#But bestie.... That shade of yellow | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

intheorangebedroom · 8 months ago

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Tonight you belong to me, chapter 4

Summary: He comes to you every Friday, in a shady motel on the outskirts of town. Christmas on a Friday means you won't be meeting Frankie this week. This break away from each other might be just what the two of you need to consider if you should carry on with whatever this is…

Pairing: Frankie Morales x fem!Reader (OFC)

Rating: Explicit 🔞 see series masterlist for extensive tw.

A/N: Happy Frankie Friday, Orange besties 🧡 @frannyzooey you mean more to me than you will ever know 🧡

Word count: 14.3k

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Chapter 4: Frankie

Frankie scratches the stubble on his jaw. Behind the green screen of his aviators, under his creased brow, his eyes are riveted to the red light in front of him. His grip on the steering wheel too tight for safety.

Something has to be wrong with this light because he’s been waiting at this intersection for ten minutes at least.

He takes in an angry breath. Loud, but constricted. Yet it’s enough for your scent to fill his lungs.

It might be a trick of the mind, because it’s been six days since you’ve been in here, and it’s still everywhere around him. It floats in the cab of the truck. It clings to the fabric of the seat. It’s woven into the suede leather of his jacket.

It’s probably what it is, just a trick of his brain, but he’d like to know for sure. If your presence has pervaded the whole space, or if he’s losing his goddamn sanity.

The light changes to green. His head rolls back on the headrest, eyes drifting close.

It’s a light fragrance. A pale shade of yellow, and celadon green. Orange blossom, citrus, honeysuckle. It’s the very last days of spring, when the air is still chill, but the sunbeams are warm and blinding. Before summer sets everything ablaze, the southern wind, the asphalt, the concrete walls and the bodies. It’s the first sunny day on a pale winter skin.

And there’s the sweet musk you exude, mixed with his own, when he’s fucked you hard and thorough.

The car behind him honks and he jolts up in his seat, knees knocking against the wheel. He puts the pedal down to the floor in less than a millisecond, tires screeching, engine revving up.

What the fuck is wrong with him? What is happening to him?

The route to Will’s place is a familiar one. He drives absentmindedly down streets and avenues lined with palm trees, his mind wandering. To Lua’s shot, that’s due next week; to his Thursday shift he has to swap with Felix. To the gutters that need cleaning, and the front door he should repaint. To the overnight diapers he has to restock soon.

To the feel of your smaller hands cupping his face, and the coolness of your touch. To that tiny pink wound on your forehead and the weariness in your eyes. To that scar on your knee in the shape of a grid, and that other one on your inner thigh you try not to let him see. To those two dimples above your ass and your scent, fuck, your scent, it does something to him. Something he didn’t ask for. Something he wasn’t prepared to deal with.

When he turned around, back in that dive, and his eyes met yours, he didn’t feel anything. Or rather, he felt everything, all at once. The end and the beginning. The sweetness and the pain. Blood and honey. It was all there, contained in your luminous, telling eyes. He saw something in them. Something frightened, but brazen. A hunger. A madness. A longing. Something he recognized, and wanted himself.

He took in your general appearance, the expensive clothes, the even more expensive bag, and he turned back around. Tried to convince himself you were just some corporate executive, bored with your life, looking for a cheap thrill and a quick fuck.

He could sense your gaze, burning holes through his shirt into the muscles of his back, those damn eyes, wide, exhausted. And they kept boring into him. Strong, determined. They wouldn’t let go. You wouldn’t let go.

So he left. He got up and stormed out. Went home to the guest room sofa, and his sleeping baby, and tried to forget about you.

Your eyes kept haunting his nights. And his waking hours too. And since he’s been clean, his days have gotten considerably longer.

No more drugs meant sleepless nights, followed by never-ending stretches of daytime, with nothing to sustain his focus but stress and coffee. It means going to work, and flying on three hours of nonconsecutive sleep, while his thoughts swirl in his overwrought brain. Nothing to take the edge off.

He hadn’t realized the weight he was carrying until Lua was born.

As long as he was in the military, he had kept his head straight. So many guys he served with were using; all kinds of shit. A genuine feel good hit of the summer. It was disconcerting, the ease with which they could score pretty much anything, in just about any country where they were deployed. As if it were made accessible to them purposefully.

But not him. He had never needed it. His focus was sharp, his mood even and leveled, his mind clear. Every fiber of his being striven towards one goal: to watch over his brothers. To leave no one behind.

Things started going south after he’d retired. They followed him. The ones he had left behind. Those times he’d been too quick on the trigger. All of them, soldiers and civilians. Faces without eyes. Deep, bleeding cavities, and dark gaping holes where their mouths should have been. Brothers and enemies merging into one big shapeless and viscous mass of casualties.

They came to him at night, and soon, he stopped sleeping. Exhaustion exacerbated his temper. His control became tenuous. But somehow, he still kept going.

When he met Lupe, he had told her everything. Five days a week, she was the voice in his headset, steady, constant, as she dispatched him and the crew of paramedics to wherever the emergency was located. She sent him to brutal, deadly pile-ups on the highway, burning high schools or heart attacks on remote hiking trails with an even tone that aroused his curiosity and inspired his trust.

When they’d started dating, he confided in her. The nightmares, the difficulty focusing. She understood, but she also didn’t want anything to do with it. She’d answered with a blunt warning. I have my own shit to deal with, Morales, I’m not in this to save you. He didn’t want her to, anyway. He wasn’t her responsibility.

He had stayed. And so did she. Things were good enough. They were in love. She was already well into her thirties, with a job that didn’t leave much time for dating, and even less for starting a family. She wanted a kid more than anything, and he thought normalcy would do it. That it would ground him enough to fix him.

After Lua was born, he resorted to drugs to numb out and function. At the time, he had considered it to be a momentary solution. He needed the energy to care for her, not to keep it together.

The drugs helped at first. It helped with the nightmares. It helped with the realization that flying had, for most of his life, been his sole purpose, main goal and greatest talent, and that he’d used it to destroy, ravage and kill. It helped with the guilt. Even as it generated more of it.

The benzos put him to sleep for dreamless hours, and then the coke kept him awake throughout the workday. He thought he’d find some sort of footing.

It didn’t help long, though. He got caught fast. Almost as if he wanted to be. And then it was all burning shame, and disintegrating self-esteem, with no means left to escape any of his feelings.

Lupe gave him hell, rightfully so. His sister said nothing, which nearly killed him. She wired him money so he could hire a good lawyer. She’d been the one to advise him in the first place to think twice about bringing a baby into his mess. He still hated himself for not listening to her.

What hit him the hardest was the suspension of his pilot license. Who was he, if not a pilot?

After the bust, he invested everything into being a good father. Lupe found it in her to forgive him, and things were pretty good for a couple of months.

Until Pope came back with his bullshit idea. Frankie watched his friends buckle and fold, one after the other. Ben, Ironhead and Redfly. Until he had no other choice but to follow suit. Watch over his brothers. Leave no one behind.

Flashes after that: Redfly coming back in a plastic bag, to join the mass of eyeless, gaping holes that kept him awake at night.

The cruel irony of his suspension being lifted within a mere two weeks after he’d crashed that fucking Mi-8. Pope going into hiding, perhaps dead himself. The rest of them left here to slowly fragment, standing amongst all the things they broke beyond repair, with nothing to show for it.

And then that one day, you collided into him.

When he came back to the bar two weeks after your first encounter, it was with the firm intention of giving you what he thought you wanted. Scratch your itch, and his. Fuck you once, use you as an outlet, same way you probably wanted to use him.

The very moment he saw you step inside the bar, he understood how wrong he’d been.

You were not out for a cheap thrill or a quick fuck; you were not a bored, cynical executive looking to mix with the very working-class you exploited.

You were in pain. Numbed out. Withdrawn. Absent.

For some reason, that fucked him up hard. He tried running away from you, but you came after him, headstrong. You sought him out. Without hesitation, or fear. And something held him back, prevented him from running away too fast or too far. He let you catch up with him.

You wanted him. You want him still.

The sounds you make when you come, that breathless moan, full chest, empty mind, he knew he was in trouble when he pulled it out of you that very first night in the parking lot, against his truck. You clung to him, cold hands with a feverish touch. He was greedy and you thrashed before you went slack in his hold and right away he had wanted more. He risked a taste, licked his fingers, and you were heaven. You were unreal.

He wanted to know so much more: what did you feel like from the inside when you came? How much of him could you take? What your voice would sound like after he’d fuck your throat?

How much of you really existed? How much of you had he made up?

He soon found out. About the sensation of your soft skin under his rougher hands. About your patience. About your scent. A pale shade of yellow and celadon green. Intoxicating.

At the beginning, he thought you were coming to him for degradation, as much as for pleasure. There wasn’t a single debasing act he could come up with that you didn’t let him do to you.

You’d take anything he gave you.

Week after week, you let him fuck you numb, fuck you rough, fuck you raw. Tie you up, fold you down. Cover you in come, choke you on his cock, spit in your mouth.

Friday after Friday, you kept looking at him like you couldn’t believe he was still here, pounding you blind into that shitty mattress. Not grateful. Surprised. Or relieved. He didn’t know what to make of it, of that dignity you forfeited when you crossed the threshold of that room that very first night. Of your surrendering.

In retrospect, you understood your dynamic much faster than he did. Back then, he was still struggling with the idea that you were real.

He grew wary, and in his head, a refrain started playing. Tonight’s the last night. There won’t be a next week.

He couldn’t stop, though. One last night, that turned into two, then three, then four. He finally started getting decent nights of sleep, a restful slumber of which he felt undeserving.

He had to put a stop to this. Just one last night, and there wouldn’t be a next week.

He knew even more when his curiosity started to drift elsewhere. To your life outside the room with the brown rug and the yellow curtains. To that inner island of yours, the contour of which he was only starting to make out through the fog of his blunt desire.

You kissed him like you knew he’d never be yours, so you’d be his instead. Like his breath was yours. Like your heart only beat under his hand. And yet, you kept eluding him, silent and slippery. The paradox drove him insane.

He grew restless in between Friday evenings, booking the room earlier each week. He forbade himself any other kinds of relief, and instead turned to books. Browsing, flipping pages impatiently, searching for words and concepts. Intellectual tools to rationalize the feeling of you, to understand your presence and describe your scent, because you wouldn’t let him name you, and probably never would.

He thought that if he didn’t come inside you, perhaps you’d keep coming back to him.

It only made him want you more. The relinquishing drop in your shoulders, every time he asked you to stop him. He became obsessed with the thought of giving you what you knew better than to want. And in his head, the refrain kept playing.

One last night. One last fuck. One last fix.

In comparison, it had been easier to quit coke.

He can’t explain your pull. The way his body gravitates towards yours. He can’t explain the visceral craving.

Aloof and soothing, with a will so hard and unbending it scares him, you take, everything that festers ugly inside him, and absorb it, making it disappear. You turn it into something beautiful, something that blooms and purrs and breathes. Orange blossom and honeysuckle.

What do you do with all his rage? How do you cope with it? Where do you get this strength from?

Your strength. He’s only beginning to fathom the magnitude and depth of it.

It’s hidden beneath the surface of you, dormant, nestled in your quiet resilience, your accidental resistance. The remoteness of your gaze. It’s in your plea for him to take, until he knows he’ll stop breathing if he stops giving in.

That place within yourself, where you retreat not to get hurt. That’s where he wants to find you. That’s where he wants to live.

When you didn’t show up two weeks ago, he should have been relieved. He’d got out easy. You’d taken the decision for him. Inside his chest, however, anxiety chewed up his heart and set his nerves on fucking fire. The possibility that your absence was unwilling. That something might have prevented you from coming. Something, or someone.

He had your plates written down in the little spiral notebook he kept in the glove compartment of his truck. He could’ve pull some strings, found out your address. Fuck, he could’ve found out your name. But it felt like a violation even thinking about it, no matter how sickly worried he was. Like a step too far into madness. Something he wouldn’t come back from.

And then, you did show up. Exhausted, wounded. Twice as determined. He felt the overwhelming urge to get you into his truck and drive away with you, and never come back.

He felt the familiar grip of wrath, a blinding surge of hatred for this man who’s not quite your husband.

Pulling in front of Will’s building, Frankie puts the truck in park. He grazes a palm over his face, eyes falling on the ugly condo to his left. The teal-colored, budget paint peeling off the sunburned walls in large flecks.

He sighs, remembering Will’s former house. The one he shared with his fiancée before she left him. Two stories, bow windows on the top floor, a white porch with a swing. Lilac trees in the front lawn. Conversations about having kids.

He readjusts his hat, fingers deftly combing through his hair, takes the six-pack next to him on the seat bench, and exits his truck, dark eyes quickly scanning the block for Ben’s car. The beat-up Camaro is nowhere in sight. He didn’t expect Ben to be on time anyway, but he’s hoping he won’t take too long to join them.

In the narrow corridor leading to Will’s apartment, a neon lamp goes off and on in a spasmodic, irritating blink. The damp stench of molded wood cloaks his tense frame. He knows that if he tilts his head down to his shoulder and inhales deeply enough, he’ll find you there.

He doesn’t.

Before he brings down his knuckles to the door, Frankie exhales long and slow. With closed eyes, pursed lips. It’s useless. His shoulders won’t relax.

When Will opens the door, Frankie’s taken aback by how good he looks. How normal. Thick blond hair kept short, with a carefully trimmed beard. Brawny shoulders, creaseless shirt, alert gaze. Seemingly unchanged, incomprehensibly constant.

Frankie leans a little longer than necessary into his friend’s full-body hug. When he lets go, the tall man briefly narrows his eyes at him, a steel-blue, surgical stare from behind long blond lashes.

“How are you doing, man?” Will asks in his lazy drawl.

The dim hallway feels too small for the two of them. Frankie’s skin is pulled taut under Will’s unblinking scrutiny. He lowers his head, tucking his face into the protective shadow of his hat.

“Good. Same,” he mumbles.

Benny’s buoyant entrance saves him, and it’s more hugs, bulky shoulders colliding, hands clasping and eruptive greetings as they slowly make their way inside the apartment.

“How’s my goddaughter?” Benny asks.

Frankie smiles at the question. A genuine smile, crinkled eyes and dimpled cheeks. The warmth of the younger man’s baritone spreads in his chest. It’s the care in his words.

“She’s good. Growing up fast. I think it’s just a matter of days before she walks, now.”

“The minute she walks, I’m gonna teach her how to throw a punch,” Benny grins.

Every time he visits, it takes Frankie a minute to adjust to the contrast between the exterior of Will’s building and the interior of his apartment, and tonight is no exception. The small, one-bedroom’s white walls look like they’ve been freshly painted. The sofa’s cushions are puffed as if no one has ever sat on it. Every surface is spotless, not a dust particle flying. The coffee table is bare, no glass of water, not even the remote control lying on it.

Matching frames lined methodically on the living-room walls display family pictures, chronologically arranged, as well as a couple of shots from their time together in the Army. Frankie catches a glimpse of his younger self, cropped curls, sharper jaw, smoother grin. His arm is wrapped around Pope’s shoulders. He averts his gaze.

In the kitchen, the stainless-steel sink is shiny and empty, clean dishes neatly stored away in the overhead glass cabinets. The stove looks like it was just delivered.

Frankie knows himself to be tidier than most. When they started dating, Lupe would often tell him it was one of her favorite traits of his.

But Will’s ability to inhabit a seemingly unlived place is unsettling.

They take their usual seats around the small, round kitchen table. The two brothers fill up the room. Benny’s presence is bright, cheerful, in complementary contrast with his brother’s density and observing silence. Frankie lands somewhere in the middle. Like a bridge. Like a common ground.

The conversation flows between them, effortless. It would be easy to believe nothing has changed. Up until nine months ago, they used to meet at least once a week. Fight nights, bar nights, gym nights... Pope was rarely in town, Tom busy trying to make ends meet, so it was often just the three of them.

Now, Frankie seldom sees the Millers more than once a month. But after thirteen years, ten of which they’ve spent serving side by side, he knows them well enough to notice the invisible changes.

There’s a new sort of gravity to Benny’s demeanor. His laughter isn’t as loud, not as immediate. A loss in spontaneity. There’s Will's unusual patience and leniency toward the young man. The nervous glances at his watch whenever his brother’s late.

Lately, Frankie has caught himself envying the two men’s bond. The many quiet ways in which they look out for one another. A tightly packed unit. Blood tied.

He could call his sister. Hell, he could even hop on a plane with Lua and fly across the country to visit her, Lupe could probably use the break. His sister would listen. She already has. And she never judged.

Will places three more cans of beer on the table. Frankie hesitates. He doesn’t need a DIU in his Christmas stocking.

“What are you guys doing for Christmas? Going back to Colorado?” he asks, stalling.

“Yeah, we’re flying tomorrow,” Benny answers with a slow nod. “Can’t leave mom alone.”

Frankie finds himself trapped under Will’s gaze again. It’s charged, with what, he cannot tell yet, but he’s ready to bet he’ll find out before the evening ends. That fourth beer is really tempting. Instead, his thumb finds the target tattooed on his left hand, blunt nail worrying at it.

“Say, Fish,” Will starts.

Here it comes.

“I met Lupe the other day at the grocery store.”

Frankie nods, steeling himself. Chin up, to meet his friend’s eyes. There’s the metallic crunch of a tall boy cracked open, followed by the bubbly, high-pitched hiss of the beer.

“Wanna tell me why she’s under the impression that we see each other every Friday evening?”

A second pair of storm-blue eyes dart to his face. If he wasn’t caught in the middle of it, Frankie could find the scene almost comical.

“Wait,” Benny cuts in, “you guys are back together?”

Frankie shakes his head. “No. No, we’re not.”

“But you still live together,” Will states, impassive, carrying on with his interrogation.

“For Lua,” Frankie says flatly.

Those two words have come out of his mouth for what feels like a thousand times in the past nine months, to family, close friends, colleagues, and acquaintances alike. Today, for the first time, he realizes how incomprehensible, how irrational it might have sounded to all of them.

“Why are you lying to her, then?” Will leans in closer, his face contrasted in harsh shadows under the overhead suspension.

“Look Will,” Frankie starts, his tone a notch too defensive, “I appreciate your concern, I know this comes from a good place, but I’m not on anything, ok? So you can– you can drop it.”

The request is rhetorical. Desperate, really. Ironhead is not known for letting go, once he has latched onto something. Across from Frankie, Benny drinks up in silence, eyes flickering between the two men and the growing tension that hangs like smoke between them.

An ugly apprehension creeps up along Frankie’s nape.

“I know you’re not using. I can tell. You look better than I’ve seen you looking in a while, aside from the fact that you’re wound up pretty tight. But we’re in this fucking aftermath together, Fish, so I gotta ask: what the fuck is it that you do every Friday evening?”

Frankie sits up straight, folding his arms over his chest, blood simmering.

“Are you saying you don’t trust me?” he asks, keeping his voice even.

“No. That’s not what I’m saying.” Will cocks his chin toward Benny as he adds, “I trust you with mine and my brother’s life.”

“But not with mine,” Frankie whispers, comprehension finally dawning on him, and somehow, his friend’s concern hits him harder than an unlikely lack of trust. Something snaps and goes slack between his shoulders.

Benny moves suddenly, his massive frame leaning forward. Propping his forearms on the table, he lets out a long, low whistle.

“Holy shit, man,” he says, “Fish got himself a new girl.”

Will frowns. His eyes do a quick back and forth between his brother and Frankie, who hangs his head, hiding under the brim of his hat, hissing an angered fuck.

Benny erupts in thundering laughter. Around them, the tension bursts open, the entire atmosphere dripping with it, the air moving again.

“No. No, I don’t,” Frankie mutters, shaking his head.

His denial is drowned under Benny’s booming voice.

“Come on! Look at yourself, old man, you’re fucking blushing! You got yourself some pussy!”

“Do you? Did you meet someone?” Will presses, trying to lock eyes with him.

Frankie gives it to him. Raises his head and looks him dead in the eyes, shaking his head still, a vein ready to pop in his corded neck.

“I didn’t meet anyone. She’s not a girl. I’m not talking about her here,” he grits.

Will leans back in his chair. It creaks loud and tired under his weight. He lets out a heavy sigh, of relief perhaps, or deepened worry.

“Come on, Fish! Give us something. At least tell us what she looks like,” Benny teases.

He opens another beer and slides it over to Frankie across the table.

Will’s eyes have yet to leave his face.

“Why don’t you tell Lupe about it? She’s the one who broke up with you,” he remarks.

“Less than nine months ago. After I fucked up, yet again. She’s the mother of my kid, Will, she’s been through enough on my account.”

Will nods in silence, apparently satisfied with this explanation.

“Anyway, it’s nothing. There’s nothing to tell,” Frankie adds, swallowing the bitter taste that sits at the back of his tongue.

Silence settles over the three of them. Frankie grabs the can and brings it to his lips, downing half of its content in long gulps.

Your scent is there, right there, meshed into the fabric of his jacket. It takes all of his willpower not to turn his head and breathe you in.

“She’s married, is she?” Benny asks with a shit-eating grin.

Will’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline in sheer horror.

“Is she?” he asks, plunging forward to look at him.

Frankie grinds his teeth, jaw flexing, eyes clenching shut.

“Fish, is she married?” Will repeats, a shrill undertone in his usual low drawl.

“Well, I, for one, am not judging you,” Benny declares, giving his brother a pointed look and raising his can as if to toast Frankie.

Frankie sighs.

He’s never going back to that motel.

—

You don’t like champagne, but that’s all Adrian’s parents ever serve you. It’s fine. For once, you don’t mind. You’ll be driving later today, so you need your mind clear and your reflexes sharp.

You cradle the tall glass in your hand. The taste has long gone stale, the liquid lukewarm in the warmth of your palm. The bubbles are flat. On your lap, your phone buzzes quietly with a new message. Across the table, Adrian’s eyes dart in your direction, annoyance darkening them.

You swipe your thumb across the screen, and a smile plays on your lips at the sight of Ava and Polly grinning for the camera. They’re sitting in the middle of a large group of women, you quickly count twelve of them, wearing a rainbow of paper crowns.

They’re gathered in front of a festive table. A small living-room, brightly lit, cluttered with art, lamps, and plants. A Christmas tree stands in the left corner. In front of them, the plates are loaded with what looks like turkey and roasted vegetables. Napkins, cutlery, candles, and decorative pine tree branches scattered on the table. There’s a large cake dish at the center, on top of which sits the highest lemon meringue cake you’ve ever seen, the topping at least three inches high, clearly homemade.

Some of the women are holding wine glasses, white or red, half full, lipstick smeared on the rim. The photograph has captured them mid-cheers, their lips pursed around a word that’s not yet a smile. The picture is all crinkling eyes, ringing laughter, colorful clothes and flushed cheeks.

You tap your thumb on the screen in fast motions.

Gorgeous! All of you!

Wait, is that turkey vegan?

You add a winking emoji to clarify your tone before pressing send.

The three dots blink briefly and the dark-haired, shrugging emoji pops up on the screen.

You chuckle.

It’s Xmas!!!!! Lexi’s filling is fkg delicious!!!!!

What abt u? U holding up????

The little round yellow face, with its mouth turned downward, stirs guilt in your gut.

Ava was tearing up again, when you dropped her at the airport two days ago, despite your many reassurances that you would be perfectly alright. It’s not your first Christmas apart, but it’s the first one with over a thousand miles between you. You want to put her mind at ease. For her to remain carefree as long as life allows her to be.

I’m good, pup ♥ But I’d be even better if I was about to eat that meringue cake, OMG!

It’s not a lie, not exactly. Of course, it’s the first time in decades you’re completely sober to face the ordeal that is Christmas diner at Adrian’s parents. It’s almost an outer body experience. But strangely, not the nerve-racking one you feared. You anticipated worse. For every sensation to be impossibly loud, blinding, sharp. For your mind to spiral downward at the first uncomfortable interaction.

It hasn’t. You’re nervous, but also focused. And that grip provides you with just enough balance. This year, you’ve got a clear course of action. At least for the upcoming couple of days. One step at a time.

Pinching the screen, you zoom in on Ava’s face, before your eyes flicker up to the dining table you’re sitting at and the people around it.

Everything’s beige. From the tablecloth linen to the leftovers growing cold on the plates. From the Christmas tree and the guests’ clothing to Adrian’s mother’s hair.

Beige, bland, boring. Ashen.

The only touch of color is on Adrian’s face. Those ruby-colored specks spreading to his cheeks from the neck, standing out in his pale carnation. A reaction you only seem to arouse when he’s furious with you.

His mother announces dessert will be served in the jardin d’hiver, which is how Beatrice insists on calling the back porch.

Your phone vibrates, signaling another text from Ava. You slide it in the pocket of your jumpsuit without opening it. Adrian glowers at you a second longer before walking over to the end of the table to assist his grandmother.

His brother nearly races him to it. You watch the grown-up man in his bespoke Armani suit get up so fast he nearly trips over the legs of his chair.

Their motivation is not honorable. Affection doesn’t play into their eagerness. There isn’t a member of the Mountcastle family who harbors love or respect for the 92 year old, acrimonious matriarch. In their defense, she’s a dried-up, nasty piece of bigotry, built on pure, solid hatred, even by their conservative standards and values.

But she owns the estate and she holds the money. And so the two Mountcastle spawns scramble to their feet to make a show of their devotion.

The whole clan gets up to form a procession behind the old woman’s frail, hunched silhouette. Parents, aunts and uncles, in-laws and cousins, children in ruffled dresses and short dress pants flittering around them. Your so-called family. You can barely tell them apart.

Detached, you stride slowly behind, toward the back of the house. You haven't worn heels in two weeks. It’s quite surprising how fast you got unused to them. Your slick, black pumps press uncomfortably on your little toes, rubbing your skin raw. But you won’t be wearing them much longer. So you suck in the pain. You let it ground you.

Your choice of outfit elicited a stern glance from Adrian when you slipped it on this morning. He hovered behind you, disapproving and silent, still riled up from your earlier confrontation when you had announced you’d be driving your car to his parents’ house, so you could leave early.

You stood in front of the mirror, rigid and hesitant, sliding up the side zipper. A sleeveless black jumpsuit with a V-cut cleavage in the front, and a deeper one exposing your back, bought in a thrift store ages ago, when you were still in college. You exhumed it from the depth of your closet, in hopes it would convoke the boldness you had briefly experienced during this short period of your life. You’re done dressing to please anyone but yourself.

The help walks briskly past you through the double, ornate-glass doors leading to the porch. She lays a porcelain tray on the console near the railing.

“La bûche de Noël!” Beatrice declares triumphantly, opening her arms to gesture theatrically at the brown mass on the tray.

A wave of blond heads undulates toward the console, blue eyes in every nuance darting at the dish where a log-shaped lump of a cake sits.

“What is this monstrosity?” her mother-in-law croaks.

The entire family falls silent. Your eyes grow wide and you bite down on your grin.

Beatrice instantly loses her carefully crafted composure. It’s never been obvious to you until now, how vacant her gaze turns whenever something upsets her. You briefly wonder what’s her drug of choice to escape. You sure hope she has one.

“Oh but it’s French, Abigail,” she murmurs. “It’s a delicacy. I bought it from Sucré Table, on Kennedy Boulevard.”

“What’s wrong with an American pecan pie?” the matriarch spits out without so much as a look for her daughter-in-law.

Beatrice smiles her empty smile, sharp yellowed teeth, hardened gray eyes. You can’t bear to look at her any longer. You turn your head, and your gaze meets Agatha’s.

The young girl instantly lightens up, straightening her back in her baby-blue seersucker dress, smiling at you with something you can only describe as relief. She raises a little hand and wriggles her thin fingers. The ten year old is your favorite. You love her dearly. Her bubbly personality and burgeoning sense of humor have seen you through many family gatherings.

Today, it hurts you to admit, you’ve kept her at arm’s length, selfishly preserving yourself from Beatrice’s favorite question: when will you have a child of your own?

With a slight wince, you blink away the vision of Frankie holding his little girl in the photo booth picture. Their full heads of curls. Their dimpled grins.

Charles, Adrian’s father, is the first to break the uneasy silence, with a playful albeit daring remark on his mother’s failing sense of adventure. The assembly lets out a collective breath. Beatrice takes a seat on one of the cushioned wicker chairs, curtly signaling the help to cut the bûche and serve it.

You exhale slowly through parted lips. If you wait any longer, courage will fail you.

Smoothing your palms over your belly, you make your way to Adrian, where he’s leaning against the railing at the rear end of the porch.

“I’ll be going, now,” you whisper, eyes not quite meeting his.

He sighs, something constrained and hostile, facing away toward the sprawling, lush garden, hydrangeas, willow trees. Tension rolls off his lanky frame. Your stomach turns, your mind swivels, grasping for words of reassurance.

Incomprehensibly, you want him to talk to you, even though you’re terrified of what he might say. The poisoned words he’s capable of, somehow preferable to his irate silence.

“I’ll excuse myself to your mother before leaving. I’ll be discreet. I promise. I won’t do anything to jeopardize your–”

He turns to face you so fast it startles you.

“You could at least tell me where you’re going.”

You look up at him, taken aback by his pained expression. Under his pinched brow, his features are twisted in an unfamiliar expression. He slithers a hand around your waist, drawing you close, and it strikes you: he’s pleading.

A breath hitches inside your chest. From this close, you can see the flecks of green in his pale blue irises. You had forgotten their complexity. Their refined beauty. He tightens his grip on you, fingers curling into your tender flesh. The lie tumbles out of you before you can hold it.

“I’m just going to check in on Ava. It’s her first Christmas on her own.”

You catch a glimpse of his mother in your peripheral, handing out Bone China dessert plates. The heady perfume of the hydrangea bushes is going to your head. The day is swirling inside your brain, around you, jardin d’hiver, French dessert, delicacy. Agatha’s desperate little wave, her loneliness, your cowardice. Adrian’s eyes of green and their angry plea.

Your lungs constrict, not letting you breathe.

Adrian tilts down his face, pressing his forehead to yours. His breath skates your skin when he speaks.

“What happened to us, babe?”

His lips brush against the edge of your jaw. Static scrambles your brain; your hand motions upward of its own volition to rest on his back. The pain, the remorse in his voice sits like a razor blade inside your throat. You have to talk around the taste of your blood, voice unrecognizable.

“I’ll be back tomorrow. I promise.”

It’s not a lie. You will be back tomorrow. Facing a blank page, the rest of your life to figure out, to navigate with what you’ve learned about yourself.

His hand moves, sliding down to rest in the small of your back, the muscles of his back flexing under your light touch, and your palm, your entire body registers the difference. In sensation, in mass, in warmth.

“I miss you,” he whispers against your lips.

—

The car stereo plays a classical rendition of Let it snow. Ten minutes into driving, you gave up trying to find a station that would broadcast something other than Christmas tunes.

The traffic is fluid, the roads eerily deserted. The windows on both sides are cracked open, and the warm, late afternoon air that wafts in soothes your sore rib cage.

Your mind keeps wandering to the previous Friday, when you sat nestled into Frankie’s side as he drove aimlessly. To the smooth fabric of his jacket under your cheek, to the heat of his chest, to his solid breadth.

You stop it.

The memory is always a thought away. But it shouldn’t be summoned at random. You can’t risk its erosion. There won’t be another one.

You’re disappointed to find a lanky young man sitting in Raul’s place behind the counter of the motel’s office. His blond hair is tied in a bun on top of his head, and his phone blasts pop tunes in audio slices of fifteen seconds through revolving TikTok videos. You want to cover your ears. Or smash up his phone.

