#twenty miles from nowhere

[furnituremontana]

[welcometogrouchland]

I think that Donna Troy and Garth/Tempest should have their kids restored to main continuity (maybe at the age they were last seen pre-52 bc I know they??? Died?????) both bc it'd be nice for those two to get closure/second chances at parenthood but ALSO

Because I think it'd be funny if Dick Grayson. "chronic over achiever used to being labeled the defacto Most Adult of all his teen associates" was in his late 20s surrounded by friends who are all (mostly) either married or separated with kids (some of whom are teenagers due to time shenanigans) meanwhile he's got like. A dog

[yandere-daydreams]

Title: Love and Care.

Pairing: Yandere!Clark Kent x Reader (DC).

Word Count: 4.0k.

Commissioned by the very lovely @distortedhumor.

TW: Non/Con, AFAB!Reader, Prolonged Captivity + Kidnapping, Spanking, Psychological/Physical Abuse, Slight Infantilization, and Delusional Behavior.

You were going to freeze to death.

That was – if you didn’t die of dehydration, first. You really weren’t sure which was supposed to work faster; thirst or exposure, the acidic dryness crawling up the back of your throat or the slow, numbing chill spreading up from your toes, your fingertips. You didn’t have to worry about hunger – even if you could feel something sharp and hollow gnawing at the pit of your stomach. You remembered reading somewhere that it took longer than a month for someone to starve to death, even if it was hard to believe that when it felt like you were on the verge of collapsing into yourself.

It wasn’t that you hadn’t been prepared. Admittedly, it’d been an impulsive thing to do, the half-baked result of a door left unlocked and the daunting awareness that you had at least twelve hours before you so much as heard from Clark again, if not the full twenty-four. You didn’t have shoes more durable than house-slippers and the delicate, lovingly polished, Mary Jane heels he liked to see you in, but you’d put on your thickest dress, stuffed a bottle of water and a few slices of homemade bread into knapsack, and started walking into the lifeless, rolling plains that surrounded the rustic farmhouse he kept you in. You didn’t run – he always seemed to know if your heart rate spiked– but you had all day to walk until you found a road, or a phone booth, or anything else that could at least remind you that other people existed. You figured you’d come across something eventually, even if you couldn’t find the help you were looking for.

Except, you’d underestimated just how cold the countryside could get in autumn, and you hadn’t thought to ration your meager supplies until after they’d already run out, and as far as you could tell, he’d found the most vacant, lifeless, desolate corner of the world to trap you within. The hem of your skirt was caked with mud and dust, your knapsack had been left behind entirely after you realized there was no point in carrying and empty bag, and one of your heels had broken off about two miles back – leaving you reduced to a slow, hobbling limp. Your body was exhausted beyond exhaustion, but you couldn’t imagine a world where you stopped walking. The only thing worse than knowing you were going to freeze to death in the middle of nowhere would be knowing that you’d just laid down and accepted it, and if you’d been willing to do that, you wouldn’t have run away at—

Your foot caught on a dense patch of undergrowth, and too tired to catch yourself, you crumpled – your knees hitting the earth with enough force to make you whimper. The last of your perseverance crashed and shattered as soon as you hit the ground, and before you could so much as try to stand up, you fell apart completely. You felt the tears before you realized you were crying – just one, at first, then another, then more than you could ever hope to count. You threw your head forward, sniffling miserably as you collapsed onto your side. You were going to die out here, but…

But, that was probably for the best, wasn’t it? It was either die out here, or die in that lonely farmhouse when Clark finally lost his temper or the roof collapsed or the ‘villains’ he was also so worried about finally did their job and put you out of your fucking misery. With a full-fledged sob, you curled into yourself and clenched your eyes shut, and—

And of course, less than a full second later, you felt a pair of muscle-bound arms your crumpled form, sweeping you off the ground and dragging you into a broad chest. You were too weak to meaningfully resist, but still, you tried to writhe and nudge yourself out of his iron-clad hold to little success. He was already talking, too. Great. On the ranked list of things you might’ve wanted to hear immediately after accepting your own mortality, your kidnapper’s nervous babbling didn’t crack the top hundred.

As if that had ever stopped him before.

“—and I thought you’d gotten hurt, and your pulse sounded so far away, and— and I don’t know what I would’ve done if it’d taken me any longer to find you.” You tuned in mid-rambling, trying to swallow your agitation. He was bent over you, his face buried in your hair, giving his voice an unsteady, muffled quality. For the world’s strongest man, he was quick to fall apart whenever he thought you so much as might be in danger. You couldn’t really judge him for that, though. You fell apart whenever he wasn’t around, too, and you didn’t care about him at all. “Are you alright? Are you hurt? There’s a hospital about fifty miles away, I can—”

“I’m fine,” you cut in, your hands shoving at his forearm where it was barred over your waist. With an airy sigh, he repositioned you – letting you fall into a proper bridal-carry rather a fully-body tackle. You noticed, for the first time, that his feet weren’t touching the ground. He was levitating, a nervous habit that that back into too often to keep track of. He must’ve genuinely thought you were in danger. More importantly, he must’ve known there was no one around to see him doing something so obviously superhuman. “Just a little cold. I‘m sorry for worrying you.”

Another sigh, this one more genuine than the last. For the first time, he drew back, and you were able to see him properly. He must’ve come straight from Metropolis; he was still wearing the suit you’d seen him in that morning, his hair slightly disheveled and his glasses shoved haphazardly into his shirt pocket. You tried to breathe, not to be thankful for how quickly his inhuman warmth was ebbing away the harsher edges of your hypothermia, and for the most part, you succeeded. You felt his lips brush against your cheek, then the corner of your jaw – Clark as affectionate as he was paranoid. “Poor thing,” he muttered, haphazardly shrugging off the jacket of his suit and draping it over your shoulders. “We’ll have to get you warmed up once we get home.”

Despite yourself, you stiffened. It was over - you knew that. He caught you, and even if he hadn’t, you wouldn’t have been able to go on much longer. You knew that.

And yet, you held yourself that much tighter as you asked, “…do we have to go home right away?”

Clark’s smile softened; his expression slackening is a patronizingly sympathetic sort of way. He didn’t need to answer, not really, but you still cringed when he inevitably did. “Of course, dear.” And then, with another kiss to your forehead. “How else can I keep you safe?”

You might’ve been nicer than him, after all. Rather than respond, you bowed your head and tucked yourself against his chest, shutting your eyes and blocking him out entirely. Clark only hummed in acknowledgement, flying that much higher and taking you home.

~

It took an embarrassingly short time to reach the farmhouse – less than a full minute, if that. It wasn’t what you deserved, but it was what you needed: a reminder that you were trying to run away from someone who didn’t have to run at all to keep up with you. Trying to escape on your own was pointless. You’d either have to find another way to get away from him or give up entirely.

Despite your constant squirming, Clark only put you down once you were inside (meaning, once the front door was locked and deadbolted with you securely trapped behind it), and you stumbled to your feet, still on the verge of collapsing. He let you struggle through all of two steps before taking you by the hand and, with that award-winning smile, guiding you through the farmhouse. “A warm bath should do the trick. Some tea, too – or coffee, to keep your blood flowing.” His eyes flickered down to the mud-caked hem of your dress, your ruined shoes. “It’s a pity. I know that’s one of your favorites.” He paused, squeezed your hand. “We’ll have to pick out another together. Maybe tomorrow, before I leave for work.”

You bit the side of your tongue, nodding along absently and letting him ramble. When you passed the staircase leading to the second floor, to your bedroom, you started to move towards it, but Clark only continued further into the house.

“Uh, Clark?” You dragged your feet as he pulled you into the kitchen. “I— Um, tea sounds nice, but I’d really like to change, first, and—”

“In a few minutes.” Another infuriating smile, another squeeze to your hand. “Do you remember what happens when you break one of our rules?”

You felt something in your throat tighten. You’d managed to forget, but it came back quickly enough. “I do, but— I was out there for a few hours, and I can’t really feel my—”

“We’ll take care of that in a few minutes, love.” He was already moving towards the kitchen table, your hand still trapped in his. “We should get this over with now.”

Trying to argue would’ve been useless. You did your best to grit your teeth, to brace yourself, but your vision still blurred as he finally released you, settling into one of the simple wooden chairs. You crossed your arms over your chest, but it did little to put a barrier between you and his prying gaze. “Do you want to undress yourself? Or, do you need my help?”

Shaking your head, you fumbled with the buttons lining the back of your dress. Usually, you could manage on your own, but your hands were still numb, and you were fighting back tears, and Clark only watched you struggle for a few seconds before motioning for you to come closer. Soon enough, cotton and lace pooled uselessly at your feet, leaving you all-but entirely exposed in front of him. You didn’t need to be told to take off your shoes, kicking them into the depressing pile of fabric that used to be your favorite dress, but when it came to your panties, you hesitated, glancing toward Clark with a pleading look. “All of it,” he confirmed, with a tone bordering on apologetic. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

As if that would make you feel any better.

You sucked in a deep breath, then eased your panties down to your ankles. You’d been wearing one of your nicer pairs – white and silken, with a lace trim around the edges and a ribbon bow that was just slightly too big to be entirely inconspicuous. They were one of Clark’s favorites, even if you doubted you’d ever hear him admit something crude out loud. You could only hope you’d never see them again.

You kept your eyes on the floor as he took you by the waist and with as much effort as it might’ve taken to move a doll from one shelf to another, lifted you up and laid you over his lap. His thighs bit into your stomach as a hand found its way to the small of your back, rubbing slow circles into the base of your spine. “We’re only going to do fifteen, alright?” It wasn’t really a question, so you didn’t bother pretending you were going to answer. Clark didn’t seem to need you to. “And you know I’m doing this because I love you, right?”

That, you couldn’t get out of so easily.

“I know,” you mumbled, because that was what would upset him the least. “That doesn’t make it hurt any less, though.”

He didn’t make a sound. You wondered if he’d heard you at all, at least until the flat of his palm came down on the plush of your ass and immediately, it was impossible to think about anything at all.

It was a small mercy that he didn’t make you count. It was something he’d tried early on, the first couple of times you‘d thrown a chair through a window or stolen his phone or hoarded weapons underneath the mattress of your shared bed, but you’d never really been able to hold yourself together long enough for anything like that. You broke down too quickly, too easily – fuck, you were breaking down right now and he’d only hit you once. You could already feel tears pricking at the corners of your eyes, a knot welling up in the back of your throat that only seemed to let little, pitiful whimpers and miserable sobs slip by. You tried to steel yourself, to bite back any signs of weakness, but that only meant you’d forgotten to brace yourself for the second strike – just as bad as the first, centered more towards the back of your thigh than your ass. He was trying to spread the pain, to make sure any marks he left wouldn’t be permanent. He was trying to be gentle.

It was scarier than it should’ve been – knowing that he really did care about you. You couldn’t call it ‘love’, not really, not if you still wanted to be able to live with yourself, but he had to care about you, at least enough to pay some amount of mind to your well-being, at least enough for you to be sure he didn’t hate you (although, some days, you could still be convinced otherwise). He didn’t love you, but he thought he did, and the fact that he could earnestly believe he loved you and still treat you like this made you very, very afraid of what could happen if he ever changed his mind.

By the third strike, you were crying unabashedly, and by the sixth, your hands were clamped around his thigh, your nails biting into his skin in less of an attempt to hurt him and more of a desperate scramble for any kind of stability he had to offer. It was all force, no friction – a bruising, throbbing type of pain quickly spreading outward from every part of your body unfortunate enough to be under his palm. You couldn’t seem to talk, but Clark didn’t have an issue, pausing after every blow to rub circles into your bruised skin and mutter to himself. You couldn’t imagine he still thought he was talking to you. “I just worry about how you’d manage things, out there, all on your own,” he explained, his tone cloyingly sweet. Like he was talking to a child, too naïve to know any better. Like he could still expect you to believe there was anything in the world more dangerous than him. “You know I’ll always keep you safe, but I can’t be everywhere at once. It’s easier for both of us if you just—” A pause, an airy chuckle. “—if you just stay out of trouble.”

You’d lived in the city for years and never gotten into trouble, not before meeting him. Saying that felt pointless, though, especially when he was already moving onto the seventh.

Fifteen was a terrible number. If there’d been twenty or more, you might’ve been able to go numb by the time he finished, and ten or less would’ve given you a chance to preserve at least some of your dignity. At fifteen, though, the pain was still intense enough to be blistering, and you couldn’t seem to choke down your own keening sobs as Clark brought down his hand for the final blow – using just a little more force than he really had to, making sure the lesson would stick for the next couple of days, if not the next couple of weeks. He was strict, like that, despite how tender-hearted he pretended to be. If he wasn’t, you would’ve acted out more often.

You had to believe you’d act out more often.

You were still limp and crying when his arm wrapped around your waist and with a raspy, adoring sound, he sat you up – letting you straddle one of his thighs. Whatever relief you might’ve felt at the end of your punishment was immediately overshadowed by the pale, reddish tint spread visibly across his face, the feeling of something too large and too stiff pressing into your leg where it fell between his. Clark didn’t acknowledge it, though, and you were happy to follow his lead, melting into his hands as he cupped your face, basking in his happily provided comfort. There was a shallow exhale as he tilted your head back, pressing another lingering kiss into your forehead, before dipping lower – falling immediately to your neck. You let his lips make contact with your throat before sniffling and shifting in his lap. “Hurts, Clark,” you murmured, doing your best to make your voice that of something small and in need. “It’s not that I don’t want to, but… can we go upstairs, first?”

That was enough to snap him out of it. “Right. Of course.” There was one last peck to your collarbone before he pulled you into his arms, any thought of letting you walk on your own prematurely dismissed. You tried to go blank as he trailed through the farmhouse, not to focus on anything but the pain and your exhaustion, but your gaze seemed to catch on everything you didn’t want to see – the bowl of dough still rising on the kitchen counter, the torn dress-shirt you’d planned on mending today, a dozen tiny things that all drove their own little needles into the pit of your stomach. In Clark’s defense, the housewife shtick hadn’t been his idea, but you couldn’t say he was entirely blameless, either. When you were left trapped and alone, given nothing to do and no way to occupy your time, there was only so long you could last before resorting to household chores. It was just a happy coincidence that the byproducts of your captivity were practically identical to the kind of sugar-sweet, domestic behavior that’d always seemed to melt his heart, back when your relationship wasn’t so insidious.

At least the bathroom was warm. Still too unsteady to be trusted to walk on your own, you sat on the vanity while Clark ran a bath, staring at your hands absentmindedly as the steam started to ebb at the chill. When the tub was nearly full, he helped you into it, more than happy to make it seem like you couldn’t so much as move without his help – which, in his defense, you really couldn’t. As you sunk into the scorching water, you made a mental note not to let him touch you at all tomorrow. You doubted it would be enough to fix the damage tonight had done, but it’d be better than letting him coddle you half-to-death.

Surprisingly, Clark didn’t hover over you for very long. “I think I promised you something to drink,” he explained as he moved to the doorway, his smile suddenly sheepish. Like he had any right to be shy about what he’d done to you. “I’ll be back in a second – unless you think you’ll need a hand?”

You hesitated, but shook your head. “’m fine. I just need some time to think.”

“Not too long.” He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes prying into you for a second, then another before he turned away. “I think we should be careful about what gets into your pretty little head, for the next few days.”

And just like that, you were left alone. For the first time since he’d brought you home, you let yourself relax. The hot water momentarily dulled the pain, but without the agony to distract you, humiliation quickly took its place. You shouldn’t have let Clark take you back so easily – that only gave him more leeway to treat you like some naïve, fragile object he’d been tasked with looking after. You shouldn’t have taken your punishment so quietly, even if you doubted clawing at his legs and thrashing would’ve actually accomplished anything beyond salvaging your pride. You shouldn’t have run away at all, not if it meant triggering Clark’s paranoia, not if it reminded Clark that you’d still take any chance you saw to get away from him. You’d have to be smarter about it, if you ever to escape tried again.

(You did your best to ignore that, a few months about, the same sentiment would’ve been followed by ‘when you inevitably tried again’. You weren’t superhuman. You didn’t always have the strength to be so delusionaly optimistic.)

When Clark did return, he was blissfully quiet and careful to keep his distance, sitting on the edge of the tub while you haphazardly washed the dust out of your hair and scrubbed the mud from your skin. Even after the water had gone cold and you’d managed to struggle to your feet, his touch remained fleeting, ginger as he bundled you in a towel and lifted you into his arms – his sudden distance no excuse to treat you like a living, breathing, capable person, apparently.

You didn’t have the energy to be frustrated. Exhausted and beaten down, you closed your eyes and rested your head against his chest, only stirring slightly when you felt Clark lower you onto a quilt-padded bed. You started to sit up, but the feeling of a hand laying over your hip was enough to stop you. When you opened your eyes, you found Clark, still standing, still staring down at you with that dazed, lovesick smile. “It’s really amazing, how someone like me could ever end up with someone like you.” He dipped lower, his lips finding the side of your throat. There was no pretense of innocent affection, this time, just his mouth on the side of your neck, his teeth ghosting over your skin. His voice was stifled by proximity, but mournfully audible. “I love you. I’m always going to love you. You know that, right?”

“I... I do.” You sounded hoarse, weak – more so than you would’ve liked. Clark nipped playfully at your collarbone, nearly breaking the skin. “I know you’ve been waiting, but—”

“Guess I’m just that impatient, when it comes to you.” There was an airy chuckle, a glint to his smile, but neither were very comforting. Again, you made an attempt to flee, and again, he found a way to keep you where you were – his hands curling around your thighs as he eased your legs apart. There was a hollow thud of body against floorboardas he fell to his knees, as he pressed yet another open-mouthed kiss into the inside of your thigh. “I just can’t help it. You make it hard for me to think straight.”

Not that he was trying to. You opened your mouth, trying to think of something that could distract him, that could convince him you just couldn’t do this, but he’d latch onto your cunt before you could spit anything out – the flat of his tongue running over your entrance while his nose ground into your clit. With your ass still blistered from your punishment and your nerves still on-edge from the cold, that was all it took for you to bolt upward – your hands automatically finding their way to his hair in a desperate attempt to pry him off of you. Of course, he didn’t budge, and of course, when he did glance up, he did it with that lovestruck expression that you’d never been able to stand. That you never wanted to see again.

That you just couldn’t seem to wipe off of his fucking face.

“Clark,” you whined, his name fractured and mangled on your tongue. “Please, I— It hurts, and I’m so tired, and I just—” You cut yourself off, swallowing harshly and trying to catch your breath. “Please, don’t.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Your heart skipped a beat, hope swelling in your chest. He melted into your palm, grinning like an idiot. “You can relax. I promise, I’ll be gentle.”

And just like that, you felt something deep in your chest crack open and shatter.

The next time he bowed his head, burying himself between your thighs, you didn’t bother trying to stop him.

You didn’t do anything at all.

[feeder86]

Tommy's Two Hundred

From the moment Tommy had joined the gay dating app, he’d spotted that the closest person to him geographically was a catfish. It was obvious from the little thumbnail picture that no one with a body that good could live so close by and him not know about it. The picture, showing the massive pecs and toned six pack were guaranteed to have been stolen from some straight bodybuilder somewhere in the world; but definitely not anyone who lived within at least two hundred miles of this backwards town in the middle of nowhere. The guy was probably some lonely, middle aged man seeking some attention that he did not deserve; attention that Tommy had no intention of bestowing upon him.

With his good looks and average height, Tommy soon found himself on a couple of dates with guys from the app. Some a little older; a couple still in college. He always got himself so excited before each one, having enjoyed endless kinky exchanges beforehand, back and forth. He liked it when the guys led the conversation with their horny talk, getting most aroused when they spoke about dominating him and tying him up. He gave these virtual suitors a deep, authorative voice in his head as he read out their messages, imagining the ways they’d seek their pleasure from him. In these fantasies, he built an entire persona for his dates; the way they spoke, the way they acted; the things they would do to him after getting back. He was his own worst enemy. No one could live up to such expectations. Despite being bold and brave behind the keyboard of their cell phones, the guys were never as Tommy pictured them in real life. They were polite and friendly; a little kinky perhaps, but only behind closed doors. It didn’t take more than a few seconds for Tommy’s bubble to burst, leaving him stuck on a dull date with another boring Mr Average. 

As Valentine’s Day rolled around once more, Tommy felt the sting of still being single at the age of twenty-four. Friends, who thought they were being helpful, lamented about how difficult it was to understand why a guy so good looking and successful was still on the shelf. Tommy, however, knew that he just wasn’t being plain enough with people about what he was really after. He’d wasted more than a couple of years of his time on guys who were never going to please him in the ways he most wanted. If he was going to find the man of his dreams, he would need to start his dating profile from scratch.

Stripping his shirt and binding his hands with rope, Tommy posed for his new profile picture. He updated his username to include his submissive nature. Then, it was finally time to work on the profile itself. He stripped it bare of the mundane details about his favourite hobbies and movies, his education and aspirations. In their place, he went to town about his kinky interests and desires. He wanted to submit himself to someone entirely, openly and without reservations. Like a form of cosmic ordering, he outlined in great detail the sort of kinky, dominant guy he was on the lookout for, and ended by posting a further picture of his toned, naked body, wrists and ankles bound with handcuffs.

With breathless excitement, Tommy saved his changes and waited with fizzing excitement for his first messages. 

Nothing. Sure, his profile had had lots of views, but no one had felt compelled enough by it to reach out. 

Days went by. Tommy began to feel that he had made a mistake; that he had exposed himself and his kinks too openly on the app. Perhaps, rather than being turned on by his pictures and words, they were laughing at him instead; his extreme submissive fantasies, too weird and niche for anyone to actually want to meet him. Maybe the man of his horny dreams didn’t actually exist.

By the end of the second week, Tommy had made up his mind to delete the account. He gave his profile one final read, cringing as he tried to imagine it from another person’s perspective, then he stormed onto the app settings and found the exact link he needed to erase it entirely.

Just as he did so, Tommy saw a message pop up on the screen: 

‘Nice profile.’ 

Assuming sarcasm, Tommy skeptically tapped his way into his inbox and rolled his eyes when he saw that the message had actually come from the catfish profile of the guy who supposedly lived right here in town. 

‘Thanks,’ he typed back, determined that he would never be rude enough to ignore anyone who messaged him.

‘If you’re really as submissive as you claim, I’d be very interested in meeting you,’ came the next response.

Again, Tommy rolled his eyes at the fake profile picture. However, given that in five minutes time he would be deleting the app for good anyway, why not just click on the profile and take a look?

What Tommy saw next altered his perspective entirely. He didn’t care if the profile picture was a fake; a guy who could write like that, so erotically, about his desires to dominate, could look however they wanted to in real life. Tommy needed to meet them.

What followed over the next couple of hours was a kinky exchange where Tommy literally poured his heart and soul out to the mystery man on the other end. No one had ever shown such an interest in his kinks, nor drawn them out of him with such precision. So, when the offer of a meet at the coffee house in town came up, he didn’t think twice.

Sitting with his back to the door, Tommy waited patiently, but with a realistic mindset that a guy with a fake profile picture was unlikely to ever actually show up. Then, suddenly, he felt a large, warm hand land on his shoulder and a deep, masculine voice rumble into his ear. “Tommy?”

Tommy didn’t turn his head. He wanted to preserve that catfished image of the man he had been messaging for just a few moments longer. Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw that very same man appear in the flesh. Tall, strapping, muscular and handsome; it was as if a beautiful, mid-twenties Greek god had just arrived in his hometown; from out of absolutely nowhere. 

“I’m Hunter,” the guy smiled, reaching out his large hand to shake.

Tommy couldn’t help admitting to the fact that he hadn’t believed Hunter’s profile pictures to be real, and Hunter nodded, saying that he had been told the same thing many times. He seemed pleased by Tommy’s appearance too, stroking his knee gently under the table as they settled into their first real conversation.

A few moments later, Hunter was up and ordering coffees for them both. Tommy turned to catch the guy from behind as he stood at the counter: so tall, with such perfect glutes and that broad back adorned with muscular shoulders. Was this really Tommy’s lunchtime date?

Hunter soon returned carrying a tray with coffees and, surprisingly, a large slice of triple chocolate cake, which he placed in front of Tommy. 

Politely, Tommy thanked him for it, even though he had not asked for something to eat and actually felt a little awkward picking at it when Hunter did not have anything himself.

“I wanted to discuss our sexual interests,” Hunter stated next, steering the conversation when Tommy seemed to be taking it down a more mundane path. “The domination and submission.”

Tommy felt his cheeks getting hot. There were another two couples close by; probably within earshot. But Hunter didn’t seem to care in the slightest. 

“What do you want to know?” Tommy replied excitedly.

“Actually, I think it's time that you listened to me instead,” Hunter replied sternly, putting Tommy in his place perfectly. “It’s lucky that I saw your profile as I don’t use that app much for meeting guys.”

“Where do you usually meet guys?” Tommy asked, sensing that Hunter had paused for him to ask just such a question.

“A few places,” Hunter shrugged, flicking through his cell phone. “These are some of my previous subs,” he offered, holding up his phone and swiping through pictures of himself next to other guys in various forms of submission to him: on their knees, bound and gagged, you name it. “Do you notice anything in particular about the guys I sleep with?” Hunter asked next. His tone was serious and it was obvious that he wanted Tommy to respond in much the same way.

The answer came to Tommy immediately, but he squirmed as he tried to think of a way to reply to Hunter, without seeming rude. “Well, you’re so…” he mumbled, gesturing towards Hunter’s powerful body and chest. “And yet, these guys here… there’re a bit…”

“They’re fatties,” Hunter stated for him; obviously not one to dress his language up. “I need you to just come out with it in the future when I ask you questions,” he stated frankly. “That’s the way I work. No bullshit.”

Tommy nodded, feeling turned on by how direct Hunter could be. Having discussed in such detail what his dream dominant would be, it was almost as if Hunter was slotting perfectly into place. 

“Why fatties?” Tommy asked, hoping that mirroring Hunter’s language would please him.

“Because fatties turn me on,” Hunter replied plainly. “I work hard to build my body up. So when I fuck a sub, I need him to be soft and doughy for me.” He reached over to the plate of half eaten cake in front of Tommy and gave it a gentle nudge. 

Tommy’s eyes bulged. Hunter wasn’t kidding when he said he didn’t like to bullshit. His meaning couldn’t have been clearer. “So, you bought me the cake because…” he mumbled. He considered leaving it there and posing it as a question to Hunter, but he got the sense that the dominant hunk in front of him wanted him to just say what he believed to be true. “You bought me the cake to… soften me up.”

Hunter smiled for the first time in a few minutes and he leaned in, putting his giant hand back on Tommy’s knee. “That’s right,” he nodded, seeming to be genuinely delighted that Tommy had been frank with him. “Submission for me, is more than just slipping on a pair of handcuffs during sex. Submission is a lifestyle. It should be your entire body. You should wear it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”

Feeling his heart beating faster and his palms sweating simply from hearing Hunter’s deep voice speaking at such a volume about things, without a care in the world, Tommy nodded. “I agree,” he answered. “Submission should be a lifestyle.”

“I’m glad you said that,” Hunter nodded again, his eyes now fixed on the still half eaten cake.

“Oh,” Tommy shook himself, picking up his fork again and popping the next bit of cake into his mouth. Instinctively, he apologised and Hunter did not correct him for it.

“I’m not going to lie,” Hunter stated, nodding subtly with approval. “I think this could work between us.”

“You do?” Tommy shot back with so much delight that he immediately wanted to punch himself in the face for it. “That’s cool,” he nodded, trying to seem more relaxed.

“We’ll meet at my place next time,” Hunter told him, draining his coffee as if this interview was already over. “I’ll message you on the app.”

“Okay,” Tommy replied, surprised by how fast the date was over with. 

Hunter leaned in. “And make sure you finish that cake,” he whispered into his ear. “Every last crumb.”

Having Hunter so close sent exciting electrical pulses through Tommy’s brain: the smell of his delicious aftershave, those perfect lips so near to his face. “I will,” he replied sincerely, turning to look Hunter in the face in the hope that they may end with a kiss.

Hunter held Tommy’s gaze, studying him. But Tommy knew better than to be the one to initiate a kiss. “I know you will,” the hunk replied after a few seconds. “You’ll be a good boy,” he chuckled, then turned and walked away without a second glance.

Tommy raced home feeling more elated after a date than ever before. Finally, he had found someone who seemed to relate to him on a level that no one had before. And, unbelievably, the guy was hotter than anyone else he had ever dared to dream of.

Of course, there was the one part of the date that he was less sure about. He hadn’t come across someone so into domination that they had insisted their date consume cake for them. But just because it was a little different, didn’t mean that he had to view it negatively. After all, he’d got quite a kick out of complying, hadn’t he?

“Come on in,” smiled Hunter a few days later, opening the door to his apartment. 

Just as he had stated in his messages, Hunter had not long got in from the gym and still looked a little sweaty, dressed in tight, and particularly short, shorts, together with a well-fitted compression top that showed off every detail of his exquisite body. He was even taller than Tommy realised, making him feel so insignificant standing next to him. He tried not to faint, right there on the spot.

“Rule number one,” Hunter began. “When you come here, you take your clothes off as soon as you get inside.”

Tommy stared up at Hunter, wondering if he was serious. But as the pause continued, Tommy realised that Hunter was waiting for him to comply. He fumbled for a second, then began unbuttoning his shirt, feeling more than a little embarrassed to be doing this straight away. He’d taken so long to pick out his outfit for their second date. What a waste of time that was!

“Come on, quickly!” Hunter prodded him impatiently.

Tommy kicked off his shoes, removing his pants and underwear in one go, knowing that his dick was going to be pathetically hard already. He stood there after awkwardly removing his socks, not knowing whether to cover his hardness, or act like this was normal.

Hunter nodded with approval. He reached down into the pile of discarded clothes and pulled out Tommy’s underwear, holding them up as if for inspection, and gripping the small waist between his fingers. “Cute,” he chuckled to himself, seeming to find them highly amusing.

But Hunter did not throw them back onto the floor. He carried them as he turned into the apartment, clearly expecting the naked Tommy to do the same.

Following the jock inside and admiring those fine, muscular glutes just ahead of him, Tommy had never felt so turned on in his life. It had been immediate, from the moment he stepped inside. He felt, at that moment, that he would have eaten an entire mountain of chocolate cake if Hunter had told him to.

Hunter led him to the kitchen area, where Tommy was surprised to see that the big man was busy preparing a meal for them both, despite not having even showered yet. A good meal was clearly more important to him.

“Smells delicious,” Tommy chirped politely, still unsure whether to cover his boner with his hand as he trotted in.

Hunter raised his eyebrows in recognition of his comment, but did not reply. Instead, he pulled out a chair at his table and pointed for Tommy to sit whilst he went back to stirring and serving it out. 

There was something so sexy about a man in the kitchen. There were so many things on the go and yet Hunter did not seem in the least bit flustered. Everything was under complete control. But as Tommy watched, he noticed that it was all being served onto separate, single plates; not distributed between the two of them as he had expected.

At last, Hunter pulled out a chair and positioned it directly in front of Tommy. Then he sat, spreading his strong legs and looking at his guest seriously. “I enjoyed our date, Tommy. I really did. I think you’re a nice guy and I believe that you would make a great sub for me.”

