart security?”

With a resounding clunk, the bags of food fell beside Debbie’s feet. “Baby, I’m insulted. I bought this food.” She grinned. “Why steal cupcakes when you can steal diamonds?”

Constance let out a “whoop!” of approval and snatched the cupcake bag.

“All right,” said Lou with a Cheshire-cat smile. “I suppose it’s time to toast your brilliance once again.”

Debbie eyed her teasingly. “Oh, that’s what you thought you were toasting to?”

“What the hell else is there? Did you steal another dynasty’s worth of diamonds on the way here?” Honestly, she wouldn’t put it past Debbie Ocean to mark the anniversary of a heist with a plan for a better one.

Debbie grabbed a cupcake and shoved half of it into her mouth. “No,” she mumbled through hot pink frosting, “but we did borrow one of the diamonds we already have.”

A high-pitched gasp came from behind her, and Lou turned to see Daphne cup her hands to her mouth and her eyes grow rounder than quarters. “I thought we sold all the diamonds from the Toussaint,” Lou said suspiciously.

Debbie fished around her sweater pocket. “No—” she grunted, finally shedding the sweater and shoving two hands into the oversized pocket. “I kept one of my share.”

More little gasps of realization, and from Constance and Amita, the sneakiest looks she’d ever seen. “What the hell is—”

She turned back to find Debbie on one knee, with a glamorous, expertly stolen Toussaint diamond in her palm, fitted into the silver band of a ring. Oh. She flashed back to yesterday in the kitchen, Constant grabbing her wrist and pulling the tattoo towards her, keeping her focused on the story, wrapping her thumb around Lou’s ring finger. She must have had a string in her hand, or something to take the size. She remembered Debbie texting them, saying she’d pick up Amita at the airport in LA, stay overnight there, and then drive to the beach house. Shit. She was losing her touch if she hadn’t seen this coming, but it didn’t matter. Not now, when there was Debbie fucking Ocean, proposing to her on the deck of their ex- mark ’s beachside mansion.

“Lou—”

“Jesus. Yes Debs, God yes. I’ll marry you in an instant.”

Debbie’s grin could put the sun out of business. She got to her feet and slid the massive crystal onto Lou’s hand. “I’m overjoyed, but you have to let me finish. You have been my literal partner in crime for fifteen years now. And yes, I was in prison for five of those years, and it took me until I got out to realize I was gone on you, hopelessly, pathetically in love with you, but through everything, you’ve been my one constant. The thought of you kept me sane in the slammer, and you’re the reason I’m not back there right now. You are alive; you’re alive like nobody I’ve ever seen before. You’re vibrant and breathtaking, and ever since you roared into my life on that motorbike I’m never letting you go.”

She was absolutely, positively not going to cry. Lou did not cry. She trembled a little; her eyes glistened, and finally she pulled Debbie forward and kissed her with everything she had. And then she cried, but just barely. (Debbie would be the death of her, and she didn’t mind one bit.)

Debbie sniffled, and Lou couldn’t help but feel like she was holding a bird in her embrace, slight and willowy but immensely powerful.

“Plus,” Debbie added smugly, wrapping her arms around Lou’s shoulders and clinging to her, “the sex is amazing.”

Amita made a face. “Keep it to yourself. But congratulations, I’ve been ready to burst trying to keep this secret, even if it was only for a couple days.”

“Who else knew about this?” Constance asked as she downed another round of champagne. She raised her hand, and Lou let her gaze flick about the crowd. Amita’s hand went up, and then—surprise—Nine Ball.

“Nine Ball?” Debbie seemed surprised as well.

“Your search history gave it all away. A girl doesn’t Google wedding band styles because she’s bored.”

“I knew something fishy was going on when you told us you’d be late, but I thought you were planning another job,” Tammy admitted. “Does this mean we can have a proper toast now?”

“Yes!” Daphne snapped her fingers impatiently and reached for the cooler full of wine. She filled any empty glasses and then raised hers to the sky. “To Lou and Ocean finally getting married. Instead of just acting like it.”

Nine Ball cackled. “Amen.”

“Cheers!” Rose called, clinking a full bottle to everyone’s glasses. A collective silence filled the patio while they paused to drink, excepting the raucous screams of gulls and the crash of waves on the beach.

