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monstersandmaw · 1 year ago

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Laces for a Lady - 18th century poly shifter romance (Part one, sfw)

Disclaimer which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Well folks, here it is. You said you were interested, so I hope it meets expectations! Here's part one for you, of a multi part story. If you want to kno wmore about it, you can find some more info here, as well as a little 'mood board'.

Content: sfw, the daughter of a country gentleman from Sussex relocates to a sleepy fishing village in Cornwall in order to become the paid companion of a young widow, and meets some of the locals on her arrival. Wordcount: 3972

Five and twenty ponies, Trotting through the dark - Brandy for the Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk. Laces for a lady; letters for a spy, Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by! ~ from ‘A Smugglers’ Song’, Rudyard Kipling (1906)

In the cool, lavender light of a late spring dawn, a gaff-rigged cutter drew into the sheltering arms of a small bay at high tide, and quietly dropped anchor. As if the soft splash had awoken him, a cockerel spluttered to life in a farmyard somewhere inland, but most of the villagers were already up and awake and steering their small, secret fleet of boats out from the golden crescent of sand beneath the cliffs to meet the waiting ship fresh from Roscoff.

Beneath the waves, where churning kelp moored itself in unyielding handfuls to the ancient granite of the sea floor, a long, serpentine shadow snaked between the stalks, and the currents of the coastline subtly shifted. Any revenue men trying to sail along the coast from Fowey to catch the smugglers would have found the wind and tide set dead against them, and in the subtle wake that wafted from the mottled, eel-like tail as it passed unseen, the waters of the secluded inlet calmed beneath the keels of the scurrying fishing boats. The drag of the oars through the waves lessened, and muscles already tired from heaving and hefting goods up the cliff moved a fraction easier for the unexpected boon.

Between them over the next hour, the gathered men and women shifted their haul of half anker barrels and dozens of crates and boxes of goods ashore. The small kegs of rich, French cognac would fetch a pretty price all across Cornwall, and along with the liquor came smaller luxuries like lace and silk, and bundles of tobacco and spiced tea, all meticulously wrapped in oil cloth to keep the sea and the salt and the water out.

And when the speedy, slender ship was riding noticeably higher in the water, the locals simply melted away into the countryside like so many mice from a late summer granary before the excise men even knew the ship from Guernsey had visited the cove at all.

Fifteen miles away, as the sun breached the horizon and cast its first rays of warmth along bellies of fleecy clouds and the flanks of blossoming hedgerows below, a stagecoach lurched and rumbled westwards along potholed roads, and a young woman stared out of the grimy window as the horses carried her into a new chapter of her life.

After leapfrogging some two hundred miles or so along the staging stations that dotted the South Coast, with nothing but a small trunk of her belongings and a thrice-read, dog-eared novel for company, Eleanor Bywater was more than ready to see the back of that infernal stagecoach. Had it not been for the small but inconveniently bulky travelling case sitting at her feet, she might have hired a horse and ridden from the last staging inn at Plymouth to reach the secluded fishing village of Polgarrack, but given that the trunk held all her worldly belongings, she had not been quite desperate enough to escape the discomfort of hard seats and poor suspension to abandon it.

Bouncing along in the nearly-empty stagecoach, she studiously tried to ignore the older woman sitting opposite her. She’d stared intently at Nel since they'd left Plymouth behind that morning, and her scrutiny had begun to make that last twenty mile stretch feel much, much longer.

Finally, after jouncing over a pothole deep enough to start prospecting for copper ore at the bottom, Nel gasped and then raised her eyes to meet the woman’s openly curious stare. She found sympathy for her own discomfort, and a small degree of kindly amusement too.

“Where are you headed, miss?” the stranger asked after Nel raised the hint of an eyebrow at her as the silence stretched.

“Polgarrack.”

At that, the woman’s grey eyes narrowed in confusion. “Now what takes a young miss like you to an old fishing village like Polgarrack?”

She looked to be in her fifties, though a life beside the harsh sea had weathered her features somewhat, and her wiry grey hair was covered by a simple linen cap. Her dress was dark and plain, though there was a hint of tired lace around the neck and cuffs. Her hands had the tough, reddened look of someone who scrubbed pots and salted fish, while Nel’s own hands were smooth and soft, if a little ink stained from sending a letter to her friend before leaving the inn that morning.

Nel laughed quietly and shrugged. “There’s no mystery to it,” she said. “I am to be employed as a companion to the widowed Lady Penrose at Heath Top House. I am expected there this afternoon.”

Given that only ladies of relatively high social standing themselves tended to become a ‘lady’s companion’, the older woman made a hasty re-evaluation of her fellow traveller, and her already ruddy cheeks flushed a darker shade as she cleared her throat and looked away.

“Begging your pardon, miss,” she said. “We don’t get many new faces in Polgarrack, is all. I didn’t mean to pry or cause offence with my questions.”

“No harm in a little curiosity,” Nel said, trying to put the stranger at ease to avoid any further awkwardness between them on the remainder of their journey. “I take it you’re from Polgarrack yourself then?”

“Oh, born and raised, miss,” she chortled. She eyed the forest green redingote Nel wore, with its rather masculine high collar, wide lapels and small, gold pocket watch dangling on a chain, and the contrasting sage green skirts beneath, and no doubt made one or two judgements of her own about the young lady. “And yourself? You don’t sound as though you’re from these parts at all, if I may be so bold.”

Nel smiled. “I’ve come from Sussex.”

The woman’s watery, grey-blue eyes widened almost comically and she gasped. “’at's a bloody long way, miss! And all on your own?” She shook her head but remembered herself and mumbled, “Begging your pardon.”

