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fantasynsuch · 2 days ago

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The idler wheel is wiser than the driver of the screw.

PART 1 ★ PART 2

Quick summary: After one too many drinks, you find yourself unable to think of anything but a certain smart-mouth detective who is in desperate need of a release.

Word count: 11K (I'm sorry)

Warnings: This is basically just SMUTT with a lil feelings (if you squint) sprinkled in there; kind of angsty at points (mentions of canon-typical death and violence (hellooo they're homicide detectives); gets a bit existential at points, watch out; pretentious.

A/N: YAY! I had this obsession with True Detective S1 all throughout October (watched it at my nan's house lmao), so enjoy the lovechild of that. This is just for fun, so, please, nobody be angry at me if they don't agree with Rust's characterisation, or any of the weird philosophical chat, lalallalal, OKAY ENJOY!!

***

The night air is sluggish and humid with the remnants of a warm summer’s rain, pressing down thickly, close, clogging, simmering just below the surface.

A few times, I’ve interviewed people who live in these sorts of places: motel-types, the “in-between”, where folks stay when they’ve either got no money, no choice or nobody. Other residents include passers-by who’re looking to save money on accommodation, skipping on the fancier places. Not that Louisiana really has any “fancier places”. Places without the paint peeling off walls like dead skin, I guess. A bed and breakfast in the nicer suburbia, with a view overlooking a subpar daydream of a ghost town centre.

I’ve leaned up against the crooked, metal railing, felt the influence of my weight almost sending it and myself crashing down onto the faded parking lot beneath. I’ve leaned up there—after knocking—and waited, waited for a grey face to peer through a crack in the cracked door. I’ve smiled and remarked about how the beat-up, brass numbers up there are hanging by a thread. Sometimes, people are real stingy – they slink out and close the door behind them, or they remain in that little slit, just an eye visible, or they plain shut it in my face. Most let me in right away, maybe a little intimidated by the shiny badge clipped up in my jacket – I’ve sat across from ‘em, felt that mud in the room’s air seep into my pores, inviting me under its still swamp.

Seems like the sort of place for him.

Too many a fuckin’ time, Marty’s come grumbling and muttering into the office kitchen, rolling his eyes, scoffing, huffing, the whole lot. And when I ask him why the strop?—“Ancient fuckin’ philosopher fuckin’ Rust Cohle on it again. Birthday’s comin’ up: get me earplugs and a generous bit o’ duct tape for my dear partner over there, would you?”

Or somethin’ along those lines.

For all his apparent talk about us silly, little “biological puppets”, this seems like Rust’s sort of place. Temporary existence, temporary living. Purgatory?

Whatever.

If you ask me, Rust Cohle’s head is so far up his own ass that it’s no wonder his outlook on life is so dark.

If I was more sober, maybe I’d be thinking about it—about him—less—but this night out has had me so drunk I was maybe even hallucinating at some point. Rust?—sure, he’s been in the back of my mind for some part of the last few months – I have to see him most days I go to work, don’t I? – but, sometime in the space between my third and fourth shot of straight vodka, he was suddenly at the very front of it. I’d seen a guy who smoked like him: cigarette pinched between his thumb and forefinger, a simple, deep drag. I’d thought it was him, but then I realised his face was shrouded in the smoke that he’d exhaled, and I recalled that Rust never seems to do that. Never seems to exhale. All the tar and shit stays in.

With a twist of my keys, the engine rumbles off into more-or-less silence. Fuck, it’s a bad idea, yes, just being here. If he likes to keep his distance, well—he’s entitled to that choice.

I glance over my shoulder, out the window, out at the complex which is all yellow and shining, illuminated by buzzing halogen light bars and, of course, the occasional bug zapper. It’s clean enough. The lines of this parking space were white enough. Apartment 11A, said Marty. Second floor.

“Are you drunk?” he’d asked – Marty, not Rust.

I’d replied, “No,” pressing closer to the phone box in attempts to remove myself from the swarm and bustle of the ladies’ bathroom. And it was an honest reply. Sort of. Despite his scepticism, by that time, I’d long stopped drinking, and all that remained from it was a sort of numb tingle in my fingertips—as far as I was concerned.

I don’t think I’d be in this parking lot, stepping out of my car, if I wasn’t still a little bit gone.

Marty’s sigh had crackled through the receiver. “Don’t bring any o’ tha’ party-this-party-that attitude to ‘im, alright? He’ll hate it.” I’d told him okay, my stomach spiking up with excitement. “Fact is, I don’t think you should go at all. ‘f you do, should be a work matter. This a work matter, detective?”

I’d lied, said yes, perhaps with a slur to my voice.

He clicked his tongue. “Okay, buck, whatever you say.” Then, he’d hung up.

There was something disapproving in the manner of the conversation. I got the feeling that he was talking to me in the same voice he used to lecture his daughters. The only reason I’d called him was to get something from him, sure, so that I could basically get something from Rust, his partner. I could see how that sort of thing might’ve upset someone. Not that Marty Hart should have any right to judge, not when he’s coming into work in the same clothes as the day before, stinking of sweat and God knows what. The unsaid agreement of everyone in the office is to turn a blind eye. I’ve met his wife. Someone should cut off his damn dick.

Quiet, now. Hell, who am I to talk? Marty’s fun to chat with, makes a slow day at the office a little brighter. ‘Course, there’s rarely a slow day at the office.

And I’m at the top of the stairs, now. And I knock—one, two, three—on the pilling, forest-green door. Dulled down 11A. Blinds are determinedly shut, slats flat. For a second, I think maybe I’ll be waking him.

Then I remember Rust doesn’t sleep.

A grey face appears as the door swings just a little ways open, grave and sunken-tired. His expression isn’t so pissed-off as it is just his usual expression.

“Rusty,” I say to him with a small nod, words scraping out dryly.

He doesn’t respond right away – ‘stead, he leans his body out partway, eyes absent like he’s searching for some hooligan criminal in the night.

“Marty told you my address?” he asks lowly. It’s more a statement than anything, but I amuse him with a nod anyways. There’s a cigarette flaring up between his fingers. His hand twitches a little like he’s wanting to take a drag, but his eyes are fixed on my shoes, now, like he’s still coming to terms with the fact I’m a foreign body in his domain.

My toes curl up tight in my shoes – there’s that prick of anticipation again. Ice-cold, you could easily mistake it as dread.

Rust doesn’t exactly subject me to an imploring look—not really his style—but he bows his head down just slightly – that’s sign enough for me. He wants to know why I’m here, and he no doubt wants to know the quickest way to be rid of me.

I sigh. I ask him.

My body trembles, and he notices it, records it, stores it away for later reference, for some other time he’ll find that it and me will contribute to his purpose.

Rust has a face of stone. I get to know it well as I search for a sign there that might let me know what lies beneath. But, of course, a statue is solid through and through. Sharp angles and smooth planes carved hollow. If he’s cold to the touch, I’d like to reach out and be sure. Is he cold where a man ought to be warm? Christ, it makes my pulse jump just to think about it.

There is no greater purpose or cruel intention underlying my words, as far as I’m concerned. Rust, however, lingers there, with his arm up on the door, barricading the entrance, while he peels back and flits over every layer of possible meaning, his attention fixed absently on my left ear.

He then looks at me—briefly—in the eyes, with a sort of paralysing intensity. Even the tingling in my fingers ceases to be.

It takes a moment, pregnant with the chorus of cicadas, crickets and other night-creatures, before he steps back neatly to allow me in.

The door clicks softly behind me as I enter into a room that’s bare as bare can be.

Rust grunts, coming up around me and into the kitchen area. “Want anything?” he mumbles around his cigarette, other hand shoved in his pocket. He’s still half-dressed in his work clothes, his tie strewn on the counter, his blazer slumped over a rickety picnic chair perched up in front of a wall of crime scenes and dead bodies. My eyes linger there—how can they not?

“A beer,” I tell him, still looking at those photographs, then at the stacks upon stacks of books. Philosophy, ethics, religion. Names I’d expect only those with PhDs to know.

“Don’t think you’ve had ‘nuff to drink already?”

I shoot him a look. “I think I can handle it, Rust.” He straightens up, raises his brow. I snort, reasoning, “I’ll only have one.”

“One,” he agrees, opening up the fridge and having a rummage around.

White walls and all of them empty, like some sort of psych ward. Half-sure Rust actually did do some time in that type of care, though, so—shouldn’t make any quips about that. I don’t want him thinking I think he’s crazy – he gets enough of that, I’m sure.

Back at my place, though, I’ve got posters or drawings or paintings up around every corner. My niece’s drawing of a mermaid sits on my dresser, and photographs of my family are displayed in the hallway. One up by the TV, I painted myself when I was in high school. About two years after I graduated, they asked if I wanted my portfolio back, and I’d obviously said yes. And I love my stuff! Some ‘cause it’s pretty, others because of memories and whatnot. Guess some people don’t have that creative trait, or they lose it. Or maybe they detest the sentiments, those strings that have been, are and will be attached to things. When my cousin broke up with her boyfriend, she cut her hair and burned his clothes. “I just want to forget him,” she’d snarled. I’d sputtered a laugh into my tea.

Rust plants a Corona down on the counter, already cracked open.

There’s no mirror in here either – I can’t check whether I look as desperate as I feel. When I focus back on him, Rust is taking a swig from his own beer, turning to glance at the crucifix pinned above the messy mattress on the floor. Huh. Didn’t peg him as a Christian.

His honey-blond hair doesn’t look cold to the touch, that’s for sure ‘n’ certain. Wonder if he just wakes up like that or what. Once, Marty had been teasing him at work, even cracking a smile out of the old guy. “Ain’t them just the prettiest curls y’ever seen, buck?” he’d remarked, nudging into me, cooing at him. Silently, in my head, even then, I’d agreed: prettiest curls I’d ever seen. Rust hadn’t looked up to chart my reaction, but, if he had, he’d maybe have seen my fidgeting fingers or hitch of breath. Or maybe he felt it, heard it.

“Sorry to barge in on you like this,” I offer pathetically through a nervous smile.

He blinks, takes another swig, leaning over the counter that separates us. “No, y’aint.”

Jesus, I have to turn my head and shut my eyes for a second. I don’t particularly believe in God, but I ask Him to please give me the strength to resist my urges and act like a normal damn person for at least a few more minutes. And then I apologise for only praying out of convenience. In the face of temptation. This is why people shouldn’t drink – still, doesn’t stop me from downing a good part of my beer.

I turn to the wall and try to turn myself off a little bit. It’s not hard – Rust still has Dora Lange (rest her soul) pinned up on his wall, naked, blue, stiff. I don’t want to know why, so I don’t ask him.

His eyes are adamant on the side of my head. Funny how he never seems to look at me at the same time I’m looking at him. Pisses me off a lot of the time – not just him, but in general. A lot of people share this same fear of not being heard, not being listened to and not being cared about. Men in particular, I’ve noticed, have a tendency to raise their voice over others’, to yell or shout or hit things or push ‘n’ shove. Marty’s that way – a lot of men at the precinct are, too. Women who are raised to be the listeners sometimes act out in the same way, frustrated at all the things they have to care about that men don’t, burdened with manners and politeness. I used to hate having to listen, to wait for the man who interrupted me to finish speaking. Rust always lets people finish their point, for better and for worse. Pisses me off in a different type of way. I can feel his judgement seeping out of him, so potent that’s it’s tangible, lapping at my feet.

He doesn’t push and shove – he’s a listener, too. Of course, he has that male privilege where his silence has a gravity, a magnetic pull, where mine is simply as is. At least he pays attention. Sure, on the surface, it might look like he doesn’t care at all, hunched over a case file at his desk, back turned to me and the rest of the lot, but proximity has its power – assigned workspaces put with his personality, and he knows what’s like and unlike me better than my sister. He’s reading into my refusal to talk, to face him – unlike me.

“So, you’ve given this some thought, then,” Rust says matter-of-factly, and my tummy bubbles up.

I snicker nervously, heart racing. God, I’d expected surprise, disbelief, outright refusal, maybe even a little disgust, but, when I manage to turn around and look at his face again, it just seems to me like a calmness. Stoicism found in the affirmation, maybe, of his expectations. It’s like I’m walking right into one of those little theories of his: a proved hypothesis.

I take another sip from my beer, feeling too shy for my liking. “Well, yeah,” I drawl, slumping over the kitchen counter and propping my chin up to look right back at him in a surge of liquid confidence. “I always think ‘fore I do anything that’s anything, Rust.”

Almost immediately, he retreats, standing up straight and resting the small of his back against the lip of the sink behind him. He hums, glances away. “We both know that’s a lie,” he combats, hands tucked into his pockets, chin tilted up, eyes down. A mouthful of beer numbs the sting of rejection. “What you mean is you think you can justify all your decisions. You think you can justify why you knocked on my door and said what you said��” he elaborates quietly, eliciting a snort from me, “—but, at the end o’ the day, all your decisions boil down to what you feel is right, not what is right.”

“‘n' you think you ‘n’ you alone know what’s right?”

Slate-grey eyes flit up and down my face, like I’m a specimen on a slide.

“I think that the girl who’s stumbled up on a fella’s door asking him to fuck her is less inclined to know, without bias, what’s right, yes.”

I swallow thickly, sucking the remaining flavour of beer off of my tongue before going in for another swig.

Christ.

Not a single bat of his eyes. Not a quiver of his mouth, not a twitch to his nose, not a morsel of natural, human hesitation. Does he have to be so crass? I did the courtesy of making it palatable, at least to my own ears, with a euphemism. But when have I ever known Rust Cohle to water anything down? No drink I’ve ever consumed will match his body’s preference of alcohol content. He’s nursing his beer close to his chest, but who knows what poisons lay dormant in these cabinets?

“Rusty,” I say lowly, maybe asking for a break – I close my eyes for just a second, part because I couldn’t bear it if I caught some sort of disapproval on his face, and part because it’s just past two o’clock in the morning.

