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ghosttotheparty · 1 year

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a mess of holy things 1 also on ao3 // next cw: implied religious trauma/abuse

It feels weird to be in this room.

It’s so… empty.

Not that Steve’s room at his parents’ house back home is full. His walls were always void of photos and art and everything people on TV had, still are now that he’s gone, always covered in that wallpaper his mother picked when he was eleven. He was never allowed to talk badly about it, not that he would have had he been granted permission. But these walls don’t have wallpaper on them. They’re bare, white, empty.

He stares at them when his parents leave.

He sits on the edge of his bed, which is smaller than his bed back home, and naked except for the two blue suitcases he brought with him, and he looks across the room. At the bare wall. He doesn’t really feel the urge to cover it with anything, but it still feels sort of unnerving to look at. Like there’s something wrong with it.

But Steve doesn’t think the walls are what his father is worried about with him living here for college.

He’d had to listen to him for weeks after getting the acceptance letter in the mail. The school is popular for its business course, which of course is the reason Steve applied in the first place, despite his indifference when it comes to business, but it’s in the city. Steve had never been to a city before today.

It’s noisier than it is back home, he thinks as he turns to look out his window. From where he’s sitting he can only see the tops of trees; he got lucky in that his room faces away from the other dorm buildings around his, and he takes a moment to watch the leaves blow in the wind for a moment. He can hear voices from downstairs, muffled but still audible. It sounds like they’re arguing, but Steve can’t tell if they are or not; he had the same issue back home when he could hear his parents’ voices from his room upstairs. Though they were usually arguing when he cracked his door open.

He can hear cars from outside, a motorcycle revving, a distant siren that fades after a few moments. Some laughter that somehow feels more distant than anything else.

He stands after another second, crossing the small distance to his desk that’s in front of the window, setting his hands on the chair as he leans over it to look outside. He’s on the third floor. When he leans over farther he can see some people gathered in a circle in the grass. One is laying on his back, his hands on his belly as he laughs, and as Steve watches, a girl next to him reaches over to smack his leg. One boy in the group is smoking a cigarette. Steve looks away.

There’s a corkboard on the other side of the bed, next to some shelving. Steve looks at it, listening to the boy laugh. He doesn’t think he has anything to put on it, but maybe he can get a calendar or something.

It feels so quiet in here. Even with the noises outside.

But he’s never minded the silence.

He unpacks slowly. He does the cardboard boxes first. There isn’t much, just some old textbooks from his father, textbooks he used when he went to business school. Steve tried to tell him that they probably use different textbooks now, especially considering he goes to a different school than the one his father went to, but he insisted these books are the best, so Steve stayed quiet. He doesn’t like to argue, especially with his father. The books are padded with his bedding, which he tosses onto one of the suitcases while he unpacks, as he stacks the books on one of the shelves next to his desk.

His winter clothes go into the wardrobe, his towel and soaps into the bathroom, and when he finds his paper and post-it notes and stationary, he makes a note to buy toilet paper and a bathmat. He knew he’d forget some things.

When he unpacks the suitcases, he does so slowly. He won’t admit it to himself, but it kind of feels like he’s procrastinating as he does it, like he doesn’t want to get to it.

He knows what he’s looking for, what he’s avoiding. It’s in the second suitcase, carefully wrapped in one of his favorite sweaters, and when he spots the red knit, he pauses, standing up straight and just looking for a moment.

He unpacks everything around it. It’s hot in his room when he finishes, and he’s sweating through the shirt he’s wearing. He opens his window and plugs in the fan his father packed for him before he pauses and cracks open the window above his desk. The group of people has left, probably because the sun is going down now, but he can still smell the cigarette smoke lingering in the air. But he can’t tell if it’s just his mind providing the smell because he knows it was there or not.

That’s happened before, him smelling or hearing things that he knows aren’t really there. Lingering cigarette smoke or weed smoke, the remnants of secular music that rattle around in his head like it’s empty except for echoing drum beats. It’s frustrating. He doesn’t want to hear the music, or smell those smells, and he knows he’s not supposed to. He’s caught himself humming along to songs that he doesn’t even know more times than he can count, and every time he just lets his head fall. He recites prayers that tend to take the place of the music.

His suitcase is empty except for the sweater. He supposes he should just finish so he can make his bed.

He kneels on the mattress, reaching over into the suitcase to pull it out, holding it with both hands like it might break even though he’s had it for as long as he can remember, and he knows that it won’t shatter to pieces in his hands. He still kind of feels like his hands have that ability. To break anything.

Especially something like this.

He unwraps the crucifix, and he doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath. The cross is wood. Jesus is gold. Steve doesn’t think it’s real gold, but it’s gleaming at him nonetheless. He drops the sweater on the bed again, and with a shaking hand, he sets the crucifix on one of the shelves next to his desk. It’s up high, looking down at the rest of the room in judgement.

Steve looks away, exhaling.

He puts the sweater in his wardrobe, folded carefully so he doesn’t stretch the yarn. And then he makes his bed. It’s hard to get the corners of the mattress right because of how the room is laid out, but he manages it, and when he’s done, he takes a shower. He’s grateful to his parents for paying for him to have his own bathroom, grateful that he doesn’t have to wait for showers to be available or risk having to talk to people in the hallways.

He thinks that might be part of why they paid for it. They, meaning his father specifically. He makes the decisions. Steve’s mom just agrees and stays quiet.

His dad doesn’t like the idea of Steve being in the city.

Not because of the noise, or the trash, or because it’s something that’s foreign to Steve, somewhere that he doesn’t feel particularly, entirely safe, but because of the people that Steve is surrounded by. In his words, heathens and hippies, chain-smokers and Satanists. Steve had to very carefully tell him that he’s responsible for who he spends time with, and he’s always been conscious of his friends’ mindsets and focuses and goals. Which is the truth. His only friends from home he met in church as a child.

Though met may be generous; their mothers had been friends and they had been stuck together in the playroom when they were small, but as soon as they were old enough to sit still, even when they didn’t want to, they were separated to sit with their families. But they were all Steve knew, so they stayed together in school, even when Steve decided he didn’t really like them that much. Which is why he’s kind of glad he’s here in the city; it’s so much less likely that he’ll run into a familiar face, someone he went to school with. He feels just inches closer to escaping.

Escaping.

He shouldn’t be thinking about that.

He shouldn’t be thinking about leaving home. He shouldn’t be happy about being here in this empty room instead of in his parents’ house.

It’s highlighted in his copy of the Bible, the one he got when he was ten that he’s kept on his bedside for almost a decade. It’s highlighted in yellow. Important.

Ephesians 6:1-3.

1 aChildren, bobey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. 2 aHonour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) 3 That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.

It’s hard sometimes. But he tries. And he likes to think that that’s enough for now.

He doesn’t have anything to eat. His parents didn’t get anything for him on the way to his dorm, and then they left right after helping him move everything into his room and lecturing him about being mindful of who he’s friends with. So he just takes a shower and says his nighttime prayer, and he goes to bed.

His room isn’t as dark as his room at his parents’ house. There are lights outside, lining the sidewalk his room overlooks, and they peer through the windows when he pulls them shut. He stares at the ceiling. He kind of wishes there was something to see on it instead of white paint. But when he closes his eyes, he can pretend he’s facing the sky full of stars.

He manages to drift off after a while, but he wakes up around midnight to the smell of weed. He wrinkles his nose, blinking his eyes open and squinting as his eyes adjust to the darkness. He rolls over, furrowing his eyebrows as he looks across the room to his open window, and he sighs heavily. His limbs are sore as he gets up heavily. He’s pretty sure he has a bruise or two on his legs but carrying in the boxes.

He’s still squinting as he leans over his desk to look out the window. There’s another group of people where the others had been earlier, and of course Steve would get stuck with the room right above a popular smoking spot. There are fewer people in this group than there had been in the other, but two of them are smoking, watching a third as she spins at the center of their little circle. Her skirt fans around her legs, and another person starts clapping. The girl giggles and sits back down heavily, reaching for her friend’s cigarette. Steve watches for another moment before he pulls his window shut. He moves his fan closer to his bed.

It’s not that it’s particularly weird to not have friends.

But he doesn’t speak at all without anyone he knows around, and his throat starts to feel weird after about a week. He didn’t realize how little he spoke when he wasn’t with his friends. He knew he didn’t talk much at home, but that’s… different.

It’s not necessarily that he wasn’t allowed to talk at home. He just wasn’t supposed to. He didn’t have to.

And now he doesn’t have to because there’s no one to hear him. Attendance is taken in the form of a sheet of paper by the door, every student’s name typed out neatly, waiting for a signature next to it, and Steve isn’t to volunteer answers when his professors pose questions to the class. He listens quietly. Takes notes.

He supposes he’s avoiding the others’ eyes after a while. He doesn’t know why; it’s like he’s scared that they’ll look into him, that they’ll find something he doesn’t want them to. A few of them offer friendly smiles, polite waves, and Steve reciprocates, but in a way that lets them know he won’t be joining them, or making conversation, or any of the things normal people do. Steve doesn’t really think he counts as a normal person. His parents would say that he isn’t like the others, because he’s enlightened, because he’s saved.

But he’s starting to wonder if that’s exactly what it is, just… Maybe not in the way his parents think.

He doesn’t know if he feels lonely. If he knows what it feels like to be lonely. It’s an odd feeling, this uncertainty, but he doesn’t think it’s a bad feeling. The solitude is nice sometimes. The quiet. But he does wonder if this is what his life is going to be like from now on, so quiet and slow and…

Boring.

It’s boring.

He’ll barely admit it to himself, but he’s bored in his dorm room. Bored of the white walls and plain blankets, of his textbooks and his professors’ droning voices. Bored of the same breakfast every morning (eggs and toast, a cup of black coffee), of the same walk to his lectures (past the other dorm building and two lecture halls, through a pathway that cuts across a park that’s spotted with benches and trash cans). Bored of his degree. Already.

He doesn’t tell his parents all of this during their weekly phone calls, of course. His voice is rough as he speaks to them, but they don’t question it. Of course they don’t. Steve doesn’t think they even notice. Their calls are always filled with the same conversations:

My classes are going well.

Everything is turned in on time.

I have an essay due in a few weeks.

The outline is already done.

My hallway has been quiet.

My professors seem nice.

I haven’t made any friends.

I’ve been focussing on my schoolwork.

Friends aren’t my priority right now.

They let it slide. As long as he’s passing his classes, as long as he’s praying. They don’t ask if he’s been to church since he started college. (He hasn’t. He doesn’t know if he wants to, even though he knows where the church is in the city, even though he knows what times services start and end. He practically has the schedule memorized.)

And he’s bored.

Bored.

The library in the city is better than the one on campus in Steve’s opinion.

It’s a bit noisier with the city outside, with cars and trucks and motorcycles, sirens and construction and shouting, but it’s not just students there, which Steve thinks is what he likes. On campus, every room is filled with people his age, people he should know how to talk to, people he should be spending time with and chatting with and becoming friends with, and there’s this pressure on his chest the whole time. Like he’s doing something wrong as he’s looking through his textbooks and analyzing his notes.

In the city, there are a few people that Steve would recognize as students at his college, but there are also children carrying picturebooks, whispering loudly to their parents, and teenagers doing their homework, and elderly people looking through shelves of books, and Steve somehow feels less lonely here.

He starts going to the public library a few weeks into the school year on a whim; at first it was just to see what the library was like, just to get out of his dorm room and finally explore a little after so much boredom, but it’s become a common thing for him. It’s nice to see the city, even if there’s a sense of wrongness that follows him around as he looks at the other people. At the women in their short skirts, at the couples making out against the walls of buildings. All the people his parents would scoff at and turn toward Steve to give him a lecture because they can’t give it to the person they’re actually judging.

But for some reason, Steve likes seeing these people. He doesn’t know if it’s a sense of adventure that he gets in seeing these people and not hearing a whole spiel about how they’ll end up in Hell and how God is watching them, and oh, may God lead them to the light, despite the fact that they tend to look pretty happy with themselves as and where they are. There aren’t as many of these people in the library (save for the couple Steve saw making out behind a bookshelf; he managed to get away before they noticed him there.), but he still likes it there. There are so many more people in this public library than the one in his hometown, but it’s still just as quiet.

There are more study rooms in this library than the one back home. There’s one on the second floor that Steve likes: it’s small and sort of tucked away into a corner, the door creaky and a little hard to push open. The table is wobbly the same way his desks were in high school, and there are old doodles on it, some in ink or smudged graphite, others carved into the wood and smoothed down over time.

Every time Steve reaches for the door, he says a little prayer that there’s no one inside, and so far, he hasn’t walked in on anybody. He always anticipates it, stepping inside and making wide-eyed eye contact with a stranger, mumbling an apology in his rough, barely-used voice before he leaves and never comes back just because he can’t handle it. But maybe his prayers are working. Or maybe he’s just lucky.

He thinks he’s just lucky.

He’s also lucky that no one has come in while he’s working. Maybe because it’s so tucked away, hidden in some bookshelves, nobody really sees it.

The quiet city sounds are even quieter when he’s in this room, the vehicles and sirens and loud laughter all muffled behind the walls, and the sounds of his studying seem unusually loud in turn, the scratching of his pencil, the turning of his pages, and soft thuds of the table leg tapping the ground as he works, wobbling back and forth and back and forth. He likes it here. It might be his favorite place that he’s found since he started college, quiet and peaceful and away from it all.

He hears a truck pass outside as he turns the page in his textbook. It’s a second-hand book, one he bought after reading the supply list for one of his classes, and some of the lines are already marked, highlighted in a fading yellow or circled with smudged pencil. He ignores the annotations at first, copying down the text that he thinks is important, and then he goes back to see what the book’s previous owners thought was important. He hesitates, then writes it all down too.

He startles when the door opens abruptly, jumping and looking up, his hand fumbling with his pen. He drops it as a man enters the room, carrying a backpack. He’s got long hair that seems to obstruct his vision until he tosses his head, flicking his hair out of the way, and he closes the door behind himself, letting out a breath before he looks up and his eyes meet Steve’s.