He hands you the key, and you all but rush out of the office, only slowing once you’ve reached the front door of your room.

Before stepping inside, you halt under the porch.

Beyond the parking lot, beyond the road, over the horizon, dusk descends in dark tangerine over the canopy of trees. Slowly, the sky turns saffron in seamless gradations. The air feels textured, grainy like an old photograph, like long-gone, sunny vacations, like faded memories. The evening breeze is pleasant. The night envelops you, violet-blue, regrets and losses.

Inside room number 2, you draw the yellow curtains. You stand still for a few moments, confused, your routine disrupted, since you’re not expecting him.

It’s too early to sleep, but the tension that has run through you throughout the week, culminating with Adrian’s kiss, is now flowing out of your body, leaving you limp.

Adrian hadn’t held you like that in years. With passion and intent. Perhaps even sincerity. He’d never done that, attempted to use your nostalgic heart to his benefit. Intimidation had usually sufficed.

Toeing off your shoes, you slowly undress. You fold your clothes in a neat little pile, similar to the one you found on the desk last Saturday. Military-like.

The questions you never asked Frankie flood your brain. All the things about him you will never have the time to learn. They form a lump in the dip of your collarbone. They prickle under your eyelids.

You clench your eyes shut, and invoke the image of his daughter’s face, trying to picture their Christmas celebration to strengthen your resolve. Pecan pies and half-nibbled, minute portions of roasted turkey. Red boxes wrapped in white ribbons under the blinking tree. A teddy bear. Jigsaw puzzles with large pieces. Plastic toys with pushing buttons and synthetic lullabies. A rocking horse, maybe.

The image of him with that little girl has plagued you, continuously, throughout the week. Pain cloaking you like mist, seeping inside you, breaching the molecular structure of your flesh. Redefining it. Until you woke up one night, drenched in cold sweat, with a certitude ringing out inside your head: you had to give him up. Give him back, back to his wife and daughter.

You’d go to the motel one last time, one last indulgence, to say goodbye to the idea of him, and you’d give him back to his family.

When your heart rate has slowed down, you walk over to the bathroom to wash your face clean. You’ll miss your reflection in that black-edged mirror. You don’t smile and say, “Stop me.”

The bedspread is gross. The polyester fabric, once a peach shade of orange, is darkened in multiple places by stains of various shapes and consistencies. You’re probably responsible for most of it.

Grabbing a corner of the heavy quilt, you slide it off the bed entirely. The white linen underneath seems clean enough.

You climb into bed, and repress a shiver. You switch off the lights and pull up the sheet to your chin. The fabric is threadbare, starchy.

How can you be so cold, in the mild evening?

Lying curled up on your side, eyes strained on the curtains, you don’t feel yourself falling asleep.

Soon, you’re miles away from the motel, your naked body drifting into the Pacific Ocean. You’re half-immersed, but afloat. The undercurrent is strong underneath the white crests of the violent waves, but you’re not scared. As long as you lie in the water, as long as you don’t try to resist, you’ll be fine. Ears beneath the surface, you’re isolated by the silence of the dark abyss, eyes staring up into the immensity above you.

It’s a different kind of sunset. Flamboyant, carmine, and the whole sky is ablaze with it. The horizon is on fire, but you’re safe in the water.

A vague intuition roils your peace. You’re supposed to look for something. How, you don’t know, because you cannot shift from your position, or you’ll sink.

Suddenly, something tailspins across the sky in a fast downward fall. Too small to be a bird, too slow for a shooting star. Thick streaks of ominous gray fumes trail behind it in its descent.

Should you be scared? Should you try to get away from it? It’s so far in the distance, it can’t be much of a threat. It’s too late, now, anyway, you tilt your head to the side in time to watch it collide with the surface of the ocean.

You feel the impact in the undertow. Something too big stirs between your lungs, and you gasp as the muted sound of the collision reaches you in a vibrating shockwave.

The ripples of the impact are crawling fast over the surface, in your direction. A sense of dread, of impending doom, scrambles your brain. You jolt upward to a vertical position, legs and hands beating against the current, pushing against the water.

The balance is fractured. You’re pulled under.

You’re sinking fast, as fast as that thing fell into the ocean, and above the surface, the crimson sky is turning dim.

Instinctually, you rebel against it, screaming for help but it’s water, not air, that fills your lungs. Salty, cold, abrading your throat when you choke on it.

You’re dying, or you’re dead already, because something firm and soft radiates heat against your back.

“Shhh, it’s ok.”

A strong arm bands firmly around your chest, warm palm, splayed fingers, pulling you flush against warm skin.

“I got you, baby.”

Your eyes shoot open. The dark bedroom materializes in your blurred vision, the silhouette of the bedside table and the lamp, the pale square of the window. Its shape detached from the wall, dancing in the darkness.

“Frankie?”

Frankie presses you into him, a short, strong squeeze of an answer.

But your dream is clinging to the edges of your consciousness, salty water sloshing at the bottom of your lungs.

“‘S that really you?” you ask again, words slurred through sleep, panic in the inflection of your question.

His hand wraps around your breast. He slots his face into the curve of your neck, the scruff of his jaw a tickle against your bare skin.

“Why, you were expecting someone else?”

You close your eyes, tears rising, sudden, like the tide of the Pacific Ocean.

“I’m not still dreaming?” you breathe out.

His response is immediate. His teeth graze the slope of your shoulder. The bite is shallow, but firm, and you let out a little sound, between a surprised gasp and a relieved exhale.

“See? Not dreaming. Go back to sleep, I’ll take care of you in the morning,” he mouths against your skin before kissing it better. A pointed kiss, plush, parted lips. A promise.

The impact of that thing on the surface of the ocean is still pulsating through you. Ricocheting around your rib cage. You wiggle into his hold to turn around and face him, your palms finding the plane of his broad chest.

Your entire body registers the difference. In sensation, in mass, in warmth.

In the semidarkness, you can only make out the outline of his sharp features. You scoot closer, tucking your face into his neck, taming the vibration with his scent.

“Will you still be here in the morning?”

You feel the thick swallow in his throat against your temple. It’s a beat before he moves, tilting his head to rest his chin on the crown of your head, both arms circling your waist. Engulfing you in his hold.

“I will.”

—

Frankie knew you’d be at the motel. Instinctually so. A gut feeling, unnerving in its clarity.

He hadn’t planned on going when he headed out. He had decided never to set a foot there ever again, and he was going to stand by his decision. After he’d put his daughter to bed, he just needed to get out of the house. Escape the charged atmosphere.

It was Lua’s second Christmas, and he hadn't even managed to keep his family together that long.

Lupe was watching a movie in the living-room. He’d leaned against the door frame, already in his hat and jacket. She hated his hat. She had forbidden him to wear it inside the house when they started dating, and he still abided by that rule. A belated mark of respect.

“I’m heading out,” he announced, as neutral as possible. “Not sure when I’ll be back, don’t worry, ok?”

She was done being worried about him. He knew this much. He understood. He accepted.

They still shared a roof, however. Bills, deadlines, and most importantly, responsibilities regarding the child they had brought into this world. He owed her basic information on his whereabouts. He may have lied about where he went, but he had always been back home before Lua woke up, as agreed between them.

“Yeah, ok,” she answered, without lifting her eyes from the TV screen.

As he pushed away from the lintel, she turned to face him, as if remembering something.

“Wait, Francisco?”

She hadn’t called him Frankie since she’d broken up with him.

“Yea?” he said, backtracking to stand on the threshold.

Her dark eyes glimmered, lit up by the TV screen’s flickering light. She was beautiful. A superior kind of beauty. Like gilded age Hollywood nobility. Dolores Del Rio, Linda Darnell. Even when tired, even with a bare face, and sitting in her pajamas with a bowl of chips between her crossed legs. Frankie hoped Lua would grow up to look like her. To be like her. And not take from him and his rough features. And his fucked up brain.

“Could you stay in to take care of Lua next weekend? I know Friday’s your night, but I— I’ve got an opportunity to get away for the weekend. I might not be back until the 2nd.”

He recognized it in her demeanor. In the way she tried facing him without being able to look straight at him. The discreet, unconscious fiddling of the hem of her t-shirt. The concealment. Handing out a part, but not all the truth. Only what’s convenient.

He briefly wondered if he’d been this obvious when he was running around on drugs. Probably even more so. How she didn’t kick him in the jaw was still a mystery to him. He owed her so much for her patience alone.

“No problem, I’ll be here. Happy to do it for you,” he said in earnest, hoping it didn’t sound too awkward. Hoping she’d get the meaning behind it: she deserved someone else. Someone better.

“Ok. Cool.” She paused before she added, “Appreciate it.”

He nodded in silence and turned around, walking toward the front door.

Originally, the plan had been to drive without a goal. Pop an old Jefferson Airplane album into the truck’s stereo and listen to the music, drifting into the night. Slowly ease down from the day’s tensions.

Your scent had eventually dissipated from the cab. It’d been eight days. He was never going back to that motel, and with her request, Lupe had just made his resolution easier to translate into action.

The words formed inside his mind. He pronounced them out loud.

I’m never going back to that motel.

And he knew. You were there, at this very moment. He couldn’t explain how, but he knew. You’d said you couldn’t come, but it was Christmas evening, not Christmas Eve. Most families were done with the celebrations, heading home, cleaning up, storing away the china until next Thanksgiving.

He pictured you sitting on the edge of the bed, a lonely silhouette peering out into the twilight beyond the yellow curtains, and a violent pain shot through his chest. He thought he was having a heart attack, the way his heart squeezed and sank.

It hadn’t been more than a split second between his vision and his decision. He hit the brakes, ignoring the white SUV honking and swerving behind him, and U-turned on Ocean to head toward the 589 northbound.

When he pulled into the parking lot, the night was pitch dark. Your gray sedan appeared in his headlights. He let out a sigh of relief as he parked behind it. The pain inside his chest was only starting to ebb.

He got out fast and climbed onto the porch in front of room number 2. You hadn’t even locked the door.

—

Dawn wakes you. The light gently tugging at your consciousness, little by little. Pale but insistent, nudging your eyes open.

The room looks so different in the daylight. A miracle you have yet to tire of. Dust particles dancing in the grazing sunbeams of an early winter morning. Quiet and peace.

It’s been a long while since you last slept this well. You sigh at the cliché. A good-hearted, full-chested sigh.

Frankie’s heat behind you is nearly too much. His chest pressed against your back, his left arm, limp and heavy, resting across your waist.

His breathing is deep. Slow, and steady. With each rise and fall of his chest, a thin sheen of sweat glides between your two bodies. His breath ruffles the thin hair on your nape in a gentle tickle.

Carefully, so as not to wake him, you try peeling his arm off you. You’ve almost made it when he suddenly brings it back down.

“Nope,” he mumbles with closed eyes. The word is sleep-heavy, but the corner of his lips are twitching.

You stifle a delighted giggle.

“I have to use the bathroom.”

“Mmh.”

There’s a pause as he considers it, as you vainly try to bite down on your childlike grin.

“Ok,” he finally says, with exaggerated reluctance.

He doesn’t move his arm, though. You have to wiggle yourself out of his hold.

When you exit the bathroom, he’s still in the same position. The room is flooded with light. The sun darts its rays into his sleep-mussed hair. From golden strands to darker depth, his curls are pointing in every direction.

You tiptoe in silence, doing your very best to climb back on the bed without disturbing his slumber. You want this. More than anything you’ve ever wanted. This tranquil moment to yourself, alone with his sleeping body.

Kneeled behind him on the mattress, you take in his breadth, impressive even in this position as he lies on his side. You breathe in his scent, leather, cedar wood, and the musk of his skin, warm from sleep, from the morning sun, from your own body.

There’s a larger freckle on the left side of his neck. Your fingers hover over it, curious, tempted. Drifting higher, your gaze uncovers a faded tattoo behind his ear. You can’t make out what it represents. The green ink is blurred, as if smeared underneath his skin. You doubt it was professionally done. It tugs at your heart with a sharp little pang of a pain to imagine him as a teenager. Tall and lean, smooth cheeks, smooth skin, a friend hunched over him with a needle and an ink pen.

There’s another one on his left hand. This one, you know well. You’ve kissed it. Licked it. Held on to it. It’s nestled on the muscle between his thumb and index finger. Two circles and a dot in their center. A target, you assume, but you can’t be certain. The pile of clothes folded in military fashion springs to mind.

Your eyes continue their exploration, flicking to his other wrist, with its inked arabesque, but it’s over in a second.

You let out a sharp gasp, and he moves so fast you can’t deflect. His arm seizes you by the waist, strong and unyielding. He drags you over his body, and you stumble onto the mattress in front of him.

“What are you doing, back there?” he husks, a smile in his tone, and you giggle, again.

He pulls you in close to him.

“I’m looking at my Christmas present,” you answer.

He lets out a low chuckle. You made him laugh. Pride flares up in your chest. He smiles a dimpled smile, and you suck in a shaky breath, more pain blooming inside your rib cage.

“You’re so pretty in this light,” you whisper in wonderment.

“You’re pretty in every light.”

“How would you know, you haven’t opened your eyes yet,” you tease.

You tease. Your levity makes you dizzy.

His eyebrows disappear in his soft curls. He lifts one eyelid, pursing his lips. The morning sun catches at the mahogany of his iris.

“You questioning my judgment here?”

Smiling, you move your hips closer to his, to where you want to feel him. The low rasp of his voice is dripping down inside you, slowly, surely. Swirling like honey. Thick, rich trickles of amber, sticky and sweet. Like the light playing on his freckled skin. Like his warmth under your hands. Too much and not enough, pooling down between your legs.

Reaching up, you scratch your nails in his beard, tracing the heart-shaped, bare patch on his jaw with your fingertips.

“Is it ok that you’re still here? At this hour?” you ask, focusing on the tip of your finger.

“I don’t know. I hope my truck is not gonna turn into a pumpkin,” he answers, giving your waist a little pinch.

“I hope not. I like your truck.”

Your fingers travel down along his strong neck.

“How’s your head?” he asks.

The bobbing of his throat is mesmerizing. It’s a minute before you’re able to answer.

“You still don’t believe I fell, do you?”

“I believe you. It’s him I don’t trust.”

You’re brought back, violently so, under Beatrice’s porch, into Adrian’s arms and his lips pressed to yours, prying them open. To his taste on your tongue, bitter like stale champagne. Yesterday afternoon. Forever ago.

Perhaps he sees the memory clouding your gaze, because his leg wedges between yours, his body curling around your body. Protective, possessive. He nuzzles into the curve of your shoulder, taking in a deep, full breath. His lips trail open-mouth kisses, tickling and wet, along the line of your throat. You burrow into his chest, into his hold, into his world.

The words bubble up from the depth of your chest, from where they formed between your lungs, where the creature is purring, lapping honey, warm and content.

“My name is Lee.”

Frankie pulls back immediately with a wide-eyed stare. You see, more than you hear, the name rolling around the tip of his tongue, as he tastes it on his palate.

“Lee. Lee. Lee.”

On the third occurrence, his hand circles your hip and slides down to the round of your ass, grasping your flesh as if to hold you down. Make sure you won’t vanish. There’s that perpetual crease between his brow. His heart is thrumming hard and fast against yours. You grow restless between his arms.

“I hate it,” you say.

“What?”

You swallow thickly, mouth cardboard dry.

“My name.”

He props himself up on his elbow to better face your scowling expression, eyes piercing you under his deep frown.

“Why?”

“They gave me my grandfather’s name. Lee Abbott. Lee Abbott & Son, import export,” you recite. “It’s not even mine.”

Your eyes flicker, scanning his face, trying to read the ticking of his jaw, the widening of his pupils.

“I think it’s perfect. Lee’s perfect.”

His voice is breathy, like he just took a punch to the gut, and it sends your mind reeling. Is this what he sounds like when he’s lying?

“How?” You wrestle the question out of your throat, and it’s still barely audible.

“It’s fearless. It’s fucking badass,” he answers without missing a beat, his tone softer than you’ve ever heard it.

“What?” you scoff incredulously. You shake your head on the starched pillowcase. “I’m not badass. I’m not fearless, Frankie, I can guarantee you that.”

The pink tip of his tongue darts between his lips as he narrows his gaze on you. His hand leaves your hip. He brings it up to your face, and he pauses. An inch from your skin, like he’s taming an animal, scared, wild or wounded, or all three, before brushing his knuckles to your cheek.

It’s overwhelming, his body hunched over yours. Crowding your senses. Filling your vision. His rhythmic strokes, rough hand, gentle touch. It’s something you had foreseen but weren’t quite ready to experience: his ability for tenderness.

You’re cornered. Entirely. You should probably be scared. To some extent, you are. But you know you’re safe, the feeling instinctive. You must trust the waves, trust the tide of this deep dark ocean. It’ll keep you afloat. Embrace the impact. Embrace its concentric ripples.

“Ok,” he starts. “Here’s how I see it. Marion… Marion, she’s hiding. She’s running away with something that’s not hers, right? Something she stole. Whereas Lee… Lee got out there and she took chances. She got what she wanted. She made it hers.”

Your heart beats inside your throat, blood flushing your face and rushing through your ears with a deafening roar.

“Did she?”

He nods.

“Yea. Yea, she did.”

He leans down, slowly lowering his lips to yours. His kiss is patient, reverent, slow-building. Plush lips wrapped around yours, tongue gently prodding, softly coaxing you open. Between your arms, his shoulders tremble under the force of his restraint.

When you ease into it with a quiet whimper, he draws you in closer. You arch up in his embrace, fingers threading through his curls, right leg brushing up along his.

His mouth crushes yours with a groan. He licks inside you, tongues entwined, swirling. Honey dripping down your spine, fire licking up your core, electricity tingling along your limbs.

Kisses that are more teeth than lips, when he trails the line of your jaw, the coarse hair of his beard scrapping your cheeks. Calloused hands spamming the expanse of your smooth skin, cupping your breasts, rough and needy, and you feel the hot press of his hard length against your belly as he rocks against you.

Your heart is impossibly light. Like it’s going to rip through your rib cage and fly away. Like you’ll be left without one, and the wild creature, always demanding more, will take its place. Because that’s what it’s been waiting for, since the very beginning.

Forgotten, your good will and resolutions, weak promises you made to yourself. Pushed back, pushed down, guilt and photo booth pictures of his dimpled baby girl. Drowned, intrusive memories, blue eyes, white porch, French delicacy.

He’s yours, he said so himself, didn’t he? For the first time ever, something’s yours, wholly. You got him, because of everything you surrendered.

And it matters not that you’re lying to yourself. That, really, he belongs to somebody else. It matters not when his mouth is all over you, greedy, taking. Devouring you. When his fingers are gliding through your soaked folds, breaching your entrance. When they’re buried inside you, thick and curled and pumping.

When you’re blooming sticky and wet, pretty and dazed, bursting open under his touch, moaning his name.

He’s yours now. In this room. In the gift of your name. In your heart that’s flying away from you as you clench and shatter on his hand.

He pulls up, blown out pupils, damp wild curls falling on his forehead. He drags his fingers out of you and the emptiness prickles at the corner of your eyelids. His eyes are trained on you as he licks them. As he smiles, a cocky grin stretches his gorgeous lips and dimples his pretty face, and perhaps this is as close as you’ll ever get to see him looking like his teenage self. That smug smile. All pride and confidence.

You’re sinking into that shitty mattress, weighed down by melancholy and pleasure and regrets. And something else. Something more stubborn than you, that you still cannot name.

Frankie fastens his mouth to yours, sharing your taste with you, wedging his body between your legs, spreading your hips with his waist.

Your emptiness is throbbing at the center of you.

“Frankie please, please.”

“Yes, baby. Told you I was gonna take care of you.”

Flexing his hips, he rubs his length against your scorching heat, coating himself in your slick. Anticipation tingles through the blunt edges of your previous release. You squirm under the weight of him, knees touching the mattress, cracked open, vibrating.

He lines up at your entrance, dark eyes focused on your face, and oh god, the fucking size of him. The fucking stretch. The burn as he inches in, excruciatingly slow. It has you blinking away tears of pain and gratitude, it has you whining his name.

He’s all blown-out pupils, taut muscles, and slack jaw, as he sheathes his cock inside your heat, all the way in. Round head nudging at your cervix. The sight of him, nearly wrecked, control waning, as he makes room for himself inside you rips through you.

“You feel so damn good, Lee,” he says, impossibly soft, and you feel it inside your chest, with the way he’s lying on you.

It’s a stretching glide, when he starts moving. A spreading grind. You can feel every vein, every ridge of him. He hooks an arm under your knee and folds you around him. He’s not fully pulling out, he can’t, he needs you wrapped around him, this much you understand, clearly, through the annihilation of his deep strokes.

Forehead to forehead, chest to chest, you can’t breathe and your body’s a thinning envelope between your heart and Frankie’s. It’s too much, his weight inside and over you, his breath in your mouth, his smell everywhere.

You’re overwhelmed, forced to surrender to the fire coiling inside you. With the coarse hair at his base scraping against the sensitive bud of your clit, with his cock, hot and heavy, dragging against your walls.

Your body jerks underneath him, fingernails digging into the meat of his shoulder to draw him closer, your other hand pushing him away and he moves fast, strong fingers circling your wrist and sliding your hand above your head, twining your fingers. You’re pinned down. Helpless. Willing. Unmoored by the intensity of the building impact.

He feels it, feels your frantic flutter around his cock and the frenzied racing of your pulse and he drives in deeper, faster, harder. The room fills up with the sound of his sweat-damp skin slapping against yours. Louder than the creaking bed, louder than the headboard’s thud on the wall.

“Oh god!” you cry.

“Come on, baby, give it to me,” he grunts into your mouth.

—

Frankie sees the plea in your eyes, shiny with tears, too wide, too glassy. Come with me, you’re begging him, come inside. He’s never fucked you like that, not you, not anyone, he’s never bared himself so fully. He’s gonna lose himself for good, this time.

You’re breaking up under his rolling hips, bucking hard against the press of his body. Eyes rolling to the back of your skull, clenching cunt, clenched eyelids.

Something blares up in the back of his head. A signal. An alarm.

He can’t even fuck you through it. You let out a broken cry when he pulls out, spurting dense ropes of come on your mound with a tense “fuck.”

A dry little sob rattles through your chest. Muffled, apologetic.

He untangles his fingers from yours, unhooks your leg from his arm. Pushes away from you on the rumpled sheets, and it’s etched on your face, in your pinched brow, in your quivering lip. The disillusion. The void he’s failed to fill.

That fucking heart attack of a pain squeezes at his chest again.

He rolls onto his back, freeing you, and you gulp in a large breath.

In the room, the air is stifling. Charged with the coppery smell of sex. The daylight is unforgiving with the chipped furniture and the moth-eaten curtains. With that ugly painting of the Appalachian.

“Let’s go clean you up,” he says, sitting up with a cinch. Unable to bear your silence.

“No,” you whisper. “I need a minute.”

You shut your eyes close. You retreat. He watches you disappear beyond the shore of your inner island. Where he cannot follow you.

There’s noise coming through the paper thin walls from next door. Several voices, a television, maybe. Further away, the low humming of a vacuum cleaner.

How long until room-service robs you from him?

He lies back down. Stares at your profile, still and absent, cut out in amber against the light from the window.

Lee.

The most beautiful name he’s ever heard. He briefly noted the similarities: three letters, starting with an L. Lee. Lua. A perfect balance.

It tastes like honey. You said, “My name is Lee” but what you meant was, “I trust you.”

What has he done with your trust?

How could he ever imagine himself capable of living without this? Without you? Without this room, even?

His mind drifts to his early morning routine, Lua curled up on his lap, drinking her bottle with those hungry, little grunting noises. Chubby little fingers wrapped around his thumb.

He was always an early riser. Which was practical during his time in the Army. The nightmares, the drugs, they disrupted that. He could be up, without being awake. Without being there.

But lately, he’s the first to rise again, no matter how late sleep finds him.

He loves that Lua seems to know he’s awake. She never cried in the morning. When she was just a newborn baby, she would make those quiet babbling noises. Now she calls his name. Papa.

He comes into her room with her bottle ready. Most mornings, she’s up, already, holding herself upright with the bars of her crib. That smile she gives him, when she sees him. That’s his morning sun.

He picks her up with one hand, she weighs so little, and yet so much. He covers her face in tickling smooches until she stops giggling and starts pushing him away, making grabby hand gestures at her bottle.

These moments of a peace he doesn’t deserve, in the early, blue hours, he owes them to you. You’ve smothered the nightmares. You’ve quietened his mind. Patiently chipped away at the walls he had erected between himself and happiness, with your quiet, determined strength.

Fuck.

You’re getting up. He watches you climb off the bed and saunter off to the bathroom. He doesn’t want to stay alone on this bed, in this room. Without you.

So he follows you, standing on the threshold, leaning on the door frame of the windowless bathroom, looking at you as you clean yourself with a towel.

The paint is coming off on the lintel. The small neon above the sink lights up shit. The shower head is crusty with limestone. Humidity speckles the ceiling in black, hairy dots above the bathtub.

He hates himself for taking you here.

Back in September, he had chosen the place because it seemed sufficiently remote. Because he hoped it would deter you. Scare you away.

He hates that you didn’t even flinch.

He hates that he’s grown fond of this shithole.

You turn and hand him a glass of water. He steps inside with you. You watch him drink up, head tilted and your big, searching eyes on him. The resolve that sharpens them, that he witnessed emerging, Friday night after Friday night, as resignation receded. That’s what guides him now.

There’s something intrinsically soft, a new kind of intimacy, about standing together in that bathroom. Soon, you’ll have to part. The imminent separation hangs heavy and silent between you. Tangible. He wants you again, already.

You’ve sensed the storm raging inside his head. He can tell, because it’s as though you’re trying to absorb it with your calm demeanor. He resents that. Doesn’t want you to. His moods are not your burden to carry.

You take the glass from him and run the water over it to clean it. As if the cleaning service won’t do it once you vacate the place.

His eyes flicker up to that mirror, to your dim reflection. Mussed hair, relaxed shoulders. Your face, solemn, illegible. And his, darker looking. A trick of the weak lighting. Pitch-black eyes, flexing jaw. Towering over you. Threatening.

The reflection is like an old photograph, a decayed daguerreotype that reveals a ghost. A girl and her demon.

He moves forward to crowd you, until your hips knock against the sink, his own pressing against your cheeks, his cock half-hard already. The glass falls into the sink with a clatter when he grasps the hinge of your jaw, twisting your head upward and to the side.

“You like it when I spit in your mouth, Lee?”

You nod. “I do.”

He gathers it inside his mouth, and you open yours, diligent, hungry, pulling your tongue out with a soft whimper, and his cock twitches in the small of your back. His spit rolls down his tongue to yours. You raise to your tiptoes with a needy little moan. He watches your reflection as you swallow.

His mouth crashes over your lips, sloppy kiss, scraping teeth. Hands kneading rough at your tits, rubbing their hardening peaks between his fingers.

“I want to fuck you in that shower,” he growls, teeth finding the edge of your jaw.

You arch back into him with a broken moan, but to his surprise, you say, “We can’t.”

His hand skates down your front, down the slope of your belly, fingers roughly parting your folds and fuck. You’re soaked. You’re dripping for him.

“Why?” he brushes against the shell of your ear. “There’s time. I want you again, Lee.”

“I want you too, Frankie, I—” you try to move away from the sink, your strength a poor match for his. “We can’t because we literally can’t, that shower is impossible.”

Your laughter startles him. Stepping back, he gives you room, and you move immediately, sitting on the edge of the tub to demonstrate. Smeared with your arousal, his fingers circle his cock, absentmindedly, brain fogged in a lustful haze as you run the tap.

“There’s no hot water. Well, there is, a little, but look, there’s only pressure with cold water. And…” you look up at him with a cheeky grin, “that’s kind of where I draw the line.”

There’s a glimmer of pride in your eyes as you deliver your joke.

His heart fucking sinks. He’ll get that heart-attack, eventually.

“You’ve showered in there, with that broken tap, all this time?”

You nod with a bemused smile before you shrug, comfortable, easy.

“Well, at the beginning. I haven’t in a while.” You pause before you add quietly, “I like to keep you on me.”

Frankie lets out a long sigh. His cock resting thick and heavy against his thigh. You make him so fucking hard. You make him stupidly soft. You drive him out of his goddamn mind.

The words come out of him before he gets the chance to think them over.

“I’ll bring my tools next time. I can probably fix it, if I can access the boiler.”

Getting up, you close the distance between you.

“You could fix it?” you ask, wide eyes gazing at him in amazement.

He chuckles, a velvety rumble from his chest, something assertive and low, the sound of which he had forgotten. He considers telling you about his engineering degree. Enumerating all the aircraft he can fly. Fucking boast about it. Because he wants you to know.

The memory of the crashed Mi-8 in the middle of the coca field invades his mind. Twisted rotor, broken hull. Smoking motor, shattered glass. He can smell the gasoline. Feel the sting of his own sweat and blood in his left eye.

You skim your hands up along his arms. Bring him back to you, to room number 2.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he grits through a clenched jaw.

“Like what?” you ask, voice honey sweet.

You curl your fingers around his biceps.

“Like I can ask you anything.”

“Why not? You can.”

He has to tell you. Tell you he cannot come next week, but that he’ll be back the week after. And the following. As long as you’ll have him.

Only he catches it before he has a chance to speak. That shadow that plays across your face. The beginning of your retreat, behind the clouding of your eyes.

“What is it?” he asks, and he has to swallow down the taste of dirt in his mouth.

You let your hands drop to your sides. You can’t even look at him.

“Hey, what is it?” he presses, cupping your face.

“Can’t come next week.”

You’re so quiet, leaning into his palm, no more than a whisper, and it fucking breaks him.

“I’m going to that— stupid ski resort. Every year, I– I don’t even ski. I hate it. I just hate it. All I do is wait around all day.”

Eventually, you raise your eyes to his face as he flexes his jaw. He sees you police your expression for him.

“It’s not that bad. I get time to read,” you backtrack.

Like you triggered the fury his eyes are burning with, and not that piece of shit of a man who takes you to places where you don’t want to be, just to keep you around fucking waiting.

But his anger subsides abruptly. Everything falls into place. Your presence here last night, your sudden sadness. Like him, you had decided not to come here again.

“Were you going to tell me?” he asks, trying to suppress the resigned sorrow from his tone.

He doesn’t need you to answer. He knows the refrain. He’s never going back to this motel.

“I saw the picture in your wallet, Frankie. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. But I did.”

Three letters. Starting with an L. A perfect balance.

“And what does it change?”

His grip tightens, hands sliding through your hair to the back of your skull, thumbs rubbing circles into your cheeks. You’re cold to the touch. You grasp his wrists, hold on to him, like you did last week in the parking lot. Eyes glimmering, a first tear dangling from your lashes.

“Listen,” he starts, “if you want to stop… this, obviously, I won’t hold you back. But—”

He has to pause. Rake his brain for words, words that fail him, words to express the sadness and the loss and the fear.

He breathes deep, and your scent fills his lungs. A pale shade of yellow, and celadon green.

“But I will miss you, Lee. I will miss you so fucking much.”

That tear breaks free. Rolls down your cheek, and he catches it on his thumb.

“I’ll miss you too,” you whisper.

“Then come back to me. Keep coming back to me, baby.”