Watching their team celebrate, Lou tucked a strand of Debbie’s espresso-dark hair behind her ear. “I love you to the moon and back,” she whispered in her ear.

Debbie unsuccessfully suppressed an ear-to-ear smile and slipped her hand into Lou’s. Her thumb brushed the diamond, and Debbie bit her lip as her cheeks flushed warmly. “You’re going soft on me,” she whispered back. A pause. “I love you too.”

The next day, Lou added another number to her tattoo. 15, 6, 23, 11, 9. The 9th of May, 2020, when Debbie Ocean got down on one knee and asked her to be her wife in crime.

#ocean's 8 #ocean's eight #debbie ocean #lou #lou miller #heist wives #debbie x lou #constance #nine ball #amita #rose weil #daphne kluger #tammy #shameless sap #sugar-sweet #debbie ocean x lou miller

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glittership · 5 years

Text

Episode #72 — "Raders" by Nelson Stanley

Direct download

And here’s the RSS feed: http://glittership.podbean.com/feed/

Episode 72 is part of the Autumn 2018 issue!

Support GlitterShip by picking up your copy here: http://www.glittership.com/buy/

Raders

by Nelson Stanley

They called themselves the Raders, and if you didn’t know, you’d swear that they were waiting for something: a bunch of boyed-up cookers, second-string hot hatches and shopping trollies adorned with bazzing body-kits parked down at the overcliff again, throttles blipping in time to the breakbeats. Throaty roar from aftermarket back-boxes you could shove your fist up, throb of the bass counter-pointed by an occasional crack as a cheap six-by-nine gave up the ghost. Occasionally a sub overheated, leaving nothing but ear-splitting midrange and treble howling into the gale blowing rain off the sea.

Mya had pushed half a pill into Maggie’s hand when the red XR2 picked her up outside the all-night Turkish takeaway, and Maggie regretted dropping it already, though at first she’d thought the high percentage of whizz in it might lend her enough chemical bravery to finally say what she wanted. Now her eyes rolled in her head and the rush made it difficult to speak. Sparks came off the edges of the headlights splitting the mizzle outside. Her nervous system uncoiled and re-knitted itself, reducing her to a warm soup through which the uppers fizzed and popped.

[Full story after the cut.]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 72 for June 10, 2019. This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing this story with you. Today we have a GlitterShip original, which starts off a new issue that you can pick up at GlitterShip.com/buy, on Gumroad at gum.co/gship08, or on Amazon, Nook, Kobo, and other ebook retailers.

If you’ve been waiting to pick up your copy of the Tiptree Award Honor Listed book, GlitterShip Year Two, there’s a great deal going on for Pride over at StoryBundle. GlitterShip Year Two is part of a Pride month LGBTQ fantasy fiction bundle. StoryBundle is a pay-what-you-want bundle site. For $5 or more, you can get four great books, and for $15 or more, you’ll get an additional five books, including GlitterShip Year Two, and a story game. That comes to as little as $1.50 per book or game. The StoryBundle also offers an option to give 10% of your purchase amount to charity. The charity for this bundle is Rainbow Railroad, a charity that helps queer folks get to a safe place if their country is no longer safe for them.

http://www.storybundle.com/pride

Our story today is “Raders” by Nelson Stanley. Before we get to that, though, here is our poem, “Vampiric Tendencies in the Year 4500” by Renee Christopher.

Renee Christopher is an SFF writer and poet currently making it through her last Iowa winter. Noble / Gas has nominated her poetry for a Pushcart, and her first short story can be found in Fireside Fiction. Follow her on Twitter @reneesunok or on Mastodon @[email protected]

Vampiric Tendencies in the Year 4500

By Renee Christopher

Moon-sewn mothgirls clot near light,

their search for glow similar

to mine. The door left ajar allowed us both

alternate methods for creation

creatures merged with cosmic teeth.

Stars managed to adapt find those who,

thick as molasses, gleamed

upon the trellis of a new future.

But what I look for flutters past

a stand of deer —bright and wingless,

with champagne fingers

and summer tongues.

At least, the searing reminds me

of a time when the sun burned hot

and fast. Now the blood

I need drips neon from above,

filters through decadent soil

in a system unknown. In this quest

for light source, I am not alone.