“Jesus Christ—”

Steve’s eyes widen as he watches the man startle, turning to hide his face as he presses a ring-clad hand to his chest.

“Sorry,” the man says breathily, flinging his hair away again. “Shit. Uh.” He takes another breath, awkwardly running a hand through his hair, pushing it back, facing Steve. It’s longer than Steve’s ever seen on a man, past his shoulders and wavy, frizzy like it should be curly. There are bits of metal on his face, piercings in places Steve’s never seen: on the bridge of his nose between his eyes, on his eyebrows, his mouth. “There usually isn’t, uhm, anyone in here.”

“Oh,” Steve says finally, blinking at him. His eyes flick up and down the man’s body, scanning the angel on his t-shirt, patches and pins on his denim jacket, the rips in his jeans. He’s never seen anyone dressed like this before, so… dark. Even his boots are intimidating. The rings on his fingers look heavy, and Steve has to tear his eyes away from them.

“I’m just… I’m just studying,” he says finally. “If you… wanna share.”

“Okay,” the man says, and he’s smiling awkwardly now. He has a nice smile. It digs lines into his cheeks and makes his eyes squint, but Steve can still see how dark and shiny they are. Like a deer’s.

He watches the man sit at the other end of the table, watches him set his bag on the ground and pull some books out of it to set them on the table. Steve glances at the books and stops, staring. Atop one book that's plain brown, untitled, the spine bare, are a few colorful ones, reading Dungeons & Dragons above various illustrations of monsters. Steve feels the man glance over at him, and he looks away sharply, back down at his textbook and notebook.

It’s suddenly too quiet, even though there’s more noise than there was a minute ago. Steve listens to him rifle through his bag and glances out of the corner of his eye to watch him pull a pen out of the biggest pocket.

Steve looks away again. Finishes the sentence he’d been writing when the man came in. Turns the page of his textbook and tries to read the next paragraph.

It’s not a minute later that he looks up at the man again. He’s sitting funnily. One leg brought up onto his chair, arm around it, his cheek almost resting on his knee. The rip in his jeans shows his skin under it, and he looks even paler against the dark fabric. He’s writing in the brown book, and Steve’s eyes skim down to his hands. He’s right-handed, and his nails are painted black. The polish is chipping.

Steve looks back and forth between him and his notebook, glancing and staring, noticing something new every time he looks. There’s a tattoo covering the back of his hand. It looks like some kind of flower.

When he leans back in his seat, looking down at his book, he lifts a hand to his mouth and nibbles at his nail for a moment before he grimaces and lowers his hand. When he lowers his hand, Steve can see the tattoo that’s covering his neck and throat; it’s a bat, its wings outstretched, its mouth in some grotesque expression. Steve looks away.

He feels nervous, somehow.

The man seems nice enough. He smiled at Steve. Apologized for his reaction. He’s being quiet, respectful of their shared space. Keeping all of his things on his side of the table.

But the angel on his t-shirt has a skull instead of a face. He’s wearing at least three necklaces, silver chains and one with a charm that Steve can’t quite identify. There are tattoos on his fingers, partially hidden under his heavy rings that click every time he does something with his hands. The patches on his jacket have symbols on them that would prompt Steve’s parents into prayer.

And Steve isn’t sure how to feel about him.

He knows he isn’t supposed to like him.

But it feels odd to dislike someone because of their hair, their clothes, the art on their skin.

And he has a nice smile.

Steve faces his notebook but can’t tear his eyes away from the man. He watches him write, glancing back and forth between the colorful Dungeons & Dragons books and his brown notebook, watches him twist one of his rings around his finger, watches his lips twist as he thinks. It’s a while that Steve sits here, watching and staring, looking at his tattoos, at his piercings, at his hair (which he keeps re-tucking behind his ear).

“I can feel you looking at me,” the man says finally, and Steve drops his pen, his face flushing with heat.

“Sorry,” he says quickly, eyes wide, but the man just smiles at his notebook, scribbling something down before he looks up at Steve again. And Steve can see his piercings clearly now, two through both of his eyebrows, one through the bridge of his nose, one on either side of his bottom lip. They’re silver studs, and they gleam in the sunlight coming in through the window.

“‘S okay,” he says lightly, gently, smiling. “I get it a lot.”

It’s quiet for a moment as they look at each other, and Steve feels oddly self-conscious as the man’s eyes flick over him, like he’s analysing the shirt Steve is wearing, the way his hair is pushed back. But the man’s smile doesn’t waver, even as he leans over his notebook and gestures to Steve with a jerk of his chin.

“Whatcha doin’?”

“Uhm.” Steve finally looks away, glances down at where his handwriting has lifted up off the lines of his notebook, distracted. “…Business management and administration.”

“Sounds exciting,” the man says dryly, and Steve just shakes his head, which prompts a laugh from him. “I’m assuming you go to college here?”

“Uh, yeah,” Steve says awkwardly, crossing his arms over the table. “I’m a freshman.”

“How are you liking it?”

“Uh,” Steve says again. “…I like it.”

He just raises an eyebrow like he’s amused, silently promoting Steve, like he’s poking him in the side.

“It’s kinda lonely,” Steve says with a light shrug.

“You don’t have friends?”

“I…” He shrugs again. “I’m not… very social, I guess. I had friends in high school, but I think…” He hesitates, oddly unfamiliar with the sound of his voice after being silent for so long, but the man looks so patient, listening closely like he actually wants to hear what Steve has to say. “I think I didn’t really like them that much,” he says finally. “I took a gap year after grad and they all left for college and it was like I… I could breathe without them.”

He shrugs again, but the man is just smiling now. Like he gets it. He has a really nice smile. Steve looks at it, at the way his piercings shift slightly as his lips curve.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Steve blinks. Looks back into his eyes. (They’re so dark.)

“Sorry,” he says, cheeks flushing with heat again. “I just… I’ve never seen anyone like you before.”

The man’s smile turns sly, and he sets his chin on his palm, resting his elbow on the table.

“Never seen a freak?” he says smoothly.

“I don’t know if that’s the word I’d use,” Steve says hesitantly. The man laughs brightly, almost childishly, and Steve can’t suppress his own smile.

“What’s, uhm. What’s Slayer?” Steve asks, glancing at the man’s shirt, watching him lean back to look at his own chest like he’s forgotten what he’s wearing.

“It’s a band,” he says. “One of my favorites.”

“What kind of music is it?” Steve asks curiously, and he doesn’t think he'd never be talking this much if it were anyone else, but the man’s eyes are trained on him so kindly. Steve knows he should be avoiding him at all costs, but he seems sweet in a way that Steve can’t really describe.

“Metal,” the man says lightly.

Steve looks at him blankly, and he starts to smile again, pressing his lips together.

“What kind of music do you listen to?”

“I don’t listen to music.”

“At all?”

Steve shakes his head, squeezing his upper arm.

“My father says media distracts the soul from its righteous duties.”

He looks up at him nervously, because that’s such a weird thing to say, isn’t it? But the man’s eyes are sparkling at him, and he’s still smiling.

“Yeah, that sounds about right.”

Steve raises an eyebrow.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You look righteous.”

“You don’t.”

A laugh bursts out of him, and Steve finally cracks a smile, tilting his head at him.

“Yeah, I know,” he says finally, still beaming at Steve.

And then they fall quiet, just looking at each other. Like they’re both studying each other, taking note of what’s different. His long frizzy curls, Steve’s carefully tamed hair. His painted, chipped nails, Steve’s bare ones that he’s never really thought twice about. His worn t-shirt and patched jacket and Steve’s collared shirt that’s tucked into his pants.

“I, uhm…” the man finally says, hesitating, tapping a finger on the table lightly. “I live really close to here, if you wanna give Slayer a listen.”

Steve blinks, taken aback by the invitation, but before he can respond, the man gestures to Steve’s books.

“Unless you’re too busy with business management.”

Steve flips his notebook shut silently. The man laughs brightly.

“Sure,” Steve says, surprising himself. His parents would kill him.

But it feels kind of exciting, putting his books in his bag as the man does the same, still smiling. Steve thinks he must smile a lot.

permanent taglist: @estrellami-1 @theplantscientist @spectrum-spectre @carlprocastinator1000 @starman-jpg <3 holy things taglist: @stevesbipanic @pearynice @ao3whore @slowandsteddie <3 (comment to be added/removed to/from either list!!)

♡ buy me a coffee ♡

#and so it begins #lmk if you want to be added or removed from either taglist!!#some aspects of this fic might be kinda heavy so its no problem at all if you want to be removed :)#very very excited about this fic tho im so stoked #steddie #steddie fanfic #steve harrington #steve harrington fanfic #eddie munson #eddie munson fanfic #stranger things #stranger things fanfic #a mess of holy things

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moocha-muses · 1 year

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"I'll be out in a few minutes, sweetheart. I'm just enjoying a nice soak."

"The floor is covered-"

"You can take me out to buy a thicker bathmat tomorrow!"

"You are a menace (<3)."

#ts2 #the sims 2 #ts2 gameplay #owlcreek #link #milolink #kennethlink

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alisonagosti · 6 months

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Found at Skatepark

I adopted my dog Harvey from the Burbank Animal Shelter on February 12, 2012. At the time, he was nameless, and the card on his cage only had three words written on it: "Found at skatepark." He was filthy and scared, but he walked right up to me and put his two paws up on the bars so that I could scratch his belly, and that was it. I bought him for $70 and took him home the next day. Your life can change that quickly.

Things I want to remember: barking at me every time I'd come through the front door, His deep desire to roll on dead bugs, napping with him in the crook of my arm.

At the time, I was working two minimum-wage jobs, was obsessed with my sketch team, and had a roommate who would later be charged with money laundering. I had no business taking care of myself, let alone a dog. But I wanted so desperately to feel a sense of home— some version of family that I was so completely starved of. At this point in my life, I had no idea how to express that love was something I wanted so deeply and yet completely feared. When you're broke in your twenties, you don't always have the tools to examine your childhood and your parental models; sometimes, you just have to buy a dog and hope that it helps.

Things didn't go smoothly; he suffered from horrible separation anxiety, and when I would leave to go to work, he would bark so loudly and for so long that my neighbor finally slid a handwritten note under my door that simply stated, "Your dog's bark is so shrill and frantic -- it's like nothing I've ever heard before." Not helpful, but a valid observation.

He was one of the most stubborn creatures I've ever met. He refused to be housebroken for much of his early life. I gotta be honest; he never really locked that in -- he was 90% housebroken at best. He would steal food if given any opportunity. Once, when I was painting an accent wall, he rolled in the paint tray for presumably no other reason other than he decided he wanted to. Our lives seemed to mirror each other at the time, and since he never judged me for over-drafting my bank account or stumbling in drunk, who was I to judge him for going through the garbage?

Things I want to remember: His insistence on following me into the bathroom, patiently watching me pee and poop, sleeping on the bathmat as I showered.

It's not that he didn't know the difference between right and wrong. He knew the rules, would assess the situation and then proceed accordingly. If I was out and he needed to pee, why should he hold it? If a sandwich was left unattended, why should he not eat it? Philosophically he raised questions that my young mind was not capable of debating.

Some may call this asshole behavior, myself included. But Harvey also possessed a kindness and ease with people that I envied. I imagined him as a proud young man on the day of his bar mitzvah, happily introducing himself and encouraging you to check out the dessert bar, "We have cake in pop form and by the slice! Please help yourselves!" He never met a stranger in his life; encouraging or demanding pets from anyone. Literally anyone, he was not picky. I loved to watch him happily trot up to people at the dog park, wagging his tail and waiting expectantly until they obliged.

Things I want to remember: My favorite compliment I ever received for Harvey, "He's perfectly proportional, a lot of little dogs aren't like that."

I loved to watch people melt in front of him: a living teddy bear with oversized ears. He indiscriminately trusted everybody and wanted to sit on every lap. Somehow, people would instinctively hold him like a baby, and he would stay in that space for as long as he was permitted.

I did not have the same effect on people.

As we got older, I finally started making money; we moved to New York and experienced snow for the first time (we did not care for it).

Things I want to remember: Landing at Laguardia at 5 AM and traveling to my new apartment. My furniture hadn't arrived yet so I slept on the clothes from my suitcase with Harvey in my arms.

He took everything in stride and quelled the loneliness of a new city. For much of my time on the east coast, he felt like my only friend.

Things I want to remember: Coming home early from work to find Harvey and my dog walker asleep on the couch.

I started a relationship that was abusive. When he would yell at me, Harvey would hide, and I worried about his safety long before I considered my own. When I eventually fled back to Los Angeles, it felt like we'd both aged several decades.

We entered our 30s at roughly the same time, and Harvey really came into his own. His food theft reached new heights of creativity. On a vacation, I made the mistake of leaving a room service tray in the room with Harvey while I went to lay out at the pool. When I came back, he had pulled some of my clothes out of my bag. I didn't think much of it, but when we got home the next day, he quietly waited for me to unpack before retrieving a room service dinner roll that he'd stashed away in there. The art of it. The patience. He had become a master.

Things I want to remember: Holding him when I was sad, him generously allowing my tears to fall on his fur.

Another breakup or two, another six months of crying into Harvey's fur before Covid hit. For a good part of 2020, he was the only thing I touched. Outside of logging onto Zoom for work, he was my only purpose. At nine, he had become a reasonable man. Still capable of zoomies, not above destruction or scampery in the name of food, but a calmness had settled over him and eventually me as well.

I fostered a puppy during the pandemic, just like everybody else, and I decided to adopt him. An unforgivable betrayal in Harvey's eyes. The new calm of our house was now loudly disrupted by the idiocy of a puppy. I'll always wonder if he felt replaced. He wasn't. He could never be. We were just adding to our family.

I eventually emerged from my Covid bunker to go on a date with the man who recently became my fiancé. When he first met Harvey, he said, "he really likes me!" I didn't have the heart to tell him that he was just another guest at Harv's unending bar mitzvah; he'd eventually realize it on his own. My family became the four of us, and we became The Unit. Man, I fucking love The Unit. I didn't realize that coming home could be the most exciting part of my day.