There’s that pull. The violence of it like a blow. And you must feel it too, because you leap up to him as he leans into you, and your mouths collide. He’s crushing your lips, licking into you, cocking your head to deepen the kiss. Fingers digging into your waist, into your hips, down your thighs as they roam. A harsh, restless furrow. Looking to bruise, to leave a mark, an imprint of him.

Your arms fold around his shoulders, pulling him in, nails denting little red crescents into his skin, and he groans into it. A primal sound that rumbles around you and bounces off the dirty tiles.

His mouth drags wet and hard along your throat. Biting down, sucking in, teeth sinking into your pulse point. He follows it down to your heart. The beating thud, the flowing bloodstream. Hunched over you, lips trailing to your sternum, face burying between your breasts. He bites into the swell of it, pushing the flesh of it into his mouth, latching onto your nipple. A hard suck. Sharp. Painful.

You keen. Folding over him when he falls to his knees. Threading your fingers through his curls with a choked off moan when his teeth scrape the soft flesh of your belly, where you still taste of him. He can smell your sex, rubbed pink and raw from when he fucked you earlier, less than twenty minutes ago.

He bites into the tender skin of your inner thigh, around the long, thin scar you hide there, and you spread your legs wider.

“Good girl,” he grunts.

There’s a knock on the front door. Someone calling “room-service” from outside, and you gasp, hand flying to clasp over your mouth. He couldn’t care less.

“Don’t fucking move,” he growls into your skin.

“I’m not going anywhere,” you answer, voice high and breezy, and it shoots straight to his cock.

He lifts your leg, slides it over his shoulder, and you grip the sink for balance with a little shriek as he dives between your folds, fingers curled around the swell of your ass. It’s not soft, it’s not tender, there’s no Stop me. It’s urgent and commanding. It’s messy, desperate, demanding.

His mouth is hard, wide open, cupping your cunt, his neck pulled taut. Tongue curling around your clit, flickering, plunging into your wet, hot center. Licking your slick straight from your walls, drinking you up. You buck into it, riding his tongue, your pleasure, his face, and he groans into your heat.

His face presses up into you until you nearly topple over. You’re all ragged breaths and wanton whimpers. He wants more, wants to feel you from the inside, and it’s a need, really. Your skin melding with his. Your sex scorching him raw.

It’s your louder cry, loud enough to cover the repeating knocking, when he pulls away.

“Gotta fuck you, baby,” he rasps, getting up, grabbing you by the waist to turn you around.

His voice sounds wrecked, as wrecked as he feels. Cock throbbing angrily between his legs.

“Fuck,” you pant, “I want— I want you to— want you to fuck me.”

He watches you, transfixed, as you face away from him, bracing your hands on the slippery porcelain of the sink. Back bowed, ass perked up. Offered. Waiting. Wanting.

“Oh shit,” he pants. “Fuck.”

He catches his reflection in the dark mirror. Black eyes, hungry. Lips shining with your arousal. A carnivorous expression. It scares him. Like he’s about to eat you whole, eat you raw. A girl and her demon. No one to stop him.

Circling his cock, he spits down on it, smearing the saliva down his length with a couple of strokes, and he’s at your entrance, hot like a fever, leaking wet and sticky for him.

Hand brushing up your arched back to curl around your nape, holding you still for him, he drives into you to the hilt with all his strength.

A broken cry rips through your chest. He pauses inside you, sweat breaking on his forehead, eyes trained on where he disappears inside you, forcing you open for him. Less to let you adjust than to revel into it, the feel of you from the inside, clenching around him. Gripping him, breathing heavily with the stretch of him.

“Good girl, good fucking girl,” he husks with an obscene smirk, something akin to pride at how well you take him.

Your head dips between your shoulders and he hears your breathless laughter.

He pulls out of you, cock catching thick and stiff at your entrance, glistening with your slick, and thrusts right back in. He keeps moving. Long, thorough strokes, fast and steady, dragging along your walls, bumping against your cervix. His other hand a bruising hold on your hip, and those little grunts tearing through your throat with every slap of his hips against your ass.

You’re standing on your tiptoes, legs trembling, but pushing back into him. Meeting him thrust for thrust, with your small hands braced around the edge of the sink in a white-knuckle grip, and he can’t take his eyes off it. Off that line pulled taut between your shoulders, your grip, your grit.

Your greed for him. Your fucking determination.

There’s that pull again, that hunger for more of you, all of you. He bands an arm between your breasts and draws your back flush to his chest. You’re always so pliant. His hand a careful wrap around your throat to hold you upright and fuck. You’re a sight to behold. In that black-edged mirror. You’re a fucking vision. The mess he’s made of you. Fucked out, flushed skin, cock drunk. Sweat-damp hair glued to your beautiful face.

You’re gripping his arms with both hands, holding on to him, and your eyes find his in the reflection, burning a hole through his soul like they did all those months ago, back in the bar. His heart trips. It swells furious and pounding inside him, how good you look together, how right this feels, your two bodies entwined, surrendering to each other.

“I feel so good, Frankie, so good when you’re moving inside me,” you tell him, eyes fluttering. Your voice trickling like honey inside him, your sweet slick dribbling around him, soaking the hair at his base. He can hear it with every one of his thrusts. Can taste it where it lingers on his tongue. Lick it from his lips.

It’s gonna fuck him up. How much he wants to be yours. Fuck up his sanity and everything he’s got that he hasn’t yet destroyed, just how fucking much he wants you to belong to him. Only him.

He will carve you into his shape if he can’t carve you out of him.

He skates his hand down to your mound, kneading your soft flesh along the way, the bone of your hip, the small slope of your belly. He finds the hardened peak of your clit, fingers gliding around it.

Driving into you in deep harsh strokes, he presses his lips against the shell of your ear, hot breath fanning your skin.

“Gonna fucking ruin you for him, baby. Won’t let you go until you’re fucked full of me.”

“Oh god yes!”

You clench around him, cunt impossibly tight when he shoves you down on it. He sees the tears streaking your cheeks. Feels the shallow bite of your nails into the tense muscles of his forearms when he grinds against your soft cheeks.

“Watch me, Lee. Watch me fuck you full of my come. Gonna fuck it so deep inside you, you’ll be leaking me for days.”

You suck in a sharp breath. Mouth gone slack, eyes locked on him in the mirror, wild and craving. Everything else disappears, the world fades around your two bodies. There’s nothing but your weight between his arms, the feel of you around him.

Hand wrapped around your neck, he angles up his hips, reaching deeper than he’s ever been, into that spot that makes you cry. His fingers rubbing at your clit, more slick gushing out of you.

There’s a fast coiling heat in his loins. A fire, licking up his spine, balls drawing tight, cock swelling.

“I’m coming,” you whine, “Frankie please—”

The words stretch out of you as you trash into his arms, crashing hard around him. He follows with a grunt, loud, primal, possessive. Pumping his come, thick and searing, deep inside your gripping cunt. His vision darkens.

There’s blinding pleasure. Your skin. Your scent.

The knowledge that you're his.

****

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skzdust · 7 months ago

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Room 514

Part 1

This fic is the result of 1. Me going on a road trip and 2. A poll I did on here! I have the trip back coming up in a few days so I might do another poll to decide what I write on the way back lol!

Summary: You’re moving into a new suite halfway through your sophomore year at Stay University, populated by three guys: Jisung, Changbin, and Bang Chan. You meet their friends and quickly become a part of their group, but you find yourself wanting more with Jisung…

Pairing: Han Jisung x Reader

Includes: slow burn (if I have the patience to write it slow lol), college au, roommates, besties with skz, gender neutral reader (if smut happens reader will be afab)

Word count: 1.3k

Reblogs, likes, comments all appreciated!!!

Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Masterlist

——-

The lock to room 514 beeped, its LED turning green, and you moved your phone away. You took a breath and turned the handle.

You didn’t need to worry. The suite’s living room was empty. The decoration gave you hope, though; it was neat and decorated mostly in shades of blue, with a sunny yellow cover on the couch. You hoped it was like this all the time and not just because you were moving in today.

The suite had four single bedrooms, two half bathrooms, one shower, and a living room with a mini-fridge and microwave. You’d been living in a different hall just a few days ago, sharing a room with another girl, Catherine. She’d been awful ever since you’d walked in on her cheating on her boyfriend with another guy, spreading rumors and turning all your friends against you. You’d pleaded with your RA for a single room, and she’d helped you find a suite in another hall. It was a room with three guys, which made you a little anxious, but you’d jumped at the chance nonetheless.

“Hello?” You said, a little louder than you usually would speak.

Nothing.

You found room D, your room, in the hallway to the left. Room C, next door, had a handwritten sign beside the “C”: “Han Jisung.”

One of your roommates. You knew the others were named Changbin and Bang Chan, but you hadn’t met any of the three.

You pressed your phone to the lock on room D and walked in.

The room was small and bare, but you smiled at the fact that you’d have your own space at all. A lofted bed with plenty of storage space underneath was against the back wall, next to a desk and chair, and a tall chest of drawers was beside the closet.

You climbed up on the bed to look out the window. You had a rather ugly view of the parking lot, but the window faced South, so at least you’d get plenty of light.

There was a loud knock behind you.

You whirled around, almost falling off the bed. Potentially the most attractive man you’d ever seen in real life was leaning in your doorway, a grin on his face. “You must be y/n!”

“Yeah, that’s… me.” You said with a little laugh. “And you’re…?”

“Jisung.” His smile grew. “Han Jisung.”

You hopped off the bed. “Jisung. You’re next door!”

“Yeah! Me and Changbin and Bang Chan are excited to have another roommate, it’s been just the three of us for a while.”

“Well, I’m kind of escaping a situation at the moment, so I’m looking forward to a fresh start, too.” You tried not to let your thoughts of Catherine make you angry.

“Well, you’re always welcome to hang out with us.”

“Thanks, that’s nice of you.”

“Actually, we’re having some people over tonight.” He raised his eyebrows. “Chill with us, if you don’t have to study or anything. We’re gonna watch Love Island.”

You grinned. “Love Island? Seriously?”

“How can you not love stupid reality TV with a bunch of hot people?” Jisung held his hands up. “Just saying, just saying. We’re probably gonna order pizza, too, if that helps convince you.”

“Not judging, just wasn’t expecting it.” You shrugged. “But yeah, I don’t have anything going on tonight, that sounds fun!”

“Sounds good. Do you need any help moving stuff in?”

“I think I’ve got it.” You waved your hand. “Just some stuff in the hallway.”

He nodded. “Let me know if you want help.”

“I will.”

He gave a lazy salute. “See you tonight!” He pushed off the doorway and twirled into the hall, and you heard his door click shut.

You squeezed your eyes shut, sending up a silent prayer. Please, please, please let him be single.

—

You stood in the center of the room, doing a little circle and judging it cute enough to be finished.

You’d been unpacking and decorating for a few hours, but the sounds of people in the living room had started about an hour ago, so you’d slowed down. You wanted to see Jisung again, but you were a bit anxious to meet his friends, as well as your other two roommates.

But there were only so many times you could rearrange your books or organize your clothes, and you knew it was a good idea to go out and join the party.

You checked your reflection in the mirror on the inside of the closet door, smoothing your hair, and left your room.

There were eight people in the living room of the suite, the only one you recognized being Jisung. And… wait, was that the guy you’d been on a project with in music technology last year? Hwang Hyunjin?

“Y/n!” Jisung jumped up from the couch when he saw you, beaming. “Guys, this is our new roommate!”

“Y/n?” The guy you were 99% sure was Hyunjin said, tilting his head. “I know you! We did a project together.”

“Yeah! I remember that! It’s Hyunjin, right?”

He smiled softly. “Yeah, Hyunjin. Nice to meet you again!”

You tried to remember back to the project. You’d loved the class, and you remembered the project going well. Hyunjin had been great to work with, doing his share of the planning and the legwork. You’d found him cute then, too, but freshman year you’d been even more timid, and you hadn’t made a move. You were kind of glad for that now, though.

Because Jisung was walking across the room to you, and standing right next to you, and you almost missed what he started to say because you could smell whatever cologne he used, and it smelled good.

“Okay, around the room we have...” He pointed at each of the guys. “Seungmin, Minho, Jeongin, you know Hyunjin, Felix, Bang Chan, he’s one of our roommates, and Changbin, he’s our other roommate.” He pointed to himself. “And you know me. Jisung.”

You nodded at each name, doing your best to match them to faces. “Got it. I’m decent with names, so I’ll do my best.”

Jisung bumped your shoulder, and you giggled. “I’m sure you’ve got it.” He made a shooing motion at Seungmin, who was sitting on the floor. “Pizza’s behind Seungmin.”

“What kind?”

“There’s pepperoni and there’s cheese.” Seungmin picked up a plate. “Here, I can grab you a slice, what do you want?”

“Just a slice of cheese, thanks.”

Seungmin handed Jisung the plate, and he made a little mock bow before holding it out to you. You smiled, taking it. “Thank you, butler.”

“Of course, my liege.” He winked, and a cloud of butterflies took flight in your chest.

“Nice to meet you, y/n!” Changbin leaned over the back of his chair and extended his hand. You shook it.

“Changbin, right?”

“Mhm. Roommates!”

“Yeah, that’s right.” You nodded.

“He sings a lot. You can tell him to shut up if you need to.” Bang Chan grinned. “I’m Bang Chan, I’m your other roommate.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine. I don’t mind singing.”

“I mean, he has a decent enough voice, but it’s… frequent.” Jisung widened his eyes as he nodded. “Quite frequent.”

“Oh, come on.” Changbin rolled his eyes. “You all should be honored that you get to hear my singing. I’m gonna be recognized for my talent someday!”

“He also raps.” Jeongin added. “I’m sure you’ll hear that, too.”

“I’m an even better of a rapper than I am a singer!” He pointed around the room. “Feel honored!”

Felix held a hand to his chest. “We all feel so honored. All hail the most beautiful voice, Changbin!”

“That’s more like it!”

You laughed with the rest of them. This group felt more comfortable than you’d ever felt with your old friends, and you couldn’t help thinking that maybe moving in with Changbin, Bang Chan, and Jisung was meant to be.

#stray kids #hyunjin #han #bang chan #felix #changbin #seungmin #i.n #lee know #Han x reader #han jisung x reader #Han jisung #stray kids fic #stray kids x reader #skz #skz x reader #skzdust writes #room 514

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kwanisms · 1 year ago

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Just Like That — h.joshua

» seventeen masterlist «

playlist: fever — enhypen; light a flame — seventeen; sexuality — taemin ➮ incubus!Joshua × f!reader wc: 16k summary: fantasizing about her handsome and sweet coworker has some unintended consequences for Y/N when an incubus shows up in her home after unintentionally summoning him with what she thought was just gibberish. genres/themes/au: angst, one sided pining, smut; religious themes, supernatural themes, demonic themes; non idol au, demon au warnings: adult dialogue, female reader, sexual content (18+ mdni), see smut warnings under the cut! permanent taglist: @yoonguurt @wonderfulshinee @candidupped @dejavernon @violagoth @tigermoonbiss @katsukis1wife @luvsooby @thesolarplanetarysystem @salty-for-suga @devilsmatches @dmnspiit @simeonswhore @yangracha @atinypurr @aikyubi @labyrinthonmymind @bintificreads @toxic-babexe @plutoneu @sunwoosbaby @lilramennoodle @deadgirlwalking3 seventeen taglist: @aikisbbq @drunk-on-dk @cixrosie @hoeforcheol @98-0603 @briannabk22 @vampiirose @plants-w0rld @dementedaly @generic-teez-127 @sweetlylemon unable to tag: @prestineaugstine @imwhoever @lunaryoongie join my taglists: main Strikethrough means I cannot tag you. MINORS WILL BE BLACKLISTED & BLOCKED. AGELESS BLOGS WILL ALSO BE BLOCKED.

a/n: this is just pure filth and I won't apologize lol I did this to torture the bestie. It was supposed to be a timestamps lol and it turned into 16k. Thank you for reading, reblogs and comments are always appreciated, and as always, this is a work of fiction and all characters are not reflective of their respective irl counterparts. for entertainment purposes only.

A huge thank you to @kpop-stories-21 & @anyamaris for sprinting with me back to back and essentially keeping me company while I worked on this 💕

Translation notes: Cur curritis is google translate latin for ‘why are you running?’ disclaimer: I do not know latin so this could be wildly inaccurate because it’s google translate. Likewise, Mortalem te interro- gavi is what I got for ‘i asked you a question, mortal.’ Again, I don’t know latin. I just used google translate. I’m not going for accuracy here lol. The incantation, Te invoco a profundus inferni is from Supernatural lol

smut warnings: unprotected sex (pls use protection), tentacles, dirty talk, praise, pet names (baby, doll, angel, slut, etc), marking (f receiving), spanking (f receiving) , spitting, choking (f receiving) , fingering (f receiving), slight somnophilia, rough sex, anal, double penetration, multiple orgasms (f receiving), creampie, breeding kink, big d!ck!Joshua being a menace to my sanity, dom!Shua, sub!Reader, and I think that's everything but of course, let me know if I missed something!

═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════

Autumn was in the air. The mornings had become chilly, frosty dew covered grass crunching underfoot that gave way to cool days, the sun warming just enough but not burning. The scent of the holidays hung in the air as you noticed decor going up on your way to work in the mornings.

The only coffee shop in town had finally put up their fall menu and despite how much flack you got for it, you were excited that the pumpkin cakes and warm vanilla chai lattes with a sprinkle of cinnamon and Halloween themed foam designs were back. On your days off, you could enjoy a steaming mug, adoring the jack-o-lantern face staring back at you from atop your drink.

On days like today, you opted for the to-go version of your favorite vanilla latte, grabbing an americano as well as two slices of pumpkin cake, topped with chopped candied walnuts. The bell rang, the sound crystal clear as you exited the shop and headed down the sidewalk littered with fallen leaves in various shades of browns, oranges, and yellows.

Children hurried on by, on their way to school as you walked, rounding the corner and heading for the end of the block where the antique shop you worked at stood, the old brick building stood. It was a much older building than the ones that stood around it, the brick darker and more weatherworn.

You let out a sigh, breath hanging briefly in the cool air as you looked at the storefront. White and black striped awnings hung over the large windows, gold lettering adorning the glass in a curly script that read ‘Pandora’s Box’. You crossed the cobblestone street, heading for the old wooden door and pressed down on the handle. It turned under your hand and allowed you to enter the shop.

A soft bell rang out and immediately you could hear shuffling coming from the back of the shop.

“Sorry!” a voice called out. “We’re closed!” You ignored the voice as you moved around behind the front counter and set down both coffees and the paper bag with the pumpkin cake. You were taking off your coat when your coworker and owner of the voice appeared and glanced over at you.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said, perking up and straightening his tan colored apron. You fought the urge to giggle as he walked over to the door and peered outside the window before turning the lock and looking over at you. “Thought I locked that when I came in,” he said as you removed your scarf and hung it up with your coat on the hook behind your seat.

“What’s this?” Joshua asked, looking down at the two coffees. You picked yours up and took a sip before picking the second one up and held it out for him. “You got me coffee?” he asked, taking the cup gently from you. “Hot americano, extra cream,” you answered, setting your cup down. “I also got us some-” you were interrupted by a sharp knocking at the window of the door.

Both you and Joshua turned to look and saw an older woman standing at the door. It was the elderly woman that lived out on Broome street. “Isn’t that the cat lady?” Joshua whispered, turning his head to look at you as he set his cup down. “Mrs. Briggs,” you reminded him.

Joshua moved to the door and unlocked it, opening the door and no doubt giving the grumpy old woman a pleasant smile. “How can I help you Mrs. Briggs?” he asked in his sweet voice. The old woman wore a very old fur coat that was a bit ratty, almost as if it hadn’t been taken proper care of.

Under the brown fur, she wore a mustard yellow turtleneck sweater with a long brown skirt that reached almost to her ankles. Under she had brown stockings and some brown low heels. She had all of her gray hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun complete with a yellow scrunchie. In her hands she carried a basket full of different knick knacks and trinkets.

“I need to drop these off,” she said in a gruff voice as she attempted to push past Joshua who blocked her path. She looked up at him, lips parted in a look of pure shock. “Who are you?” she demanded. Joshua gave her his famous smile. The one that had all the girls in the coffee shop swooning or the high school girls giggling as he passed by.

Joshua had only lived in this town for a few years now. He moved into the space above the shop which was owned by his aunt. His uncle had originally run the shop but after his uncle got sick and passed away, Joshua moved in to help his aunt out. He was only supposed to be in town for a short time but he decided to stay after a year.

Joshua smiled at Mrs. Briggs. “It’s Joshua, Mrs. Briggs,” he reminded her. She looked positively outraged. “Well where is Bill?” she demanded angrily. “Uncle Bill passed away three years ago, Miriam,” you said, moving from behind the counter and approaching the door.

Upon seeing you, Mrs. Briggs looked much calmer. “Y/N!” she said desperately. You sent a subtle wink Joshua’s way and took over, keeping the old woman at the door. “I need to drop this off. I can’t have it in the house anymore,” she said, holding out the basket. You nodded, looking down and back up.

“Okay, Miriam. Let me just get my pad of paper and we’ll take care of it,” you said, turning to grab the pad from the counter. In your momentary lapse, Mrs. Briggs had managed to push the door open. Joshua moved forward but you waved him off. “I got this,” you mouthed as the woman set her basket on the counter. Joshua nodded and started to head to the back when you called him back, holding out his coffee and the paper sack.

He took them from you and you told him you’d eat your pumpkin cake later.

It took all of ten minutes to check in all the items Mrs. Briggs had brought in and when you were done, you gently ushered her to the door and waved her off before shutting and locking the door. Joshua reappeared, peering around. “You think after three years, she’d know who I am,” he said, moving to lean on the counter as you finished adding the items to the store’s inventory.

“She’s got Alzheimer’s,” you said softly as you worked. Joshua said nothing, watching you write instead. When you finished the line you were on, he finally spoke. “Sorry,” he whispered. You glanced up as you capped the pen and smiled at him. “It’s okay,” you responded, setting the pen aside and flipping the page to a new sheet. “She’s a mean old lady, even before her diagnosis. Very pushy and rude,” you replied as you started to place the items back in the basket.

Joshua moved to help you. “Did she want the basket back?” he asked as you worked together. You shook your head. “No,” you said with a chuckle. “The only thing Mrs. Briggs has more than cats are baskets. I don’t think she’ll be missing this one.” You gave him a wink and made to grab the handles. He stopped you, taking the basket himself. “I got this,” he said and nodded towards the back.

“Your slice of pumpkin cake is in the back. I’ll finish opening up, you go eat.”

You smiled, thanking him before heading to the break room in the back. It wasn’t so much a room as it was an area blocked off. There was a small kitchenette with a mini fridge, microwave, and a sink. In the middle of the space was a small round table with three wooden chairs. Sitting on the table was the paper sack. You washed your hands quickly and took a seat, opening the bag.

The pumpkin cake was delicious as always and you savored each bite. As you were finishing it, Joshua’s voice rang out from the front. “I’m going to open the shop!” he called. You stuffed the last bite of cake in your mouth and got up, tossing the paper sack in the bin and washed your hands, chewing hastily as you dried your hands and hurried back to the front.

Joshua stood behind the counter and looked up as you approached. “You didn’t have to come up here,” he chuckled as you grabbed your own apron from under the counter and put it on. “I was finished anyway,” you replied, attempting to tie your apron strings. Joshua laughed softly and moved to stand behind you. “Here,” he said softly, taking the ties from you and carefully tying them.

“It’s a lot easier when you have help,” he said, his voice soft and breath hitting the back of your neck.

Your cheeks burned and you were thankful he couldn’t see the way you drew your bottom lip between your teeth or hear the way your heart hammered in your chest or feel the heat rush to your core.

“There,” he said simply and moved to grab the paper he’d been reading. “All set.”

You forced a smile, turning your head before moving to your usual spot behind the counter and taking a seat on the stool.

It wasn’t the first time you’d had this reaction to Joshua and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

You weren’t proud to admit it, but you’d had more than one fantasy about your coworker. It was his fault really for being so nice and polite and sweet. Not to mention incredibly handsome and when he pushed his sleeves up, exposing his forearms, you could feel your panties stick to you every time he did something so effortlessly.

It was no secret half the women in town found Joshua attractive and you were one of them. Unfortunately for you, he was your coworker and although Bill wasn’t around anymore, Joshua seemed to adhere to the strict no dating coworkers policy Bill had. Of course, Bill was married and he was usually the only one in the shop until you joined.

You weren’t in the habit of dating bosses so you never cared much about the policy but now it was driving you mad. Especially during the times it felt like Joshua was flirting with you though you never truly knew for sure if he was serious or just being playful. It was hard to tell with him.

The morning flew by after opening the shop. It wasn’t like you were busy. Most of the customers that came in only wanted to look around and very few ever bought anything. Sometimes you’d have town residents come by and drop off their old things. Most of your job was cashiering and inventory.

Joshua did most of the restoration work that came with old furniture as well as other physical tasks like carrying the larger items out to customers’ cars or moving large furniture items to make space for new items. When you weren't busy ringing someone up or filling out an inventory sheet, you’d find yourself watching Joshua work, admiring the way he lifted things with ease. He’d pushed up the sleeves of his cream colored sweater hours ago, exposing his forearms and the veins that peeked out whenever he exerted any force.

You tried not to make it obvious you were staring but sometimes he’d glance over and catch you, prompting you to turn your gaze back to the crossword puzzle you were absentmindedly filling out with bogus answers in pencil. When you looked away, you missed the way Joshua’s smile turned into more of a smirk. He knew you were watching him and he knew he had an effect on you to some extent.

But not the full extent.

He didn’t know how you sometimes thought about him late at night as you teased yourself with your fingers or how you imagined it was his fingers as you pushed them into your aching heat. He didn’t know it was him that you dreamed about riding or that you wondered how his cock tasted.

And he never would.

The sun had started to set when Joshua finally locked the front door. You stretched your arms above your head, letting out the tiniest of squeaks as he walked over. “You can head home,” he said, leaning against the counter, resting his palms against the surface.

“I can close up here,” he added. You shook your head. “It’s okay, you answered. “I don’t have any plans.” Joshua tilted his head, trying to hold back a smirk. “No exciting hot dates?” he asked as you opened the register. You snorted, shaking your head. “No,” you replied.

“Why not?” he asked as you started to count the bills in the till. You looked up to meet his gaze. You hadn’t expected him to ask you that. “Uh…” you trailed off as you stopped counting. “I guess I just haven’t met someone,” you answered. Joshua’s head tilted the opposite way at that.

“You haven’t?” he pressed. It seemed like he was trying to make a point but you weren’t sure what he expected you to say. You shook your head. “Well,” you continued. “Not anyone that’s available,” you added softly, turning your gaze back down to continue counting.

You finished counting the bills and moved onto the change as Joshua watched you. When you finished and wrote down the total, adding it to the records book, Joshua finally spoke. “How about we finish up here and then go get dinner,” he offered. You nearly tripped over your own feet as you turned away from the shelf where you stored the records book.

Turning to look at him, you found him already looking at you, a smile and expectant look.

“O-okay,” you said softly, mentally cursing yourself for stammering. Joshua smiled and turned away before heading to the back of the shop to make sure everything was locked up while you pulled out the profits from the register and placed them into a bank bag and headed for the back where you found Joshua grabbing the broom. “Here,” you said, holding out the bank bag.

He looked up as he separated the dustpan from the broom. He nodded towards the door that led upstairs. “Just set it up on the counter up there,” he said as he moved past you for the door back into the shop. “What?” you asked, turning as he stopped at the door. “Just put it on the kitchen counter up here,” he said with a smile. You glanced at the door to the stairs and then back at Joshua.

“You mean in your apartment?”

He nodded, the smile spreading. “Yeah,” he answered. “Here.” You watched as he reached into his pocket and fished out his keys before tossing them to you. “Just let yourself in.”

With that, he disappeared into the front and left you standing in the break area. Taking a deep breath, you turned to the door and took hold of the knob. ‘You got this Y/N,’ you told yourself. ‘It’s just his apartment.’

You turned the knob and pushed the door open. It creaked softly as you peered into the dimly lit hall. The bottom landing was small and immediately went into the staircase. You shut the door behind you and started up the stairs, each step creaking under foot.

At the top, you managed to pick out the right key and unlocked the door before pushing it open.

Whatever you’d been expecting, it was not this. You’d only ever seen this space once and it was a mostly empty space with a few furniture items stored up here. It was dusty, dark save for the large glass windows at the back of the space that looked out into a small courtyard that backed up to a wooded area. The space had been transformed into a functional studio apartment.

A kitchen had been installed, brown counters with white quartz tops lined the wall against the stairs. A kitchen island separated the kitchen space from the living space. Facing a brick wall was a comfortable looking sofa with a low table between it and a media stand where a large flatscreen stood.

You walked further into the apartment, shutting the door behind you as you continued to look around.

The media stand held numerous DVDs and knick knacks. A knitted blanket lay folded over the arm of the cream colored couch with warm brown accent pillows. On the coffee table sat a small mirrored tray with a gold rim. In the middle was a small tv remote and a couple candles.

Against the wall under the windows stood a side table running the length of one of the windows. It had doors with small brass knobs and most likely held an assortment of different things. ‘Probably storage,’ you told yourself as you turned away from the living room.

Behind the couch was a partition wall that didn’t reach the ceiling. It was made of bamboo and straight geometric shapes with a sheer material on one side to create a separate bedroom space.

The bed was a large king size, wooden frame with clawed feet. You recognized it as one of the pieces that had been stored up here before. Joshua must have cleaned and restored it because the last time you saw it, the wood was dull and coated with a thick layer of dust.

At the end of the bed was a small bench with a folded blanket and a space to sit. Oh either side of the bed were matching nightstands in matching wood to the bed frame. The bed linens were creams and browns, both neutral but cozy and inviting.

Next to the bedroom space at the end of the kitchen was a small folding door housing what you assumed was a pantry and next to that was another door which you could only assume led to a bathroom.

Between the bed and the bathroom stood a large armoire with double doors. It was another piece that you recognized being stored in the space and just like the bed frame, Joshua cleaned and restored it so it was almost unrecognizable.

Next to the armoire in the corner was a full length mirror leaning against the wall. The top was decorated with postcards and a few pictures. Before you had a chance to move closer and take a look, you heard the door behind you open and spun around to find Joshua entering the apartment.

The two of you stared at one another for a moment before he spoke. “I’m done downstairs,” he commented. “Thought you might have gotten lost,” he added with a smirk. You shook your head, still holding the bank bag. Joshua nodded towards it. “You gonna hold onto that?” he asked, amused when you quickly set it down on the kitchen island.

“Shall we then?” he asked, nodding towards the door. You nodded without another word and headed for the door quickly, much to his amusement. Joshua stopped you with his hand on your arm gently. You looked down at his hand and up to meet his gaze. He held out his other hand.

“Keys?” he asked simply. You dropped them in his hand and headed down the stairs as he chuckled to himself, closing the door and locking it before following you.

“Are you hungry?” he asked as you reached the landing. You nodded again. “Yeah,” you managed to say as he led the way into the front of the shop. “How does Italian sound?” he asked as you grabbed your things, pulling on your coat and scarf. You nodded, heading for the door as he followed.

“Italian sounds fine.”

Once the shop was locked up, the walk to the Italian restaurant didn’t take much time at all. It was a small place with only about 5 tables and a small bar. It was nestled between a bakery and butcher shop, all owned by the same family. Joshua held the door for you with a smile as you thanked him and stepped inside.