Tommy smiled back, pleased; feeling the need to tuck his hardness between his thighs whilst Hunter was being so friendly.

“But if I’m going to spend some real time with you, I need to know what you can do. I also need you to see the type of man I really am. You may not like any of what I have planned tonight. You may want to leave. And that’s fine. But at least we'll both know where we stand, and neither of us will get our hopes up, thinking that this is more than what it is.”

Tommy looked from the gorgeous man to the piles of steaming food still on the counter. He knew that Hunter would want him to think for himself and be direct. “You want me to eat this for you, don’t you?” he asked, realising that the chocolate cake slice of their first date had just been the start of whatever kinky play Hunter was into.

Hunter simply nodded. “I want to see how far you’re willing to go for me.” 

The stud sat back, lifted his arms and removed the tight compression shirt he was wearing, revealing his remarkable torso to Tommy for the first time. 

Chuckling slightly at the obviously smitten expression on Tommy’s face, the large guy leaned in and gave him a sweet kiss on the lips. “Are you ready to do this for me?” he whispered into his guest’s ear, before picking Tommy’s small hands up and placing them on his strapping chest.

The hot, sweet breath on Tommy’s neck, combined with the musky scent of the jock’s body, so firm and strong, made him want to climax there and then. “Yes,” he replied obediently.

Hunter sat back again with a smirk, making Tommy’s hands fall back down. He knew exactly the effect he was having upon the boy. He reached down to the guy’s stomach and, with the back of one finger, he stroked across the light six pack that showed there. “Goodbye, little buddy,” he teased wickedly. Then he stood up, seeming to loom larger than ever without his shirt on, and brought the plates and bowls to the table. 

Armed with only a fork and a spoon, Tommy was expected to feast on all of it.

Luck was on Tommy’s side; he hadn’t eaten since lunchtime. Plus, Hunter was watching him, rubbing his back sweetly and advising him on what to eat next; taking him back and forth from one dish to another. But something seemed to happen about thirty minutes in. Hunter changed slightly. He’d had a laid back attitude the entire time that Tommy had been there, as if he wouldn’t have been bothered if Tommy cancelled the date and took himself home instead. Maybe he was used to that. But now he was actively supporting; up and about, fetching the furthest plates so that Tommy did not need to reach. The man’s breathing had altered as well, with deeper, more rapid intakes of breath as he watched Tommy eat. Then, with a small glance down, Tommy saw that the thickest hardness had swollen down one side of Hunter’s gym shorts. How incredible! Had Tommy really excited the dominant man that much?

“You’re doing well,” Hunter praised him; his voice deeper and more gravely than Tommy had heard it before. “I’m impressed.”

Tommy’s stretched out stomach began to really hurt about forty minutes in, yet he continued to push himself as far as he could. Some plates were clean now, which Hunter got up and replaced with some dessert items. Tommy had always enjoyed switching back and forth between sweet and savory items, so the additions to the table were more of a help than a hindrance.

Eventually, the time came when Tommy knew he would have to stop. His pace had slowed and he started selecting those easier, lighter items to make the remaining plates look at least a little emptier. “That’s it. I’m done!” he whimpered, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his painfully distended stomach.

Despite expecting cries or protests from Hunter ordering him to finish the pathically small amount of pasta he had left, or gulp down the last few melting scoops of ice cream, Hunter simply sat there, surveying the destruction on the table. “Where did you learn to eat like that?” he asked, seemingly flabbergasted.

Tommy quietly dredged up a burp to relieve some of the pressure and shook his head. “Don’t know,” he shrugged. “I’ve always had a pretty good appetite.”

Hunter still seemed unable to comprehend what he had witnessed. “I’ve seen some seriously fucking fat boys eat less than half of what you just put away.”

Tommy burped again and found some pleasant relief; more than he was expecting. He knew how expensive the ice cream that Hunter had served him was, and decided to finish it off after all, not wanting to see it go to waste. He could see Hunter staring at him in amazement. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he shrugged, a little embarrassed. “I’ve always had a very fast metabolism.”

“I can soon destroy that,” Hunter growled, giving away just how horny he was. “Natural greed like this… It's incredible. And very rare!” 

“Thanks,” Tommy smiled,unsure what else to say. 

“Why don’t you stay here tonight?” Hunter asked next, wrapping a big arm over Tommy’s shoulders, like a snake about to suffocate its prey. “I know you don’t have work in the morning. I can make you breakfast.”

A mixture of relief and arousal swept over Tommy. He’d made such an effort to eat, he’d all but forgotten the fact that he’d need to catch the bus home later.

“I’ll make it worth your while,” Hunter teased, as if Tommy needed persuading. He reached for a tiny bottle of lubricant in his shorts and tipped a small amount of it onto his fingertips, before gently massaging the head of Tommy’s hardness.

Tommy gasped and grabbed for the sides of his seat, as if the floor was about to cave in. Hunter was so good at this. All that eating made the oxygen catch in his chest and it took him a few seconds to get his breathing into a rhythmn as Hunter took the reins of pleasuring him. He nodded his head, not wanting to use his voice in that moment for fear of how pathetically weak and needy it might sound.

“Come on Greedy Boy,” Hunter teased him. “Let’s go take a shower together…”

“I can’t come next weekend,” Tommy grinned, addressing his coworkers six weeks later. “I’m away with my boyfriend.” 

As predicted, the whistles of delight sounded in the air as they all made a fuss at the news that their colleague was dating at last. Tommy wasted no time in sharing a picture of the two of them together, sitting in his parents’ lounge. 

“He’s hot!” blasted one of them straight away.

“He looks like he should be on a catwalk!” squeaked another.

Tommy smirked to himself. He loved the reactions he got to pictures of Hunter. Sure, people might have thought he was punching quite significantly above his weight, but he was still the one who got to be fucked by such a hunk, and not them. However, behind that handsome smile and perfect ‘boy next door’ act Hunter laid on astonishingly thick for all of Tommy’s family and friends, lay the kinkiest, most dominant lover he could have ever wished for. The things they got upto in the bedroom satisfied him completely. After years of dating boring guys, Hunter seemed to swoop in and make Tommy fall hopelessly in love with him in only a matter of days. Tommy was utterly devoted to him. And the best part was, Hunter knew it.

“You haven’t really told me much about these friends of yours we’re going to meet this weekend,” Tommy pondered, sitting in the passenger seat and noting how far out into the country they had gone on his online map.

“Well, why bother? You got along with all my other friends,” Hunter chuckled, obviously keeping something from Tommy about this trip.

Tommy sighed. “Yeah, but they were all co-workers and old school buddies. They don’t know… all the sides of your personality,” he replied diplomatically.

“Well, let’s just say, this weekend will be good for us,” Hunter smiled, leaning back and driving smoothly. “These guys are sexy as fuck, and we all like to play together. I’ve been excited to show you off to them since we first started going out. ”

“Show me off?” Tommy asked. “How so?”

“Just you wait and see,” Hunter laughed, adjusting the developing boner he was getting in his crotch. Something about this was exciting him very much. Then he reached his hand across to stroke Tommy’s thigh and brushed off some of the many wrappers from the drive-thru they had stopped at a good few miles back.

The location, when they finally arrived about two hours later, was nothing short of breathtaking. The house was set in the most charming of spots, overlooking the hills; with eight bedrooms, a pool, and the largest hot tub Tommy had ever seen. They entered, Hunter leading the way, only to see several shirtless men all standing around in the kitchen. They cheered when they saw Hunter and came over to greet him with a hug.

Tommy stood back awkwardly. He’d been so stupid in how he had imagined these men in his head. They were not at all as he had envisioned them; all of them round bellied and at varying levels of obesity; not the types of guys that someone in Hunter’s extreme, peak physical condition would have been expected to associate with. But, then again, Hunter had always said that he preferred fat guys.

“And this is my new boyfriend, Tommy,” Hunter finally stated, pulling Tommy forward to greet them all.

There was a look of surprise on all the guys’ faces. One of them furrowed their eyebrows, as if about to ask whether Hunter was being serious. Then, the first one stepped forward and shook his hand warmly; followed by the rest of them, one by one.

“That was a little weird,” Tommy whispered as the pair of them went up to the bedroom that had been assigned to them: thre master suite no less. “Did they not know that you’re dating?”

“No, they knew,” Hunter smirked, undressing himself and slipping on his tiny swim shorts to head out to the pool. “I date fat guys, remember. I’ve fucked and dominated every one of them in my time,” he continued, checking his perfect hair in the mirror. “So when I told them I was dating the fucking greediest, sexiest guy I’d ever met, they’d probably assumed you were a lot larger.”

“Wait. So do they know that you…” Tommy asked.

“These guys know everything. That’s why I was so excited for this weekend. We can just relax and be ourselves, without having to worry. I can cook mountains of food for you, just like normal, then bring you up here, tie you up and fuck you all night long,” he grinned, striding over to Tommy and kissing him. “Now, get changed,” he ordered, throwing some swim shorts at him.

“Looking good!” growled one of the men as Hunter led the way down the stairs. “I’ve never seen you looking so chiselled.”

Hunter stood and soaked in all of their comments, comically flexing and posing for them all. Then he smirked and tapped one of the guys on his gut. “I could say the same to you, buddy,” he nodded. “This overhang has really gotten a lot bigger since the last time I saw you.”

Tommy inhaled slightly with shock at Hunter’s rudeness. He looked for signs of offense, until he saw that the man instead looked mightily pleased with himself. “Paul has been feeding me a big tub of ice cream before bed every night,” he pointed over at another large bellied guy in the corner, who was obviously his partner. 

“Well, it’s really working,” Hunter smiled at him, giving him a deep, horny kiss. “I’m doing the same with this little guy,” he continued, pulling Tommy closer to him. “He was still living with his parents when I met him, but I’ve got him with me most of the time these days. That’s making things easier. Ice cream before bed is one of the things I started him on straight away,” he stated proudly.

The eyes of the men studied Tommy’s body in his swim shorts.

“I’m having to break down his incredibly fast metabolism. It’s not ideal. But if I turn him around, you can see,” Hunter explained, spinning a light and clueless Tommy around and bending him down so that his small butt faced the men instead. “There’s a little more softness forming around his lower back and…” he continued, dropping Tommy’s swim shorts slightly so that his butt cheeks showed, “...his glutes and thighs are filling up a lot more than when I first met him.”

Hunter tapped Tommy’s butt, creating a short ripple.

“Do you see it?” he asked them all.

With his head down, facing away from them, Tommy didn’t know if the guys had nodded in agreement. 

“Do you think he’s going to be quite bottom heavy then?” another of the men asked, clearly feeling that Tommy’s butt was wothy of discussion.

“Possibly,” Hunter agreed. “It’s a bit too early to tell. There aren’t many fatties in his family for me to get a good idea of how he might develop. That was one of the first things I checked. But he’s quit the gym to spend more time with me, so that should speed things up a little.”

Tommy felt his swim shorts getting pulled back up and a sweet kiss being placed on his forehead by his boyfriend. Then he was spun back to face the others, just as they all started chuckling with amusement to themselves, noticing the hardness that had developed in Tommy’s crotch during their conversation about him.

Hunter soon noticed as well and joined in the laughing, patting Tommy on his butt proudly. “He’s a kinky little fucker too!” he smirked, repositioning himself behind Tommy, rolling his big strong arms around the smaller guy’s shoulders and gently rubbing his crotch into his lover’s rear.

“I take it he’s a sub?” Paul asked from the corner.

“Of course,” Hunter shot back, gently nibbling Tommy’s ear. “One of the most obedient I’ve ever had,” he whispered. “You’re a good boy, aren’t you Tommy?” he teased, reaching one arm down to stroke the hardness in Tommy’s shorts, even with all the other guys there.

Tommy’s head flopped back against Hunter’s shoulder. In this situation, he felt so crazily out of control, yet it was arousing him in ways he could not explain.

“Anyway, come on, Piggy,” Hunter finally ordered, pulling his large hand out from Tommy’s crotch. “Let’s go try out the pool.” He tapped his lover on his butt, admiring the slight flutter that spread into the guy’s thighs. “But remember, not too much exercise for you. I don’t want you to spoil all the fast food calories I bought you earlier.”

Dinner was served a couple of hours later: a vast spread of multiple dishes, prepared by the varying couples in attendance. They sat in the shade, all of them in their swim shorts, and some of the men spilling out of the tight patio chairs that the rental property had for its guests.

“You finished already, Danny?” Hunter asked the significantly overweight man across the table. “Tommy will be nowhere near finished. He’s got at least another twenty minutes in him,” he boasted.

“It is extraordinary,” one of the others nodded in agreement, seeing how easily Tommy was packing it all in. “Is this how he usually is?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Hunter nodded, reaching over and spooning on another large serving of cheesy pasta, as if he was psychically linked to his boyfriend and knew exactly what he wanted. “He can go like this for every meal: breakfast, lunch, dinner… He’s also a great little snacker as well. I need to eat frequently throughout the day to keep this physique up,” he explained, tensing his large biceps. “So it’s easy to get this one eating with me, and it still never spoils his appetite when dinner time rolls around.”

“How are his family feeling about him dating a feeder?” Danny asked, eyes still on Tommy as he continued to consume.

“It’s still early days,” Hunter replied. “He’s not really started to fatten up properly yet and take shape. Plus, they absolutely love me. I have his mom eating out of the palm of my hand! I’m sure the idea that I’m fattening their son won’t cross their minds for some time yet.”

“What’s his recovery time like?” Danny’s slightly slimmer husband asked next.

“Pretty good,” Hunter nodded again. “After he’s done here, I’ll take him upstairs, jack him off and then let him sleep for a couple of hours. Then he’ll be back up and ready for something else before bed,” he laughed, rubbing his boy’s back sweetly.

Tommy listened to it all as he continued to eat. Below the table, his hardness was weeping into his swim trunks. It wasn’t at all how he anticipated the life of a submissive, but it was still absolutely perfect, hearing Hunter boast about his control over him to all his friends.

“Are you struggling there, Fat Boy?” Hunter grinned as he watched the enormous Jack trying to repack his suitcase in the middle of the lounge that Sunday.

Tommy could tell that Jack was Hunter’s favourite of all the fat guys; most likely because was the softest of them all; partly due to his shorter height, making him rounder and more spherical than the others. Tommy had been with his boyfriend long enough to know when Hunter was getting horny and he sensed the spark of arousal within him each time Jack waddled on by, dressed only in his swim trunks all weekend.

Jack wiped his brow and nodded. “I’m not as sprightly as I used to be.”

Hunter chuckled and nodded in agreement. “Harry has done an awesome job on you. All that fresh fat in that big gut…” He growled in approval, admiring it all. His hardness was getting too much for him and he pulled Tommy gently down into his crotch to pleasure him whilst they spoke.

“I think you’ve got a good one there too,” Jack nodded over at Tommy, sucking away, as ordered.

Hunter sighed with pride and slapped Tommy on his butt, as he crouched across the sofa. “He will be. He just needs time to get into my ways.”

“He looks pretty obedient to me,” Jack chuckled.

“Oh, definitely! Like I said, he’s one of the best subs I’ve ever had. Decent blow job skills too,” he sighed, really starting to feel Tommy’s work now. “I just need to take down this metabolism of his.” He gazed down at the back of Tommy’s head bobbing up and down in his crotch. “I need every part of him to submit to me.”

Jack nodded knowingly, trotting over and rubbing Tommy’s butt as well. “Don’t worry, Hunter. I know you. You’ll have him under control very soon now...”

Over the next few weeks, Tommy felt a creeping tightness in his workpants. He stared in the mirror, hardly believing that the swollen glutes and thicker thighs were actually his. In his constantly bloated state, he hadn’t noticed the disappearance of his light six pack, as a thickening layer of fat began to spread itself around his waist. In fact, it was only as he jumped down from his office chair after finding something on the top shelf of a cupboard, that he noticed the first flutter of that fat, especially in his chest. But after that day, everything seemed to spiral.

“Hunter, I need you to come to my work,” Tommy whispered down the phone.

“Why?” Hunter asked, clearly in the middle of a training session with one of his clients at his gym.

“I bent down to pick up my pen and…”

“You ripped your pants,” Hunter finished for him. “About time. Did anyone see?”

“No,” Tommy replied with relief.

“That’s a shame,” Hunter sighed in disappointment. “And now you want me to drop everything and head over to deliver some larger pants for you?”

“Yes, please!” Tommy begged, knowing that his dominant boyfriend might actually get quite a kick out of leaving him in his ripped pants all day long.

A long, excruciating two hours later, Hunter arrived at the office. Many of the female employees rushed from their desks to greet him, and Hunter flirted sweetly with them, knowing exactly what sort of effect he had on them. It was strangely arousing to see him in action, pretending to take an interest in Melissa’s honeymoon or Fran’s new grandchildren; this charming character that he portrayed with ease.

“Well, I must go, ladies,” he smiled, walking towards Tommy’s office as some of them continued to bleat on. He closed the door behind him and comically put his body against it as if to stop anyone following him in. Then he locked it, just in case. “How do you put up with such boring people?” he sighed, looking straight at Tommy.

“They absolutely adore you,” Tommy reminded him.

“I know. But they’re still fucking boring,” Hunter smirked, checking the blinds were closed properly before striding over to his chubby lover who rose from his chair to greet him with an embrace.

Immediately, Hunter seized the opportunity in those moments of weakness; his strong hands sliding down to the tear in Tommy’s pants, mercilessly ripping them open further.

Tommy’s hands slipped back surveying the damage. Now, even his underwear had been compromised as he felt cool air against his increasingly fleshy glutes. “Please tell me you brought my new pants,” he blasted in panic.

“I did,” Hunter nodded, rifling through his backpack and showing them briefly. “But it’s going to cost you,” he sniggered, now pulling out his hardness from his shorts and nodding for Tommy to lie himself on the table.

“But I’m in work!” Tommy shot back.

“All the more reason for you to stop complaining and get a move on then,” the man laughed back, stroking his thick hardness to warm it up for Tommy’s softening butt.

Tommy lay himself down, realising that one of his most kinky work fantasies was about to come true, despite feeling no less worried that there would be a knock on his door at any moment. He spread his legs, making the tear even more pronounced, then heard the thud of a supermarket cheesecake being dropped by his head and then slid underneath his nose: Hunter’s latest fascination, watching him gorge on something extremely fattening whilst fucking him.

Both of them set to work, Hunter pounding him so forcefully that the cheesecake smeared itself over Tommy’s nose and under his chin as he tried to eat it at the same time. It was clear that he needed to eat fast, save getting it on his white shirt and ending up in exactly the same sartorial predicament again. His tongue came into play, scooping it all up and then pushing whatever didn’t need chewing straight down. Hunter didn’t take long to finish, but the sweat on his brow gave away just how much he had really gone for it. He threw Tommy a pack of cleaning wipes for his face and unfolded the new pants, presenting them like a prize to his lover.

A minute later, Hunter insisted on being walked out of the office; both of them stopped on the way multiple times.

“Yes, we’d love to come over for dinner sometime, Christine,” Hunter smiled politely, both he and Tommy knowing full well that it would never happen. Hunter wouldn’t waste his free time socialising with any of these people, unless there was something in it for him.

“Whart a nice boy he is!” Christine marvelled, standing at the main entrance of the office block, watching Hunter drive off. “So polite and gentle!”

Swishing his tongue around his mouth and still tasting nothing but cheesecake, Tommy nodded in agreement. “He’s the best.”

It felt very festive, turning up at the picturesque rental cottage covered in snow. Unlike last time, Tommy knew exactly what he would be walking into as Hunter’s friends arranged their next meet up. Being from up north, renting these houses was the best way for them to meet up with Hunter, who they all found just as fascinating and intoxicating as Tommy did. 

“Someone has been eating well!” the men chuckled, seeing Tommy for the first time in almost six months.

Tommy nodded, taking his big jacket off. In the last couple of months, his cheeks had blown up in a way that was not too dissimilar to a hamster stuffing itself with seeds. Fat had spread under his chin and into his neck, always visible now that Hunter insisted that he stayed clean shaven. Hunter kissed him proudly, always delighted whenever anyone mentioned his boyfriend’s gains.

“I’m guessing you defeated that fast metabolism of his?” Danny laughed, seeing more and more of Tommy’s shape as he removed the layers of winter clothing.

“Did you ever doubt me?” Hunter smirked back, grabbing both of their bags to take them upstairs; never wanting Tommy to burn any calories unnecessarily.

“What do you weigh now?” Paul jumped in after Tommy and Hunter came back downstairs after settling into their room.

Tommy looked to Hunter, knowing that he would want to be the one to tell them all.

“We’re up 70lbs since you last saw him,” Hunter beamed, draping his big arm over Tommy’s shoulders. “I bet you can hardly recognise him with these chubby cheeks, huh boys?”

“I suppose the sweatpants come in handy these days?” Eddie asked, nodding at Tommy’s casual attire as he stood beside his muscular boyfriend.

“Um, I guess so,” Hunter pondered. “To be honest, I don’t let him wear clothes when he’s at home. Do I?” he asked Tommy in an attempt to include him, even a little, in this discussion about him.

Tommy shook his head.

“As you can probably see, his tits are starting to come in real nicely,” Hunter continued, lifting Tommy’s shirt for the boys to see. “Lovehandles are fully in shape now, and the back fat,” he rambled on, spinning Tommy around for their viewing pleasure. “I’ve had to rescue him twice in work now after he’s split his pants,” he laughed, rolling the sweatpants down so that the guys could see the transformation that had taken place in Tommy’s glutes. “And, best of all…” he went on, rapidly spinning Tommy like a ragdoll again to face them once more, “Check this out…”

The boys marvelled in unison as Hunter grabbed a thick wedge of fat that had amassed at the top of Tommy’s groin. 

“It’s hard to believe how much fat there is here, considering he’s only 220lbs at the moment,” Hunter grinned. “It’s incredible!”

“Well, we can help add to that this weekend,” Danny smiled. “It’s your first holiday season as a fatty,” he nodded at Tommy. “That’s got to be quite exciting?”

“It’s also our first one together,” Tommy replied, falling back into Hunter’s large chest.

“What are you guys doing for the big day?” Eddie asked next.

“Well, we told Tommy’s parents that we were going to my family. And then we said the exact opposite to my parents. So, basically…” Hunter smirked, pulling his lover into a cute sideways cuddle, “...this little piggy is going to be spending the day sitting on my cock whilst I feed him absolutely everything I’ve been preparing for him for the last month.”

The guys all looked at each other, clearly astounded and secretly aroused by the idea.

“Have you had much backlash from Tommy’s family now he’s getting so overweight?” Danny questioned them later, sitting at the table, waiting for Tommy to finish his meal.

“Not so much,” Hunter replied. “Now his face has started to balloon, people are certainly a lot more aware of it. But his parents aren’t as switched on as mine. My dad pulled me to the side a couple of weeks ago and told me to start going easy on Tommy.” He straightened up, about to do an impression of his father and put on a dull, stuck-up voice. “Your mother and I know exactly what you’re doing,” he began at a fast pace, poking his finger out like a school teacher. “You’ve always been forceful about getting your own way; always the bully we used to get complaints about when you were in high school. But Tommy is a nice boy; the nicest you’ve ever brought home, and you’ve got to start getting your kicks some other way. One that doesn’t involve him getting so out of shape!”

The men all laughed in unison.

“I just tell them I’m going to set up a diet plan for Tommy in the New Year,” he chuckled; setting the rest of them off. 

“Well, I can imagine exactly what sort of ‘diet plan’ you’ll have for him,” Danny smirked, knowing his friend all too well.

Hunter nodded and laughed along with them. “Yeah, this fat boy is so fucking screwed!”

Their conversation rolled on. All the while, Tommy continued to eat.

“Good boy!” Hunter sang moments later as Tommy finally put his knife and fork down; his plate cleared. “Was that tasty? That lamb dish is one of Eddie’s most fattening recipes. I should know. I taught him how to make it.”

Tommy nodded his head; utterly stuffed.

“Do you want me to take you upstairs for your pleasure time?” he asked the blubbery boy. “It’s part of his routine,” he explained to the guys. “Or would you rather have it here, so that the other fat boys can see you?”

Tommy looked around at the faces staring at him. All of the men were shirtless and some of them, like him, had come to the table wearing nothing at all. His initial thought was to go back upstairs. However, that seemed like such an effort in his stuffed state. He looked over at a cosy chair by the fireplace and nodded; “Over there.”

Initially, the other kinky guys had pretended to busy themselves whilst Hunter took Tommy over to the chair and began to rub his hardness up and down. However, their curiosity and arousal was soon gettng the better of them, one-by-one, coming to sit on the other chairs or stand nearby watching Hunter controlling his sub.

“Are you a good piggy for me?” Hunter whispered into his ear, making Tommy moan and nod. “You’ve put on so much fat for me this year. Did you see how shocked the guys were earlier? They’re all looking at you now.”

Tommy opened his eyes and looked around. What would he have said a year ago, had he imagined a scenario that was anything like this?

A curious and horny Eddie licked his thumb and began rubbing it over Tommy’s pointed nipple.

Hunter looked across with approval. “Piggy loves that now his tits have come in. He can’t get over how sensitive they are.

Danny licked his thumb and began playing with the other nipple, before Paul came along and grabbed a wedge of Tommy’s stomach fat, as if hardly believing how quickly it had developed.

“You see, you’re the star of the show, Piggy!” Hunter whispered into his lover’s ear.

Tommy’s breathing became a lot heavier as he felt his climax building.

“It’s alright, Piggy,” Hunter continued. “Don’t hold back. You can show them what I taught you to do when you climax.”

Tommy looked into Hunter’s eyes. Was it really okay to let himself go like this? But the orgasm was coming so fast and the urge to do it was becoming too much for him to resist. He gasped, letting go of his inhibition, then snorted, loud and clear, just like a pig, mimicking the tones that Hunter had taught him exactly. Jets flowed across the coffee table in the middle of the room and Tommy shut his eyes, calm at last..

As the New Year came and went, Tommy realised that his weight had spiked at an alarmingly fast rate over the holidays. Hunter had declared, looking at the vast new size of Tommy’s glutes, that it had been the best gift he had ever received. The gains did eventually slow down, but never stagnated. And so, by their first anniversary of getting together, Tommy stood next to his gorgeous boyfriend with over one hundred and ten pounds of added fat on him.

Hunter was more pleased with his own body than ever before as well. He’d spent the last few months bulking his shoulders and glutes, so that even he was outgrowing his clothes. Seeing Tommy swell so fast had given him the motivation he needed to make a real push with his weight training, and he spent much of that summer without a shirt on, both inside and outside of the apartment. He’d inherited a decent amount of money from a great uncle he had never even met, spending most of it on a new convertible and a designer watch that helped to inflate his ego even further. Their kitchen had been the epicentre of it all, with Hunter cooking himself up vast amounts of high protein meals, whilst simultaneously pouring in the butter, oils and grease into everything he made for Tommy.

Hunter’s bulking had also created the perfect excuse for Tommy’s ever swelling stomach. Hunter made no secret of how much he had to consume in order to keep up the strapping muscle on his body. “Most evenings, I’m cooking up food and portioning it out for myself for the next day,” he explained to Tommy’s aunt during their next visit. “But I think the smell of it makes Tommy hungry, and when I go to bed, I hear him rummaging around in the kitchen for hours.”

“Oh, Tommy!” his aunt tutted with disappointment. “No wonder you’ve gained so much weight then. You need to exercise some self control.”

Hunter nodded in agreement, rubbing Tommy’s back supportively; as if this was all one great big intervention, aimed at helping him. The lies just rolled off the hunk’s tongue with such ease and he’d soon be laughing in the car at how easily they all swallowed them. “Come on, Fatty,” he whispered whilst still smiling and waving at Tommy’s extended family as they reversed off the driveway. “Look at their faces,” he laughed. “They really think you’re going to turn things around this time.”

“My aunt spoke to me a minute ago, before we left,” Tommy explained from the passenger seat. “She told me that you’re the fitness expert and that I just need to do whatever you say.”

Hunter laughed victoriously. “Good old Auntie Paula!” he roared, waving one final time to her in particular. “In that case, your fitness expert is taking you home to sit my dick while I feed you your disgustingly oversized dinner. I heard that chair squeaking when you sat on it earlier. Next time we go to see them, I’m going to make sure your fat ass destroys it!”

The summer was coming to an end, but not before the pair of them drove up in Hunter’s new car to yet another rental place for a weekend with the boys.

“I’ve got a surprise for everyone later,” Hunter joked, shirtless and with a strong arm draped over his flabby, newly 300lb boyfriend.”

“Another one?” the boys joked, having just spoken at length about their shock at seeing the swell of Tommy’s chest and underarm fat in particular.

Hunter kept them all waiting keenly. They ate their dinner, recharged and then settled down to some beers in the large lounge. “Want to see something super cute?” he finally asked them, grinning with excitement.

“Is this our surprise?” Jack immediately replied, ready to be entertained.

Hunter nodded. “Look at these!” he cooed, suddenly holding up a tiny pair of underwear he’d been hiding behind a cushion.

The boys laughed. “Awh!” they all sang back. In their world, no one wore underwear that small; even Hunter with his giant glutes and muscular thighs needed a large, or even an extra-large in many cases.

“These belonged to Tommy when he came over to my apartment for the first time,” Hunter laughed wickedly, spinning them around and holding them by the very ends of his fingertips as if to further emphasise how petite they were. “I’ve not even washed them since.”

At this, all the guys began laughing in much the same way. They passed them around, each of them marvelling at their tiny size.

“Your butt used to be so small!” Paul bellowed, draping the underwear over his large gut to show how minute they were in comparison.

Tommy stared at them, suddenly remembering how Hunter had walked off with his underwear on that first date at their now shared apartment. His perspective really had been skewed, hardly believing now that he ever wore clothes that small.

“That was only seventeen months ago, boys!” Hunter shouted, raising his arms up in the air for the admiration he was owed. “That’s how it’s done, my friends! That’s how a real feeder takes control and fattens his piggy!”

The boys all cheered in complete agreement. The transformation, the sheer speed of it all; it was breathtaking.

“He’d never get them on these days,” Eddie laughed. “Not with the amount of fat he carries on his thighs, and that huge butt of his.”

Hunter pretended to ponder the idea; theatrically raising his thumb to his chin and rubbing. “Hmm, do you really think so?” he asked, barely holding back his laughter. “I think we may need to test that hypothesis, don’t you, boys?” he called out, rousing the crowd of fat men into a chorus of cheers. 

Within seconds, Hunter had stood up and moved clear so that the other men could move in and do his bidding. Tommy was being lifed and forced out of his current underwear, feeling delighted pats of approval from some of the guys as his big, fat, doughy glutes came on show. The coffee table had been removed from the room, the music turned way down, and he was pushed into the middle of a now cleared space, with all the large, occupied chairs and sofas imprisoning it. 

Suddenly, the mood changed. Unlike the others, Hunter was standing, blocking the only path out of the room; his giant arms folded intimidatingly across his immensely powerful, shirtless chest; an inpenetrable wall; a ringleader, ready to entertain.

Even before he started, Tommy could hear little hoots of laughter all around him. He looked up at Hunter’s stern expression and his hardness throbbed uncontrollably.

“As you all remember,” Hunter began, “a short while ago, I started dating a very handsome, a very athletic, and in fact, a very pretty-looking guy…” 

His tone was so playful and full of mockery; making the other guys laugh; every single one of them. Then he reached out and took the tiny underwear from the person who had them. Although only a few feet away from him, Tommy looked up at his lover as if the giant man was standing high upon a towering pedestal. The way those cold eyes stared down at him aroused him more than anything else.