Harvey continued to age; he thickened around his middle, and little things started to go wrong. He developed a limp that was eventually fixed with anti-inflammatories, and he developed allergies. But he always bounced back. He seemed indestructible. Looking at him, you would never know he was almost 11. His white fur hid any signs of grey, and he still had the bouncy gait of a children's cartoon character. He had his final act of chaos that Thanksgiving. When we set him down without a leash and he took off after a pitbull (this is not an indictment on pitbulls — I only mention it because of the size difference and sheer lunacy of it — Harvey is an asshole, don’t forget that part). Harv ran after this dog faster than I'd seen him move in years. All four feet off the ground, a fluffy bullet on his way for vengeance. In one simple move, the pitbull took Harvey's head in his mouth and flung him a few feet into the grass. It all happened in a second. When I reached him, he was lying on the ground, stunned. It wasn't until I picked him up that I saw the massive gash on the left side of his head as blood started to spill out. I will never understand why he did that. He decided he wanted to, I guess.

Even that was no big deal for him. Antibiotics and a cone for a couple of weeks and he was back to normal. He really seemed indestructible.

Then, about a year ago, Harvey got really sick and was diagnosed with diabetes -- a disease I didn't think dogs could get. And again, he bounced right back once we figured out his insulin dosage. It became my morning routine. Feed the dogs, shake the insulin, inject, dispose of the needle, repeat at dinner. I almost enjoyed it. The ritual of it. Just a small dose of translucent liquid, and he was functional. He was my buddy, just like he'd always been.

Then, he unceremoniously went blind, a common complication of the disease. He took it in stride, learning the layout of our place and confidently patrolling the dog park. He still went on walks and still played occasionally. And I really thought that this would just be the new normal for the next couple of years, at least.

Things I want to remember: After he went blind, we would often lose him in the house, asleep in tiny spaces or little nooks, watching him quietly stare at a blank wall while his nose was inches away.

Then a week ago, he stopped eating. For a few days I was able to bribe him with turkey and rice but he eventually refused that as well. We went to the vet the next morning, he could no longer stand on his own. Of course I thought that this might be the end, I also had seen him defy Death at least twice and I had no reason to think he would get Harvey this time.

The vet took X-rays that revealed an evil black mass had taken over his whole belly; I finally realized that we weren't going to wiggle out of this one. I was brought into a second room by a woman who is best described as Kate Mckinnon's character from the Barbie movie. She had sparkly nail polish, although I can't remember the color, just the sparkles. She started by telling me not to cry, and I wondered to myself what exactly constituted crying, if not this exact situation. I Facetimed my fiancé, who is working out of the country. Weird Barbie returned with my dog, my best friend of 12 years. He could no longer support his head on his own. I held him like a baby -- like I'd done thousands of times before.

"There are so many puppies that need good homes in the shelters." I looked at Harvey for backup, I think in earlier years, he would've given me a look that meant, "Can you believe this lady? She is NOT invited to my bar mitzvah." I didn't acknowledge the comment, and she followed up by saying, "Do you want me to stay with you?"

"No," I answered without thinking, and she disappeared out of the room and back into her rightful place at the bottom of a toybox. I won't go into the next part because it's too hard. To sum it up, he died in my arms. The vet held up a stethoscope to his chest and whispered quietly, "And he has passed." I felt everything in my chest -- lungs, heart, guts -- all ripped out in one moment. It was, by far, the most painful moment of my life.

Things I want to remember: Holding him after he died.

And then he pooped on me. Just a little bit, but he got one more joke in, and I respect him for it.

--- In the nights since he passed I find myself wondering if he knew that I loved him and if I loved him enough. I'm afraid the answer is no. How can you ever love something enough? How can one 11-pound dog ever know what he meant to me?

I didn't. I couldn't. But he did it so effortlessly.

He was my constant and my family when I didn't have any, a beacon of kindness, and also the funniest person I've ever known. So goodbye, my sweet Harv, my grandpa baby, and my fuzz. You will always be the co-founding member of The Unit. I love you.

#wrote

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apprenticestanheight · 7 months

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All is Well That Ends Well - Lawrence Gordon x gn! afab! reader - Part IV

Annnnnnnnnd, an hour and eleven minutes later, here's part four!! the next parts will be released on the seventh and fourteenth and then, unless I can manage to get a lot of writing done in not a lot of time, there'll probably be a bit of a delay between the end of The Beginning and the beginning of The Middle (I promise better titles will be created for these sections I am just. I am just terrible at titling and pull stuff out of a hat a lot of the time) but at the latest, the Middle will start in late march-early april.

Fic type - this one is so smutty, but it's also fluffy, so it's fluff that leads up into smut

Warnings - minors,, DO NOT FUCKING INTERACT THANK YOU, oral, cockwarming, edging (kind of??) mentions of the loss of Lawrences foot + prosthetics and pain and itching associated with wearing them too long

A few days pass, and on that Wednesday, after all of your classes were cancelled from a snowstorm, you wake up at eight and make a list with Aurelie over the phone of things you need to grab, organized by room for your own convenience.

For your bedroom you need to get a nightstand, wardrobe, a lamp or two, and better sheets and blankets than the ones you’d had for a decade, which were on their last legs as it were.

For the bathrooms—of which there are two, one in the primary suite and the other across the hall from one of the other two bedrooms—you need shower curtains, bathmats, and small bins to hold random essentials like pads, tampons, Band-Aids and anything else someone might need short notice, as well as trash cans and garbage bags accordingly.

The living and dining rooms are where stuff gets pricey—you need a couch, love seat, rocking chair, coffee table, television and a stand, curtains, maybe a rug and definitely a dining table.

For one of the other two bedrooms, you require an additional bed and curtains so that it can serve as the guest space. For the other of the two bedrooms, you need curtains, bookshelves, a comfy daybed, a desk and a rolling chair so that it can act as a library-slash-office space for studying and reading.

Since you figure Lawrence is working, Aurelie helps you get most of it. A lot of it came from IKEA for the sake of your own convenience but you refused, blatantly, to buy a bed or couch or even so much as a rocking chair from there, so it was a fairly cheap trip.

You grab the bed from the same spot you got the one you’d bought for yourself six months before, when the bed you’d had got lumpy and it became clear just how old it was—a local furniture store that was a twenty minute drive out and did same-day delivery fee at no additional cost.

The rocking chair, couch, coffee table, love seat, wardrobe and daybed were purchased from a furniture store one of your bosses had recommended. It was a forty minute drive from the condo but so worth it as they delivered to your apartment for only an additional $20.

Once the furniture shopping is complete you grab groceries and are home to unload them at half past four, making quick work of it because all you want to do is lie on your couch and make a bad decision or two.

You call Lawrence, exhausted but wanting to test out the couch in more ways than just sitting on the damn thing, at five o’clock on the dot. He answers on the second ring.

“How’d furniture shopping go?” He greets.

You bite your lip to fend off a smile. “Aurelie did it with me—sorry for not calling you, I figured you were working and the places I went to for the bigger things do delivery—and now I’m just sitting, lonely. Kind of want to order take out, honestly, but Aurelie has studying to do and I’m assuming you’re still at work.”

“Just left, actually,” Lawrence says. “I can come over if you’d like? We can talk for a bit and, assuming there are groceries in your fridge today unlike yesterday, I can make dinner. Takeaway is decent but food that takes effort is good, too.”

“I didn’t come close to spending a quarter of the rainy day fund,” you say. “I told myself I’d spend five thousand at most, and I spent close to five thousand, yeah, but still. The way I see it, I have sixty dollars to blow on take out and if you really must cook me dinner, you can do so Friday night. I like things more even and unless you’d prefer that I spent the $60 on weed, I’d really like to see you.”

Lawrence laughs. “I think I’ve realized what you aim to get from me,” he says. “I thought I’d be the one making those types of calls or coming into the condo with my spare key and groping you while you read whichever book you’re reading at that point in time.”

You laugh seductively. “That’ll come up in the next few weeks, I imagine,” you say. “However, right now I am exhausted, need something in my something and this couch is way too big for one person. Grabbed an L shaped one so that I could take a nap on it on a lazier Sunday afternoon but today was not lazy or a Sunday. Today was productive and if I don’t see you in the next thirty minutes, I will drive my ass back to where I vaguely remember your house being and knock on a door, one that I can only I hope is yours so that I can make the first $2000 you’ll give me on whichever day within the next week so worth your while that it hurts.”

“You’ll get it Saturday,” Lawrence says. “The first installment.”

“Get your ass to this condo or so help me God—”

“I’ll be there in fifteen,” Lawrence laughs. “Mouthing me off is not recommended.”

“There can’t be too many punishments out there. I like it when pain gets involved. Being thrown and smacked around just gets me wet.”

“There are ways to torture you without being aggressive. Be a good puppy and wait for me, yeah?”

You roll your eyes. One sexual encounter a few days prior and he knows, already, that calling you his puppy is the quickest way to get you to submit.

“Yeah, Lawrence,” you say. “Of course.”

“Good,” he says. “You can wait fifteen minutes without touching yourself, can’t you?”

Without meaning to, you grind helplessly against the hem of your jeans.

“Mhm.”

“Good puppy.”

And then the call is done, and you’re going to your bedroom to swap your day clothes for something more comfortable—a black hoodie you’d owned since you started in the PhD program at 26 that you’d accidentally ordered around six sizes too big—and strip of everything else.

You head back into the living room, clad in nothing but a baggy hoodie. It leaves your clit, folds, and breasts open to the wintery cold updraft, which forces you to grab a throw blanket and toss it over your legs.

The ten minutes to proceed those events are spent reading a romance novel that you’d put on your coffee table for decoration, and when you hear the sound of Lawrences spare key entering the slot on the door, you grin.

He closes the door behind him lightly, grins when he meets your gaze, and you look him over.

He looks good in a way that makes you almost insatiable—navy blue button up shirt, black slacks, white doctors coat hanging loosely off his shoulders. His hair is handsomely unkempt, and he looks like the picture of laidback professionalism.

He takes the white coat off, drapes it over the top of your loveseat.

“You look cute,” he says. “Waited for me on the couch the entire time?”

You nod, standing up without thinking twice about it. “You said to wait. I did.”

He steps towards you, intentionally walking slowly. “Are you wearing anything beneath the hoodie, puppy?”

You shake your head. “I’m not. I always wear the hoodie like this—it’s comfortable for me,” it’s a lie, of course, but you just have to hope it’s not a very obvious one.

“Is it really?” He asks. When you bite your lip, he laughs.

“I don’t like liars,” he says. “If you decided to forgo anything beneath it because of me, you’re allowed to be honest. I find honesty preferable to lies, even if the way that you bite your lip and how fucking good you look makes me want to bend you over the arm of the couch and use you to my preference.”

You nod. “I wore it like this for conveniences sake,” you admit. “Was a bit warm, too, and needed to cool off, even though I regretted that almost instantly because it's the fucking winter. Figured you’d have an easier time touching me if I wore nothing underneath the sweater.”

Lawrence takes another step and is finally within arms reach.

“I’ll buy us dinner,” he says. “You can use the sixty for a nice lingerie set if you want, or maybe a few new books, but I have to get you back for thinking of how to dress in a manner that conveniences me.”

“You’re giving me four thousand dollars this month. I am not letting you buy dinner.”

“New rule, then,” he says. “Rule number four: in addition to the four thousand dollars monthly, I get to buy you dinner and gifts whenever I please.”

“You’re only doing that out of spite,” you say pointedly. “You said four thousand was the max amount you could give me while living within your means.”

“I said it was the amount I could give you, not the max amount,” Lawrence says. “Realistically I could afford close to five thousand, but I figured that spoiling you to some extent would come into play at one point or the next, so I rounded down.”

“Fine,” you nod. “I accept the rule. What’s your favorite color?”

“That’s a tie between dark blue, dark green, and maroon,” he says. “Why do you ask?”

You bite your bottom lip lightly. “While I am privy to owning a decent set to feel confident once in a while, I do want it to look so good that you can’t resist the urge to see what’s underneath. Your favorite color is the place to start in figuring that out, one would think.”

He puts one hand on your hip, a smirk kicking up the corner of his mouth. “I won’t be needed at work until nine tomorrow morning,” he says. “I’m going to make this worth it for us both, mm?”

You nod. All you want him to do is either start rubbing your clit while he kisses you, or for his fingers to be in your mouth again.

“Hows the oral fixation?”

“Still doing it’s thing,” you say, biting your lip again. “Why?”

“Be a good puppy for me and kneel, Y/N.”

You do as he says without having to think twice, becoming eye-level with his half hard cock and almost moaning as you look at it.

“What do you wanna do from where you are?” Your gaze goes to his.

Your tongue pokes out from between your lips, and suddenly thoughts of sucking him off cloud your mind entirely.

“Go on, puppy. Speak.”

“Wanna suck you off,” you whisper. “Wanna—oh my God. Lawrence please—”

“Do as you please, puppy,” he whispers. “I’m not gonna tell you no.”

You lean in, smelling him through his pants before you undo the zipper, button, and pull them and his boxers down, taking his half hard cock into your mouth within seconds.

“Good—holy fuck,” Lawrence moans. “Your mouth is amazing.”

You hum in response, tongue finding the underside of his length and setting a pace that clearly drives Lawrence a little insane. When a hand falls to your hair and he sets a pace of his own, you let him, just enjoying the feeling of his cock in your mouth.

He finishes in your mouth a few minutes later, and you swallow his cum without thinking. It makes him laugh even as he apologises for coming so suddenly, wiping what of it had dribbled to your chin after he’s helped you stand.

He presses his thumb against your bottom lip and you take it into your mouth, getting the cum off of it and grinning slightly when he thanks you for the deed.

He sits down on the long end of the couch, having pulled his boxers and his pants back up.

His gaze meets yours, and he smirks. “C’mere, puppy. Sit on my lap.”

You do as he tells you, sitting on his lap so that your thighs sit on either side of his. His hands find your hips pretty quickly, and all you want to do is kiss him, but you refrain.

“Did Aurelie offer to help, or did you ask?” Lawrence asks.