Nelson Stanley works in an academic library in the UK. His stories have been published recently in places like The Dark Magazine, the Lethe Press anthology THCock, Black Dandy, The Gallery of Curiosities, The Sockdolager, and Tough Crime. One of his stories was included in the British Fantasy Award-winning anthology Extended Play.

Raders

by Nelson Stanley

Waves thrashed at the rocks below the edge of the cliff. An occasional dark shape—a seagull, perhaps, blown off-course and away from the bins—fluttered into the edges of the headlights’ glare and then reeled away into the greater darkness. Hydro and tobacco exhaust vented through half-opened drivers’ windows and flavored the edges of the sooty exhaust smoke from a dozen engines running too rich. One or other spun dustbin-lid size alloys on the wet, loose tarmac with an angry howl, holding it on the handbrake, then—just when you might think that a clutch was about to melt—drop it hard so that fat low-profiles tramped up into the suspension turrets as the tires found purchase, slewing away to nail it down the narrow cliff road, returning from its circuit a few minutes later to rejoin the loose congregation in the car park.

“See. What I mean is, we could be like… See? We don’t have to like… What I mean…” Maggie trailed off, frustrated not so much, perhaps, by her inability to articulate her emotions than by the inefficiency of talking as a medium for expression itself. Why couldn’t she just touch Mya, and have her know exactly what she meant? How she felt? She chewed savagely upon the inside of her bottom lip and fervently wished she’d brought some chewing gum, breath fast through her nose. She started to roll a ciggie, but her hands were shaking and tobacco and papers seemed alive in her hands.

In the driver’s seat, Mya was doing her lippy in the rear-view, an action made more difficult by the way she was surfing the breakbeats pulsing from the stereo, pausing occasionally to puff on the spliff hanging out of the other side of her mouth. With a sigh that seemed practiced she twisted her lippy shut and dropped it amongst the scree of empty Embassy No.1 packets, roached Rizla cartons, baggies and half-crushed tins of cheap cider littering the dashboard.

“Look,” she said, placing both hands on the steering wheel, as if what she had to say required anchoring herself more firmly to the car, “With you now it’s all ‘What I want’ and ‘What I think is’ and it just… I knew it’d get like this. Knew it. What you don’ get is, I don’t care. It’s over, girl. Let go.”

Chemicals rushed into Maggie’s head like someone filling up a bath. She was frantically rubbing a rolling paper flat between her thumbs, gaze pinned to the wrinkled rectangle as if somewhere upon it was written a way out of this, a way to get Mya back.

“I suppose I do need you,” Mya went on, leaning back in the Recaro and idly picking at a blim-hole in the upholstery while puffing luxuriantly on her smoke. “But not the way you need me. I can’t be the thing you want, y’know? It was fun, while it lasted, but is what it is, girl.” She glanced over at Maggie. “But you can still help, if you like.”

Maggie—lorn and reeling from the chemicals thudding through her central cortex—tried to answer, but all that came out was a small hiccuping yelp. She nodded frantically.

“Jesus fuck,” Mya said, and shoved the j toward her passenger. “D’you wan’ some of that?” she said, and it seemed to Maggie that there was love in the gesture, in Mya’s voice, real love, an outpouring of care and concern, and even if it wasn’t what Maggie wanted—that surging roil in her groin, the brimming of her heart that accompanied her memories of the two of them twined together in Mya’s bed, under the Congo Natty poster, the way Mya held her hand in public once or twice, walking back through the rain and the ghost-haunted dawn, hoodies pulled up against the wind—then, still, it unlocked such a river of sweet-flowing sadness inside Maggie that she thought she might melt, right there in the XR2, melt outward in a great silent wave of warmth that blossomed from some secret core inside her body and pulsed through her, turning her flesh to something at once liquid and as evanescent as smoke.

“Jesus fuck,” Mya said again, peering into Maggie’s face. “If you vom all on my Recaros I swear down I will kick you out right here, get me?”, but Maggie knew she wouldn’t, knew she wouldn’t do that, and she was right.

Outside, other cars were gathering, as if drawn by the bass or the lights, as if boyed-up hatches were sad deep-sea creatures, huddling together for mutual warmth around some abyssal vent.