“The pride and joy of his parents…” Hunter sang, holding Tommy’s old underwear for them all to see again, “...college graduate, all round nice guy. He told me that he wanted to meet me. Practically begged me!”

Again, the other guys all laughed at that. Tommy’s first foolish mistake.

“He told me that I was the sexiest guy he had ever seen in his life,” Hunter smirked, emphasising the language and slipping a finger up into the crotch of the old unerwear, showing where Tommy’s little erection would have once pushed against them. That got him one of the biggest laughs. “And he promised me one thing…” Hunter went on. “...That he would do absolutely anything that I wanted him to.”

The guys all turned from looking at Hunter, to gazing with awe at Tommy’s fattened body: the rolls and blubber, stretch marks and sag. His complete submission was right there, before their very eyes. Hunter’s will, made flesh.

“What you’re about to see, boys, is my now disgustingly gluttonous, obese boyfriend, trying to put on a pair of underwear that he last wore the second time he met me,” Hunter declared, throwing the tiny material down at Tommy’s feet, filling his large chest with air and folding those enormous arms once more. 

Again, the fat men all laughed to themselves, some reaching in again to poke Tommy’s fleshy stomach, or tap his naked, under-exercised butt.

“Taking them off was one of his first acts of submission to me. And now,” Hunter continued, “this greedy, fat hog is about to try and put them back on for us.” He stared hard at Tommy, making him hornier still.

Tommy nodded slowly, hardly believing that this was all happening so fast. Two minutes ago, he had been snuggled into Hunter on the couch, oblivious that any of this was coming.

“Are you ready, boys?” Hunter roared at them all; rousing another cheer of excitement. He was made for this. Showmanship was in his blood. “Count the fat fucker into it for me…” he shouted at an alarming volume.

Tommy glanced at the ridiculously small underwear; his heart beating at quite the pace. He could feel the huge ring of fat under his chin as he looked down and tried to envision how best to do it.

“Three…two… ONE!” the boys all sang with the boisterous Hunter; lifting their bottles of beer up high; eyes wide and excited to see how this would all go down.

With a slight grunt from all that he had eaten earlier, Tommy bent down to pick up the underwear. There were cheers of amusement as his butt crack opened to those standing behind him. Then, turning the underwear in his hands, he lifted one leg to begin to put them on. He stumbled, feeling the fat in his butt and love handles quiver with the force he had to throw his foot down, just to keep his balance.

“Take your time, Piggy. Get it right,” Hunter reminded him in his stern tone. This show was important. These were his friends, and he had brought Tommy here to entertain them.

Tommy nodded. He started again, slipping one foot into the tiny hole and raised the material to his ankles. Now came the trickier part. He grunted, raising his other leg and miraculously slipped that inside as well. The big moment had arrived. 

Grabbing onto the tiny waistband, Tommy sucked in his stomach and heaved them up. They began soaring up his legs and then slowed dramatically. just above his knees. They were so narrow, he felt like he needed to spread his legs more to get them up; but there was no room. He pulled at them again, hearing howls of laughter all around him. The effort was almost unbelievable, and yet the underwear raised barely more than a couple of inches. Never mind his giant butt, it was his blubbery thighs that were the problem. 

On he struggled, feeling the waistband at last touching the lower part of his doughy rear. He lifted the front part easier, just managing to squish a little of his excited erection inside and then he looked up at Hunter. Had he done enough?

Hunter simply raised an eyebrow and smirked, the guys’ laughter suddenly becoming too infectious for even him to ignore. His smile spread and he laughed too, throwing his arms out and then pumping his muscular chest. Some of the men reached their congratulatory hands out to the feeder for him to shake as he walked around the space where Tommy stood. His victory lap.

“Thank you. You’re right,” he replied to their comments. “Twenty five years old, and look at it now!”

Finally, he came to stand in front of Tommy again, suddenly becoming falsely affectionate and stroking his submissive’s large, chubby cheek. “I’m so glad I met you,” he told Tommy, speaking as much to the other men who were listening in.

“I’m glad I met you too,” Tommy replied, full of love and arousal for his dominant lover.

The men all laughed at Tommy’s words and Hunter looked around at them with devilment dancing in his eyes. His perfect white teeth glistened as the widest smile grew on his face. He knew exactly what they were all thinking. Obesity was beginning to take a vice-like grip on Tommy’s body, and yet the twenty-five year old was still hopelessly under the spell of his wicked boyfriend.

“Good. I’m very glad,” Hunter nodded, lovingly tucking Tommy’s overgrown, sweaty hair behind his ears. He could never resist stroking the extensive chin fat with the back of his finger at the same time; the broad, fat face, freshly shaven as Hunter always insisted upon. “You realise that you’re going to be fatter than everybody here soon, don’t you?” he continued, explaining it to the fat boy like it was an exciting adventure they were embarking upon.

Tommy nodded.

“And that’s okay is it, Piggy?” Hunter asked, playing up to the crowds.

“Yes,” Tommy nodded again. Compliance was so easy.; submission so arousing. And this situation he was in now, so exhilarating and undenyably thrilling. Everything he never knew he needed.

Delving further into the three hundred pound zone was every bit as strange and transformative as the guys had warned Tommy as he left that weekend. Everything jiggled. Everything made him sweat. He had to accept how severely overweight he was now. It was the first thing people noticed when they met him and it was the one factor that influenced how people treated him most. He noted their tones of disapproval and impatience; their blunt answers to his questions and their indignation whenever they saw the gorgeous Hunter kissing him. He stared at pictures of the two of them at his sister’s wedding: his large, bulbous, doughy belly spreading out of his jacket and barely contained within his enormous shirt. He looked at the beautiful Hunter standing behind him, grinning proudly; no one there realising that he was laughing at them all, showing off what he had done to one of their own.

“I think it’s time you considered a new job. One where you can work from home,” Hunter declared, getting up after having fucked one of his new favourite places on his lover’s evolving body: the fat roll encompassing Tommy’s deep belly button.

Tommy nodded. “That would certainly save me a lot of time,” he agreed.

“It would also save you a lot of calories,” Hunter sighed impatiently. “I get so frustrated thinking of you burning off all my delicious breakfasts, trotting that giant ass of your back and forth to the photocopier.”

“But the girls in my office would miss seeing you though,” Tommy joked.

Hunter rolled his eyes. “Another good reason to quit,” he grumbled, chugging down one of his protein shakes and drying off his sweaty body with the towel they left under the bed.

“They actually asked me to apply for a job at another one of our branches the other day,” Tommy considered, remembering how little he had considered it at the time. “Two days in the office, three at home.”

“Where?” Hunter asked with surprising interest.

“North. We’d have to move. At least we’d be closer to Paul, Eddie, and the other guys. But then, it means uprooting your life as well.”

Hunter furrowed his eyebrows in disagreement. “Look at me!” he cried. “I could get a job at any fitness place I wanted. A move away is exactly the sort of thing that we need.”

“It is?” Tommy asked, having never heard Hunter even consider the idea of moving before.

Hunter came over to Tommy, who was still sticky and sprawled out on the bed. The guy’s immense, muscular body made the bed sink slightly as Hunter sat next to him, making the fat in Tommy’s tummy jiggle and lean towards the powerful lover, as if attracted by him. “Listen. You’re now a very fat man. By this time next week, I’ll have you at over 350lbs,” Hunter explained. “But people around here don't see that. All they see is that skinny little dweeb they used to know. That handsome guy with a six pack and no ass, who couldn’t admit that being dominated would make him so fucking horny.”

Tommy chuckled. Hunter’s descriptions were blunt, but always very accurate.

“It’s time we went somewhere new. Where people don’t know about how slim you used to be. Where they will see you the way that I do: just another fat, disgustingly overfed piggy.”

Tommy exhaled deeply, feeling himself getting aroused hearing Hunter using so many of the trigger words that he usually deployed when he was getting pleasured. He nodded. Perhaps Hunter was right. Maybe it was time for a change.

“You make sure that you look after him, won’t you?” Tommy’s mother sobbed, speaking to Hunter as the pair of them stopped to pick up the last of their things and load them into the truck.

“Don’t worry, Angela. He’s in good hands with me,” Hunter smiled back. Now that Tommy had grown wide enough, the big muscular man could rub his boyfriend’s disgustingly overgrown glutes the entire time he spoke to the guy’s mother, without anyone even noticing. “Your boy will be well taken care of.”

They all hugged, with Tommy’s parents telling him how proud they were about his big promotion, as well as how much they would miss him.

“Do you think they know? Even on some level?” Hunter asked as the pair of them got back into the truck. “They have to, surely? No one is that fucking stupid, watching their son get into a relationship and suddenly gaining over two hundred pounds in just over two years!” he sniggered, surprised that no one had mentioned Tommy’s weight today; even with the daringly tight t-shirt he had made him wear.

“Perhaps, on some level,” Tommy considered. At barely average height, his 370lbs was sitting more and more on his stomach these days.  Only a few moments ago, Hunter had needed to push against his wide, overgrown butt, in full view of his parents, in order to get him back into the high removal truck they had hired for the journey. “But, if I’m honest, I don’t think they really know what’s going on.”

“So fucking stupid! It’s unbelieveable!” Hunter sighed, turning the volume way up on the stereo and pulling off his shirt as the air conditioning blasted into life. As much as he enjoyed playing the innocent boyfriend, Hunter also longed for recognition, in whatever form it came.

“Goodbye,” Tommy waved to his parents as they started pulling away. He knew they couldn’t hear him. The music was far too loud.

“Goodbye,” Hunter joined in bitterly as he started to steer. “I’ll look after your son. I’m turning him into a big fat pig, y’know!” he shouted loud and clear, although he would never be heard. “I’ll have the fat fucker at 400lbs by the time you see him this Christmas! Goodbye, idiots!”

Hunter laughed with delight at himself as they rolled down the street. He slipped on his sunglasses and opened his window, just a crack, to let in a bit of fresh air.

“Still think this is the right thing?” Hunter asked moments later, reaching for Tommy’s chubby little fingers and holding them sweetly. His question was so ambiguous, with so many different possible meanings, and an infinite amount of responses. Not that any of that mattered to Tommy. For him, there was only one possible answer to any of those questions.

“Yes,” he smiled with certainty. “Two hundred percent, yes!”

[buckera]

I know we all love the idea of Eddie keep flirting with Steve and calling him pet names, because he thinks he can get away with it.

But I've been thinking about Steve casually calling Eddie baby without even registering what he's doing.

Like they are standing outside the van with the hood open and Steve just tutting at him like "Eddie, baby, you really gotta get your transmission checked, this is like the third time this month" and Eddie's losing his shit, mouth hanging open in shock, but Steve has no idea and it just keeps on happening after that.

Next time it happens, they are all over at Steve's, having a movie night and Steve has El and Max passed out on him, making him unable to get up from the couch without waking them and he just whisper-yells to Eddie "Hey babe, could you pass me a beer? Kinda tied up here" and Eddie just blanks and says nothing, but gets a bottle from the sixpack on the floor and Steve says "thanks" like it's just how things have always been between them.

And Eddie's working himself into a frenzy. Has Steve got no idea about what he's doing to him? Because Eddie's been lowkey crushing on Steve since he got mixed up in the whole Upside Down business and it just got worse when he woke up at the hospital to Steve holding his hand and giving him the brightests of smiles that there was, rubbing his thumb over Eddie's knuckles, whispering a soft "Hey there sleeping beauty, how're ya feeling?" while being completely oblivious to the suspicious look Wayne was giving them. And sure, hanging out with him nearly every day didn't help the situation one bit.

But this. This is going to be the death of him.

And it just keeps on happening. Steve murmurs "goodnight baby" into the phone before hanging up, he shouts "babe, come here, you gotta see this" when Lucas ends up stuffing fifteen oreos into his mouth (which is a new personal record) and whispers "hey baby, I'm sorry, I know you'd rather do something else, but I promised Mrs Wheeler" when they're watching Holly's ballet recital, waving at her from their seats when her eyes land on them.

It all comes to a head when Eddie's stupid van breaks down in the middle of fucking nowhere, on their way back from Indianapolis, after going there to buy a special boardgame for Dustin's birthday.

There's not a single car or house to be seen anywhere in a ten mile radius.

"Oh this is just great," Steve hisses as he jumps out of the car to walk around and Eddie does the same. He pops the hood and watches as a small cloud of smoke slithers out of it.

"Shit" Eddie swears under his breath. It looks bad.

"See baby, that's exactly why I told you to get it checked! Because I didn't wanna get stuck in fucking no man's land!"

"Look, I'm sure if we just leave it to rest a little..."

"Rest? Eds, come on, you know that's not how it works. We gotta walk up to the next gas stop and phone someone to tow it."

"Fuck, fine!" Eddie grunted. "But it gets dark in like twenty minutes."

They both know that they can't handle walking out in the wild after dark. Not after everything and not with all the nightmares that still tormented them most nights.

"Then I guess we're sleeping out here tonight." Steve says, dropping his hands on his hips. "You have pillows or some shit in the back?"

"Got a couple of blankets, yeah."

In the end they lay down two blankets on the bottom of the van and bundle up some old jumpers Eddie keeps in there for pillows. They lie there, facing each other in the dark.

"Hey... I'm sorry about all this" Eddie whispers, like his voice could disturb anyone out here in the middle of nowhere.

"It's okay, I just wish you'd pay more attention to stuff like this. I mean shit, babe, what if it's just you out here, huh? What then?"

"Steve-"

"I mean, I just hate to think about how shitty it would be, to be out here alone, in the dark... plus I'd worry myself sick not knowing where you are, you know?"

"Steve."

"Yeah?"

"I'm not alone."

"No, no you're not alone" Steve agrees with a private little smile.

They settle into a companionable silence and Eddie's almost certain that Steve is just about to drift off, but he can't contain it in himself any longer; he has to ask.

"Hey Steve?"

"Mmh?"

"Why uh... why are you keep calling me...?" He can't bring himself to say it out loud without his face heating up.

"What?"

"Names." He settles, hoping that Steve would get it.

"Names?"

He's gonna make him say it, isn't he?

"Yeah like uh... baby."

"Oh"

Even in the darkness of the van Eddie can see how the colour darkens in Steve's cheeks.

"Does it bother you?" Steve asks after a beat and Eddie just sighs out a soft "no".

"Okay."

For a long moment it seems that this is all Eddie's gonna get, but then Steve shuffles a little closer and runs a finger along Eddie's palm before taking his hand into his own.

"It just felt right, you know? Calling you that. I dunno, it was like how it was meant to be."

"That sounds kinda romantic, isn't it?" Eddie's shooting for a joke, but Steve just sighs timidly.

"Yeah, it does, doesn't it?"

"Steve-"

"Eddie... can I?" He doesn't finish it, but Eddie knows he'd say yes to pretty much anything Steve could ever ask from him.

"Yeah" He breathes with a little nod and Steve scoots even closer, placing his other hand onto Eddie's cheek. He leans in and looks him in the eyes for an impossibly long moment, making sure he's got permission one last time.

Steve whispers a soft "baby" onto his lips before finally closing the gap between them.

[octuscle]

System abort

William sat in his new Tesla in a good mood. He had just eaten a delicious lunch and was now rolling along the country road with a freshly charged battery. The display of his navigation system showed a dead straight line on a green background. And that's what reality looked like. A dead straight road in the middle of endless cornfields. William let his sound system play Rhapsody in Blue, activated the assistance system and enjoyed the drive.

An emergency stop snapped him out of his thoughts. The car had come to a standstill. All the displays were dead. Black. Nothing. His cell phone: no reception at all. William played with all the available buttons: nothing, the car didn't move. William got out of the car. It wasn't a particularly warm day, so he had put on his jacket. He tried to get a network for an emergency call. Nothing. And the car door wouldn't open either.

The picture had to be absurd. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere. A shiny, brand-new car. A man in an expensive suit with polished English shoes. And nothing else. William cursed. First inwardly, then quietly, then louder. It felt like he had been standing next to the car for an hour now. And lightning flickered in the distance. Standing next to his useless car in the rain now would really be the height of bad luck. The thunder was getting louder. But luckily for William, it wasn't a thunderstorm. It was a tractor. A huge tractor was approaching. William waved excitedly. And the tractor came to a halt beside him. “Trouble, son?” the driver asked. A man, about William's age, maybe a year or two younger, definitely not younger than 50. His short-cropped hair was gray, his skin weather-beaten. And his muscles were obviously the product of hard work. Even if they were about the same age, the difference between the men couldn't have been greater. William explained in detail what had happened. The man on the tractor didn't seem to be listening at all and looked off into the distance towards the approaching thunderstorm. “I'll take you to the gas station for twenty.” William sighed. Better than nothing. He pulled out his wallet, which was fortunately in his jacket pocket. 30 dollars. That was all he had. He thanked him, climbed into the tractor, handed the man twenty dollars and sat down. “Thanks. I'm Cletus.” William was about to say that it was a nice name, coming from the Greek name Anakletos, but he thought it might be better to keep quiet. They drove in silence for half an hour. The roar of the engine and the thunder of the storm were the only sounds. And then the gas station finally appeared. Cletus stopped and said curtly, “Good luck!”. William got out of the car and thanked him. The gas station was in the dark. The storm was almost upon him. Probably a power cut. The door to the salesroom was actually open. William was hungry. There was a young man behind the cash register. White trash, William thought to himself. “No power, I can't fill up,” said the young man. William explained his problem. The man looked at him and said “I can tow your car for 50. Then I'll have a look at the engine.” William sighed and pulled out his black American Express. “Cash only!”

William was standing in a run-down gas station in the middle of nowhere. He had ten dollars left, a bunch of useless credit cards and his cell phone battery was dead. No charging cable in sight. Not an ATM within a 20-mile radius. And a growling stomach. The young man said that loitering at the gas station was forbidden. William became angry. He said that he needed help. If he could use the phone. The lad said, “Sure, a dollar a minute. Cash only.” Unfortunately, the phone was dead because of the thunderstorm. An elderly lady came into the store out of the pouring rain. “Chuck, didn't you tell the man that loitering is forbidden here?” William got scared. He openly asked for help. The woman looked him up and down. Could he help her with the dishes? Two dollars an hour. And a bed for the night. And she would also buy his shoes from him. For ten dollars. And a pair of decent boots to replace them. William sighed again. The Alden loafers had cost 750 dollars. But that didn't really matter now. He was a dishwasher in the Midwest. How low could he go?

In fact, he had imagined everything to be worse. The woman had introduced herself as Hillary, had shown him a small but clean room where he could hang up his shirt and jacket. Hillary had given him his boots, a hairnet and an apron. And then he had washed dishes in the little diner next to the gas station. It was incredibly humid. But somehow the work was fun. It was so different from investing in some startup. It was honest work. The only problem was that his pants and undershirt were soaking wet at some point. Hillary had brought him an undershirt and a pair of jeans. He stood there in the night air after work. The storm was over. He had bought a cold can of beer and cigarettes at the gas station. Tomorrow he would get his car, Chuck would get it going and the spook would be over.

It was still dark outside when the horn of a truck woke him from his sleep. Suddenly Hillary was standing in his room asking where he was. The first breakfast guests had arrived. William groaned. He would have liked to take a shower and have breakfast himself. But a few minutes later he was behind the stove, producing mountains of eggs and bacon. Truckers were hungry. And some of them came for him. Willy himself didn't eat bacon. But he made himself a big scrambled egg with chicken breast. He ate plenty of protein. He needed strength for the work here. And stamina. Sweat dripped from his forehead and armpits. The store was full. Full of big fellows with lots of hunger. He didn't know most of the truckers. But he recognized Cletus. The two greeted each other like old friends. And Cletus said that he could use some help on the farm tomorrow. Did Willy want to earn a few extra dollars? Of course, Willy wanted to be far away tomorrow. But he said yes. You never knew.

It was early afternoon. The lunch business was finished. The kitchen was clean, the tables wiped clean. Willy was full and had provisionally washed himself with a washcloth in the toilet. Even though he looked silly, he had put on his suit and was waiting for Chuck and his car to arrive. The two of them arrived. Chuck had made a few good scratches while towing the car. And he couldn't help either. “It's broken,” he said. William asked what he should do now. Chuck said there was a garage in town. They could pick up the car tomorrow. It would cost 100 dollars to pick it up. Only Chash. Willy wondered how much money he could make from Cletus. Hillary offered to buy the suit from him in exchange for a pair of dungarees and a couple of T-shirts for five dollars. If he got a trucker cap with it, Willy said. Hillary agreed.

When Willy brushed his teeth at the wash basin behind the gas station before going to bed, he looked at himself in the dirty broken mirror. No one would recognize him at home like this. Thank God. Although he actually felt fit. He was fine. With the tips and what he had received for his things, he had 105 dollars in his pocket. And a tin of chewing tobacco. Hillary must have forgotten it in there. It would be all right. But now he had to go to bed. Cletus had told Chuck that he would pick Willy up tomorrow at 5:30 a.m.

It wasn't even dawn when Willy stood under the cold shower. Not so much to get clean. More to wake up. When he sat in the back of Cletu's truck half an hour later, he also realized that he didn't need to take a shower. Most of the other day laborers and farmhands who were jolted along with him on the dirt road to Cletus' farm smelled of sweat, tequila and tobacco. Most were in their early-mid 30s like him, but very few spoke his language. Most of them spoke Spanish. Willy didn't. When the truck came to a halt, it was dawn. A breathtaking red stretched across the eastern horizon. Two foremen were instructing the day laborers in Spanish. Willy looked around questioningly. Then he heard someone shouting. “Wyatt, son! Over here!” Willy turned around and spotted Cletus. He was glad to see someone he knew and whose language he spoke. He spit his chewing tobacco on the ground and walked towards Cletus, who shook his hand happily. “Nice to have a real man here for once and not a wetback!” he said and led Willy into the pigsty. Cletus talked about feeding systems and problems with infrared lamps in the piglets. Willy didn't understand a word. But he could tell the difference between a pigsty that needed order and cleanliness and one that was clean and tidy. So he put on his rubber fishing pants, grabbed the hose and got to work.

Apart from a lunch break, taking a shit and fucking a hot Latino once, Willy worked hard. He felt at home in this pigsty. He couldn't say why. At some point, Cletus shouted into the noise of the repaired feeding system that the truck with the day laborers had left. And that Wyatt should call it a day. There'd be a beer on the veranda in a minute. Willy still didn't understand why Cletus always called him “Wyatt”. But it was good to get out of his rubber pants. Willy stood naked in the yard in front of the stable and rinsed the mud off his body with the hose. Even though he couldn't see anyone, he knew he was definitely being watched. And why not? Tough fellows like him were eye-catching.

Wyatt was always the first one awake in the foreman's shack on Cletus Farm. An hour of running, pull-ups, push-ups. You didn't get a body like his from sitting in front of the TV. Cletus appreciated that, and the fact that Wyatt usually wore nothing more than a pair of nylon shorts. Too short to permanently and completely hide his magnificent cock. His muscles and his cock had certainly contributed to the career Wyatt had made on the farm. But his diligence, his expertise and his legendary skill as a pig whisperer had also played a big part. He was responsible for the conversion of the pig farm to sustainable agriculture. And he was happy to get up to his shoulders in mud and pig shit when it came to helping a pregnant sow.

“Dude, I'm definitely not going for a test drive like that,” Wyatt shouted with a laugh to Chuck as he drove his repaired Mustang into the yard. It felt like an eternity ago that Wyatt had broken down with the car. But now his little darling was better than new again, he could rely on Chuck. And that he would suck his cock like a devil when Wyatt drove Chuck back to the gas station. That and the prospect of a hearty dinner at Hillary's were prospects enough for a good night out. Wyatt loved his life here in the country!

Inspiration by @rowdy317, pic by @ki-kink

[alexanderwales]

Alright, here's my dream Stardew Valley style game, designed for my own tastes.

You come to a small town with the usual twenty to thirty people. It's in the middle of nowhere. It's a fantasy town, and no one actually farms anymore, partly because it's only questionably profitable, partly because a lot of the knowledge has been lost. Instead, everyone uses these magic doodads which are very powerful but also very limited. The tavernkeeper has a doodad that makes him a single kind of weak ale and a single variety of off-tasting wine. The clothier has basically a square mile of linen to work with, and everyone wears her drab clothes. Tools are made from a doodad that the blacksmith owns, not even made of any actual metal, just a material that wears away after a month and needs to be replaced by a new copy from the blacksmith's doodad. People get their meals from the doodads. They get their medical checkups. It's all a bit shit.

Because I'm a worldbuilder at heart, I would have this all exist in the wake of a large-scale war that depleted the town of its fighting-age population, with the doodads being a sort of government program to ensure that more of the lifeblood of the town could be drained away. And for there to be some reason for the town to continue existing, perhaps the government is harvesting some resources necessary in the creation of doodads. That's enough for a pro-doodad faction and maybe some minor drama with them, though I do like the idea that the only reason things are Like This is because there was a war and things got bad. It's not necessarily a bleak town, but there's definitely a listlessness to it, a "what's the point".

So you're a farmer, but no one is really a farmer anymore. Maybe there are a few books, but you don't learn farming from books, you learn it from practical experience; that's a lot of what this game is about. When you start, there's no one to buy seeds from, there's just a bunch of wilderness where farms once stood, now all long overgrown.

So you go out and forage, for a start, and you clear the land, and you pay attention to the plants and how they can be used, and you start in on making recipes with them, maybe with the help of your grandfather's old, partially incomplete books. You find some wild corn that's a descendant of the old times. You find some tomato seeds in an urn. You discover potatoes because you see them dug up by a wild boar, which itself was once a domesticated animal.

In my ideal game, you need to pay attention to the soil quality, to how far apart things are planted, to what crops work well together. Farming is a matter of companion planting and polycultures. You get some chickens by giving them consistent feed, and you keep them around because they're natural pest control. Your climbing beans climb the stalks of your maize. You're attracting pollinators. (From a gameplay perspective, yeah, we probably put this all into a grid, and you have crop bonuses from adjacencies, and emergent gameplay that comes from all that, some plants providing shade, others providing nitrogen fixing.) You're a scientist making observations about the plants, maybe with your incomplete book giving you confirmation on the nature of all your crops once you hit certain production goals or a perfect specimen or whatever.

Cooking is the same. There has got to be a system that I like better than just "combine tomato with bread to get tomato bread". I'm pretty sure that it's some variant of the actual process I use when cooking, which is making sure that things are properly cooked, balancing flavors against each other, adding in a little salt or acidity or umami or whatever. Time in the kitchen, in this game, is often about making meals, ensuring that if you have a fatty piece of meat you have some asparagus that's coated with lemon to go with it. (From a gameplay perspective, I think building the dish once is probably sufficient and it can be automated after that, and building the meal is the same. I don't want to play this minigame every time I'm cooking a dish, I just want to play it a single time until I have good knowledge of the best way to grill a BBQ chicken breast with a homemade sauce.)

But if we're having a little minigame here where we pay attention to how long we're cooking the kale to make sure that it's the right texture, and we're paying attention to abstractified mouthfeel and palette, then we can get something else for free: variation. See, you're not just cooking to get an S grade, you're cooking for people with different tastes. The cobbler has a sweet tooth, the librarian loves fruity things, the mayor cannot stand fish, that sort of thing. From a gameplay perspective, maybe we represent this with a radar graph with some specific favorite and least favorite individual flavors, and maybe it's visible to the player, but the important thing is that player gets feedback and have a reason to strive for both "good" and "perfection" and some of this is going to depend on the quality of the ingredients.

And this is, gradually, how the town is brought back into the fullness of life. You're not just cooking for these people, you're also selling them food, and they're making their own recipes, and all the stuff that's not food is making their businesses not suck anymore. After the first test keg of ale goes swimmingly, the tavernkeeper wants more, a lot more, and puts in an order for hops, wheat, grapes, anything he can use to make things that will improve nights at the tavern. The clothier will skeptically take in wool and spin her own yarn, and then eagerly want more, because how awesome is it to have a new textile? There's a chemist who is extremely interested in dyes and paints, and wants you to bring him all kinds of things to see what might be viable for going beyond the ~3 colors that the doodads can provide.

So by year two, if you're doing things right, you're the lynchpin of the revivalist movement. People are now moving to the town, for the first time in decades, because they hear that you're there and doing interesting things with the wilderness. Maybe there are other farmers following in your wake, but maybe it's just new characters who are specifically coming because a crate of wine was shipped to the capital city. Maybe some of them bring new techniques for you, or a handful of plants from a botanical garden, and there are new elements for the minigames, or maybe some automation for the stuff that's old hat.

I think something that's important to me is that there's a reason for the crops you plant and the things you do. I always like these games best when it feels like I'm doing something for someone, when I can look at a plot of cabbages and think "ah, those are the cabbages I owe to Leon". Where these games are at their worst, everything is entirely fungible and I've planted eight million blueberries because they have the highest ROI.

And yeah, in most of these games, there are other minigames like fishing and mining and logging and crafting, and since this is just a blog post and not a game, I definitely could massively expand an already sizeable scope.

I think for mining the player would use doodads of their own, and maybe you could make a mining minigame out of that, using the same planting tile system to instead create an automated ore harvesting machine that plumbs the depths of the earth (possibly dealing with rocks of different hardness, the water table, and other challenges along the way).

Fishing is a question of understanding the different fish species, what they eat, where they congregate, and then setting nets or lines, since I have never met a fishing minigame I really enjoyed. Again, there's some idea that the player is gaining information over time, building up a profile of these fish, noticing that some of them go nuts when it rains, understanding the spawning season, that they go to deeper water when it's cold, etc.

Crafting really depends on what you're crafting, but if you're reintroducing traditional artisan processes to this town, then people are going to need tools and machines and things. I'm not sure I know what a proper crafting game looks like. The only experience I have to draw on is wood shop, where I made wooden boxes, cutting boards, and picture frames. Since this is an engineering-lite puzzle-lite game, you could maybe do something in that vein, e.g. defining a number of steps that get you the correct thing you're trying to make, but ... eh. I love the idea of designing a chicken coop, for example, or building a trellis if I want my climbing beans to not need maize, or whatever, but I don't know how you actually implement that. There are definitely voxel-based and snap-to-grid games where you build bases, and I tend to find that fun ... but it's mostly cosmetic, for the obvious reason that doing it any other way than cosmetic requires programmatic evaluation, which is difficult and maybe unintuitive. The closest I think I've seen is ... maybe Tears of the Kingdom? Contraption building? But I don't know how you translate that to a farming game. Maybe I should ask my wife about this, because she's always doing little projects around the house (an outdoor enclosure for our cats, a 3D-printed holder for our living room keyboard, a mounting for our TV).

Making an interesting crafting system is difficult, which is why pretty much no one has done it.

And if I'm talking pie in the sky, without concern for budget or scope, I want the villagers to all have a mammoth amount of writing for them. I want petty little dramas and weird obsessions, lives that evolve with or without my input, rudimentary dialog trees that let me nudge things in different directions. This is just an unbelievable amount of work on its own, it would be crazy, but I would love having a tiny little town game where sometimes other people would fall in love. I would like to be invited to a wedding, maybe one that happened because I encouraged the chemist to hang out with the clothier, and in the course of working together on dyes, they fell in love. With twenty people in town and another ten that come in over the course of the game if you hit the right triggers, I do think this is just a matter of having a ton of time/budget. You write tons and tons of dialogue so there's not much that's repeated, you have some lines of conversation between characters that are progressed through, you have others that trigger off of events, and then you have personal relationships between NPCs that can be progressed through time or with player intervention. Give single characters a pool of love interests, have their affections depend on their routine which depends on what's changed in town ... very difficult to do without spending loads and loads of time on it though.