You’d been to this place maybe once or twice in the whole time you’d lived in this town. It had been owned by the same family for generations and was currently being run by the grandchildren of the original owner. A young girl at the host stand smiled as you entered the building.

“Just two?” she asked. Joshua nodded as she gathered the menus and silverware, rolled up into black cloth napkins. She tucked the menus and silverware into her arm and picked up a pen, jotting something down on a piece of paper on the host stand before smiling at the two of you. “Right this way!”

She led you to a smaller table in the corner meant for couples. All the tables were round, most seating about four patrons. There was a small room off the main dining area with a much larger table meant for bigger parties. Along the wall were smaller tables with two chairs each and at the back was the bar. A long window allowed a look into the kitchen where you could catch glimpses of workers passing by.

A door at the far corner opposite your table allowed workers in and out of the kitchen. You removed your coat, laying it across the back of your chair and sat down as Joshua did the same and the hostess set the menus and silverware down on the table. “What can I get you started to drink?” she asked as you both settled into your seats.

“Just water,” you answered, not in the mood for soda or coffee. Joshua smiled at the hostess as he glanced over the drink menu. “A glass of cabernet, please,” he said politely. He turned to look at you. “You sure you just want water?” he asked, tilting his head. You looked down at the menu, eyes scanning before finding something that sounded good. “I’ll just have a limoncello martini,” you said, looking up at the hostess who smiled and nodded. “I’ll go put those in and your server will be by soon,” she chirped.

“And I’ll still bring you that water,” she added with a wink your way before heading off.

You looked down at the menu, flipping it over to look at the entrees. The menu wasn’t huge but they had a lot of options to choose from. As your eyes scanned, you could feel eyes on you and glanced up through your lashes to find Joshua already doing the same. He glanced back down, a smirk tugging at his lips. You looked back down, trying to finalize your decision.

“I can’t choose,” you heard him say softly. “I’m stuck between the tuscan-grilled sirloin or the mezzaluna,” he added, glancing up to meet your gaze. “Well they have an option to do both,” you offered, looking over the combinations. “You could get a 7 oz sirloin and a half order of mezzaluna,” you read off the menu. “That way you don’t have to choose.”

Joshua nodded as he looked at the menu. “What are you getting?” he asked softly, looking up once more. “The chicken,” you answered, setting your menu down as the host returned, setting two glasses of water down. You thanked her and picked it up, taking a sip. “Which chicken?” Joshua asked as he lifted his own glass, keeping his eyes trained on you.

Before you could answer, the server arrived. She was around the same age as the hostess and looked like she could be an older sister. “Hey,” she said breathlessly and you could only assume she’d been running all over the restaurant, serving multiple tables. “Your drinks should be coming from the bar in just a moment,” she said as she pulled out a pad and a pen. “Would you like to start with an appetizer?” she asked, looking between the two of you.

Before you could say anything, Joshua answered.

I’d actually like to get an order of the cozze in bianco,” he said without even looking at the menu. “I’ve tried just about every other starter but I haven’t tried the mussels,” he added. The server smiled as she jotted that down. “They’re really good,” she answered. “I’m not just saying that cause I work here,” she continued. “They’re genuinely delicious. It’s my grandma’s recipe,” she added.

You looked up, intrigue written across your face. “You’re part of the family?” you asked. She nodded with a proud smile. “Fourth generation,” she clarified. “My great grandparents started the place. My grandparents just retired and now my uncle and dad are running the place,” she explained, pointing at two men behind the bar.

“My sister is one of the hosts,” she added, pointing to the host stand where the hostess who had seated you stood. “I thought you might be related,” you said with a triumphant smile. It felt good knowing your instincts were spot on. “Yeah!” the server said. “Anyway, I’ll get this in,” she said, tapping the pad with her pen. “Then I’ll grab your drinks and come back to take your meal order,” she added with a smile and an “I’ll be right back.”

Once she left, Joshua turned to look at you. “I guess it really is a family business,” he said with an amused tone. You nodded, uncertain of what to say. Silence fell over the two of you as you waited for the server to return. You glanced up from the menu to find Joshua reading over the list of wines. “So,” you said softly, drawing his attention away from the paper.

“You’ve been here a lot?” you asked. Joshua smiled, setting the wine list down. “Been here? Sort of,” he answered. “This place is right around the corner from the shop,” he started to explain as you took another sip of water. “It’s perfect for getting carryout,” he added. “I’ll just call and place an order and then come pick it up and take it home.”

You listened patiently as he explained. “I don’t go out much,” he continued. You tilted your head as he spoke. “How come?” Joshua looked up from the table, eyes meeting yours. “I don’t know many people,” he admitted softly. “So you just stay in your apartment?” you questioned.

He nodded slowly. “Sometimes I go visit my aunt but my cousin recently moved back in with her and we don’t exactly…” he trailed off, thinking of the right words. “Get along.” Before you could ask any more, the server returned with your drinks, setting the wine in front of Joshua and the cocktail in front of you.

“So,” she said with a smile as she pulled out her notepad and pen. “What can I get you?”

After ordering, your conversation with Joshua shifted to other things. You talked about what he did in his spare time, discussing his taste in movies, books, and more. It was the most you’d ever gotten the chance to speak to him but it was nice to learn more about the man you spent half your day with four days a week. You wanted to consider Joshua a friend and hoped he could do the same.

The food was amazing. The mussels were cooked to perfection and though you were never big on them, Joshua got you to try at least one and you were surprised by how good it was. Your meals arrived just as you were finishing the last of your appetizers.

His steak looked incredible and he’d asked for marsala sauce on top. Your chicken was juicy and tender and the lemon butter sauce was perfect. You were glad you decided to forgo the capers in the end. The portions were just right and you were left feeling full but not stuffed at the end.

As your server took your empty dishes, she asked if you had saved room for dessert. Joshua glanced at you. “We’ll look over the menu,” he said and she nodded, moving to take your empty plates away. Joshua looked over the dessert menu. “I don’t think I could any more,” you commented. “Not without hating myself afterwards.” Joshua snorted and handed the menu to you.

“We could always split something,” he offered.

You looked over the page, eyes scanning the sheet. There were staples like tiramisu and cannolis but there were also unique twists on traditional pieces like a cannoli cake. You spotted a chocolate cake as well as cheesecake. “I’m not sure,” you said softly, drawing your bottom lip between your teeth before handing the menu back. “You decide. I’m sure whatever you pick will be delicious,” you added.

Joshua looked over the menu as the server returned. “Made a decision?” she asked to which Joshua nodded. “One slice of the cannoli cake,” he answered, handing her the menu. “We’ll take it to go,” he added and she nodded, moving to put in the order and bring the check. You moved to open your bag but Joshua stopped you. “This is on me,” he said as he pulled out his wallet.

“No, it’s okay!” you said as you pulled your own wallet out. Joshua shook his head. “I insist,” he said more firmly. “I asked you to join me. It’s my treat,” he continued. Sensing you weren’t going to win this argument, you let him have his victory.

When the server returned with the check, Joshua immediately handed her his card and she walked away. While she was gone, you replaced your wallet in your bag and looked up to meet Joshua’s gaze. “Thank you,” you said softly. “For dinner.” Joshua returned the smile as the server returned with his card and the cannoli cake slice already bagged up.

Joshua signed the slip as the server smiled at you. “How was everything?” she asked.

“Oh it was amazing,” you answered as you finished your cocktail. “Better than I remembered,” you added. “Thank you so much,” Joshua said as he slipped a couple bills out of his wallet and tucked them behind the signed slip and handed them to the server. “The food and the service was incredible as always,” he added. The server thanked both of you before walking away.

Joshua stood up and grabbed his coat. You stood up quickly, gathering your things as he grabbed the togo bag and led the way to the door.

Outside, the sun had fully set behind the trees and the streetlamps outside had turned on. You pulled your coat on, noticing the chill that had set in. Joshua had already pulled his coat on and was watching as you slung your scarf around your neck. “Well, I should get home,” you said breathlessly.

Joshua gave you a peculiar look. “Don’t you want to come up and try this?” he asked, holding up the to-go bag. “We got it to split,” he reminded you.

Although your gut was telling you this was a bad idea, you agreed and followed Joshua down the sidewalk and around the corner. The shop loomed over the both of you in the darkness, only one dim streetlamp illuminating the space in front of it as Joshua reached the door and pulled out his keys.

He unlocked the door and stepped in, allowing you to enter after him. As he shut the door your eye fell on the basket on the counter. You were almost one hundred percent certain that hadn’t been there when you both left earlier. “Uh… what’s that?” you asked as Joshua closed and locked the door.

He looked to where you were pointing, setting the bag on the counter and moving to the basket.

“It almost looks like Mrs. Briggs basket,” he said as he grabbed the handle and pulled it towards him. “But the items are different.” You watched as he sifted through the items. “Could you uh…” he asked, turning to look at you. “I hate to ask since we’ve already closed up and it is pretty late, but could you inventory this for me?,” he continued.

“I really should learn how to do it myself.”

You nodded, moving around the counter to grab your pad and pen. You watched as he pulled each item out and set them on the counter. “None of these items are the same as the ones Mrs. Briggs brought earlier,” you said softly as you started to write down the items and the descriptions.

Your eyes fell onto a small statuette and you set your pen down before grabbing it and looking at it.

In the low light you could tell it was very old. It was a small animal statue. The material you couldn’t discern but it almost felt ceramic. It was a cute little calico kitty. You looked it over but couldn’t find any manufacturer or name. “Huh,” you huffed as you set it down, drawing Joshua’s attention.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. You looked up at him. “This little statue,” you replied, gesturing to the cat. Joshua picked it up and turned it to face him. “What about it?” he asked. You shrugged. “I don’t know actually,” you said softly. “It just caught my eye.”

Joshua glanced up at you and back to the figurine in his hand. He set it back down in front of you. “Tell you what,” he said softly. “You can have it.” You looked up from the notepad, eyes wide. “What? Really?” you asked. He nodded and shrugged. “It’s just a little cat figurine,” he added. “Keep it,” he said.

You thanked him and went back to finishing inventorying all the items. When you were done and the basket packed back up save for your little calico figure, you followed Joshua up to his apartment where he started to unpack the slice of cake. The two of you stood around the kitchen island. “Here,” Joshua said, handing you a fork and using his own to take a bite.

You watched as his eyes fluttered shut, sighing in contentment. “That’s really good,” he murmured, turning to find you watching him. “Try it,” he urged, pushing the plate towards you. You gently stabbed your fork into the cake and brought a piece up to your mouth, fully aware Joshua was watching you intently. It felt oddly intimate, having him watch you so keenly.

Once you tasted the cake, however, his interest in watching you was made clear.

“Wow,” you said through a mouthful of cake, covering your mouth with your hand and looking up to meet his gaze. “That’s really good!” Joshua smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “I know!” he exclaimed, taking another bite. The two of you continued to take bites of the cake until there was one little piece left.

You held your hands up and moved to the kitchen sink, rinsing your fork and placing it with the other dishes. “I’m done!” you said as Joshua turned. “The last bite is yours though,” he said with a frown. You shook your head. “No,” you said softly. “I’m good. You can have it.”

Joshua shook his head, moving to stand beside you. “No,” he replied, holding the piece for you. “It’s yours.” You looked from the piece of cake up to his face. He was waiting patiently for you to take the bite and although your gut was telling you this was a bad idea, you took the plunge anyway.

His eyes never left your face as you pulled back, chewing and swallowing the last bite of cake. “Okay,” you said, looking up. “Now I’m-”

Your words were cut short by Joshua pulling you in, lips crashing against yours. You moaned into the kiss as his lips parted yours, tongue slipping into your mouth. All you tasted was cake and saliva. He’d abandoned the plate the second you accepted his advances, discarding it on the counter behind you as one hand moved to your hip, the other staying put on the back of your neck.

Joshua guided your body away from the sink and against the kitchen island. You groaned as the counter dug into your back, a sound that Joshua swallowed as he deepened the kiss. “Fuck,” you hissed as his lips left yours, trailing over your cheek and down the side of your neck.

Without warning, he pulled back, spinning you to face the rest of the room, pushing you against the counter as he grinded against you, allowing you to feel his hard cock. “You have no idea how crazy you drive me,” he growled, one arm wrapping around your chest and holding you against him as he rutted against you. You let out a feeble moan, hands moving up to grab his arm as your legs threatened to give out under you. “J-Joshua,” you whimpered.

Your voice must have snapped him back to reality and just as quickly as it started, Joshua pushed away from you, facing the sink and gripping the sides as he tried to control his breathing. “Oh my god,” he breathed. “I’m so sorry.” You turned to face his back, hands on the counter behind you as you steadied yourself. “Wh-what just happened?” you panted.

Joshua shook his head and when he spoke again, his voice sounded strained. “I think you should go.”

Your brows knit together in confusion. Was he… kicking you out? After all that?

“What?” you whispered. Joshua raised his head but still didn’t turn to look at you.

“You should go home,” he said, his voice still strained. “This is wrong.”

You stared at the back of his head incredulously. He practically jumped you at the sink and almost bent you over the island of his kitchen and now he was backpedaling? You said nothing, instead grabbing your coat and scarf from the seat you left them on and headed for the door, yanking it open before stepping out onto the landing and slamming the door behind you.

Your footsteps were loud, echoing as you ran down the old wooden steps and into the back room of the shop.

Up front you reached the door in record time but stopped as something caught your eye. The little cat figurine was sitting on the counter, staring back at you. In a split second decision, you grabbed it. He had said you could keep it after all.

The bell rang softly as you exited the shop, slamming the door behind you and hurried down the sidewalk and around the corner. You stopped for a moment to catch your breath before continuing on.

It was late. Really late you noticed as you walked in the direction of your home. The shops and restaurants had all closed for the night and there wasn’t a soul to be found as you walked down the deserted street.

The shops to your left were all dark, only a couple with running lights on in the back of the shop. On the right side, across the street was the park. It covered a good portion of the town, stretching for several blocks. The park was home to the playground, a pond, a dog park, and lots of walking trails.

It was covered in trees and lots of shrubbery. It was a lovely place to walk and visit all year round but right now it felt menacing and looming. You tried not to focus on it as you continued down the path before you, clutching the cat statue tightly in your hands.

It didn’t take long for you to finally reach your home, ignoring the chilly breeze that followed as you let yourself in and shutting the door behind you. It was an older home, built back before the town grew up. It was a family home, one you inherited from your parents after their passing. It was a cute craftsman style home with four bedrooms. You’d closed off the bedrooms upstairs, taking up residence in the master bedroom on the main floor.

You locked the door, listening for the click of the lock as it engaged before finally settling and feeling relieved. You shrugged your coat off and pulled the scarf from around your neck, hanging both up by the door before kicking your shoes off and heading into the living area.

You set the cat statue on the kitchen counter and moved to your fridge to grab some water. You always kept a few bottles of water in the fridge. Turning as you uncapped the bottle and started to sip, you jumped slightly at the glowing eyes peering in at you from the back window.

Once you realized it was only a cat, you berated yourself for overreacting and downed some more water before moving to the bedroom but only after making sure the doors and windows were locked.

In the safety of your room, you drew the blinds and curtains, quickly undressing and pulling on your pajamas. Your bed was all but calling your name as you pulled back the covers and climbed in, settling under the comforter as the exhaustion of the day weighed down on you.

You fell into a deep slumber, one you didn’t even remember falling into.

Your alarm woke you up at 630 on the dot and you groaned, lifting your head to peek at the red numbers. You really did not want to get out of bed. Mostly because you were comfortable in your warm cocoon and because the events of last night were flooding back in and you weren’t sure if you could even face Joshua after that.

You knew staying in bed and wallowing in your misery wasn’t going to help so as much as you didn’t want to, you turned your alarm off, threw the covers off your body and started to pull yourself from the depths of your bed.

As you sat up, you grabbed your phone sitting on the nightstand beside your half empty bottle of water.

Unlocking the screen you found you had a text waiting for you. From Joshua.

Your heart hammered in your chest as you tapped on the icon to read what he had to say.

Joshua: hey, don’t worry about coming in today. The shop is closed for some repairs. You’ll still get paid so don’t worry about that either. I’ll see you Monday

Your stomach dropped into your lap as you read his messages. So he couldn’t face you either? You weren’t sure what kind of repairs the shop could need. There wasn’t anything you noticed in the last few days. You chose to avoid deciphering what he meant and instead to use the day to get things done.

As you got up and started your morning, you took a shower and changed into clean clothes, opting for a light caramel colored sweater and light denim jeans. You gathered up your dirty clothes and took them to the small laundry room off your kitchen, setting a load and going about the rest of the house, cleaning and putting things back where they belonged.

Time ticked by as you worked, stopping briefly to take a lunch break when you realized you were low on groceries. Deciding to swap your washed clothes over to the dryer first, you set out from the house, donning your cream colored long coat but forgoing the scarf. Today was much warmer than the previous day.

Your walk from your neighborhood to the market only took a couple minutes and you greeted the cashier at the front as you entered and grabbed a bright yellow shopping trolley. You wheeled your cart through the aisles, grabbing items from your list off the shelves and crossing them off as they landed in the basket. You had just turned into the cereal aisle when you stopped dead in your tracks.

Halfway down the aisle was Joshua. He was smiling as he handed a box from the top shelf to an elderly woman. You couldn’t see her face so you didn’t know which resident it was. You tried to back up and head for another aisle but in your haste, you bumped into the display next to you, knocking a few cans of beans off the shelves.

Joshua and the woman heard the commotion and looked in your direction. ‘Oh brilliant,’ you thought to yourself as you knelt down to pick up the stray cans that rolled across the tile. As you stood up, Joshua and the woman had parted ways and he was currently walking in your direction.

You turned away as he approached, setting up the cans and trying to mimic the display they’d been in before.

“Hey,” you heard Joshua say softly. You turned to face him, forcing a smile. “Hey,” you mimicked.

The two of you said nothing, instead standing awkwardly before one another, looking anywhere that wasn’t the other person. ‘Why is this so awkward? Why are you even still standing here? Just walk away!’ You cleared your throat and forced another smile, laughing awkwardly as you took the handle of your trolley. “Well, I gotta go,” you said, your voice much higher pitched than before.

Joshua’s eyebrows shot up as you started to turn your cart and push it past him. He was quick, grabbing your wrist and turning you to face him, backing you up against the shelf of canned beans. Your breath caught in your throat as Joshua looked at you, eyes studying your face.

You saw them briefly look down to your lips and back up. Finally he spoke.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t know what came over me.” you shook your head quickly. “It’s fine,” you squeaked. “Alcohol does that sometimes,” you added after clearing your throat. Joshua nodded, eyes still fixated on your lips as you spoke. “It doesn’t have to mean anything,” you continued.

The shift in his expression was unmistakable but you couldn’t tell what emotion he was conveying. “It… doesn’t?” he asked softly. You shimmied out of his grip, straightening your coat as you heard voices enter the aisle you were currently standing in. “No,” you replied. “It doesn’t.”

Joshua opened his mouth to respond but you stopped him. “Don’t worry about it,” you added. “Let’s just forget it. I’ll see you on Monday.”

You didn’t let him speak as you hurried away, pushing your cart into the next aisle to finish your shopping. You were grateful he didn’t attempt to follow you and luckily you didn’t see him again, which allowed you to return to the cereal aisle and grab a box of your favorite brand.

After visiting the dairy section, you headed to the front to check out. The next stop was the butchershop where you grabbed your usual cuts of chicken, pork, and beef before heading home to stock your fridge as well as fold and put away your clean laundry.

The task took longer than you were expecting and by the time the last towel was neatly tucked and folded, you saw that it was getting close to dinner time. You sighed, glancing at your fridge upon realizing you hadn’t prepared anything you bought yet.

You got up and walked over to the fridge and opened the door, looking at the contents and settled on one of the flank steaks you’d bought earlier. You grabbed the package and pulled it from the fridge as well as a couple other items and started with rinsing the vegetables you selected.

As you set the items on the counter, the small kitten figure caught your eye. You’d yet to find it a home in your place and moved to pick it up. As you did, a small portion of the bottom fell off onto the counter with a soft clatter and you cursed under your breath. It seemed as if the statuette had a small seal on the bottom that had seemingly come loose.

You turned the figure upside down and your eye caught the end of something shoved into the tiny space inside the ceramic figure. You carefully removed what turned out to be a rolled up piece of paper and set the figure down to start unrolling the paper.

Blackish text written in what you could only assume was a dark red ink adorned one side of the paper. You weren’t sure what it said but you could tell it was a different language. Possibly latin. Your brows furrowed as you read the words in your head before trying to sound them out.

“Te invoco a profundus inferni,” you read off in what you could only assume was terrible latin. You studied the paper for a moment longer before shrugging and turning to your trash bin, crumbling up the paper and tossing it away.

‘Out of sight, out of mind.’

Once rinsed, you started to prepare the potatoes, slicing them thinly before adding them to a glass baking dish. You worked over the dish and the stove simultaneously, making a cream sauce to add to the potatoes before sprinkling some cheese and panko over the top and putting in the oven.

While that baked, you poured yourself a glass of wine and turned on some music on your phone. The bottle was a new one you picked up earlier. While sipping on the wine, you prepared the steak for cooking, seasoning both sides since you didn’t have time to marinate it.

Soft jazzy tunes floated through the air as you went about the kitchen, heating a skillet before adding the steak which started sizzling immediately. You sipped on some more wine as you waited to flip the steak over. Your mind wandered as you waited, wondering what Joshua was up to before you forced the thought out of your head.

‘Stop thinking about him!’

You continued to listen to the music as your steak cooked, sizzling again when you flipped it onto the uncooked side. Once the steak was cooked to your liking, you pulled it from the pan and set it aside to rest while you checked your potatoes and added the chopped veggies to the hot pan, drizzling them with some oil. It was something you learned from your mother.

Once you were sure your veggies were done, the timer for the oven went off and you made a plate for yourself, sitting down at the kitchen island to eat. You had a dining room but as you lived alone, you saw no point in using the table. You could just eat at the island instead.

Just as you were cutting into the steak, you heard the doorbell ring and turned to look at the front door which you could just see from your spot. You waited for a moment before it rang again and you got up quickly, moving to answer it.

Pushing the curtain covering the window beside the door aside, you peered out onto the front step but saw no one. You contemplated opening the door but decided against it and instead looked through the peephole.

Again, you saw no one standing on the other side.

You took a step back, staring at the door in confusion until your thoughts were interrupted by three sharp knocks. You stared at the door and moved quickly back to peer through the hole. Again, the front step was empty. You moved to peer through the curtain but still saw nothing. You turned the deadbolt and backed away from the door, staring at it for a few moments more.

When nothing happened, you turned to head back to the kitchen to finish your dinner.

Just as you crossed the threshold into the living room, three loud knocks rang out from the door, causing you to whip around and head back to the door. This time you unlocked and opened the wooden door, leaving the metal storm door securely closed and locked.

Outside, just as you suspected, was no one. The street was deserted as the sun set behind the trees, casting everything in a bluish glow. The twilight glow. You peered out at your front porch, looking from side to side but not opening the outside door.

Seeing no one, you stepped back and shut the door, locking it once more before stepping back and waiting to see if someone knocked again. You weren’t sure what you were expecting, you hadn’t seen anyone before so why would you see anyone this time?

As you were wondering, you heard something different. Loud, heavy footfalls on the steps outside, almost like someone stomping up the steps to your porch. Before you could move to throw open the door to confront the trickster, three loud pounds sounded at the door, the strength of it shaking the floor of your vestibule.

Your eyes widened, heart hammering in your chest as you backed away. Another three pounding slams sounded on the other side of your door. Followed by three more. You rushed to the door and as soon as your hand fell on the handle it all stopped.

You didn’t dare open the door this time. Instead, you made sure the front door was locked before going around the rest of the first floor to make sure all the doors and windows were secured and properly locked. When you were certain they were, you headed upstairs to check the windows and attic door.

Upon reaching the landing, you were horrified to see that the attic door was cracked open. Your breath caught in your throat as you stared at the door, unmoving. You felt a cold chill run up your spine. Although you couldn’t see anything, you knew someone was looking back at you from the darkness.

You watched in horror as the cracked attic door slowly shut on its own. You blew off your sweep of the second floor of your home before running downstairs and grabbing your phone to call the police. As you waited for the operator to pick up you felt a breeze and looked to see your back door was open.

‘I just locked that!’ You were certain you’d locked that before going upstairs. You’d even done the tug test on it. The line clicked and you were greeted with the sound of breathing.

“Hello?” you asked into the receiver frantically. When no one answered but the breathing started to turn into distorted voices and then a deep rumbling growl you hung up and dropped your phone onto the counter next to your plate.

The corners of your eyes burned as you wandered cautiously towards the open door. You peered out the door into the dark and in an instant, you could have sworn your heart stopped. Your breathing sped up as you tried in vain not to hyperventilate.

Standing outside your door, just beyond the reach of the back porch light was a dark figure. There were no distinguishing features, no eyes, nothing to tell you anything other than the fact that someone… or something, was standing outside your door.

Without thinking, you rushed the door and slammed it shut, turning the lock before backing away.

The shrill tone of your phone sounded out and you rushed to pick it up without checking the screen.

“Hello?” you all but shouted. “Ma’am this is [xxx]. We received a call from this number moments ago. Do you have an emergency?” relief flooded your body as you almost passed out from the stress.

“Yes!” you said quickly. “I think someone is in my attic,” you answered. No sooner than you said those words, you heard a loud crash from upstairs. “He might have left the attic and is in the house,” you whispered, your body starting to shake.

“Can you give me your address?” “It’s Y/N,” you said quickly before giving your address. The town was small and the police station wasn’t far from your home. You knew an officer would be by in no time. “Okay Y/N,” the dispatcher said. “I have two officers enroute. In the meantime, can you find a weapon and a place to hide?”

Your eyes landed on the huge knife you’d used to cut your steak earlier and grabbed it quickly. “I have a knife,” you announced softly to the dispatcher who commended you. “Now you need to find a place to hide. Can you do that?” he asked. You tiptoed softly towards your bedroom, keeping your eyes on the bottom of the stairs before finally reaching the threshold and closing your bedroom door.

You turned the lock and made for your closet, squeezing in and sliding the door shut.

“I’m in the closet in my bedroom,” you whispered to the dispatcher. “Where is your bedroom located?” he asked. “Ground floor, back of the house behind the kitchen,” you whispered back. “Please tell them to hurry!”

You listened as the sounds of slow heavy footsteps pounded across the floor above you, heading for the stairs. “I think they’re coming downstairs!” you hissed. “Okay, Y/N,” the dispatcher said calmly. “The officers are almost there. I’m going to stay on the line but you need to be quiet for me, can you do that?”

You nodded and hummed in the affirmative as the heavy steps made their way down the stairs, one step at a time. Each slam had you jumping. You were shaking as you listened, keeping the knife ready to lash out. To your horror, the steps started to walk through the first floor and sounded like they were making a beeline for your room.

You tried to control your breathing as the steps stopped just outside your bedroom door.

You waited for there to be banging or for the door to fly open but neither happened. Instead, there was a rapid knocking at your front door followed by the sound of the front door opening and a voice calling out “police!” you waited for the bedroom door to open and the closet door to slide aside as a light was shown in. “I found her,” the holder of the light said as you held up your hands.

The knife was taken from you and the officer helped you up. After they escorted you out of the house, one officer spoke while another two searched the house bottom to top, clearing each room and even going up into the attic. While the officers searched your home, you gave your statement to the officer who wrote down everything you said.

“And you’re sure you locked all the doors?” he asked, looking up from the notepad. You nodded again. “It’s just that when we arrived, both front doors were unlocked,” he explained. You stared at him blankly. “That’s not possible,” you replied. “I know I locked that door. Multiple times,” you explained.

“Someone was ringing and then kept knocking but each time I checked, there was no one there. I thought it was just kids getting into the Halloween spirit and being a nuisance. Until the pounding,” you continued. The officer narrowed his eyes. “Pounding?” he asked. You nodded as the two officers exited you home.

“Y-yeah,” you answered. “It started as light knocking but when I refused to open the door or come out onto the porch, it turned into pounding. I heard loud stomping up the steps but when I checked, I still saw nothing.”

The officer nodded as he jotted that down while one of the two officers came over.

“We found no sign of forced entry,” she started to explain. “We found a stack of boxes in the attic had fallen over. That was probably the loud crash you heard,” she continued. “Your back door was also unlocked.” Your jaw dropped. “I know I locked that!” you exclaimed. When I came downstairs to call you, the back door was open and when I walked over, I saw someone standing outside-”

“You saw someone outside?” the officer originally taking your statement asked. You nodded quickly as he started writing down more notes. “What did they look like?” You sighed heavily.

“I-I didn’t get a good look.”

Both officers exchanged looks as you rushed to explain further.

“They were standing just outside the light field,” you explained. “But they were tall. Maybe around 1.8 meters,” you explained. “Everything else was just black. There were no distinguishing features at all,” you added. The officers nodded. “Ma’am,” the woman started and you turned to her.

“We noticed an open bottle of wine in the fridge,” she stated and you knew where she was going. “I just opened it,” you explained. “I hadn’t even finished a glass yet,” you added. She nodded and the other officer quickly jotted that down as well.

“Well, other than the boxes in the attic,” she started. “There are no signs of anyone inside the home. Since the points of entry were unlocked, they must have gone out that way before we got here.”

You shook your head silently. “I heard them walk up to the bedroom but I never heard footsteps leave.”

The officers exchanged looks before the woman spoke again. “We’ll have a patrol car in the area for the night and if anything else happens, call us immediately,” she explained as she pulled a card out of a little pouch on her belt. “You can call me directly,” she added. “I’m on duty all night.”

The female officer walked you to your door where you thanked her and watched as both cars pulled away and headed down the street. A chilly breeze blew through the front porch followed by a distant flash of lightning and you quickly retreated inside, making sure your doors were locked before heading to the back door to do the same.

Once you were fully satisfied your doors were locked, you returned to the kitchen to clean up your dinner, putting the uneaten portions in a glass container and putting it in the fridge. You downed the rest of your wine and started to rinse your dishes, placing them in the dishwasher before turning off the lights and heading upstairs to make sure all the lights were off, windows closed and locked.

Before heading back down, you turned back to look at the attic door which was firmly shut. You headed down the steps carefully, turning off the light at the bottom landing before heading to your bedroom where you checked your windows.

Once you were sure everything was secure, you changed and got ready for bed.

Climbing under the covers, you weren’t sure if you’d be able to sleep but exhaustion took over and you were out within minutes of crawling into bed.

You were in the midst of a really good dream when you were startled awake by a loud crash and sudden burst of wind. Sitting up, you looked around the dark room and saw one of your windows had sprang open. ‘How the hell did that open?’

You threw the covers off your legs and got up, moving around the bed ro quickly shut the window, clicking your tongue as you stepped in a wet puddle on the wood floor.

The crash you had heard was thunder and a full blown storm was raging outside. You groaned and turned back towards the room as a flash of lightning illuminated the space causing you to stop in your tracks. In the corner by the door stood a tall, dark shadow.

Your heart hammered in your chest, beating almost up into your throat as it closed, your ability to scream being ripped from you. ‘No,’ you thought. ‘This can’t be happening.’

You glanced at the door but knew deep in your heart that you’d never make it to the door, not with the shadow standing right beside it. Maybe you could climb out the window? Damn! You should have left it open! If only you’d seen the shadow before closing the window!

As you weighed your options, a deep, gravelly voice spoke.