Inside, in the thick dusty warmth blowing out of the demister, Maggie shucked off her hoodie and T-shirt, down to her bra, worming her shoulder blades into the fabric of the passenger seat. Though she rolled her eyes at this, Mya was at least calmer now that Maggie had smoked herself into a place of happy burbling. She cranked down the window as a battered G1 CRX pulled up, fishtank lights glowing underneath the sills and an acre of filler across its back three-quarter panel as if it suffered the ravages of some terrible disease. The relentless, tinny grinding of mid-period Sick of it All pounding from the CRX met the XR2’s sweetly dubbing Jungle, twisted in the rain into a horrifying new hybrid.

The boy in the CRX, baseball cap pulled down low, leaned out the window and put his hand out for a fistbump, got left hanging, pulled it in reluctantly and settled further down into his Parka.

“It’s nearly time,” Mya said to him.

He sniffed. “Aye.”

“You gonna lead?”

He shrugged, somewhat restrained by his seatbelt. “Thought you were gonna. As it’s, like, your party n’that.”

All around the car-park hatches were circling now, splashing through the puddles: a well-loved 205 GTI with engine mounts so shot that it kangaroo-ed on the clutch, pitching the front-end like an obsequious underling kowtowing to its superior so that the add-on plastic chin spoiler spat a spray of gravel in front of it. A cooking Sierra twin-cam done out to look like a Cossie decided to show the front-drive pretenders what they were missing out on, and started power-oversteering around the edge of the circling hatches, back end slewing dangerously close before a hefty stomp on the throttle and an armful opposite-lock sent it whirling away. Maggie, eyes rolling saucer in her head, could only see trails of light, fireworks steaming in the dark, light spidering out of itself to scrawl the night, after-images licking at the edges of the rain.

“Where we going?” she said, struggling upright in the seat, pulse thrumming up through her, a solid lump in her throat.

“We’re gonna take a trip to Faerieland,” Mya said as she took the XR2 out of the carpark, the Raders peeling off after her, each trailing a respectable distance behind the other, jostling for position down the narrow slip road. “The land of the dead, the shining place on the hill where the Good Stuff comes from, where they take you when it’s all over.”

Maggie watched the empty wet streets go past, everything wet and filthy, the streetlamps chrysanthemum bursts of light. The Raders peeled off and followed one-by-one in a continuous rising and falling of fat aftermarket tailpipes and tinny drum’n’bass, punctuated occasionally by the telltale clunk-woosh of a dump valve some joker had bolted on to a naturally-aspirated Golf. They snaked down the road leading from the overcliff, overly-fat radials whispering across the wet tarmac then ka-thumping awkwardly as they bottomed out on the potholes because they’d lowered their suspension by cutting their coil springs with an angle grinder.

“Think on,” said Mya, checking her reflection in the rear-view, “Think, Maggie. A place—well, not quite a place—somewhere they talk in the high-pitched whistle of bats, words you hear not with your ears but something lodged in the back of your brain. They got stuff there, one tiny hit’ll burn through your soul, let you touch the face of God and strip away your skin, make you forget all the shit life drops in your lap.”

Beyond the glass, the neon frontage on dingy shops and cheap bars spread and blurred in firework streaks. Maggie convulsed in her seatbelt, clawing at the tensioner as it ratcheted too-tightly around her stomach. The XR2 lurched over a speed-bump outside Syndicate—the townie girls lined up on the wet pavement clutching their purses, tugging ineffectually at two inches’ of skirt as the rain blew in sideways from the seafront, the young boys with too much hair product reeking of cheap body-spray and grabbing their crotches as they shotgunned cans of lager—and for a second Maggie thought she might actually be sick, but luckily it passed.

“A place where you never have to think,” said Mya, idly flicking ash off the end of her j as she took to the wrong side of the road to pass a dawdling hatchback—big swoosh of locked brakes against wet tarmac, cacophony of horns blaring into the night—“Where you never get hungry, or sad, or old.”

Maggie opened her mouth to speak, but Mya chose that moment to take the inside, getting both nearside wheels up on the curb as she passed a recovery lorry turning on to the main road, orange spinning light sending weird tiger stripes strobing across the interior of the XR2.