Anyway, that's one of my dream games. No one is ever going to make it, it would be a niche of a niche, and as scoped here, is too much for a small team to ever actually finish, let alone polish. But it's the sort of thing I'm imagining in my head when I think about playing Stardew Valley and its successors.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 8: She's The Salt Of The Earth And She's Dangerous]

A/N: Be sure to vote in the poll pinned to the top of my blog AFTER you finish reading!!! 🥰

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes, RIP Jace (again).

Series title is a lyric from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “She's A Rebel” by Green Day.

Word count: 7.4k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🥰

“I’m sorry if I was a creep when we first met,” Aegon says. He’s been oddly philosophical since he was burned. “I hadn’t seen a hot single chick in a while, and I wanted to fuck you.”

Cregan siphoned just enough gas from a decrepit Chrysler Sebring in Merna to take the Tahoe two and a half hours west to Little Thunder Bay Campground on the shores of Lake McConaughy, a manmade reservoir and New Deal project from the 1930s. You glance over at Aegon dubiously, amused. “Do I count as hot?”

“Yeah, Chippendales, you’re hot. In like a…you live in a cabin and knit sweaters by a crackling fireplace kind of way.”

You smile. “So you got over that.”

“Oh no, I still want to fuck you. Now I just know you better, so I wouldn’t want to offend you by being obnoxious about it.”

“That’s sweet, I guess. I appreciate your discretion.”

“No problem. If you ever decide you want to take a ride on a less distinguished Targaryen brother, let me know.”

The two of you are fishing from a boat launch, dry splintering planks of wood, opaque rippling water, soft wind and bright sunshine from an aquamarine, cloudless sky. Cregan found the fishing poles in the abandoned RV you’ve moved into, a Winnebago Spirit with one of those stick figure family decals on the back window, Mom, Dad, four lovely children and a dog too, all of whom are perhaps alive but more likely dead and in any case nowhere to be found here in this tranquil corner of western Nebraska, 150 miles from the Wyoming border. Helaena digs worms from the earth, then Rhaena slices them into wriggling segments with a hunting knife and brings them to you and Aegon to be impaled on barbed hooks. Aemond, Rio, Daeron, Luke, and Cregan are swimming about twenty yards down the beach, soaked boxer shorts and nothing else, splashing each other and scrubbing the grime off their skin from a morning spent gathering wood for the firepit and the grill; Ice is paddling joyfully alongside them. Baela floats on her back and peers vacantly up into the vast blue nothingness. Aegon is not permitted in the water, as his leg is an open wound beneath his bandages. You ask him as you recast your fishing line: “Why are you like this?”

“Like what?”

You shrug, smirking guiltily. You thought it was obvious.

Aegon throws back his head and cackles, slow and lazy. “Oh, I get it. A loser.”

“I didn’t say loser.”

“You thought loser.”

“I implied loser.”

“It’s alright. I’ve been called worse things by people I admire much less.” He contemplates his answer as he gazes down into the water, sluggish stoned reverie. Aemond must be almost out of morphine by now. At last Aegon says: “I think the first thing I ever learned was that no matter how hard I tried, no one was ever going to love me. Not in a normal kind of way, Disney movie love, Christmas rom-com love. So I stopped trying. Mother wanted me to play piano, so I bombed the recital. Father wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer, so I skipped class, went golfing and yachting, didn’t even bother to pay someone to write halfway decent essays for me. If they couldn’t love me unconditionally, I wasn’t interested in meeting their conditions.” Then he chuckles, the breeze combing through his hair, ninety degrees and only getting hotter. “I refused to work. All you’ve ever done is work. You must hate me.”

“No, I get it.” You reel in your line; a fish has stolen the worm from your hook, tiny clandestine nibbles. You impale a slimy new victim and recast. “No one wants to be used.”

“Yeah. Exactly. I wasn’t going to spend my life doing shit I didn’t want to do so my parents could brag about me to their insufferable friends and absolve themselves of their mistakes. Mother married a man who didn’t give a fuck about her, Father ignored us all. Me being a success story would have given them the impression they did something right. I couldn’t have that.”

So Aemond had to be the success story instead. You glance down the beach at where he is bursting through the water and slicking back his dripping hair from his face, showing Luke a bone he found in the muddy silt of Lake McConaughy, hopefully not human.

Aegon follows your eyeline. “Aemond went the other way, I guess. Always so pathetically desperate for their approval. Scrabbling for crumbs of it like a rat. That’s what the thing with Alys was all about, it’s the only explanation I have. Older woman, surrogate mother, comforting but chilly, fawning but forbidden, always keeping him at an arm’s length and rewarding his tricks with treats.” He smirks flirtatiously, then sees that he’s hurt you. “Oh, um, I mean…look, it wasn’t…it wasn’t a good thing, you know? He wasn’t happy. It was a seven-year-long psychotic episode, not a relationship.”

“You mentioned that Criston likes Aemond,” you say, pivoting. “The…what is he? A family friend, an assistant?”

“My mother’s personal security guard. And yeah, he cares about Aemond. He’s proud of him, he trust him, he thinks he’s more capable than any of the rest of us, and that’s probably true. It’s definitely true compared to me. But that doesn’t mean Criston always knows how to express it.”

You look out over the water, trying not to imagine Aemond touching Alys, this woman you hate without knowing her face. You wonder if he ever wishes you were more like her: older, clever, entrancing, masterful. “It must have been a strange way to grow up.”

“Cold,” Aegon says. “Hollow. Holidays, birthdays, vacations, everything. You go through the motions but something’s always missing. When you’re little, you think it’s your fault, and then eventually you realize that they’re going to be miserable whether you’re there or not. But you can get out if you’re willing to run far enough.” He scratches at his forearm, and your eyes catch fleetingly on the black ink of his tattoo: It’s not over ‘til you’re underground. You had told Rio something similar when you were stranded on that transmission tower in Catawissa, Pennsylvania. “This is fucked up, and I don’t mean that I don’t feel bad about what happened to Jace, and I get that millions of people have died agonizing deaths, and that all sucks, believe me, I know, but this…” He gestures vaguely, to the zombies and the desolation and the collapse of everything you’ve ever known. “It was kind of my Get Out Of Jail Free card. And in a weird way…sometimes I feel like I’ve been happier since the world ended than I ever was before.”

You smile. You know what he means. “Even if your leg gets infected and we have to saw it off without anesthesia like you’re a Civil War soldier?”

Aegon laughs and shakes his head, his hair flopping around. It’s almost long enough for him to have a man bun like Cregan’s if he wanted one “No, probably not. Also, what’s the Civil War?”

“Forget it.”

“No, now I want to know.”

“It’s kind of a long story.”

“Aemond said something interesting this morning while you were picking blackberries with our favorite Trump supporter,” Aegon tells you, salacious and sly, offering a tantalizing morsel he knows you’re powerless to refuse. He pauses and waits for you to admit it to yourself.

“Fine. Okay. What?”

“He said that when you and Cregan are standing next to each other, you look like you belong together.”

You groan, quite loudly. “I have zero interest in Cregan romantically. Literally zero. I don’t think he sees me that way either.”

Aegon shrugs. “The dating pool is awfully small nowadays, Banana Chip. Anyone who’s not a corpse or an immediate blood relative starts to look tasty.”

“So that’s why you like me.”

Aegon grins, teeth he shows often and easily, so unlike Aemond in every way. “No. I think I’d like you anywhere.” He tugs languidly on his fishing pole. “I want a new golf club.” He forgot his at the house in Broken Bow where Jace died.

“We’ll see.”

“I want new shoes too.” One of his Sperry Bahama sneakers was burned beyond repair and filled with shreds of his own singed flesh, scraps like soft bacon fused with the padding and insole. “And some polos.”

“I’m not a Big Lots.”

“Who the fuck shops at Big Lots?” Aegon’s fishing line jerks, and he yanks hard on the pole before reeling in his catch. Suspended at the end is a long green creature, yellowish spots and a villainous angular face. “That is one ugly bitch.”

“It’s a pike,” you say, and then when you grab it you observe that the misfortunate fish has the barb of the hook piercing not through its lip but one of its bulging, glassy eyes. “Oh my God!”

Aegon squeals, horrified. He offers no meaningful assistance. “That’s so gross, that’s so gross, what are we going to do?!”

“We have to, like, I don’t know, grab the back of the hook from inside its mouth and pull it out of the eyeball, I guess…?!”

“Yeah, awesome. Good luck with that.”

You reach tentatively into the pike’s gaping mouth. Its jaws snap shut, needlelike teeth stinging your wrist. “Ow!”

“Cregan!” Aegon bellows. “Cregan, help!”

Now the others are running to the boat launch to see what’s going on, Helaena and Rhaena from the shore, everyone else from the lake, Luke helping Baela wring the water from her sundress and Ice galloping alongside Cregan. He gets a look at the pike and guffaws, loud and rumbling.

“Poor little guy. That’s some bad luck he’s got.”

“Can you get the hook out?” you ask, eager to surrender the fish, which is still thrashing franticly and gnashing its teeth, mindless cold-blooded death throes.

“Of course I can.” Cregan plucks the pike from your grasp, shoves his massive hand into its mouth, and rips the hook out with one effortless maneuver. The pike is freed, but its eyeball remains speared on the hook. Then Cregan spies blood on your wrist. “You okay there, Miss Chips?”

“Oh yeah. I’m fine.”

“Freaking disgusting, man,” Aegon mutters; he and Rio are ogling the disembodied eyeball, complete with a frayed optic nerve like a tail, with identical, stunned revulsion.

You turn to smile up at Aemond, but he doesn’t notice you. He is staring at Cregan, his sole blue eye narrow and fixed and flat like still water.

~~~~~~~~~~

“The closest town is Ogallala,” Aegon says as he lays his map across the wooden picnic table. The rest of you are seated around him and picking flaky white meat from between the thin, fragile bones of the pike, which Cregan has gutted and cooked on the large metal grill that careless camping families once roasted marshmallows and hotdogs over. Helaena is at the edge of the table and writing in her spider notebook, elegant loops of cursive. Ice is lying on her belly and gnawing on a rabbit she killed for herself, its doomed black eyes gazing up at you.

“That has to be what, ten miles south?” Rio says apprehensively.

Aegon licks grease from his fingers. “Yup. A little more, probably.”

“What about Lemoyne?” Daeron says, pointing. “Or Keystone, or even Belmar? They’re all closer.”

“See how small the names are written?” Aegon tells him. “That means they’re not actual communities. They’re like a few stop signs and maybe a Dollar General and that’s it.”

“I love Dollar General,” Cregan says, nostalgic. “Man, do y’all remember Chicken in a Biskit? I used to park myself in front of the tv and eat boxes and boxes—”

“It has to be Ogallala,” Aemond insists. “We need pharmacies and grocery stores and cars to siphon gas from, we need a real town.”

Rhaena chews her lower lip anxiously. “The Tahoe is empty. We have maybe half a gallon left and that’s it. Just enough to get down to Ogallala if we’re lucky, but not back.”

“So we’ll drive until it dies and then we’ll walk. Cregan has a gas can in the back, if we find fuel we can bring some back to the Tahoe and continue from there.”

“Walk, huh?” Aegon says, looking down at his bandaged left leg, which he can’t put any weight on. He gets around by hopping, leaning against other people (oftentimes against their will), and being carried by Rio.

“Well, you’re not going,” Aemond tells him. “And Baela isn’t either.”

Baela, gazing blankly down at the map, says nothing. A brown striped snake darts through the grass only a few feet from the picnic table, moving swiftly towards the lake, and there are alarmed gasps and yelps.

“Northern water snake,” Helaena says, glancing up from her notebook. “Not venomous.”

“Good,” Rhaena replies with a shudder.

Luke says fearfully as he reads the map: “Aemond, last time we went into a town that big was Broken Bow, and…Jace…the farmhouse…”

Aemond slams his fists down on the table. “We have to, okay? We need food and water. We need bullets. I need more pain meds and bandages for Aegon, I need antiseptic and Neosporin, and Vaseline for when he’s healing, and supplies for when Baela goes into labor too, since I’ve had to use everything I had saved.”

“We need pads and tampons too,” Helaena says as she examines the black-ink inventory in her notebook. “And Advil, lip balm, bars of soap, hair ties, and socks and underwear. And that green jelly aloe vera stuff for Aegon’s sunburn.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Aemond agrees. “We need a lot of things. And we have to refuel so we can keep moving west.”

“We could stay here,” Baela says, so softly that at first you aren’t sure if you heard her right.

“What, Baela?” Rhaena asks gently.

“I want to stay here.” Baela is more resolute now. “I want to have the baby here.”

Nobody knows how to respond. Rio gives you a troubled glance. You nod in agreement, so subtly you doubt anyone else notices. Not an option.

Aemond is calm but unwavering. “Baela, I’m sorry, but that’s not possible.”

She pleads her case. “I like the Winnebago. I like the lake. I’m comfortable here, and we’re out in the middle of nowhere, and I…I think we could make this our home for a while, now that we’ve found someplace like this. Someplace quiet and safe.”

“We’re not safe here, Baela,” Aemond says. “It feels like we’re safe, but we’re not. We aren’t a big enough group to reliably be able to defend ourselves. We don’t have adequate supplies. We have a lake to our backs, sure, but the rest of the shoreline is open for anybody to walk right into, and our visibility is blocked by trees. No one has stumbled across us yet, but that doesn’t mean they won’t. And if they do we’re extremely vulnerable. But when we get to the west coast, we’ll be home.”

“I’m tired of running. I’m tired of being afraid.”

“I understand. I am too.”

“It’s different,” Baela says, abruptly fierce. “You don’t know what this feels like. None of you do. I’ve never given up and I’ve never asked to be taken care of, I’ve always been the strong one, but I’m so goddamn tired, and I want to have my baby here, and I…I…” Her large dark eyes are glistening, haunted. “Every time we’re driving I feel like I see him sitting next to me, or standing out in the middle of the road, and then I have to remember what happened all over again, and…I just…I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Rhaena takes Baela’s hands in her own, skims her thumbs across Baela’s knuckles; Luke rubs her back reassuringly. The rest of you can only offer silent, pitying looks. There are no easy answers, no fortuitous gold strikes, no shortcuts. The only way out is through.

“Whatever you guys decide, I’m leaving either way,” Rio says. “Sophie’s waiting for me in Oregon. I can’t just hang out in Nebraska forever. I’ll walk if I have to.”

“It’s over a thousand miles,” Aegon tells him.

“Doesn’t matter, man. I gotta do it.”

You add: “Obviously, I’d have to go with Rio.”

Both Aemond and Aegon appear startled. “We’ll be on the road again soon,” Aemond promises. “Tomorrow, if we can find gas in Ogallala.”

“I’m not going,” Baela whispers.

“We have to, Baela,” Rhaena implores. “It’ll be alright. We’ll take care of you, and the baby too when the time comes.”

Baela stands, strides to the Winnebago, disappears inside and slams the door behind her.

“She’ll be okay,” Rhaena tells the rest of you. “She’s…you know, she’s shaken up. She’s not thinking clearly. But she’ll realize this was the right decision. The only decision, really.”

“It’s best if we can get set up somewhere permanent before she goes into labor,” Aemond says, as if he’s defending himself. “Traveling with a baby…Baela recovering…it would be very dangerous for all of us.”

“Luke and I are thinking the same things, Aemond. We agree with you.”

He gives Rhaena an appreciative smile, very small but sincere. Then he turns to Daeron. “Baela and Aegon will have to wait here when I go south to Ogallala, since they can’t walk in the event the Tahoe runs out of gas. You’re going to stay behind to protect them.”

“Got it,” Daeron says soberly. All the bullets are gone; his compound bow, fed with arrows fashioned from sticks, is the best weapon you have left. Cregan has his axe, Rio still prefers to bash skulls with the butt of his Remington shotgun, everyone else must make do with hunting knives from that cellar back in Pennsylvania and kayak paddles found here at Lake McConaughy.

Aemond looks around the table. “I’ll need Rio, Cregan, and Luke.”

“And our beloved furball Blue Raspberry Icee,” Aegon says, smirking. “To sniff out any zombies.”

“Yes. Ice too.”

“What about me?” you say, staring incredulously at Aemond.

“Not you. You’re staying here in the RV.”

“If you and Rio are going, I’m going.”

“No, you’re not,” Aemond says. “You’re the best shot, and we all agree about that, but we’re fresh out of bullets. You therefore have no advantage tactically.”

“What’s Luke’s advantage?”

There are awkward chuckles. Aemond leaves the picnic table and gestures for you to follow him. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Why?”

Aemond doesn’t answer; he keeps walking until he’s hidden amongst a small grove of Kentucky coffeetrees, oval emerald leaves and umber seed pods that hang from branches, reminding you of skate egg cases—what some people call mermaid’s purses—you once found washed up on the beach outside Djibouti City. Rio teases you: “Ohhh, you’re in troubleee…”

You swat him on the back of the head; his hair is getting long too, dark curls that flutter in the breeze that comes in off the lake, hot and humid, the infinite wildness of July. “If I’m not going, you have to swear that you’ll—”

“I got it, I got it,” Rio says, blasé and jolly. “I’ll look underneath things, I’ll look on top of things, I’ll look everywhere. Okay?”

Aegon kicks him with his good foot. “Get me a golf club.”

“I’m not a Dick’s!”

“Dicks?! Who brought up dicks, you sicko…?!”

You go after Aemond and meet him in the shade, an island of twilight in the omnipotent golden morning. He pushes you against one of the Kentucky coffeetrees—rough bark to your back, prodding you through your t-shirt—and nuzzles your throat as he presses his hips to yours, blissful clandestine surrender as your knees weaken and you gaze dizzily up into the canopy of leaves.

You sigh: “This is not an explanation. This is a distraction. A very enjoyable one, but a distraction nonetheless.”

“Daeron is good with a bow, but he’s young,” Aemond murmurs. “I need you to help him protect the others.”

“You’ve managed to make this sound like a promotion.”

“And,” Aemond continues. “When things get risky and chaotic, and I’m trying to make sure everyone is safe…I find you being around to be…distracting.”

“Rio doesn’t think I’m a distraction.”

He chuckles, avoidant. “That’s not an equivalent situation.”

“I get that Luke has binoculars, but I am also perfectly capable of using binoculars, and I could borrow his and he could stay here. I really don’t think he’d mind being benched, he’d probably prefer it—”

“I always ask you to stay near Rio, and you never do, and then I have to worry about you getting lost or bitten or imperiled in any one of a million other ways.”

“Because it’s not that simple! Rio gets it, I have to be able to improvise—”

Suddenly, Aemond pulls away and asks: “Do you trust me?”

You are bewildered. “What?”

“Because I could understand if you don’t.”

You search his scarred face; he has that look like he’s trying not to reveal too much of himself, to show that he’s nervous or vulnerable or afraid. You touch your palm to his ravaged cheek, your voice soft. “I trust you, Aemond.”

He seems relived. “Good. Then please stay here.”

“You’ll watch out for Rio?” you say threateningly.

“Of course.”

“And yourself too.”

He grins, those small secretive teeth he loves to hide. “That’s the plan.”

“And you’ll check under things and on top of things, and you’ll remember what I said about the racks? When you go into stores and you’re rummaging through—?”

Aemond kisses you, warm and slow and kind, the curve of his lips pleased and mischievous. “It’s flattering that you’re so concerned.”

“And don’t forget the pads and tampons.”

His scarred eyebrow rises half an inch. “Oh?”

“I’m already having pre-period cramps. I’ll need supplies in a few days.”

“You’ll have them. Don’t fear.” Then he studies you, concerned, his brow furrowing and his palm testing your cheek and forehead. “You feeling okay? You’re sure that’s all it is?”

“Oh yeah, totally. It’s very routine at this point, I’ve had a decade to get accustomed.”

“Alright. If there’s anything else you think of before we head out, I’ll add it to the list.” He takes your hand and examines the shallow scratches left on your wrist by the needlelike teeth of the pike. “Let me clean and wrap that up for you. I think I have just enough bandages left.”

“Your worst nightmare came true,” you joke. “I was bitten after all.”

Aemond doesn’t laugh, doesn’t even smile.

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s long after nightfall and you and Aegon are keeping watch just outside the Winnebago Spirit, slumped in folding camping chairs people once told their legends from: scary stories, workplace grievances, familial mythology. In the firepit, logs split and pop, and embers glow a bloody red. You’re waiting for the Tahoe to return and trying not to think about the possibility it might not.

“These suck,” Aegon says, garbled by a mouthful of Cheddar Whales, grimacing at the bright blue box. “Why do you and Rio eat these? They’re like…dodgy Goldfish.”

“Are you kidding?! They’re way better than Goldfish! Goldfish don’t taste like anything.”

“And Cheddar Whales taste like salty cardboard. The American Dream.” Aegon passes the box back to you. “They better come back with some SpaghettiOs or Rice-A-Roni or something. I can’t survive on Cregan’s overcooked fish.” He lights a Marlboro Gold cigarette by sticking it into the fire and takes a deep drag, looking up at the stars. Aemond gave him the last of the morphine before he left, and Aegon is floating on a feathery, narcotic cloud.

You say after at last working up the nerve: “So you’re a slut, right?”

He snickers, firelight dancing on his sunburned face. “Slut, loser, you’ve got me all figured out.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yeah, I guess I’m a slut. Why?”

“Have you ever had trouble…” Your hands flail around aimlessly; it’s so awkward to say out loud. “You know…getting it in?”

“No, not really. But I’m hung like a hamster.” He looks over at you, curious shimmering stoned blue eyes. “Technical difficulties, Chip And Dip? Not enough dipping going on?”

“Forget it. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“You’re probably just nervous. Aemond’s a doctor, he’d be able to tell if you had something wonky down there, like those chicks who are born without a vagina. Or with two vaginas. Jesus Christ, can you imagine the possibilities? Why can’t I meet someone like that?”

You stare into the fire, discouraged. “I’m going to ruin everything.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that. Aemond will assume it’s his fault. He thinks everything is his fault.”

Through the darkness, you spot headlights bobbing as the Tahoe approaches on bumpy dirt roads. “Oh, thank God. They’re back.”

“About time. If Rio didn’t find me a new golf club, I’m going to drown him in the lake.”

“He could break you in half.”

“But he wouldn’t.”

“No.”

“Because he likes me too much.”

“Right.”

“Maybe you like me too,” Aegon says as he exhales smoke, his glazed eyes listing to you, his grin crooked and drowsy. “Just a little bit.”

You smile reluctantly. “I might.”

“Cool.” He beams up at the stars, and then says again: “Cool.”

As the massive SUV rolls to a halt, the headlights cascading over you and so bright they’re nearly blinding, you notice the red letters on the grill: GMC. “That’s not the Tahoe,” you say, panicked.

“What? Then who is it?”

“I don’t know.” You stand up, instinctively reaching for one of your M9s; but they’re both empty. All the guns are. Your hand drops to your side.

Aegon, unable to rise on his own, remains in his chair and grips the armrests tightly. He whispers: “Should we go inside…?!”

“They’ve already seen us. But they don’t know who’s in the RV.” Rhaena, Baela, Helaena. With a shiver like a bolt of cold lightning, you recall what Aemond said at the bowling alley back in Shenandoah, Ohio: I don’t want them to know we have women with us.

The GMC Yukon is still running when two men step out, the headlights disorientingly bright. They are both armed, you see immediately, pistols that you’d guess are Colts. Aegon’s hand juts out and closes around your forearm as the strangers approach. They are both young, maybe twenty, and wearing jeans, camo jackets, and baseball hats like they’re going hunting. They stand in the yellow-white glow of the headlights as they watch you.

“Hi,” you say congenially, forcing a smile.

The men glance at each other, then one greets you with a nod. “Howdy.”

“We’re set up here,” you say. “But it’s a big campground. You’re welcome to any of the other spots.”

The man who spoke earlier chuckles and scratches at his short beard. You steal a glimpse back at Aegon: his eyes are huge and horrified.

“It’s real quiet on the lake,” you continue. “We haven’t had any problems, and we’ve been here a few days. It’s a good place. We’re happy to share it. We don’t…” You deliberate what words to use. “We aren’t interested in making trouble. We just want to be left alone.”

The man replies: “I camped here every single summer growing up, learned to fish here, swam in the water with my cousins, brought my girlfriends here to fuck. And now you’re inviting me to stay? You’re not from here. I can tell by your accent. This is my backyard. You’re the one who should be asking for permission.”

Aegon is making a low, whimpering sound; his fingernails are digging into the defenseless, downy underside of your forearm. “We don’t have anything of value,” you say, your voice trembling.

“Uh huh.” The stranger’s gaze flicks to the Winnebago.

“We found it. There’s no gas, no keys. Two of the tires are flat. It’s just shelter.”

“Who else is in the RV?”

“No one.”

The second man is squinting at Aegon. “Is he a cripple?”

“He was burned. That’s why we’re resting here for a while, so he can heal.”

The first man points to the bandage on your wrist. “Did you try to kill yourself? My neighbor did that when her kid got eaten. Slit her veins open out in the middle of the street. Bad scene.”

“I got mauled by a fish,” you reply numbly.

He laughs, a slow, rolling, mocking sort of sound, not taking his eyes off you. Then they drop to the Beretta M9s you have holstered at your waist. “Are those loaded?”

“Yes.”

He signals to the nearest Kentucky coffeetree. “Prove it. Shoot that tree.” You stare at its trunk, stark in the headlights of the strangers’ SUV. Long seconds tick by, the only sound the idling of the engine and the crackling of the firepit. “You can’t,” the man says, grinning. “Because you’re out of bullets. But I’m not.”

He raises his pistol and fires, a thunderclap, a mechanical roar. A small circular wound appears in the tree. Aegon shrieks and tries to stand; he tumbles to the earth when the raw, weeping flesh beneath his bandages betrays him. The RV door flies open and Daeron is the first one out, clutching his compound bow but still blinking his way out of the dreams he was jolted from. He won’t be able to nock one of his makeshift arrows before they shoot him.

“What the hell’s going on—?!”

“Drop it!” the stranger shouts, and both he and his companion aim their pistols at Daeron. He freezes. Baela, Rhaena, and Helaena exit the RV and begin screaming, clinging to each other.

“Do what they ask,” you tell Daeron, trying to remain calm. With great hesitancy, he sets his bow on the earth and puts his empty palms in the air. There are hunting knives inside the RV, you think. Where did we store them? In a drawer, in a cabinet?

The men are now herding you all into the RV, jabbing the barrels of their pistols against your backs and bellies. “Let’s go, everybody in,” the first one says. The second man hooks an arm forcefully under one of Aegon’s and drags him through the threshold, Aegon yowling as his burned leg smacks against the doorframe. The second man forces Aegon and Daeron to kneel on the floor at the front of the RV near the driver’s seat; the other one arranges the women at gunpoint, instructing you to squeeze together to sit in a row on the floral couch. Helaena—farthest from you and closest to the kitchenette booth—is sobbing and covering her ears. Rhaena appears to be hyperventilating. Baela’s head is held high, her face furious and defiant.

Aemond, Rio, Cregan, please come back…

“Now this is interesting,” the first man is saying to his friend. He uses his pistol to indicate to each of you. “We’ve got G.I. Jane, this delicate little sweetheart, a pregnant lady, and Cinderella. Where should we begin…?”

You glance at Rhaena, catch her wide frenzied eyes, then look meaningfully at the drawers across the aisle near the kitchenette stove and sink. Knife? you mouth.

It takes her a moment to realize what you mean, then she inclines her head, an elusive nod. She remembers where they are, where they were stored once she cleaned them this afternoon in the lake water. That’s good; but in order for Rhaena to grab a large serrated hunting knife, the men will need to be distracted.

“There’s a bed in the back,” the second man is saying. “I can see it from here, down the hallway…”

Your gaze is darting around the Winnebago. Aegon is yelling something; the second man pistol-whips him, fortunately not hard enough to fracture his skull.

“Don’t worry,” the first man tells Aegon, background noise you try to ignore as you search for an opportunity. “You’ll get to watch…”

Helaena is trying to get your attention, staring at you with her wide, gleaming blue eyes. You furrow your brow at her, not understanding…and then you see the burlap strap she’s looped around her wrist. Her messenger bag must be in the kitchenette booth beside her. And as you watch, and only for a second, she arranges her fingers in the shape of a gun.

The Ruger, you realize, amazed, that tiny revolver she was always so repelled by. Helaena never used it, but she still has it. And it’s loaded.

Baela is arguing with the men, words you tune out. Helaena points to you, but you shake your head. There’s no way for her to get the Ruger to you without them seeing. You mouth to Helaena, your face severe: You have to do it. Then you look to the first man, presently waving his pistol in Baela’s face.

“I’d like to go first,” you say casually, and all the noise stops.

“No, no, no, I’ll do it,” Aegon tells the men. “You want a blowjob? You want to fuck me in the ass? I’m down. I’m not scared of no dick. I experimented in college.”

Both strangers burst into hysterical laughter. “That’s a mighty generous offer,” the second one says, swiping a tear from his eye. “But that’s not the team we’re on, is it, Wesley?”

The first man, Wesley, is smiling down at you. His gaze sweeps over your body, from your bare feet to your eyes, calm and level. “Why do you want to go first, darling?”

Shoot him, Helaena. Shoot him right now. “I’ve never done it before. I figure I should give it a try before it’s too late.”

Helaena whips the Ruger out of her burlap messenger bag and opens fire. She winces each time it goes off, and her aim is terrible; bullets pierce the ceiling and the walls, striking nowhere near Wesley or his accomplice, but their panicked ducking buys valuable seconds. Daeron and Aegon tackle the man closest to them and wrestle the pistol from his hands. Aegon presses the barrel to his skull, pulls the trigger, kills him instantly. Rhaena flies to one of the drawers and yanks out a hunting knife ten inches long. She buries it in Wesley’s throat, the blade disappearing until the hilt rests on his collarbone. When she rips it free, scarlet blood jets from his severed carotid artery, spraying you, soaking you. Blood is in your eyes and nostrils, hot coppery carnage; when you scream, you can taste it in your mouth.

People are reaching for you and telling you to calm down, that they’ll help you, but you can’t wait. You use your t-shirt to mop as much of the blood as you can from your face and bolt through the door of the RV, running towards the lake. You drop to your knees on the sand and splash yourself, cool moonlit rivulets that wash the blood away. You’re trembling, you’re crying, and when somebody grabs you by the arm you scream and strike out at them, clawing like an animal.

“It’s me,” Aemond says, and only then do you get a good look at him, blood and lake water beading on your eyelashes. He’s wiping blood off your face with his palms, he’s inspecting you for fresh wounds. “Don’t fight, it’s me, it’s me, whose blood is this, what happened—?!”

“You were right,” Baela says to Aemond from where she stands on the sand, a hand resting on her belly. Drifting from the RV are the voices of the others who have just returned: Rio, Cregan, Luke. “We’re not safe here.”