“C̸̫͕̿̀̎̈́̈ͅȗ̶̠̳͉̽ṟ̴͖͛̈́̂̓͠ ̶̞͈̈́̌̄̋͂c̵̪̱̆͂̃u̵̡̪̜̠̣͗͒ř̵̤̠͕͈̉r̵̺̙͙͍̦͂̐i̸͈̜͕͙͐́̑̾t̸̨̩͖̣͖̀̑i̵̯͖̼̓͌͛̑s̴̭̐̍̚̚͠ ?”

You stared at the shadow in the corner. Did… did it just speak?

Uncertain if you heard correctly, you waited for it to speak again, although you had no idea what it said.

“M̶̳̞͖̓ͅỏ̷̮̲̯̚r̴̭̹̈͋̀̎t̶͓̩̪̟̿̉̒́̅a̴͓͐̽͊l̸̲̰̯͛͛͠e̴̝͝m̵͕̱̾͋ ̸̫̩̾͜t̸̪͚͔͋e̴͕̠̘̖̅̍͊ ̶̝̞̌i̵̯̺̯̋̉̄ͅn̶̺̳͚̟̟̊́͆̀t̵̫͗̌̎̕͝e̸̗̋̚ṝ̴̺͇̉͗͗͠r̸̺̭̫͈̖̅̉o̷̟͙̥̱͗͌-̴̮̇ ̷͓́g̷̰̪͋͛̕͝ā̸̙͊̍v̴̭̙̜͋̾̊̚i̶̦̟͌͋̈́͛ .”

Your lips parted as it addressed you, still in the same language.

“I-I don’t understand,” you whispered. The shadow didn’t move but instead, in the same gravelly voice it spoke again, this time in English. “I asked you why you keep running away from me.”

Your stomach nearly fell out of your ass. Whatever this was, it was sentient. “Wh-who are you?” you asked, your voice barely above a whisper. The shadow figure chuckled. Actually fucking chuckled. The sound was distorted and unsettling.

“I am Tarrunach,” it answered. Your brain tried to wrap around the name. It was unlike anything you’d heard before. “T-Tarrunach?” you repeated. The figure said nothing and stayed perfectly still, another flash of lightning illuminating the room but still the shadow stayed black, a stark contrast with its surroundings.

“What do you want?” you asked softly, shifting your weight as your hand slowly reached behind you for the window latch. The shadow figure tilted its head before speaking in its rough voice.

“You summoned me.”

Your eyebrows shot up. ‘Summoned?’

You shook your head, halting your movements. “N-no I didn’t,” you answered. There was another flash of light and a clap of thunder. As soon as darkness returned to the room, the shadow figure shifted. Eyes appeared and it took all your willpower not to scream in terror at the sight of glowing red eyes.

“Is that the game you want to play?” it asked, voice scratchy and low. “You summoned me. Do you not remember the incantation?”

As you opened your mouth to say no, a memory played in your head, almost like a movie reel. The cat figure with the roll of paper inside. The strange words written in dark red ink.

‘Te invoco a profundus inferni,’ Your eyes widened as the realization hit you.

You knew it was latin but you didn’t know latin. Had you…

Had you accidentally summoned a demon?

You looked back up and noticed the shadow figure had moved and was now standing in front of the door. You leaned back against the window, fingers searching for the latch to open them.

“I-” you trailed off. “I didn’t know that was an incantation,” you admitted. “I thought it was gibberish.”

The figure laughed again. “Are you in the practice of reciting gibberish often?”

You shook your head. “No,” you answered. “Not particularly. I don’t see gibberish very often.”

You were stalling but the figure was moving closer. The flat black shadowy figure had taken on a more corporeal look, instead of blurry appendages, you could make out a curve in the arms by its side. Your fingers brushed against the latch but didn’t manage to catch on.

Another bolt of lightning streaked across the sky, throwing your room in a cast of bright white allowing you to see the figure in full. Your eyes widened, a scream forming in your throat.

Before you stood a blackened figure. The skin looked almost charred. The red eyes looked back at you from a charred face, the lips pulled back into a menacing smile with rows of sharp teeth. The figure was slim and androgynous in appearance. You saw nothing that would distinguish it as either sexually male or female. It was like one of the Ken dolls you’d had as a child.

Before the scream building in your throat could escape, your fingers managed to grab hold of the window latch and you pulled, opening the window. Instantly the wind blew in, the sound of rain intensifying and blowing into the open space. You tried to turn and climb out the window but the figure moved at an impossible speed.

The window was shut, all wind gone as the figure slammed you against the wall beside the window, hand closed around your throat. “This isn’t a game,” it growled in your face, breath hot against your skin. “You summoned me, whether intentional or not,” it hissed. “And I’ve come to collect.”

‘Collect?’

Fear filled your senses, spreading throughout your body and to the tips of your fingers and toes.

“C-collect?” you gasped, clawing at the hand around your neck. “Yes,” the figure snapped. Without warning, it tossed you onto the bed easily and was on top of you as you bounced on the mattress.

“C-collect what?” you coughed. “My soul?”

The demon tilted its head again only this time much faster, so fast you barely registered it except for the cracking sound that accompanied it. “I don’t want your soul,” it growled. You winced as it leaned in, sniffing your cheek before you felt its warm, wet tongue lick a stripe up the side of your face. You tried to push it away but the demon was much stronger.

“You can’t fight me off,” he laughed cruelly.

You felt your throat close up, tears burning at the corners of your eyes as the monster pinned you against the bed. “Please,” you whimpered. “What do you want from me?”

The demon chuckled again, the sound just as jarring. “I want your energy,” it answered.

You turned your face to look up at it in the dark, it’s red eyes boring into yours. “Energ-gy?”

“Your sexual energy,” it added. Your stomach churned at the thought. ‘No way. Absolutely not.’

You shook your head in agreement with your thoughts. “No,” you said defiantly.

The demon laughed, caging you in with its arms against the mattress. “I figured you’d say that,” it said, taking your face in its clawed hand. You stared up, raw fear pumping in your veins as your eyes met. You watched in both shock and horror as the charred skin of the demon melted away to reveal an all too familiar face.

You managed to push the demon off you and scramble off the bed towards the window as the demon stood up. You cowered away, your back up against the wall. “J-Joshua?”

The figure standing in your bedroom smiled at you, flashing a pair of perfect teeth. “Wh-what the hell?”

The demon started to pace back and forth, keeping its eyes trained on you. “What do you think?” it asked. “Looks just like him, right?” You stared in awe. “Or would you believe me if I told you I am Joshua?”

You shook your head quickly. “That’s not possible,” you croaked, your voice hoarse. the demon laughed and instead of the cruel, jarring sound, it was Joshua’s laugh. The one you’d heard countless times in Pandora’s Box as you told him a joke. The smile was the same one he gave you when he caught you staring at him from across the shop.

The same knowing smirk.

You shook your head again. “You’re not Joshua,” you answered. “You’re just messing with me!”

The demon tilted its head again. “That’s where you’re wrong,” it said in a low, menacing tone.

“Let me show you something,” it said, raising one hand and with a snap of its fingers, the lamps in your room came on. You looked around quickly before your eyes landed back on the demon.

“Is that it?” you asked. “I thought you were going to like, snap us to the shop or something,” you added.

The demon’s smile fell and its eyes narrowed.

“You want to go to the shop?” it asked. You nodded. “That’s where he lives,” you said. “The real Joshua!”

The demon sighed and rolled its eyes before standing up straight. “Get dressed,” it said, moving towards the door. You hesitated as it opened the bedroom door. Sensing you weren’t going to move, the demon stopped. “Get dressed,” it ordered again. “I’ll prove it to you.”

You pulled on a pair of sweats and a hoodie before heading out of your bedroom. It was surreal to see the demon masquerading as Joshua in your living room. You slowed to a stop as it walked around, looking around your house. “Nice place,” it said with a smirk. “How come you’ve never invited me here before?” he asked with a mocking tone. You narrowed your eyes, crossing your arms over your chest.

Taking that as a cue you weren’t going to talk, the demon led the way to the door. “Shoes,” it said as it unlocked the deadbolt and looked at you. “We’re going to the shop.”

The walk down the deserted streets at night was eerie enough but the fact that a demon masquerading as your coworker was walking beside you as if nothing was wrong made it even more uncanny. The walk to the shop took no time at all and soon, you were walking up to the front door.

The demon produced a set identical to Joshua’s keys and unlocked the door. You led the way to the back where the door leading up to the steps was already open. You hurried up the steps to the top landing but before you could knock, the door opened and you fell into Joshua’s arms.

“Close the door!” you gasped, scrambling to shut the door behind you and lock it.

You looked up into the concerned brown eyes of your coworker. “Y/N,what’s wrong?” he asked. “It’s the middle of the night and it’s storming.” You glanced down to find your clothes were indeed wet but on your walk, you didn’t remember it raining. Though you did remember it raining when you were back in your bedroom.

“Here,” Joshua said, letting go of you and heading to the wardrobe that stood between the bathroom and the nightstand. “Let’s get you out of those wet clothes.”

You followed him, glancing around quickly. Nothing seemed out of place in the apartment. Joshua pulled out some clothes, holding up the large tee shirt. “This should fit,” he said softly. “It’s not my size.” He pulled out a pair or shorts as well, holding them up to inspect.

Once he’d found something that might fit, he handed them to you and directed you to the bathroom where you changed quickly. Out in the other room, Joshua was heating up a pot of water. He looked up as you approached. “Let me throw these in the dryer,” he offered, taking your clothes from you.

Once he put them in the dryer and poured you a hot cup of tea, you sat at the kitchen island, trying to come up with an explanation as to why you were there. What reason could you possibly have for coming to his place in the middle of the night.

‘I accidentally summoned a demon that wants to collect my sexual energy and it looks just like you.’

He’d call the cops faster than you could finish getting the words out.

Frustrated, you lowered your head and fought the urge to cry, your shoulders shaking. Joshua rounded the island and sat next to you, placing an arm around your shoulders. “Hey, hey,” he said softly. “It’s okay. You’re safe here.” You turned to face him, startling him.

“No one is safe,” you said softly. Joshua’s eyes searched your face. “What?” he said quietly.

“There’s…” your voice quivered as you hesitated. “There’s a demon.”

As soon as the words left your lips, the serious look on Joshua’s face morphed into a smile. “Oh Y/N, please,” he scoffed. “You know, you really are something,” he said, getting to his feet. You watched as he walked back around to his empty cup and moved to put it in the sink.

You got up and ran over to him. “Please, Joshua,” you pleaded. “I’m not messing around!”

When he didn’t respond, you tried to grab his hand. The moment your skin touched his you jerked back with a yelp. Almost like you’d been burned. ‘What the…’

You looked up from his hand to his profile. He slowly turned his head, eyes boring into yours. The brown eyes you’d looked into before were replaced with yellow irises, the sclera no longer white but red. The same eyes you’d seen in your bedroom. Your heart sank as Joshua slowly advanced on you.

“No,” you whimpered, a soft sob escaping you. You tried to run but the demon was quick, grabbing your arm and dragging you over to the counter, trapping you between its body and the kitchen island. “Stop!” you screamed, pushing against its hard chest. “Let me go!”

“I told you,” it said in the voice of Joshua. “I told you I am Joshua.”

You shook your head. “It’s not possible,” you sobbed, tears falling down your cheeks.

The demon took your face in both its hands gently. “I wasn’t lying. I am Joshua. Joshua is me.”

You glanced up to meet the fiery gaze once more. Behind the yellow and red eyes was a sincerity you hadn’t expected to see. The demon wasn’t trying to trick you. “H-how?” you hiccuped.

“How what?” he asked. “Did you not find it odd that I seemingly haunted every dream and waking thought of yours?” he asked. “Or how Mrs. Briggs didn’t recognize me?” You looked up at him. “Are you even related to Bill?” you asked softly. Joshua chuckled and shook his head. “Bill doesn’t have any siblings,” he answered.

“Why are you here?” you asked suddenly. “In this town. Why are you here?”

Joshua tilted his head. “Do you remember the night Bill passed away?” he asked, nodding when you shook your head. “It was a couple days before Halloween,” Joshua started to explain. “A couple of teenagers were out at the old covered bridge messing around with a ouija board.”

You listened as he told the story of the teens and how they inadvertently summoned him, bringing him to the town. That night, after they summoned the demon, they ran, leaving behind the Ouija board. Bill was driving home from the shop and had to cross that old wooden bridge.

As he started to cross, Joshua explained how he appeared, causing Bill to swerve and plow through the side of the bridge and down into the ditch below. It wasn’t full but because there had been a lot of rain the past few nights, the ditch had been flooded more than usual and because Bill’s car landed upside down, he drowned.

As Joshua finished his tale, you covered your mouth in shock.

“And that little figure you took home,” he continued. “Why would I give you a random gift like that?” he asked. “I wanted you to have it. I wanted you to find the incantation. I wanted you to say it, knowing you were curious and had a proclivity for reading out random words you see,” he added.

Everything he was saying so far added up. Your dreams about him, your fantasies, your attraction, everything was caused by him. “Why did you need an incantation?” you asked suddenly, looking up to meet his gaze. “I wanted you before that.”

Joshua shook his head. “I’m a demon,” he explained. “I have rules and rituals to abide by.”

The realization dawned on you.

“That’s why you stopped the other night,” you said softly as it all fell into place. “Because you can’t just have sex with whoever you want?” Joshua nodded. “There has to be a binding incantation,” he explained. “Which is what you read off tonight.”

You swallowed thickly. “Which means…”

You felt one of his hands moved to your hip. “Which means, we have to have sex,” you continued.

Joshua nodded, leaning in and nuzzling your cheek. “Exactly,” he said in a low, husky voice. “But if we have sex,” you said suddenly, placing a hand on his chest and pushing him back. “Doesn’t that mean you have to leave?”

Joshua tilted his head questioningly. “Why would I leave?” he asked softly.

“When I have a shop to run.”

Without letting you say another word, Joshua took your lips in a searing kiss, his free hand moving up your back and pulling you into him. “I said that incantation binds me to you,” he murmured, lips ghosting over your skin. “I never said anything about having to leave. I’m bound to you now.”

Your knees almost buckled as you felt his teeth graze against the skin of your neck. “I’m yours,” he whispered, his breath hot against your skin. “And after tonight,” he continued, trailing kissing back up until his lips were against your ear. “You’ll be mine.”

You pulled him in for a heated kiss, leaning against the counter as one of your legs moved to wrap around his waist. Joshua leaned into the kiss, parting your lips and sliding his hot tongue into your mouth, muffling your moans.

You whined as he pulled away, slowly kissing down your neck to your collar before taking the hem of the shirt you were currently wearing and tugging it up, pulling the shirt off over your head. “Good girl,” he murmured, taking in your topless form.

His hands were back on you in a second, lips trailing kisses down your collar and between your breasts. As he lowered himself to his knees, he made quick work of the shorts you were wearing, pulling them along with your panties down your legs before taking one of your thighs and lifting it over his shoulder.

You watched as he planted light kisses along the inside of your thigh, stopping just short of your aching heat. One of your hands braced yourself against the counter, the other moving down to tangle in his hair as he placed a kiss just above your clit before shifting between your thighs, pushing them further apart.

Your head fell back as you slipped to rest your forearm against the counter again as you felt Joshua’s tongue glide through your folds, brushing your clit lightly. Light teasing licks turned into heavy laps until he pulled back, his chin already covered in your essence. “Bed,” was the only word he uttered.

You were there faster than you could process, your head spinning with arousal as you leaned back against the sheets. Joshua had stripped himself of his shirt in the short distance from the kitchen to the bed and was lowering himself to kneel as you parted your thighs.

He fell onto the mattress, arms wrapping around your thighs and pulling your pussy closer to his face.

You moaned, head falling into the pillows as you felt his tongue back on your clit. He teased and toyed with the bud, not really falling into a rhythm. Instead he was merely taking his time and learning your body. Twice you felt the tip of his tongue dip down to your hole, pushing into it as his nose bumped against your clit. You felt the vibration of his groans against your sex, your walls tightening around the end of his tongue.

Just when you thought he was going to pull away, it was as if his tongue grew, entering you fully and filling your cunt. “Oh shit,” you cursed, fingers tightening in his hair as your free hand gripped the sheets beneath you tightly.

He only pushed his tongue into you a few times before pulling back. You raised your head wearily to see him licking his lips. “Already so fucked out?” he asked with a chuckle. He didn’t give you the opportunity to respond as he pushed two fingers into your cunt, watching your face as your lips parted in a silent moan.

Your eyes rolled back as he started to slowly pump his fingers in and out of you.

“That’s it,” he cooed as he curled his fingers, brushing against the soft spongy spot that had your toes curling. “You like that?” he asked, mildly amused by the response you were giving him despite him doing the bare minimum. “Yes!” you gasped as he continued to finger you. “F-fuck!” you swore. “Don’t stop!”

Joshua continued to watch your face as you writhed in pleasure under him. “Like that?” he asked, angling his hand so his fingers reached even further. “Yes! J-just like that!” Joshua leaned down, lips moving against yours, a mix of tongues, spit, and moans but you weren’t sure whose moans they were.

Joshua pulled away, keeping his eyes on your face as he sped up the pace. “Just like that?”

You nodded quickly, your body starting to shake as your orgasm approached but before it could crash over you, Joshua withdrew his hand. You whined at the loss of contact, making Joshua chuckle. “You’re falling asleep,” he noted. You pouted at him. “Don’t care,” you murmured.

Joshua tilted his head curiously. “Are you giving me permission to fuck you while you’re sleeping?” he asked. You nodded. It felt too good and you were so close you’d do just about anything to cum. “Yes,” you answered. “Feels s’good.”

Joshua chuckled against your skin, leaving feathery kisses against your cheek. “As you wish,” he said softly, gently rolling you onto your stomach. You felt his hands push your thighs apart and shuddered as you felt something hot and wet against your hole.

You assumed it was his tongue until it pushed into your cunt and you groaned into the pillows. It was most certainly not his tongue. “Wh-what’s that?” you murmured. You felt one of Joshua’s hands caress your cheek. “Shh, angel,” he said softly and you almost laughed at the irony of it.

A demon calling you angel.

You tried to lift your head to look back but it was too dark. “It’s okay,” you heard him purr in your ear. “Just go to sleep,” he added.

Your cheek fell back against the sheets as sleep started to take over your form. You felt whatever was inside you probing around and a sudden thought hit you. “Is that a tentacle?” you murmured, your voice partially muffled. Joshua chuckled, again in your ear as he leaned over you. “Yes,” he answered.

“It is.”

That snapped you awake. “Hng,” you grunted as the tentacle started to thrust in and out of you. “W-wait a second,” you whined. “I thought you…” you trailed off as Joshua halted his movement. “What’s wrong, baby?” he whispered. “I wanted your…” your words failed you again.

“You have to use complete sentences,” Joshua cooed in your ear. “I wanted your cock,” you finally whined. Joshua chuckled, the tentacle in you starting to slowly thrust. “Don’t worry sweetheart,” he replied. “You’ll get that, too.”

Your cheeks burned as the tentacle continued to pump into your pussy, gently bumping your cervix with each thrust. You felt another warm wet appendage against your ass and tried to reach behind you but Joshua managed to catch both hands and pin them to the bed.

“Shhh,” he murmured. “Just relax for me. Can you do that, angel?”

You moaned into the sheets as the second tentacle pushed into your ass, carefully stretching you open. Your fingers gripped the sheets tightly as the tentacle stopped, settling in your ass as the one in your pussy continued to move. The sensation was unlike anything you’d ever felt before.

“That’s my good girl,” Joshua whispered into your ear as the tentacle in your ass slowly started to move, setting an asynchronous pace to the first tentacle and soon both were thrusting into you. It wasn’t enough to build up an orgasm but it was enough to drive you insane.

You wanted more. You needed more.

You moaned into the pillows as the tentacles increased speed. “That’s it baby,” Joshua cooed. “You’re doing so well for me.” You were aware that the sheets were no doubt covered in your arousal and that a mess was being created between your thighs.

Joshua didn’t seem to mind. Without another word, the tentacles withdrew leaving you feeling empty. You let out a tiny yelp as Joshua wrapped an arm around your hips, pulling your ass up before taking one of the pillows and tucking it under your raised hips.

You moaned as he ran his hands over your ass, crying out when you felt him land a blow against the skin. He repeated this again, rubbing his hand over the spot each time. “Of course,” he murmured, more to himself than anything else. “Of course you’d like that, you little slut.”

You moaned at the degrading name, whimpering when you felt him push two fingers into your heat again. “I supposed you’re ready,” he added. Your body burned in anticipation as you felt the bed move. You had neither the energy or will to look and see what was happening but it didn’t matter.

As quickly as Joshua disappeared, he was back, kneeling behind you and spreading your cheeks with his hands. “Such a pretty little pussy,” he growled. “And it’s all mine.”

You moaned in response as he spit onto your waiting hole. The next thing you felt was the tip of his cock brushing against you. “I’m going to ruin this little pussy,” he growled in your ear. “Make it so mine is the only cock you can take.”

You whimpered as you felt his teeth dig into your shoulder before he straightened back up. You felt the head of his cock as it pushed slowly into you and suddenly, you knew why he prepped you with the tentacles beforehand.

Inch by inch, Joshua slid into you. Your body shook as your cunt stretched to accommodate his girth. As he bottomed out, you shuddered, walls clenching and unclenching around him. “So warm,” he breathed. “M’gonna wreck you,” he added, taking your hips in both hands before slowly drawing his cock out until just the tip was still inside you.

Without warning, he snapped his hips forward, making you scream into the pillows as he pushed all of his cock into you at once. The first few thrusts were the hardest but as he fell into a steady rhythm, the stinging pain was replaced with a dull ache. You could already feel your juices starting to roll down your thighs, no doubt mixed with sweat as Joshua pounded into you from behind.

You could feel the tip of his cock hit your cervix with each stroke. You cried out as he slammed into you.

He hovered over you, one hand on the mattress next to you and the other holding your hip. “You take cock so well, baby,” he growled. “It’s like you were made for this.”

You moaned loudly, tears and spit staining the pillow your face was currently buried in. Joshua grabbed the pillow and tossed it aside. “I want to hear you,” he rasped, hips hitting your ass as he thrust into you. “Wanna hear you scream for me and I split you open.”

Your cries filled the room with each slam of his hips, the sound of skin hitting skin the only other sound to be heard. Your fingers dug into the sheets, trying to ground yourself from the onslaught of his hips. “Mine,” you heard him growl. It was almost animalistic. As if to seal his claim, you cried out as you felt his teeth sink into your shoulder. The stinging pain of your shoulder combined with the feeling of his cock repeatedly dragging against your walls raw sent you over the edge and you came with a whimper, falling limp as he continued to fuck you.

More tears spilled as Joshua moved, his hips never faltering. “M’gonna fuck you so good,” he grunted. “Fuck you like you deserve. Fuck you until you’re full of nothing but my cum. Turn you into my own cum dumpster like the good little slut are.”

The sound of his almost angelic voice saying all those dirty things had your mind reeling as your second orgasm built up quickly, a low, deep moan escaping you as you came for a second time. “Such a good little girl,” he chuckled. His chest pressed against your back as he buried his cock fully inside you, pinning you to the mattress.

“You want that? You want me to fill you up? You want me to breed you?”

You moaned, hips pushing back against him, urging him to move again.

When he did it was fast and unforgiving. His thrusts were erratic. “Fuck,” he growled, his voice hitting a low you didn’t think possible. “Stay down,” he added, pinning you to the mattress as he pushed himself up with one hand. “Yeah,” he continued when you obeyed him. “Just like that.”

You felt his cock twitch and throb in your pussy, your walls fluttering around him as another orgasm washed over you. You’d lost count at this point how many you had but Joshua was nearing his own and you were left at his mercy as he chased his high, hips slamming into you as he growled and cursed in a language you didn’t understand.

As he finally started to come undone, he thrust once, twice, thrice more before burying his cock deep in your walls as he came, teeth sinking into your skin once more, marking you as thick ropes of his hot cum painted your walls and filled your cunt until it started to spill out.

You panted, breathing heavily against the sheets, ignoring the drool on your chin. Joshua shuddered as the last of his cum spilled into you. He let out one final groan before stilling completely. Your eyes fluttered shut as you heard him whisper into your ear but what he said you weren’t sure.

Everything faded to black.

You woke with a start and opened your eyes, sunlight filtering into your room and blinding you.

You groaned as you tried to roll over but your limbs were heavy and sore. It took more strength than usual to roll over. As you did, you caught sight of the alarm clock next to your bed but something was wrong.

It was on the opposite side. You lifted your head and stared at the alarm clock. The red numbers told you that it was just after nine in the morning. That was when you noticed the wall. It wasn’t your wall. You started to push yourself up, peering down at the sheets. They weren’t your sheets.

Just where the hell were you?

You sat up and looked around. This wasn’t your place.

Your gaze continued over the familiar surroundings but it wasn’t until it landed on a figure in the kitchen that everything clicked.

He smiled as he walked over carrying two plates and a mug of coffee.

You watched as he sat on the edge of bed, setting the coffee on the side table next to you before setting one of the plates in your lap. “Morning,” he said cheerfully, leaning in to kiss your cheek. “You seemed pretty tired last night,” he added. “So I let you sleep in.”

You looked around as you tried to process what waking up at his place meant. Did you two…?

Memories from the night before flashed before your eyes.

The demon in your room, showing up at Joshua’s place, the sex. You raised a hand up to your mouth as you realized what actually happened last night. You looked over at Joshua as he ate his own plate of pancakes. “Did we…?” you whispered looking up to meet his gaze. His eyes, which were brown, momentarily flashed red, and you knew instantly.

“We did indeed, doll,” he answered, returning his gaze to his plate.

“And you’re…?” Joshua nodded, looking up. “Yep. I’m a demon,” he answered nonchalantly.

“But I’m your demon,” he added. Your cheeks burned as he smirked at you.

“So I was thinking,” he continued to speak.

“Maybe we could move in together.”

You stared at him as he spoke. “I mean, since we’re bound to each other for eternity now, it just makes sense, you know?”

Your heart hammered in your chest, blood pounding in your ears. ‘Move in together?’

“And if we live together, we can have sex like every night.”

‘For eternity?’

“It would be perfect. It’s stupid for us to be apart anyway.”

You looked down at your plate as your pulse sped up.

‘What the hell have I done?’

ⓘ Graphics made by me. Content and support banners made using a template by cafekitsune. I do not allow reposts, translations, or continuations of my works. All writing and graphics are ©️ kwanisms.

#svthub #seventeen scenarios #seventeen imagines #seventeen fanfiction #seventeen smut #seventeen x reader #joshua hong #joshua hong scenarios #joshua hong imagines #joshua hong fanfic #joshua hong smut #joshua hong x reader

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nikethestatue · 8 months ago

Text

Happy birthday to my bestie, my mate, my Elriel sister @tswaney17

I wouldn't have joined this fandom without her. So if anything, blame her! Jokes aside, I hope you have a marvelous year and meet your own stranger in the night. Please enjoy!

One shot

Summary: Elain Archeron is celebrating her birthday and happens to meet an enigmatic and mysterious stranger who upends her world

She smoothed her black bodysuit over her hips, though it wasn’t wrinkled and then tousled her hair, in what she hoped, was sexy, beachy curls.

Anyone else would’ve told her that she looked great—well put together, elegant, and not trying too hard. But to her self-critical eye, she saw a slew of imperfections. Hips too wide, breasts too large, stumpy fingers...She could stand here all night and critique herself, but what would be the point? It was what it was, right? Some part of her though, liked what stared back. The black bodysuit hugged her in all the right places, and paired with strappy golden heels and some delicate gold jewelry, she looked...nice. Not quite her 31 years old. Her friends always said that she was a ‘young 30’. She looked about 24. But inside, there were days when she felt 78.

Oh well. Time to go. That’s not to say that she didn’t want to back out of her solo restaurant trip about 25 times today. Internally, she’s been telling herself that she is too busy, too tired, too poor, and that staying in with a bottle of wine and pizza would be just fine. Another part of her wanted to get out. Even if she looked like a loser, dining alone. At least it was a Wednesday night—not the weekend—so she could theoretically make up a story of being on a business trip. Not that anyone’s going to ask. But she needed that security blanket for herself: “I am eating alone, because I am here on business’. Yeah, that sounded legit. She was a successful, professional woman, determined and confident, and she was on business in Chicago.

She grabbed her clutch and headed out.

It was a warm evening by Chicago standards. The middle of April could be blustery or it could be blistering. You never knew. Tonight was lovely, actually. Trees were in full bloom—white, pink, yellow, assertive red, purple, even blue—bursting in flowers of every shape and size along the streets of her neighbourhood.

Beatrice was a quint restaurant in Fulton Market. Or as ‘quaint’ as a restaurant could be in the bustling, hipster corner of the city. She only knew it because she’d come here before with her stylish, popular co-worker, Morrigan. She recalled how Mor wore a pristine baby blue bodysuit, sky-high heels, and a sparkling silver belt studded with glittery gemstones. Mor’s hair was a waterfall of golden blonde, which cascaded sensually down her back. Her skin was flawless. Her makeup was perfection, and her nails the right shade of pearl. When they were seated, all the girls in the party immediately rattled off a list of things they didn’t eat, were allergic to, and ‘avoided’. Mor announced that she was ‘celiac’ in a tone that implied that obviously she was celiac! And then proceeded to order bread. When the waiter told her that bread has gluten, Mor said that ‘she was allowed to today’.

Back then, she’d ordered something called the Straight ‘A’ Salad, not wanting to tuck into something juicy and fatty in front of everyone. It ended up being empty and unsatisfying. But she still wanted to go back there, because the other items on the menu looked good, the vibe was nice and not overwhelming, and the drinks were inventive. If nothing else, she’d get her full in alcohol.

“Follow me, Miss,” the hostess beckoned her and she scurried quickly between tables, wanting to be seated as soon as possible.

It was nice. The table was by the wall, and she could see inside the restaurant and out the window. She laid her clutch on the table and exhaled. She was here. She was in her place, in her chair.

She made it.

“Are we celebrating anything tonight, Miss?” the waiter asked, when he approached with the menu.

“Oh no,” she laughed, “I am on a business trip.”

“And do you have any allergies?”

“No!” she stated decisively. No. She is going to eat what she wanted. No faux allergies for her.

The drinks menu looked a bit intimidating. Lots of things with Mezcal and Elderflower and words like ‘smoked’ and ‘hibiscus ginger kombucha’. After discreetly googling what kombucha was, she gagged and decided on a Lemond Drop. Safe and sound.

The waiter wasn’t exactly impressed by her choice, but she didn’t care. Instead, she ordered Cheddar Popovers with bacon butter, and green chili queso for appetizers. It harkened back to her California upbringing, where things were less formal, the food less complicated, and the loneliness less acute. She suddenly and desperately missed her sisters, who lived back home. She missed the sun, tacos, trips to Sacramento and the simpler life she had back home.

Sighing, she sipped her cocktail and looked around. It was fairly bustling, couples and friends chatting animatedly, drinking their complicated drinks and laughing. But...she felt okay. Not amazing, but okay. It was peaceful.