As Mya straightened up, fighting the bit of aquaplane as she brought it level, she continued: “There was this girl, see. She was just like any other. Stupid but not free. She met another girl, and fell in love. The sex was fucking epic—” and at this Maggie gave a low moan—“for starters, but wasn’t just meat-meet, wasn’t just something in the cunt or the brain or the blood. This other girl showed the first one things she’d never seen. A new way of looking at the world—” Traffic lights bloomed like fireworks through the rain-swept windscreen as Mya, faced with the inconvenience of a stop signal, took a shortcut through the carpark of a pub, narrowly missing someone’s Transit pulling out of a space then nipping back into the snarl of traffic, agonised howls of horns behind them like the baying of something monstrous. “A new pair of eyes.”

Maggie nodded, chewing on her bottom lip.

“The world seemed changed,” Mya went on. “Everything was magic.” The speed of their passage smeared the neon of a kebab shop across the night, and Maggie, her hand up to wave away a stray strand of hair that she swore was scuttling across her face like a spider, was left staring, open-mouthed, soul tightening in her throat as it sought to escape the skin, astonished at the colored lights crawling and twisting across her skin.

“She showed her things she never dreamed existed, never dreamed could exist. Then, her lover told this girl that she couldn’t have her, that it wasn’t to be. Where her lover came from, she said, that place was different to ours, and she had to go back there. She came from far away, from a place out beyond the days of working shit jobs for the man and burning up your nights in Rizlas and watching them drift,” Mya said, exhaling a long cloud of dope smoke. As it hit the windscreen and flattened out Maggie watched the coils interpolate and shiver in a slow-motion swirl, and the spirals twisted and convulsed and in the whirl there were bodies churning, moving against each other in a liquid tumble, figures clotted together and sliding through each other and as she watched featureless heads opened empty mouths in silent screams of ecstasy and lust—

Taking another big roundabout, Mya let the XR2 go sideways for shits and giggles, whoosh of tires on wet asphalt, and the stately procession of the Raders followed, each making the same playful half-wobble in the Ford’s wake, then out on the ring-road past industrial estates lit up garishly by high-powered halogens.

Maggie dry-swallowed the lump in her throat, convulsed slightly, gasped out:

“I think I’m gonna need another pill, if we’re going to a rave.”

Mya ignored her. “This other lover, she told the girl she was in deep, that where she came from they never died, but every so often one of them had to pay a price, tithe to the Man Who Waits, the Man Who Must Be Paid, and that it was her turn to pay.”

On the edge of a judder of chemicals as they sped down the pulsing freeways of her blood, Maggie found her voice:

“I’d’ve loved to have gone to a rave with you. We never did, did we? There was that big one, down by the river, in the old tire factory? We never made it,” and she trailed off, the memory of that night coming back to hit her: going round someone’s house to score, the crunch of the purple-y crystals in the baggie with the smiley on it. Too greedy to wait, they’d each cut a line that glistened like finely-ground glass on the back of a CD case, huffed it back, shrieking and clapping and giggling at the burn as it dissolved their mucus membranes. They’d staggered out of the dealer’s house arm-in-arm, already giggling, bathed in the streetlamp’s orange glow, hands slipping between hoodies and jeans against the cold. Before they knew it they were fucking each other raw in an alley behind the closed-down Tesco Express, panting against the bins, colors streaming from the edges of their vision as fingers worked in the cold.

Mya’s hand dropped swiftly off the gearstick, squeezed Maggie’s knee.

“Nearly there,” she whispered.

Maggie was halfway to replying “No, no you fucking weren’t, with the Mollie you took ages to come, I had to go down on you, knees in a puddle, my Diesels got fucking wet through,” when she looked up, and saw.

The lights of a deserted superstore glowing through the murk like the warning lights of a ship out at sea. To either side light industrial units glowered through the rain. Something that might’ve been a dog scurried through the puddles collecting on the uneven tarmac, shook itself, then squeezed through the gap in a fence and was gone. The road descended as it cut across a valley. At the top of the valley sides, brooding behind razor wire, huge dark shapes reared against the night sky. The XR2 turned up a driveway you could get an articulated lorry through, between steep banks choked with wet gorse. She pulled up in a huge open space across which the low-profiles bucked and jinked, big wheels nervous over the ruts. Ahead of them, a locked gate, skin of plate iron welded onto a framework of quarter-inch box-section, topped with barbed wire like icing on a birthday cake, stained with something that shone dark in the backwash off the streetlights, something that might’ve been oil.