~~~~~~~~~~

The next night, rain falls as you lie entangled with Aemond in the attic bedroom of a ranch house in Red Desert, Wyoming, flashing lightning and flickering candles illuminating bare skin. You are kissing feverishly, your hands all over each other, and Aemond is pushing himself into you; or, rather, he is trying to. There is pain, and you can feel your body turning treasonous, rejecting him, shrinking away from him, fearing that you’ll never be able to satisfy him.

No, no no no…

His voice is hushed and gentle as his lips brush your ear. “Hey, you’re shaking, why are you shaking?”

“I’m okay, I’m fine, keep going.” And then, when he stops: “No, Aemond, don’t—”

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You have to. I’ll be okay, I promise.”

Instead, he lies down beside you and turns your face to his, fingerprints on the slope of your jaw. He asks again, more firmly: “Why are you shaking?”

All the walls and arches of you collapse, stones tumbling to crack against the earth. You are suddenly fighting tears. Your words come out in a whisper. “I want this to be real.”

He studies your face, distressed. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t want to ruin it. I don’t want to lose you. I never thought I’d have something like this and now I’m so afraid of fucking it up.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“That’s what Jace thought.”

Aemond pulls you against his chest and holds you as you sink through him into dark, cold, watery dreams, and doesn’t make any more promises he can’t keep.

~~~~~~~~~~

“What time is it on the East Coast right now?” you ask Rio. It’s May and almost a hundred degrees every day in Djibouti City—arid, rainless, sun glare and dust that sting your eyes—so the Navy has you building at night when they won’t have to deal with quite so many Seabees dropping over from heatstroke. Outside the day is turning to a soft lavender dusk and your shift will begin soon. You are dressed—sand-colored t-shirt, camo pants, work boots—and toweling off your hair, still wet from the shower.

Rio is sprawled across the floor of your room, taking up almost all of it; housing at Camp Lemonnier consists of converted shipping containers, each outfitted with its own perpetually whirring air conditioning unit. He is reading Fifty Shades Of Grey. “Like seven hours behind here, so early afternoon, I guess.” Then he looks up at you, suspicious. “Why?”

“I should probably call.”

“Should you really?”

“I want to. I’ll feel guilty if I don’t.”

Rio shakes his head and returns his attention to his reading material. “I’m not going to tell you what to do.”

“You love telling me what to do.”

“I wish you loved listening.” He flips a page, puzzled. “Why the fuck does Sophie like this book so much…?”

You open Facebook Messenger on your phone and make a call. The wifi isn’t good for videos, but old-fashioned audio calls usually work okay. There is an answer on the fourth ring.

“Yeah?” she says, and you can hear the entire house when she turns on speakerphone: the squeaking of the recliner, the droning of a talk show, indistinct speech and chuckling from other people, glass—cups, bottles, baking dishes, ashtrays—clinking sharply.

“Hi, Mama! Happy Mother’s Day!”

“Aw, ain’t you sweet to call.” And you are testing her voice like water from a tap, icy cold, hot enough to scald. At the moment, Mama sounds perfectly lukewarm. “I didn’t count on hearing from you. I know how busy you are.”

That’s a landmine that you step gingerly around. “We definitely have a lot going on here, and there’s the time difference and everything…but I wanted to make sure to say hi, even if I can’t talk for long. What are you up to today?”

“Oh, nothing much.” You hear her smoking: breathe in, breathe out, a cunning sort of pause as she decides how to proceed. Of course there were no extravagant festivities planned. Nothing ever felt like a real holiday at home: Mama getting sloshed and burning the turkey on Thanksgiving, Christmas presents that had to be returned for grocery and gas money, fistfights and doors ripped off hinges on New Year’s Eve. You had decided years ago that Hallmark channel magic was pure fiction…but sometimes you get glimpses of it now. Thanksgiving dinner in some unceremonious chow hall with Rio and your other friends feels more like a holiday than anything else you’ve ever known. “You still in Africa?”

“It’s Djibouti, Mama, I told you. It’s on the Horn. Across the sea is Yemen and Saudi Arabia.”

“Why can’t they put y’all to work in your own goddamn country?”

“Well, we do that too sometimes.” You stall, listening to her smoking. Rio glances up at you from where he’s still reading on the floor. “They have some incredible beaches here. Yesterday morning we went down to the water and there were all these cute kids playing, and they only spoke French but Rio showed them how to play tic-tac-toe by drawing a board in the sand—”

“I like the beach,” she says, and you know you’ve made a mistake. “You remember that?”

Deflated now: “Yeah, Mama. I remember. Are the boys going to take you to Virginia Beach this summer?”

She scoffs. “We’ll see, but I doubt it. It’s expensive, girl.”

You sigh deeply. Rio was right. I shouldn’t have called. “We talked about this. I need to be saving up to get my own house one day, and my own car, and all those things I’ll need to have a life when I get out of the Navy—”

“And what about my house?!” Mama cries, damn near wails. “I’m gonna lose it! I can’t make the payments!”

You reply calmly: “Mama, that’s your house. That’s your business. And you’ve got more than one kid still living at home long after they’ve turned eighteen, so they need to be the people you’re asking to help, not me.”

“You’re gonna let your Mama be homeless? Is that what you called to tell me on Mother’s Day? What the hell kind of daughter are you?”

“I got out!” you shout into the phone, and Rio is scrambling off the floor to rush to you. “I’m learning things and I’m making money and I’m building schools and hospitals on the other side of the fucking planet, and you can’t be proud of me because you think it means you’ve failed, but the truth is that you could have gotten out too! All of you could have! But you didn’t, it was me, it was just me, and now you hate me for it!”

“You need to come home now,” Mama says. “You gotta take care of me, take care of your Mama. You only got one and she needs you, so you gotta heed me. That’s what’s right.”

“I am not going to spend the rest of my life watching you get wasted in that filthy house, and I’d work where, at the Dollar General? At Arby’s? And get knocked up by the first guy who shows any interest?”

“You’re giving me heart palpitations. I’m gonna have to go to the emergency room and it’s all your fault.”

Rio is whispering into your other ear, one of his massive palms resting on the back of your neck: “Just hang up. It’s not worth it. You can hang up, just hang up…”

“I want things to be normal,” you tell Mama, you plead, tears stinging in your eyes. “I’ve tried so hard to get along with everyone, and help you as much as I can, but no matter what I do it’s not enough, and you’re always mad at me, and you’re always fighting with me—”

“You’re damn right I’m fighting with you, because you’re a spiteful, selfish child.”

“Hang up,” Rio is murmuring. “Hang up, hang up, hang up…”

“Mama,” you say, your voice strangled. “I’m sorry. I have to go now.”

“When I’m homeless, you know you got no one but yourself to blame—”

You hit the red button to end the call, throw your phone down onto the bed, stare at the wall and swallow noisily, choking back sobs. You won’t let yourself cry. You’ve cried enough for them already. You have to keep moving forward. The only way out is through. “You were right,” you say to Rio at last, quiet and raspy. Your hands are trembling. “I shouldn’t have called.”

“Hey.” He grabs your face roughly, forces you to look at him with your miserable shimmering eyes, grins hugely. “I’m your mom now, bitch.”

You laugh as tears spill down your cheeks, let him bury you in one of his smothering bear hugs, cling to him like a life raft in a storm.

[hanasnx]

MINORS DNI 18+ WARNINGS: f!reader | dom!bruce | vag fingering | sexual content | size difference | brief descriptions of intoxication.

“What did you say your name was?” The words of YOUNG!BRUCE WAYNE speak against you, muffled by his lower lip caught between your teeth and the pounding music of the club. You grin coyly, shaking your head as you tug back on his lip, releasing it to let it bob.

“I didn’t.” you reply, reinforcing the mystery of it all. His black hair had a sort of intentional messy look to it, longer in the front and hanging over his forehead in an edgy and fashionable way. The silken locks tickle your forehead as the two of you stand impossibly close together, refusing each other any breathing room as if you’re exchanging the most sacred of secrets.

You don’t know who this guy is, and frankly you couldn’t care less. All that mattered was that he invited you up to a platinum pass VIP floor of this nightclub, got a few drinks in you, and now you’re all over him. Instinctively, you raise your leg to tuck him between your thighs, and he takes the extra mile of hooking his fingers in the crook of your knee to lift it a little further. He’s tall, and there’s a good stretch when he gets you up to his hip.

Lips locked, you can’t ignore what an expert he is with his tongue. Maybe it’s the alcohol, but with specific swipes of his tongue you whimper. If he could hear you above all this noise, he might think you’re in the longest dry spell of your life. To your knowledge, it doesn’t appear like he’s judging you, in fact he’s spurred on by your enthusiasm, tangling tongues like inexperienced teenagers in the dark corner of the floor. Unconsciously, you begin grinding. A subtle rut chasing friction, the thin fabric of your dress separates your bare cunt from humping his crotch. You don’t register fully the kind of desperation you’re giving off. He doesn’t seem to mind at all, clutching onto your leg tighter to encourage you.

When things escalate to an inappropriate degree for his level of comfort regarding PDA, his hand cups your chin, directing you back to break the kiss. You emit a sound of disappointment, your eagerness cut short. To make up for it, he affectionately strokes your skin with his thumb. A kind smile curls his lips, swollen and pink from all of your sucks and bites, but there’s a delicious darkness in his eyes. “Let me show you something.”

You knew this guy was loaded, but you didn’t know exactly how wealthy. He’d brought you to a private room because apparently he owned this place. Your shock was brief, staring at him long enough that he interrupted you with another long and tonguey kiss. He couldn’t be more than a couple years your age. How can he own anything in his twenties? However, as he guided you to a cushioned seat, directing you to straddle his lap, you’d completely forgotten about money. The only thing on your mind now is how cups the back of your neck like his hand belongs there, firmly fixed as he keeps you where he wants you, diving his tongue far into the back of your throat. It’s demanding, and it shoots right through you. Hopelessly aroused, you can feel your slick coating the insides of your thighs. It only worsens when he begins to take off his rings. One by one, silver bands are removed from his long and thick fingers.

An omen. A filthy and delicious omen of what’s to come, pulsing your cunt until he gets his bare hand on it, sweetly caressing you through the tasteful slit in your dress. “Knew you were gonna get some?” he asks, a frustratingly handsome expression of pride and joy on his countenance.

“Shut up.” you respond with a roll of your eyes, patting his shoulder scoldingly. Your nonchalance doesn’t last long because he starts taking your pussy seriously. The tip of his middle finger swipes through, a chill running up your spine because of it. Nervous energy has nowhere to go, and you claw his upper arm, seeking out the provided friction with a gentle rock of your hips. He watches you with interest and parted lips, gauging your every minute reaction as he experiments his touch. As if you’re a puzzle, he’s curious about you, alternating between dipping shallowly into you and rubbing at your little clit. At a particularly sensitive motion, you throw your head back, sitting onto his hand fully. A mild chastising is in order, his free hand clutched onto your hip picks you back up, but he doesn’t withhold giving you more of what you need.

“Easy, pet, we’ve got all night.”

[bloodyknucklesforme]

Red Summer | Ghoap x F!Reader | Slasher!AU

After breaking up with your long term boyfriend you take a job working as a camp counselor in Northern Vermont. Seven weeks of swimming, volleyball, archery and hiking. There's even a hot lifeguard. It seems perfect until you find something evil is lurking in the woods

Tags: Slasher AU, Ghoap x Reader, intro chapter, nondescript reader, dark fic

Chapter 1: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

5.5k words

It smelled like Summer. Ozonic and earthy, carried into your car by the breeze as you drove North through winding roads. Montpelier was two hours behind you now. 

Despite the eighty degree heat, Vermont was lush and green. Only a couple more miles of shaded forest roads before you reached camp. At least you hoped so. Your maps app had been slow to load the last twenty miles.

The place was North, nestled between the border of Canada and the New Hampshire state line. It was gorgeous though. Anytime you thought about moving out of New England to somewhere cheaper the next season changed your mind. The trees just didn’t look as pretty in fall or the snow as splendid in winter. You just wished it was cheaper.

Suppose that’s why you took this job, as much as it didn’t appeal to you. Camp counselor for seven long weeks, the pay was shit but your food and board came free. After a bad breakup you didn’t have time to find a new lease so your life was packed up into a rented storage box with anything valuable shoved into the back of your car. 

A friend of a friend recommended it. She’d been working here for years, attended for even more. She was an old money New Englander. Boarding school outside of Boston and all that. She was nice though. Got you the job over any qualified candidates. It wasn’t nepotism but whatever it was called you wouldn’t complain.

Your car dinged. Low gas. Shit.

Scrolling quickly through the map you saw a gas station up ahead. You’d just make it… hopefully. 

You let out a sigh of relief as you pulled into the station. It was older with dusty windows and sun-faded posters for cigarettes. 

A piece of paper was taped to the pump.

“Reader broken. Pay inside” scribbled in sharpie.

You sighed and headed inside. 

It was dusty inside too. A couple aisles of brightly packaged food and walls lined with fridges filled with beer and soda. The man behind the counter glanced up from his book when you walked in.

He was handsome. Black with dark, short cut curly hair and big brown eyes. Much too handsome to be working in the middle of nowhere. He’d look more fitting in the corner of a bar, buying you a drink. He smiled up at you and your heart might have skipped a beat. 

“Pump three? How much?” He was English… strange.

“Just…uh… ten bucks.” You stumbled out. 

“It’s the accent,” he chuckled. “It throws everybody off the first time.” 

“It’s a strange place for an Englishman to be, I guess.” You swayed awkwardly. 

“I go to Middlebury. Easier to get a summer job than fly home.” He shrugged. 

“Understandable.” You weren’t an expert on Vermont geography but you swore the college was on the other side of the state. 

“Ten on three.” He said, nodding his head towards the window.

“Oh yeah. Thank you.” 

“You still got to pay, love.”

“Oh fuck, yeah. Sorry… uh… Kyle.” You read his name tag before digging through your tote bag, finding the last bit of your cash.

“No worries. What brings a girl like you out here.”

“I’m working at the camp.”

“Weldon lake, right?”

“Yeah. First time… I’m going the right way, right?”

“If you continue up the road. There will be a sign when you need to turn.” He handed you your receipt. 

“Thank you.” 

“Hey!” You were half way out the door when he called. “Stay alive out there. Heard the campers can be down right evil.”

“I’ll try!”

The rest of the journey was smooth, there was a sign just like Kyle said. Another one after that taking you down a long gravel drive and into a dirt parking lot. A couple other cars were there already. 

You made sure everything important was locked up in the trunk before grabbing your duffel bag and tote. You hoped you brought enough sunscreen. 

The sun was warm on your back as you made your way up to the main building. Two other girls were hanging around on the porch. They each wore matching white baseball shirts with red sleeves and trim, each labeled with STAFF on the back. 

“Hey, you’re Sophia’s friend, right? I’m Janie.” She jumped down from the porch fence. “I love your braids by the way.”

You’d done your hair before leaving, figuring it’d be easier to keep clean braided than fight for limited shower time. 

“I’m Natalie,” The other girl greeted. You introduced yourself, thanking Janie for the compliment.”

“I think your cabin is next to mine. I can take you over once you check in.” Janie said.

Check in was easy enough. Sign a couple more papers, show off your ID to prove you were you and get your cabin assignment, key and two staff shirts. Tomorrow was orientation before the campers arrived Monday morning. Tonight was for getting to know everyone. 

“So, where’s this cabin?” you asked, walking outside.

The girls grinned and led you down the path. Everything seemed to branch off from here. They pointed out where the dining hall was just past the main office next to the nurse’s station.

“Don’t expect much. They’re still recovering from when Covid almost killed this place.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah. They had to raise fees and a bunch of parents freaked out. Guess an extra hundred dollars really threw all the millionaires off.” Natalie laughed. 

Next was the pool, fully fenced in and surrounded by two tennis courts and two basketball courts on either side. 

“Hey lasses!” A man called from the pool, leaning over the chain link fence. Natalie rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. “Who’s the new girl?”

He had a thick Scottish accent. Lots of transplants for the area, you guessed. He was also handsome. Muscular with a dark mohawk and light eyes. He was shirtless with very short and tight red shorts on and a silver whistle around his neck. He was dripping water over the ground.

“You say that like you aren’t also the new guy, Johnny!” Natalie called, clearly annoyed already. 

“Nat hates him.” Janie giggled. 

“It’s been three hours and he’s already tried to fuck half the counselors. He’s a dog.”

“One I’d put on a leash.” Janie laughed.

Johnny walked over, still dripping wet. His crocs squeaked with every step. 

“Johnny,” he grinned, holding out his hand to you. You introduced yourself as he shook your hand excitedly. He had a tattoo on his side, up by his ribs. You couldn’t see all of it but it looked like a heart with someone’s initials in it. S and something else, you couldn’t tell for sure. “Beautiful name for a beautiful gal.”

Your cheeks felt hot as his blue eyes traveled over your body. 

“It’s going to be a fun seven weeks with all you bonnie lasses around.” He grinned. Nat looped her arm around yours.

“Down dog. We still have half the camp to show off.”

“You know where to find me. Pool looked like the lake when I got here.” He raised his hands up as he walked backwards towards the pool again.

“Come on, before we lose Janie.”

“He’s hot!” She defended. 

“You just like him because he got your name right on the first try.”

“He’s intelligent too!”

The cabins were next. Ten white painted buildings split in half with about eight beds on each side and a shared bathroom in the back. They formed a circle around a fire pit with log benches. 

You had cabin room 14. Janie was the building next door in 15 and Nat with 16 sharing with her. They took turns explaining everything.

“Your bed is the only non bunk and the chest underneath locks so anything you don’t want the campers to find should go there.”

“Basically all your shit. I had a copy of Crime and Punishment stolen last year. Fucking Crime and Punishment like any of these kids could read Dostoevsky.”

“Showers are in the back. Hot water is sparse so if you want some, move quick and early.”

“Breakfast is at 8. Coffee tastes like shit unless you pour half a pound of sugar in it.” 

“You can vape just outside but if you smoke you gotta ask your neighbor counselor to watch your kids. At least thirty feet away or they’ll snitch too.”

“Weed is only for days off because they'll either snitch or demand you share. That goes for kids and counselors.” 

“Days off are randomly assigned but you should get one every other week.”

“I don’t recommend sleeping with other counselors but if you must, go to your car.” Natalie said. 

“We’ll leave you to get settled. Dinner is in an hour. You can meet everyone else then.”

“Thank you guys for everything.” You felt overwhelmed just a bit. 

They left, still arguing about Johnny. He was cute but the break up wounds were still fresh. You didn’t want to sneak around either. You weren’t a teenager anymore.

You haphazardly dumped the contents of your duffle into the lock chest before shoving it back under the bed. You had seven weeks to organize it. 

The bed was okay. A plastic covered mattress with an old sleeping bag. You should have brought your own pillow. Maybe a Target run on your next day off whenever that was. 

The ache in your muscles from driving all day hit hard the moment you sat down. 

There was a knock on the door. 

“Hey sleepyhead!” Sophia came in. You rubbed your face as you woke up. Out the window you could see the sky looked darker, a blue summer evening. “I’m glad you ended up coming.”

“Yeah. Thanks for getting me the job.” You stretched, your shoulders cracking. “It’s nice to get away.” 

“I’m sorry about you and Ale.” There it was. She was nice but always craved gossip. 

“It’s okay. Just wanted different things.”

You shrugged. It wasn’t a bad breakup, no arguing, just a slow and painful demise. He’d even offered to let you stay with him when the lease ended and he found out you didn’t have a place to go. You chose this instead. 

“Well, let’s get you something to eat. The food is incredibly mediocre but I heard a rumor that the lifeguard has beer and weed for the fire pit.”

She was not wrong about dinner. Hot dogs with a slice of Kraft cheese melted on top with a bag of chips as a side. 

You sat with Nat, Sophia and Janie. 

“There are my lovely ladies!” Johnny sat down, forcing his way between Cel and Sophia. Nat looked like she wanted to kill him. “Coming out to the lake tonight? Hope you all brought swim suits or birthday suits.”

“Jesus Christ.” Nat groaned. 

“I think we’re gonna have an easy night. Some of us had long drives.” Sophia motioned to herself and you. “Just some girl time.”

Johnny pouted. 

“Fair enough but I do expect all of you at the bonfire tomorrow.” He pointed at all of them, even Nat. “Especially you new girl.”

He got up and jogged off to another table of girls. 

“Am I allowed to call him a slut?”

“What happened to dog?” Janie asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“Dogs can be trained.” 

You all laughed. You’d been worried that you wouldn’t fit in. All the other girls knew each other for years at this point. Janie and Sophia had been coming here since they were kids. Nat met Janie in high school and got a job as a junior counselor with her the first chance they got. 

It wasn’t a super attractive job and the pay was shit but it looked good on resumes and college applications apparently. Showed responsibility. Most of your experiences with camp were from horror films. 

The sun was still out as the four of you walked back. Sophia was your cabin neighbor, taking care of room 13. It’s where you all gathered. 

Sophia and you sat on her bed while she did your nails. 

“Red looks nice on you.” It was a bright cherry red. She’d picked it out, saying they should all match. 

The evening was spent talking and laughing. You asking questions about camp life and getting advice from the other girls. 

You had friends back home but you were glad you fit in so fast. Any anxiety and fear for the Summer slipped away as the sun set. 

“I’m beat.” Nat yawned. It was almost midnight now. Janie agreed and the two wandered off back to their cabin. 

“I’ll head back too. Thank you for being so welcoming, Soph.”

“Absolutely! It’s nice to get fresh meat every once and a while. It can be tough with the kids so some people get jaded. I hope you have fun this Summer and if you don’t you can blame me.” She laughed. 

The air was cool on the little porch out front. Most of the other cabins had their lights off by now and the center was lit up with fireflies, neon yellow dots. 

There was an orange dot out towards the back of one of the cabins across the way. A cigarette. The man smoking it seemed larger than any counselor you’d seen but it was dark and he was half hidden behind the building. It was Johnny’s cabin, you think. He was big. 

He waved and you waved back. He dropped the cigarette and stamped it out. The little corner fell dark and you went into your side.

You didn’t realize how quiet the world could be as you curled up in your sleeping bag. No hum of electronics or cars. No people yelling above or below you. Just the stillness of the stars.

It was an early morning. Johnny was running around the circle of cabins playing music to wake everyone up. He was shirtless again and his shorts seemed shorter than the day before. You wouldn’t complain. 

“So why did you choose this wonderful vista as a summer job?” Johnny asked, jogging up next to you as you made your way to the dining hall. 

“Needed a break. Get out in nature for a bit. I grew up in the suburbs and just broke up with my boyfriend so I guess I wanted to breathe for a bit. You?”

“Running from my previous life of crime.” He smiled. “Nah, just also trying to get away. Was military back home, knee injury did me in. Didn’t know what else to do. Hiked part of the Appliachian trail. You know, it's the same mountain range as the Highlands. Felt like I had to see them. Haven’t really felt like going back home yet.”

“You hiked alone?” You raised an eyebrow. You knew that it was one of the longest and hardest trails in the country. 

“Had a mate with me but I’m on my lonesome now.” He opened the door for you. Sure, he was boisterous but he seemed harmless one on one. Maybe a little dogish but he wasn’t going to hump your leg unprompted. 

“Shirts are needed in the dining hall, Mactavish!” Sophia called. He held up his hands in surrender before fishing out a cropped muscle tee that had been shoved into his pocket. It was a nice change of pace to be around a man that wanted to show off his own skin rather than try to get girls to show theirs. 

You told yourself before you got here that you wouldn’t look for that kind of distraction. It wasn’t worth it, especially not this early. You could look though. No harm in that. 

Bacon, Eggs and self-serve cereal was today’s breakfast. You joined back up with the girls from last night. Orientation was supposed to take up most of the day so they encouraged you to grab a couple pieces of fruit and a protein bar.

“Only fill up your water bottle in here. There are fountains elsewhere but I think they taste weird.” Said Janie. 

You were put in a group with Johnny, Sophia, and another guy named Warren. He and Sophia were long term counselors so they gladly took on the role of being you and Johnny’s tour guide. Johnny had been hired because of his lifeguard training so he already knew the layout of the lake and pool. You were scolded for not having proper shoes for hiking.

“What’s your size? I might have an old pair in my car.” Sophia offered. “If not I think there’s an L.L.Bean like two hours away. We can go on our next day off.”

You weren’t sure if you could afford brand new boots so silently hoped that Sophia did have that old pair and they fit. 

“Don’t want ya getting blisters all summer.” Johnny said. He was doing the hike in crocs but apparently did have boots back at his cabin. 

You didn’t do the full trail but Warren pointed out the different routes and how difficult each one was and which ones kids could do by themselves and which ones they couldn’t. The fields were next. A soccer field and baseball field were across the way from the cabins. It was a loose definition of each. One was a huge patch of grass and the other a diamond of dirt. Both looked a little off size wise. There was the sports supply shed that had all the equipment in it. Only a couple counselors had keys to it.

“People kept using it inappropriately.” Sophia smiled.

There was the art building, the rec hall, a path leading towards the archery field and riflery field.

“Riflery?”

“Yeah. We used to teach kids how to shoot. Mostly clay pigeons but it was one of the programs cut after Covid,” Warren explained. 

“Shame I missed it. Could have taught the kids trick shots.” Johnny joked, pretending to aim a rifle backwards over his shoulder. 

The horse stable was also closed. Too expensive to have horses here for even half the season. 

The Lake was the last part of the tour. It was on the other side of the road so to get there was an underpass to get there. It was large enough for five adults to walk side by side comfortably but the yellow light from the lamps gave it a sickly vibe. 

It ended a little ways before the beach. There were several rows of Kayaks and another shed filled with life preservers and paddles. 

“Wow Johnny! You cleaned it up well.” Warren clapped him on the back. For a moment Johnny looked irritated that he’d been touched but he shoved that emotion out of the way to make room for his usual excited self. 

“Yeah. Cleaned up the best I could.”

“It looks great, Johnny.” You were impressed. He’d even sprayed the kayaks down, bright clean plastic in a rainbow of colors.

“Yer making me blush.” He laid a hand over his heart. 

The lake was gorgeous. Cream colored sand feeding into sapphire waters. You could just see the beach on the other side, a small empty dock with a path leading into the woods. The camp side had a floating platform about thirty feet into the water. 

“Campers have to swim there and back to pass the swimming competency test.” Sophia explained. “If you can’t swim on your own you’re stuck in the buoyed area.” 

There was a ten by ten foot area cordoned off by buoys, keeping to the shallow end of the lake. Made enough sense. No one wanted to fish a dead kid out of the water.

“Let’s head back. We don’t want to miss lunch.” Warren clapped his hands together. 

The four of you made the trek back to the dining hall. You did feel like blisters were starting to form on the back of your ankles. You’d have to put band-aids on them later. 

The rest of the afternoon was spent going over itinerary for the following week. Campers would arrive tomorrow between ten and six. It was a day mostly planned out for settling them in with an inaugural bonfire that night. After that it was seven weeks of regular old American camp adventures. 

You went back to your cabin the moment you had free time. Your ankles hadn’t started to bleed but they were bright red and throbbing. You applied the bandaids and grabbed another pair of socks to wear the rest of the way. 

There was about an hour and half before dinner and final orientation from the camp managers, who, you had been told, often made themselves scarce throughout the summer to avoid having to do their jobs. You settled on top of your sleeping bag. A nice breeze came in through the screen door. Janie had told you that it was the best way to keep the building cool.  

You thought about Ale. His smile and deep laugh. How he’d wake you up in the morning with kisses to the back of your neck. How he loved your hair and ass. How he’d whisper in Spanish to you. You still had the English/Spanish dictionary he gave you shoved in a box back in the city. You missed him. Your cowboy. He would have been so disappointed to hear the stables were closed. Maybe you’d call him after all this. Ask to work something out. 

You drifted off daydreaming about the scent of his cologne.

“Bonnie! You’re gonna miss dinner!” Johnny was knocking on the screen door. Maybe Nat was right in being annoyed by him all the time. 

“I’ll just miss it.” you sighed, rolling over on the bed. 

“You never know which meal is your last. Best not to skip any! C’mon or I’ll drag ya myself.”

You would have thrown a pillow if you had one. How did he always have so much energy?

He jogged literal circles around you on the way to the dining hall.

“How are your feet?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“You were limping on the way back to the cabins earlier.”

“Oh…yeah just blisters.”

He tutted at you. 

“Got to get you some good shoes soon.”

Dinner was the same hot dogs as the previous night with a bonus of a bowl of lettuce, cherry tomatoes and a slice of cucumber. 

There was an excited energy in the room. Most people who’d snuck in alcohol or drugs said tonight was the best night to use it all. An unspoken competition of who could drink the most and still function when the first campers started to arrive. It could be fun, you mused. You were never a big partier in college and what was this if not a perfect chance to make up for that. 

The boys built up a nice fire, each poking and prodding their own side with their favorite stick. You sat on one of the log benches next to Sophia and Janie. Johnny was across the fire, his arm around the waste of another girl counselor. Ceilidh you think it was. Pronounced like Kay-lee, she’d said. Pretty name, Gaelic. Made sense for him to go after a piece of home.

“Glad he’s finally left us alone.” Nat chuckled. 

“I think they’re cute.” Sophia said. You pushed down the twinge of jealousy you felt seeing her giggle at his joke. 

Warren came around with a cooler filled with a hodgepodge of beer. He was his fraternity’s president and one of his responsibilities was to get rid of any extra at the end of the term to avoid trouble. Dry campus issues. 

You grabbed a Modelo. Ale’s old go to and one you’d gotten used to drinking. It left a familiar warm feeling in your stomach.

You drank, you danced, you ate s’mores, you laughed with your new friends. The stars seemed so bright and clear out here. Janie had you all lay out on your backs in the grass nearby as she pointed out each constellation.

“That’s the big dipper and above it is the little dipper but Draco is the constellation between them. If you guys tell me your star signs I can point it out for you.”

There was laughter nearby and you glanced up to see Johnny and Ceilidh sneaking in the dark towards her cabin. 

You had another beer. And another. Maybe one more after that. 

Someone offered you a hit off a joint so you did that too. 

The four of you were laughing and stumbling back to Sophia’s cabin. You had no idea how late it was. The fire was dying out. Warren said he would make sure everyone got back inside all right. The designated driver of drunken counselors. He was a good guy. 

You found yourself laying on your side on one of the empty beds. Sophia and Janie were on her bed, half asleep against each other. Nat and you were talking about your childhoods. 

“I broke a bone three years in a row, each time in May. I missed field day every time. My mom once pulled me around in a wagon so I wouldn’t feel left out,” She laughed. 

“How did you break so many bones?”

“Catholic school where the playground was just a parking lot. I was a wild kid. I broke my arm tripping and falling against the priest’s car. I dented it too. I thought I was going to hell.”

There was a shrill noise. Loud and stomach dropping. A scream cut off. You and the other girls all jumped to attention. It was silent except for the crackling of the fire outside. 

“Fisher cat.” Janie said, trying to convince herself.

“Or a fox.” Sophia added. 

“Did you guys hear that?” Warren said, coming in. 

The four of you nodded.

“It sounded close. I’m gonna check it out.”

“By yourself?”

“One of the other guys is gonna come with me. It’s probably just an animal. If you see Johnny tell him to go check on everyone. I want a headcount before we all go to sleep.”

You all watched from the window as Warren met another guy holding a flashlight and a baseball bat. Sophia turned on the porch light. They disappeared between the cabin’s across the way. 

“Johnny and Celilidh went off together. Should we try to find them?” Sophia offered. 

“Maybe we should just stay here. Safety in numbers.” Janie answered. 

“Safety from what? It was just an animal.” Nat insisted. 

“Didn’t sound like an animal.” You thought. No one else would say it but you were all thinking it. A slide show of clips from horror films played through your mind. 

Four sets of eyes darted around, looking out windows and the front door, waiting for some masked killer to seep through the walls.

Bang!

You all screamed as Johnny flew through the door, clutching his stomach. 

“We have to go now!” He grunted. Blood was pouring between his fingers.

“Oh my god. What happened? Where’s Ceilidh?”

“Dead… fuck.. She’s fucking dead. Fucker came in through the window in the bathroom. I tried to fight him off. I’m sorry.” He gulped. “We have to go now!”

“You’re bleeding. Please let me look.” Janie reached out and he pushed her hand away. 

“Don’t have time. We have to go. Get my car keys. I can fit us all.”

“What about everyone else?” You asked. There was so much blood, it was dripping on the floor now. 

“I don’t know… when..when’s the last time you saw anyone?”

There was another scream from outside. Silence took you over again.

“Please… we can get out and get help but we have to go now.” Johnny pleaded. His bright blue eyes were watery and his tan skin was stained red down his legs. 

“I’m going.” Sophia said, grabbing her backpack. “Fuck this. I’m not fucking dying like it’s a movie. We’re all going. Johnny, do you need help?”

“No, I can manage. I need to get my keys though.”

“I have mine. We can just take my car. It’s an SUV.” Sophia urged, crouching down to look out of the door.

“No…no…I…I uh…I have a gun in my car.”

“You brought a fucking gun to camp?” Nat’s jaw dropped. 

“Old shotgun. It works. I’m trained for this. Get to the car and I… I can kill him.”

“You’re bleeding out, Johnny.” Janie cried, reaching for him again and once again being pushed away. 

“Come with me.” Johnny looked at you.

“I…I…I don’t know.” You were shaking. It didn’t seem real. Too cliche. A real life spree killer running around the woods of a Summer camp. Sophia was right, you didn’t want to die like it was some movie. 

“He knows I’m weak. He’ll go after me first. We’ll get my keys and if he shows up… you take them and run.”

“You..can’t sacrifice yourself.” Your voice warbled.

“It was my job to do that. If I can’t die saving my country, I’d like to die saving a group of pretty girls.”

Johnny was pleading. He seemed to know he couldn’t do it on his own. You thought about Ale saying you needed to stand up for yourself more. You never did. You didn’t stand up to bullies in high school, rogue professors in college or shitty demeaning bosses. You didn’t even stand up for yourself when Ale said he wanted a break. 

Nat was saying how you should all just run to Sophia’s car. She had her keys. Sophia was agreeing. Janie was crying silently. 

“I’ll go.” You forced the words out like vomit. It was that or actual vomit.

“Okay.” He almost smiled. “Sophia, turn off the lights. We’ll give you a signal when it's safe to come out. Then we all run to the parking lot.”

“What’s the signal?” Janie sobbed.

“I’ll whistle.”

You were shaking so much you worried you’d fall right down the front steps of the cabin. Johnny was in front of you, shoulders hunched up, his eyes darting everywhere. Sophia turned off the lights, leaving the two of you in near darkness. The fire was nothing more than orange smoldering logs. 

“You seem like you’ve done this before.” You said quietly, finding yourself holding the bottom hem of his shirt. 

“Like I said. It was my job.”

You walked on your tiptoes, trying not to make any noise. Your heart cried for the others. Even if you didn’t know them. You didn’t hear or see anyone. Maybe they all got out? They escaped already…or the killer was chasing them deeper into the woods.

You didn’t want to die. In the movies it always seemed so prolonged. The stabbings and bleeding out. Johnny had been hurt and he was still going on, trying to save you and everyone else. 

“Stay here. I’ll go check to make sure it's clear.” He said. You’d made it to his cabin, whole body still shaking just on his porch now. Your heart leapt into your throat as the door creaked open. 

“Be careful, please.”

He winked at you before heading in. You picked at the skin around your nails, a nasty old habit that you tried so hard to kick. You could forgive yourself for this relapse. It seemed an appropriate time to scratch out anxiety.

The step behind you creaked. Any light from the fire was blocked out. A arm wrapped around your neck and pulled you flush with a wall of muscle. You screamed for Johnny as a knife cut into your stomach.

It hurt worse than you thought it would. He was stabbing you over and over. All those movies and none prepared you for the sound that came from being stabbed yourself. The rush of blood in your head. You kicked and scratched the best you could, catching the gap of skin between his gloves and sleeves. Flesh caught under your nails and tore. The knife cut sideways across your stomach. Something wet and heavy hit the floor by your feet.

“Fucking cunt.” The man growled. You could have thrown up if it didn’t feel like your stomach had been torn open. 

You hit the porch face first, no strength left to even try to hold yourself up. Blood pooled in your mouth. He stepped around you and in the corner of your eye you could make him out. 

Large, well over six feet and bulky with large shoulders. A half skull mask covered the top part of his face. His head was buzzed. He had a hunting knife in his hand and it dripped your blood onto the wood and onto your face. 

“Johnny!” Your killer called. You’d doomed him too. He could have gotten away. Johnny would die and it would be your fault. They all would now and it was your fault. 

You closed your eyes as the throbbing subsided. You didn’t want to listen. He was so nice. He didn’t deserve it.

You didn’t deserve this. 

You closed your eyes and let yourself slip away. 

You heard music. Loud obnoxious music and singing from an off key baritone scot.

You opened your eyes and you were in your sleeping bag in your cabin. It was Sunday morning again. 

Shout out to @ceilidho for being an inspiration to me to write darker fics and letting me use her name for a counselor.

[moralesluvr]

Hii. So I had this idea where it’s (e-1610) miles saving Reader from something and when he finally looks at her he immediately becomes attracted towards her (like love a first sight thing) and gets all shy and cute

love at first sight ft. miles morales

♡ pairings & aus: miles morales x fem!black!reader, college au, cafe au. ♡ summary: after getting hit on after walking home from work, your friendly neighborhood spiderman is here to save you-- and he‘s stunned when he sees you. ♡ warnings: none jus fluff! ♡ a/n: this is so extremely self indulgent because i wear glasses and i was just visualizing this the whole time LOLLL ♡ got a request? | masterlist ♡

YOUR SAGE-TINTED FINGERNAILS PINCH around the soft material of your apron, a broken sigh tumbling off of your reddened lips as you placed it on the coat rack in the back of your workplace. Another huff leaves you, this time of relief, eyes darting to the clock that resides on the wall. It reads, it digital numerals, '10:22.'

You should've closed twenty minutes ago, but of course, some of your avid regulars insisted that they needed a coffee or slide of banana bread right as you had grabbed the broom from the back, ready to shut the cafe down. But you couldn't complain because you were at least happy that you had the next couple of days off, so you let your worries roll off of your t-shirt clad shoulders, grabbing your purse and keys from your work cubbie and switching off the lights.