It felt peaceful until her eyes fell on a singular, solitaire figure of a man, who sat at the bar, with a drink in front of him. The reason she even paid attention to him was because he was literally breathtakingly beautiful. So handsome, her breath stalled in her chest. Big. So goddamn big, it felt like he was sucking the air into the vortex of a black hole that he’d created just by simply...being. He sat, unmoving, in a sharply cut suit and a white shirt, unbuttoned at his neck. The other reason why she looked at him was because he was staring back at her. Big, bold, unflinching stare. Those incredible, luminescent eyes almost glared at her, and she wished she’d know what colour they were. The man’s face remained impassive, but he continued staring, even once she’s averted her eyes and squirmed in her seat. And now, all she could feel was his stare, following her every move. It was suddenly hot, and she felt her nipples pop like tiny Whack-A-Moles beneath her bodysuit. Served her right for not wearing a bra! Jesus Mary and Joseph. Well, her evening was ruined just like that. Instead of being at peace with her lemon drop and her popovers, she was not being scorched by the gaze of this absurdly handsome man, and all she wanted to do was look his way and see if he was still looking at her. While she didn’t want him to be looking at her. But she wanted to make sure that he was. Oh, god. What. The. Hell.

She was on the verge of fanning herself, before realising that she’d be looking like she was having hot flashes, and it was too early for that. Her nipples were hard as bullets and she was forced to cover her breasts with her folded arms, just to maintain some sense of decorum. As she ‘busied’ herself with her drink, she snuck a momentary glance at the man. He was still there, but no longer looking at her. Instead, he was on his phone, and a deep sense of regret and longing washed over her at once.

He was interested in her for 23 seconds.

That was it.

But she supposed that for the most handsome man in the world to take notice of her for 23 seconds was sufficient enough.

“Miss, your popovers,” the waiter stepped up to the table, placing one plate down in front of her, and then the other, “and queso. Please be careful, it’s hot.”

The food looked fine, but somehow, she no longer felt particularly hungry. She wasn’t sure if it was because the man was no longer looking at her, or because he was looking at her before. Did she want him to look at her? No. No, she didn’t. He was entirely outside her comfort zone, with his piercing gaze and his unnaturally good looks and he was definitely a player, so there was no need for all of this.

On her birthday, all she wanted was peace and quiet. She didn’t need smouldering men giving her the death stare. Instead, she forced herself to concentrate on her food. The popovers were light and fluffy and crispy on the outside, and the bacon butter was to die for. Sinful, but so, so good.

She sunk into her seat, enjoying her cocktail and alternating between the popovers and then the rich, spicy queso. She was still deciding on the main course—penne with spicy vodka sauce? Slow cooked short rib?

“Miss,”

Her contemplation was interrupted by the waiter, who was holding a drink.

“From the gentleman at the bar,” he said and placed the drink in front of her.

Her mouth fell open. Whaaat...

Timidly, she allowed her eyes to travel to the bar and sure enough, there he was. Staring. A small, secret smile touched his beautiful mouth and he inclined his head just a bit. She didn’t exactly know how to act in these situations. Was she supposed to drink the drink that he sent? Invite him over? Go over there herself? Ignore him like a total douche?

Okay, first things first. She raised the pretty coupe glass to her lips and tentatively sipped the drink. Sour and smokey, with a touch of sweetness and heavy on lemon flavour, this was definitely a whiskey drink. And she didn’t like whiskey. But for some reason, she really liked this. She took another sip, a bolder one, and then glanced at the man. He was smiling, as he watched her drink, and when she swallowed, he winked at her. Approving? Enjoying watching her? Smug? Pleased? She wasn’t sure. But she...

“Ready to order, Miss?” the waiter was back, and she absently said ‘fish tacos’ which isn’t what she even wanted, but she was too scrambled to come up with a better idea. “Very good,” the waiter chirped, and before he disappeared, she said, “can you ask the gentleman who bought the drink to join me?”

Her throat was dry. Her underarms were sweaty.

WHAT was she doing??

She never did anything like this before? Inviting strange men to eat with her? Never!

“If he wants to,” she added quickly and the waiter nodded.

God, please say no. Please. Please god, let him say no. I don’t want it. I don’t.

There he was. Moving through the restaurant like the Angel of Death. Dark and tall and slim and muscular. Jesus. He was actually coming over! Oh. No. Nononononono.

And then he was standing at her table, how own drink in hand.

“I wasn’t sure if Whiskey Sour was the way to go,” he said—his deep, dark, raspy voice matching his appearance to a tee. "But it looks like I did well.”

She swallowed hard and then muttered, “Is that what it is?”

Yep, it sounded lame even to her own ears.

“Indeed,” he confirmed. “First time?”

Somehow, this made her blush. A simple question, and a correct assumption, but for some reason, it was laced with innuendo.

Their eyes finally locked.

Hazel. His eyes are a gorgeous greenish amber colour, spectacular like the rest of him.

He took a sip of his drink and slowly dragged the tip of his tongue over his lower lip, swiping the droplet and that made her even sweatier than she was before. Soon she was going to be sweating like a sumo wrestler—which of course is the most enticing look a woman could sport.

“No, I’ve had it before,” she finally managed to answer.

He smirked a knowing smile.

“Have you?”

As he was looming over her and attracting way too much attention from the females of the species, and even some males, she all but ordered him, “you can sit down!”

He smiled again, that smooth, secret smile, saying, “I thought you’d never ask”.

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she just watched him in silence as he slid onto a chair across from her.

“Thanks for the drink,” feeling awfully uncomfortable, knowing she was not great at small talk, and completely out of depth with this man, she thought that this was all a pretty bad idea. What was supposed to have been a quiet and nice evening alone, was turning into...well, she wasn’t sure what it was turning into, but it was something.

“You aren’t waiting for anyone, are you?” he asked, sounding curious. “I wouldn’t need to fight a boyfriend or something...I mean, I’ll win, but,”

She huffed, and snorted a laugh.

“So confident?”

He shrugged, “pretty confident”. After a pause, he pressed, “so?”

“No,” she blushed despite her best efforts to appear cool. “I am here alone. On a business trip,” she lied smoothly, grateful for having this little nugget in her pocket.

He crossed his legs and leaned back in his chair, lounging comfortably. Suddenly, he said,

“Nope. Try again.”

Startled, she glowered at him, not knowing what he meant. All the while, as she squirmed in confusion, he casually drank his whiskey, watching her closely.

“What,” she brought her glass to her lips and took a generous swig of the drink, “what do you mean?”

“Only that you are not being exactly truthful,” he shrugged, and then grabbed a popover and swallowed the whole thing easily. “You aren’t here on any business trip.”

“What?!” she exclaimed with indignation. “Excuse me! How do you know? What do you mean?”

His eyes slowly slid over her bare arms, her chest, her neck, and again, she blushed like a fool, but there was no stopping her body’s reaction to this strange man.

He was...enigmatic.

“A beautiful woman like you, wearing something so elegant and understated,”

Understated? Did he mean boring?

“is not in Chicago on any business trip. So, that makes me think—if you aren’t waiting for anyone, and you are dressed up, then you must be,” he cocked his head, considering, “celebrating something? A new job? A birthday?”

Most of his words rolled right over her head, because all she heard was ‘a beautiful woman like you’. He thought that she was beautiful? He? HE thought that?

“What?” she asked dumbly.

He chuckled, amused. “You are a little naughty liar, is what I am saying,”

“You can’t call me that!”

“Then don’t lie to me.”

She bubbled her lips and finished her drink. Finished already? Shit.

He noticed it too and motioned for the waiter.

“Another drink for the lady,” he ordered. “And I’ll take another whiskey. And,” he thought for a moment and added, “bring us a bottle of champagne.” He looked at her and asked, “what are you eating?”

“I think I ordered fish tacos,” she recalled, watching him in confusion.

“Want to eat them?”

“I dunno.”

“Mind if I cancel them and order us steaks?”

“Uhh...okay?”

He did just that, telling the waiter that he’d pay for the tacos as well.

Who the hell was this guy? He flicked his fingers and just got whatever he wanted. The waiter didn’t even question him! ‘Of course, sir’ ‘Whatever you want, sit’ ‘Right away, sir’.

“So, is it your birthday?” he asked once the waiter ran to fetch the drinks. Literally, ran.

“No.”

His brows knitted together and he pursed his lips.

Something about him and his look made goose bumps rise on her skin and she shifted under the table, crossing her legs. This guy and his unbelievable dominating bossiness were both scary, but also highly sexual. She knew that she was a bit of a submissive at heart, but that was mostly because she read way too many omegaverse books. But now, she was faced with a true Alpha. When they spoke of an Alpha Male, she suddenly became aware that she was in the presence of one. He wasn’t just tall, dark and handsome—even if he was a walking cliche with all of these attributes. But it was his undeniable, almost God-given natural dominance and superiority that she found so fascinating. And yes, so appealing as well.

“It’s not your birthday?” he repeated.

“N-no,” she bleated pathetically.

He didn’t respond immediately, but only drummed his fingers on the table, and she noticed that his hands were scarred. Rather extensively. Burns, from what she could tell. Jesus. How did he get these? And both hands, too.

“Lie to me again, and I will take you over my knees and spank that perfect bottom until you beg for mercy,” he warned, his voice impassive, his face unchanged.

Her mouth dropped open and she thought that she was going to slide under the table and dissolve into a puddle.

Was she supposed to cause a scene and slap him? Was she supposed to storm out of the restaurant? How does one reacted to being threatened by a spanking by a complete stranger?

Also, he thought that her ass was ‘perfect’?

“Let’s start anew, beautiful girl,” he proposed then, while she made silent gasping noises like a dying fish.

The waiter arrived just then, and only that prevented her from fainting or screaming out loud. He popped the champagne bottle with flourish and poured both of them a measure, while also setting their cocktails down before them.

“Don’t come back until the food is ready,” the stranger warned the waiter and the man nodded and left without saying a word.

“What is your name?”

She swallowed, but remembering his warning, she decided to go with the truth this time.

“Elain.”

“Gorgeous name,” he approved. “It suits you. I am Azriel.”

“Azriel,” an exotic name for an exotic man. “Nice to meet you. I think?” she ventured and extended her hand to him.

“Pleasure is certainly all mine,” he said, squeezing her hand in his huge, warm, powerful palm, watching her with strange, almost palatable hunger. “Whether you’ll receive pleasure from me or not remains to be seen,” he decided vaguely and she bit her lip, sensing that innuendo again and not knowing how to deal with it.

The one time a guy was instantly interested in her, and he is a dangerous weirdo. Figures. Just her luck.

He raised his glass and said, “Happy birthday, Elain! I hope it’s wonderful to you.”

“Thank you. That remains to be seen, I think,” she said softly and they touched their glasses. She sucked the champagne quickly, and with a sense of foreboding and some kind of desperation. She had no idea where this was going, or what he wanted from her. But she wanted it to continue. At least for the duration of this dinner.

“What do you do?” he inquired, dipping a chip into the queso, but instead of eating it, he held it out to her. She looked around, in some kind of futile hope that someone would save her from this, but there was no one. Only this stunning, somewhat insane man, who was feeding her chips and dip.

“Come on, beautiful Elain. Open up,” he urged soft, his voice smooth and husky and so tempting.

Numb, and only driven by the sound of that sensual voice, she opened her mouth and he gently pushed the chip inside. As she pulled it between her teeth, he brushed his finger over her lower lip and then brought it to his mouth and sucked.

“More?” he whispered and then concluded, “more.”

He dipped another chip and fed it to her again.

“So?”

“I am in marketing,” she answered, knowing in advance that hers was the most uninspiring answer in history. But she was more preoccupied by the fact that she was being fed chips by a strange man in the middle of a restaurant.

“And you live in the city?” he asked further. “Please don’t even start with the whole ‘I am here on business’.”

She sighed and admitted, “Fine, I am from the suburbs. But I work in the city. What do you do?”

He didn’t seem too thrilled about her question and took his time eating the last of the popovers.

“Do you really want to know?” he asked finally.

“Yes, of course. Why not?”

“You might not like it.”

“Why wouldn’t I? What do you do? Kill people?” she joked.

He smiled at her, but the smile was less of a smile, and more just a stretch of his lips. The smile didn’t reach his eyes

“And if I am?” he wondered at last.

She frowned and then it dawned on her and she laughed, “what? You kill people?”

“Maybe.”

A shiver ran down her spine and she gawked at him in shock. Until she dissolved in a flurry of laughs.

“You had me there for a sec!” she wiggled her finger at him. “A+ for a perfect deadpan delivery! I am impressed.”

He didn’t seem to be laughing, but he added, “but they were all bad”.

She stopped laughing and nervously shifted in her seat.

“Wait. What?”

“You wanted to know what I did for a living,” he reminded her.

As she processed his words, he just sat there, watching her intently.

“Oh my god,” she exclaimed at last, realisation dawning on her, “it’s a scam, right?! You are one of those guys who pretends to be an assassin, or a millionaire, or in the CIA and then I fall for it, and in two months you’ll start asking me for money and I blow all my savings on you and then never hear from you again.”

Shaking her head in disbelief she grabbed her napkin and then said, “thank you for the drink, Mr. Azriel. But I am not stupid. I appreciate the gesture—the razzle dazzle—but let’s part ways right here so that no one leaves here too traumatised.”

He listened to her impassively and in the next moment, the waiter arrived with their steaks.

She was hungry and upset, but she knew that she couldn’t stay here any longer and remain in his company. The whole thing was too bizarre and she didn’t want to get in trouble. And this man was clearly trouble. Or maybe troubled. Or both.

“Azriel, I am,”

“Sit,” he ordered, though his tone was soft. “You are safe with me. Don’t worry. But you did ask me what I did for a living,” he insisted again.

“Well, when I did ask you, I didn’t expect for you to tell me that you are some kind of a killer!” she snapped, her voice rising.

“I’d rather you didn’t yell,” he requested. “However, I wanted to tell you,”

“Why?!” she exclaimed. “Don’t killers usually try and keep their profession,” she made a quotation mark sign with her fingers, “a secret?”

“Normally, yes,” he agreed. “But, I want you to trust me and I felt that being honest is the best way to earn that trust.”

“Trust me? Why? And,”

“Because I want you,” he interrupted her and his tone was blunt, but calm.

“Wha,”

“I want you,” he repeated. “I saw you and you...well, you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. And now, I am obsessed with the idea of learning what you’d look like when I enter you. What sounds you’d make when you come on my tongue.”

At that, the big steak knife fell out of her trembling fingers and she wondered if she was having some kind of out of body experience. An ‘episode’? She wasn’t prone to episodes, but hell, there was a first time for everything, right?

He shrugged, and continued like this was a perfectly sane conversation they were having, “Sorry if this is a bit unorthodox,”

An understatement of the century!

“However, I am not one to mince words,”

Another understatement of the century.

“And when I want something, I go after it. And right now, I want you.”

She made a gurgling sound, but he ignored it, then cut into his steak, and chewed slowly.

“However, you don’t strike me as someone who sleeps around or who is used to the type of man I am,”

Was any woman?

“Therefore, I wanted to build a baseline of trust between us. Like I said, you have nothing to fear from me. I am simply a man, interested in a woman.”

He was anything but, but okay.

“So,” she finally found her voice which was lost somewhere in the bottom of her stomach, “telling me you are an assassin is your way of establishing a baseline of trust?”

He looked at her hand, which was clutching a butter knife, her knuckles white, and smiled faintly.

“I suppose so.”

She reached for the bottle of champagne, but her hands were shaking so badly, she could barely grasp it. Smoothly, he took the bottle and topped off her glass. This was probably the worst idea—to continue drinking—but she couldn't think of anything else.

“Why don’t you relax and eat,” he suggested. “The steak is cooked perfectly.”

“I don’t think I am hungry.”

“Nonsense. Lay down your weapon of choice, dig into your dish and relax a bit. Have fun. It's your birthday!”

He then raised his glass and mused, ‘what should we toast to?”

“Me remaining sane after this dinner,” she muttered under her breath.

He laughed.

“How about ‘to the future’? Because tomorrow with you is worth every yesterday I spent without you,” he said and she almost choked.

He couldn’t be for real.

No man talked like that. Ever.

“Listen, I know I could a little blunt, but in my line of work, I have to move quickly and I typically don’t get many second chances. And I don’t want to miss my chance with you,” he drank his champagne and watched her attempt to concentrate on her steak. “And when I said that you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, I am being honest. I saw you across the restaurant and you kind of blew my mind. It happens, you know,”

“No, it doesn’t,” she argued. “Only in romance novels.”

“Okay,” he shrugged, “so we have a romance novel beginning, so what?”

“It’s not real,” she insisted.

“Well, while you think on that, tell me when I can kiss you, because I’d really, really would like to kiss you right now,”

“Never!” she shrieked. “Stop talking like that!”

She desperately needed him to stop talking. Stop using that sensual, deep baritone to say deliciously sinful things to her. Because if he continued, she wasn’t sure what she’d do. She kept trying to shield her breasts from him, since her nipples were achingly sharp, threatening to poke through the top of her body suit. And between her legs—disaster. She was flooded. Every glance at his strong, powerful hands made her wonder what they’d feel like between her thighs. What his soft lips would taste like if he did get that kiss from her. And every word he said just made her wetter and wetter. She feared she’d have a stain on her clothes once she got up from her seat, and the thought alone was mortifying.

“I think you should let me kiss you,” he insisted, watching her intently.

“No, I am not kissing you!”

God, this steak was good!

“How about this then,” he proposed slowly, “I scoot closer to you, and you let me play with your clit, while you eat, and then you come all over my hand. I pay the bill and we go to my place and I’ll continue making you come. Because all I want to do right now is kiss every inch of your porcelain skin, and fuck your soft, lovely mouth and watch my dick disappear between those rosy lips. And then you’ll come on my dick in your perfect pussy and ask for more, while screaming my name. And if you let me, I’ll fuck that gorgeous ass as well and will make you come from that as well. And then you’ll sleep in my arms and in the morning, we’ll go get breakfast.”

She watched him in dull astonishment, her brain failing to work properly as she attempted to process his words.

This really couldn’t be real. At all. No man, in the history of mankind, ever said words like these to a woman.

Yes, he just sat there, with her perfect face and his perfect body, and waited.

“And then you’ll go and kill some people at work?” was all she managed to say to his explicit monologue.

She’s never been fucked anywhere, let alone her ass. So yeah.

“Well, not at work. For work,” he corrected.

“Uh uh,” she sighed. “And you are okay with me knowing about that then?”

“Like I told you, I want you to trust me.”

“Uh uh,” she sighed again. Then she set her napkin aside and told him calmly,

“Azriel, it certainly has been an interesting evening. I thank you. I am not sure I’ll ever forget it, or you, but...I don’t think that I am the girl you need,”

“All me to decide that,” he argued sharply.

She chewed the inside of her cheek, before clarifying, “I suppose I choose not to be that girl for you.”

“Why?”

“I like my boring little life. It suits me. And you...you don’t suit me or my life.”

She couldn’t even believe her own assertiveness. She was rarely like this.

“It’s unfortunate,” he said sadly. “Forgive me if I offended you,”

“Astonished, more like,”

“Better than offended.”

She got up from her chair and her knees felt soft and shaky, and for the first time she understood what ‘jelly legs’ were. She had jelly legs because of him.

“Thank you for dinner. I better be going.”

“I’d like to walk you to your car,” he offered.

“I think it’s a bad idea. Besides, I am getting an Uber. I drank too much. Goodbye, Azriel.”

She rushed out of the restaurant and onto the bustling Fulton Market, where there were hundreds of people milling around. Her fingers trembling, she got her phone out of her clutch and pressed the Uber button on the verge of hysteria now. She didn’t know where she was going even, so she pressed ‘home’ even though she knew this Uber would host like $60 at least. But she needed to get away. Away from here, away from him, away from making a bad decision. Very bad, terrible decision that she was yearning to make right now.

3 minutes.

Okay, she just needed to make it for 3 minutes out here, until the car came.

She glanced at the phone frantically, over and over again, watching the little car move along the street diagram.

Suddenly, a familiar scarred hand reached over her shoulder and grabbed her phone.

“Wait! Give it back!” she demanded desperately.

Azriel smiled at her and then typed something in her phone.

“Now you have my number.”

A text chimed, and he added, “and I have yours”.

“We’ll never see each other again,” she promised.

“We’ll see,” he said simply.

Finally, Honda Civic! Blue! There she was!

She bounced on her heels impatiently, hoping he wouldn’t do anything, and yet hoping that he would at the same time.

Ugh.

“Goodbye, Azriel,” she said again.

He opened the door for her politely and before she folded herself into the car, he pressed his lips to the top of her head.

“Happy birthday, beautiful. I’ll see you later.”

Azriel ‘The Shadow’ Night had two problems on his hands.

As he watched the Honda weave in and out of busy traffic, he lit a cigarette—an occasional bad habit of his—and inhaled deeply.

Nothing that he told her was a lie.

He did find her to be incredibly beautiful. And his attraction to her was instant and hit him like an avalanche. He’d never felt anything remotely like this before. He wanted her with every fiber of his being and know, innately, that their paths were crossed forever and for a reason.

The only omission in his tale was that their meeting was not accidental. And that she was the target, who was his current assignment.

Now, he needed to figure out how to murder her, while keeping her alive.

#elriel #elriel fanfic #my fanfiction #my writing #elain archeron #azriel #azriel and elain #pro elriel #elain x azriel #elain #acotar fanfiction #Modern AU

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askinkiskarma · 2 years ago

Text

Lo'ak x Omatikaya!Reader

Warnings: angst, suggestive language, cursing

Word count: 3,1k words

Notes: surprise!! here I am once more writing things outside of what I had planned to, but people have been asking for a Lo'ak story and you know me besties, I aim to please. I really loved writing Lo'ak in my Cardigan series, so I'm excited about this. enjoy x

Na'vi words used: ma 'ite - daughter; sa'nok - mother; skxawng - idiot; tsantu - good guy, txepvi - spark

next part (x)

He was sunshine, I was midnight rain He wanted it comfortable, I wanted that pain He wanted a bride, I was making my own name He stayed the same, all of me changed like midnight

You and Lo’ak have been friends for longer than you can remember. Literally. You couldn’t remember becoming friends, because, as Neytiri loves reminding you both, your connection was immediate and permanent.

“Did you know, ma ‘ite, that you and Lo’ak held hands for the first time when you had just been born? Yes, yes… he was just a few months old when we brought him by as you were born, and your little fingers wrapped around him when he reached out for you. You were so tiny, the most precious baby. And I’m pretty sure my son fell in love with you that day.”

“SA’NOK!”

You laughed as Lo’ak’s face dropped in shock, and smiled almost bashfully as he shuddered when your fingers made contact with the freckles on his cheek, that shone brighter than they normally do, probably due to the deep contrast between them and the new shade of purple that signalled a beautiful blush, that you could never get used to, no matter how many times you have seen it through the years.

“Oh, son, am I embarrassing you?”

He huffed and got up from where he stood, and you joined in as all the family starting laughing at the beautiful boy that left the tent stomping, his tail swishing furiously behind him.

You scoffed softly and followed him, rolling your eyes as Spider made kissy noises and Neteyam chuckled to himself.

“Wait up, skxawng.”

“I’m so damn tired of being my family’s clown.”

“Oh, Lo’ak…” you caught up to him outside of the village, and took his hand in yours to stop him in his tracks. He didn’t look at you, even as you manoeuvred around him to come face to face with this boy the you loved so much, this boy who knew you, who you knew, who will always be everything to you.

“You’re nobody’s clown, Lo'ak. We all love you so much, but you take things too seriously. It wouldn’t be funny if you didn’t get so upset about it. What’s so bad about your mother said? I think it’s sweet.”

Your hand trailed up his arm slowly, and you saw goosebumps appear in its wake, and you smiled at the reaction his body had to your touch. Your hand stopped as it reached his face, that you caressed, and his lips, lips that you’ve dreamt about, that you loved the thought of, that you could feel on yours in dreams and wishful reveries. The same purple tint took over his features once more, and you couldn’t help yourself, couldn’t help the way your face inched closer to his, closer and closer, until your lips touched. It was so soft - the kiss, his lips, the feelings that enveloped you. It felt like home. He felt like home.

“I think you’re sweet. And I think I fell in love with you the day I was born, too. I think it's always been you, Lo’ak.”

He could no longer be upset at his mother after that, not when her meddling led to the happiest day of his life.

Lo’ak loved watching you get ready for battle. How could he not, when your body, tall and supple, a body that had such grace and elegance to it, he felt everyone else in the world would be privileged to ever get to see, was now covered in war paint that complimented your blue skin so well. Orange and yellow lines travelled from your face to your neck, and Lo’ak stood there, mouth agape, once again needing to thank Eywa for whatever luck or happenstance brought you in his life.

You looked up at him, a mischievous gleam in your big yellow eyes, one that he knew too well, one that seemed ever-present on your face. This look and all it encompassed is why he called you what he did. Txepvi. Spark. His spark. As much as his family gave him grief about his own behaviour, about this recklessness and propensity to get himself into trouble, you were worse - much worse. Always looking for adventure, for danger, for adrenaline rushes that electrified your senses and set your body ablaze. You told him once that you needed it, needed this. That it made you feel alive. You always said there has to be more to life than sitting in the village every day, learning to weave, learning about plants and how to best combine them to make pastes and ointments. You were bored easily, bored of the same mundane, of the same routines, so you always looked for new ones. And you got exactly what you wanted when the Sky People returned.

Lo’ak knows you hated it, hated them, that you would have happily watched all of them die at your hands, but he also knew that deep down you loved it. Loved how each day was a new challenge, was a new opportunity to prove to yourself, and to him, and to the Olo’eyktan, that you were an asset, that you would be worthy of one day of being Neytiri’s successor, of your parents’ legacy as warriors that gave their lives in the war that came to their doorstep so many years ago.

“I want you to mark me. You always bring me good luck. And I need it today. I want your hand on me, on my heart. I need a reminder of what’s good in the world. Of what’s mine.”

Lo’ak’s heart was booming in his ears at your words. You have always been brave. You had a strong heart. You always knew your own mind, always knew what you wanted, who you wanted. And he still couldn’t believe his luck that what you wanted was him. You pushed the bowl of paint towards him and eyed him expectantly, and he obliged you. He placed his five-fingered hand palm first in the bowl and watched as the paint dripped back in it as he removed it, trying to shake off the excess so it doesn’t mess with the design already on your body. Trying to calm his thoughts, he placed his hand on your chest, right in between your breasts, and felt your own heart beating loudly against him, and he smirked, placated in knowing he wasn’t the only one whose emotions were running wild, whose desires were pulsating through every fibre of his being.

“I still think it’s unfair you get to fight while I am still stuck being a spotter. You’re younger than me, for fuck’s sake.”

“I’m better than you, ma tsantu, how many times do I have to prove it to you?”

He scoffed, and tugged at your beaded top until your lips connected, the white paint on your lips smudged and diffused now, coating his own, and he didn’t care. He thought it was fair, that there were physical traces of you on him, coating his body like you did his being, his heart and soul. Your tongue traced his bottom lip and explored and he let you, meeting you halfway, a messy needy dance that left him panting and weak. He kissed you to shut you up, but now he was the one speechless. How did this always happen?

You pecked him once more, then moved to reapply the painting that had just been erased. He could hear the small smile in your voice as you spoke.

“Your father loves you. He doesn’t want you to put yourself at risk. He doesn’t want you to get hurt, and doesn’t want Neteyam to get hurt trying to protect you, like he always does. He doesn’t have the same compulsions with me. That's why you're a spotter and I'm not.”

You grinned at him, your large, sharp canines coming into view, and he yelped a little as you directed them to his neck, biting on it until a sharp sting traveled through his body. You licked the blood that came out of the two small puncture wounds and he shuddered at your touch.

“Come, mighty warrior. Let’s go show them what happens when they mess with the Omatikaya.”

It was surreal to you, how much life changed, how fast life changes. It seemed like yesterday that you were swinging through the trees of the Omatikaya forest, innocent and mild, just happy to exist, happy to be alive, happy that there was air in your lungs and sun shining through the leaves and hitting your bare skin, that soaked it all, that loved it, loved every ray, loved it all. You were different now, so different you could barely recognise yourself. You don’t know if child you would have liked the current you… or vice versa. Current you wanted more. More than just the forest, more than just being, and existing peacefully, more than what every other Omatikaya seemed to be satisfied with. You wanted chaos, and pain. You wanted deep, earth-shattering experiences, you wanted life to course through your veins like ice water through the stream near the village. You wanted to fly and you wanted to fall, you wanted to be remembered, you wanted to be revered. You wanted everything.

You knew the Sullys would be angry at you for taking their son away again, for bringing him along with you on one of your unprompted and unplanned trips, where you just got on your ikran and didn’t look back for days, until you discovered something new, something more than what you knew. It was your favourite thing to do, outside of what you were currently doing, limbs tangled with this boy that brought light to your life, and shivers down your spine.

“I can’t believe this place. It might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, present company excluded, of course.”

You giggled and propped yourself up on your elbows, looking at the beach that surrounded your entire line of sight, on this beautiful small tropical island. You flew until you reached the Eastern Sea, and your sights both locked on this little slice of Paradise, that felt so isolated, so wild and untamed, so untouched by Na’vi or animals alike, and you knew this was the place to spend the night, with nothing but the endless stars watching over you. You never got to see the sky like this in the forest, so clear and unperturbed by all the trees obstructing the view - yet another reason you loved your little adventures.

“My dad’s going to kill me when I get home, you know? And then he’ll kill you.”

“I know. But that’s a problem for future me. Present me wants to swim in the ocean, and she wants you to join me. She’ll show you a good time. You won’t think about your dad anymore by the end, I promise.”

He growled lowly at your words, and followed you as you got up and ran into the water, diving for its depths, revelling in this feeling you hoped would never end, and in his presence, that quieted the tumult that was ever-present in your mind. You loved him. He was your home, your calm. He was the best thing in the world, and he was yours.

You felt nervous as Lo'ak entered your tent, a troubled, tearful look on his face, one that meant danger, one that meant hurt, for both of you.

“Dad says we have to go. I have to go.”

Your mind went blank at his words, a new feeling for you. You couldn’t quite understand what he was telling you.

“Go? Go where?”

“The Metkayina. He says we’re to start a new life there.”

“But… but you can’t go. He’s the Olo’eyktan, he’s the Toruk Makto. You can’t just up and leave us.”

You watched as Lo’ak’s face changed from sorrow to anger, directed at you, at his father, at the world - you couldn’t quite tell.

“Do you think I want to fucking go? Do you think I chose this? I don’t get to choose what happens, none of us do, but this is happening.”

You felt tears pricking at your eyes painfully, but you couldn't shed them yet, not when it felt like there was still so much heartbreak still waiting to ambush you.

“So you’re just going to leave me? Leave what we have behind?”

His eyes softened at your words, as he approached you and his hands immediately found your face, the face he adored more than everything else in the world.

“Of course not. I could never leave you. I love you. I’ve loved you my whole life, I have dreamt about your life woven with mine for as long as I can remember. I have always known you were the one, the only one. I never had the courage to tell you, but you did. You told me, and you kissed me, and I am so grateful. So grateful that you chose me, so grateful that I get to know that you’re mine, that our children will be the best warriors this clan has ever seen, just like their mother is.”

Your heart fluttered upon hearing his confession, and a smile swiftly replaced your deep frown and stubborn tears. You couldn’t help tightening your arms around his waist and pulling his body into yours, until you felt every crevice, every indentation, every scar and mark on it, until you were so close you felt like you were becoming one, unable to ever be separated again.

“I don’t understand, Lo’ak. What are you saying?”

“I want you to come with me. You have to come with me. I can’t live without you, and I know you feel the same. We have to be together, and this way we get to.”

It quickly felt like the world quieted around you, dead quiet, like a grave or an unopened tomb, like no life has ever touched it.