“Mya, babe,” said Maggie, “where the fuck are we?”

The rest of the Raders, fallen behind in traffic or cut off from the XR2 by stop lights, began to wheel out of the night on to the forecourt, pulling up in a rough circle. One by one, the engines died, leaving just the reflections of their under-sill lights on the wet tarmac and their headlights cutting through the rain, deepening the shadows on the huge organic-seeming shapes sprawled up the side of the valley. From behind the ringing in her ears, Maggie thought she heard a sound far-off like bells, irregular, plangent, as if they’d taken a wrong turn and were down by the sea and could hear the ships still rolling at anchor in the wind, or when you’d gone to a free party and got mashed and passed out next to a sixteen foot high speaker and woke up with your head ringing and chiming, every sound distant and jangling for the next few days.

Mya smiled, leaned back in the driver’s seat, pulled another joint from a crevice on the dash, held it by the twist-shut and shook it to level it out.

“This is Faerieland, babe.”

Mya, an easy smile playing about her lips, sparked up the j. Maggie, spiking on another wave off her pill, nodded, started frantically chewing out her lip.

“Is this like when we—”

Mya pressed a finger to her lips and the dry knuckle against Maggie’s mouth smelled of hash and tobacco and the pleasantly artificial tang of raspberry lipstick.

“This is like nothing you’ve ever seen,” she said, her voice a whisper. “Now. Why don’t you unclasp your seatbelt?”

Maggie fancied she could hear a sort of whistling twitter, a high-pitched oscillation at the edge of hearing, like weaponized tinnitus. The noise got under her skin, wormed its way inside her nerves, crawled along her limbs and set itself just behind her eyes, where it fluttered and beat against the inside of her head like a moth caught in a lampshade.

The noise—and whatever she’d taken—made it difficult for her to think straight. She rubbed frantically at her eyes, which seemed to have dried out, and a starshell burst across her vision.

“It’s nearly time,” Mya said, taking a deep hit off her j. “They’re here.”

When Maggie looked again, things were moving in the darkness at the edge of the headlights, detaching themselves with a slinking motion from the huge shapes up on top of the hill, flowing through the night, drawing near to the edge of the pale circles cast by the Raders. Then—just when she thought she might be able to see what they were—edging back, staying tantalizingly out of reach. They moved on all fours. There was the suggestion of an angular, branched shape, like a four-branch exhaust manifold. A headlight found the edge of one of them for a second, but they were gone so quickly it was impossible to make anything else out other than the suggestion of wet fur, oil-slick pelt, stealthy stalking in the ebon night.

“What the fuck we doing, Mya?”

Mya shook her off. She held her right hand out of the car, in the rain, as if leaning to get the ticket from a tollbooth, then let it drop. The headlights of the Raders went off in a volley, and the night bloomed with afterimages that writhed violet and ultramarine and a pure, actinic cobalt that burned into Maggie’s retinas as if she’d been staring intently at the base of a MIG welder. Through or under these distortions moved other, darker shapes, suggested by the gaps between the swirling colors on the edges of the twisting light. The chittering increased, like the noise a tweeter made if you wired it in when spliffed up so that it was grounding to earth via the RCA connector.

“The only way this girl’s lover could be free, was if someone could take her place.” Mya smiled at Maggie, and there was sadness in it, a sadness that wrenched Maggie so that she jerked and flopped, a spasming convulsion that took all of her strength from her and left her hanging from the seatbelt, spent and useless as a discarded condom hanging from a fence. She tried to raise her head and it sagged useless and boneless on her neck.

The darkness rippled and shifted. Something was pulling itself in to existence, shapes coalescing from darkness, shapes Maggie half-recognized, tantalized as they formed then—just on the cusp of understanding—flowed into something else. Waves of prickling heat chased themselves across her, as if she was coming up again, but she was cold, bone cold, breath shallow like one nearing death, alone and lost in some icy hell.