Late nights have consumed my life recently, what with that sicko rapist connected to a Christian fertility cult. Children of God – “go forth and multiply”. His confession had turned my blood cold. Johansson had offered to sit in the box instead, but I did it anyway. I went home and cried over it, then came into work the next day to talk to some press and then receive my new assignment.

He hums, taking a drag from his cigarette, swallowing the smoke down. Rust knows how it is. To be honest, I’m probably the one who doesn’t know the half of it. One night at the office, he’d casually confessed to his insomnia, like he was just commenting on the state of the weather ‘n’ nothin’ else. So, I guess I won’t pretend to get it.

I gnaw on the inside of my cheek. “Are you into that whole abstinence thing?”

The weak light above flickers gently as he pauses, turns the question over in his mind. Anyone else would’ve surely laughed.

“I believe that man is susceptible to desire, yes—but he can resist it and its consequences should his willpower be stronger than the false promises posed by that temptation.

I snort again, because, now, I really am tipsy, and I can’t hold in my attitude any longer. It’s not that I think he’s lost it or whatever. It’s just—he’s so—objectively—absurd. Well—“objectively”. He’s got points, but those points lose all meaning in the spiralling darkness of overthought and deep contemplation wherein he’ll explain that everything really means nothing—and he’ll be right about that, sure, but also unintentionally prove a point about himself. I’d ask him what it means when, in a world where everything means nothing, a child will give their friend a flower found on the way to school, but I feel like his answer would be too morbid for my liking. Does that make me an unreliable source? The fact that I want to live?

He's absurd. He’s also a little bit awry in the head. Don’t know what he’s lost or what he’s lookin’ for, but it’s not a good look on him. He’s honest, yes – that’s a good trait. But honesty without kindness is cruelty. And he is kind – underneath, he’s kind, and I know that because of how hard he works to weed out evil people in this world, most times at his own risk. That’s kindness, albeit unconventional, whether he realises it or not.

The kindness almost cancels out his arrogance.

“So, what?” I challenge under the guise of a teasing grin. “You can go mouthin’ off for hours on end about how up themselves religious people and all’at are, but you can’t draw the similarities between their philosophy and your philosophy? How does that work, Rust?”

While I was working that Children of God nightmare of a case, he just couldn’t seem to restrain himself – every bullshit word that left him revealed to me his hubris. Now, I’m not angry, and he’s not stupid – we’re not arguing. In fact, he seems intrigued, lean body shifted toward me. He sets his beer down on the counter, crosses his arms over his chest after securing his cigarette between his lips, and lowers his head as if to listen to me better.

I sigh, continue. “D’you know what I think? I think you oversimplify humanity. You’re a great detective—‘nd I guess you know it—and, within the confines of your job, it serves you well, makes you good in the box. But your assumptions are too general. People are who they are, sure, but they also decide to be those people. By their environment and those who surround ‘em, people make the decisions that define ‘em. A lot of the time, their circumstances ain’t fair. People born into badness are trapped by the badness—either physically, or up in their heads—and they have a tough time escapin’ it.”

Rust inhales the smoke again, the only evidence of it happening being the soft whisp that curls away from his nose. I wonder to myself how his lungs are still standing.

“‘s that how you explain that—homicide case you’re workin’ on?” Three-year-old boy died of neglect, his siblings found locked in cabinets, one in a dog cage, by their mother and stepfather. Rust’s eyes flash silver. “Killer had a tough time?”

Asshole.

I narrow my eyes dangerously. “Don’t be mean, Rusty,” I scold, and he blinks in concession. “I think evil exists. I think it’s complicated. I think you summarise things that ought not to be summarised.”

He’s silent for a heartbeat. Then, his hand comes up to pinch away his cigarette, and he waves it in a small flourish, explaining, “When I say “people”, I mean society. Human culture.”

“Last I checked, Rust, you don’t know everybody on the planet. You don’t know their “culture”, or experiences.” That seems to shut him up. My eyes wander to his broad shoulders, trail along the meat of his arms beneath the cheap, polyester shirt that hugs close to the muscle, and they linger there like the quiet that settles between us.

He nods slowly, once. “Our decisions define us?”

I bob my head, unabashedly staring at the elegant column of his throat, his neck, and the stretch of tan skin that is settled beneath the white undershirt revealed by the first one, two, three buttons which have recently been undone.

He’s quieter when he asks me, “Well, how does this decision define you, then?” There’s nothing malicious about the way he says it, or even lustful – just a calm curiosity.

“Ain’t it obvious?” I grin again, laugh a little, blush hotly. “I’m horny!” I hide my face in my shoulder, trying to compose the hiccups of laughter in my stomach. “I’m sorry,” I snicker, wiping my palm over my brow, my eyes. “This probably isn’t very attractive to you.”

“You’re a very pretty girl,” he replies. He mutters my name solemnly, like we’re in a formal meeting or something.

I glance up, check whether he’ll offer me eye contact again, but he doesn’t – he’s staring at the wall, lost.

I scoff. “You’re a very pretty guy, Rust.”

God willing, none of the boys at the precinct will ever find out about this. If Marty lets it slip that I even asked for Rust’s address, then I’ll never hear the end of it. Worse, everyone’ll think I’m dead-gone over him. Guess I don’t really fit the standards expected of women around here: “wife”, or “whore”. Or “dead”. It’s hard enough to be taken seriously going about pretending I’m not interested in sex at all. Once sex comes into the equation, I’ll be reduced to that and nothing else.

Anxious, I start flicking up under my fingernails. Is Rust already starting to think those things, too? I’m a great detective, but that’s the only capacity in which he’s really known me.

I wring the neck of my bottle. “I should explain—”

He holds his hand up, stating, “I don’t need you to. Do you feel the need to?”

Curious, wary, I watch his face, a blank slate. Still waters run deep. My eyes drift down, to where his hands are together in front of him, one relaxed beside him the other curled around his wrist with two fingers resting on the pulse.

“No,” I reply.

“You thought it over,” he says, eyes tilting up at the ceiling, aloof, bored, maybe. His words are sort of monotone, like he’s reciting a passage from a book that he’s just recently read: “You chose me because you know me. You haven’t been sleeping well. You’re stressed, you’re scared, you’re frustrated.” He blinks. “You’re attracted to me due to some—unfortunate trigger beyond your control in the reptilian part of your brain.” Brief as the flicker of a candle in a still room, he looks over me, brow raised slightly as if daring me to tell him that he’s wrong. He pauses again, takes a short puff. “It makes you think I can take care o’ your needs.”

Look at the state of him: sallow and wilting on the inside. Reducing me down to a sentence or two, and being right about it.

“Well, can you?” I ask weakly, feeling small. He looks over me, blinks blankly. “How do you take care of your needs?” No reply. “You do have needs, don’t you?” I remark, tapping the rim of my bottle to my warm temple. “Programming ‘n’ whatnot.”

He tilts his head away in dismissal.

I smile, more to myself than to him. “Beat off in the shower, is it?”

For a second, Rust is still. My eyes grow heavy, admiring the strong profile of his nose. He then nods helplessly, like there’s no point in trying to lie.

I hum, a soft, self-satisfied smirk edging its way onto my face. “Must feel like a sin,” I snicker.

He squints slightly, like he disagrees with my logic, but does not interrupt to protest.

“I remember takin’ baths as a teenager and double-checkin’, triple-checkin’ I locked the door,” I confess. “Couldn’t take my time. ‘S that how it is for you, Rust?” I probe, tilting my head to the side, losing his eyes as quickly as I catch them. “You ever let yourself enjoy it? Let yourself want it—?”

“I don’t want it,” he snaps quietly.

“But your programmin’ says you do, right?” I point out, scrambling to hold onto the flaw in his argument. I search his face, my own bright, eager.

He quirks up a miraculous smile, and I myself burst into a wide grin. Still smiling—though, you’d have to admit, it’s such a strange sight, sort of gratifying, almost patronising—he shifts his weight between his feet, scratches at his nose with his pinkie, sniffs, takes a long drag of his dying cigarette. I know he must feel disjointed, though he doesn’t show it: he’s misstepped, and I’ve caught him. And how often does Rust Cohle misstep? I should’ve checked the news for a blue moon tonight.

Interested, now, is he? Breathing quietly, rolling his jaw – he’s entertaining the competition I have goin’ up in my head. From the looks of the gentle smirk on his face, he’s enjoying it, too.

“No,” he corrects with a dry husk to his voice. “No, I know what I want, and, when I think those things are necessary or useful, I know how to get them.”

In this type of context, I’d like to see him try. Though, he is an undeniably attractive man. Thick, solid all the way through, like a rich wood. But he’s got these brittle eyes: fraying.

He continues: “Most of the time, though, what we want is born out of dangerous feelings, like rage or lust. Ruminating on the consequences of those potential actions seems to me the more sensible thing to do than to just leave it and find out.” I sniff. “Desire is inescapable for most, including the sexual kind. I feel it—“ he eyes how I wriggle beneath my skin, “—you feel it. But it can be resisted. You’re lettin’ it dictate what you do ‘n’ say. If I do to you what you want me to, have you thought about how it might affect things down the line? Tomorrow, next week, next month—?”

“Yes,” I hiss, a little too emotionally, such that a gleam of satisfaction crosses his grey eyes at the strain and stretch of my voice. Christ. Desperate much?

I take several seconds to think before allowing myself to speak again, all while staring at him straight on and refusing to look away: I’d just die if I let him catch me out. “Well, how can you be sure of the fallout? How do you know the good won’t outweigh the bad? Not “you” specifically, but, also, yeah, “you” specifically. I can think about something morally ambiguous, and I can evaluate the potential consequences, and, just as you are satisfied to observe, I will decide to follow through with this somethin’ and deal with what I gotta deal.”

He sighs. “Because decisions define a person?”

I tuck my hair tight behind my ears. “Yes.”

And he hums – that beautiful noise resonates in my stomach before sinking down there, low, its weight a comfort. “I agree with you in that respect,” he admits.

A laugh erupts out of me like the sputter of an engine. Luckily, I’m easy to laughter – it’s like me, as is my genuine grin. “Rust Cohle’s agreein’ with me on somethin’?—Call the police!”

“We are the police,” he replies smartly, watching me snort and smile and grow flushed in the face. I feel very grateful to that beer – at least my giddiness can be blamed on the effects of alcohol and save me from embarrassment.

As I simmer down, he looks away, adds, “I agree to an extent. People all think that they’re one-of-a-kind. That they make these—amazing decisions. They speak and do and walk and play and work and fuck and eventually die – all of ‘em.”

“You’re part of the people,” I argue.

He hums, nodding in acceptance. “Yes.”

“If a person acts due to their instinct, whether it’s succumbing to it or fighting against it, then isn’t man simply his programming?” He lowers his head. “You can be aware of it, and you can be a part of it, too. Who are you to deny yourself the good parts?”

He fiddles with his cigarette, svelte fingers nimble and acute. I cross my legs, flex my hips; he notices.

“Because of the consequences,” he replies, a soft whisper.

I thought that everything meant fuck-all?

For someone who sees no meaning in life, he sure seems to spend a lot of time contemplating it. Here, I thought I’d have hot hands sliding all over me, gripping, spreading, pushing, but instead find myself defence in an unprecedented debate.

Rust is breathing slower, deeper, almost unable, now, to look me in the eyes, even look at me in general, whereas, before, it had been a choice, whether that choice be conscious or unconscious. His cigarette burns weakly in his fingers, forgotten. The muscle in his jaw flexes, his expression hollow.

My body buzzes with want, leaves me scrambling for breath like I’ve just run a race. I want. I want, I want, I want. The rough pads of his fingertips, the surest and most confident I’ll have ever known. Sharp tongue, quick and precise. Something about how he smells. All my compliments to pheromones – even in the heavy musk of the bar, I’d smelled him, ashy, warm, alive, and now it’s wreathing all around. Or maybe that’s just me – it’s like when you try to take someone’s pulse with your thumb, and all you’re feeling is your own heartbeat.

I want – my breath trembles with it.

“Rust,” I say softly. He shakes his head a little, looking away still, vulnerable like a wild animal. I sigh, gnawing at my lip. “I really want it. I—I’ve—it’s not just a rash decision,” I explain. “I’ve wanted it for a while, now.”

He shudders – I notice. “Since when?”

I huff out a sheepish laugh, fix my eyes on my restless hands. “You won’t remember it—”

“I will.”

His voice sounds clogged. It sobers me right up.

“A year back,” I tell him. “You were working at the office—late, in the dark. You called me, and I asked you why, and you said—it was because you were tired and thinkin’.” I glance up to check if he’s maybe looking, but he’s not – he’s turned his head even further away. The soft, gentle curls of his hair tempt me.

Blindly reaching for the bottle, securing it almost immediately, he finishes the rest of his beer, then sets it back down.

“I—” he begins, scratching his nose, “—I was—tired.” He pauses to re-thicken his voice. “And—thinking—”

He doesn’t finish his sentence, but the both of us know what he said that night: Of you. Thinking of you—of me .

My stomach flips, leaving me almost nauseous, just like it did when I first heard those words. At first, I thought I’d misheard, that I was so tired my mind was playing tricks on me. Then, I thought he was being cruel, or maybe he was drunk. Those two instances weren’t—aren’t—unlike him, but he never, ever calls to be mean or to be stupid. He’d been quiet and warm through the phone after that, a presence so thick I could’ve sworn he had his arms around me right then. I hadn’t slept well for a time, then, of course, and that made it all the more vivid. His voice had made me shiver all the way through as he told me he had to get back to work.

When I saw him the next morning, I couldn’t look at him. It was the first time I couldn’t, not wouldn’t. It was also the first time I felt him paying attention to me.

I shift, ask the question I’d wondered since that call: “Why?”

A pause.

Then: “You brought me coffee that morning,” he explains softly, speaking to the wall opposite. “I was—looking at the mug on my desk – it was yours. Green one you like to use.” He sniffs. “And…” He teeters on the precipice of that word but does not finish the thought.