You have to come with me. I can’t live without you.

You didn’t notice your arms dropped sluggishly to your side until Lo’ak grabbed them and tugged at them, at you, trying to pull you out of your lethargic state.

“Ma txepvi… please say you’ll come. Please.” He was pleading now, anguish coating every word as he was pushing them out, and you felt it all, deep within your soul, you felt it overtaking you too, felt it killing you as you knew what you had to do, knew what you had to say.

“No.”

As soon as the word escaped your lips, so did a pained sob escape Lo’ak’s.

“No?”

And there they were, the tears, the hot tears that stung each inch of your body they travelled down to, the tears that signified the end of childhood, the end of peace, the end of your life as you knew it, of happiness as you dreamt it.

“I can’t, Lo’ak. You can’t ask this of me. You know me, you know me better than anyone else. You want me to give up everything I have worked so hard for, everything I have yearned for, everything that’s finally within my grasp, all of it, to come and be at the Metkayina’s beck and call? To be a trainee again, to be useless again? To give up my bow, my mother’s bow, and pick up a spear, to give up my ikran, my sister, for some sea creature that will never compare?”

He was crying, too, painfully tugging at your arms, hoping that by doing so, you wouldn’t leave him, you would change your mind, you wouldn’t do what he feared you would, what he always dreaded. He always wondered if he would ever be enough for you, and he was terrified that, each moment passed, it seemed as if he got his answer, the monstrous answer he didn’t know if he could deal with.

“I’m asking you to be with me. I’m asking you to love me the way I love you, I am asking you to give us a chance to grow old together.”

The pain was shooting through your body like a lightning hit, powerful and all-consuming, and you felt as though you were going to drown in your own tears, and you would welcome it, welcome the sudden death, welcome the chance to be put out of your misery. This is what you wanted, you thought bitterly to yourself. You always wanted pain and hurt. You wanted to feel alive. Now you did. So alive it felt like death, it felt like your demise, it felt like everything and nothing, like the beginning and the end.

“I love you. I will always love you. And I am sorry. But I am more than this. I have more to give to the world, to this clan, than just myself to you. Someone has to stay behind and protect the people when your whole family is gone. Someone has to stay and fight. There’s still so much of the world I’ve yet to see, so much of myself I have yet to meet. I can’t let you take that away from me, Lo’ak. I’m sorry.”

You didn't wait for his response as you removed your body from his grasp, that all of a sudden felt trapping, felt suffocating, and took off, leaving nothing but heartache and the shattered promises of a picture perfect future, of love and a shiny family, of a life worth living, but one that wasn't yours.

"Good job today. It's been tough dealing with the demons on our own, without our Toruk Makto, but you're doing great. You're indispensable to our clan, to this village. I hope you know that."

"I know, Tarsem. Thank you." you brought your fingers to your forehead and bode the new Olo'eyktan and the Tsa'hik a goodnight, and made your way out of the tent quietly.

This place felt empty in the months following their departure... his departure. You felt his absence in your every bone. You felt it in the loneliness that haunted you every night, in your body that ached for his touch and warmth, in your mind that never knew peace, not anymore. You wondered if he felt the same. If he ever thought about you, about what you had. You wondered if he's doing well, adapting well, if he found himself a girl, quiet and beautiful, smart and kind, that wanted everything you didn't, that was able to fill the hole you left behind. You hoped he did. You hoped he didn't.

I guess sometimes we all get Just what we wanted And I never think of him Except on midnights like this

dk about a p2 but we'll see how my besties feel x

thank you @firefly-graphics for the dividers xo

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idontknowanametouse · 4 months ago

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Straw hat men headcanons (yeah, Yamato is here, don't ask shit)

Tw to abuse

Zoro

Autistic and semi-verbal. Only communicates through echolalia of his crew's words. Has absolutely no social abilities. Stares at people VERY intensely. Has a hard time telling lies apart from the truth, because of that, developed the habit to be always aware about others. Suffers from understimulation and often has shutdowns, the only person able to help him in those situations is Luffy.

Is visually impaired due to an accident on the Kuraigana Island. Has a hard time with profundity and adapting to new environments, specially big ones. Sometimes uses his swords to tap around and know if there is an object he hasn't noticed yet.

Colorblind and dyslexic. Avoids reading because he feels embarassed due to internalized ableism. Has a hard time telling apart blue, green, yellow, purple and red. Nobody knew that until Chopper made an eyesight analysis on him, so now the crew helps him with some stuff.

Has tan skin and, for literally everybody's surprise, actually dyes his hair (even though he doesn't bath), as it's original color is black. Very tall, large on the bust and muscular. Has various scars through all of his body.

Very gay and also trans. Transitioned shortly before he met Kuina, never came out. Didn't have surgery cuz he thought it could disturb his sword abilities, so he just worked out his chest so much that it would look like that (he had small breasts, so it helped a lot). Still struggles with internalized transphobia, but is working on it, specially after Sanji came out. They dated a little before timeskip and after it went full on a relationship. It's weird, but it works for them (basically, they show off like they hate each other, but on backstage it's just love).

Basically only eats onigiri due to taste hypersensitivity, nobody other than Chopper knows how he manages to be so muscular eating only that (Chopper knows about his nutrient reposition).

Likes green and green only. Everything he has must have at least one shade of green on it.

Half of his echolalia is swearing. Likes to do it specially when fighting.

His promise is so that Kuina will be the only one ever above him, the only one able to absolutely defeat him. Sometimes, he feels like Kuina is there. His heart aches.

After timeskip, calls Kuraigana Island frequently, as he got very used to Mihawk and Perona's company (will never admit that he now got a dad and a sister).

Besties with Nami, very protective towards Usopp although he doesn't seem like. Likes sparing with Yamato and hanging around with Jinbei, as he usually leaves him alone. Hates Robin's teasing and Law's resting bitch face, although he also has one. Carries Bonney and Chopper around the ship anytime he can, Luffy's best bro ever (if Luffy ever could choose a best friend, it would probably be Zoro) as they went through a lot of shit together.

Has absolutely no music taste, will listen to anything even if it's not good. Everyone is fucking horrified.

Before Law joined, he would spend an entire fucking week on the same clothing. Now, Law will spank him if he does so. Zoro changes exactly ONCE a day, and they all look the same.

Scared of choking or asfixiating, will keep plastic (?) bags away from the ship at all costs.

Learned to play some shamisen as a kid, but very little. Due to time, is kind of bad on doing it, but he tried nonetheless in Wano.

After he got lost so many times, Usopp had an idea: to keep a balloon tied to his wrist so they could locate him from far away. Zoro does not like this at all (he still uses the balloon though).

Talks to his swords. He doesn't care if people stare, he needs to get to know their opinion. Cherishes them like nakama.

Even though he is not the most expressive guy, especially when it comes to expressions of love, he still will protect them when in danger no matter the cost.

Franky

Autistic, loves infodumping, special interest is obviously ships, no social cues so he just says whatever comes to his mind, super is a vocal stim, will often get emotionally overloaded and cry a lot.

Has PTSD due to the abandonment of his bio parents, panicks a lot when it comes to falling on the sea. Needs to stay around the crew when it happens.

Left leg amputee ever since his childhood, after he became a cyborg his special focus of the upgrades go to the left leg as he has a special love for this specific prostetic.

Very tall, large and muscular, thanks to hormonal blockers and testo. Hair was originally blonde and he used to dye it blue, but, after timeskip, it's natural. Has many scars through his torso.

Trans king, found out after he was taken in by Tom and started on hormones. Had a crush on Robin ever since he met het, but was kind of embarassed to say it until the end of Thriller Bark. Mom and dad of the crew (and Sunny's).

Likes working in the night more due to it being calmer, so his sleep schedule is a mess. He doesn't care, that way he can talk to Sunny without being interrupted.

Loves blue, yellow and red, includes those in everything he creates.

Never swears, just says weird words instead of it. Everyone other than the straw hats does not get it. He just says, idk, "bazooka" and the straw hats are like "GAAASP NOT IN FRONT OF BONNEY AND CHOPPER" meanwhile outsiders are like "???????"

Very clingy towards Robin, keeps hugging her at every opportunity and telling her he loves her, specially after timeskip as they made alliance rings for their relationship.

Regularly calls Iceburg and speaks for two hours about how Sunny is doing. It's common, whenever Luffy adopts a new nakama he makes a tour with them telling every single detail about the ship.

Hangs around a lot with Brook and Jinbei cuz they are really cool. Carries Luffy, Nami, Usopp, Vivi, Chopper and Bonney around the ship because they are all smaller than him (and won't kill him). Bros with Yamato, they like sparing (Yamato likes sparing with everybody, but that's not the point).

Loves Taylor Swift and eletronic songs, sometimes improvise some rap. It's horrible, but he tries.

Walks around the ship basically only in swimming trunks. Nami always yells at him for that, but everybody knows he'll never stop.

Is as scared of bugs as Sanji and Nami. Sprays insect repellent everywhere possible.

Surprisingly good at breakdancing. He really rocks at it.

Has a Den Den Mushi for each nakama. He just likes to verify them at most times. It's kind of tied to anxiety, but it helps him.

Stims in every way possible: visual, vocal, auditory, fidgeting, motor, biting. He just really needs stimming. Like, at all times. It's stronger than him.

Always working really hard to adapt to danger and keep Sunny and the crew safe. He does his best.

Jinbei

Autistic, but masked most of his life due to ableism (is learning to undo it now). Temperature hypersensibility, way too formal social script, loves fluffy and squishy stuff, fidgets a lot, rocks back and forth on his feet, has much flappy hands, has shutdowns that include self-harm.

Much taller than the rest of the crew, has a lot of scars, long beard and hair, fat and kind of muscular (he very strong).

Aroace dad, is very embarassed towards romantic and sexual relationships, but tries to be supportive. Just found out aroace existed and was mindblown. He kinda confused but he got the spirit. Robin's favorite victim of playfully flirting (he gets so embarassed it's funny).

After he entered the crew, he had a hard time being around Nami due to the guilt he felt, but they had a really long talk and now it got better. She is now his second kid (first is Koala) and likes hanging around a lot with him, very clingy towards him at the first sign of danger.

Never swears and scolds the rest of the crew when they do, specially when it's the younger ones. Very dad energy.

The most huggable person of the crew. Has received at least 2 hugs from everyone, which is a miracle considering Zoro and Law.

No favorite colour. Everyone calls him lame for that and he goes :(

Calls Koala daily as she is always with Sabo. Sabo is scared of Koala's dad, even though he is very chill with them dating.

Takes care of the younger nakama. Usually the one to pull akuma no mi users out of water. One of those to put the leash on Luffy to stop him from doing shit. Zoro keeps wanting a sparing match, but he refuses.

Likes traditional music, but does not deny any other style, as long as the song is good.

Usually wears traditional clothing cause he got so used to it he'd feel weird in any other clothes.

Scared of Robin. He likes her, it's just that she sometimes is so creepy he thinks she is going to kill him. Robin can never know this, of course.

Likes writing fanfic about other people. This comes from the time when he was a shichibukai and he wrote about his colleagues. It's a secret, of course, nobody can know.

Reads journal regularly and is the one in the most touch with the rest of the world's news when they are on the sea.

Likes touching his beard. It's fluffy. Because of it, they bought a plushie for him to sleep with. He cried because of his happiness.

Due to being big, strong and an ex-shichibukai, his very presence can make most malicious people go away. The crew grabs him along most times they get to an island.

Yamato

Autistic, special interest is Oden and sake. No social cues reading, speaks very loudly, doesn't know how to match face, tone and emotion, hyposensitive to sound, sake is comfort food (drink?), variates from meltdown to shutdowns in the lack of constant stim.

Has PTSD due to being imprisoned and spanked by Kaidou. Hates confined places and anything that might restrain him. People bigger than him usually make him very uncomfortable. Just as he entered the crew, Chopper started marking his appointments.

VERY tall and also muscular, with many scars through his body. Has some oni characteristics, like the horns and pointy teeth. Hasn't changed his appearance since he came out as he is actually very comfortable with it, so he sometimes just walks around the ship with his boobs showing.

The Trans Idol Ever (like Hatsune Miku). Even though he appreciates Ivankov a lot, he also really likes his body, so he doesn't feel the need to transition with hormones or surgery. Very gay too, dating Ace on distance (shut the fuck up Akainu) and they get really clingy every time they get to find each other.

One of the physically strongest nakama, nobody wins him in arm wrestling (at least, not before an hour). Likes sparing with everyone, specially Law. There's just something about him that gets to his nerves.

Loves orange and light green. It fits him.

Is learning how to swear after leaving Wano and Kaidou's influence. Almost always screams.

Third one to eat the most, right before Bonney and Luffy. They sometimes become truly Sanji's terror.

Loves sparing with everyone, but specially Zoro. Carries Luffy, Chopper and Bonney around cause they are much smaller. Listens to Franky's infodumping for many hours without blinking an eye. Is creeped out by Robin cause she keeps appearing behind him without making a single noise.

Has been exploring his musical side, and specially likes punk rock. It's wild. He likes it.

Doesn't change clothes from Wano just because of practical reasons. Just like Zoro, almost never showers, just with the bros (Law is scandalized with the lack of hygiene of these people).

Fears cats cause they are too unpredictable. They look like they wanna murder him.

Likes painting, specially on walls. It's actually very pretty, both Franky and Sunny approve.

Loves hearing the crew's stories. It's beautiful.

Stims from hitting/punching stuff. It varies from small objects to people. It's kind of wild.

Will rip your throat with his own teeth if you say anything about his crew.

#one piece #one piece headcanons #roronoa zoro #franky #jinbei #yamato #yamace #zosan #frobin

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siblingshuffle · 2 months ago

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Day-017: Partner

Lore:

Dr. Light’s idea was for robots that could grow, change, and think for themselves. However, he’d had to win over the committee before he could make that dream a reality. Feeling bad after he’d told the committee that he couldn’t support Wily’s double-gear system (especially because Wily had been there to witness it), he offered that they could build the first Robot Master together.

Wily had always been better with hardware and mechanical design. It was something of his specialty, even. With his skills with hardware and Light’s skills in artificial intelligence, the two could be basically unstoppable.

Wily had initially refused - the salty man he is, he definitely interpreted Light’s gesture of goodwill as some kind of condescension. However, eventually he accepted. Light (mistakenly) took to mean he’d been forgiven. Wily would design a lot of the hardware and design, including, eventually, the prototype Megabuster and the Variable Tool System.

Dr.s Cossack and LaLinde weren’t officially on the project, though they did contribute their thoughts and ideas. When Blues’s core failed in the middle of the Military demonstration (because they built it with Blues the unarmed child in mind and forgot to compensate for the weapon attachment, and it turns out it couldn’t generate enough to power both Blues and the buster. The event damaged his core, making it more inefficient and unbalanced.), Light made sure to consult Dr. LaLinde to help him design the solar cores for Rock and Roll (she’s an environmental scientist and he figured she would probably be able to help him and Wily design a more efficient environmentally-friendly solar core.)

————————————————————————

Notes:

Their overall appearances are based on their young designs from Megaman 11. Their shirts are colored that way as a reference to their young selves from the Ruby Spears cartoon.

Wily’s hair color came from blending the shades of yellow of Piano, Bass, and Zero together (& then lightening it because 11’s Flashback Wily has LIGHT blond hair). With Light, I blended Rock, Blues, and X’s hair colors and darkened it. ✨ Contrast ✨

Light and Wily were roommates. They couldn’t exactly escape each other. After ignoring Light for a week, Wily told their shared friend group that he was getting sick of having see his "stupid, traitorous face" every the morning and afternoon and LaLinde & Cossack (he was doing his thesis at the time) individually suggested that he should try talking to Light about how he felt. He basically said "screw that!" but did take their advice to at least try to get along. It was the first crack in their friendship and he never actually forgave it.

Dysfunctional Besties <3 (/hj)

Also I think it would be kinda cute if Light was inspired on a subconscious level by Dr. Cossack talking about Kalinka & how she was growing up. She might be like 2, if she is even born yet tho. Still working out the timeline there. It’s a little fuzzy.

Blues took quite a few years to build because they had to do everything from the ground up. The Robot Masters built after him used modified versions of Blues’s base code and designs, so they took comparatively less long.

The idea was presented before the committee as just the base code, which they determined would probably work. (I assume the committee would reach out to investors or something, but I’m like the furthest thing from a roboticist so I have no idea.) By the time Light founded Light Labs and obtained military funding, he’d gotten like. parental-levels of attached. He didn’t set out to make robot children but boy did he want robot children now—

and then he made 4 that were "children" children and like a bajillion that don’t stay at Light Labs

#rocktober #rocktober 2024 #sibling shuffle au #mega man au #mega man classic #megaman #my art #dr. light #dr. Light #dr. Wily #dr wily #Lore #im not an engineer Idk what I’m talking about when it comes to that stuff

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the-marshals-wife · 2 months ago

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Rookie Jitters (Wolf Jackson x Reader)

─ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 ⋅☆⋅ 𝐀𝐎𝟑 ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─

A/N: Happy Halloween! 🎃 Besties, I didn't even plan this one ahead of time. I watched Beetlejuice Beetlejuice for the third time, and the inspiration struck. This one's for the Willem Dafoe girlies. You always keep it real. ;)

Description: Wolf Jackson x Fem!Reader, meet-cute fluff with a light sprinkling of angst | Warnings: death mentioned many times (nothing graphic, mostly humorous), guns mentioned, canon-typical creepiness of the Neitherworld | Setting: post Beetlejuice Beetlejuice | Word count: 2,266

Imagine being Wolf Jackson's new secretary, and being nervous to meet him

If your heart could still beat, it would have stopped. You stare at the yellowed paper in your hand that detailed your new job description, and your eyes lock on the name of your boss.

"I'm working for Wolf Jackson? The Wolf Jackson?!" you gape.

The poorly mummified woman across the desk doesn't look up from her clipboard. She slides a folder towards you, and you resist the urge to recoil at her half-decayed arm.

"I don't know who that is. I just hand out the forms. All the details will be in your file," she replies placidly. "Says here you're being assigned to the Afterlife Crimes Unit."

"Crimes Unit? I think there's been some sort of mistake. I'm not in law enforcement."

"Look lady, whatever the paper says, that's where you gotta go. I don't make the rules," she dismisses, pointing with her boney finger, "You go out that door, down the hall, third door on the left, down the stairs, and take the second right. Big doors, you can't miss it. If you wind up in Lost and Found, you went too far."

You nod, trying to absorb the directions as your head swam with new information.

"Could...you maybe write it down for me?" you ask.

The clerk looks over her glasses at you in silence.

You smile nervously, rising from your seat, "Nevermind. I'm sure I'll find it."

Hurriedly gathering up all your paperwork into your arms, you make your exit from the office before the woman's glare could kill you a second time.

While you navigate the dim, winding passages, your thoughts return your destination, and who you might find waiting there. Was your new boss actually Wolf Jackson? Frank Hardballer himself? You seriously consider pinching yourself.

'Figures,' you think, 'I had to die to have the best day of my life.'

After what felt like an eternity of walking through the most otherworldly funhouse imaginable, you take the second right and lay eyes on the big doors. As you read 'Police Precinct 515' painted in black letters above them, the knots in your stomach multiply.

"This must be it," you sigh, clutching the papers to your chest.

You swallow hard, gather the remains of your courage, and walk inside the station with your head held as high as you can manage.

The officer behind the front desk looks up immediately. "Can I help you, miss?"

"Uh, yes. I'm looking for the Afterlife Crimes Unit?" you answer, approaching the intimidatingly tall bench.

"They send you from Orientation?"

His friendly demeanor catches you off guard.

"I think so," you answer, peering up at him, "To be honest, they haven't told me much since I got here. Just one person after another shoving papers at me."

Despite feeling like you'd already been here for a lifetime, you still weren't used to being among so many dead people. It didn't even seem real yet that you were one of them, although that was certain to come with time. The officer's skin is almost the same shade of blue as his uniform, and his features are unnervingly sunken in, but cadaverous countenance aside, he has a kind look that puts you somewhat at ease.

"Things can be pretty nuts around here, but you'll get used to it," he smiles, standing up straight, "You must be the new secretary for the ACU. Last one caught the Soul Train this mornin'. I feel for Jackson, though. I don't think she had the heart to tell him."

"You mean he doesn't know?" you ask.

The officer winces. "I guess you'll find out. It's just down the hall there, first door on the right."

You refrain from rolling your eyes at more verbal directions, just grateful to have spoken to someone pleasant.

"Thank you," you say, glancing down at your heels, "I'm starting to think I should have died in more comfortable shoes."

The officer chuckles. "Good luck to you, miss."

Your focus shifts from the throbbing in your ankles to shaking in your limbs as your nerves return full force. It didn't seem fair that you could still have anxiety in the afterlife, but it would take more than the cold hands of death to calm you in this moment.

As you reach the door and grab the handle, you hear a muffled voice from the other side.

You tread lightly into the room and carefully close the door behind you, not wanting to intrude. Through the cracked blinds, you see a figure pacing frantically in the office ahead of you.

"This is unreal," the man laments, "Where could she be?"

You freeze in your steps, recognition washing over you. You would know the voice of Frank Hardballer anywhere. There wasn't a single Saturday night in your father's house that you hadn't heard it blaring from the television set, accompanied by all the gunfire and explosions required of a true blue, B-grade cop film. It was really him.

Steeling yourself, you walk towards doorway. The clicking of your heels on the vinyl floor announces your presence, and you utter a prayer not to trip over your blistered feet.

"Janet?" you hear him call out as you step into view.

There he is. Leaning over his desk, concern written all over his face, Wolf Jackson stares back at you.

The grim reaper himself couldn't steal your excitement away.

You open your mouth, and a mess of words comes out. "Um, excuse me, sir? A-are...I'm, uh-"

He waves you away, cutting off your stammering. "I'm sorry, miss. You'll have to come back another time. My secretary's up and disappeared. I gotta start a missing persons report."

"Um, about that, sir" you begin, clinging to your paperwork as he riffles through a pile of folders, "I believe I'm your new secretary."

He stops and looks back at you, visibly stunned. "What happened to Janet?"

"I think the person I'm replacing got on the Soul Train this morning," you hesitate, unsure what that even was. "I'm sorry, that's all I know."

"I didn't know her time was up," he says, bewildered, "She never told me."

His confused expression turns somber as he puts his hands in his pockets and walks over to the nearest window. "She didn't even say goodbye," he continues, sighing heavily, "But that's the way things go in this crazy world of ours. Here one minute, gone the next."

A long pause follows as you stand motionless in the doorway, suddenly feeling like you're intruding on a private moment.

"Here's looking at you, kid," he declares, proceeding to turn swiftly on his heel. Every trace of sadness was gone, replaced with a smile. "Where are my manners? Come in, come in."

Your stomach is teeming with butterflies as you officially enter the room. He eagerly goes to meet you, hand extended.

"Wolf Jackson, Afterlife Crimes Unit," he introduces.

You shake his hand, trying desperately to keep your composure.

"I'm Y/N. It's a pleasure to meet you, sir," you grin.

"The pleasure is all mine, Y/N," he says "It's not every day you get to meet a new face down here. Least of all one as wonderfully intact as yours."

You could sense the compliment in his unusual words. Thankfully, it didn't seem the dead could blush, because your cheeks would surely be betraying you now. Finally standing before him, you're unable to conceal your admiration any longer.

"I can't believe I'm actually getting to meet you, sir. I am such a big fan."

His eyes light up instantly. "You don't say!"

"It's true! My dad and I used to watch your movies all the time. We absolutely loved them," you beam, heart swelling.

Wolf appears as thrilled to hear your words as you are to say them. "Don't that beat all. It's been so long since I've gotten to talk to someone who knows my work," he marvels.

"I think know every line of every Frank Hardballer movie by heart. I've seen them all more times than I can count." Your starstruck smile fades a little as you speak again, "We were devastated when we heard about your accident. That day was one of the only times I ever saw my dad cry."

"Well, I bet he'd be pretty jazzed to see you now," he offers, rushing to clarify, "Not being dead, of course. But you know, working for me...with me. Working with me."

You stifle a laugh as he fumbles his words.

"I know what you meant, sir. You're right. He would be over the moon."

Somehow, this surreal moment was the least strange thing to happen to you so far. One of your biggest idols was just as excited to meet you as you were to meet him. His injuries were not as bad as you'd expected either. The way the media had made it sound all those years ago, you thought for sure he'd been blown to smithereens. Not only was he just as handsome in person, but his presence felt familiar. You could sense your worry fading away, and for the first time since you'd arrived in this unsettling place, you felt safe.

"At any rate, the first day down here is always the hardest," he remarks, "Here, rest for a minute. Put down all that nonsense you're carrying. If you've got questions, I'll tell you what you want to know. You're not gonna find any straight answers in those ridiculous 'onboarding' pamphlets."

He motions to the empty chair by the window nearest his desk, and you're happy to oblige, your arms well-past the point of cramping.

"Thank you, sir." You take the seat and set the papers aside.

Wolf steps over to the front of his desk and leans his weight on it, shaking his head in apparent amusement.

"So formal," he chuckles, "Enough with this 'sir' business. Just call me Wolf."

"Really?" you question, wide-eyed, "I mean, you're still my boss, aren't you?"

"Death makes equals of us all," he states candidly, "But, if you'd prefer, Mr. Jackson works just fine too."

Despite having his permission, it felt unnatural to use his first name. Not yet, anyway. "You're the boss, Mr. Jackson."

He nods in approval. "That'll do." His gaze falls to the floor a moment before he talks again, "Speaking of death...how is it you came to be here, Y/N? If you don't mind me asking, that is. Although I didn't exactly have the luxury of discretion myself, discussing it can be personal for some people, and I respect that."

"I don't mind," you begin, frowning as you recall your own demise, "It all happened so fast, honestly. One minute I was walking home with my best friend from her birthday dinner, and then out of nowhere this big guy with a gun jumps out from behind a truck and starts yelling at us to hand over everything we have. I don't know what I was thinking. I just...reacted."

You pause as the vivid memory flashes through your mind.

"I threw my bag at his face and tried to get the gun away from him. It fell to the ground, and I just remember jumping on his back and screaming at my friend to run. It was stupid, I know. I just didn't want her to get killed. She's like family to me," you explain solemnly, finally looking up and meeting Wolf's intent gaze, "The last thing I remember was the guy throwing me into a wall. I guess I hit it pretty hard, because everything went black. Next thing I know, I'm waking up in the DMV from hell. Nothing but waiting in lines and filing out a thousand forms that I don't understand."

Wolf snickers at your description, and you follow suit before going on.

"I know at least some of them were about job placement, because that's how I got sent here. And there you have it. That's my story. Not exactly Hollywood worthy," you declare with a shrug.

"Are you kidding? That was an incredibly brave thing you did," he insists.

"Thank you," you reply, smiling unconvincingly.

"I mean it. That took guts," he says, shaking his fist in affirmation, "I play the hero. But what you did for your friend? That's what real heroes do."

You could see in his eyes that he meant every word. Even without a pulse, you could swear you felt your heart pounding.

"Well, if I've learned anything from Frank Hardballer, you gotta keep it real."

Wolf claps his hands together and jumps up, grinning ear to ear. "Now that's what I like to hear!"

You can't help but laugh at his enthusiasm.

"What do you say to a little scenery? How about I give you a tour of the station, introduce you to some of the boys around here, and we'll get you all settled," he suggests, already leading the way.

"That sounds great," you answer, standing up to follow, "But while I'm keeping it real, Mr. Jackson, I have to tell you that I don't have any experience being a secretary. Undead or otherwise," you admit.

He stops in the doorway and turns back, giving you a sly look, "And I don't have any experience being a cop."

"That's true," you concede, "but I'm not an accomplished actor like you."

The notion gives him pause for only a moment.

"Well, can you make a cup of coffee?"

You chuckle, "I think I can manage that."

A smirk of satisfaction spreads across his face.

"Honey, you're gonna do just fine."

#wolf jackson x reader #wolf jackson #wolf jackson imagine #willem dafoe #wolf jackson x y/n #beetlejuice beetlejuice #beetlejuice fanfic #beetlejuice x reader #beetlejuice imagine #my writing #no hate to my girl janet she just had to be gone so reader could have a chance 😆

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getluckylana · 9 months ago

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need the summer outfit plans pls, your new style is everything, us girls love it!

2024 Early Spring Trend Forecast

This season is going to give toned down coquette on the bodice, Y2K bellow the waist, on the feet, and perched on the shoulder in form of your besties beloved pet cat.

In the next few months your instagram feed will increasingly fill with grown woman sporting sailor themed ensembles. Yes, Like the ones you wore for photo day in pre-school. This is where the toned down coquette comes into play for the season. I also foresee lots of Peter Pan style collars and neck lines. It’s all about the baby doll, and growing up your girlish childhood favorites. Paired with Mary Janes or riding boots. The girls will also be sporting victorian style accessories, like bonnets, bibs and spats.

Prints and colors? Polka dots, rain jacket yellow, pastel and deep shades of purple, green, and blue paired playfully to make a monocromatic masterpiece, sweaters with equestian or floral embroidery, opt for a sheer fabric, nipples and well groomed pubic hair is in, and the fashionable girlies will have it on display.

Children’s wear/Skipper doll/Y2k mix bellow the waist, capri’s are hot, Bubble skirts are hot, vintage cheer skirts are hot, and we still like skirts over pants this year, trade in your Adidas track pants for Adidas track capri’s to be more on trend.

We’ll be incorporating YTK into our bags, and shoes this season. I’ve seen other reports that we will be Jane Birkinfying our bags again, but we already did that. Instead we will be doing insanely fun bags, and shoes strait out of the 2000’s. Check out pic’s bellow for ideas.

Keep but switch it up! “Siren core” glasses are getting tired, dilute them for translucent frames of similar shapes or round frames in any color you want.

Hot Depop sections to browse are “$20 and under” and “elevate your look” but avoid fast fashion brands like Shein ect and opt for vintage pieces made out of higher quality fabrics.

The key to styling every outfit is contrast, if you pick a coquette top, do a simple bottom, and a Y2K shoe or bag. You never want the whole outfit to be one aesthetic it will make you look tacky, and separates a well dressed person from the rest.

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mr-craig · 2 years ago

Text

Now it's been delivered to its intended recipient, I can show off my latest cross stitch project: The Lemon is in Play. It's inspired by John Finnemore's brilliant radio sitcom, Cabin Pressure. I designed the pattern with Stitch Fiddle, using a stock photo of a lemon, some typeface references, and a list of all the shades of yellow that were already in my stash. I'm super happy with how it turned out, and my bestie was delighted with it too!

#cross stitch #mr craig crafts #fan art #Cabin Pressure #John Finnemore #the lemon is in play #lemons

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intheorangebedroom · 1 year ago

Text

Tonight you belong to me, chapter 1

Summary: He comes to you every Friday, in a shady motel on the outskirts of town.

Guilt is a wild trip, but so is desire. How the hell did you end up in this divvy motel? And now, what's next?

Pairing: Frankie Morales x fem!Reader (OFC)

Rating: Explicit 🔞

A/N: Happy Frankie Friday, orange besties 🧡 PLEASE, see series masterlist for extensive trigger warnings. Now I'm off to disappear for another month, heehee. To anyone who celebrates anything, happy whatever you celebrate. Ily 🧡

@frannyzooey And to you, Kelli… Thank you 🧡 Thank for your help on this chapter, without you it wouldn’t exist. Arguably, without you I wouldn’t exist (my gothic ass) and without you I would certainly not be writing at all. You’re the kindest, most generous, most beautiful person I’ve ever met, you shine so brightly and I love you more than all the Frankies from all the universes put together 🧡✨

Word count: 6.5k

[prev] * [series masterlist] * [next]

Chapter 1: Dirt

Guilt, you’re about to find out, is an interesting feeling.