“I called,” you laugh a bit. “Defeating the hyper independence one phone call at time, I guess. Plus, she wasn’t working and told me to call her if I needed anything. My mind has been pretty fuzzy since last night, when I tried to think of everything I’d need to buy, and I called her to avoid having a breakdown. Without her helping me figure stuff out and then going with me to grab it I would’ve cried a lot more today, to say the least of it.”

“Good,” Lawrence says. “And you called me because you were alone, horny, and needing company?”

You nod. “I know our first—encounter—was the other day, but I just—”

Lawrence nods like he understands, and part of you believes that he does. “Can I kiss you, puppy?”

“Please, Lawrence.”

And then his lips are on yours, and he’s letting you press his back against the couch as your hands cup his face and sit at the bottom end of his neck, and it’s so, so easy to get lost in it.

Lawrences tongue darts out to your bottom lip while one of his hands moves from your hip to your clit, resulting in the sound of a hushed gasp befalling your lips. Lawrence uses it to his advantage, tongue finding its way into your mouth while he rubs excruciatingly slow circles around your clit.

“Lawrence,” you moan, desperately clenching around nothing in order to avoid grinding down onto him. “Oh, Lawrence. Please.”

“Not yet, puppy,” he whispers, pulling away from your lips just enough to talk. “You got a bit mouthy earlier, yeah?”

You bite your lip, nodding slightly.

“Well, I believe I made a point about there being ways to punish you that don’t involve pain?”

“Mm,” you hum. “You’re not going to be needed at work until nine tomorrow, which means—”

“Realistically, I don’t have a need to be home until around one, which means I have you until at least midnight, which is, what? Six and a half hours out?”

“Lawrence—” you whimper. “Please, sir. Please don’t make me wait that long.”

“Aw, you think using an honorific is gonna make me take mercy? Puppy, I love it when you address me as such, but you did this to yourself, yeah? You can’t tell me what to do, sweetness. I’m the one who does the ordering. Be a good puppy for the next thirty minutes and I promise, the punishment stops and the reward begins, okay?”

You clench around air again, nod and let him go back to kissing you.

He kisses you until your head is spinning, and when he pulls away, you find that it’s only been a few minutes. Your head rests on his shoulder as you catch your breath, both of his hands returning to your hips.

“Take my cock out of my boxers for me, yeah?”

“Had you kept the pants and boxers off, it would’ve been easier,” you sass before you can stop yourself.

Lawrences response is a nod, a kiss to the side of your head. “Do as I say, puppy,” he says. “Good puppies get treats, and if you don’t do as I say, you’ll just be punished until midnight, and when I leave, you’ll have gotten a free dinner but sexually? You’ll be dissatisfied for at least another few days.”

“Sorry, Lawrence.” You lift yourself off him and pull his pants and boxers down, waiting for him to do the last of the work before you sit on his lap again, hovering just over his length.

“It’s okay, puppy,” he whispers, kissing your cheekbone. “You’re allowed to stop hovering.”

“If I don’t, then you’ll—I’ll—do you want us to use condoms?”

“I got a vasectomy in October, and Plan B pills are a thing,” he says. “You said you were clear for STIs, so I’m not worried. Go on, Y/N, but only if you’re comfortable.”

You slide yourself onto him, letting yourself be split open by his length, watching the way that he reacts to it.

The way that Lawrence reacts has to be one of the most attractive things you’ve ever seen—he rests his arms on the back of the couch, and as soon as you’ve taken the tip, his head tilts back.

When you’re close to bottoming out, a long, depraved, drawn out “fuck,” falls from his gorgeous lips.

When you do bottom out, you let yourself moan, let your head fall onto Lawrences shoulder.

“Gotta stay still, puppy,” Lawrence says. “No moving, yeah?”

You whimper, biting down onto Lawrences shoulder in order to keep yourself from doing so.

“I know, Y/N. Twenty minutes until six, mm?” He laughs, one hand slipping beneath the sweater you wear. “You can’t react, either. No clenching, no moving, nothing. Biting, moaning, and whimpering are allowed, though. You’re cute when you get needy, so it seems.”

His hand finds your lower stomach and he presses down, and you have to fight every single reactive urge to do as you’ve been told. Instead, you moan lewdly, the pressure of your bite against his clothed shoulder increasing.

“Good puppy,” he praises, his voice a whisper. “Oh, you really are a good listener. You like how this feels?”

“Lawrence,” you moan desperately. “’M sorry about the bite—I’m scared I might’ve bruised.”

You kiss the area of his shoulder you’d bitten while he laughs.

“You’re just doing as I told you, yeah? The pain wasn’t bad compared to the other stuff I’ve been through.”

At that, you remember his foot, or lack thereof, and just how long he's probably been wearing his prosthesis, which just has to hurt by that point. But no, of course you'd completely forgotten about potential discomfort when horny and wanting, though it was something you had taken account for when you'd talked in not-sexually-driven situations.

“Shit!” You curse. “I’m so sorry—I just—”

“I try not to make a huge deal of it,” he says. “It’s really no concern.”

When he finds that you still look a little unsure, he laughs and presses a kiss to your lips. “It’s all right, puppy. I promise, I'm fine. Nothing hurts, aches, or itches as far as my footless leg is concerned, yeah? Just relax for me, mm?”

You nod, still feeling guilty. Lawrence presses a kiss to your forehead and the next twenty minutes are spent with him letting you thrust once or twice every few minutes, his fingers rubbing slow circles around your clit.

When six hits, Lawrence beams. “You’re allowed to move,” he says. “But don’t come yet, yeah? Wanna spread you out on this couch.”

You do as he says, setting a pace that’s just quick enough to make you teeter along the edge within minutes but not enough to come. When Lawrence has had enough, he tells you as much, telling you to get off of him and lie on your back.

You do as he tells you, watching him take off his shirt and tie like it’s a strip show. When finally his lips are on you again, he’s kissing your thighs and making his way to where you need him most.

Once there, he presses a kiss against your clit, then runs his tongue gently through your folds.

“You’re so wet,” he laughs. “You really do get turned on easily, mm?”

Your response comes as a half-laugh, half whimper, and it just eggs Lawrence on. His tongue attaches itself to your clit and you clench around pretty much nothing, one hand finding your nipple beneath the sweater while the other grips the back of the couch like it’s a lifeline.

“Lawrence,” you moan as his lips and tongue move down to your hole. You pinch your nipple between your fingers and Lawence laughs at how desperate you sound for him.

His nose presses against your clit and you grind against him, moaning lewdly. “You're using your fucking nose—ohmygod,” you moan, having a split second wherein you don’t care about how loud you’re being. “Oh, fuck, Lawrence—”

Although he’d only gotten divorced four, maybe five months beforehand, it’s clear that he knows what he’s doing—whether it’s muscle memory from the early days of his marriage or something he’d picked up in the time since his divorce, you’re glad for it.

“Lawrence—ohmyfuckinggod—” you grind against his face and he laughs, nodding slightly.

“Use me, baby,” he says, pressing a kiss to your clit. “Use my mouth, yeah? Don’t worry about anything, just focus on yourself.”

You do as he says, letting yourself set a pace while Lawrrences hands move up to your stomach.

“Fuck, Lawrence,” you moan, inches away from releasing over his face. “Lawrence—I—”

“Go ahead,” he presses his tongue flat against your clit as you grind against him and that’s basically the final straw—when he buries his face in your cunt again, you cum over his face with your thighs pressing against the sides of it, holding him in place slightly.

He stays with you through the aftershocks and comes up to kiss you once all is said and done, and once again—depraved but so fucking hot because you can taste yourself on his tongue. The kiss is intense but also everything you need to relax, and when Lawrence pulls away, you tell him there are wash cloths in the bathroom and that he’s welcome to take a shower if he sees fit, but you’re exhausted and sprawled out over the couch is the way you aim to stay.

He leaves your side and is back twenty minutes later with a damp washcloth, which he runs over your exposed cunt and then himself. He helps you get to standing and leads you to the primary suite, grabbing you a pair of sweatpants and a baggy sweater after locating them easily in your wardrobe. You wobble back to the living room while Lawrence gets dressed again, plopping into the rocking chair you’ve placed in the corner of the room.

Lawrence checks the couch for stains and both of you are surprised to find that there are none, though Lawrence cleans the area anyway before he calls and orders delivery to your apartment.

“I know we said no staying post-coitus,” you murmur. “But—you have until midnight, yeah? Stay for a while.”

Lawrence nods. “I’ll at least stay for a while after dinner,” he says. You stand, sit in the love seat. Lawrence sits down next to you, wraps an arm around your shoulders. “I do want to get to know you more—I feel like we don’t know each other as well as we should.”

You smirk. “I’m entitled to my secrets, and you are to yours.”

“Yes, that is a fair point, but part of me wants to know everything about you that’s not a secret, Y/N.”

“Don’t forget one of the first rules we made—you’re not allowed to fall in love with me.”

“I wouldn’t hate loving you in the platonic sense of the word,” Lawrence says. “That’s what I aim to do.”

You hum, press a kiss to his shoulder. “’Mkay,” you nod. “Loving me platonically is allowed, says the judge of whatever the fuck this is going to turn into.”

Lawrence laughs.

For a split second, you feel the urge to freeze the moment in time, to treasure the simple domesticity of it.

You want to stay in that pocket of time forever, Lawrences arm wrapped around your shoulders, your cheek pressed just above his chest, so blissful that nothing else in the world matters to you or him, so well hidden away from the rest of the world that nothing can find you or be bothered with looking.

You brush it off quickly—the first rule of the agreement had been that you weren’t allowed to fall in love with each other. You were not going to start falling for a man you could not have, one that would not want you in turn.

#lawrence gordon #lawrence gordon x reader #saw (2004)#saw posting #sawposting

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jagdishstore · 1 year

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embossross · 2 years

Text

The Devotion of the Girl in the Mirror

Chapter 2 >> Chapter 3 >> Masterlist

✣ Pairing: Rindou x AFAB fem!Reader

✣ Warning: 18+ explicit content, minors DNI

✣ Series: part of the In the Belly of the Beast fic universe

✣ Chapter CW: (so many omg) dom!Rindou, ptv sex, orgasm denial/control/ruin, spit kink (excessive amounts), degradation, cervix fucking, mean/hard dom, nipple pinching, flexible reader, mentions of overstim, spanking, vibrator use, flogging. mentions of domestic violence/murder (not reader or Rindou), mating press

✣ Story CWs: BDSM dob/sub relationship; sex (oral, ptv, pta, etc.); genre typical drug use, alcohol, smoking

✣ Synopsis: A story of two lonely people find love for better or worse. Or, dom!Rindou is sweet on his girl. Or, on paper, you and Rindou have nothing in common. But sometimes chemistry defies logic, and with every conversation, you find yourself more bewitched until all you see, smell, or hear is Rindou.

✣ Word Count: 12.5k+

“Describe your perfect day,” you murmur.

It is a sleepy command, the heat of the bath leeching what little energy you both have left, and yet loud as the tiny bathroom is an acoustic masterpiece, echoing the words back to him.

Rindou lies with his back propped in the bath, knees bent to fit the tub and thighs spread to fit your body. Your back nestles into his chest, the crown of your head even with his lips. He can’t resist taking big breathfuls of your scent as the clean shampoo smell drifts up to his nose. There is no place for his hands to rest other than your supple body, and he casually holds your breasts in each palm, just enjoying the weight of them and the way your nipples pebble in the cool air.

“My perfect day, huh?” Rindou muses. “It would have to be a day off, I suppose.”

“Naturally.”

“And, you’d be there,” Rindou hums into your ear.

“Even more naturally,” you agree primly.

Rindou tweaks your nipple, and you squeal. Water sloshes over the rim and drenches the bathmat as you squirm in his unrelenting hold.

“What a cocky brat,” Rindou says mournfully, but internally he marvels for the nth time at how seamlessly you’ve carved out a place in his life, how quickly you’ve become the best part of his day, his week. It defies everything he understands of women, of himself, and yet here you are, nuzzling into his chest like a prized cat and whispering sweet nothings into his ear. “My perfect day…I guess I’d want to get out and see as much of the city as possible, do as much as possible. Maybe start with a walk at Yoyogi Park, get breakfast from a street vendor, take you to a flea market and buy you whatever you want.”

“Is this my perfect day or yours?” you laugh, and the vibration of your chest shifts your tits in his hands.

“Hmm, actually, let’s go back a step. First, I’d wake you up with my cock in your cunt. Just lazy spooning until I fill this pussy up,” Rindou says. His fingers dance to your mound, twirling through the short hairs there and gliding through the seam that blocks your pussy from him. It parts easily at the slightest pressure.

“Again, is this my perfect day or yours?”

“And, then I’d take you out. Wherever you wanted to go, an art gallery, coffee –”

“A bookstore café,” you interrupt eagerly.

“Sure, a bookstore café and –”

Before he can continue, you interrupt again, “And would I have taken a shower that morning, sir? Or would you be showing me off around the city while my pussy is filled with cum?”

Rindou groans, for one moment utterly at your mercy as he pictures your stained thighs, skirt so short that anyone who looked carefully would know what a mess he made of your drippy cunt. He would let you wear panties, just to guarantee you kept his cum close for hours.

He can’t resist rubbing touching you, heavy palm slowly waking your clit up from its slumber as he rubs around it.

“Naughty little slut. Of course, I’d keep you dripping with me. Nothing’s free either. Everything I bought you would cost you, too. One belt against this hot ass per.”

You strain back into him, your ass sinking into the crease of his thighs, and gasp, “Yes! I’d try to buy everything!”

“I know. A pain slut like you would earn her whipping,” Rindou agrees. He feels your clit peak through your hood and redirects his fingers to your slick mouth, wetting them thoroughly against your velvet tongue before returning to tease slow circles around your it. With your hips canted up, the waters don’t quite reach the height to wash away your spit.

“After shopping?” you moan.

“Hmm, I think we’d go right home. You’d need to pay for your frivolous purchases. Wasting my money like that? I’d have to teach you a lesson. I’d bend you over standing, right in front of a mirror, so you can see what a whore you are when you take my belt, and then I’d whip your ass black and blue.”