Hmm. That’s something to think about. Rust Cohle thinking about me and not picking apart why and why he shouldn’t be. It had been a mindless enough gesture – it’s not unheard of me to be makin’ coffee for other people in the office, not because I have to but because I like to. For the people I can stand, that is: Johansson always, and him for me; Cathleen; Marty, when I’m not pissed off at him; and Rust, from time to time. Everybody knows that green mug is mine, though – nobody touches it, not even the boss. Rust reads far too much into things. Most of the time, he’s dead-on. I should’ve known from the moment I placed that coffee on his desk, from the sharpening of his eyes (that did not spare me a glance) that lingered on my lingering hand on his table, that he knew. Figured out something I hadn’t even quite figured out myself. Not until later that night.

I wonder if he’s ever thought of me when fucking his own hand. I wonder if he thinks about me sometimes, when he can’t sleep, in between horror stories and brutal blows and uncovering the secret truths of the universe. I do, sometimes.

When I push myself back to my feet, stand up, Rust’s attention springs back, and he watches me, looks at me.

Quietly, I relish in the satisfaction of his stare, crossing on light feet to toss my empty beer bottle in the bin. He steps aside to let me open the cupboard under the sink, his hand curled in a loose fist by his side. I’m not trying to tease him – I grant him the space he so clearly needs, retreating about five paces back, leaning slightly myself against the counter.

I could say anything right now, no matter how insane, and he’d treat it with total and utter respect. I could reveal to him the reaction my body has to seeing his fingers fiddle like that with his cigarette, and he’d manage to identify the cogs and wheels in what, when you step back, actually turns out to be a hidden machine. Christ, I could probably remove all of my clothes, stand naked in front of him, and he’d look on as one would look on at a piece of evidence at work. Going over the details, once, twice, scribbling it all down in that big, leather ledger.

Here’s what I think: he needs it. For all his talk about how unoriginal, how predictable mammals are at the end of things, he probably knows that himself. The tension in his jaw, the perpetual tightness of breath. That clipped way of talking he has, wound so tight around himself, like a compressed spring fighting its natural urge to let go.

I could make him let go. Maybe. I wish he’d let me try. It’s nothing possessive, really: wanting to be the one to unravel his tightly coiled body. Just—the release of seeing him be. No thinking in particular – just being.

He is still, however, uncommonly mute, avoiding my eyes.

I sigh. I ask him tentatively, “You think I ought’a be ashamed o’ myself?” biting down on the fleshy inside of my cheek.

“No,” he contradicts.

“But—you think I should be findin’ my fun elsewhere, with—some other guy?”

He sort of pins his hands behind his back, pressing his weight against them there at the edge of the sink. He looks a lot taller from this angle. “I think there’s a lotta fellas stumblin’ over themselves to be with a girl like you.”

“Maybe,” I scoff, “but my reptilian brain don’t want none of ‘em.“ I blush warmly when I glance up and he’s there watching me, though there’s no bashfulness at all on his side of it.

I expect him to maybe dart his eyes away again, like he does, and then walk me to the door, maybe even to the car if I haven’t offended him too badly, and then call it a night. I could stuff it in; I can compartmentalise. Monday would carry on as it always does, except now without the wondering and the yearning and the delusion. Did he have to be so good-looking? His cheap, wrinkled shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows—like they are now—and those lean forearms braced up on the table, caging in the neatly set-out notes scrawled up in his ledger, like they have mind to escape. And he’s—beautiful. He’s tall. Out-of-place sort of tall, where he has this bend to his neck, sometimes, as to not draw attention to himself. Other times, though, he stands to full height, regal, elegant, authoritative, like when he comes out o’ the box.

He sees into people. He feels it all so deeply.

And he’s looking at me, seeing into me, deeply. His eyes are brittle like china pieced back together with store-bought glue. The low light casts long shadows down his neck and harsh face.

“Come here to me, Rust,” I say to him, beckoning him over with a tilt of my head. To my surprise, he does. He does immediately, peeling himself off the counter, eyes drifting somewhere just behind me as if disinterested.

He stubs his cigarette out on an old plate, abandons it there officially, before stepping slowly towards me, feet never dragging, dodging my searching eyes like the plague.

Hmm. Maybe I made a good argument “for” to his “against”. Or maybe he was never “against” to begin with. I’ll watch him carefully tomorrow and see if there was anything I missed.

I reach up and touch his face gently. I used to do this with my husband before he passed, and he’d close his eyes and whisper my name and lean into the touch, tender, loving – my fingers shake slightly with the memory. Rust Cohle does none of that, because he is nothing like my husband. He’s perfectly rigid against my fingertips; his stare flits briefly up right into my soul, his mouth pressed in a hard line. Everything about him is so sharp. The ridge of his cheekbones, the defiant slant of his nose. The lean muscle of his arms and shoulders, slightly sinewy just beneath the skin.

But when I brush my thumbs up along his eyebrows, easing the sharp line between them, he sighs and closes his eyes, neck bowing down, still as stiff as before, just—different. A small gap, an opening, to that locked room of his upstairs.

“Rust,” I whisper, nose brushing his. He hums again, lowly, eyes shut. “What do you think of us havin’ sex?”

“Sex,“ he replies softly, “is the illusion of connection constituted by the release of a mess of happy hormones, simply by touching all the right places—and nothin’ more.”

I hum and watch the look on his face grow brittle as our breaths mingle closely. God, he’s so near to me that my head swings in a bout of lightheadedness, heady, vision centring in on him and only him, such that I wouldn’t know if this place was burning down all around, even if the flames started eating us alive.

“I think you’re full o’ shit, Rusty. Know how I know that?”

He sighs shakily. “How?” It’s like the word is dragged right from the pit of his chest, barely a breath to show for the effort of it.

“I can feel you against my leg.”

He swallows thickly, but he does not blush, and he does not open his eyes. And, contrary to what he might seem, Rust is not cold like stone. When my fingers grow more confident, when they trace and drag lightly along the line of his cheeks, he is warm there. His pulse, when I find it, exists and is hot and slightly erratic, a fact that leaves my mouth dry and open. I can feel the inflexion of his throat as he swallows again, the shift of the skin and the rhythm of his heartbeat, the gentle influence of his breathing.

I wait for him to say something, but he doesn’t. So, I ask him, “Can I kiss you?” ever so gently.

Softer still, he replies, “Yes,” with that slight Southern whistle of his, barely moving.

Give me strength. Give me strength.

That look on his face is filling me with a delicious, vibrating power. As I stretch my neck up to brush a kiss against the corner of his mouth, my eyes are open and watching him, charting him: Rust breathes strongly out of his nose, eyes still determinedly shut, like he’s absent and meditating. He is not tough as stone – parts of him are soft. He barely returns the kiss, but, as far as my brain processes, his lips are soft. Hesitant, maybe.

Then, these soft lips part, and he is sucking in a hot, shuddering breath, capturing me in a deep kiss, as if to breathe all of me in, a strong hand threading through my hair. It hurts a little at first – a small noise escapes my throat at the slight shoots of pain tugging at the roots – but Rust doesn’t seem to notice. Not at first. No, he’s still breathing me in. His lips are dry, rough, a push and tug, a twist, and he’s kissing like a punch, knocking the breath right out of my lungs. Whatever oxygen I manage to hold onto is sucked out of me promptly.

I whine, my body going all slack and tired as he smooths the hair out of my face, palms dragging clean back across my cheeks. Those hands cradle the back of my head, making it impossible to keep my eyes open.

Content, I sigh, eyes succumbing to the sensation and falling shut. The last thing I see is his own eyes slipping open to look at my face.

Boy, he’s a good kisser. Must be that lizard brain he has such a distaste for.

My fingers blindly reach and fumble at his belt, hooking into the waist, pulling him flush against me. Rust must forget what he’s doing for a moment, and he pauses where he is, in limbo, eyes far away. When I begin to unthread his belt from its quietly clinking buckle, he goes stiff again, blinks rapidly before perceiving me.

Holy shit, he’s gorgeous.

His hands hover over my shoulders, not quite committed to the contact.

He’s seeing me—really seeing me—as I unzip his trousers and spit crudely into my palm and curl around the length of him, warm, tight. I begin to understand the gentle throb and strain he feels, a delightful thrill running rapid all through my insides. He feels deliciously alive.

But then he turns his head away, neck straining up, breath choked back in his throat. His hands come away, raised, it looks like, as if trying to seem non-confrontational, trying to come away unscathed from a bad situation.

My stomach burns with desire. “Let yourself like it, Rust,” I mumble against his cheek. “Are you here with me?”

I can feel him swallow.

“Yes,” he responds. I guide his face to me, stroking his cock confidently once, twice, as encouragement, maybe. Temptation. Whatever you want to call it. My mouth waters, my head goes airy, when I feel his sex twitch in my embrace.

“Kiss me again, then.”

And he does. Brows furrowed as if in pain, he does, with the tip of his nose dragging and pressing into my cheek. He kisses me sweetly once, then again, and then pants down hotly into my mouth, hovering there before sliding his tongue deep inside, close, smooth.

I let myself love it. I let myself let go with every kiss he blesses me with, growing looser and easier and lighter each second.

The weight of him in my hand inspires a beautiful urge to have him lay down and let me feel every part of his body. Even though his hips stutter, he doesn’t buck up into my fist, doesn’t whine, doesn’t moan, doesn’t curse. Not yet. He just breathes and breathes, and kisses me and kisses me, like it’s all he was set on Earth to do. All he’s allowing himself to do.

Desperate, perhaps, my thighs are pressed against his, feeling unnaturally weak and warm. The throb between my legs coincides with my heart rushing in my ears, a steady ache, impatient. Part of me wants to drag this out as long as possible, because what if this never happens again?—and another part wants to push him inside me already, have him fill me up, fuck me stupid.

This thought stuffs me up to the brim, like cotton punched down into a pillowcase. I whine shallowly and try to slot his thigh between my own.

A switch in his brain must flick on.

It’s like he’s inside my head, like he’s in on my desperation, like he can see and feel every sinful image and thought circulating my alighted brain. He knows it all so well, such that he uses his hips to press us firmly against the counter, spreads my legs with the nudge of his foot between mine, and immediately pushes the rough pads of his fingers right where I need it, through the fabric of my skirt, letting me grind myself against him, hips and all. He circles there generously. I can feel my need dripping from me. He can too, no doubt.

I sigh, he breathes. I gasp, he breathes. My eyes flutter open and shut, but he looks on, eyes half-lidded but stare immovable.

He then lifts his knee to place against my cunt.

“That feels good, don’t it?” he says gently, rocking me over his knee up and down, back and forth, fingers digging into the soft skin of my hips.

My legs widen. When I gasp out weakly, he raises his brow and scans my face, like he had predicted the shaky, wordless nod that I offer to him too late in return.

“Did you want it like this, girl?” His voice is low, intimate, a hit of something just shy of addictive. “Or did you want somethin’ else, too?”

He kisses the hollow of my neck.

His other hand grips at my ass, up my skirt, kneading the flesh there, manipulating it, and his fingers ghost my slit, spreading me around his knee. He fucks up into my hand. I slide my fingers through his hair, which is soft and warm like butter.

Fuck him. Fuck him and his stupid, pretty curls. I’ve proved my point: regardless of whatever act he may try to put on afterwards, we’ll both know that Rust isn’t as numb as he wants to be, that I made him feel good, that I made him want me, and that he’s hot-blooded and thrumming with life. I can feel how alive he is . I hope he thinks of this again some time, whether by himself or surrounded by people. I hope it drives him a bit mad, remembering this.

A hot, sharp breath fans out across my cheek, his mouth slotting back over mine, open, daring me.

I rut against his knee, my fingers teasing the wet head of his cock. I look down between us, at my hand on him, with half a mind to drop onto my knees and make him cum down my throat.

Rust lets out a grunt and swallows hard again.

Then, he gently grabs my wrist and pulls my hand out of his pants, leaving me dazed and confused. With nimble fingers, he unzips my skirt, pushing it over my hips and dragging his hands over my bare skin. He asks me, “You want the bed?”

I step out of the pool of fabric around my feet, slide my shoes off. “‘s not a bed.”

I slide my fingers beneath his sweaty, white undershirt, feeling the taut muscle there, feeling the steady breaths that contradict his racing pulse. He holds my eyes, dipping slightly when I dip, tilting when I tilt. “Seems like one to me.”

How unlike him.

A smile spreads over my face, and his pupils blow wide, dark, imploring. “You wait ‘n’ see what happens when the dust-mites turn up.”

His eyes on me alone are enough to leave me breathless, chest caving in on itself. Of course, when he kisses me softly, it only makes things worse – his long fingers curl around the base of my throat, watching me watching him, and his other hand slides up under the hem of my blouse, palm spread over my bellybutton.

I sigh, try not to squirm.

“You want the bed?” he repeats, heavy, rough. I bite back a needy whine that sits at the back of my mouth. His fingertips press down slightly into my pulse, tightening my breathing.

I nod. “Yeah.”

Think of all the times I’ve sulked over his lack of eye contact with me. Was I annoying? Uninteresting? That, obviously, was an immature way of looking at things, definitely not improved by my distinct femininity undergoing some kind of unspoken disapproval by most I met on the job. This is the most present he has ever been in a moment with me around.

As he pulls himself away, steps back, his eyes are darting over my face, less like he’s judging me and more like he’s trying to find and memorise every detail. I do that, sometimes: if I pay well enough attention, it feels like I’m re-living the moment when remembering.

His hands slot sensibly into his pockets as if his cock isn’t blushing and poking out of his fly right now, belt undone, hanging low about his narrow hips.

Legs don’t fail me now. I slink out of the glowing kitchen and carry on to where the mattress lies in a dim, blue corner, the strange crucifix watching over, a long shadow cast over the empty wall upon which it hangs. He follows shortly behind me, his warmth radiating out onto my back.

I pause and look out onto the darkness revealed behind the half-open slats of the floor-to-ceiling blinds that shield the room from the window to the outside world.