Mya slipped her own seatbelt off and stepped outside, into the hush. She opened Maggie’s door and unclipped the belt, and Maggie fell forward, body gone liquid and useless, all her bones melted into a delicious slow ooze. The kiddie from the CRX with the baseball cap appeared at her side, and together he and Mya hauled Maggie out of the seat, trainers skidding on uneven greasy concrete, half-carried and half-dragged her limp scarecrow body between them, laid her gently on the wet rough cement.

A shipwreck puddled on the ground, Maggie’s eyes rolled up to the looming outlines against the clouds, and suddenly—with a burst of icy clarity like a siren cutting through your high, telling you it was time to fuck off out of the rave and head for home—she knew where she was. This, this was the place where the dead go. She could smell it, corruption, the sickly smell of ancient automotive glass gone sugary and fragile, of prehistoric hydraulic grease thickening like wax as it seeped back to the tar whence it came, fishy castor-oil tang of gone-off brake fluid and the tired dead-dinosaur ghost-smell of very old petrol, an undercurrent of spoiling, long-banned industrial pollutants, the waxy whiff of chrome-effect plastic as it expired in the wind.

Immense effort, all she had, everything given to a squirm of her neck, cheek scraped by wet concrete, and she could see—how could she see? Vision finally adjusted to darkness or some passing benediction of whatever it was Mya had given her?—a makeshift board up on the slope, where someone had painted the word “FAERIELAND” in thick daubs of blue paint.

Behind and above it, the huge misshapen outlines against the sky resolved themselves, trompe l’oeil turning the vast near-organic mass to cars piled atop each other in collapsing columns, sprawling aggregation of vehicular death, charnel-house of discarded bangers, piles of engines rearing against the sky like hearts piled up after some battlefield atrocity, ragged rusting wings hanging off like torn pinions of dying angels, Mcpherson strut-assemblies unbolted but left attached so that they dangled from brake lines like new appendages extruded by some automotive nightmare creature testing which shape would be best to crawl out of its pit and stalk across the land, delivering vengeance to those who’d left it here after years of faithful service, those who deserted it to rot in the polluted air and sink slowly into the mire of mud and the butchered remnants of its comrades.

The place where the dead go. Faerieland. The land of the dead.

And, out from that huge pile of automotive corpses, out from under the shattered sills and pent-in roofs, flowing out like poison from trailing umbilical fuel lines and ventricles of disassembled engines, from the aortas of shattered fuel injection systems, from underneath chassis twisted like paper and from cracked-open gearboxes, out from the jeweled synchromesh and delicately-splined shafts of sundered transaxles and torn-open wiring harnesses spewing copper filaments like multicolored nerves, they came.

The real Raders, the OG crew. They poured into the space before the cars like oil hitting water, as their forms adjusted to the limits of their new environment. They made the stuff of the night sing across human neurons and their wake through what we call the real produced a noise like far-off carillons of many bells and a chittering like angry bats. As they came down the hill the air hummed with their presence, spat and crackled and buzzed like high-voltage lines in wet weather, like a pylon singing to itself in the rain. The scrapyard smell receded and the night filled with the evanescent, sickly-sweet smell of violets—flickering across the nose then gone!—then an overpowering burst of eglantine and woodbine, stopping up the throat like death. The steeds they rose had lashed themselves together out of the rotting pile of scrap: corrugated flanks flaking away in oxide scabs, stamping hooves fashioned from brake discs, hydraulic piping and flex from cable looms bulging like sinews at their shoulders, mismatched headlamps for the eyes, exhaust-smoke breath billowing out in clouds from fanged maws made from the teeth of gearwheels and the lobes of camshafts. Their hounds were vast and black and bayed silently at their sides, the thick ruff of their pelt giving way at the shoulder to gleaming metal that heaved and rippled like flesh along the necks that held their great steel-antlered heads aloft. Impossible, implacable, reveling in their alien exhilaration, driven by compulsions innominate and terrible, they poured out into the night, churning up the bank as they came for Maggie. She sat blinking—unbelieving—as her doom streamed down the hill toward her, heart thudding slow in her chest.

The Raders watched, for a time. Then, one by one, they fired up their engines and followed Mya’s XR2, as it swept back out onto the rainy streets.

END

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Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back soon with a reprint of “Désiré” by Megan Arkenberg.

Episode #72 — “Raders” by Nelson Stanley was originally published on GlitterShip

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