A viscous, gluey business that sticks to your skin and clings to your frame. It’s a prickling tickle under your armpits, a rigidity in your legs. It’s a tightness in your shoulders, and it pulls on your face. It has a density, and it’s tangible, not only do you feel it, you see it in every mirror, every reflective surface.

A pervasive, shape-shifting torment that unfurls gradually, and comes in many colorful shades, when you begin to take in the gravity and the ramifications of your actions.

The first wave is darkened by fear, black as petrol, trickling down your insides when he says his name.

Frankie.

Like an invitation, an opening. Gaping, abysmal, pulling you in and you remain silent, struggling on the edge of it, grasping for balance. Drawn in, but too stunned to let go and dive in yet.

It’s a violent crimson, next, shame creeping over you when you walk back inside the bar to retrieve your purse.

Facing Mark is difficult, but talking to him is beyond your strength. You gesture toward the handbag waiting for you on the other side of the counter. He hands it to you in appraising silence, judgmental, surely, and you smile, or you wince, you can’t even tell. With shaky hands, you fumble inside it for your wallet, his green gaze strained on your face.

You know that your entire appearance gives away the narrative of what just took place in the back lot of his establishment. Your face is flushed, your lips swollen, your hair undone. Your clothes are rumpled and in his eyes, you will from now on and forever be this woman.

After what feels like several minutes, he takes pity on you, and reiterates his offer. You’re good, he says. Sweetheart. The first pint’s on him.

You don’t stay long enough for a second drink, however.

Back outside into the muggy night, you crumble onto the passenger seat of your car. The polyester lining of your skirt clings to the bare skin at the back of your thighs, damp with sweat and what is left of your inconsequential desire, and you feel appallingly filthy, bone-deep disgusting.

Guilt washes over you in blue waves of regret, welling under your eyelids when you notice that the red truck is gone. And with it, the gaping, abysmal possibilities of another you, reinvented with him.

The shaking starts as you’re driving, trembling hands gripping the steering wheel. A brutal, chilling comedown, guilt experienced in bright and blinding yellow at the belated realization of your betrayal.

How easily, how rapidly you forgot, trapped under Frankie’s gaze, coming undone between Frankie’s hands, that your life isn’t truly yours. That it has never been. You’re not on your own, no matter how much you long to be. You have never been afforded the privilege of independence, nor do you possess the necessary strength to break free from your family.

And who has Frankie betrayed? What faceless, nameless woman has he gone back to? Remorse blends in with envy and resentment, painting green ring-shaped stains in your peripheral vision as you get out of your car and into the lobby of your building.

Eyes to the floor, you step into the elevator, this oversized coffin lined with mirrors reflecting your image with a silent scoff. There’s dust from the gravel on your leather pumps.

Inside your apartment, the clickety-click of your heels on the tiled floor bounces off the walls of your skull. You hate that sound, eminently cold and giving away your presence.

The living-room television is on, probably set to a news channel, most likely broadcasting a financial show in which white men over 50 listen to the sound of their own voice and debate about obscure economical regulations you’re supposed to care about.

Adrian’s already here. Uncharacteristically early. Friday evenings usually mean late night poker or whatever his own excuse is to get away from your cribless home.

Hoping to go unnoticed so as to avoid him, you take off your shoes, but it’s too late. He calls out your name from the kitchen, his intonation surprised but cheerful.

Head hanging low, heartbeat picking up, you make a silent dash for the upstairs bathroom, remorse so pungent you fear no shower can ever wash it off your skin.

Under the scolding high-pressure stream, you scrub your body raw with a soapless loofah, but there is no scrubbing away the feeling of those hands over your skin.

Eyes drifting closed, you lean your forehead against the anthracite marble of your Italian shower, and let your chest heave around a suppressed sob.

Guilt, shame, and remorse are powerless to outweigh your want, undeterred, unabated, unquenched.

Back in the parking lot, it had been a moment before you were able to push away from the side of the truck and stand upright. He stood there, silent and immobile in front of you. Waiting, as if to shield you from the street and the rest of the world. Silence hanging charged and heavy between you, as you wouldn’t offer your name in return.

When you started moving toward the bar’s entrance, he stepped aside, and that’s when your body moved of its own volition. You took his hand in yours, palm against palm, trembling fingers wrapped around his knuckles.

“Can I see you again?” you asked, pleaded, begged. You didn’t recognize your voice.

He swallowed hard, shook his head at you for the third time, and squeezed your hand in his bigger one.

“I don’t think so. You know that’s not a good idea,” he said.

—

Grief settles like dust over the first weeks of September.

You are surprised, almost shocked, to observe how little your life has changed. You get up in the morning, you shower and get dressed, drink coffee, go to work. You attend meetings about maritime trade regulation, sitting at your father’s side, go over endless spreadsheets detailing import-export profit and loss, you pretend to understand them, and you pretend to care, like a pretty human puppet.

You come home at night, skip dinner when you can. You lie in bed next to Adrian. You seek out warmth where there is none. You perform sex without satisfaction.

There has been no question asked. No suspicion, no doubt cast.

You wear the same clothes, drive along the same roads, walk around the same hallways.

And no one seems to notice that you are different. That you experienced imperious want and incandescent pleasure. That you carry a secret. Nestled, dormant and quiet, between your lungs, like a wild and unknown creature.

Whatever part of him you welcomed inside you transformed the hollowed spaces of your existence. It redefined the void, creating a place of your own where to curate your new desires.

His lips on your lips, your body molded into his, and pressed against your hips, an unfulfilled promise for more.

In the palm of your hand, the ghost sensation of Frankie’s hold, now forever gone and lost, and your highlighted loneliness feels like a barless prison. On your own, always, again, to divert the old familiar pain of being you.

Weeks go by. The guilt recedes, and sadness takes its place, like clockwork, like physics. Like a new sort of weight coating your limbs. A nostalgic longing without any object.

In the idle moments of your day, when you’re stuck in traffic, in a meeting, or in a conversation, your mind wanders back to him. The solid slope of his shoulders. The strong span of his back. Muscles bunching up under your grip. His scent, his curls, his taste. An organic trace seared into your being.

His rebuttal, after he’d given you so much, felt less like a rejection than like a refusal to heed a deeply rooted instinct.

His stare was no longer hard and cold. It carried only sorrow and loss.

Does he think of you like you think of him? Does he miss the contact of your skin, or the abandon of your kiss?

Did he walk away from your embrace with something to keep, like you did?

Day after day, summer fades into fall, the change hardly perceptible through the consistently sweltering weather.

Day after day, focusing becomes tricky, finding sleep more and more difficult and your train of thought turns downright maniacal.

Ava’s calls go straight to voicemail.

More often than not, you start drinking as soon as you come home to fence off the tears of exhaustion, hoping Adrian won’t notice. Another line you had promised yourself never to cross, and under the combined effects of the alcohol and the antidepressants, you feel drowsy and dizzy, increasingly disconnected from your reality. A nagging sting settles on the left side of your lower abdomen. But you don’t mind the pain as much as you mind turning into your mother.

Some days, you think you’d like nothing more than to give way, allow yourself to drown into the proven refuge of self-abuse. Whenever you indulge the thought, soothing images spring to mind, oil on canvas, deep green, tender brown. Ophelia, crowned with wild flowers and rings of violets, sleeping peacefully in a shallow stream.

When you finally return to the Hole in the Wall, it’s only with the hope of hindering your impending tailspin.

In the parking, after turning off the ignition, you sit in your car for the whole of five minutes, staring numbly at the dark lot where the red truck had been parked.

Mark’s hesitant greeting puzzles you; by now you have lost most of your ability to read people’s reactions.

You walk to the counter and choose to sit on one of the high stools. Somewhere deep down, you enjoy his distance; you relish the sadistic pleasure of reliving the humiliation you felt standing before him, freshly fucked dumb on a total stranger’s fingers.

Besides, you’ll take the attention, however uncomfortable it may be.

“Long time no see,” Mark says, and you produce a poorly executed smile.

“I don’t know… two weeks? I’ve been busy,” you add as a way of apologizing.

“It’s been a month,” he replies curtly.

You try a brown ale, this time, rich and bitter. He busies himself behind the counter, cleaning and wiping, while you drain your glass in silence. You haven’t eaten all day, and you’re drinking too fast. Nausea laps against your diaphragm. It’s the last missing scene from this scenario: you, throwing up in the toilet of his bar.

You’re considering leaving when he speaks again.

“Trucker hat dude came by.”

Your head shots up and you glare at him, eyes widening under your pinched brow, a new wave of sickness nudging further up. He gauges your face, twirling a towel inside a pint glass, waiting for your answer, but when you give him none, he goes on.

“Did he…” he starts, and his eyes slowly go back and forth between yours, “he didn’t hurt you or anything? Cause if he did, if you wanna press charges, I can—“

“No,” you cut him off, “god no, I’m fine. I’m perfectly ok,” you add unnecessarily when his gaze narrows.

He pauses for a moment, like he’s the only one who can judge if you are, indeed, perfectly ok, before he faces away from you to put back the clean glasses on the lower shelves behind him.

When he’s done, he turns back around, props his hands low on his hips, and for the first time since you’ve entered the place, he stands perfectly still.

“He’s been asking about you.”

Between your lungs, the creature begins to stir.

“He came back,” you say, surprisingly matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, that’s what I said. Asked if you come here every Friday.”

Piece by piece, your mind starts swiveling, sluggish and blunt after being successfully dulled out by the past couple of weeks of excessive drinking. You picture his tall figure standing in the small bar, perhaps he sat on the stool you’re sitting on now? Did he lift his cap to comb his hair with his fingers before he spoke?

Mark is talking again, and it’s a conscious effort to bring your attention back to his words.

“Asked if you always come on your own. If I know your name.”

“I never told you my name,” you panic, “what did you tell him?”

“I see your name every week on your AmEx Gold, sweetheart, but I kindly told him to go fuck himself,” he scoffs.

His sardonic tone snaps you out of your drifting daydreaming. Your face immediately hardens. You sit up straight, drawing further away from him and he seems to change his mind. He’s softer when he speaks next.

“Look, I don’t know what’s the lowdown between you two, you understand? And anyway, I’m not in the habit of discussing my regulars with just about anyone. That kinda goes against the job’s ethics, you know what I mean?”

You shrug away the rational, albeit patronizing explanation with a huff of annoyance. You feel more alert than you have in weeks.

“When was that?” you ask.

“Last week. Thursday, I think.”

“Shit.”

Mark lets out a heavy sigh, resembling that of an exhausted father, and he opens the cash register.

“He left a note for you.”

—

An address. Written in all caps, black ink on a white piece of paper torn from a lined notebook. No phone number, not date, no time… and no name. Just the address. Under the feeble cabin light of your car, the paper looks old, like it’s been carried around tucked inside a wallet for years, and time has turned it yellow.

The coordinates on the dashboard GPS are identical to the ones on the paper. They were identical back in the parking, at the bar, when you typed them in; they were identical at every single red light you stopped at and checked. And they’re still identical now, glowing in blue letters, cold and synthetic, above the message You have reached your destination.

You raise your head again and stare at the building in front of you.

It’s a motel. One floor, L shaped, slightly sloping roof. With wrought iron details, a porch hanging low and square wooden pillars demarcating each room, nine of them in total. On the right, underneath a bare bulb, a large ice machine gleams like a beacon for lost time-travelers, next to a pay phone with a cut-off cord and a missing receiver. On the rear end of the building, to the left, above what looks like the reception, a 4 feet tall sign spells MOTEL in red neon letters.

At its height, the place probably looked nice. But that was a rough 55, 60 years ago, you estimate. Now it’s nearly derelict, with visible cracks streaking the yellowing walls, several broken drainpipes, and a missing number on the door of room 7.

If you cared about these kinds of things, you’d figure that the diversion of the main road further south is responsible for the motel’s decaying state.

Your attention is elsewhere, as usual. The parking lot is deserted, save for three vehicles. The red truck is here, parked a couple of places away to your right. Engine off. Empty.

The drive here from the Hall in the Wall was nearly an hour long. The car cruised along poorly lit, narrow two-lane roads, lined with luxuriant vegetation, dense and confining in the pitch darkness of the suburban night. You’ve lived in Tampa your entire life and have never set a foot in this part of the Bay Area. Technically, you’re not even in Tampa anymore.

He’s inside one of these rooms, somewhere. Waiting for you, and that thought alone makes your breathing difficult and your hands clammy.

What now? What’s next? Are you supposed to walk up to the reception and ask about him? A tall man wearing a trucker hat? Frankie?

And what will happen, once you’ve found him?

This is ridiculous. Sordid. It’s gone too far, whatever that is. A motel outside of town. The worst possible cliché. The most degrading place.

Between your lungs, the creature is clawing at your chest.

You shift nervously on the creaking leather seat, exhaling long and shaky, no longer repressing the memory of his sturdy fingers curling inside your warmth, of his tongue swirling inside your mouth. The instant intimacy of your furtive encounter, that turning point, when he briefly relinquished his control.

A chorus of voices rumbles like tumbling boulders inside your head, a cacophony of rules and guidelines, tacit and unspoken, ingrained and internalized. But with every passing minute staring at the bright motel sign, your resolve grows surer.

The yellow curtains ripple behind the rectangular window of room number 2 and you quickly pull the key out of the ignition. Grabbing your phone from the dashboard, you stuff it inside your purse, which you slide under the driver's seat.

Eyes locked on the curtains, you make a fast-paced beeline to the door. Around you, the night is bustling with the sounds and noises of the invisible wildlife. Revealing nothing, containing so much.

With a quick rattle of your heels, you step under the porch, hand extended and ready to knock on the door when it opens for you.

Oh he’s broad, so much broader than you even remembered, blocking the entire doorway with his frame, blue jeans, black shirt, and this goddamn hat that’s already haunting your dreams and your nightmares.

Looking down on you, irate, defiant, daring you to push him aside and enter. Behind him, the room is plunged in darkness. Above you, the porch lights cast a warm hue on his face, that fails to soften his expression. The crease between his brow is deeper than your fears.

You take a step closer, on instinct, but he moves to the side as if to avoid any contact with you and you enter the dark bedroom, carried by your momentum.

Guilt will come back to you later, sporadically, in episodes, but for the most part, you forfeit it wholly when you cross the threshold of room number 2.

He closes the door behind you and flicks up the toggle switch near the door frame. Two quaint lampshades blink to life on the headboard, casting a warm, subdued light. There’s no AC, or he hasn’t turned it on, and the atmosphere inside the room is already stifling, charged with his scent.

“Took you long enough. Thought you wanted to see me,” he grunts, and the creature purrs inside your chest.

“I did. I do.”

Stopping in the middle of the room, you turn around to face him. He’s standing tall and firm and mighty, feet planted apart on the carpeted floor, arms crossed over his chest. Yet you note his hands are splayed across his biceps, as if he were attempting to hug himself.

Perhaps that’s when you convince yourself Frankie is not his real name. Somehow, it makes it easier to believe you’re not the object of his ire.

“Your friend didn’t tell you–”

“He’s not my friend,” you interrupt. “I only got your note earlier. Tonight.”

You let the implication sink in and your gaze travels down to the dip at the base of his neck and back up. The square, yellow bedroom provides you with the brightest environment you’ve ever had the leisure of observing him in.

He’s beautiful, stunning, really, with unique and complex features. Almost pretty, but in a reluctant way, as if it was irrelevant to the life he’s chosen and led. His face speaks so loud, washed over by so many emotions, frustration, doubt and anger, and that lingering sadness in his dark eyes that tugs at your heart and twitches your fingers.

“What’s your name?” he asks, tilting his chin in your direction.

Janet Leigh’s face pops up in black and white inside your mind, driving through a curtain of strident violins, skittish eyes flicking between the road ahead of her and the rearview mirror.

“Marion,” you answer, inexplicably.

“Marion,” he repeats, and you know he knows you’re lying.

Unable to hold his gaze, you look away to the side, and he gives you time to take in the surroundings. The medium size bed with a stained, synthetic bedspread, the practical, shipped furniture, an angular chair and a desk surmounted by a rectangular framed mirror, the antique cathodic TV set hanging from the wall in the corner. The brown carpet. The yellow curtains. The painting of the Appalachian.

And whatever your face says then makes him huff.

“Not what you expected? How did you think this was gonna be? How do you think these things go?”

You look at him again, stunned, lost, hurt maybe, that he should recognize you for what you don’t want to be.

“I don’t know. I’ve never done this before,” you tell him in a small voice.

He shakes his head, like you aimed to wound, and unconsciously, your fingers find your sternum, jittery, anxious to appease this wild creature scrabbling against your rib cage.

“I shouldn’t be here,” he mutters hoarsely, shaking his head again, or still, “and you shouldn’t be here either, this is bullshit.”

And he’s right, once more, he is right, neither of you should be here. All the lines you walked, all the rules you abided by, meeting expectations and doing as you were told, and you still end up here, on the outskirts of town, in this gloomy motel. Facing this stranger, begging to surrender to him, with your heart in your hand and your life on your lips.

Eyes strained on his, you move closer, cautious, with your palms upward, as if he were to jolt and scurry away if you were too sudden. If you tame him, perhaps you will tame the wild creature between your lungs as well.

Drawn to his skin, you brush the tips of your fingers along his bicep, and the taut muscle thrums under the freckled, tanned surface of him.

He’s holding his breath, hardened face, hardened stare, deepening crease, and your fingers skate up along the slope of his arm until they meet his hand.

He’s difficult to catch, you think, even when willing to be caught, but it’s now very clear what you want for yourself. You want him.

It matters not that he belongs to somebody else. If you’re here, it’s because he wants you too. Despair and desire have brought you together, combined, conjoined, converging.

Your hand travels round to the back of his arm, soft and feather-like, up under the hem of his t-shirt, lifting his sleeve. His eyes are boring into yours. You lick your lips, slowly, and lower them to his skin. A light kiss, testing, tender and wet, and underneath it, a tremor.

There’s a terrible density to his body. He’s tension and heat. Pressing your parted lips to his shoulder, you let your tongue peek out between them. You take in the tangy taste of him, it travels through your body like lava, like syrup, heavy and sticky and sweet and it pools down between your hips.

He’s completely still, eerily so. Emboldened, hopeful, you tug on his t-shirt, tentatively at first, and when he doesn’t stop you, when he unfolds his arms, you pull it off his frame, the hat coming off with it. You suck in a sharp breath at the sight of his naked head full of curls, lush and tousled. You want to run your fingers through them. You know that’s probably not a good idea.

His chest, broad and solid, fills your vision, and your hands fly to his sternum where you press them, chasing something invisible, roaming up the plane of his chest, as delicately as possible. Your fingertips drum lightly along his collarbone, as if you were seeing him with your hands, as if all your senses were necessary to take in the whole of him.

His frown turns imploring, his breathing shallow.

“Tell me your name,” he murmurs, his deep baritone a pleading husk.

“You can call me whatever you like,” you answer, lifting his hand and taking his two first fingers into your mouth, eyelids fluttering. You cradle them with the flat of your tongue, brushing against the callous tips of them, saliva flooding your mouth around the salty taste. A moan escapes you, imperceptible, and his jaw ticks around a curse, something you don’t make out, something in Spanish, you’re too dazed with want, too dumb with thirst.

Fire licks up your spine when he moves, fast and sure. His hand tangles in your hair and he sharply tugs your head back, his fingers popping out of your mouth with a hanging thread of saliva. His face has become a threat, a warning, a promise. He’ll give you what you want until you regret asking for it.

His mouth crushes yours, teeth colliding, and his tongue is inside you, swirling and licking.

Like a dam that gives, his strength breaks and sweeps over you, crushing you into his chest with his hold and his kiss, fingers gripping your hair, your ass, and you let him have it, let him bruise your flesh with his need, scraping your fingernails up his arms, on his back.

You’re smiling into the kiss, with relief and eagerness, squirming into him and he hardens his hold before releasing you, swift and sudden, grabbing your blouse and pulling it up in a feverish movement that you follow, lifting your arms like a docile little girl. A seam of the silky fabric rips around your shoulders. You don’t notice it.

His face dives into the crook of your neck, the scruff of his beard grating your skin, and he sinks in his teeth, sucking hard and feral, and at first, you melt into it, before you remember. You force his chest away with both palms, whining, urgent, plaintive, “I can’t– can’t have marks,” when what you really want is to be covered in him.

It makes him chuckle, and it sounds like a growl, so terribly dark, so profoundly disillusioned, that you shiver in the heat of his body. He squeezes your breasts through the thin cotton of your bra, it’s brutal and it hurts like retaliation.

“Get fucking naked, Marion.”

Drawing away from him, you start working the button and zip fly of your skirt with fumbling fingers, blood beating fast and booming in your eardrums, while he toes off his shoes and undoes his belt buckle. Hard metal, the same one that was scraping against your belly when he was crushing you into his red truck, into white-hot pleasure.

His skin looks amber and smooth under the mellow lighting, the harmonious muscles you guessed under his shirt on the very first night highlighted in shadows. A soft belly, and a long, sideways scar on his left side. Would he tell you the history of his wounds? Will you ever have the chance to ask?

Your skirt crumples at your feet, you’re lost in the sight of him, arms falling limp at your sides. Self-consciousness skirts the edges of your lust. This body that you neglect and ignore at best, despise and mistreat if given the chance, will it be worth anything to him? Will he want you like you want him? With determination. Without dignity.

When he pulls down his jeans and his boxer briefs in one deft motion, your eyes widen, but he’s grabbing your arm already, spinning you around like a doll and throwing you onto the bedspread. He climbs on the bed after you, the mattress dips with his weight.

His firm hands spread your legs; he’s manhandled other bodies before yours, the skill evident with his dexterity, the experience obvious in his assurance, and you want to be all of them at once, lovers and enemies.

His hand rubs over your damp panties and you buck into it, trying to raise yourself on your elbows to turn around. You want to see his face as he touches you, see his reaction at the evidence of your arousal, you want to watch his eyes when his cock breaches you, but he presses a large hand between your shoulder blades and pins you into the mattress with a grunt.

He’s unlike anyone you’ve known before, brisk and rough and domineering, and you blush at your inexperience, at his irreverence, when he yanks your panties to the side and spits on your folds. The sheer obscenity feels like a reward for coming this far.

Sprawling your arms forward, bunching the slippery fabric of the bedspread in your fists, you brace yourself, the round tip of his cock lining up at your entrance.

He shoves himself inside you to the base, and you cry out at the blinding intrusion, the strength of his thrust hauling your body forward on the bed. With a harsh grasp, he slides you back down on his length and you bite down another cry, flesh gushing through the splayed fingers clutching your hips.

Crouching over you, he presses his forehead heavy against the back of your head.

“Don’t move,” he hisses through clenched teeth, “don’t fucking move.”

His cock pulsates angry and swollen inside your throbbing pussy, his chest pressing down on your back with each uneven, shaky breath burning your nape.

Sitting back, he wraps his right hand around the strap of your bra and twists it around his fist, pulling on it for leverage as he begins to fuck into you. The thin elastic bands bite into your shoulders, raspy vibrations echoing from your throat straight into the bedding with each of his rhythmic pushes forward.

He’s too much, too fast, too sudden. And he picks up the pace, forcing your right leg up with his knee and angling up his strokes, reaching deeper inside your core. He’s going to puncture your body from the inside, and you contract tight and rigid around his length, writhing underneath him, until he leans into your neck, close to your ear with a command, voice low and gravelly.

“You want it, just fucking take it, then.”

That wild thing inside your chest is swelling, madly swirling, your slick floods around his drilling length. Closing your eyes, the side of your face smearing makeup on the bedspread, you nod with just enough strength to exhale a breathless yes.

Yes. Yes, you want it, just like so. You want to be used, shattered, obliterated by this man.

And so you relent. Curling your fists and sinking your fingernails into your palms, as the pain turns to pleasure and he rams into your taut heat, rams against your cervix, bending you backward, spine ready to snap with each forceful shove.

The room is filled with the explicit sounds and noises of your emerging dirty secret. The relentless smack of his hips against your ass, the lewd squelch of his cock slamming in and out of your cunt, the creaking bedding, his feral groans, your grateful moans.

He’s miles away from you, but that’s what you came here for, drain the sadness from his eyes, make it yours, understand. If you’re only going to have him once, then you want it all.

But his rhythm is faltering already, and it stops abruptly. He releases his grip on you and pulls out with a loud curse, leaving you empty, for all those things you never wanted in the first place to fill you up again.

You feel his knuckles brushing against the swell of your ass as he strokes himself into his release. He loses his balance, and braces his hand next to your face to catch himself as come spurts hot and rich into the curve of your arched back.

He slaps his cock into the cleft of your cheeks once, twice, pumping out the last drops of his spend, and he collapses next to you, with a grunt when his back hits the bed, his chest heaving with exertion.

Unshed tears weigh down your eyelids. Your heart rattles against your rib cage, frantic and irregular. Your blood is thick as molasses, of amber and gold, coursing dense and languid down your limbs, but your nerves are crackling like electrical wires of blue and purple.

The creature between your lungs has tripled in size and your sore cunt throbs with your suspended orgasm.

Sunk into the mattress, you’re unable to round your back or turn your head towards him. Everything hurts. Everything is alive.

Reaching back blindly, you dip the tip of your fingers into the pool of his spend, and bring them back to your lips. Tasting him with delight and a quiet, strengthless moan.

The mattress moves with him as he shifts on the bed, and you feel the warmth of his large hand covering the expanse of your lower back.

Before you can relax into it, he flips you on your back with an easy strength, and you wince with the sudden change of position. What a mess you must look like, flushed face, sweat-damp hair, clotted mascara.

He’s heavy, in his straddle of your thighs. He brings his hand to your mouth, and you open up for him, pulling out your tongue to lick his come-coated palm, wrapping your lips around his fingers as they glide over the hot wet muscle. You swallow his essence with fluttering eyelids, grateful, tears rolling down your temples.

The soft light catches at the sheen of sweat gleaming over his chest, like he’s made of gold, leaning over you like a magnificent and merciful god, like you’ll grant him everything, and you bask into his radiance, your lips pursed into a new smile around his digits.

The frown that hasn’t left his brow softens ever so slightly. His throat bobs, corded muscles, pebbled skin, the tension barely relieved. His fingers slip out of your mouth and come to cup your chin, so gentle your mind fails to comprehend. His touch lingers, warm and relenting and it becomes a caress, trailing down the line of your throat and coming to rest over your beating pulse at the base of your neck.

“Are you real?” he asks, sorrow blurring his dark eyes.

“I don’t know,” you murmur, beading sweat, beading tears. “Make me be.”

He breathes in deeply, and perhaps it’s the first time in years he breathes in so freely.

“Okay,” he nods.

Slowly, with the tip of his tongue darting between his parted lips, he tugs down your bra to the side. His calloused palm finds the soft swell of your breast, and his warmth radiates through your skin. His hold strengthens, he pinches your nipples with his two first fingers, the ones you took in your mouth earlier, harder, until your mouth goes slack with pleasure and with pain, and you keep smiling at him through it all.

Loose, trustful, pliant, you watch as he drags your panties down along your damp skin and spreads your thighs. He pauses, eyes on your core and you lie still, exposed and opened, feeling no shame.

His curls, matted with sweat, are stuck in locks to his forehead. Where was he, when you were still hopeful? Were you too young for him, then?

He dives between your hips, and his teeth bite into the soft skin of your inner thigh. You jerk, palm pushing feebly onto the crown of his head and he freezes, eyes shut, like he doesn’t have enough willpower to let go, like too much of his control has already waned and thawed.

“Please,” you coo, “please. I’ll get in so much trouble.”

And your heart sinks a little with apprehension because, surely, he’ll scoff at you again, but instead he just lets go, bringing his fingers to your swollen folds to part them.

A small whimpering sound escapes you when he latches his lips around your clit, but the sensation is nothing like what you anticipated. Of his previous roughness, only the bruising digging of his fingers into the plush of your hips remains.

His mouth is warm and soothing, a liquid caress, the touch from the tip of his tongue precise but gentle. He shifts with a soft groan, applying more pressure and you keen, head trashed back into the bed. Instantly, he adjusts his grasp, pulling you closer to his face, suckling on your clit with more insistence.

The smooth skin of your calves brushes over his shoulders, your heels digging into the muscles of his back and you’re reminded of that first night again, when he swiveled around to meet your gaze, soft sad eyes, hard cold stare. Your orgasm builds up fast, embarrassingly so, encouraged by his heavy breathing fanning the soft curls on your mound.

The wild creature melts into your blood and flows down to your core, branching out to every nerve from the top of your head to the tip of your toes. And when you come, you come sharp and bright, with your hand clasped over your mouth to muffle a loud mewl and your back arched from the bed.

He forsakes his restored restraint when you recoil from the overstimulation, hardening his hold and fastening his mouth over your cunt to lap up your release, tongue diving in, greedy, burning your walls.

You’re still shaking with the aftershock when he releases you and rises above your trembling body. Lying his forehead on your belly, heavy head, heavy breathing, sweat dripping on your skin, he stays there until his breathing slows down, falling in rhythm with yours. You reach down for his hair, threading your fingers through his curls, at last, and he gives in, leans into the tenderness of your touch.

A stray tear slides down into your hairline and it’s over, he’s gone, standing up, his broad back turned to you, gathering his clothes and dressing up.

The notion of the world around you resurfaces. Outside, tucked away in the heart of the night, countless other wild creatures dwell and carry on, moved by fear or desire, and you lie still in that crushing knowledge. Soon, you will have to leave this bed, confront your solitude to theirs.

You roll to your side and curl up on yourself, drifting with the soft droning from the sleeping creature between your lungs and the sweet soreness thrumming between your hips.

He’s at the door, putting his hat back on, when you call out his name.

“Frankie.”

It passes your lips for the very first time, a long kept secret, a forbidden vow, a usurped oath, and immediately you want to say it again. You want it to be real. You want it to be yours.

Frankie pauses and tilts his head towards the bed without facing you completely.

“Thank you,” you say.

He opens the door to a draft of air wafting in, charged with the salty, humid scent of the faraway bay. He’s about to cross the threshold, and disappear into the night, when he speaks.

“The room is paid for til morning. I’ll see you next Friday.”

****

Additional note: I woke up on day and decided to build a multiverse of orange bedroom Frankies 🧡 For those who've read PTMY, can you spot all the clues? This Frankie is really pissed off, though, but I kinda like it. I hope you'll like it too 🧡

Taglist (thank you 🧡): @elegantduckturtle @mashomasho @lola766 @flowersandpotplantsandsunshine @nicolethered @littleone65 @bands-tv-movies-is-me @the-rambling-nerd @saintbedelia @pedrostories @trickstersp8 @all-the-way-down-here @deadmantis @hbc8 @princessdjarin @harriedandharassed @girlofchaos @gracie7209 @mrsparknuts @your-voice-is-mellifluous @mylostloversbookmarks @readingiskeepingmegoing @lovesbiggerthanpride @youandmeand5bucks-blog @sarcasm-theotherwhitemeat @southernbe @blackvelveteen1339 @anoverwhelmingdin @casa-boiardi @nandan11 @jessthebaker @pedroshotwifey @angelofsmalldeath-codeine @noisynightmarepoetry

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