Rust’s presence is intoxicating behind me. He smells like cigarette smoke, still, enticing. I’m trying to quit, but he makes it damn hard. His nose is just shy of my hair, his body so close to enveloping me into him – the prospect of it makes me shiver in delight. I must hallucinate his fingertips along my spine.

I unbutton my blouse with slow fingers, then slide it off and undo my bra.

His breathing is level and grounding by my ear as he comes close, sliding his strong, wide hand up my stomach, along my ribs, and cups under my soft breast. He rubs over my nipple in gentle circles before squeezing over me warmly. He then comes around to pinch the creamy tissue gentle between his fingers and thumb, closing his hot mouth over, drawing along his feverish tongue. I sigh, stroke his hair, let him press soft pecks and kisses to the curve of the soft flesh and to my sternum.

My fingers, cupped around the nape of his neck, dip under the collar, cool. This touch, for some reason, causes him to make some sort of breathless, pathetic noise against me. His eyes are half-shut.

“Anything else philosophical y’wanna get out before we fuck?” I quip smartly (though, not feeling so smart altogether), hand placed innocently on his hip.

He lifts his head, removes his hands from my body – he looks so tragically beautiful in this light. “You want me inside you?” he asks genuinely, seemingly aloof to the fact I’m naked in front of him, open and wanton and pressing my thighs together, his eyes never drifting from mine.

“What do you want, Rust?” I whisper.

He seems to really think about it – he’s always thinking. Briefly, his eyes flit down to my mouth. Then, he looks away, scratches at his forehead.

After a moment longer, he swallows thickly and tips his head down over to the bed, tells me, “Lie down on the mattress,” in a gentle, decisive tone. He’s so soft-spoken – it makes my toes curl.

I do as told, transfixed by the dark shadow in his eyes, and sink down to sit and then recline back on his coarse mattress, coarse bedsheets, with my weight on my forearms and chin tilted up towards him. He watches me, tucking his thick cock back into his underwear.

Still fully dressed in his work attire, he takes a step forward, looming over me, powerful, assertive. Saliva pools in my mouth—again—as I play with the thought of him sitting heavy on my tongue with his stomach tight, shaking, hands in my hair, fucking down my throat. I would let him. Hell, I’d probably let him do anything he wanted to me at this point.

Does he know that? Maybe. I don’t know.

As he reaches his hand out too smooth the hair out of my face, I try to figure it out, but I can’t – he seems too wrapped up in his own desire to be thinking anything at the moment. I feel a flicker of satisfaction jump up in the pit of my stomach. Or maybe that’s something else.

“Lie back, girl,” he tells me.

My cunt flexes.

I thump onto my back, breathless. “Take off your shirt, Rust.”

Without replying, he sinks down to his knees in front of me, my thighs. Instinctively, I prop myself up and watch him unbutton that wrinkled shirt all the way down, shrug it over his broad shoulders. I could fuck myself silly just over the thought of those shoulders, I remark inwardly. He tugs the wifebeater over his head, lean muscles catching the low light, strong, study, solid, and tosses the thing to the side thoughtlessly. My hands reach out to touch him, to feel him and know him. When my fingers press into his skin, glide up his neck and down over his chest, he sighs deeply. He then carefully removes my hands, urging me to sprawl down under him.

“Said lie back, didn’t I?”

Rust doesn’t say another word before placing his large hands on my knees and easing them apart, lowering himself to press pecks and slow, open-mouthed kisses to my thighs, closer, closer, stroking my sensitive skin gently. I almost flinch at his every touch, like it burns. His face is awful serious, like he’s concentrating. I wriggle in anticipation, eager.

“Rust,” I whisper purposelessly. He looks up, hums, searches my face for anything the matter.

I watch on desperately, on the brink of feral distress. A sob clogs my throat as he kisses my fluttering stomach, ducking his head down and curling his forearms, his hands, around my thighs. The dark stamp of his bone-bird tattoo curls over his arm. I realise he is waiting for my attention to return to him, his eyes patient but glazed over with something cardinal. Hungry.

“Can—?”

“Yes.”

He hums. And then he breathes hotly over my underwear before pressing his nose right there into the damp fabric, inhaling my scent there. I whimper at the pressure he applies with the strong bridge of his nose, at the wetness of his open mouth against me. He breathes heavily into me, groaning slightly beneath it all – I can’t tell past the thrumming of my heart in my ears.

“Rust,” I whisper again, my shoulder straining with the task of keeping me up and looking down at the sight of his sweet head buried between my glistening thighs.

“Lie back.”

He kisses me through my underwear, dutifully kneading the flesh of my hips, my inner thighs.

I thump back against the mattress, helpless, keening into his touch as this grey man roughly tugs my underwear down, down, all the way down, until they’re clean off my body, long gone, and then returns his nose to the cleft of my pussy, unseaming me with his tongue, opening me up, breathing me in. It’s enough to draw a shallow, hoarse cry from me. He doesn’t say anything, and I can’t say anything, biting down on my white knuckles.

Rust licks warm over my clit, sucking gently on the bud of nerves (then not so gently), before sliding down, down through my very centre.

Whining breathily, the twist in my stomach tightens and spasms as he presses my hips and thighs right down against the mattress, slow, strong, giving me time to notice it, realise it, give into it, deny the natural instinct to curl my limbs tight all over his face, his neck, his mouth.

Holy fuck. Rust Cohle has his face buried between my legs right now. I have Rust Cohle’s tongue pushing deep into my cunt – he sighs softly, a sound with its own powerful gravity a black hole to envelop me in, and grinds his hips against the edge of the mattress for a split second, just once. My mind pulses with the thought of making him cum. I wonder if he feels the same hunger.

Then, he’s sinking his long, elegant fingers into me, one, then two, and just the knowledge that those fingers belong to him makes my thighs quiver and shake, makes me sigh again. Thick, confident, they curl inside, slow like an experiment, right up to the knuckle. When he taps up against me, when I squeal and crimp up into his hold, he returns himself to mouth dutifully over my clit. My hand threads itself into his hair, holding him steady – I offer a breathless moan when his grip across my hips loosen, an invitation to begin rolling myself up over his pretty face. He pulls his fingers out of me, wet and hot, and encourages my thighs upon his beautiful shoulders, clinging onto them urgently. He shudders a little, I think, when I lock them firmly around his head and grind myself shamelessly against his mouth, his nose. He moves his jaw, his face, in tandem.

I cum after a while like that, because how can I not? The searing buzz reaches a roiling static.

I go loose, moaning softly, melted down flat, and stroke fuzzy fingers through Rust’s pretty hair as he sucks my clit still, as he inhales again and sighs again, reduced to something primitive and needy.

Thick, my heartbeat throbs and echoes like a drum in my skull, threatening. I feel so full that I could mistake the beat of pleasure for nausea pressing in my throat. It was silly to think that this could all be satisfied just from one time. My eyes closed, Rust’s light touch over my abdomen, up to my throat, is acute and heightened, like a million tiny, individual sparks. His fingers fumble over my jaw, then press lightly over my pulse.

He retreats just as I’m playing with the hairs at the nape of his neck, coming to stand to full height above me, unthreading his belt from his trousers with quiet, precise hands. I press my shaking thighs together, watching him breathe strongly through his nose, trying to remain somewhat respectable in the presence of the darkening look in his eyes that is locked down on my body.

He pauses, wipes some shine from his nose. Before he can continue with whatever, I find myself sitting up on my knees, grabbing his hips hard enough to bruise all pretty and purple, shoving the trousers down to his knees, and palming him through his boxers.

We don’t have to say anything. He just watches me passively, pushing my hair back again, behind my ears, my shoulders, rolling my earlobe softly between his fingertips.

I remove his underwear, take him into my mouth, thick and long and wanting; he sighs, holds my head with two steady hands.

When was the last time someone helped him like this? I honestly couldn’t have told you, even given a loose theory, prior to this moment: Rust is simultaneously the hottest and most non-sexual being I’ve ever come across in my life. He just happens to be beautiful; he just happens to inspire these sort of feelings choking up inside me. No overarching intention that he’ll ever admit to, no vanity, no preening. So strict to himself, so tight, like a piston, something that fights and pushes and hurts.

So, as I hold him firmly and suck at the head of his blushing cock, kissing him, I watch his face, savour the tart taste of him, and press my thighs together: he’s becoming warmer, looser.

Still, as much as I want him, I know he’s wanted me. However vague he tells it, he’s wanted me. Good Lord, he looks even more stressed now, somehow, than when we had just been talkin’. Hands gently cradling my skull, he tilts his head away, watches the cross on the wall, as he succumbs to it, maybe, and begins to gently, languidly fuck my face. I tuck a hand between my thighs, and I love him, my other with the fingers digging into his hip, his ass. If I’m lucky, maybe it’ll leave some sort of mark, just to remind him I was here, so that, when he’s being all indifferent again, with his eyes lowered to the floor as he shares a report with me at my prim, little desk, we’ll both know that we were once in this room together, here like this.

Rust breathes and breathes, almost mechanically, and slides his cock further into my mouth. The weight of him in there drives me half-insane. If I could consume him, envelop him, and we could be one and the same, I’d readily allow it. When he sinks deeper still down my throat, I sigh around him, rub myself the way I like.

His eyes are determinedly shut, like some part of him refuses to be here.

Before I can make him cum, he shakes his head and tugs my hair back a little bit, mumbling for me to stop and sit away.

For all his mouthiness just a half hour ago, would you look at him now?—Rust Cohle, plundered by the human sensation of speechlessness. I’ve never seen him out of his element before. When he comes down and cages me with his body, hot skin flush against hot skin, I don’t mean that in a bad sense. Shit, he’s far from it. But there’s nothing to say. Nothing of note, nothing to pick apart, no deeper meaning, no theory. Just an itch that has to be scratched. He wants, he is, and it’s heaven to see.

In the dark, he sinks in to me as he is, eliciting from me a soft moan that curls over the shell of his ear. I have to bite down on his shoulder when comes the push, the stretch, the sink, the comfort of him inside. I curl my legs around his waist and grab at his ass, willing him deeper still. He shudders silently over me, thick ripples of pleasure rolling through his lean body.

I curse, but I’m sure it barely registers with him.

His head lifts and his eyes clamp shut as he braces an arm against the wall, lifting one of my legs up over his hip and fucking into me deeper, slipping out and in, and again, and again. I know what I’d see if I took a look down, saw his cock pumping into me, but I can hardly do anything but buck my hips up to meet his effort, my stomach stuttering with that building pressure, hands gripping desperately around his neck and shoulders.

Though, I’m not even sure it is effort that’s driving him.

I mumble into his shoulder, dumb, focussing on the feel and press of him in my belly. I doubt he’s really aware of anything more than the sensation of it, evident from the small grunt that passes his lips as he fucks deep in me. His stomach presses heavier down onto mine, crushing a delicious pressure there, teasing out a long, breathy whimper. He snakes an arm around my hips, pushes his free hand to the back of my knee, tilting my legs back a little more, and then pulls me wider. Tight, he moves me how he wants me, my flesh dipping and carving, fucking himself raw with me, with my hot cunt. His mouth moves over mine, not kissing me, not speaking, just there, present, hot, panting. He doesn’t open his eyes, so I close mine, and I breathe.

Rust stutters and cums and spills over into me with a grunt. He pants sharply, harshly, rhythmically into my mouth, tense again, and then he collapses over my body, and he lays there. I lay there too, burning on the far inside.

I think he only really remembers I’m there when I shift under him.

His eyelashes brush against my cheek. “Sorry,” he murmurs, but the sound of his voice scrapes directly against my brain with the shock of a flesh-wound.

I assume he’s referring to the thick cum that I can feel leaking out of me now. He shifts his hips, adjusting himself in the grip of my cunt. My fingers wrap around his arms, squeeze as I feel him easing out.

“It’s okay,” I reply.

He glances down between us and guides himself out with a lewd noise, swallowing hard. I shiver.

Quiet, sedated, he shrugs his trousers, his underwear, off of his ankles, slipping the bedsheet over both our naked selves. His hand spreads and flattens warm over my abdomen, feeling the gentle swell and sink of the breaths I take and release.

790 notes · View notes

fantasynsuch · 2 days ago

Note

Hi😊

I love how you write and since you were asking for writing requests I have one (for 2012 Rust ofc):

It's possible a combination of 2 prompts?

If it is then:

1-Angst prompt(keeping things from the other to spare their feelings)

And 8- soft kissing prompts ( kissing them while cleaning their wounds)

Thank you so much for writing for us and don't feel pressured to write this if you don't want to!

( by the way have you heard Experience from Ludovico Einaudi? I think it's perfect for the jj series and for TD in general)

“I didn’t know for days.”

“I-”

“Days, Rust.” You cut him off, voice cracking jaggedly as you took in his appearance. Never had he looked so beaten and small, so physically fragile.

Every part of your nervous system felt as if it was breaking down. You hated being in hospitals more than anything and you were due to crumble any minute now.

What a fucked couple of weeks.

“I’ve done enough. Couldn’t bother to ask you here…” He rasped. It was a weak as shit excuse and you both knew it. The scoff you offered in reply was a harsh lashing to his already feeble resolve,

“You say that yet here you are. Always doin' more and botherin' me more than I can put into words.”

That was mean. He deserved it.

Partly.

You pushed down the rising bile soured with devastation in your throat. You weren’t here to fight, even if that's all you knew how to do now.

“I don’t know if it’ll breach your thick skull but…when Maggie called me about what happened…my heart just about gave out. I mean that.” You said solemnly, shaking hands starting to bunch at your sides.

God, you didn’t know the last time you cried over this man but you remember just how easy he made it.

“Maggie called?” It was almost funny how bad he was at tampering down his shock at that information.

“Yeah. Imagine that.” You huffed dryly, wrapping your arms around yourself as you took a seat in the flimsy chair opposite his hospital bed. You continued,

“I almost didn’t answer. But I figured she wouldn’t call after all this time for nothin’. I made sure of that years ago…” You looked anywhere but him. His window seemed like a portal to nothingness with how dark it was outside. Like reality didn’t exist beyond these four walls.