Keys jingling as you step outside, you stick a golden one into the hole that's below the door's handle, locking it and beginning your walk down the street.

A shiver courses through your veins, your body not quite adjusted to the sweet, yet wintry cold that summoned goosebumps on your bare forearms. You hugged yourself and tucked the sides of your coat in, throwing your Coach bag over your shoulders as the pretty lights of Brooklyn advocated for your lack of vision.

The cafe that you worked at was the only place you could earn money and also enjoy. Your boss was one the upperclassmen that you knew from your university, which really helped because she always gave you days off and flexible work hours. All your co-workers were just close friends or classmates-- plus, you loved to bake, so it really was a genuine place of interest.

You're humming one of your favorite songs down the block when you reach a strip of shops. There's a pub nearby and you always hold your breath when you pass it-- because it's not so much a bar, but more of a place where teenagers hang out and smoke or drink ill-tasting beer. Usually you're safe passing through, but that wasn't necessarily the case tonight.

A boy that you recognize from your university stumbles out of the place, eyes reddened and droopy as he stopped you in your tracks. He smirked at you, "Why're you walkin' all by yourself? Need some company?"

Pushing a curl back behind your ear, he beams a smile at you, one that makes your stomach feel uneasy as you slowly moved his hand back down to his side.

"No, Aaron, I don't. I...have a boyfriend." You lied through your teeth. You definitely didn't, but you needed a valid excuse as to why you didn't want this creep taking you home.

"I think you do need some company, though, pretty thing." He insists, pushing himself closer to you, a laugh sounding from his throat. "I don't see your boyfriend. What kind of man would leave his girl alone at night, walking down the streets of New York?" His hands find home on your waist and you let out a squeal, "Stop!"

Although it's no use. He continues, trying to learn into your lips as you fight his tight embrace. But he's stronger, and you genuinely think that you're a goner until a tall figure in a-

Spider-Man?

He comes literally out of nowhere, standing in front of Aaron as he grabbed both of his arms, removing his grip on you. The masked vigilante twists his hands behind his back and he screams, biting his lip, "This your pathetic boyfriend, huh? Some idiot playing around in a mask?"

Spider-Man says nothing to that, except he just shoots a web at Aaron's hands, pinning them behind his back. He then flips him around and webs his mouth, moving closer to him. He whispers against his skin, "Shut up."

Aaron's eventually pinned to the brickwork of the pub's walls, when Spider-Man finally turns to look at you. You're smiling, even though anxiety is still pumping through your blood, "Thank you, Spider...Spider-man?"

He just stares at you.

You're so pretty, curls tucked back in a ponytail with some loose ones hanging against your dark glasses frames. You're clad in a leather jacket and a pair of ankle-high boots, a pretty skirt resting on your thighs. The moonlight glows against your brown skin, and he finds his mouth dry because it's wide open.

You cock an eyebrow at him, "Spider-Man? Are you okay?"

And although he longs to say something, to get the words out, he can't help but give you one last glance as he finds himself webbing to a wall, swinging away without saying a word.

𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 ☻ thank you for reading!

𝐒𝐏𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐑-𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐄 𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓🕷️: @queenesther996 //@sukunas-slutty-bitch // @c3f21 // @wydney // @rinnyisnothere // @brieryann // @moisttowllet // @Dee-m-cee // @liliummz // @starhrtz // @daisydark // @randomhoex // @solanawrld // @whore4hobie // @tanakaslastbraincell // @simp4miguell // @nyrovi3 // @my3tumbles // @aziulsworld // @enchantingfoxsparkles // @mancerseedu // @cafehyunji // @personofyou // @mcdvsr // @kopiivie // @ellatienesuscosas // @venuswash3re // @calliarlerte // @pr0wlerpunk // @tzuyuzzs // @wisepoetrycheesecake // @clearskiiiess // @d3atht3hek1d // @vienreina // @pixqlsin // @caulifloweron // @aizawassimpblog // @stvrgrl // @zerosinterweb // @ishqani // @mookiebut // @urmotherswhor3 // @cumbermovels // @asmobeuses

𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 ✎: @Dee-m-cee // @euphorichappiness10 // @adoree-kaelynn // @mhadnirb // @mmst4rz // @iris-theflower // @fleurrieerecs // @kenlani // @kala2022 // @ilyless // @milesmolasses // @laylasbunbunny // @all444miles // @thecoloredpages // @bl00dsuccker // @evacowan // @popeheywardssecretgf // @adoremvney // @anikaluv // @qtdenks

𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓: @enj4i // @chrissytalia // @chaoticevilbakugo // @motheroffae // @luci1fer

[cradle-quill]

Lost in the Rhythm, an ABDL Story by CradleQuill (Reupload)

Disclaimer: All content is fictional, consensual, and intended only for mature audiences. All characters depicted are adults aged 18+ _

You didn't know what you were getting into. You started seeing a therapist, something you really should have done long ago. You'd put it off for years, until the night terrors became impossible to bear any longer. That's when you met Dr. Vale.

You'd never seen nor heard of her practice before, yet her office was just a few miles away, tucked into the corner of a half-abandoned shopping center. When you saw the add for it online, it was if it were calling out to you directly. "Come find yourself. Recapture what used to make you, you." Words on a screen had never seemed so appealing. So you went ahead and set the appointment.

The consultation with Dr. Vale was perfectly normal. She was a kind, soft-spoken, older woman, and her office was neat and welcoming. She had a lovely couch for you to sit on, and you told her all about your night terrors and how they'd grown worse over the last few years, as you reached the latter half of your twenties.

She asked you when they started, and you recited memories of waking up in cold sweats all throughout your childhood. Her ears seemed to perk up at that, and she listened with a welcoming charm that invited you to reveal more. You told her about your parents, and your school life. Even about your first crushes and heartbreaks. She soaked them all in and at the end, she offered a warm smile and you felt just the smallest bit of prolonged pain melt away like ice beneath a freshly-lit candle flame.

The whole following week, your footsteps felt a little lighter. Your shoulders didn't bear quite as much weight. And you chalked it all up to your visit with Dr. Vale. To think you were already feeling so much better after just a consultation, you were thrilled to see how you felt after a real session. But you should have realized something was off. Things that seem too good to be true oftentimes are.

When you arrived at her office for your first true visit, you were surprised to find you'd arrived first. You sat down on the familiar couch, but the doctor was nowhere to be seen. You waited for some time, with nothing to entertain you but the incessant ticking of the clock above the door. As it ticked away, time slowed to a crawl for you. You watched the clock's hand as each second passed, feeling the full weight of each one as they came and left your world.

By the time the door finally opened, you were in a profound state of calm. Too calm to even notice the items Dr. Vale carried with her when she entered the room. You shook your head and blinked away the sleepy crust that had accrued in your eyes, and as your vision returned to you, it settled on Dr. Vale's lovely smile. The weight of your worry sank deeper into a place too far and foreign to feel.

"It's nice to see you again," she said as she sat down in her armchair. She placed what she was carrying down at her side.

Before long, you found yourself opening up to her again, this time delving even deeper into inner chambers of your mind you'd locked long ago, so far into the past you hardly even remembered they were there. She took each one and lifted it from you, easing that burden just enough to make it all seem so manageable. You were so thrilled with your decision to see her. And so proud of yourself for making the call.

That's when she spoke up. "You know, honey," she said with her usual firm yet loving tone. "You've told me so much about you in such a short amount of time. I feel like I've really gotten to know you, the person you are, and the person you want to be. And I've seen how your demeanor has changed, even just between our first meeting and now. You feel it too, don't you?"

You nodded, embarrassed and cheeks burning a bright rosy-pink hue. It was one thing to acknowledge these feelings yourself, but to have her speak them so plainly, it was as if she'd turned a mirror on you. And for the first time, you liked what you saw.

Her smile widened further. She was there with you, meeting you where you needed her to. You could feel her understanding. She saw you, the way you really needed to be seen. And her smile told you all you needed to know about her thoughts as well. She was happy for you, thrilled she could help you open yourself up, even just that little bit.

"I think I have something here that will help you even more, if you're willing to try it," she said, gesturing toward her pile of things beside her. "They're a bit unconventional, but I really think you're a perfect candidate for this kind of therapy."

You didn't even question it. You just happily agreed without even giving it a second thought. You trusted her completely. How foolish to trust someone you'd known for such a short amount of time, and yet you did, because you were naive, or maybe because you were vulnerable. She was certainly willing to take advantage of that vulnerability.

Seeing your eagerness, Dr. Vale reached down and pulled out a silver pocket watch. It was beautiful, and it shone in the office's faint lights. On its face, there was an engraving of a crescent moon featured prominently amongst a star-lit sky. She held the pocket watch out in front of you and scooched her chair forward, drawing closer to you.

She let the pocket watch fall down and it swung back and forth like a pendulum. Your eyes followed it each way it went, back and forth, back and forth. Before you even knew it, your eyes were transfixed, and you couldn't focus your attention anywhere else. With each swing of the pendulum, the sound of the ticking clock echoed throughout your ear like a thunderous chorus singing a soothing hymn.

"You've been such a good girl for me, love," she said. Her words were as the wind, beautiful and forever present without needing to be seen. They were felt instead. "You're doing so well, but I know you can do even better. You can be a good little girl for me. You can escape all those adult worries that frighten you so much. If you give in, if you fall and let me catch you, I'll take care of those things for you."

"I'll hold you and love you," she continued. "And I'll cherish you always. Close your eyes. Just listen to the sound of my voice. Feel yourself giving in, feel the weight of your toes as they touch the tips of your shoes. Feel them grow heavier, and feel that weight run along your feet to your ankles, and then to your legs. Feel it all around your pelvis and torso, as the sense of warmth and completeness travels to the very top of your head and flows down your scalp like raindrops. You want to be my good girl. You want to give in. You came here knowing, deep down, that you weren't cut out for adult life. You want to let it all go. Be a good girl for me, sweetheart. Be a good girl for Mommy."

Something tugged within you. You wanted to resist. You knew she was talking nonsense, and yet the severity of what she was asking wasn't lost on you. You felt it, your identity, your adult self, slipping away into the farthest reaches of your mind. There was a moment, a single, perfect moment where you had to make a choice. To choose to fight back, to grab hold of that version of you and refuse to let go. Or to give in. To trust her, to let her guide you. We both know which one you picked.

Who you were, everything that made you the adult you'd become, it flowed away into the sea of your mind. You stopped holding onto it. You let go, just as you let go of everything else you'd been holding onto. You let the warmth flood into your pants and spread beneath your bottom, soaking the seat. You sat there in a puddle of your own making, and as the final drops escaped your bladder, you knew your transformation was complete. The ecstasy of it all gave way to reality, to a sharp pang of anxiety, but it was too late.

You could no longer speak. Each time you tried, you heard only babbles escape your lips. And soon those babbles became sobs. "There, there," your new Mommy said. "It's alright love, babies like you aren't expected to keep their big girl pants dry. Don't you worry, Mommy has just the thing."

She lifted you effortlessly, as if your body weighed next to nothing. She was much stronger than she looked, but whatever she did to you also made you entirely limp. You put up no fight whatsoever, no matter how much you tried. She unrolled a changing mat and laid you atop it before removing your clothes. You felt so vulnerable, having her see you in such a state, and yet there was something else too, something Mommy refused to allow to go unnoticed.

"My my," she said. "It looks like my little girl is wet in more than just one way. Such a silly, naughty baby. Mama will have to play with you a bit so you can release some of that pent-up energy."

She lifted your butt and placed a thick diaper beneath you. She rubbed baby lotion all around your thighs, and when she made her way to the middle, she ran two fingers up along the wetness, stirring something up within you and causing you to shiver. Suddenly, the ecstasy had returned. She sunk her fingers inside, sending you writhing along to the rhythm she played for you. Each note transcended the moment itself, slipping into the deepest parts of your consciousness as she built to the inevitable crescendo, the one you'd been yearning for. She gave you what you wanted, what you so desperately craved. And for the next few minutes, your moans sang in harmony with the rhythm of her hands as she played you like an instrument. Once you were both finished, she sprinkled baby powder on you and taped your diaper up into place, then gave you a firm pat on the bottom.

"There. All finished, baby girl." Next, she helped you into a onesie, one perfectly tailored to fit you. She'd been planning this from the moment you'd met, and there was nothing you could do about it now. You were foolish enough to trust her, and pathetic enough to give in. This was it. This was your life now. You'd made your choice.

From that day on, Mommy took care of you. She took you away from that office, and you never returned home. She blindfolded you while she drove you to her house, your new house. So even if you did someday regain your ability to speak and move your limbs like a full-fledged adult, you'd never know where you were. But she made sure things would never get to that point in the first place, as each morning, when you woke up in your already soggy diapers, she'd pull out the pendulum and swing it before you. Your eyes would follow it and all your big girl thoughts would fade away into the rhythm of that ticking clock. And you'd smile and coo like a good little girl. And each morning, your little hypnosis sessions always ended the same way. With you giving a few firm pushes before filling your diaper and giggling like the good little girl you'd always be from then on. _

Instagram | Subscribestar | Tumblr | Twitter

[mavrintarou]

Lord Namikaze Minato

Got it done in one part lol.

Warning: fluff & smut (my two combo)

.

Y/n had only met Lord Namikaze Minato twice in her twenty-six years and the third time, it was on their wedding day.

She came from the Land of Iron. Natives from this country have distinctive emerald eyes and platinum blond hair with a tan complexion.

Their marriage was arranged at the young age of eight and are to be wedded when Y/n is the age of seventeen. However, it was repeatedly postponed due to Lord Namikaze.

Unlike all the other girls in her village, who married within the village or neighboring villages, she was the unlucky one who would be leaving her home for a new home that was thousands of miles away.

The last time she saw him, they were only barely pubescent. He had bright blond hair, blue-green eyes, and a lanky physique.

As she was leaving her home, she received congratulations, given that Lord Minato’s name is well-known beyond the Land of Fire. However, a few people also didn’t forget to warn her about him, as he is feared by all.

Only five other men, her maid whom she had known since she was a little girl, and Y/n herself, traveled almost three days before they reached the Land of Fire. Her family would leave as soon as her wedding was over and she dreaded each minute.

Finally, the moment arrived, and Y/n stood in front of the closed sliding door. On the other side were her new family and her future husband.

She took a deep breath, this was the last seconds of her being single and a member of the Land of Iron.

The door slid open and she shut her eyes tightly.

“Please welcome, Lady Namikaze.”

Her eyes opened and immediately met the blue-green gaze of Minato.

She swallowed, not expecting him to be right on the other side of the door from her.

Minato smiled and held out his hand for her, “come, my wife.”

Y/n blinked in confusion. After everything she had heard about this intimidating man, she couldn’t believe the person standing before her was the same one everyone described. He looked harmless, with his soft smile and bright hair.

She reached for his hand, her small handset in his much larger one.

“Let’s go,” he said, pulling her along with him.

Taking a step forward, her mind was resolute, as there was no turning back. From now on, she would be known as Lady Namikaze.

.

Her maid sets the comb down, “are you ready, my Lady?”

Tightening her yukata, Y/n nodded and followed her maid down the hall, leaving behind the room where she stayed as a single woman and a guest.

Now, she is a married woman and must share a room, and a bed with her husband.

“My Lord, my Lady is here.” The Maid announced outside the door.

A quiet come-in can be heard from the other side.

The maid opens the door, giving Y/n a warm smile. “I will see you in the morning, my Lady.”

Y/n is greeted by the sight of her husband’s back as he gazes out the window. He slowly glances over his shoulder, prompting Y/n to quickly look down. He is dressed in a dark blue yukata, and his blond hair is still slightly damp from his bath. She hears the door click shut behind her, leaving her alone in the room with her husband for a few hours. “My Lord,” Y/n greeted quietly.

Since the age of twelve, she has been prepared and educated for this night.

The marital night.

She didn’t hear his footsteps at all, but a pair of bare feet stood in her line of sight. “Look at me please.” Her eyes slowly met his. “Minato,” he smiles, “please call me by my name.”

Y/n observed her husband. He is three years older than her, yet he looks more mature and older than her, yet at the same time, he has a soft innocent youth to him.

She didn’t dare, but if he was giving her permission to call him by his given name, she had no choice but to obey. “Okay,” she answered meekly.

Minato raised a brow slightly and he tilted her chin until she had nowhere to look but into his blue eyes, “are you nervous?”

“Yes, my Lord.”

“Minato.” He reminded.

“Yes… Mi – nato…”

His breath hitched; she barely missed it if it wasn’t for the dead silence in the room. He takes a step closer and leans down.

If Y/n was not mistaken, he was just as nervous as she was.

His lips paused centimeters away from hers, eyes searching hers – as if asking for permission.

Or teasing her.

Y/n closes her eyes, “please…” she breathed.

His lips press against hers gently before he moves his mouth over hers slowly and gently.

Minato’s eyes catch her tightly fisted hands and he grabs both her wrists, in which her palms loosened, and presses them against his muscular chest. She can feel the heat of his body through his yukata.

Her eyes shot open, wide and she was about to pull away, but he was faster. A hand shot around the back of her head and kept her from moving. Minato took this opportunity to slip his tongue past her lips and fully kiss her. His eyes shut as he moved his mouth eagerly over hers, increasing the pace of their kiss.

He felt her body relax and soften and it was the soft moan that pushed him over the edge.

Y/n squealed as she was hoisted off the ground and carried her to the futon she hadn’t noticed.

Minato laid her down gently and he held her gaze before asking, “do you trust me?”

Y/n should have said no, no she didn’t trust him but her heart spoke and her head followed.

She nodded and her stomach fluttered with tingles when he flashed her a charming smile.

“May I take off your clothes?” She nodded again and he spread both her knees apart, tugging the yukata open, and moved in between her legs. She was naked before him and he could feel his mouth water at the sight of her. His eyes drop to her core, and he feels his throat tightening.

His thumb gently grazes her slit before pressing down on her clit. “Have you touched yourself before?”

Y/n shook her head, teeth biting down on her lower lip. She was curious and other girls her age had told her about pleasuring themselves, but she was too embarrassed to do it.

“I… couldn’t bring myself to.”

Minato raised a brow at her confession. He bit down at the corner of his lower lip, content to hear that even she had never pleasured herself. “How come?” he inquired quietly.

“I didn’t want…” she looked away, cheeks blushing, “I feel like I would be cheating on my future husband if I touched myself.”

Minato refrained from smiling, he rubs light circles with her clit and smiles when her faint but sharp hisses escape her lips. “Yes, only I can touch you.” Sliding his thumb down, he slips it past her wet folds until the entire length of his thumb is embedded inside of her.

Her thighs widen naturally, and he can feel her walls sucking his thumb tightly.

“Shh, it’s okay…” he coos thrusting his thumb slightly in and out of her. When he felt she was able to, he switched to two long fingers, curling them against her hot soft walls. He started a slow pace before gradually increasing until his two fingers were sliding in and out of her, they plunge deep into her warm pussy.

Y/n panted, writhing against his fingers. She unknowingly realized her hips were moving, rolling. Was this what her friends were talking about? She covered her face, embarrassed as she murmured, “no… no… too much…”

With his other hand, he pulls his yukata loose and his cock is hard and ready.

Her eyes caught sight of his hand stroking his cock. “It’s… will it… will it fit?” she choked.

Minato hummed, a smile on his lips, “it will, but this first time you might feel uncomfortable, but you will become accustomed to it soon.” He pulls his fingers out and looks at them, satisfied at how glistening they were coated. “It is yours, just as your body is mine.

Y/n gasped watching him stroke his cock with the fingers that were just inside of her. “My Lord – “

Leaning down, Minato towers over her, “what did I say about calling me that?” His tone was teasing but strict. “I will punish you if you do not listen, hmm?”

“Minato,” she whispered, nodding her head in understanding.

He pecks her lips softly before fully engaging in a kiss. A distraction for her as nudged his cock at her pussy and thrust gently inside her, groaning as he struggled to impale her tight walls.

Minato couldn’t stop now. Never.

Even though her nails dug into his biceps, he took the opportunity to thrust hard until he was fully inside of her.

He broke off the kiss with a gasp, she was so tight he felt dizzy for a split second. “Y/n…” Her eyes widen as he calls her name, and at the same time, her walls tighten. “Relax…”

She inhales and exhales, listening to him as her body relaxes around him.

He groaned and slowly began to thrust in and out of her hot walls slowly.

Her soft cries mixed with his groans and that urged him to fasten his hips with deeper and harder thrusts.

He hiked her legs around his waist and pulled her up and together they sat in a lotus flower position. Her arms quickly wrap around his neck and with great ease, he lifts her easily and rocks her over his cock.

“Mina…” she whispered, hugging him close, chest pressing against his.

Minato’s teeth found the skin below her clavicle, and he sucked hard until a blooming red mark appeared before trailing elsewhere.

Y/n began to push at his shoulders, squirming away from him as her body began to tingle in an odd sensational way. “My L – Minato… please… no… I feel –“

He kissed her jaw, “you feel what, my wife? Tell me?” Calling her his wife had her walls tightening around his cock and he groans, “do you like that? Me calling you my wife?” He laid her back down and unlocked her legs from behind, spreading them wide as he rubbed the puffy nub that sent her arching her back instantly. “What do you like?”

He rubbed her clit in a circle, “do you like it if I do this?” his thrusts were shallow but deep as he pressed down on her clit, feeling her walls react to his doing.

“Please,” she begged, “no more… I don’t know this feeling… it’s… it’s weird…”

“It is pleasure you are feeling,” he whispered with a smile, “let go for me.”

Y/n’s body jerked and thrashed as he brought her to her peak and he followed seconds later, cumming hard deep against her walls. His body trembled as he filled her womb with his seed.

Her small hands grabbed his, stopping him from overstimulating her but he overpowered her, he wanted her body to shudder to his touch only.

She palmed her lower abdomen, “stop… too much… I feel too full…”

Listening to her cry, he stopped and pressed his forehead against her chest, in between her breasts. He took this moment to catch his breath.

The moment he set eyes on his wife when those doors slid open, all he wanted was nothing more than to make her his. Now she was and he was never going to let her go.

He leaned back and ran a hand through his hair. Without withdrawing, he maneuvered her onto her front side and straddled her. He leaned over her, pushing her hair off her beautiful shoulders, he made a note to mark her shoulders. He wanted to taste and mark all of her.

Minato pressed his lips to her shoulder and reached to turn her head so he could look into her eyes. He’s always known her eyes were beautiful, but they look even more stunning with the glossiness in her eyes.

He acknowledged he pushed her to her limit. “I am sorry…”

He was not sorry he pushed her to her limit. He was sorry he had not done this sooner.

He pressed a kiss to her temple, “this is only the beginning, my wife.”

.

Minato returned to Konoha and after giving his report to the Hokage, he immediately went home. He did not bother to stay and wait if the Hokage had any questions or when his next mission was.

He didn’t want to go on any mission any time soon. Or at all.

All he wanted was to go home to his wife.

Six months of being married has changed Minato’s life.

Before, going on long missions for more than a week was something he did not mind. He didn’t have anyone to return home to aside from his village. Which was why he was willing to take on the missions that normally required more time away from home.

But now that he has a wife waiting for him, being on a three-day mission was becoming challenging for him, let alone being away for more than a few hours. If possible, he would try and complete the mission as fast and efficiently as possible so he could return home to her.

He could not have imagined that marriage life would change him this drastically when work was and had always been his priority. And in less than a year, that had all changed.

He regrets the time they missed out due to his uncertainty and refusal to settle down.

When he was old enough to understand what it meant to be engaged and married by his parents, Minato voiced his opinions about his marriage, wanting to be able to choose his bride but there was nothing he could do, it was an arrangement made years ago.

The only way Minato was able to prolong his marriage was to continue to accept missions and advance up the Konohagakure’s military rank. However, he could only delay for so long before reaching the top rank, earning the highest military title, at which point his parents put an end to his stalling.  

At almost thirty years old, he finally accepted his fate and agreed.

He remembered Y/n during their younger days and recalled that she was pretty and cute. He would be lying if he didn’t wonder if she had matured into a beautiful woman.

Only a few times in Minato’s life had he felt nervous, and the day he was meeting his wife was one of them.

When the door slid open and on the other side revealed his bride, he had forgotten how to breathe.

She was breathtakingly beautiful.

Their first night was one he would never be able to forget. His desire only continues to burn for her each day afterward.

The lost time with her was none other than his fault, and it would be something he would regret but to look forward to, he would have the rest of his life with her.

Y/n, his beloved Y/n was his priority now.

He said the three words to her a month after being married.

“I love you, Y/n.” He knew it was coming out fast but they were genuine. He loves her, wholeheartedly. He couldn’t deny that he wasn’t a bit disappointed when she didn’t return the words but reminded himself to wait, wait until she could see how much he loved her and would be patient for the day she returned those words to him.

The day came when he returned home from a mission that left him hospitalized. It was nothing life-threatening but to see her husband bandaged up made Y/n confess her heart.

Minato smiles to himself as he recalls that day, never forgetting that day, the day Y/n told him she loved him.

Sitting on the hospital bed, Minato patiently complied with the doctor as they wrapped bandages around his head. His right arm was currently being treated by a nurse as she gently put his arm in a sling.

He just wanted to see his wife but at the same time, he did not want her to see him in such a state. But it would also take a few days at most before he could look at least somewhat presentable and he couldn’t dare be away from her any longer.

“How long will it –“ Minato’s words were cut off when the frantic person at the doorway startled him. “Y/n?”

Her hands came up to cup her nose and mouth. From where he was, he could see tears building up in her eyes.

His heart raced fast and all he could see was his wife frozen at the door.

Letting out a deep breath, Minato called her name. “Come here,” he commands softly, wincing but holding out his left hand. When she didn’t make a move, he repeated more sternly, “come here, Y/n, or I’ll go to you.”

The doctor bandaging his head finished up his work and excused him and the nurse, leaving Minato alone with his wife.

Exhaling, Minato shifted to swing his legs off the bed when Y/n rushed over beside him, stopping him from moving further.

“Don’t move!” She cried, tears spilling down her cheeks. She sobbed silently to herself as her hands trembled, scared to touch him.

Y/n was in a state of panic and Minato knew what would shake her out of it. He reached for her, gently taking her by the jaw and forcing her lips to meet his in a deep, longing kiss. His tongue slips into her mouth and swirls with hers.

He pulls away first, breathing hard, “I’m okay. I’m okay, Y/n.” He assured, pressing his forehead against hers. His eyes searched deep into her emerald eyes. “I’m here, I’m okay.”

“You’re so hurt…” she whimpered, fresh tears dripping down her cheeks.

“I just look hurt, but I’m okay,” he smiles. “I didn’t want you to see me this way – “

“I love you!” She exclaimed, throwing her arms around his neck. “I love you. I love you. I love you!” She choked back a sob, “I’m sorry it took you getting hurt for me to tell you that I love you. I love you. I have you for some time now but was too scared to tell you.”

Minato was dumbstruck at her sudden confession but his only free arm wrapped around her as he hugged her back. He leaned back, pulling her with him as he rolled them onto the hospital bed.

“You’re hurt!” she tried to push herself away from him but he tightened his hold on her. Telling her that if she moved away from him, it would hurt him more than anything.

“I missed you,” he buried his face into her neck. “I missed you so much, let’s just stay like this… please.”

Y/n found herself beneath him as he lay beside her. “I want your fingers in my hair,” he murmured against her neck.

He never knew the true feeling of relaxing until he married Y/n, and laying in her arms every night with her fingers running through his hair gave him a sense of relaxation he needed.

“Okay,” she whispered, doing as he requested. She turned towards him, hugging him and running her nails against his scalp.

“No more crying,” he murmured when he heard her sniffling.

She tried to stop her sniffling, but she only continued to keep crying. Her mind kept pushing negative thoughts in her head. “I could have lost you.”

There was nothing, absolutely nothing that could have kept him from returning.

“You’ll never lose me, Y/n.” He leaned back and blinked at her tiredly. The warmth of being in her arms and embrace was the only thing that made him sleepy. “I’ll always come back home to you. You are my home.” He pressed a kiss to her chin. “Say it again. Tell me again, Y/n.”

She looked at him confused.

“Say you love me, Y/n.”

Her mouth curved into his sweet favorite smile, “I love you, Minato.”

“I want to hear that every day for the rest of my life,” he muttered, slipping into a slumber.

Every day since then, Y/n would remind him daily, “I love you, Minato.”

The smile on his face vanished when he didn’t find his wife in her usual spot where she would be waiting for him. Where she always greeted him with the smile he so eagerly awaited. “Where is Y/n?” he asked Y/n’s maid who came to greet him.

She bowed her head and answered, “my Lady is napping in your shared chamber, my Lord.”

Minato frowned in confusion, it was midday. “She is napping?”

His servant smiled and their eyes twinkled, “my Lady has been more tired than usual, and she requires at least one nap throughout the day.”

It clicked in Minato’s head, and he hurried towards his wife.

He found her in a deep sleep, her right hand placed over her belly.

His eyes narrowed and he cocked his head.

The mission, originally estimated to take five days, was completed by him in three so he could quickly return home.

Had something changed in the time he was gone?

Shaking his head, Minato was about to leave his tired wife alone when she suddenly shifted, causing her yukata to loosen and open, her breasts almost spilling out.

Her chest was not bound.

Minato couldn’t draw his gaze away and when he finally did, he scowled at himself for having poor restraints.

But he had gone three days without her…

Kneeling, he leans over her and brushes her loose hair away. “Y/n,” he calls quietly. His finger trails along her jaw, to her neck, and brushes over her partly exposed collarbone before down the valley of her chest.

He tugs open her yukata, exposing her breasts at last. Her breath hitched when the cool air hit her nipples, hardening them.

Swinging his leg to straddle her but not putting an ounce of his weight on her, he leans down and swirls his tongue against a rosy bud that became hard instantly under his touch.

A smile spreads on his lips when he hears her moan and her breathing becoming heavy with her chest rising.

“Mina…” she called her fingers instantly threading through his gold locks. “You’re home?”

He releases her nipple with a pop and smiles, “Yes, I’m home.” He never realized how much he loved the sound of that.

“I missed you,” she reminded, “I love you.”

He moves to kiss her lips, “I missed you every second I was away and love you more every minute I’m away.”

“You must love me more than I love you now?” she teased trying to pull her yukata to cover her chest.

“No,” he said sternly, “I want to suck them.”

Her hand loosens and he pushes her yukata open again and suckles the other nipple.

When she hisses, he looks up at her with a raised brow.

“They’re… sensitive.”

Minato blinked, he didn’t think that he was any rougher than usual. “Sorry, my love,” he whispered and gently suckled and teased. “Is that why they were not bound?”

She nodded, watching him swirl his tongue, suckle, and nibble at her nipples. It sent prickling sensations down to her core. “Minato,” she said his full name and he froze before snapping his head, his brow knitting together. She let out a laugh and reached to soothe away the crease between his brow with her thumb. “I… I believe I have great news to tell you. I…” she exhales deeply, “I am with child, I believe.” She paused, watching his reaction. “But I’m – I’m not entirely sure just yet it's just that all the signs are there…”

Now she feels bad for getting his hopes up when she has not yet confirmed it.

“Ah!” She squeals when Minato rolls them over so she is on top of him.

Without speaking, he presses her into him, so her chest is buried against his face.

Y/n quickly tries to push off of him but he holds her still.

He gasped for air and shouted, “that’s the best thing I’ve heard!”

His head hits the futon with a thud and he closes his eyes, a beautiful smile on his lips. “I’m so happy, so happy…”

Y/n stopped struggling to push him off and just gazed at her extremely happy husband. “Does it please you that much that I might be with child?”

Without opening his eyes, he answered, “I never thought about becoming a father, but the thought of it now is the best thing next to being your husband.” His eyes open, and his blue eyes gleam with affection. “I am pleased to hear.”

Y/n’s breath hitched, “I hope it is true then.”

Minato cupped one cheek, “if it is not, we can still practice until we get it right.”

.

Y/n was indeed pregnant.

The family doctor estimated that she may be as far along as her body, which was just beginning to show physical signs.

Neither Y/n nor Minato had noticed it.

When the doctor finished, Minato pulled Y/n into his arms. “I guess we did not need to practice.”

Y/n buried her face into his chest and mumbled something he did not catch. He lifts her chin and stares into her eyes, “what is it, my love?”

“I still…” she blushed, “I still want to practice anyways.”

The corner of his lips curved, but he shook his head, “no, we must halt our practicing for some time. I do not want to put you or our child at risk.” He chuckles at her pout, “don’t pout, I won’t be able to resist and will grant you all your wishes. Just this one time, listen to me. We can practice all you want when it is safe.”

“We can practice other ways…” she muttered under her breath, jerking her chin away from his grasp.

Minato raised his brow, “if it is safe, I am willing to practice.”

She looked up at him with determination, “I can use my mouth?”

As if he was punched in the stomach by his wife’s words, he hisses and closes his eyes, calming himself down. “Y/n…”

“Please?”

All his sense of control goes out the window.

He closes his eyes and when he opens them again, they’re dark and dilated.

Y/n’s eyes remained locked with his as her hand trailed down his chest and rested above his crotch. When he made no move to stop her, she squeeze his cock, which have become alert.

“Please?” she repeated.

Her eyes sparkled in the light of the day and Minato knew he couldn’t ever refuse her. “Okay,” he answered quietly and breathlessly.

Minato leaned back on his hands and watched with amusement as his wife knelt beside him. She eagerly undressed him until his yukata hung open, his cock fully erect. Before he could react, she leaned down and wrapped her lips around the tip of his cock.

Groaning, his head rolls back. It was just the tip, she had only taken the tip.

He nearly exploded when she took more of him further into her mouth and began bobbing her head.

“Just – just like that…” he cooed, watching her and reaching over to brush her hair out of the way. He wanted to see how she was taking his cock into her mouth. “Wait,” he called and guide her lips off his cock. “Take off your clothes,” he ordered.

When she stripped off her clothes, he laid down flat on his back and instructed her to get on top of him. “I want you to feel good too,” he explained when she hesitated. “There won’t be any deep penetration but I can still make you feel good.”

Nodding, she swings over his face, settling on top of his face, and leans down over him. “Like – like this?”

“Just like this,” he answers, bringing her hips down onto his lips and begins devouring her pussy.

Y/n grasp his cock with both her hands and stroke him, trying to maintain her focus. She takes him into her mouth once again until she feels him hit the back of her throat and gag. She continues to bob over his cock. Her eyes glaze over his thick and muscular thighs. Running both her hands along his thighs, she grazes her nails against the blond hair.

Minato’s cock twitched inside her throat and she moans, sending tremors against his cock and down to his sacks.

She hears Minato growl before he hungrily sucks and slurps at her pussy and clit.

Y/n throws her head back, moaning, “Mina…” she strokes his cock that’s lubricated by her saliva. Fisting both her hands and stroking him fast. The faster she pumped him, the faster Minato sucked.

Her husband’s groan gave her the answer she needed and last minute, she wrapped her lips around the top of his cock to receive his orgasm.

His seed filled her mouth.

She moaned, in both delights of receiving his cum and cumming.

As soon as her high began to fall, she flipped over to lay beside him. Minato quickly towers over her. “My delectable wife… you need to tell me where you learned how to do that?” His eyes narrowed to the residue that escaped from the corner of her lips and growled when her tongue darted out to lick it away.

She smiles sweetly, “you taste delectable too, husband.”

Minato loves his wife’s boldness, even when it drives him mad. He squeezes her side, making her twist and giggle. “Tell me, where have you learned to please a man like that?”

“My friends!” She shouted, trying to escape from his fingers that tickled her. “Stop! No more!” she rolled away only to be pulled back against her husband’s naked front.

He nuzzles into her shoulder, “your friends?”

“Yes, my friends have consulted with me before I arrived here. They are married women and when I asked for guidance… that’s what they told me…” Y/n answered, she twisted until she was facing him. “You are my first for everything, my first and last.”

.

Tears fall from her cheeks as she stares up at her husband who proudly accepts his Hokage haori and slips it on.

The crowd cheers and applauds as Minato turns around and waves at the entire village from the top of the Hokage’s office balcony.  

Namikaze Minato is named the fourth Hokage of Konohagakure.

His eyes scan the crowd until they land on his wife who cradles the wrapped bundle in her arms, their daughter.

She smiles at him and mouths, I love you.

. . .

@queenelleee @mfreedomstuff @erintaro @callmeraider @chaotic-fangirl-blog @wolffmaiden @cloud-lyy

[hazza-bear-care]

Be Quiet

Daryl, Rick, and Y/N are going on a run for supplies after a visit from Negan, but Y/N can't seem to be quiet. Rick and Daryl come up with a solution.

Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Fem!Reader x Rick Grimes

Warnings: SMUT! MINORS DNI! Threesome (mmf), double penetration, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it), spit as lube, fingering, spanking, choking, swearing, vaginal sex, anal sex, oral (m and f receiving), pet names (baby, sweetheart, princess)