“Would I cry?”

“Of course, slut. You’d be sobbing before I was done.” Your nails scramble desperately up and down his arm, sparking little pinpricks of pain. “Don’t you dare cum! Greedy bitch.”

“No, sir!” you gasp, but he can see by your tensed thighs that you are fighting your way back from the edge of oblivion. To be mean, he rubs a little directly over your clit, and you keen but don’t cum. Your head thrashes back and forth, almost bucking into his nose, but you don’t cum.

Since you started seeing each other, you have cum five times without permission, each one an accident you dearly regretted even before your punishment. And punish you he did. Each second of pleasure was paid back a hundred-fold, for the first in orgasm denial, for the second in bruises to the back of your throat, for the third bruises to your tits and thighs, and for the fourth stripes to the back. The last time, he took a different approach. Tying you to a vibrator at the highest-setting, Rindou left you for hours until your tears ran dry like a desert, your brain foggy, and your clit numb to anything for a week. You have behaved since.

Stirring with pride at your continued restraint – the restraint he taught you – Rindou kisses your quivering cheeks and slows his fingers.

“After, we’d do this. Exactly this. I’d hold you in the hot water, soothe your welts, kiss away every pretty tear.”

“This is nice,” you agree, and when you present your lips for a kiss, he can’t resist giving you several, darting around the edges of your mouth until you are smiling.

The blanks of his so-called perfect day fill in readily, and Rindou continues, “Then, you’d need to rest up, so I’d put you in bed for an hour, while I go to the gym –”

“So, this is the part where you come up with a way to get rid of me. I see how it is,” you say.

“Oh, suddenly interested in weightlifting? In MMA? You wanna come to the gym with me?” Rindou challenges.

“Well, no. I think I’ll enjoy my nap,” you concede.

The ghost of a smile lingers on the corner of your lips. You know just how funny you are, never quite bratting as you obey all commands without argument, but playfully teasing him until he puts you back in your place. Rindou enjoys your teasing almost as much as he enjoys showing you exactly where you belong.

“After the gym, we’d go out clubbing, somewhere so loud and so crowded we can’t hear ourselves think. And we’d dance until the club closes. I’d dress you up in something nice and slutty, so that I can get a hand on this ass whenever I want, so that when I grind into you, you feel every part of me. You’d be so sore still, wincing whenever I rubbed you the wrong way. I could just reach over and pinch you at any moment, bring tears back to your eyes.”

Rindou resumes his fingers on your clit, amping them up faster and faster until you shiver. Your lower lip is ripe and red from where you bite into it. A screamer always presents a lot of fun, and you scream as loud as anyone he’s ever met.

“We’d be all but fucking by the time we leave the club. I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off you,” Rindou murmurs, breath tickling the shell of your ear. “And when we got back, I wouldn’t. I’d fuck you face down, ass up, while you begged to cum until you were hoarse. I’d put my hands around your throat, squeezing just right so you can’t breathe, can’t think, can hear your pussy pounding so loud. I’d drag you around by your hair, manhandle you like my little fucktoy.”

“Sir!” you gasp, scrambling.

Peering at you sideways, Rindou notes the wildness in your eyes. Ever atom of your body is poised for the fall, taut and trembling with the strength it takes not to cum. Your nipples are so tight and chewable. He can’t resist tugging on one cruelly, and now you shriek.

“Please can I cum, sir? Please, sir. Please!”

“On my perfect day, I would let you cum if you begged me prettily enough,” Rindou says conversationally, above the desperate pleas that spill forth from your lips. “I’d let you cum, but then I wouldn’t stop. I’d rub your clit for hours, make you cum again and again until you were begging me to deny you. Maybe I’d use up all your orgasms for the whole year. Whenever you begged to cum in the future, I’d be able to remind you how many times I’d let you cum already. Only a greedy whore would beg for more.”

“I’m begging, sir. I’m begging!”

Your fat clit pulses between his fingers, and Rindou draws it side to side. He watches the panic in your eyes with cruel pride. As desperate as you are to cum for pleasure’s sake, you are twice as desperate to earn his permission before you fail. You can only stay at the precipice so long, lacking the years of orgasm denial and control that seasoned subs could boast, and soon, you will cum regardless of whether he grants you permission.

Yet, you don’t want to disappoint him. You so badly don’t want to disappoint him, in fact, that you draw your own arm to your mouth and bite down into the fragile skin. It breaks and little beads of blood run down into the waters you share and dye them pink. A stupid move from a stupid little pain slut. Your hips buck. If anything, the pain only brings you closer to the edge.

Rindou laughs down at your pitiful face, decides maybe you deserve a little mercy if only because you are so pathetic.

“Do you really want to cum so badly?” he asks.

“Please, sir,” you slur around the blood in your teeth.

“Go ahead and cum then, slut,” Rindou coos.

He rubs circles onto your clit for a few more seconds until your body is tight as a rubber band stretched to its limits. You snap. Your orgasm starts to unwind from your cunt, and Rindou removes his fingers, removes his hands, removes his lips from your neck. He leaves you entirely empty and untouched.

Ruined.

You scream.

Quickly, he pins your arms with one hand and keeps your thighs separated with the other. Your body fights him, trying with everything it has to get some friction, but all you can do is writhe in his unforgiving hold as your orgasm is ruined. The pathetic, aborted orgasm falls to nothing, the memory of almost pleasure making the denial even more brutal.

“Aww, aren’t I so generous? Giving a greedy whore a ruin when she hasn’t even earned one. What do you say?” Rindou taunts.

Something incomprehensible escapes your lips, a little angry but mostly broken and agonized. Rindou smiles at the rictus of pain on your features and prompts you a second time.

“Thank…you…sir,” you pant through gritted teeth.

“Aww, any time baby,” he says.

The serenity of your bath is broken now, the romance disintegrated by his games, but he feels closer to you than ever as your body instinctually clings to his for comfort. He kisses your hair and runs strong hands up and down your sides. The water is long cold, so he drains the tub and wraps you in a fuzzy towel. Life returns to your eyes as he warms you up.

Later, as you both get dressed, he feels your eyes on his back. You keep your silence for several minutes, rare for you.

Finally, you say, “Hey, Rindou…Is that really your perfect day?”

He isn’t lying when he answers, “Yes, sweet girl. That’s my perfect day.”

If he fakes an asthma attack, will the others finally take his complaints about their incessant smoking seriously? Or will they just laugh as he heaves?

Safe Heaven, like always, is wreathed in smoke. It circles upwards until it disappears into the vents to be recirculated into their weary lungs in an endless, cancerous loop. If he coughs up phlegm on Mochi’s paunchy face, Rindou thinks the man may finally take him seriously about those smelly cigars.

While never intended to become Bonten’s go-to-place for casual meetings, Safe Heaven has become unavoidable. It is Ran’s domain, a gentleman’s club where the girls are discrete and the drinks top-shelf by default. Mochi loves it here. He especially loves the pink-haired darling, appropriately named Candy, who works up front and giggles at his every joke like he’s George Carlin reincarnated. Mochi eats that shit up. And since Mochi’s smuggling operation can’t be disentangled from Rindou’s domestic drug trafficking, he finds himself regularly seated in one of the soundproofed backrooms to discuss business.

As the smoke clings to his lungs like crud, Rindou swears he feels the years sliding off his lifespan.

All of the usual suspects gather around the table – Ran, Mochi, Rindou – plus the less common but not unheard of Takeomi, Sanzu, and Wakasa. Tonight, they have caught a big fish.

The fish – one Ushioda Junichi – cries alone in Ran’s office. At twenty-two years old with a degree from Tokyo University, everyone would agree he’s a fine young man from a fine young family.

Yesterday when he hit the town and one of Bonten’s clubs with his friends, his life was a wide open plain of possibilities, every day promising something better than the last. Tonight, after waking up from a bender with the blood of his girlfriend drenching his hands, Ushioda still believed he might have a future once he got his story straight. Then, Ran found him, showed the security footage of just how brutally he beat the life from his girlfriend in the alley outside the club, reminded him of the sentence for murder. Now, his wracking cries are louder than the sound proofing, his life shrunk to the size of a tick.

Rindou almost feels bad for him. He knows what it’s like to be out of options. But he watched the video too and knows the scumbag deserves to rot.

Kicked back on a leather sofa with a cigarette burning to nothing in his hand, Ran updates the group on the opportunity Ushioda presents, “From what I could gather, Ushioda’s daddy is the kind of man who would jump out of a window before he saw the family name shamed. He built their family up from nothing. He’ll leap at the chance to cover up what the kid did.”

“Does he like the kid?” Mochi asks.

“Piece of shit burns the man’s entire life down in a blackout? Of course, he doesn’t like him,” Sanzu guffaws.

“Poor men who grow rich always hate the kids they raise. They resent them,” Wakasa wisely intones.

“Not necessarily –” Takeomi argues. The image of his kids, spoiled and spared the horrors of the street, probably flashes before his eyes.

“Maybe not,” Ran interrupts, returning them to the subject at hand. “But he loves him. He’s his only son.”

“So, he loves the kid and will play ball to cover it up. What does that mean for us?” Rindou asks.

“Ushioda Shotaro is the Senior Vice President of Operations at Acme Corporation, which means he’s ultimately responsible for supply chain and manufacturing of their semiconductors. Acme Corporation is one of the few companies manufacturing their semiconductors in Japan, and they import the base components through the Port of Nagoya, mostly from China,” Ran explains.

“And that is a windfall opportunity for us,” Mochi grunts, sounding sober for once as this is his area of expertise. “Since 2005, freight shipping’s been a pipedream for us as far as trafficking. Customs is clenched down tighter than Takeomi’s asshole. But that’s not the case for the mega corporations. Customs barely glances at what they’re importing, and if they ask to expedite, they are greenlit without a second thought. We use Acme as a front to ship through all the meth we got from the Chinese. We don’t have to worry about our mules getting picked up at the airports, no risky line back to us, no lost merchandise. And we can move a lot of it.”

“We talking about one big shipment, or are we trying to slip it in every shipment for months? If so, we’d need a whole new operation in Nagoya,” Rindou says.

“Think we need to meet with Ushioda to know, but I’m hoping we can wring this guy dry. Could be our path to heroin,” Mochi says.

Everyone sucks in a breath at the prospect.

Heroin is a money-maker, the drug that could catapult Bonten’s revenues from the tens of billions to the hundreds of billions. There is no domestic market for it. Yet. But Rindou knows how they will introduce it, has studied the proliferation in the US and knows that once people get a taste, they’ll come back for more, and they’ll find Bonten, raising the prices higher and higher.

Rindou doesn’t consider himself very ambitious, the job’s a bore, the money’s good but it makes no difference to him if they grow or stagnate, but even he gets goosebumps imagining this windfall.

The only person who remains dull eyed at the thought is Wakasa. Everyone knows that cousin of his is an addict, lost somewhere with a needle in her arm. She stays far away from Tokyo where Wakasa might find her and throw her into rehab. She hasn’t been seen in a few years. Sharp-eyed, Rindou catches how Takeomi looks to Wakasa first at Mochi’s announcement, puts business second to Wakasa’s personal life.

Like he knows everyone is waiting, Wakasa speaks next, “Well, what are we fucking waiting for? Let’s tell the pig to take us home to Daddy.”

Sanzu doesn’t need more encouragement. He throws open the door to the office with a cackle and the sound of cracking knuckles. He’s high, brimming with violence. Ushioda should be crying. More measuredly behind him, Takeomi follows.

Given how this opportunity may mean major changes to his operation, Rindou almost stands to follow, but then his phone lights up with a notification from you. Once he dreaded the buzz of his phone, but lately he feels a little…pleased when it flashes because it may be a text from you.

You’re constantly sending him the dumbest shit he’s ever seen: cats racing on treadmills, squealing gifs of anime girls, obscure references to books he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know how you find these memes or how to go about sending one back. All of Rindou’s knowledge of emojis come from Sanzu, who texts in hieroglyphics because he says it’ll be harder to use as evidence. Sanzu favors the vomit emoji, which so far, Rindou has avoided sending to you. The whole thing makes him feel like an old man.

Checking his phone, he sees you haven’t sent him a new meme but a link to a movie playing in Shinjuku next weekend. They’re reshowing Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai, a movie you know he can’t resist.

It would be your second movie date. Rindou regularly revisits the memory of that first, how you clung to his arm as he played with the settings on the vibrator in your pussy, quiet enough that no one could overhear, but loud enough that you didn’t realize they couldn’t, shuddering in fear at the threat of discovery. In the dark, there was no one to see you squirm when he sucked a line up your throat or caressed your inner arms. The whole time, you stared straight forward, never cumming like the good little edge slut he promised to train you into. What shocked him most was after, when you called one of your friends and recited the entire plot of the movie, character names and all, without missing a detail. Despite his best efforts, you enjoyed the movie to its fullest.

“Look at that grin! Who’s making little Rinny smile like that?” Ran coos.

The phone is locked and in his pocket in the span of a second.

Not for the first time, Rindou wishes there could be something on the ceiling, so he could pretend a distraction. His favorite strategy, faking a can’t-miss email, is out of the question given the circumstances. If he had a lighter, maybe he could set off the fire alarm? Maybe, he thinks, everyone smokes because it gives them an excuse to do something with their hands.

“Nothing,” he grunts. “Wanna bet how long it takes Sanzu to break him? I think we’ll hear screams in two minutes.”

No one takes the bait.

“Nothing? You were grinning at your phone like it just told you you’re going to be a father, and congratulations, it’s a boy,” Ran says.

“I thought you said it was good news,” Wakasa snarks, just as Mochi chimes in with his own attempt at a witticism, “Or like it just promised you a blow job.”

“It’s your mom. She sent nudes,” Rindou snipes back at Mochi, though the man is too busy smirking over at Ran in mutual glee to care.

“So, who is she? The girl who makes my brother smile,” Ran pesters.

“There is no girl.”

Trading places with Ushioda would be preferable to standing the guys’ bullshit. They all take the piss out of each other constantly, but Rindou finds himself in the hotseat more than anyone else because Ran lives to put him there.