Clearing your throat you shifted back toward him,

“Marty said you need a place to stay so I set up a room for you.”

“No that won’t-”

“I wasn’t askin’.”

Rust makes no move to speak further.

“Plus if I get sick of you fast enough…I’ll just hand you off back to Marty. Just figured you’d want more breathin’ room than his bachelor pad.”

That gets a wry wheeze out of him, though he looks on the verge of breaking. Marty mentioned something being different now. That something within Rust had shifted during this whole experience that couldn’t quite be explained.

You’d keep your questions for later.

Sitting in a charged bubble of silence for what felt like forever, taking each other in to the fullest extent, you break it to reach for a clean rag and soak it in a basin that rested close by in the room.

The care you took in dotting at his marred, tender skin could’ve had him worshipping you at your feet but he wouldn't ruin this with words. A feeling of warmth and hope he hadn’t known in over a decade encased him at your gentle action, leaving him feeling like an exposed livewire.

There was no telling where you’d end up. If things would ever be as they were before.

But with a barely there kiss to his hairline, it felt like a start to the repairment of a soul tie left buried too long ago.

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fantasynsuch · 4 months ago

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10 Years Later: Zevran

How can we have the Crows as a faction in DA4 and not have a cameo from the best Crow of them all!?

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fantasynsuch · 6 months ago

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I HAVE TO TELL SOMEONE

I feel like Rustin gives the best head imaginable, like incomprehensibly good at it.

The way you guys are coming out of the woodwork lately lmfao I love every single one of you. <3

But yes. You're absolutely right. 💯

As I mentioned in my first set of headcanons, Rust would absolutely use this as a way to get out of his head after a long day. 👀

You've never had a partner—male or female—that was as good as giving head as Rustin Cohle. It was like his life depended on it, like he couldn't quit until he knew you were exhausted and close to passing out.

Doesn't matter how he has you, either. Laying on the couch, sitting on the counter, even if you're busy washing dishes. He'll crouch down on his knees behind you and bury his face between your legs in no time.

Likes it when he catches you unawares like that because obviously it excites you just as much, and that's what really gets him off.

While he enjoys foreplay, a lot, I can see him getting right to it when he doesn't feel like waiting.

He'll hold your legs open while his tongue dives in, making you squeak in surprise at the abruptness of it.

Reaching around your leg to thumb at your clit once he's got you nice and slippery to make more of those breathy little moans come out of your mouth.

When he fingers you he always starts with one first. Then, when you're wiggling around and begging him for another one, he'll take the first one out and lick up the mess you've made before giving you two fingers. He loves making you needy and desperate when you think he's about to stop.

Sometimes he'll pull back as he's pumping his fingers inside you and just look at your face to see how you're enjoying it. Obviously he knows you are but he still enjoys the act of watching it.

"Feel good, baby?" He murmurs real low in that damnable, honeyed accent of his. You take a peek at him and nod vehemently with your lip caught between your teeth, hands carding through his short curls. His eyes close as he concentrates on bringing you to orgasm, taking note of every little jolt your body makes when he curls his fingers and presses harder on your clit.

"Can feel you squeezin' my fingers, never had such a needy pussy before."

His dirty praise seems to shoot electricity straight to your cunt and you whimper in response, canting your hips so it feels like he's hitting that spot inside you just a little bit more forcefully.

"Look at you," He marvels softly. "Fucking yourself on my fingers like a good girl."

"Gonna come," You sob, hands leaving his hair to dig into your thighs. The bite of your nails in your skin is delicious, and your back arches the slightest bit as the coil in your belly instantly snaps, waves of bliss stemming from your cunt and making your blood thrum in your ears.

Rust hums as his fingers fuck you through it, slowly easing their pace as you catch your breath, hips relaxing into the bed.

You reach for him and plant kisses on his jaw before he devours your mouth the same way he devoured your cunt, the taste of you still on his lips as he licks and nibbles and consumes.

"Not done with you yet." He warns as he easily turns you over to prop a limp pillow under your hips. All you can do is moan and take what he gives you as he turns you into an overstimulated, quivering mess.

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fantasynsuch · 8 months ago

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a little morning pick-me-up

A morning on the way to Baldur's Gate. The party booked themselves into an inn and enjoyed real beds, hot baths, and privacy for the first time since the Nautiloid.

Gale and Mayhew shared a room, of course. They were filled with the relief of surviving the shadows and the glow of finally getting together, so their private room was probably a blessing for the whole party, honestly.

This was some ascended anatomy practice! Referenced some great stock from @null-entity.

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fantasynsuch · 8 months ago

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Goddesses and Mortals

Premise: After the events of Love and Longing, Gale finds out that his feelings are reciprocated.. and that's not all.. 😳🍑🫵

Accidental sequel to a previous fic cause I can't get this lonely Wizard out of my head without the promise of a potentially happy ending 🥹 in more ways than one 😏🍆

Gale x gn!tav • 18+ • E/M rating • MDNI

Gale POV, reader referred to as 'you', no specific mention of gentials or gender, porn with plot?, Mystra can fuck right off, fantasies becoming reality, longing, love, tenderness, mutual masturbation, anal fingering (M receiving), unabashed consent, mild cum swapping, minor sub/dom energy, marking if you squint

5.3k words

Special thanks to @senualothbrok for nestling this tadpole in my brain for Gale to get the real deal one day.. 💜

And at it again @spellbooking with another beautiful gif of our Rizzard ☺️ Thank you! 💜

Gale was close, very close.

He had to hurry, the party would all be rising from camp soon. Though there was no sunlight in this desolate place, a full rest was almost upon him.

Safely secluded in the abandoned house on the far reaches of camp; sweat damp on his brow, his hand slick with salvia, Gale feverishly pumped his length in quick bursts.

Your illusion image looked up at him through lidded eyes licking your bottom lip hungrily and growling a hedonistic moan.

"Gale.." you whimpered, the voice distorted.

"Yes, love.. I'm going to come for you.. only for you.. come with me." He bit out, on the precipice of orgasm.

Suddenly, a faint lilting of rosewater assailed his nose and stopped him dead.

A cold dread filled his body, incapacitating his lungs.

Mystra.

It couldn't be.

Surely not.

Not here.

Not now.

Why right now for hell's sake?

He'd not felt her presence since she'd tried to wedge herself between you both when you'd shared a moment of magic in camp.

Despite their separation, she still checked in on her disgraced former chosen and lover at the most inopportune moments.

Fumbling, he quickly tucked himself away in his waistband and spun on his heel.

Nothing.. but the scent remained.

Had she finally gotten sick of his abusing himself constantly to the fictitious likeness of you, using her magical essence to do so?

Had she been sensing him masturbating at least twice a day since her intervention charm through Elminster?

Was she making herself known to quell his incessant self-gratification, or to participate in it?

Even a tenday ago, that would have been a comforting thought. One he would have relished in, taken solace and pride in.. but this felt wrong.

His sweet nothings he had whispered in the dead of night to "you" weren't for Mystra's perverse enjoyment, or sick amusement, weren't for her for to cast judgement on.

"I don't know why you're here," he called brazenly, "but I assure you, this is nothing that concerns you any longer. Now, if you'd be so kind, leave me in peace." He requested, firmly.

Silence.

He wasn't convinced.

"And I don't appreciate the timing of you little assertion here. Now that I'm finally on a path of some kind of healing, you make yourself known?" He snapped, pointing a finger at nothing.

"You have no reason to be here. You have already spoken your will and want with my life and until such a time that that moment arrives, I will do what I want, with whomever I want. Be they real, or fantasy is no concern of yours. Now, leave." He frowned and gestured finally.

The warmth in the air he didn't realise had been present disparated. He was left cold.

Just like always with her.

"Gale?" Called your voice, your vision now by the doorway.

He looked up to see you leaning on the doorframe, slightly bleary.

"Sorry, my love. I got distracted. Less said about that, the better. Now," he beckoned a crooked finger towards himself, "let's get back to where we were before everyone wakes up."

You frowned and looked him up and down, "Did you just call me, 'my love'?" You asked.

For the second time that early morning, Gale's blood ran cold.

"And what exactly were we doing before?" You irked a brow, looking amused.

Gale struggled for words as the blood that had been swiftly journeying to the south was urgently redirected north.

"I-uh-I did? Must've been a mistake. What are you doing up so early?" He asked, trying to change the subject.

You squinted, "Who were you talking to?"

"No one." Gale answered, feigning innocence.

"Wow, that was convincing." You teased with mockingly wide eyes. You narrowed your eyes at him and he felt a gentle brush against his mind. You were seeking permission. He allowed it.

"Mystra?" You asked with a tense lilt. Gale nodded.

Gale's heart bloomed.

"Thought so, I heard you calling that you were trying to move on and someone was suddenly trying to get your attention again. Is everything alright?" You asked, your tone worried and sincere.

"Yes, since her missive from Elminster, she's reached out. I don't have time for it."

"Somewhat." He answered in a half truth.

"That's a massive step for you, Gale. You said something about moving on, is that true?"

You smiled, "Is she still here?" There was a pause, Gale could see the cogs turning, "Did you want to make her jealous? Is that why you called me 'my love'?"

Gale blinked twice.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, maybe you snuck up here to be with me. Maybe I'm the one you're moving on with."

Again, Gale blinked twice.

How unintentionally right you were.

He swallowed.

"Would that be something you're interested in helping me with?"

"To fuck with the gods? Anything." You purred the last word down the connection at him and it made the hairs on his neck raise like you'd whispered it directly against his skin.

"Then by all means, take the lead."

You irked a seductive brow and turned down your head to gaze through lidded eyes.

He swallowed.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to stare. You're just so gods damned handsome. I'm glad we could sneak away again." You walked towards him confidently, a slight prowl in your gait.

Gale's blood supply had ignored previous instruction and fully marched back south. The sight of you - truly you - saying these things to him had him dizzy from the rush of blood.

"Not to worry, I quite enjoying being gawped at."

"Well, it's certainly no hardship." You wrapped your arms around him and pulled him in for a sensual hug, while he desperately tried to keep his erection from your notice.

"Mm, we have to be quick. We don't have much time until the others wake up." You crooned, wrapping your arms around his neck, "Did the minor illusion keep you warm enough while I was gone?"

And for the third time that morning, Gale's body shot full of ice.

His blood entirely confused, threw it's hands up in defeat for direction.

You knew?

How could you know?

He was careful.. wasn't he?

Your hands never stopped roaming; his arms, his shoulders, his neck.. his hair.. oh gods, up into his hair.

Gale's breath hitched and shuddered.

Oh gods, you felt like heaven. Even if he felt like he was in hell.

"I know you like me to watch you but I've been so neglectful lately with everything that's been going on. Can you forgive me?" You pulled back from him, your face pulled into a beautifully twisted smile, sin pulled at the edges.

"I th-think you can make it up to me." He gasped.

Your eyebrows flexed in amusement up your forehead, "Do you want me to watch you right now? With everyone waiting in camp, drinking tea and preparing breakfast?"

You smoothed your hands from his shoulders to the top of his chest, "Do you like the anticipation of being caught, Gale? The rush of being found?"

Oh gods, you were so close. You smelled so good, like lemongrass and lavender.. and underneath the balms, your musk, your scent. You.

"I would do anything, as long as it was with you, my love." He breathed, unable to contain the emotion in his voice.

Your eyes unfocused for a brief moment, then came back, blinking as though seeing through an unfogged mirror.

A soft gasp caught in the back of your throat; that noise could state him for a thousand nights.

Then you stepped away.

You averted your gaze, and backed away from his arms completely. You shut your eyes tightly.

"Gale, I-"

You opened them, a wealth of feelings swirling but he couldn't decipher any of them.

"I need to get back to camp. We need to get to Moonrise Towers today, with Isobel's blessing we can cross the Shadows. We need to be ready." You nodded curtly and disappeared.

Gale stared after you, the cold air of the Shadowlands around him a cruel but poetic pathetic fallacy.

He groaned and closed his eyes against balled fists, as he pressed them against his eyes. Tears brimmed behind them, hot frustrated tears.

"Gods fucking dammit."

***

Gale had attempted to maintain distance today, which had been difficult considering you'd partied up together with Karlach and Shadowheart.

Karlach had tried to question his glum mood, but he'd simply recused it as nerves of their close proximity to the potential Heart of the Absolute.

"Ah, Gale. If there's anyone who knows how shit it is to have a ticking time bomb in their chest, it's me. Come and speak to me sometime mate, yeah? We can talk about it."

"Karlach, you're truly a soul that steels my own. I may just take you up on that."

A firm nod and a beaming smile from Karlach ended the conversation as they entered this Balthazar's chamber, after which none of them really had the stomach for food that night.

Wyll had stepped up and made a hearty bowl of vegetable and meat stew. It was nothing on his own cooking, of course but it was a valiant attempt.

Needed a little more pepper.

You sat nursing your bowl, generally making conversation around the fire. Halsin had joined you back from Last Light with no new news of the catatonic lost soul, apart from that he kept singing. A lute of significance to him had been added to your list of items to retrieve; an ever growing list.

Gale swallowed a mouthful and risked a glance towards you, your eyes met for a brief moment before you looked away, uncomfortable. His heart sank.

He'd truly ruined any chance of friendship after his desperate behaviour this morning. You'd barely spoken two words together all day, and now you wouldn't look him in the eye.

The noise around the campfire grew weary as he poured over his readings. Various 'goodnights' alerted him to the potentially late hour.

He excused himself for an early night and retreated to his tent. He lit his candles and pulled out one of the many books he'd picked up along today's excursions around Moonrise, hoping that one of them would point them towards the heart.

***

Gale sighed and rubbed his eyes, he conjured a bookmark, closed it and drained his glass of wine.

Now that he'd been pulled from his focus, he realised how tired he was. Physically drained from a gruelling day of emotional turbulence.

Rosewater gently lilted under his nose, he snorted it back out.

"Oh for the love of-! Bugger off!" He spat through a whisper.

"I'm sorry." Came your voice from behind him.

He spun around on his knees to see you hastily trying to leave his tent.