~~~~~~~~~ "Why are you walking so fucking loud?" Daryl hissed as Y/N followed him and Rick through the woods, the trio on their way to replenish what Negan had taken the last time he visited Alexandria.

"I only know how to walk one way, Daryl. I make noise, deal with it." Y/N called, jogging to catch up to the men in front of her as they trekked deeper into the woods.

"Yeah, well every step you take is telling every walker in these woods that we're here and low on ammo. Do you feel like dealing with a swarm of face-eaters?" Daryl shot back, spinning on his heels and facing Y/N.

"Not today, no. But you try being quiet when there are leaves and sticks and rocks on the ground, Dixon." Daryl's eyebrows raised at the challenge as he turned to see where Rick had ended up. He was about four feet away, so Daryl turned back to Y/N and walked backwards towards Rick, his footsteps silent.

"Whatever, show-off. You grew up in the woods, I didn't."

"Knock it off, you two, we have food to find." Rick said, smirking before trekking further into the woods. Daryl caught up quickly, but Y/N lagged behind as she began watching where she stepped, cautious about making any noise. Once she was confident that she had figured out the right way to walk quietly, she began to pick up her pace in an effort to catch up with the men she was teamed up with. She'd give anything to be out with Michonne or Rosita instead, given the fact that they didn't seem to have a problem with her sunny disposition or how loud she walked. Distracted by her thoughts, Y/N didn't notice the twisted root that popped up out of nowhere. The tip of her boot caught the edge of the gnarled root, causing Y/N to trip, a loud thud making the birds in the trees around her to fly away. She groaned as she picked herself up and dusted off her pants, ignoring the throb in her knee and the warmth spreading across her face as embarrassment sunk deep in her bones.

"Ow, fuck." Y/N hissed as she took a step towards Rick and Daryl, the pain in her knee radiating through her entire left leg.

"Come on, slowpoke!" Rick called over his shoulder, missing how Y/N winced picked up her pace, limping through the dead leaves scattered across the forest floor in order to catch up to the men at least twenty feet away from her.

"Jesus Christ, can't you be quiet?!" Daryl yelled, wrenching Y/N's arm in his grasp and dragging her up to Rick.

"Oh sure, Daryl. Let me just ignore the fact that I'm in pain, so you can focus on keeping everyone back home alive!"

"Enough! Y/N, you're bleeding." Rick said, looking at the river of blood that had managed to soak through Y/N's jeans. She rubbed her hands over her face, angry at herself for getting hurt and Daryl for bitching at her for how loud she was being.

"I tripped. It was an accident, Rick." Y/N said softly, looking down at her feet in shame.

"Come on, we're only a few miles away from the next store. We can get you cleaned up there, okay? Can you walk?" Rick asked. Y/N nodded, pushing herself away from Daryl and taking a step towards Rick, wincing as another round of pain shot through Y/N's leg. Her knee buckled and she fell forward again, Rick catching her before she could hurt herself again. Wordlessly, Rick and Daryl wrapped their arms around Y/N and helped her walk, the noise she was making ignored by the two burly men holding her up. Once they reached the store, Daryl left Y/N with Rick while he surveyed the area, clearing any walkers that had managed to find the store before them, gesturing once it was safe for Rick and Y/N to enter.

Once inside the store, Rick helped Y/N up onto the checkout counter and throwing his backpack beside her, digging through it to find something to bandage her up. Daryl had managed to find some anti-bacterial cream and joined Y/N and Rick at the checkout counter, dropping to his knees and removing Y/N's chunky boots, placing them beside him with a loud thud.

"Today, of all days, you decided to get hurt while wearing skinny jeans?" Daryl asked Y/N.

"What's the big deal about what she's wearing, Daryl?" Rick questioned, a roll of bandages and a stack of gauze in his hands.

"We can't roll up her jeans. We either have to cut them, or she has to take them off." Realization dawned on Y/N, her cheeks warming at the fact that she'd have to strip down to her underwear in front of Rick and Daryl, her allies and the hottest men she'd ever seen.

"Y/N?" Rick asked, eyes, glancing down to her jeans.

"They're my only pair..." Y/N mumbled.

"Alright then. Daryl, help her up so we can take off her pants." Rick said. Daryl helped Y/N off of the counter, holding her steady while Rick made quick work of her pants. Rick's warm hands trailed down her legs as her jeans pooled around her ankles, one hand cupping each foot as he removed her pants entirely before folding them and putting them on the counter beside them. Daryl's callused fingers wrapped around Y/N's waist as he picked her up and put her back on the counter with her jeans, wrapping his hand around her ankle and pulling her leg out to survey the damage she'd done to her knee. Rick had soaked a spare handkerchief in water, cleaning her wound with care as she hissed in pain at his movements. After the blood was cleaned, a decent gash was left across the top of her kneecap.

"Damn, Y/N. You sure know how to turn a molehill into a mountain. All that limping for a tiny cut? God, how did you ever manage to survive this long?" Daryl scoffed, moving out of the way so Rick could get a better look at Y/N's injury.

"Daryl, make yourself useful and gather some supplies, maybe find Y/N another pair of pants. I'll take it from here, okay?" Daryl threw his hands up over his head, snatching Y/N's jeans as he walked away so he could find something that would fit her. Rick turned his attention back to Y/N's knee, surveying just how bad the cut was.

"How does it look?" Y/N whispered, gnawing on her bottom lip anxiously.

"You don't need stitches, but it's definitely bad. Let me see what I can do. Put this on your cut, it'll help stem the bleeding." Y/N pressed the damp handkerchief to her cut as Rick continued to dig in his backpack, the gauze and rolled bandages not good enough for her injury.

"I'm sorry." Y/N whispered, tears welling up in her eyes as she tilted her head back, willing herself not to cry in front of Rick. Her head was swimming with embarrassment, heart heavy at the thought of having portrayed herself as weak and dramatic.

"Hey, look at me." Rick started, grabbing Y/N's chin and tilting her head down to face him. "Accidents happen, Y/N. You didn't trip on purpose, and you sure as hell didn't mean to get hurt. If this is about Daryl, ignore him. You know how he gets, right?"

"Yeah, I do. He's right though; how did I manage to survive this long? I'm weak, Rick. I can't even walk in a straight line without tripping over my own two feet or the root of a tree that came out of nowhere." The tears she had fought back began to fall in rivers, wet sniffles accompanying every tear that fell. Rick wiped her tears away, Y/N's injured knee long forgotten as he stared deep into her eyes in a serious manner.

"You are not weak. Clumsy? Yes. Loud? Unbelievably so. Weak? Not at all. You survived because you're strong. You've been through so much in your life, Y/N, and you've handled it all. You've made it this far, are you just going to give up because some grumpy hunter thinks you walk loud?" Rick's argument was solid, a chuckle escaping Y/N's lips at the description of Daryl. Rick wiped Y/N's face again before turning his attention back to her cut knee. With a tap to her hand, Y/N moved the rag away from her cut, the bleeding almost stopped completely. Rick shuffled Y/N closer to the edge of the counter so he could wrap her knee. He ripped open the gauze package, placing it on her cut and grabbing Y/N's hand, holding it over the gauze while he unrolled the bandage. Once again her hand moved as Rick began to wrap her knee, securing the gauze in its place to ensure no more blood would get on Y/N's clothing. While he wrapped her knee, Rick's eyes couldn't help but wander, tracing up her thigh until he was staring at her crotch, the sight of her pink cotton panties causing him to lick his lips hungrily.

"I found her some pants, but not in her size." Daryl had returned to Rick and Y/N, creasing his brows as Rick shook himself out of the trance he was in. Y/N turned towards Daryl, reaching for the oversized pair of sweatpants he had draped over his arm. Before she could put them on, Rick stopped her, a dangerous glint in his eyes as he looked back to Daryl.

"Two things need to happen before we continue looking for supplies. One: Daryl, apologize to Y/N for giving her shit about getting hurt." Rick ordered.

"That's not going to happen..." Daryl started, silencing himself once Rick's stony glare met his. "Y/N, I'm sorry. You said it was an accident, and I shouldn't have gotten upset with you." The apology was sincere enough for Y/N to accept.

"Two: Y/N, you do need to learn to be quiet. Daryl is right, you never know what will happen if you're too loud. Lucky for you, I have an idea on how Daryl and I can both teach you how to be quiet." Y/N swallowed hard as her eyebrows furrowed in confusion, Daryl's own expression mirroring hers. Before either of them could question what he was talking about, Rick smashed his mouth to Y/N's in a heated kiss. His fingers wrapped in her tangled hair as he pulled her closer, his tongue delving deep into her mouth and moaning at the feeling of her soft tongue dancing with his. He pulled away from Y/N with a nip to her bottom lip, smirking at the dazed look on her face. Rick looked back to Daryl, who's eyes had darkened while he watched his best friend make out with the young woman they had rescued only three months before.

"You want a taste?" Rick asked Daryl, who nodded almost immediately, quickly taking Rick's place between Y/N's legs to kiss her himself. While Y/N's mouth was occupied with Daryl's, Rick took the time to pepper kisses over the expanse of Y/N's neck, a moan rippling through her. Rick wrapped his fingers in Y/N's hair once again, ripping her away from Daryl, who tried to chase her lips with his until Rick stopped him.

"There's one rule, baby: Every time you make a noise, we stop. Do you understand me?" Rick commanded, causing Y/N to nod frantically and the arousal in her panties to pool. With a satisfied nod, Rick released Y/N and Daryl instantly reattached their lips while Rick continued his assault on Y/N's neck. Her head was spinning at the attention she was getting from the most attractive men she'd ever known, the urge to make some kind of noise strong. Daryl gripped her hands and put them in his hair, allowing her to tug lightly on his greasy curls, a low growl rumbling in his chest. While her hands were occupied, Daryl's had gingerly cupped her breasts through her shirt. He pulled away briefly, glancing at Y/N's blown pupils and plump lips.

"Can I touch you?" Daryl whispered, his thumbs tracing the underside of her bra.

"Answer him, Sweetheart." Rick ordered, his face still buried in Y/N's neck.

"Please." Y/N whispered, breathless from the barrage of kisses she had received from both Daryl and Rick in a short amount of time. Daryl nodded, pushing Rick away in order to rip Y/N's shirt from her body, her bra following shortly after. Once her breasts were free, Rick and Daryl each took a nipple in their mouths, their movements varying. Daryl was sucking and licking her right nipple leisurely, as if he'd never get the opportunity to do it again, while Rick was aggressively biting her left, tongue soothing the pain he had created after every nibble. She carded her fingers through each head of hair that was currently attached to her chest, head rolling back in ecstasy as she muffled the moan that was building in her chest. Rick released her nipple with a pop before kissing down her belly, kneeling between her legs and staring at the arousal that was spreading over her entrance.

"Fuck, baby, you like this, don't you? You're fucking soaked." Rick groaned as he pressed his face to her core, emitting a gasp in response. Simultaneously, Rick and Daryl pulled away, leaving Y/N a breathless mess under them.

"What did Rick say about noise, Princess? Be. Fucking. Quiet." Daryl hissed into her ear, his nose pressed to her temple as he wrapped a hand around her throat in warning. With wide eyes, Y/N nodded, gulping in anticipation as she stared at the men above her.

"Good girl." Rick praised, kneeling once again to be face to face with Y/N's covered pussy. He pressed a kiss to the wet patch that was still growing as Daryl sucked a hickey on Y/N's neck, quickly moving her panties to the side and licking a heavy stripe from her entrance to her clit. Y/N's hips bucked at the contact, pressing her lips together as she resisted the urge to whine. She was on cloud nine, relishing in the fact that her wildest dream was coming true right before her very eyes, which rolled in pleasure as Rick began to eat her out. Daryl excused himself from Rick and Y/N as she buried her hands in Rick's hair, pushing him closer to her sopping wet core. Daryl stared at the scene for a while before retreating further into the store and grabbing a blanket, returning to see Y/N writhing in Rick's grasp as he stared at her in anger.

"She make another noise?" Daryl asked, spreading the blanket on the floor before joining Rick, and glaring down at Y/N in disdain.

"Uh huh. I'm surprised you didn't hear it, she was so loud." Rick answered, still glowering at Y/N who had tears in her eyes again. She was so close, and it slipped out on accident, but they didn't seem to care. She had broken the only rule.

"On all fours, Princess. I think you deserve to be punished, don't you Rick?" Daryl's voice was thick with arousal as he caught Rick nodding out of the corner of his eye, ripping Y/N off of the checkout counter and onto the blanket, positioning her with her face down and ass up. She winced at the pressure that was on her knee in this position, and as if he read her mind, Rick had bunched up her new sweatpants, tapping her leg so he could slide them under her knee to help relieve some of her pain. Once she was settled against the blanket, Daryl took the initiative to rip Y/N's panties off, shoving them in her mouth as a makeshift gag to keep her quiet. Rick had spread her legs, a pornographic noise rumbling in his chest as her slick dripped onto the blanket below her.

"Daryl, you have to taste her." Rick's hoarse voice sliced through the silence around them as he and Daryl quickly switched places. Daryl wasted no time licking into Y/N, moaning at how she tasted on his tongue. Her sweet and salty arousal was exactly what he was expecting from the usually mouthy woman, and he was addicted to her as he buried his face deeper between her legs, his scruffy face scratching her thighs. As Daryl ate her out, Rick's hands trailed down her back before landing a harsh smack to her ass. Y/N jerked, arching her back at the contact as Rick spanked her again, her pussy quivering against Daryl's tongue.

"Mm, she likes that. Getting so wet for us, Rick." Daryl said, plunging two of his fingers into her tight heat, growling as her cunt clenched around his fingers. Rick spanked her twice more, her ass cheeks becoming red and inflamed due to the abuse. He then soothed the pain with kisses, spreading her ass to see her tight, puckered hole winking back at him. He spat on her asshole, a thick glob of saliva dropping from her hold to Daryl's fingers where it was then pressed into Y/N's weeping pussy. She drooled around the panties in her mouth, pressing her eyes shut as she willed herself to stay silent. Her body was working for her, allowing Rick and Daryl to know that what they were doing was turning her on without her verbalizing it. Rick spat on her again, using one of his fingers to spread his saliva over her entrance, guaranteeing it would stay where he wanted it. With another spank to her sensitive ass, Rick's finger pushed against her puckered hole, spanking her again when she clenched to keep him out.

"Come on, sweetheart. Don't you want to be good for me?" Rick asked, smirking when Y/N nodded rapidly in response to his question. "Relax for me, baby. I promise this will feel so good."

Sucking in a deep breath, Y/N focused on how Daryl was making her feel as his fingers tickled her g-spot with every thrust. His other hand had found her clit, rubbing furiously to help Y/N relax. Rick nodded, pressing a kiss between Y/N's shoulder blades as his middle finger slowly entered her, the sensation of both her holes being filled overwhelming her quickly. Her eyes rolled back into her head again as she pressed back into both their hands, electricity crackling around the trio as they continued their dirty actions. Y/N's pussy squelched around Daryl's fingers as another gush of arousal flooded her. Another wad of spit hit her asshole as Rick pushed in another finger, spreading her open and preparing her for what they all knew was coming next.

"Is she close?" Rick asked hoarsely, face still pressed between her shoulder blades. Y/N nodded at his question, but that earned her another stinging spank across her sore ass.

"Oh yeah she is. I can feel it." Daryl answered.

"Good. Pussy or mouth?" Rick offered, letting Daryl choose which hole he wanted to claim first.

"Pussy. I need to feel her cum on my cock." Daryl answered, standing to discard his boots and pants, his boxers thrown to the side as he positioned himself at her entrance. His fingers replaced Rick's as the former cop stood and copied Daryl, throwing his clothes to the side before kneeling in front of Y/N and removing her ruined panties from her mouth. He placed a rushed kiss to her mouth before tapping the head of his cock against her lips. She opened her mouth urgently, kitten licking at the angry red tip of Rick's dick. While his fingers were knuckle deep in her ass, Daryl's free hand counted from three to one as both of their cocks speared Y/N at the same time. A garbled noise erupted from Y/N causing both men to pull away instantly. Y/N dropped to the blanket, anger and the desperate need to cum flowing through her veins.

Daryl spanked her harder than Rick had, her ass rippling due to the force behind the strike. Y/N whined at the feeling, resulting in another strike to her sensitive skin that was harder than the first. She preened again, and yet another spank met her flushed ass. This time, Y/N was quiet as she accepted her punishment, tears flowing freely due to her overwhelming feelings of desperation. Rick cupped her face and wiped her tears once again, kissing her deeply.

"I know it's hard, baby, but you're doing so well for us. We're going to make you feel so fucking good, I promise. Are you ready to try again?" Rick's praise shook Y/N to her core as she nodded, trying to be quiet, while also not trusting her voice in the moment. With another searing kiss pressed to her mouth, Rick nodded to Daryl, who pushed himself inside Y/N without hesitation, Rick's mouth swallowing the quiet sob the rolled through her. "I'll let that one slide, sweetheart. Hush now."

With that, Rick shoved his dick down Y/N's throat, relishing at the feeling of her gag around him. Her tears were still flowing as Rick and Daryl found their rhythm, playing her body like an instrument. Daryl's hand snaked around her hips to rub her clit roughly, and her pent up orgasm shattered through her without warning.

"Oh my God, Rick she's squeezing me so hard." Daryl commented, fucking Y/N through the aftershocks of her orgasm as her toes curled due to her rising overstimulation. Her tongue flicked and swirled around Rick's cock as his hips faltered, his orgasm approaching as well. He pulled out of her mouth and lifted Y/N until she was straddling his waist, spinning her to face Daryl as he spat on his dick, using it as lubrication before sliding his wet fingers against her asshole again. Y/N reached for Daryl, who happily allowed her to swallow his dick the same way she did Rick's. Once Y/N set a decent pace, Rick thrust his sopping dick past her tight ring of muscle, and her moan rippled through her and around Daryl's cock. Rick shot him a look over Y/N's shoulder, but Daryl waved him off because her moaning around him felt too good for him to stop. Rick started thrusting at a brutal pace, her ass hugging his dick beautifully with every thrust. Y/N choked on Daryl's cock as he pushed her head further towards the base, more tears spilling over her cheeks, which Daryl wiped away with a rough thumb.

Behind her, Rick was groaning into her shoulder, fucking her ass becoming too much to handle. He ripped her away from Daryl, standing quickly with his back pressed against the wall, holding her legs open to entice Daryl towards them. Without hesitation, Daryl once again slid deep into Y/N's pussy, the head of his cock brushing her g-spot instantly. Y/N initiated the kiss she shared with Daryl to muffle the moan blooming in her chest.