His pocket vibrates twice with yet another message from you, but Rindou doesn’t dare check it. Instead, he affects the patented you’re-full-of-shit eye roll that he’s been using against Ran for nearly three decades and loosens his tie.

“Really, Rin…” Ran shakes his head.

“Maybe it’s not a girl,” Wakasa volunteers. “Maybe he’s addicted to those…what are those perverted games otaku are always playing? Where you like roll to own a pair of tits?”

“Gacha games,” Ran volunteers happily.

“Yeah, those. Benkei’s addicted to ‘em, and when he plays, he’s always smiling like a demon at his phone,” Wakasa says.

Behind the shag of his bangs, Rindou’s face conveys nothing but yawning boredom. Ran can get a rise from him, but no one else. As no more than Machi’s top goon, stuck on the miserable human trafficking gig that no one else wanted, Wakasa is beneath Rindou’s notice. Mochi too, though it is slightly more annoying as Mochi can egg Ran on to greater heights of sibling pettiness if he tries. Those two always make each other laugh.

“Don’t tell me you’ve gotten into V-Tubers, Rin. We can get you a real girl if you’re struggling,” Ran says, and immediately Rindou’s composure breaks.

“Oi! Sanzu! Hurry it the fuck up!” Rindou shouts, banging on the wall a few times for good measure.

Pissing Rindou off has its shelf-life like any diversion and eventually, reluctantly, the others move onto new topics of conversation.

They never hear Ushioda’s scream because he faints at the first suggestion of threat. When he comes to, he calls his father without argument. Ran arranges a neutral location for the meeting, and Takeomi schedules it for later that night. Takeomi, Sanzu, and Mochi will take it from here.

The hour is late, and Rindou wants to squeeze in one last workout before the dawn saturates the sky with color. As he stands to leave, Ran follows. Together they walk into the brisk night air.

Even on a weeknight, a steady stream of patrons come in and out of Save Heaven. It caters to trust fund brats that have never woken early for a hard day’s work in their life, boys with popped collars and starvation-sharp collar bones. In the day, these boys rule the world with daddy’s money, but here, outside Safe Heaven, with the moon a beacon in the sky, they give Rindou and Ran a respectful berth, nodding a little as they pass without daring to eavesdrop lest they learn something unlearnable. None of them would guess the two intimidating yakuza are discussing their love lives.

“Hey, you know I think it’s good, right? That you have a girlfriend,” Ran says.

A large crack splits the sidewalk, and Rindou toes the crevice with the tip of his boot, wondering if he can widen it large enough to escape this conversation altogether.

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Rindou insists.

“Sure, sure. Whatever you say. I just think it sounds like a good thing for you. And I wanna meet her when you’re ready,” Ran says.

“You are not meeting her!”

“Uh-huh,” Ran sings with the shit-eating grin of a professional shit-eater. “So, there is a her, huh?”

“I’m seeing a girl right now, yeah. But she’s not my girlfriend. It’s not a big deal,” Rindou says.

“It is a big deal,” Ran protests. “You’ve never had a girlfriend before!”

“First of all, yes I fucking have. Second of all, am I going batshit? Or did I not just say she is not my girlfriend?”

“In middle school! Honestly, at your age it’s just too embarrassing to count that.”

This is what Ran does best, gets him stuck on some garbage side point, wasting all his energies arguing something that doesn’t matter, so he is defenseless when Ran returns to the real subject. Usually, Rindou is a master at evading Ran’s every strategy, but tonight he is easily baited. He takes a deep breath, reminds himself to slow down and stop reacting to start thinking.

“Whatever. I’m just saying, I’m not Mikey. It’s not like I never see the same woman twice. I have seen lots of girls before. No need to make it some big thing,” Rindou says.

“Maybe…but if a woman can make you smile like that, I’d like to meet her,” Ran says quietly, with a voice far too sincere for a night when there are no shadows to take the brunt of his fraternal attack, just too brothers standing together.

Unable to stay angry when Ran is serious, Rindou feels his teeth unclench, his shoulders loosen. Something streaks across the sky, and Rindou thinks for a split-second it is a shooting star, feels the soaring hope of a child, and then realizes it’s nothing more than a Chinese satellite. He is too old and has seen too much to believe in fairytales.

“She’s a nice girl,” Rindou admits quietly. “Even if I wanted to bring her around …she doesn’t belong in this world. Doesn’t know what I do, and I can’t tell her.”

“Not necessarily –”

“You of all people know how it works,” Rindou interrupts.

The specter of Miki, a love long dead stirs between them, and Rindou almost feels guilt at nudging that old wound. It is scarred over, yet somehow still bleeds whenever Ran thinks too long about the only woman he’s ever loved. A woman who staring down the barrel of an uncertain and violent future, picked up and left, leaving Ran behind with the memories to haunt him.

You would do the same. Worse, because at least Miki was game for a while before she changed her mind. Rindou knows you would run home to your mother’s apartment, your childhood bed, your young and lively friends at the first suggestion of the truth. So many of the things he likes most about you – your softness, your smiles, your honesty and freely given trust – couldn’t survive the word he lives in.

There are only three options for men like them. They can live like Mikey with a sporadic array of one-night stands, like Mochi with a few chosen whores that playact a real relationship for the right price, or like Takeomi with a marriage built on a foundation of deceit. He won’t turn you into the latter option.

“If you wanna use Miki, then at least get it right. Yeah, Miki made a choice, but she made a choice because I gave her one. I wasn’t a coward. I didn’t piss away true love because I was too scared to look it in the eye,” Ran says, voice hard, though Rindou knows that Ran must still be feeling affectionate towards him or he’d be on his back with a black eye for daring to mention Miki like this.

He claps Ran on the shoulder, a half-baked apology. Stands there as his brother smokes yet another cigarette and doesn’t even complain as the wind whips the smoke in his direction.

As they linger on the curb, the cityscape sounds competing with the thundering bass of the club inside, Rindou wonders where everyone got the idea you’re some great love.

He doesn’t believe in that fairytale shit.

You’re a cute girl, but he doesn’t love you.

He doesn’t.

Fucking you is like biting into a ripe peach. The hint of pressure, a squeeze, and juice dribbles on his tongue, a smearing mess made of your thighs. Sometimes, Rindou presses his nose into the center of your panties and breathes. He can smell the wetness deep inside you. All that fresh, tangy cum that you relinquish only at his command.

Like a peach, you bruise easily too. You walk away from every date covered in his marks. Fingerprints brand your hips, purpling welts cling to your ass, flames on your tits.

Rindou makes a habit, at the start of every date, of spanking your ass just once. It’s like a greeting. The flouncy, darling skirts you wear flip up at his nod, and then he delivers a quick smack to the center of your quivering cheeks. Hours later, when you finish your meal – or movie or dance or walk in the park, or any of a dozen other dream dates made reality – and he shepherds you to a love hotel, he will bend you over and there will be the mark of his handprint, still visible and impassioned on your cute ass.

The sight makes him burn for you.

One day, he lays newspaper on the bathroom floor and orders you to lie still for him. There, he traces each bruise and mark of your lovemaking with a calligraphy brush. Big, black strokes of ink memorializing the places where he marked you.

The paint is cold and the bristles coarse. Good girl that you are – and he never met anyone who earns this praise so easily – you follow his instructions not to move, but can’t help but flinch, a spasm of your lips and feet whenever the paint twirls across your navel. The breathiest sighs escape your lips whenever he leans close to blow cool air along his work, drying out the paint and beckoning goosepimples to rise along your arms.

He saves the photos he takes of you that day in his phone gallery, flips to them whenever there is a lull in his workday. They are hardly pornographic, kind of artsy thanks to the dim lighting, and yet something else. With your honest beauty, no one could mistake you for a professional model. Your eyes project too much raw vulnerability. A submission that haunts and entrances him. Since the night he met you, those eyes have owned him.

Finding places to meet, poses a challenge from day one. You require neutral, fertile ground.

There are dangers that lurk in the shadows of Rindou’s life, so his apartment is out of the question. Meanwhile, your mother looms like a vengeful dragon over the suggestion of yours.

So, like so many other young lovers, you make a home of love hotels.

In the sanctuary of the many love hotels around the city, you fuck and play like animals.

Through your eyes, he rediscovers the love hotel’s charms, the fun of it. With the right attitude, they become a kind of adult playland. The mirrors mounted on the ceiling can be a playful voyeur not just to sex but to a dance party; the karaoke machine is a must-try on every visit – watching your cute furrowed brow as you labor over what to sing before always going back to Alicia Keys, the English masticated on the already butchered notes you can never quite hit; the massagers are worth every yen when applied to stiff joints (and can double as makeshift vibrators with a little ingenuity); and you might as well take advantage of the free condoms, shoving extras in your pockets before leaving.

In each hotel, you always insist on a bath. You explain your mother taught you to never leave a hotel without at least trying the bathtub. Sometimes he joins you, but sometimes he watches from the bed as if you are a siren of shallow bath waters, hypnotized by the view of your elegant neck, the peak of a breast, the arm slung haphazardly over the rim to cool.

The seediest rooms turn glistening when you enter, like you can cleanse the dirt of the world and replace it with something new and shining. He forgets about the hairy couples that occupied the room before, about the outside world, and submits to the taste of your lips.

He loves the rare still moments, when he lays his head in the bony cradle of knees and thighs, closes his eyes and drifts off into a strange half sleep. Your songbird voice drifts over him as you recite the poetry of men and women long dead or from across a sea you never once crossed yourself. The emotion of the poems sweep you up like a song, and you rush through some lines to reach the emphatic point, voice pitching deep and low when you find a phrase particularly powerful, and jabbing aggressively, like a pen digging through paper to emphasize key lines.

He could listen to you talk for hours.

The smallest things excite you. And when excited, your voice rises in volume. You are loud in your pain, louder in your pleasure, and somehow louder still when your clothes are on, and you are talking up a storm. They receive noise complaint after noise complaint until Rindou gets into the habit of greasing the hand of the front desk clerk as they check in.

Friends and family must coddle you because you never realize. He won’t be the first person to hurt your feelings by revealing this flaw. In his estimation, it’s not much of a flaw anyway and he would hate if you clammed up because now, the world is wide open to you. Every day you learn something new, whether from class or the internet or your friends in passing, and you are so bright-eyed in your eagerness to share with him.

On days when you can’t meet in person, in the twilight hours when the city sighs out its last breaths, he calls you. You tell him about your day, about what you’ve learned, about who you’ve met, what you watch on TV or read in the pages of a book.

Through you, he learns what it’s like to be a university student: the late nighters to finish a paper, the argumentative study sessions when friendships strain over erudite nonsense before they repair over shared bottles of beer, and the uncontainable joy of finding a hundred yen note on the street because it means one more vending machine coffee before your bank account hits zero.

Another student could never teach him these things. Because you were nearly denied your collegiate opportunity, you embrace every day like a gift, and the mood is infectious.

One night, he stays on the phone with you for four hours. The time slips away unnoticed as you vent about your friends. An affair between two of your classmates, both of whom were in relationships with other members of your friend group, promises a schism that you assure him will make the breakdown of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches look like child’s play.

Rindou smiles as you passionately advocate in defense of your wronged friends. So easily you adopt the moral position. If reconciliation is impossible, the traitors ought to be excised from the group, the victims preserved. Nothing else would be fair. He admires your naivety even as he cautious you against being too loud or hasty in your judgment because he knows full well how often the villains come out on top.

One of your friends, Naoto, is another endless source of drama. Even though he isn’t a fellow student, already a suit-wearing graduate, he is a steady member of your friend group. Lately, he’s been prying into your comings and goings, like he doesn’t believe you are mature enough to make your own choices you complain. Your new relationship is an especial source of contention.

Twice now, Rindou joined your friends for brunch, meeting Naoto amid the sea of undergrads who fawned over him. He remembers Naoto as quiet, thoughtful, beneath his notice. Ever since, you say Naoto always wants to know where you are going, when you are meeting, what you talk about.

Rindou thinks Naoto has a fat hard-on for you but knows better than to say so. It will only make you angry, and you are cuter when you smile.

He starts looking for ways to make you smile. Your whimpers and tears are precious in the bedroom, but elsewhere, he likes to spoil you with the riches you never experience. Nothing too luxurious, but a locket here, a trinket there, a book you mentioned signed by the author, or a bottle of wine worth six weeks of your old salary. Each offering is met with a pretty kiss to his cheek, a whispered thank you, and then a screamingly denied orgasm before the night ends.

Right before the Christmas break, you call him amid squeals and screams so high-pitched they break the sound barrier. He pulls the receiver a few sparing centimeters from his ear and asks you to repeat yourself.

“I got the job! The library, Rindou! It doesn’t make any sense. Like, I literally can’t believe it. I am not qualified. I was already putting in applications at restaurants around campus, but now I don’t need to because I got the job!”

“Congratulations,” Rindou murmurs warmly.

“I’m going to hyperventilate. I’m so excited!” you shout. “I mean, even in my wildest dreams, I was hoping to get hired for the new term in April, but they say they have a sudden opening, and now I don’t have to wait! Can you believe it?”

The depth of your gratitude and excitement is the best Christmas present he could receive. He knows exactly how the sudden opening appeared at the library as he personally arranged it. He paid for a kid’s rent for the next year just so he would resign and recommend you for the job. It’s a happy Christmas for everyone involved.

“I’m going to take you out to dinner when I get my first paycheck. Just you wait!” you promise joyfully.

“Hmm, I’ll get the most expensive thing on the menu then.”

“Yes, whatever you want, baby! I’ve got it!” you are giggling madly, and he wishes he was there with you to sweep you up in the circle of his arms and swing you about until you collapse dizzy to the floor.

Making you happy is addictive but also reciprocal. Without seeming to try, you make him happy too.

The new year dawns with a sunny sky, so unerringly blue without clouds or gradation that it’s impossible to stare into it without seeing a world washed clean. New beginnings.

The first day of the year is meant to unfold as follows: wake up, work, waste time around the apartment, join Ran for an obligatory meal in celebration, back to the apartment and a YouTube rabbit hole.