"No!" Called a little too loudly, reaching out across the space, "Not you. I didn't mean you."

You stopped, looking back at him for the first time since the morning. The soft glow of the candles illuminating your wonderful face, his heart squeezed uncomfortably.

"I assume she's back again, then?" You asked through terse lips, glancing around the low lit interior of his tent.

"Where rosewater is, Mystra's sure to follow. What can I do for you?" Gale asked, shaking off the lingering of his former lover.

"I-," you started, wringing your hands, "I wanted to apologise for this morning."

Gale blinked.

You wanted to apologise?

"What for?" He questioned his tone incredulous.

"For it all. I embarrassed you, I embarrassed myself.. I acted poorly. I thought it would be a good way to show that I knew what you'd been doing-with the minor illusions." Gale's eyes widened. He'd been attempting to solve that one today.

"H-How did you find out?"

"I'd cast Detect Thoughts on Jaheria when we met her at the Inn, and it lasts all day. I heard you when I was laying down to rest. All the things you wanted to do." You swallowed thickly, and a jolt of excitement shot it's way through his cock to his brain.

That was two nights ago.

He'd fantasized about gourging on your sex as you mounted his face, fucking yourself with his mouth as you leaned back with one hand to stroke him. He'd made a mess of his walls, as well as himself.

"You've got a pretty interesting imagination, Gale. Especially since we seem to be ethereal galaxy people in your head." You smiled, folding your arms across yourself, "The one from last night was pretty hot too." You bit your bottom lip to contain more, and swallowed.

He remembered that vividly.

He'd fantasised about spooning you, fucking into you and playing with you from behind. The mirror image had gasped and moaned for him, breathed his name over and over again, as he came to the thought of pleasing you enough to milk his cum inside your clenching walls.

"I thought it was just sex, that maybe we could get rid of some nervous energy together but then this morning.. the way you-you looked at me.." you trailed off, Gale's heart hammered against his chest.

You rest your splayed hands across your heart, "I was foolish. You're not the kind to just sleep around. To have casual sex and not think of it again."

"Like Astarion?" He quipped before vetting the venomous comment.

You tightened your lip, "Kind of." You answered, with a tone that felt loaded with more secretive information but he didn't want to pry.

Well, he did.

But not right now.

"I could be." He postured, looking up at you.

You let out a short laugh, "That face this morning is not the face of someone who can just have sex and not want more."

He hardened his face, "It could be.. if you wanted to be.." Gale irked a brow, feigning a casual air.

"Oh, yeah?" You goaded, leaning on one hip and folding your arms again.

"Absolutely. We could have sex right now and I wouldn't bat an eyelid." He lied, pushing his lips down into a grimace, while his cheeks flushed and his heart pounded against his sternum.

"Really?" You questioned, looking dubious.

"Unquestionably." Gale punctuated with a flick of his fingers, relaxing into his position on the floor, widening his knees to sit back on his heels in an attempt at nonchalance.

"So, you fantasising about kissing my neck, my chest, stomach and hips and calling me "my love" means nothing." You stated, using air quotations.

"Certainly not. Mere sweet talk." Gale shook his head, shrugging his shoulders, while sweat gathered on his forehead.

You kicked off your hip and confidently strolled towards the short distance to him. His mouth instantly dried to dangerous levels of dehydration, as he tried to keep composure.

"And imagining your cock in my mouth, telling me how much you adore me, that isn't telling at all?" You sneered a lip through a smirk and shrugged one shoulder.

"Demonstrably." He tried to remain calm but every cell in his body was panicking, "Do you see me reacting?" He willed himself through words not to show a care.

Your tongue broke through your smirk to rub against your top teeth and his felt it between his legs, he jerked unconsciously.

"You're glowing." You drawled, dipping your eyes to his chest, "Do you even realise your orb lights up when you're horny?"

Gale's painfully stony face dropped as he quickly darted his vision to his chest.

You were indeed correct.

Through his camp clothes, a faint purple hue eminated through the fabric. Gale gave a sharp exhale through his nose and closed his eyes.

"This tent has been a purple colour show since Crèche Y'llek." You teased, the sound of your voice curved around a grin.

Gale's chest hollowed.

Gods dammit.

Mystra dammit.

"Oh and also this.." Suddenly he felt something graze along the length of his concealed erection - what he thought was a his concealed erection.

He let out he whining gasp, his hand slapping against worn leather, and he opened his eyes.

You'd rubbed the top of your boot under and against him in his kneeled position, gliding his sensitive member with the leather of your shoe. You continued the rhythm, the gentle friction was delicious, he gasped open mouthed.

Oh gods, it was real.

You were real.

It wasn't a cruel trick, or a fantasy.

It was you.

Gale reached up to grasp the crook of your knee, you held your gaze steadfast against his own. He began to pull off your boot, your eyes never faultered from his as it was flung to the back of the tent.

Your foot resting on his thigh, his hand still holding the meat of your strong calf.

You took his prickly chin within your fingers, eyes usure.

"If this going to happen, it's just sex. Nothing more." You stated, in a low tone.

Gale nodded, trembling from anticipation.

"I mean it. If you're on a path to self-destruction in the name of a Goddess, I'm not wasting my time with feelings." Your voice caught and anger flashed across your features but tears hinted in your eyes.

You slid your foot off his thigh and slowly descended to crouch in front of him, taking his face fully in your hands. Their warmth slid into the deepest recesses of his lonely soul.

"I care about you, Gale. You're worth far more than what she's asked you to do. Far more."

He poured over your face, so close to him. Emotions that he had denied himself bubbling to the surface; the longing, the loneliness.. the fear.

You ran a thumb to dry a tear he hadn't realise had fallen.

"Say something." You whispered, your gaze flitting between his eyes and his lips.

Oh gods.

This was to truly happen?

He'd kiss your beautiful, soft lips?

His breathing was unsteady, the anticipation coiled dangerously around every facet of his musculature.

Gale opened his mouth to speak, to utter sweet poetry regaling your beauty, your passion, your wit and wisdom but the words would not form, they were stunted on his paralysed tongue.

You were so close.

He could feel the heat from your body, he could see the wisps of your hair moving with his unsteady breath.

You came closer and pressed your lips between his brows, electric tingling his skin in your wake. His eyes lolled shut as he finally brought his hands to hold you to him, press you to him, to feel you finally.

He slid his hands below the seam of your shirt, to feel your smooth and scarred skin, fire grazing his fingertips at the contact.

"I-.. I care for you deeply. I cannot deny this." He began breathlesly, your forehead's connected, your bodies melting together. You sank further into the embrace, widening your legs to fully welcome him between your thighs.

The image of that first night he touched himself to thoughts of you, bloomed across his mind and he bit his lip.

"Neither can I." You agreed, the sound of your voice low and raspy, "It scares me, Gale. It scares the shit into me," you leaned back, holding on to the back of his neck, slowly leading you both down to the carpeted rugs below his bedroll, "Show me. Show me I'm not wrong to feel this way. Show me I'm not alone in this."

Gale shook in head, almost trance-like, "You're not alone-not alone.. I'm with you." He followed you down, desperate not to lose a second's touch with you.

"And I'm with you, I'm not letting you go." You spoke the words against his mouth, it made his mind numb.

"No, never. Never leave me." He mumbled, as you both situated yourselves on the floor. Words bubbled and frothed out of his mouth before he could stop them, "I've been so utterly alone for so long, cut off from everyone I knew and cared for.. and I'm terrified, I'm filled with dread each day. I don't want to die-I want to stay.. stay here." He mewled through the overwhelming emotion in his throat. You increased the intensity of your touch against your brows.

"Shh, none of that matters now. It doesn't exist. For now.. it's just us.. you and me.." you whispered against his skin, he felt it shiver down every vertebrae.

"You and me." He repeated, comforted by the softness in your voice.

Suddenly, your hand grasped his naked cock. He yelped in pleasure, but was hushed by the passionate meeting of your mouth. You captured his cries, claiming them as your own.

His fingers bunched your shirt, his knuckles white, as your tongue swept in to merge with his.

Oh gods.

You tasted like wine, and oranges, and sex.

He'd imagined your taste, your scent.. but this.. the full force of you was so much more intense that he could have expected.

You fingered his leaking slit and he jerked at the sensation, causing you both to make involuntary, open-mouthed moans.

You increased in fervour at his reaction, a desperate whine eeking from his body.

It was too much but not enough. He wanted more, more of you, more of this. He wanted the world to fall away and to be consumed by only you.

Like you said; "Just you and me."

Even though it would be grammatically correct to say 'You and I'.

Your hand wrapped around the length of him, pumping the head of his penis in short, lanquid bursts.

Gale knelt over your body, settling himself between your gorgeous thighs, pressing down against your sex, enough to make you gasp.

You shared a wicked grin together before he cradled you to him, desperately kissing and mating your tongues. His hips unconsciously twitching against the friction of your hand.

"Gods, Gale. I want you." You keened against his lips, puffs of air escaping aggressively from your lungs, as his hips drove against you.

"Yesyesyesyesyes.." he chorused, messily thrusting against your palm, "Want this. Want you. For a long while.. even before.."

"Did you fantasize about all the positions we could fuck in?"

A sharp feeling settled low in his gut and he squeezed his eyes shut to close out a threatening, pre-emptive climax.

"Yes, wanted you.. badly." He added, barely able to speak.

"I know, I saw. Sweating and willing underneath you?"

"Yess.." he hissed.

"Slipping a finger inside me, then another, preparing me to take you?"

Another deliciously painful pang shuddered inside him.

"Stretching my tight hole for you, till I'm begging you to fuck me hard and unrelenting?" You growled against his lips.

Gale tensed his jaw to mute a groan from his chest, as your words gripped the back of his head.

Oh dear fucking gods.

You were very, very good at this.

"I especially liked where I got to play with you. Those moans at the back of your throat when you'd think of me on top.. I had trouble concentrating yesterday because I could stop replaying those sounds."

He heard you whisper an incantation, that his lust-filled brain slowly realised was Mage hand, the moment before he felt the cold sensation working his undergarments completely free, pushing them down passed his knees.

"There was one particular part you seemed to be interested in exploring together." You purred against his temple, as you twisted your grip around his plump, weeping member.

The Mage hand palmed at the cleft of his ass and lazily dragged it's fingers up his perennium, sliding towards his..

He gasped, throwing his head back and loosening his tight hips to tilt them upwards in wanton display.

"Oh gods." Gale whimpered, biting down on his lip hard, "Mm-Mhm." He panted in abandon.

He bucked and jerked against the feeling of you pleasuring him, needing more of both.

You groaned and rutted your hips against him.

"You look so beautiful like this, I can see you in the mirror behind you. You look spectacular, spreading yourself for me." You crooned, praising him and licking your bottom lip. You looked beyond him to what he assumed was his mirror.

Oh gods.

You were going to watch him like this.

Like he'd imagined.

Exposed.

Hedonistic.

Depraved.

The thought waved over his brain and made him dizzy, the desire swelled low in his belly.

"You're so willing and receptive, Gale. Do you want me to slide these fingers inside you? To pleasure you completely until you can't comprehend your own name?" You asked salaciously, assuring consent before blindly continuing. He raised his hips higher for better access as wordless agreement.

The mage hand ran a soaked finger across his puckering hole but ventured no further without express permission.

His whole body trembled, desire coarsing through his veins, soaking into every orifice.

"Yes.. yes.. fuck. I need it. Please.. please.." he wailed through staggered breath.

"Look at me." You instructed softly, halting your motions of abject pleasure.

With great difficulty, Gale did as he was told. He about exploded with joy with the sight of you.

He'd imagined you, summoned your likeness but nothing could ever compare to this.

The aura of his orb bathed you in a magical amethyst glow; the adoration shining in your eyes, the seductive curve of your lip, the sweat flattening your hair to your temples.

"So handsome.. so beautiful. Look at you, look at how you light up for me.." you smiled, guilding him with compliments as you raise a hand to touch the angry purple mark on his chest, now emblazoned with Mystra's star. "This does not define you. You are not the orb. You are not Mystra's chosen. You are Gale of Waterdeep and you chose your own path. You are, and will always be, enough.."

Soft tears fell from his eyes from the intensity of his emotional response to your words and the physical stimuli of the hand gently testing his entrance.

You gently kissed the apples of his wet cheeks, then looked up at him with a darkened expression.

"Arch your back for me, sweetheart."

Gale instantly buried his face against your neck, lifting his exposed self for you.

"Good.." you cooed, beginning a slow pace to pump his cock again.

"Ohh, gods." His whined against your skin, his limit already close.

"Relax.." you whispered, kissing his temple, "Relax for me, darling. Take a deep breath, and let it out. Keep breathing."

Gale did as he was told. With each expell of air he loosened the muscles surrounding his asshole. The need growing to dizzying heights.

Pressure pushed against his rim as the finger glided halfway, he gasped and clenched unconsciously.

"Breathe, Gale." You soothed, pressing soft kisses to his face, "You're handling this so well."

Further and further you pushed inside him, delicious sensation flooding his body. His body tense and limp simultaneously, as the pleasure radiated through him from his pulsating walls.

"Fuck." He barely managed.

He kissed your neck and sucked down on the bite marks left by Astarion. He would make his own mark on you. One that everyone would see.

You gasped, your breath catching as you rolled your hips against him, teeth lightly nipping at his ear lobe.

Gale felt the friction of your other hand reaching down between you to stimulate your own release. His urge re-doubled in it's efforts to push him higher, intoxicated by your arousal.

He could feel your desperate movements between you, lightly grazing his testicles with the back of your hand.

You surprised him by gently pinching the head of him and thumbing the slit before initiating an unyielding, rapid rhythm wrapped around his cock. Synchronizing with curling the Mage hand towards his stomach, rubbing over the knot of his prostate.

A ragged, strained noise escaped from his throat as the sensations joined, assailing him from both sides.

He pushed back against the Mage hand, taking it's digit to the hilt.

"Oh yes, that's it. Enjoy it. It's for you.. all for you." You chorused his words to you, the words he used every night to pray to your false altar.