"Fuck this. Come on, Princess, let us hear how good we're making you feel." Daryl ordered, allowing Y/N to throw her head back and scream, the feeling of both strong men fucking into her brutally becoming unbearable.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck! Oh my God you feel so good!" Y/N wailed, laying her head on Daryl's shoulder, peppering kisses up his neck and over his face, showering him in love and adoration he rarely gets. Rick's arm came up from one of her legs and wrapped around her shoulder, pushing her further onto their cocks, all three of them moaning loudly at the sensation.

"Feel good, baby? Tell me." Rick growled from behind her, brushing her hair over one of her shoulders to kiss the back of her neck, admiring the goosebumps that were left behind in his wake.

"It f-feels amazing! Fuck, more, please!" Y/N cried. Daryl took one of her nipples into his mouth, nibbling lightly as his hands held her open and allowing Rick to rub her clit fast and hard. With a strangled cry, Y/N came hard around Daryl, the clenching of her pussy and ass causing him and Rick to moan in unison. Daryl came next, his cum buried deep inside Y/N as he pumped her full. Rick came last, his breath and hips stuttering as he gave Y/N everything he had. Y/N slumped forward into Daryl's arms, exhaustion burrowing deep inside her. With a kiss to her cheek, Daryl pulled Y/N off of Rick, his hands smacking her ass once more as she was gently laid onto the blanket.

Daryl left her once more as Rick came and cuddled beside Y/N, grabbing a water bottle from his backpack and letting her drain the whole thing. The hunter returned with yet another blanket, covering Y/N before setting her newfound sweats and a package of cotton panties beside her, taking the other water bottle Rick had offered and taking a few sips before returning it to Rick, who also only took a few sips. Their tryst had taken longer than expected, and the sun had set, covering the world in darkness that was unsafe for them to travel in.

"Do you think anyone will notice we're gone?" Y/N asked softly, her voice cracking after hours of unuse.

"No. They know how long this takes." Rick answered honestly.

"Good, because I definitely can't walk." Rick and Daryl chuckled at Y/N's genuine comment before they left the sanctuary of blankets, gathering their clothes before returning to help Y/N dress. Daryl held her in his arms, pressing kisses anywhere his lips could reach, while Rick slid a new pair of panties on her, the oversized sweats following shortly after. He pressed a kiss to her lips as they all huddled together, a lantern illuminating them as they ate some of the spoils they had worked hard to gather. A thump on the glass startled Y/N, a walker making its presence known and drawn to the living inside the store it was attempting to enter.

"It's just one, for now, but we can probably anticipate more tomorrow. There's a back way out of here right?" Rick asked Daryl, the latter nodding through the bite of food he had shoved in his mouth.

"Yeah. Boarded up. We're safe for the night." Daryl threw the empty can of beans over his shoulder before glancing at Y/N, who had been quiet since their tryst had ended. "You good?"

"Yeah, fine. Just practicing being quiet." Y/N smiled softly, as Rick and Daryl laughed again.

"I'd say you learned your lesson for tonight, sweetheart. Let's get some sleep?" Rick answered, allowing Y/N to make herself comfortable as he and Daryl prepared to keep watch. Y/N ended up laying her head in Rick's lap, and the two men each kissed her goodnight before turning off the lantern, the only light coming in from the pale moonlight streaming in behind the glass. Rick's fingers ran through Y/N's hair absentmindedly as he stared at the lone walker still banging on the glass door, his mind wandering.

"What are you thinking about?" Daryl asked, almost jealous of the fact that Y/N had seemed to choose Rick over him.

"Nothing in particular. Just how we could punish her the next time she gets too loud." Rick smirked in the dark, staring at his best friend across from him. "Get some sleep, Daryl. I'll take first watch."

Daryl nodded before laying beside Y/N, yanking her towards him and sighing in relief once she relaxed against him. Rick only chuckled, allowing his friend to be possessive over the young woman they just shared, watching as they continued to sleep. He'd have Y/N to himself in a few hours, but it seemed he and Daryl silently agreed that she wouldn't be waking up until tomorrow morning. As much as he enjoyed the challenge of keeping her quiet, Rick hoped he could hear her sweet noises again in the comfort of his bed, behind the safe walls of Alexandria, with no threats of walkers or Negan coming to take her away.

[artemis32]

vagabond

my batfam obsession has finally come in handy (reader is like, late teens, early twenties??)

This was meant to be a drabble, but I went a teeny tiny bit overboard, and by overboard, I mean this is 5.6k words - there will also definitely be a part two <33

Enjoy :)) Or don't. I can't tell you what to do

****

dc masterlist

****

“Okay,

Let’s do this one last time

My name?? You don’t need to know my name. All you need to know is that I was bitten by a radioactive spider, and for the last six years, I’ve been the one, and only, Recluse.

….what? Spiderman?

No, no, none of that nonsense. That’s so overused. Plus, I’m a woman, and Spiderwoman just feels like a bit of a mouthful. 

Yeah… Recluse. I was bitten by a recluse spider. 

…ironically, I hate spiders.”

****

Hear me out.

You’re a Spider person(??), involved in the Spider verse. You have the usual Spiderman backstory (sort of), and you’ve got the same incredible senses and abilities. I imagine you having a slightly superior spider sense and speed compared to other Spiders – think Cindy Moon. And obviously, the name, Recluse, means you were bitten by a recluse spider (I fucking hate spiders), but that also means that you get all the qualities of a recluse spider. Mainly necrotic venom and the ability to camouflage. You can’t exactly turn invisible, you just have the uncanny ability of blending in like a chameleon. It’s kind of creepy, I won’t lie.

Regardless of your abilities, you were there when Miguel lost his temper and when Miles ran away. 

Except you made the mistake of trying to help Miles. Why wouldn’t you? He was just a child, and he only wanted to keep his family safe. Anyone else would’ve done the same in his position. Suffice it to say, that pissed Miguel off. Majorly.

And while Miles managed to get away without a dimension-travelling watch, you weren't as fortunate. You fought tooth and nail with other Spiders, not wanting to hurt them and not wanting to get caught. You barely managed to escape with your life as you tapped a random location into your watch and zapped off to another earth without a second thought or a proper plan. But not before the Spiders giving chase had managed to damage your watch (and you - they’re strong as fuck, of course they managed to do some damage).

Now, as you stand on an empty rooftop, examining your watch in the rain, you're beginning to think you may have fucked up. 

Slightly.

The watch still prevents you from glitching, you've confirmed that much. Thank goodness.

But it is broken. You know it is. Because you can't reach anyone else in the Spider verse. And you can't see what universe you're in. You feel like you’ve been thrown in the deep end, and the fact that you can barely stand doesn’t help.

****

Stood in the rain on a rooftop in the middle of nowhere, injured and all but stranded, was not how you had planned on spending your Saturday night.

As you distractedly tinker with the watch in a pathetic attempt to fix it, grumbling to yourself about your ruined weekend place, your spider sense goes haywire, ringing so loudly in your ears that your head spins.

You're so disoriented that you barely manage to dodge the dagger thrown your way.

A dagger that's... shaped like a plane? No, it looked more like a bird?

You step back cautiously as a man emerges from the shadows, jumping down from a ledge just above your head. 

He’s dressed strangely, which is one hell of a statement coming from you, someone dressed in a skintight spider suit. But-

“Really? A cape? Isn’t that, like, super impractical?” 

The question leaves your mouth before you can think about it, but really – did Edna Mode teach people nothing?

He walks closer without a word. His silence is almost as unsettling as his gaze. It feels as if he’s dissecting you. He keeps a safe distance between the two of you. 

Hm, he’s not completely lacking in the common-sense department, at least.

Then, after much deliberation, he speaks.

“That light- you fell from the sky?”

His voice was cautious, every word measured and serious. His eyes scanned you from top to bottom, taking in your appearance without a word. 

You sigh and prop a hand on your hip, trying to appear nonchalant, trying desperately not to wince at the flaring pain in your ribs. You were in no position to fight, so you’d either have to run, or talk your way to safety. 

If there was one thing you were good at, it was talking.

“Yep. You’re so observant.”

He scowls, his mouth pinching slightly at the corners.

Okay, maybe sassing the man with a dorky superhero cape isn’t a great idea… At least, not while I can barely stand.

So you change tactics.

“I’m sorry, I just- Look, uh, where exactly am I?” 

The look on his face tells you that that was not the right question to ask.

Great. A sceptic. That’s exactly what I needed.

So you backtrack, laughing awkwardly as you wave your hands dismissively.

“That was a… a joke- A terribly timed joke. I apologise. Uh, your suit is… nice?”

Now he seems more exasperated than cautious, and he takes a step closer, reaching a hand out towards you.

Your spider sense flares, and you know that something about this man is dangerous. He appears young and relatively harmless, but appearances can be deceiving, you of all people know that.

So, you do the only thing you can think of at that moment. The only command your instincts give you. You jump away. 

You jump.

And, naturally, you stick to the wall.

It’s nothing. It’s such a small action, one you’re more than accustomed to. You do it all the time, climbing walls and ceilings, scaling the sides of buildings. Other Spiders do it too. Even the civilians back on your own earth are used to it.

But it’s not nothing.

The man before you seems stunned beyond words, his outstretched hand hanging in midair as his jaw drops. He stares at you as you stand there, exactly perpendicular to him, sticking to the wall and defying all laws of nature as if it’s nothing.

His hand clenches in a fist and he reaches for a bo staff, the metal snapping loudly as he swings it outwards, the leather of his glove creaking as he tightens his grip.

“Who are you? Your name. Now.” he demands, his jaw clenched tightly.

You tilt your head. 

Was this guy an idiot? The first rule of secret identities is that they’re, y’know, secret?

“Oh, well, I’m Recluse. Who are you?”

He ignores your question, slowly approaching you again, looking at you curiously. It might have seemed innocent to a third party, but your head was still ringing. You couldn’t let this man get too close to you.

You sigh heavily.

Running it is.

You point your arm outwards, startling the man, who takes a wary step back. Before he can react or reach for you, you shoot a web out and swing away. His bo staff slams against the wall seconds after you leapt from it, the wall denting and crumbling from the force of his swing.

The look on his face was priceless, first fear at the sight of you jumping over the edge of the building, then surprise, then a flash of anger as you mockingly saluted him as you swung away. You’d laugh if your ribs didn’t feel like they were seconds away from shattering. 

You swing through the unfamiliar city, the buildings passing by you in a flash. Coming to a stop is painful, your head swimming as you nearly slam into the side of an apartment building. 

Thank God for spider-like adhesion.

You sit there for a long moment, taking a second to catch your breath and gather your bearings.

After you've managed to shake the dizziness away, you swing to the street down below.

While you think over your piss poor plan of finding some civilian clothing and learning more about this universe, you try to ignore the aching throb in your ribs. You weren’t too concerned about the injury – one advantage of being Spiderwoman was that you healed at an incredible rate. You’d just have to grin and bear until you healed.

****

Wayne Enterprises.

They specialised in a whole lot, but all that really interested you was their science division. In particular, the tech and biotech sector. The company seemed eerily similar to variations of other mega corporations you’d seen in your time travelling through the multiverse.

Stark Enterprises. Alchemax. Oscorp Industries. Roxxon Energy Corporation.

The list was endless, but you’d decided, after hours spent in a cramped internet café doing informal research on the strange dimension you found yourself in, that investigating Wayne Enterprises was the best place to start if you hoped to ever fix the watch and return home.

Your plan of action was simple. Scratch that, it was terrible - held together with little more than hopes and prayers. But with your abilities, you were confident you could pull it off.

That’s how you found yourself confidently walking through the foyer of Wayne Enterprises, acting as if you were supposed to be there. Swiping an access card off of some poor, unsuspecting office worker was easier than it should have been.

You wandered around the reception area for a while, carefully surveying the room before approaching the elevator with the air of someone who knew where they were going.

There’ll be signs for each division… Right?

Wrong.

Twenty minutes later, you’re still wandering aimlessly through corridors, hoping the right room would magically present itself to you.

So caught up in your own frustrated musings, you nearly miss the department you’d spent almost an hour looking for.

The sign above the door is pathetic - faded and barely visible, peeling and yellowed at the edges, like some old poster left out in the sun to age.

Shoving your irritation to the back of your mind, you quietly open the door, wincing as it creaks. Popping your head through the gap, you peek around the small room, and-

Nothing.

It’s completely empty, the thick layer of dust settled over the countertops seeming to mock your failure of a heist.

A silent huff of annoyance is all you allow yourself, quickly shutting the door and continuing on your way. Determination fuels your every step, intent to find something, anything, so that your breaking-and-entering excursion wouldn’t be for nothing.

****

Success.

You definitely weren’t supposed to be in here. Not that you were supposed to be in the building in general, but this?

‘This’ being what appeared to be the CEO’s personal office, if the floor to ceiling windows and expensive leather furniture was anything to go by.

You’d long since discarded any pretence of searching for the biotech department. Now, you were just snooping around, curious to see what exactly the CEO of Wayne Enterprises had laying around.

Naturally, you’d come across a few pictures of him in your investigation of Wayne Enterprises, and all you’d thought about the moment you’d seen his photo, was that Bruce Wayne was undoubtedly one of the most attractive men you’d ever met.

If you weren’t caught in such a dire situation, you might have taken the time to fawn over him a while longer.

The office is odd. There’s something about it that you can’t quite put your finger on, something uncanny. Maybe it’s that lack of colour or warmth, or the lack of any personal effects.

But that couldn’t be it. You’d seen plenty of rooms similarly decorated, but there was something about this in particular that set your hair on end. Not your spider sense, but your unconscious mind.

It almost felt as if you were being… observed. As if an unseen force was breathing down your neck, pinning you in place.

You distract yourself from your ever growing unease, pulling open drawers and rifling through cabinets. 

What an obscene amount of paperwork.

Truly, you don’t expect to find anything exciting or noteworthy. Maybe an office cellarette, maybe a Courtesan cigar.

What you don’t expect is to find the parts you needed to fix your watch. 

The parts that were supposed to have been in the biotech department.

Before you have much time to contemplate about why the tech worth billions is shoved behind a bookshelf, the door opens.

You’re on the ceiling before he even enters the room, your breath tight in your chest, the klystron conductor clutched firmly in your fist as you try not to make any sudden movements.

Certain abilities you’d gotten as a result of the spider that bit you came in handy more often than not, namely the capability to survive weeks, if not months without food or water, and the preternatural proficiency you had hunting at night. Most useful had to be your camouflage abilities.

And while you were able to camouflage yourself, it came with its own set of drawbacks and caveats. Specifically in the fact that it was a camouflaging ability, not invisibility.

If you moved too suddenly, even someone unaware would notice you.

It takes you a moment to realise that the man is Bruce Wayne. 

He looks different than in the photos - his back is broader, his hair darker, and his eyes…

His eyes-

Your head feels like it’s being split open, a buzzing so persistent filling your ears that you almost slip off the wall, your adhesion faltering for a moment.

There had been one or two stories within the Spider Society, of moments where someone's spider sense had gone so haywire they couldn’t tell up from down. There’d been a time where, supposedly, someone had even passed out from the pounding pressure in their skull.

Initially, you’d thought it was an exaggeration, a newfound hero overplaying a fight gone wrong in an attempt to save face.

Now, as he surveys the room, his azure eyes lingering on you for a moment longer than they should, you understand what they meant.

Panic isn’t enough to describe how you feel at that moment.

You feel too exposed, your nerves raw and laid bare. 

It… almost feels as if he knows you’re there.

But that’s not possible. There’s no way.

You allow yourself the slightest sigh of relief, releasing the searing breath in your chest as he turns, moving towards his desk.

His silhouette is broad and domineering as he bows over his laptop, the sound of his tapping at the keys filling the sweltering silence of the room. 

With his back turned towards you, you take your chance, slowly, so slowly making your way across the room, still sticking to the ceiling all the while.

You pause for a moment, freezing when you catch a glimpse of what exactly is on his screen.

The camera feed.

There you are.

Entering his office with a wide eyed look on your face.

And-

And that’s you, barely ten minutes ago, rifling through drawers and shelves.

He pauses then, on the frame of you holding the klystron conductor with a satisfied smile and a slight sparkle in your eyes.  He sighs heavily, his head dropping forward as he taps two fingers against the tabletop.

You don’t linger to see his reaction, dropping down from the ceiling and slinking out the ajar door.

****

After you’d hightailed it out of the building as soon as you could, you hadn’t dared to look back.

That man… Something about him set your nerves on edge. He wasn’t normal. 

Thankfully, you’d managed to get out without much hassle, and now you were wandering somewhat aimlessly through the city, looking for a place to set up shop, so to speak.

Spying a seemingly abandoned building across the street, you decided it would have to do for now.

As you cross the road, aiming for the darkened alleyway across the road, you’re slammed off of your feet. 

By a car.

Someone hit you with a goddamn car.

You lay there, in the entryway of the alley, gasping for breath as you press your forehead to the wet concrete beneath you. But no matter how deeply you breathe, you can’t seem to force yourself to your feet.

Spider sense my ass – what the fuck was that?! No warning, nothing!

The edges of your vision turn black, and you pray that you don’t pass out as a pair of polished black leather shoes approach you.

A man crouches down in front of you, his words drowned out by the ringing in your ears.

He reaches out to you, intent on pressing his palm to your shoulder. 

You pass out before he can touch you.

****

You might’ve been unconscious for a few hours or or a few weeks. You weren’t sure.

All you knew was that you were in what appeared to be a medical facility, and you were restrained. 

On the bright side, you felt a ton better than you had before you passed out. Though a look around proved that it might have been because of whatever concoction of drugs they’d given you to numb the pain. 

Well, with your increased metabolism, that comfort probably wouldn’t last too long.

You lay back, content to stay there until a doctor or nurse came in to check on you.

Twenty minutes later, long after the medication had worn off, someone entered the room.

The man, grey-haired and dressed in an immaculately pressed tuxedo, pauses for a moment when he realises that you’re awake before continuing on his course towards you and proceeding to check your vitals.

“How long have you been awake, Miss?” 

You don’t respond.

Or rather, you can’t.

Pain grips you like a vice, wrapping its fingers around your abdomen, digging its claws into your skull.

Stupid damned metabolism.

Apparently, your pain and distress are visible enough for the old gentleman to see.

He frowns, leaning closer slightly for a moment before striding towards a row of cabinets, sifting through them before returning with a needle and a small glass vial. He squints slightly as he fills the needle.

A lot of what happens after that is lost to you in your pained daze. You’re awake, aware, but barely.

The older man is gone by the time you manage to pull yourself out of the strange, aching daze.

In his stead is Bruce Wayne.

The heart monitor betrays your panic, the sharp beeping filling the echoing space of the room.

He doesn’t speak or move from his spot beside your bed, instead observing you with a flat look as your heart rate slowly evens out again.

After a long bout of silence, he hold up a hand, waving it slightly, and-

And he’s holding the klystron conductor.

Of course.

“Do you want to tell me why you were ransacking my office for a multibillion dollar piece of tech?”

Your hands clench and unclench around the stiff sheets, and you lick your lips before responding. 

“No, not particularly.”

You pause. 

“Do you want to tell me why you hit me with your car?”

The corner of his mouth twitches.

He finds this funny?! What a psycho.

“Well, you did steal from me.”

“So you hit me with a car?!”

He raises an eyebrow, seemingly unimpressed with your raised tone.

“Regardless… I’m guessing it has something to do with this.”

Every muscle in your body goes rigid as he holds up your watch, casually dangling it from his forefinger as he carefully observes you for any signs of a reaction.

Okay, okay, just… play it cool. 

“What, a watch? Pfft, keep it, it’s not worth much. Just some piece of crap I won in a claw machine ten years ago.”

Your knuckles are white from the force of your grip as you all but strangle the bed sheets beneath your grasp. 

He smirks slightly, nodding empathetically.

“Ah, of course. So, you won’t mind if I toss it in the trash, right? Since it’s just an old piece of crap and all that?”

You shrug, keeping your eyes on his and away from the watch. “Go for it.”

And he does.

He tosses it in the trash can beside your cot, still watching closely from some reaction.

You remain nonchalant.

“...hm, well. Rest up then. You’ll need all your energy- Prison in Gotham is a harsh place.”

You blanch.

“Prison? But- But technically I didn’t even steal! You got it back, didn’t you?”

His mouth quirks slightly at that.

Great. He finds amusement in my suffering.

“While that’s true, you did break into Wayne Enterprises. And my personal office. I have the evidence. That’s grounds enough for an arrest, wouldn’t you agree?”

He stands, sliding his hands into his pockets and taking a casual stance.

Fine. I can play along for a bit.

“...okay. I-I’m sorry. Fine, you can hand me over to the cops, just- Just please let me rest for a bit? I think you might’ve concussed me.”

He huffs a laugh, his eyes lighting up in amusement. He knows you’re lying. And you know he knows.

“Okay. Take all the time you need.”

He leaves without another word, not looking back.

And not a moment too soon.

As the door shuts, you glitch, painfully spasming, your cells electrified and fizzing.

You fall out the cot, collapsing onto the floor as you grip the edge of the trash can, rifling through it in your search for the watch.

Slipping it onto your wrist and tightening the clasp, you-

…this isn’t my watch.

The door opens again and in strolls the culprit, a self-satisfied look in his eyes.

“Just a piece of junk, huh?”

“Oh, fuck y-”

You almost bite your tongue off mid sentence as you glitch again, clinging to the railing of the cot as your muscles stiffen up and your blood roils in your veins.

He’s speaking, confused and panicked as he calls out to you, and then someone else, rushing towards you. You think his hands might be on your arms. You aren’t sure.

Then it’s over. You’re hunched over, all but sprawled on the sparkling white tiles, shivering and sweaty, fighting the urge to throw up. 

But it’s over.

You squint up at Bruce.

His face is hazy, and so is the figure behind his.

Everything is hazy, but you can feel the strap of your watch on your wrist, his hand just above it. You can feel how dry your mouth is, and the pounding of the growing migraine in your temples. And you can feel your spider sense tickling the edge of your consciousness, slowly growing in urgency with each passing moment.

“What the hell was that?”

The voice is a new one, one you haven’t heard before. It belongs to the figure lingering behind Bruce.

His face comes into focus as the effects of your glitch wear off.

Blue eyes. Just as startling and off putting as Bruce’s.

In fact, he seems like a carbon copy. Almost. His skin seems slightly more tanned, and he’s leaner than his older companion. Shorter too, though just by a few inches.

“That…” you say in a weary manner, “was a glitch. A painful one. I don’t recommend trying it.” 

“A glitch?”

You deadpan, pushing yourself into a sitting position, leaning against the wall adjacent to your cot for support.

“Yeah. I just said that. Pay attention.”

“So that watch keeps you from… ‘glitching’ then?” 

Bruce and his companion sport matching expressions of intrigue and dread.

“Yep. Ten points to Gryffindor.”

“...what’s a Gryffindor?” 

Good God, I should’ve let Miguel kill me.

“...doesn’t matter. I’ve overstayed my welcome.”

You get up with an embarrassing amount of difficulty, grunting as you pull yourself up using the cot’s railing. Your enhanced healing could only work so fast, it seemed, and clearly Bruce had done a number on you with the bumper of his car.

The short stride to the door is cut short as the young Bruce lookalike steps in front of you.

“Sorry, but we can’t let you leave just yet. Where exactly are you from?”

“Earth. Please move.”

“I can’t do that. You should sit back down, you don’t look too hot.”

You let out a strangled noise of disbelief.

“Excuse me, I look very hot. All the time.”

A deadpan look is all you’re granted in response.

That’s it, I’ve had enough.

“Seriously. Move.”

“No. Sit down.”

Bruce sighs, massaging the bridge of his nose as you and his mini-me engage in a stare down.

“Okay, that’s enough. Dick, back up. Miss, please, sit down before you hurt yourself.”

You pause, glancing at Bruce, then back at the man in front of you.

There’s a slight pause, and then-

You burst into a fit of giggles, clutching your pained ribs as you stumble back and collapse onto the cot.

“Your name is Dick? Dick? Seriously?”

His eyes harden at your laughter, his mouth pressed in a tight line.

“...it’s not that funny,” he mutters, unimpressed.

“Yeah it is. Who willingly allows themselves to be called Dick? I can think of six penis jokes off the top of my head. You’re practically begging for them.”

Bruce interjects before either one of you can continue, sending Dick a sharp look.

Ha. Dick.

“That’s enough. What I want to know is why you’re glitching. And you won’t be going anywhere until I find out.”

You deadpan, fixing him with an incredulous look.

“...no offence, but you can’t really keep me here.”

“I can, and I will.”

You snort, laughter bubbling up in your chest once more.

“No, I mean- You can try, but you probably won’t succeed. No hard feelings though.”

“What, you mean because of your superpowers? Trust me, they won’t do you much good around here.”

His words give you pause, and you stare up at him silently for a moment.

“I don’t- What are you talking about?”

“There’s no use playing dumb,” Dick interjects. “It won’t get you very far. We know about your abilities, and we’re telling you that we know about them so that you don’t try anything.”

“And what exactly do you plan on doing if I do try something? Money can only get you so far.”

Your words make Bruce’s mouth twitch into a small smile once again.

“I have a theory, one I hope you’ll entertain for a moment.”

He looks at you expectantly.

After a moment of deliberation, a heavy sigh, and a nod, he smiles in a self-satisfied manner and takes a seat on the foot of your bed. After a short nod to Dick, he exits the room, leaving you and Bruce alone.

“I think that you’re from Earth, like you said. Just not this Earth. I think that you’re from another universe or dimension, and you’re ‘glitching’ because you’re not meant to be here. Am I right?”

It’s an effort to hide your reaction and keep your face blank, but you manage. Barely.

“Well, that’s certainly an… interesting theory. What sparked that idea?”

He shifts, staring at you for a moment, resting his palms on his thighs.

“...you fell from the sky. Out of what I can only assume is a portal. And your cells are basically decaying without that watch- or at least, that’s what my colleagues at Star Labs tell me.”

You stiffen at his words, squinting for a beat.

“How do you know I came through a portal? The only person around then was that idiot with the cape.”

Bruce frowns at your words.

“The cape isn’t stupid. It’s practical.”

You deadpan. “It’s a deathtrap.”

“Regardless. I know about all that because…”

He pauses.

“Because I’m Batman.”

“...Batman? Is that supposed to be a superhero alias or something? That’s the dumbest name I’ve ever heard- Did you pick it yourself?”

He lets out a noise of exasperation, annoyance painting his features.

“Stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Changing the topic. It’s annoying.”

“...sorry.”

He shakes his head. “So? Am I correct in my assumption?”

You take a moment to think, really think, weighing your options. He didn’t seem like a bad person. Yes, he did hit you with his car. And yes, he wouldn’t let you leave, but…

But your spider sense had gone radio silent. If you were in any danger, it’d be ringing like crazy, so…

“Yes. Yeah, you are. I’m not from this Earth. I’m from Earth 662.”

“Earth… 662?”

“I just said that. Does everyone on this Earth struggle with processing information?”

He fixes you with a stern look before continuing on.

“So I assume you’re stranded here? That’s why you were trying to steal the klystron conductor.”

“Uh uh,” you tut disapprovingly. “I was borrowing it. I would’ve returned it… Eventually.”

Bruce nods along, rolling his eyes slightly as he continues.

“...Earth 662, huh… How many variations of Earth are there then-”

“I can’t tell you that.”

Your response is immediate and stern, leaving no room for debate.

Thankfully, Bruce doesn’t kick up a fuss.

“Hm… Well then, do you know how to get back?”

“Of course I do. I just need to fix up the watch. Hence the little heist I pulled off at your office.”

“And do you know how to fix it?”

You press your mouth into a tight line, avoiding the knowing look he gives you.

“Well, I mean… how hard can it be?”

He sighs. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

There’s a pause, a lull in the conversation, and neither of you say anything for a long while, both lost in your own thoughts.

“Okay. Here’s what I propose. You obviously don’t know what you’re doing-”

“Hey!”

“-so I’ll help you out. I’ll help fix that watch of yours, and let you stay with me while we try to find you a way back home. In exchange, you’ll tell me about things from your Earth, and about the multiverse. Sound fair?”

As much as you’d like to argue, to refuse his more than generous offer, you know you can’t. You were smart, but not in the areas needed to fix the watch. 

You needed his help.

Damn it.

“...fine. Deal.”

His hand feels cool and calloused in yours, and his grip is firm and reassuring.

If only you knew then how wrong things would go. Maybe you’d have refused his deal.

****

Four months later.

“...still nothing?”

“No. I’m sorry. I’ve sent Dick to Central City to find a few more parts.”

“It’s not your fault, I just… I really want to go home.”

It had been months. 

You’d been stuck on this strange Earth, so similar to your own, for months.

While the Wayne Manor was nice, and its inhabitants lovely, you missed your home. You missed your family.

But there was nothing to be done about it. You’d damaged your watch more than you’d originally thought, the travel mechanism was completely destroyed. 

Initially, you’d been foolishly optimistic, believing you’d return home within a week.

But that week had passed. Then another. And another. 

Time kept passing, and you were still stuck here, four months later. 

At least you had decent company.

While you didn’t exactly trust them, you’d grown fond of them. You might even have begun to consider them friends.

Dick had grown on you over the months, despite the rocky start to your friendship. He was reliable in a way that reminded you too much of the many variations of Peter Parker you’d met throughout your time in the Spider Society.

Tim, who you’d discovered was the ‘idiot in the cape’ you’d met on your first night on this Earth, was just as easy to get along with. At first, he’d thrown you off a bit with his unsociable personality, but he’d slowly opened up over time. Really, he was more of a nerd than anything else. 

And he’d heeded your words of wisdom regarding the cape.

Damian, Bruce’s ‘prodigee’, was someone you still had trouble getting along with. Your relationship had improved over the months, but barely. Before, he’d outright ignore your presence. Now, he at least graced you with a nod of acknowledgement or the occasional verbal greeting. 

How kind of him.

Bruce had become somewhat of a parental figure after he had walked in on you crying one night. While you were embarrassed, he’d taken it in stride, comforting you as best as he could, reassuring you that they’d find a way to send you back home.

“Oh, I know, I know. We’re all trying our best, just… try to be patient. We’ll find something soon, I promise.”

His palms rest on your shoulders, patting you reassuringly.

You nod in agreement, too tired and disheartened to say anything else as you mumble something about going to bed, turning to leave the room.

****

“And you’re sure no one knows she’s here? If they found out…”

“Yes Dick, I’m sure. I’m not an idiot, I know how to wipe a hard drive.”

There’s a slight lull in conversation as the two wait for the rest of the group to arrive.

A few minutes later, Bruce enters the room, Damian trailing behind him. 

He walks to where the two are seated and puts the klystron conductor on the table before them.

“That’s the last one. Have you done everything else?”

Tim nods, gesturing to a singular hard drive placed on the coffee table.

“That’s the only remaining evidence of her presence on this Earth.”

Bruce nods and sighs, looking between the three men with him before Dick interjects.

“Do you- I mean, are we really going to do this? We’re supposed to be the heroes. This… This isn’t something we can undo.”

All three of his companions hold a steely glint in their eyes as they nod.

“I’m sure. It’s better this way. She’s just a kid, she doesn’t know what she needs. She’ll thank us for this in a few years.”

There’s a tense pause for a moment before he speaks again.

“Do it.”

And just like that, the final klystron conductor is destroyed, along with any hope you’d had of returning home.

“...she’ll thank us.”