You told him weeks ago that you would be out of commission until the end of the holidays. For the first time since he married, your brother, his wife, and kids are staying over. Every time Rindou scrolls your social media, you greet him with a new picture where you smile to outshine the sun, surrounded by people who share the same arched eyebrows and dimpled cheeks. Beyond a goodnight text, he hasn’t heard from you in nine days.

Rindou misses you in ways he can’t articulate even to himself.

Because he misses you, Rindou jumps when his phone rings and your name flashes across the screen. You should be deep in the midst of familial bliss right now. When he answers, you tell him that your brother’s family returned home early because the baby is colicky. Meanwhile, your mother’s arthritis has flared up, and she’s gone to the hospital, insisting you not join her lest you be cursed for the rest of the year. Rindou sprints to his car before you can even ask him to come over, having to circle back because he forgets his coat in the rush.

Two hours later, Rindou stands in line at Sensoji Temple, your little gloved hand warming his and the vendors hawking souvenirs at the captive audience echoing down the busy street.

Temple visits were a tradition he loathed back when his grandparents would force him along. Like most of their neighbors, his grandparents observed Buddhist rituals only when a holiday and good meal came attached. The hypocrisy would drive him crazy, and Rindou would sulk, cold-chapped hands buried in his pockets and Ran talking his ear off as the hours of waiting in line limped by.

It’s different waiting with you. All the jokes and observations you stored up for the past week pour past your lips. You recount story after story about your family reunion – about losing your bed to your brother’s children, crawling onto your mother’s mattress like you were a little girl again, and how she snores just as loudly as you remember. And how your brother desperately tries to offload his kids on anyone foolish enough to agree to watch them. You think he and his wife had sex on your bed when everyone was busy in the kitchen, and you share this information with the scandalized screech of a betrayed virgin. The low point of the trip is your sister who could not make it, but she joins every night by facetime, her role in the family harmony uncontested.

The line moves slowly, but Rindou doesn’t feel the passage of time. He’s frozen in place, exactly where he wants to be with you by his side.

He buys you red bean manju from a food stall and warns you not to spoil your appetite for dinner. He promises it will be a feast.

Naturally, unthinkingly, he’s invited you to dinner with Ran of all people. He wants to take it back or at least cancel on Ran, but you clap in delight, unshed tears glistening as you admit your heart broke at the idea of not eating osechi-ryori this year, your first ever holiday without. Rindou doesn’t like your moue of disappointment when you describe your anxiety at missing out on this tradition and doesn’t retract the invite.

So…you meet Ran.

Ran never left Roppongi, but he did leave behind their shared apartment above the laundromat in favor of a five-bedroom house on a quiet side street lined by Japanese dogwoods that bloom pink as a promise in the spring.

The outside is unassuming, but the inside is striking. Most of Ran’s free time for the better part of three years has poured into appointing his house in a Baroque style. No counterspace is left empty. No furniture is left unadorned. Vases, winding statues of frolicking angels, and baskets of fruit stand proud in the sitting room, resting on gilded commodes and low desks painted with cherubs. There is always a fire crackling merrily in the living room, adding an orange glow to a room already rich with browns, reds, and purples.

You marvel at the decorations, and Ran is impressed by your taste, so used to unappreciative yakuza who can only ask how much his furniture is worth rather than after its artistic merit. Ran insists on giving you a tour, pleasantly pointing to each piece and detailing the great pains he took to acquire it. Rindou trails a few steps behind as you eagerly soak up the history lesson.

“I can understand why you love this so much,” you say, reverently quiet, like this is a church or sacred place you shouldn’t disturb. “It’s a remarkable period when you think about it. Europe starts 1600 with Hamlet and Shakespeare and Cervantes not long after and ends it with the novel about to take off. And it was the same here. The birth of the haiku, of Bashō, and by the end of the century, we had Saikaku’s prose…so much innovation, so much art on opposite sides of the world.”

“It was the same in Europe and Japan. We can thank money for all of it. Here we had the rise of the middle class, finally peace after the wars, trade with the Dutch, and in Europe, they had new lands to rape and pillage for profit. All that chaos, and from it?” Ran spreads his arms wide to gesture at the beauty of the rooms he slaved over. “Art!”

You stare up at a painting wide as your arm span of sailors in a storm, fighting the elements to secure the mast. Even as their faces scream, ravaged by threat, there is something hopeful in the piece, a promise that together they will right the ship and sail off to calmer seas. Rindou can see why you like it. It isn’t baroque, an eighteenth-century anachronism in the otherwise themed room.

Towards the end of the tour, Ran recounts a dramatic auction where he won a bust of Frederick the Great out of the greedy hands of an Australian businessman.

It is only the hundredth time Rindou has heard this heroic tale from Ran, and he could supply it word for word at this point. They’re nearing the part where the Australian businessman kicks a wall in a fit of pique at being outbid and breaks his big toe – the climax – when you bring the story to a crashing, off-script halt.

“Wait, eight million yen!” you cry.

“…yes,” Ran says blankly.

“For that statue?” you point accusingly at the head of Frederick the Great like you’re questioning what’s so great about him to justify an eight-million-yen price tag. It is intricately carved, the polychrome wood painted white for dramatic effect, but it does not appear to shit gold, so you struggle to understand its value.

“It’s a bust not a statue,” Ran says snidely, forgetting himself for a moment in his irritation before he says more kindly, “And it’s an artefact. From the right artist, I’ve seen pieces go for much more. It may just resell for even higher. There’s a lot of money to be made in art investment.”

“That’s just a lot of money.”

“What can I say? Business has been good to us,” Ran says.

“Export-import,” Rindou barks out quickly.

“Yes, the…export-import business has been good to us,” Ran repeats, taking up the story with a roll of his eyes that goes right over your head. You’re too busy tucking your elbows and glaring at the furniture like it might leap out and shatter on your body at the slightest provocation. You’re barely breathing in fear of breaking something.

“Wait,..,” you say, coming back to the conversation after a moment of buffering. “You’re in business with Rindou? And you’ve made this much money? Oh, oh no! I’m so sorry. That was so invasive and rude. Please forgive me!”

“Rin! Why does your beautiful friend think you’re poor? Please tell me you’ve not been making her pay for dates! I taught you when you were younger that a gentleman always pays,” Ran tuts, ignoring your apologies. When Ran is at his most spiteful, he smiles, and his lips quirk now with malicious glee.

“Oh no –” you try to protest, but Ran is on a roll, apologizing to you now on his “shameful little brother’s behalf.”

Rindou is going to stab him.

“I pay for our damn dates!”

“He does!” you agree with a vigorous nod of support. “I just thought…well, I thought you had nice dinner twice a week money not bust of Frederick the Great money.”

Pleading eyes turn to Ran as you beg him to believe you. It reminds Rindou of how sweetly you beg him for forgiveness when he overstimulates your clit or squeezes your nipples to a bruise. Damned cute. Ran’s lips curve indulgently in spit of himself at your expression.

Rindou thinks that his brother isn’t half bad at all. At least he has very different taste in women, taste that does not include you.

The dining room is every bit as unconventional as the rest of the house with a tall wooden table large enough to seat eight and high-backed chairs that demand perfect posture much to Rindou’s chagrin. In contrast, Ran serves a traditional osechi ryori meal neatly separated into lacquered containers.

With so many options to choose from, everyone sets in on a different dish first. Rindou gravitates to the crunch of kazunoko, the juicy Satoimo potatoes, and the snackable baby anchovies. You giggle a little as you munch on a sweet omelet roll, and when Rindou asks why, you whisper that everything he’s eating symbolizes fertility. He quickly uses his chopsticks to try the buri, which he recalls symbolizes a more general kind of success.

“This is delicious,” you offer Ran warmly. “Did you cook all this yourself?”

Rindou snorts, and his brother gives him one of those quelling looks that used to reduce him to knocking knees and hiding in closets. Ran rarely hit him beyond normal brotherly playfighting, but he would chase him with that baton for blocks when angered.

“No, there was no need this year. A friend was kind enough to cook for me,” Ran says.

“Ran is a menace in the kitchen. If it was left to him, we’d be eating plain bread.”

The quelling look grows sharper.

“Oh, that’s not so bad. I’m not much of a cook either,” you say politely.

“Don’t play so nice with the guy. I’m not saying he’s not a chef. I’m saying he couldn’t figure out how to cook a grilled cheese or boil some noodles.”

“Why would I want to eat a grilled cheese?” Ran demands.

Rindou stabs his chopsticks in Ran’s direction, a lifetime of culinary wrongs powering his spite. “That’s what I’m saying! The problem is that Ran has the palette of a fucking prince. When we were kids, we’d have no money, no adults to help, and I’d find him trying to cook a whole duck and setting the kitchen on fire. When that happened, I’d have to make noodles. He just flushed our grocery money down the drain every week.”

“To be fair, I stole the duck,” Ran sniffs.

A candied chestnut pelts Ran in the forehead, a bullseye for Rindou who would strangle his brother if he were within reach. The bastard knows not to mention their criminal activity around you. Rindou looks nervously to you and your reaction but finds your eyes alight with curiosity.

“How the hell does a child steal a duck?”

The tense atmosphere lifts, and Ran leans forward with a grin to answer, “A child doesn’t. Two children, however? One to fake an asthma attack and draw all the adults and one with an empty backpack? Those two children could steal a duck no problem.”

“What a little criminal mastermind!” you laugh.

“Good thing I went straight when I did, or I’d be running the city’s underground today, huh?” Ran smirks.

Against Rindou’s will, he finds himself drawn into a long recounting of some of their greatest childhood misadventures. None are violent or hint at future gang activity. Instead, they recount shoplifting, stealing out into the late hours of the night, and outwitting their teachers. None of it scandalizes you, and Rindou relaxes just an iota.

Because it’s dinner with Ran and they can’t help themselves, the brothers bicker every other word, but sometime after your third glass of wine, you stop hiding your laughter. You treat it like a sideshow to a good meal, one you could watch a hundred times.

Having you here doesn’t feel unnatural at all.

As the final bites dwindle to nothing, you say, “Thank you really for inviting me. I was dreading spending New Years without family for the first time, and well, being here with you didn’t feel all that different.”

Everyone pretends not to notice the beading of tears on your lash line. Your sincerity is so at odds with their usual attitudes that neither brother quite knows how to react. Rindou settles for squeezing your hand tightly in his, but it is Ran who finds the perfect words.

“I propose a toast. To 2017. And to hoping that we welcome the next new year together, too.”

Just as, possessed by your infectious holiday cheer, Rindou didn’t think before taking you to Ran’s house, he unthinkingly brings you back to his apartment, too. It is the first time you’ve come over.

His apartment is less impressive than Ran’s museum of a house. The space is mostly decorated with sleek, standard furnishings with only one bedroom for guests. If anything stands out, it’s the fancy gadgets: big screen TV, gaming computer set up, topline speakers in every room.

For the first hour, you piece through his record collection. He answers your questions about different artists, shows you how to position the needle. You land on a rock album that’s all bass. It shakes the vinyl shelf with every pulse.

Satisfied with your choice, you invite yourself to root through his dresser drawers. You strip in front of him without an ounce of embarrassment. The apartment runs chilly, so your skin is only bared for a few seconds before you scramble into a pair of his sweatpants, a tee-shirt that hangs low past your hips, and the thickest socks you can find.

You look all ready for bed, so that’s where you go next. The short hairs that curl at the base of your neck are baby chick soft, and he twirls the strands absently around his fingers while your head makes a pillow of his chest.

Everything feels strange. Not bad, just strange.

Rindou has lived in this apartment for nearly four years, slept in this bedroom most nights, and somehow he doesn’t recognize it. Here, with you in his arms, the room is transformed. The bed is warmer, and he discards the heavy comforter he uses in the winters; the taste of flowers fills his nose whenever he breathes, drifting up from that body lotion you slather everywhere in the mornings; he lies on his back, noticing the water stains on the ceiling for the first time ever, instead of flopping to his stomach and falling into a dead sleep the moment his head hits the pillow. You’re the first person, besides him, to ever enter this room.

“Thanks for inviting me tonight,” you murmur. “I was so sad when I woke up this morning and everything happened, but you cheered me right up.”

“Thanks for calling me. I was bored out of my mind,” Rindou counters.

“You’re too sweet sometimes…It was really nice to meet your brother, too. Ran’s an interesting guy. He’s like some nineteenth century dandy. Like, he’s a character on TV not a real person. So different from you except when he gives you a hard time. Then, it’s like a switch flips, and I can see the resemblance. It reminds me of my brother, giving me a hard time just to show he can.”

“Older brothers,” Rindou says with only half-hearted disgust. Without Ran to push him, to teach him to stay on his toes, he would probably be moving furniture in some warehouse not trading in people’s life savings over morning coffee.

“It was fun,” you repeat. “And I feel like I understand you even better now.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, like I learned how you get away with having such ridiculous hair. I always wondered what kind of business could overlook that, but you’re rich. Plus, your brother’s hair isn’t much better. At least it’s short, I guess, but pink?”

“You should have seen our hair when we were younger. Ran used to have longer hair than you. He’d wear two braids with blonde highlights. Back then, mine was neck-length, but blue and blonde,” Rindou says. At your raised eyebrows, Rindou opens his personal phone to find an old photo.

“Like a Squirtle,” you whisper.

“Like a what?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Anyway, pretty much all our executives have dyed hair,” Rindou admits. “Ran’s not even the only one with pink.”

“I wish I could show you off to my middle school homeroom teacher. She used to say we wouldn’t get good jobs if we so much as double pierced our ears and look at you! Successful and tattooed and dyed! We’ve really become a modern country, huh?”

“I’ll introduce you sometime…Our CFO, Koko is the smartest guy I’ve ever met, and his girlfriend’s the second. I think you’d like them. Maybe we can double date,” Rindou says.

Two days ago, Rindou was still intent on keeping you as far from his work life as possible, building up steel walls that wouldn’t break no matter how much pressure you or his colleagues applied. But what can’t be knocked down can still be unlocked, and here Rindou is, key in hand, throwing open the doors with no excuse or explanation.