But now he had you, truly had you.. and you were spectacular.. you could not be formed into words.. you transcendend this mortal plane.. you were.. more than Godly.. you were-

A second finger penetrated him without refute and stretched his hole, doubling the pleasure against his sweet spot inside his ass, and he cried out in sheer bliss. Your hand wrapped around his cock, pumping in jubilant rhythm combined with the thrusting of the spell deep inside him.

The precipice of orgasm gripped him like a vice and choked him of all other need, apart from that to cum.

In that moment of blessed eternity, the world was narrowed down to nothing more than you and him. A vaccum in existence bathed in magical light.

Rapture split through every atom of his existence, building and climbing in a torrent of unstable energy.

"Yes, Gale-yes-come. Come with me."

His mouth open, panting like a rabid dog, he lost himself entirely.

He roared and strained and gasped, as he shot thick ropes all over your torso. His asshole squeezed and clenched tightly on the digits deliciously stuffed inside him working his orgasm longer. Your skilled hand milking every last drop from him.

He gulped for breath as you cried out underneath him, jerking against your own hand, breathless and exhilarated.

He watched you come undone underneath him, eyes screwed, mouth gaping, then biting down to quieten your moans.

Dear gods, you looked exquisite.

He reached a hand between you both to feel the after effects of your rhapsody, you twitched and laughed through a smile, as he cupped your sex in the wake of orgasm, riding you longer like you were to him.

"Stopstopstop-too much." You barely gasped against his sweat laden forehead.

There you lay, for what seemed like an easy age, together.

Aftershocks struck you both as you lay together in your joined euphoria.

The Mage hand had disappeared and left him feeling pleasantly sore from the hectic pace.

Gale pushed himself up onto his forearm, extracating his hand from between you. It was covered in your cum, it glistened on his hand.

It was one of the most erotic things he'd ever seen. Something he hadn't fantasied.

He glanced back to you, you also held up your hand drenched in him.

You opened your mouth, clearing indicating to feast on yourself from his fingers. His tender cock twitched with desire.

He reciprocated his mouth and you swept your digits in his mouth. He tasted himself, licking his semen clean, as you suckled your own essence from his fingers, then pulled him in for a deep kiss.

Gale moaned at the melding of you both on mating tongues. It was pure sex and exhilaration. The desire and need. The fullfilment and warmth.

The kiss broke and you smiled at him, letting out a large breath.

"That was.." You started.

"Incredible." He finished.

"That's one of many words." You mused, laughing breathlessly.

Gale pushed himself up higher, "Oh, gods." He snorted, looking down at the scene of debauchery before him and kneeled onto his heels.

You and he were both covered in cum. It was obscene how licentiously delicious you looked painted with each other.

He remembered the first time he'd cum to your image, how hollow and alone he'd felt.

But not this time.

This time he felt complete.

Like a piece of him had hurried it's way back to him after so long apart.

"Well, that's one way to let off some steam." He chuckled darkly.

"I think it's hot." You smirked, biting down on your lower lip.

Gale swallowed with difficulty, "Careful you, that's dangerous."

Gale heaved out a breath and came to grips with what had just transpired between you both. How little his imagination had been able to conceive of you. What paltry figments had been the stars of his fantasies.

He glanced down upon you; hair mussed, sweat drying on your skin, clothes rumpled and he couldn't have loved you more.

"What?" He asked in a quiet voice.

Gale shook his head, "Nothing." He feigned.

He waved his hand with a simple somantic and the evidence was gone.

"Then come down here, I'm getting cold." You stroked your hands up his arms and enveloped him into an embrace that warmed all the lost parts of his soul.

"I meant it, Gale. I won't let you destory yourself for this. We'll find another way." You nestled yourself deeper into the hug.

Gale smiled contentedly from ear to ear, "I know we will.. because now I have something to live for."

°•°•

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fantasynsuch · 11 months ago

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fantasynsuch · 11 months ago

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Adam Stanheight Angst Fic

TW: this is pure angst. Not an x reader fic. Inspired by O Superman.

"Hello, this is your mother."

Mom.

That's the first thing Adam thought of when he woke up again in the pitch-black void he's become accustomed to in the past week- his mom.

They never had that good of a relationship in the first place, him too deep in his teen angst, and her too stubborn to recognize what Adam was going through.

They hadn't talked since he left after graduation. He gave her a half-assed hug, and she waved him goodbye as he left in his beat-up Corolla. At the time, he was certain he would never see her again- but now, as the hunger swallows him whole and the fear of the dark he never quite got over as a kid looms in the background, he wants her.

Anything would do- her nasty meatloaf, or the plate of celery that she would fix him after school, or even just her arms wrapped around his whithering body. He wants his mom. Any fragment of comfort would do.

Are you there?

"Mom..." He whispers in the dark, his lips cracked and bleeding. His eyes open, but it's still as pitch black as it was when they were closed.

The last voicemail she left him weighs heavy in his static-filled mind.

"Are you there, Adam? Are you coming home?" She begged him. He ignored it, like he did all the other messages. If he could see her, even just one more time, he would tell her how much he loved her. He would curl up in her arms and let her cuddle him like she used to.

But the one last rational part of his brain knows he's never going to see her again. He would die, alone and aching for any semblance of hope, and she would never know what happened to him. She would spend the rest of her days yearning for a son that isn't there anymore. She wouldn't know that he was dead, either. She would think he hated her, and he was choosing to never speak to her again. But Adam knows that's not true. He loves her. His heart aches, and he's struggling to breathe. His eyes are getting heavier and heavier, and he can't bring himself to hold them open anymore.

Are you there?

"Mommy..." He begs to no one as his dry eyes close one last time, to never open again and to leave his mom aching for her son.

He was aching for her too.

"I'm here, Mom." He breaths out and drifts off.

Are you coming home?

He wasn't coming home.

#adam faulkner stanheight #adam stanheight fanart #adam stanheight angst #saw fanfic #saw #adam stanheight imagine #dr lawrence gordon #leigh whannell

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fantasynsuch · 1 year ago

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THE FIVE DAYS OF SMUTMAS QUEUE: DAY ONE

Bad Decembers - Adam Stanheight x gn! reader

OKAY!! I would not be me if I did not find a way to worm my love for the holiday season into my love for writing, so that's what the fics coming out in this queue are going to be—not all of them will be the pinnacle of the christmas season but all of them will at least be set in december and mentions of the holidays will probably worm their way into several, but the guarantees I can make are that the fics will either be close to or more than 1k words, and that there will, at a minimum, be snowy weather in the fics because we have gotten snow maybe twice where I am and I can't resist.

This one stems from a thought that I had on the sixteenth where I was like "okay angry and aggressive sex with adam, talk it out, then make up sex for round two yay" but it did change a little bit as things do when they start as ideas but get turned into fics! It's not that different from the original concept—the idea is the same it's just that round two is a little different than how I'd originally intended because I believe in my heart of hearts that Adam would be a fiend for giving oral so this fits that headcanon.

lastly, this fic is meant for audiences of 18+! Minors, DO NOT INTERACT.

Fic type- this is smut!

Warnings- adam is a guy with anger issues and they get the best of him (it is mentioned a couple of times that he punches a coworker in the face after he was provoked, and the work environment Adam is in is implied to be shitty anyway, as someone slapping someone else is also mentioned) the reader is gn for all intents and purposes but as I know the anatomy best, they're AFAB but referenced with gn terms and petnames (aside from the word pussy, which only gets used once), Unprotected sex, rough sex, reader is a masochist and Adam is kind of sadistic, oral sex (m! giving) bruises do happen because adam gets a bit manhandl-y and bruises and rough biting ensue, as does rough groping. Pet play is also in this one a few times (in use of the nickname puppy only, gn terms when smut writing aren't my strongest suit so puppy is for some reason my go-to)

December, despite all of the cheer and festiveness it usually carried, was just not your month, so it seemed.

Work was very, very difficult for you, which really shouldn't've come as a surprise come the last month of the year, but somehow always did.

Crappy coworkers always became the crappiest versions of themselves with the onset of the holiday season, and by December, amidst having to listen to your coworkers complain about how difficult their relatives were to shop for, several HR-funded Christmas parties where you and Adam would drink some of the cheapest booze and listen to your crappiest coworkers complain, and a Secret Santa gift exchange with a minimum—yes, a minimum, which to you seemed kind of ludicrous, though a max amount was certainly something you understood—spending allowance of $150 and a maximum of $380, you were angry and exhausted and looked forward to the nine days off you took between the twenty third and the thirty first like nobodies fuckin' business.

The only bright side to working in that company was the fact that you'd gotten the opportunity to get your secret santa—and one of the few decent coworkers you had in your offices, one named Claire who was actually breeching close friend territory more and more by the day—a bundle of things she'd mentioned really needing in those past few weeks thanks to the budget imposed by your offices.

You'd had the chance to get her a couple of the books she liked in addition to a couple of gift cards to grocery stores and gas stations as she was in a very tight situation with her mooch husband who refused to work point blank period. You'd gone over budget with her gift, actually, and it was the first and last year you'd ever do that.

You were working in marketing and sales and you made $2000 biweekly, which covered your half of rent and utilities, groceries and other bills with something like six hundred to spare to use as fun money. When you'd brought it up with Adam, who'd met Claire a good couple times at those Christmas parties and thought she was great for your morale, he'd supported you, said to go all out because you'd have the money back in your account two weeks from your latest paycheck anyway.

So, grocery cards, gas cards, books and around $100 in stowaway cash later, you'd gone over budget by $80 but had zero regrets because of how happy it made Claire at the end of the gift exchange.

For what it was worth—you were gifted a Nespresso and five boxes of Nespresso pods from someone who practically loathed you and probably wanted you to refuse it, but by the 21st you were so sick of work and people and everything else that you just faked a smile, said your thanks in a way that seemed just a little too sweet and definitely a bit too happy, and knew that you and Adam would cherish that Nespresso for all of the glorious coffee it made on your latest nights until it broke in the years to follow.

Getting home from the gift exchange at six, you were tired and angry at the world, pretty much, and it seemed—based on vibes alone—that Adam was much the same.

For Adam, though, it had definitely been work. After the trap, he'd switched from working as a glorified snitch for far less money than all of it was worth to working closely with a gallery that liked the shots he took enough to commission him for collections of photos. The commission money was certainly more than enough—from commissions, he got $3000 a month for 300 photos, which were typically displayed for six, eight, or ten months before he had to pick a new theme and the cycle repeated—but the gallery people he was working with were much like your coworkers in that they became the worst versions of themselves in the holiday season.

The collection he'd been trying to get together had been one part of a four hundred photo collection that captured Jersey in the winter which was due to start displaying on the 23rd and would stay up until the second of January the following year. He was working with three other people and the gallery staff and all of them were too stuck up to actually cooperate with him.

To that point, it had been twenty-one days of screaming matches, crappy coffee made worse by the bitterness Adam felt, and fighting day in and day out to keep his anger internal while he was in the apartment you shared because yelling at you, when he'd worked so hard to keep his anger issues in check? That was, under no circumstances, an option.

The first four months of your relationship had been spent with fights once every two weeks because Adam was still trying to learn how to keep his anger in check after letting it go unchecked for so long, and you'd been dating for five years. In those five years, after that rocky four months, you'd both found a balance and you both loved that balance. Adam wasn't going to fuck it up because he was angry at people who existed in a realm completely othered from the one where you were.

Well—he was going to try to avoid fucking it up for himself.

He's sitting on the couch, stewing in his anger when you come home. You grin at him, exhausted, and Adam leaves to the kitchen before you can get a word in—he'd been warned to expect a joint call sometime before midnight in relation to the collection that he had to take 100 photos for and he was antsy as well as angry, and he doesn't want you to see him like that, spiteful and angry at anything that breathes the wrong way.

He tries to make coffee with the pot you'd taken when you'd moved out of your parents place eight years prior, though the coffee machine seems to have a disagreement with Adams idea as it refuses to work, which causes Adam to snap.

"Fuck!" He shouts, hitting the coffee machine and regretting it because damn, plastic meeting knuckles is a horrible feeling. "All I need is some goddamned coffee, but no! The fucking machine—"

You step into the kitchen. When Adam hears your footsteps, he turns on his heels to face you, sees your grin.

"The coworker who loathes me gave me something that will definitely make your night a bit better," you say. "He probably wanted me to refuse but I figured we would need a new one soon anyway. It's a Nespresso, there are five different coffee types to choose from, and all you need to do is set it up. Shitty month?"

"Shitty is a fucking understatement," Adam grits his teeth. "I'm just so pissed off at the world right now, Y/N. I wouldn't be around me if I were you—when I get like this I am a flight risk because I tend to want to break things. Punched a guy in the face today and was reprimanded for an hour or three, which just made my day a lot fucking longer than it needed to be, and everything is shitty all the goddamned time and I'm sick of it."

You nod, further enter the kitchen and set the Nespresso up while Adam stews in his anger, trying to calm himself down in the ways he normally does only to find that nothing is working. He's frustrated with everything that's happened in the past three weeks, and the more he reflects on that time the angrier he gets.

And then, something happens. You accidentally sidestep onto his foot and the floodgates open, and he snaps. He screams for a solid five minutes about shit that doesn't even relate to you and you just—you just let him. You do fight back but it's like part of you understands that not all of it relates to you anyway so you just let him say his peace, and when he storms off, you don't follow him.

He goes to your bedroom, angry now with the events of the past three weeks, and the fact that he punched someone in the face, and with himself for snapping at you instead of just communicating, and he sits on the edge of the bed, staring at the wall and stewing within his anger until you're opening the door, poking your head in and meeting his gaze.

"You're still angry?" You ask, tone calm and even.

Adam nods, pursing his lips. He doesn't want to be angry anymore, doesn't want to do anything other than let everything go and apologize for all of the shit he berated you for, but he's still angry. Something within him isn't letting him let it go, even as much as he wants to.

"All right," you step into the room. "Would sex help? That way you can just get your frustrations out while also getting endorphins and all that other health shit."

Adam clenches his jaw. "No," he says. "We've never fucked while one of us has been angry, Y/N, and if I'm willing to punch someone in the face while I'm pissed off, I'm a little scared to find out how rough I would be willing to be with you if I did that while so mad I could smoke two joints and still feel it."

You shrug, leaning your back against the door to close it. "So be rough," you suggest. "I don't care, Adam—I think we've discussed it before, but I do like being manhandled. You can leave bruises, too. I don't care how rough you are with me, I just hate seeing you like this and if sex will take your mind off it and if it's something you're willing to do, I want to do it."

"I don't wanna leave you bruised," Adam says. He hates how obvious it is that he's half-lying. He doesn't hate the idea of you bruised—it's just how you end up as such—if someone else hurts you, he'll be ready to commit murder. But if he were ever to do that? He would feel immeasurably guilty.

"You're lying to me," you say, catching onto it immediately. "You don't want me bruised as in black eyes or punches or something else physical and abusive and you would never, ever do that to me so I'm not at all worried about that, but you would absolutely cherish the bruising on my hips and arms from holding onto me that tight during sex. I would cherish them, too, actually."

Adam tsks, "masochist," he says before biting on his bottom lip. He gets to standing, crosses the room and closes in on you, grinning as he feels your breath against his face.

"If I'm a masochist, you're a sadist," you whisper pointedly. Adams hands go to your hips, holding them tightly, thumbs pressing into your skin until he finds your hip bones and you moan just low enough for Adam not to hear it at the contact.

"Mhm," Adam whispers as he leans in so that his lips are millimeters away from your pulse point. "Gonna let me use you, puppy? Need an outlet for my anger, and you did offer."

"Yeah," Adam can't help but smile as he presses himself up against you and notices the way that your arms clench at your sides because you're physically trying to keep yourself from leaning into his touches, not wanting to give into it as quickly as you might've when he called you puppy. "All yours to use, Adam. Please. Don't want you to be angry anymore, and if using me is what it takes then go ahead."

Adams left hand moves from your hip to your face, thumb tilting your chin up and to the left so that he has better access to your neck.

"Good puppy," he whispers, this time close enough to hear the quiet moan that the praise pulls out of you. "That's all you are, isn't it? Just a good puppy, reliant on praise and my cock."

You haven't had sex since early November, so both of you are sexually frustrated, which is the icing on the fucking cake.

You moan in response, grinding your hips against him. He pushes his leg between your thighs as his tongue presses flat against your pulse point, the grip he holds on your hip remaining steady. The hand thats on your face moves down to your hip again, thumb pressing until it finds the bone.

"Mine to use," Adam says after a couple of seconds. The anger that's within him exists like a fire pit in his stomach, burning bright and burning hot and burning unrelentingly. "Right, Y/N?"

"However you want," You don't know how you're managing to speak. "As rough as you want, Adam—fucking hell. Please."

"You're perfect," he loosens his grip on your hips, kisses down your jawline until he's back at your lips again.

When he kisses his way up to your lips, the kisses he leaves in his path are rather sweet. His hands are groping aggressively at just about anywhere they can get to, and when his hands settle on your hips again, your lips are on his and the kiss he pulls you into, tongue sliding into your mouth as you open it in a quiet moan, is enough to leave your lips bruised.

Adam doesn't pull away until you're starting to and he's realizing that he can't really breathe. You press your forehead against his shoulder and take a deep inhale, arms settling around his waist.

Adam pulls away, cups your face in his hands. "Getting submissive on me already?" He asks teasingly, grinning at you a little. "Oh, Y/N. You're so easy."

You hum your agreement. "You always manage to make quick work," you murmur, moving to lay down on the bed that you share. Adam stops you, unbuttoning your work shirt and tossing it into the farthest corner of the room before you can go any further. You lay on the bed as Adam takes off the granddad sweater he'd chosen to wear after having absolutely nothing else in his closet during what would later turn into a laundry evening, happy to stare at the ceiling while you wait for your beloveds next move.

His lips are on yours again seconds later, one hand roving over your chest while the other is near your face after he'd bent his arm at the elbow to hold himself up.

After he's kissed you sufficiently, he moves his lips down your neck, kissing and biting and sucking at the skin mercilessly. You wonder, for a second, if he wants to draw blood and decide that if he does, you'll let him because the pain feels so good.

Adam laughs after he's bitten down on your collarbone particularly harshly and you've moaned lewdly, rolling your hips against his half hard length without thought.

"You're such a slut for pain," he nips at the skin again gently. "I really do think that I could cut you to pieces and you'd thank me for it, Y/N."

the thought of it makes your core wet, and so you give an embarrassed nod. Adam just laughs again, lifting your hips while still maintaining an aggressive hold on them and releasing that hold to take off your pants and underwear, leaving you completely open and bare in front of him.

You shiver as a gust of cold Jersey air gets through the room through the slightly opened window, nipples hard as pebbles from Adams ministrations, and watch him take his own pants and boxers off.

"Want me to wear a condom?" Adam asks.

You shake your head. "I can take a plan B pill," you respond. "Just--please. Please don't make me wait. Need you."

"Good puppy," Adam breathes. He goes back to kissing you before his lips move to your chest, biting and sucking at your nipples in the way he knows makes you melt the quickest. "Gonna let me do whatever I want, mm? Even if it means you're in pain?"

"Adam," you moan as he presses his cold tongue flat against your warm skin. "Fuck—mmm, whatever you want. Please, just—please don't stop. Please don't—"

"Pain slut," Adam laughs a little. "You love this, yeah? Love me using you, manhandling you, not giving a fuck if you get bruised up?"

You moan, pressing the back of your head into the pillow.

"Speak to me, baby," he murmurs, pressing kisses down your navel.

You whimper, bucking your hips against Adams shoulders and Adam repositions himself so that he's eye level with you again, holding your chin lightly.

"Use your words for me, baby," he says. "I know you love how this feels, yeah? I know you love it when I bite you because you like the pain that the biting draws out, but how am I supposed to know you want me to keep going if you don't tell me? How am I supposed to know you're not whimpering, not squirming, because the pain is too much?"

"Adam," you moan, rolling your hips against nothing. "Adam, it—you—oh my fucking—" you moan again, and Adam smiles.

He moves back to where he'd been before kissing down your navel to the place where you needed him most, kissing back up to your lips again and wetting his dick with the wetness from your folds before he thrusts into you in one fell swoop.

He gives you maybe three seconds to adjust to his length before he sets a quick, aggressive pace, one hand on your hips to keep you steady while the other sits on your breast, first finger and thumb pinching your nipple with as much force as he can muster. He needs the anger to be gone, needs it to be replaced by the comfortable, airy feelings that come with sex and post-sex glory, needs to get his anger out of his system before he's at risk of snapping at you again.

He thrusts with as much fervor as he can, trying to rid the anger from himself with each thrust. It works, for the most part, and when his hand finds your throat and presses on the sides but is careful to avoid the front, most of the anger goes out of his system completely.

You lean up into his touch, and Adam laughs at it.

"Pain slut," he whispers, leaning down to bite and suck at your nipples.

Adams release triggers yours, and Adam thrusts through the aftershocks before he pulls out, falling to your right and wrapping an arm around your waist to pull you close.

A few minutes pass by. You get up to use the bathroom and return to Adams embrace, press a kiss to his lips and look at him like you want to talk.

"You've been angry for three weeks," you say. "If you're in a talking mood, let's talk, yeah?"

"I know that photography is what I'm good at, and normally I love it but I think I have something of an independence issue with regard to working there," Adam admits, moving the hand that's on your waist up to your face. He just wants to kiss you senseless, kiss you until he forgets his own name and how to speak words other than yours, but he knows he owes you a conversation—an explanation, mostly, and an apology. "I just can't do it. I can't work with other people. Three people on this project besides me and all of us are in conflict day in and day out because we're all apparently averse to compromise, and yeah, I punched Harry in the face but he smacked Kelce the other day because he didn't agree with one of Harrys ideas. It was payback, which I know doesn't excuse it for shit, but—I just—"

You press a kiss to Adams forehead. "I'm sorry that work has been so terrible," you murmur. "Soon as you get this installation done, though, you'll be able to work on your own again. Gotta practice a bit of optimism, baby. Gotta see the bright side and all that."

Adam laughs. "There is no light at the end of the work related tunnel," he says. "I'll be due in to work with the same group of people in the spring, and then in summer, and then in autumn. I've been told I'll have to do my own installations on top of that, which will mean picking more themes, dealing with more disagreements."

He props himself up on his elbows, presses a quick peck against your lips.

"I'm sorry," he says, green-blue eyes meeting yours. "About earlier—snapping at you like that? It was a dick move, and with the coffee—I flipped my lid in a way that was completely unfair. I'm sorry you had to get screamed at like that, everything just boiled over and taking it out on you is the last thing that I should've done."

You nod. "It was a dick move, and you do kind of need to work on talking it out with me before the shit hits the very angry fan, but you're forgiven," you grin at him. "If it helps, work hasn't been a picnic for me either. Never is during December."

Adam groans. "You work in an office," he notes. "How many of your coworkers complained about how difficult it is to buy gifts on their salary?"

"Everyone who had anyone willing to listen," you laugh. "Claire liked the gift I got her for the Secret Santa gift exchange, though. Glad I was hers—were it Leon, I fear she would've gotten a book on being a housewife or some shit like that. James was the guy who got stuck with me, which means we have a Nespresso. Bastard probably wanted me to reject the gift, too, because he scowled from the window at me while I loaded it into the back seat of my car."

Adam laughs. "Good thing the old coffee machine broke when it did, then," he pecks your forehead, feels the desire to kiss you senseless evade all of his senses. "A broken coffee machine turns into a Christmas miracle! Oh, glorious day."

You laugh, hand moving up Adams shoulders until your cupping Adams face, hand resting against his jawline.

"Was my apology good enough?" Adam asks, dipping his lips to your neck as your hands slide back down his and you let your arms drape over his shoulders.

"Why do you ask?" You know why he's asking, but you want to hear him say it. He had his angry fun, and now you get a shot to have a bit of fun of your own.

"There's something that I haven't tasted since early last month," he kisses until he's at the center of your collarbone. "Miss it, is all. Had a bit of a craving lately too, if I'm honest."

You spread your legs on impulse, already weakened and ready to let Adam give in to his whims. It makes him laugh because of course the bastard notices the movement, and he nods.

"You're amazing," he presses kisses down your chest, careful to kiss lightly over the places where light bruising has started because of how aggressive he was with his groping, kissing delicately over the places where the bite marks remain. You hate how quickly he can get you hot and bothered but admire it all the same, hate how you thrive off the feeling of his wet kisses and his perfect tongue moving down and across your torso.

"You're depraved," you try to say it, but it comes out as a moan, and you feel Adams smile against your navel. "Absolutely fucking depraved, Adam."

"Well, if you weren't so fuckin' ethereal, I might be less depraved, but every time I look at you all I see is perfection. Can't help it, baby."

He kisses across your lightly bruised stomach to your hips, careful to kiss lightly over the already-forming bruises that match the shapes of his thumbs.

"'M sorry about these," he says. "Sorry about all of it—the bruises and the bite marks. I didn't mean to hurt you this bad."

"It doesn't hurt," you assure. "And even if it did—I like the pain, Adam. The pain is good, I promise."

He kisses the bruises on the sides of your hips, too, nods. "I momentarily forgot about the masochism," he admits. "They do look nice, but I just can't help feelin' bad about being that rough."

"Focus on how nice they look," you hope it comes out reassuring. "They don't hurt, Adam. I promise. If I tell you not to worry, will you listen?"

Adam hums, kisses along your stomach to your other hip and takes his time there as well.

By the time Adams gotten to your thighs, you're wet and aching and just about ready to start clenching around nothing. He's got you needy and wanting, which is what he wants, and he loves it.

He turns his gaze to yours as he presses his tongue flat against your clit, loving the way that you writhe, clenching around nothing in response.

"So wet for me," he says, kissing along the outside of your pussy. "Good God, you're perfect."

And then he's licking at your folds, eating you out like he's a man starved, and you're not even trying to be quiet because of how consumed you feel by his lips and his tongue.

He moans against you, clearly getting off from getting you off, and can't help but buck your hips against his face.

He laughs, pulling away for a second. "You're so fuckin' needy," he says, bringing one finger to your gaping hole and slowly pushing it inside you.

You clench around the digit, moaning. "You're the reason. You and your perfect tongue, your amazing lips," you moan, arching your back off the bed for a split second.

He brings his lips and tongue back to your clit, thrusting into you with one finger, doing as you wish when you start begging for a second and a third.

"Adam," you moan, "fucking hell—Adam,"

Your orgasm crests, and you feel Adam moan against you with his own release as you cum over his fingers.

Breathless, your gaze moves up to the ceiling as you feel Adam pull his hand away. You turn to him as you hear him get up, watch him make something of a show out of licking your cum from his fingers.

"Just as good as I remember it," he grins teasingly at you, leaves to go to the bathroom.

Ten minutes later, he's telling you that a bath is ready and you're leaning against him as you walk to your bathroom, sinking into the hot water and pressing your back against Adams front.

"I'll get better at communicating before it boils over," Adam murmurs, pressing an open mouthed kiss to your shoulder. "Promise, baby."

You hum, leaning against him. "We can work on it together, yeah?"

Adam nods. "That sounds like a nice idea," he says.

Silence lapses, though its comfortable. You get out of the bath tub and stumble back to bed because of how jello-y your legs feel, which Adam laughs at even though he knows he's to blame, and when you steal a pair of his boxers and one of his button up flannels, he doesn't object, merely pulls a pair of boxers and sweatpants on himself before joining you in bed and pulling you close.

The two of you fall asleep early that night, curled up together in the quiet of a Jersey evening in the tail end of December. Adam sleeps through the call from the gallery and you sleep through the call that Claire tries to get to you to talk about the aftermath of the Secret Santa gift exchange, but the sleep you get is so good that the missed calls feel entirely justified.

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