Maybe if he hadn’t built the damn wall in the first place, he could have seen you throughout the holidays. He could have met your mother, fucked you in your twin bed while the memories of your childhood peered down in judgment, and tried your home cooking.

“I learned something else about you from Ran, too,” you chirp.

“Oh yeah?” he repeats.

“Yeah, I learned why you don’t ‘suffer brats.”

Rindou laughs. “Oh yeah because Ran’s brat enough for the rest of my life.”

“No, because behind closed doors, you’re the big brat!”

Your gleeful giggle turns into a yelp as Rindou harshly pinches your nipple, hand dipping through shirt and bra to find gold.

“Want to repeat that?”

“I’m just repeating what I saw. Where your brother is concerned, you act like a big bra–urgh!”

Your plush, hot little mouth is a source of hours of pleasure, but sometimes you talk too much. With it wide open around your nonsense, it makes an easy target. Three of Rindou’s fingers force their way past your lips, tongue, and teeth. He can feel the place where your throat closes up in instinctive panic, a hard barrier that with a few pushes will break.

“Blink twice for green, once for yellow, and none for red,” Rindou says seriously.

Two quick but emphatic blinks answer him as you gaze up with absolute trust. Rindou sits up to tower over you, strands of his hair dangling down to brush your quivering cheeks.

“If you want to act like a fucking brat, I’ll find other ways to put your mouth to use. Open the fuck up.”

Under his insistent prodding, the barrier of your throat relaxes, and he pushes in as deep as his fingers are long. Your mouth stretches wide, obscene and red as you swallow around the obstruction. His fingers can’t bully you as well as his cock, so you manage the intrusion with minimal gagging. He pets along the ridges of your throat, remembering how the ribbing feels sliding up and down his dick when he throat fucks you.

The memory is tempting. He loves the way you tear up when he stuffs his cock deeper than you think you can manage. Then, you choke and whine and learn to regret mouthing off to him, but there’s no need to teach you a lesson. It is not a brat that tries to suck the fingers lodged in the back of her throat, but his good little slut, the one who tries so hard to please him.

Slowly, Rindou pulls back from your mouth, letting you suckle needily in the retreat.

“Spit,” he orders, holding out his open palm.

You demur. Only a discrete amount of spit lands in his hand. With the way he toyed with your throat, you should have more than that to offer him. He should be drenched in ribbons of it.

Slap.

The wet hand meets your cheek hard, snapping your head to the side. Rindou likes the look of it. Little strands of spit cling to your hot cheeks. He decides you could be even messier.

Rindou purses his lips and hocks a glob of spit directly into your face. It lands on your cheek, near the corner of your mouth. You yelp and turn accusing eyes to him, more aggrieved by this than the initial slap. Those eyes quickly close as Rindou smears a heavy palm across your whole face, making sure your spit covers you from chin to eyelids.

“I think you look prettiest like this slut,” Rindou says. You whine in the back of your throat, a noise of dissent and not passion. Rindou relishes it. It’s rare for you to show anything but easy submission. “No? You don’t like looking like a little drool slut? Well, then you shouldn’t have acted like such a brat, huh, baby? Good girls get to swallow, but bad girls have to spit all over themselves. That’s what you’re going to do until I decide you’re good and messy enough. You’re going to drool all over your face and tits. No swallowing. Give me a color and let me know you understand.”

“Green,” you whisper. “And yes, sir. I understand.”

To accompany your words, you let a glob of spit dribble past your lips. It doesn’t have much momentum, landing on your chin, where its shine draws the eye like shiny jewelry.

When you look shame faced, dribbling and pathetic and hanging on his every word, is when Rindou wants you most. His cock twitches to life against his thigh at the mess he made of you.

He wants to see more. The tee-shirt is ripped to the ground as he attacks your tits with his mouth and tongue. The proud nipples rise to greet him, and he mouths at them desperately.

For hours at time, he’s subjected you to his systematic exploration of your chest. He knows exactly what to do to eek a response from you, and he employs all of that knowledge now. He circles the nubs gently with his tongue, knowing every hair on your body will stand at attention. When he sucks at just the right amount of pressure, you sigh like he intended. Then, he increases the pressure, and right on schedule, your hands dig into the shag of his hair, not pulling away but anchoring yourself, as the pleasure pain assaults you.

There is a flogger in the bottom dresser door perfect for burning your tits red which he considers, but he doesn’t want to separate from your body for an instant. Your soft belly feels so right beneath the hardness of him, and when he cants his cock into the crease of your open thighs, the friction leaves him lightheaded.

He plumps up your breasts instead, leaving fat hickeys wherever his mouth lands. His hands squeeze to the beat of the drumming bass, and you start to hump your hips in time with him.

All the while, he hears you spitting pathetically above him.

The time between each spit lessens as he continues. Lust conquers shame, and you grow eager to impress him, drooling like a bitch in heat. You should be running out of saliva, but when that happens, he hears yours coughing gags as you fuck your fingers deep into your throat just so you can earn more precious spit.

It’s pathetic, really, how desperate you get for him, how much you need him to take you in hand, show you what a whore you are.

Alongside the speed of your spitting, the distance increases as well. Soon drool lands on your tits, globs falling near his mouth, sometimes pelting his cheek or sticking to his hair. He eagerly laps it up, uses his mouth to smear it all over your breasts. He can barely find purchase, slipping and sliding through the valley of your lubed up tits, so wet and hot they remind him of your pussy.

It has been over a week since you last fucked, and Rindou thinks you must be drenched, drooling just as much down your thighs. He needs to know for sure.

Rindou doesn’t stop caressing your nipples with his lips as his hand dips into your sweatpants. Sticky panties cling to your folds, and he struggles for a moment to separate them enough for his fingers to find your soaked little pussy.

“Did you control yourself and not touch this cute cunt while you were gone?” Rindou asks.

“I didn’t, sir. I swear. I didn’t touch myself at all. Didn’t cheat and find some other way to cum either,” you plead as if he didn’t already know the answer.

“Hmm, maybe you’re not such a bad girl after all,” Rindou muses as his fingers rub through your folds, circling the entrance that drools so eagerly at his proximity. “Do you know why girls like you only cum with permission?”

“Because all my orgasms belong to you, sir,” you sigh as if that is a helplessly romantic prospect.

“No. It’s because stupid sluts can’t be trusted to know what’s good for them. You have to trust me to tell you when to cum, and when to ruin, and when to go no touch because otherwise, you’d waste away. If no one was there to look out for you, you’d spend all day toying with this clit and fucking this little hole, and then what would happen?”

You gurgle happily at his words.

Rindou likes to talk during sex, loves it even, but he finds himself calling out every filthy thought when he’s with you because your pussy clenches so tight at a simple word of praise, even tighter at an insult. He can see your hole flex now, and he wants to feel it. He wants to be inside you.

Off go the sweatpants and panties as well as his own clothes. Cock in hand, he strokes himself while looking at the swollen folds, wet like morning dew. When he slides up your slit, that wetness clings to him.

He glances at your face for the first time in minutes only to find you absolutely wrecked. There is not a dry space on your neck, chest, or chin. All of it glistens with multiple coats of spit. Several long strands tangle together as they drool out of your mouth.

“Who told you to make such a mess, slut?” Rindou snaps, slapping one of your tits hard enough to bounce.

You gape at the sudden change. Every time you fuck, you try to stay on top of his whims, to answer his every desire before he can think to articulate it, never understanding that it is a Sisyphean task. He would not be a good dom if he didn’t rip your attempts at power out of your hands, disrupt the scene, and leave you scrambling in that subspace that makes your eyes go foggy and mouth fuzzy.

Rindou shakes his head in faux disappointment even as he taps his cock against your puffy clit. “What should I tell the housekeeper tomorrow when she finds my sheets stained. Should I tell her a little drool slut decided to make a mess of herself and the bed? Should I tell her that some whores have so little dignity they drool all over their tits on command? Maybe I should take a video, so she can see just how much you wanted to be used like a tight little cocksleeve.”

The degradation makes you wild, and your hips start bucking like they answer to something separate from your brain, making your point as effectively as your babbling mouth. “Please, sir, yes, please use me however you want. I can make you feel so good. I wanna make you feel so good.”

“Then, show me.”

Rindou manhandles you roughly, yanking you down the mattress and then flipping your legs back. They fold almost to your ears. It brings your pussy close to your own mouth, and an idea hits him like a bullet at close quarters. He spreads your pussy lips wide with his fingers.

“Get that hole wet for me,” he orders.

You spit straight onto your cunt. Again and again until you get the aim right. Rindou joins you. Soon, you are flooding over with the combined juices of your body. Your hole sucks at air, so desperate to be filled, and some of it is slurped straight into your pussy.

It has been too long.

“It’s been a while since you had anything in this hole. It may hurt at first in this position,” Rindou warns, as if you have any say in positions outside using your safe words.

“Please give me your cock, sir,” you chant eagerly. “I can take it. I promise!”

His cock slides through your slippery folds so easily that he wonders if he’ll ever go back to normal, unlubed sex again. The ring of your pussy is tight when the head breaches it, but so wet too. So very wet. It’s immediate ecstasy.

There’s nothing like that first penetration. Snug, warm, your pussy molding to embrace his cock. Pure paradise lays between your thighs.

In a single thrust, he slides halfway in.

You hiss through gritted teeth. Another three centimeters disappear into your body, and you start to moan. He doesn’t force himself further at first, instead rocking back to start fucking you open all the way.

Squatting over you, his balance is precarious, so Rindou grips the fat of your thighs for support. The skin dimples where his fingers dig in. He can fuck you so good at this angle, can angle his hips to slam into your ass so it claps to temporarily drown out the squelch of your slick pussy.

It only takes a few heavy thrusts to break you open the rest of the way. Now, when he slides out, the ridged walls caressing every centimeter of him as he draws away, he can then thrust back to the hilt. Deep, hard, and slow, that’s how he fucks you. The furthest reaches of your pussy are at his mercy, and he taps your cervix every couple thrusts, enjoying the way his tip tingles and nerve endings alight. When he batters your cervix, you don’t cry out but embrace the pain and shudder into the pillows like an addict.

Just as hot for him is the way his balls slap into your ass when he bottoms out each time, sending little sparks of pleasure dancing through his brain. He doesn’t know how to think when he’s inside you. Every sense is focused on the need to fuck you to oblivion.

As he pounds into you, your calves dangle somewhere between his ears and yours. They start to shake as he punches the breath from your lungs over and over again. When he angles his hips so they smack hard against your clit on a downward thrust, they quake out of your control.

He watches your eyes to see the way they dart out of focus. Your face is so expressive, he can watch as you experience every thrust like a miniature earthquake to your senses. So pretty how they glaze over with lust.

The song changes on the record playing. Now, something fast and heavy blares out, sex on speed. He pumps his hips faster to time it to the music, lets it take over what little thought remains. And with it comes every dirty word he’s been holding back.

“If there’s one thing a greedy whore like you can do, it’s take a fucking dick. Just look at how you swallow me up. Filthy girl with her legs spread so she can get used and abused,” he huffs through short breaths.

Rindou yanks your hair hard, folding your body into an even smaller and tighter sleeve for him and positioning your face parallel with your cunt. You stare dumb and desperate at the space where his cock disappears inside you. Little mumbles of nonsense tumble out of your mouth.

“Aww, baby can’t think. That’s okay. All you need to do is keep that cunt tight and fucking. Take. This. Fat. Cock.”

The final words are punctuated by hard thrusts that batter your cervix cruelly. Your pussy clamps down in a frantic squeeze, and panic breaks through your fucked out haze.

Now, he can understand the words as you cry, “Wait, sir! Oh, no! Sir, can I cum! Oh no, oh no, oh no!”

There is going to be no stopping it, not when your cunt has been neglected for so long. Knowing how tightly you’re going to squeeze down, Rindou doesn’t want to deny either of you the feeling, not today.

“Go ahead. Squirt all over my cock, slut. Cum as much as you want.”

You do – or maybe you don’t squirt. It’s hard to say when your pussy is already a river. Regardless, you do seize up, calves spasming, cunt coiling, eyes crossing. It’s an absolute avalanche of sensation, and you don’t stop screaming your pleasure for a solid minute after the first warning quivers.

Rindou loses himself in the feel of you. Each pulse against his cock is a shot of pleasure and a new challenge. Instincts tell him to pound deeper into your defenseless body, make his home here in the heat of you. When he fucks to your cervix, he swears he won’t find the strength to pull out, but he does, if only to feel that bliss again when he shoves his cock inside you.

He starts to imagine just how wet you will be when he cums. If he thinks you’re wet now, imagine once he fills you up with four days’ worth of buildup, cum he’s saved just to paint you white once again. It’s where his cum belongs. In fact, he almost hates you for denying him your pussy for these last days, days where his cum died ignominiously on his stomach or shower floor when it should have been flooding your cervix.

His heart races, and then Rindou cums hard. Vision blacked out, brain empty, muscles dead. Hard.

For five seconds, he spasms and grunts as his cum shoots out of you. It’s so overpowering, he almost doesn’t notice that you start to shake around him once again, your pussy growing tighter and tighter and your little fists beating into the sheets as a second orgasm sucks all his cum deep into your belly.

The endorphins hit, and Rindou mellows like he’s just smoked a joint. Hazily, he realizes the way you twitch and cry beneath him. He pulls out and watches as streams of liquid slide right out of your hole and down your thighs.

Uncaring of the mess, Rindou collapses to his side and pulls you into the crook of his body. He’s not sure which one of you needs the aftercare after that. It was so intense that his brain still isn’t formulating thoughts. Your head nestles near his heart, breath darting across his navel, and he pets your hair in encouragement.

He feels like a fucking king.

Several minutes pass before you speak again.

“I’ve missed you,” you whisper, and when you say it, it sounds like a confession.

“I missed you, too.”

And when Rindou says it, it truly is.

A confession that is.

"After a long time of watching the glittering rooftops and the smoke and the red dragonflies and other things, we had felt something warm and close, and we both probably wanted, half-consciously, to preserve the mood in some form. It was that kind of kiss. But as with all kisses, it was not without a certain element of danger.'" - Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

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