“You’re right,” Nel sighed, letting her gaze slide to the window to watch the countryside roll past in a blur of salt-bleached grass and vibrant yellow gorse flowers. “It is a bloody long way.” And her spine and backside felt every lump and bump and lurch of the stagecoaches from Sussex to Cornwall. With a warmer smile, she turned back to the woman. “My name is Eleanor, but most people call me Nel.”

“Agatha,” she replied with a grandmotherly smile of her own for the young woman. “But everyone calls me Aggie. My husband, Martin, is the village carter and smith, and we’ve got four boys, all of them either fishermen or miners. They all married too, so I’ve got nine grandchildren, if you can believe it!”

Nel offered Aggie her congratulations and another little smile, and then ventured to ask, “Will you tell me a bit about the place? I should like to know more about it, since it is to be my home for the foreseeable future.”

Aggie brightened even more and shuffled her plain, dark skirts, giving a wince and a grunt as the coach lurched over a pothole and the driver cursed audibly above them. Settled, if not entirely comfortable, she began.

“Well, see now. Folks has been fishing these waters for time out of mind. Pilchards is our mainstay, o’course, but the folks over St. Austell way mine clay, and obviously there’s copper and tin mines all over in the north of Cornwall. Mining here is as old as fishing, but it’s starting to dry up here and there now, o’course.”

She barely paused to draw breath before barrelling on, and Nel sat and listened while the older woman talked.

“Now, your Lady Penrose married into the Penrose family — see, she’s from Bath herself originally, though I can’t rightly remember what her family name was, but…” Nel let Agatha's potted history of the fishing and mining community wash over her, paying just enough attention to make polite sounds at the right pauses, but the discomfort of the journey and a decided lack of sleep was beginning to wear her attention span down to a single, fraying thread.

After two hours in the swaying, rolling coach, she felt woozy and weak-stomached, but with Aggie’s near-constant chatter, she at least had a better understanding of the politics of the little village than she’d ever have gained in six months on her own. She’d also learned why Aggie had been in Plymouth, since most folks never had any reason to travel further than the bounds of their own parish. Agatha’s sister’s husband had apparently been killed in the American Revolutionary War some ten years earlier, and since the widow’s health wasn’t the best these days, Aggie made the trip along the coast when she could to see her and take care of her.

Nel’s ticket took her as far as Whitcross, a desolate intersection of paler roads on a clifftop overlooking the tightly-nestled fishing port below, and away across the heather and tufted grass of the heath, she could just see an old manor house in the distance, flanked by tall copper beeches and ash trees. It looked slightly further away than she had anticipated, and she glanced apprehensively down at the travelling trunk at her feet.

Still, she was aching for fresh air and to be free of the sickening motion of the carriage, so she took the driver’s hand and allowed him to guide her safely down onto the hard-packed surface of the road before he lifted her case down for her as well.

From inside, Aggie peered out and scowled disapprovingly. “Now just you wait a moment,” she barked at the driver, who cocked an eyebrow but did pause. “Did they not send someone for you, dearie?” she asked Nel, still leaning out of the doorway and peering about like a disgruntled badger, and using the endearment freely. Apparently, two hours of talking non-stop at Nel had removed any pretence of formality or sense of social distance. Nel might as well have been adopted into Aggie Carter’s family as a niece by that point, and she couldn’t help but smile at the warmth it conjured in her chest.

“I… I never thought that far through,” she admitted, with her hand atop her bonnet as the wind gusted up from the sea below, soaring delightedly over the edge of the cliff and racing on inland as if to continue the momentum of the great rolling breakers that foamed and thundered against the shore. The coachman glanced at his pocket watch and groused something about a schedule that was almost immediately lost to the next inward gust.

“No, no, dearie,” the old woman scoffed. “No, you must come into the village. It’s far too far to go all by yourself, and with that case as well. Here, let me —”

“I can manage the case, I assure you,” Nel said with a gentle smile as Aggie half-toppled, half-leaned out of the coach to pick up the case. “How far is it to the house?”

“Two miles up that hill yonder,” Agatha said, pointing with one gnarled and arthritic finger towards the house on the rise to the north. “Come to the Lantern, and we’ll have one of the lads take you up once you’ve caught your breath.” The Lantern, as Nel now knew thanks to Aggie’s detailed prattling, was the inn at the centre of the village, right on the water near the harbour.

She had been about to protest, but with a sigh, she simply nodded. The constant journeying and jolting had worn her down more than she cared to admit, and while she wasn’t the kind of wallflower she’d met any number of times in London during the Season, a life led mostly indoors with few opportunities for physical activity had not prepared her for a two mile walk in heavy, too-fine clothes, carrying an unwieldy case in gusty conditions. Her family had been invited a number of times to Goodwood House to walk the large park there, and she had frequently ridden a rather spirited mare through the parkland of Lavington Hall with her dear friend William, so she was not entirely unused to the great outdoors, but she did have to admit that her experiences had been rather more curated and sanitised than the wild expanse of heathland visible on all sides of the stagecoach from Whitcross.

“You’re kind, Agatha,” she said, and let the woman heft her case into the otherwise empty coach.

The thing about a tiny village was that an outsider stood out a mile, and a young lady in her mid twenties and dressed in impractical, rich green clothes, stood out like a beacon in a dark night. Everyone turned to watch her as she disembarked from the coach. At home, she had barely garnered a look from anyone. Being the centre of everyone’s curiosity there was novel and, in a word, horrifying.

She almost blurted aloud that one would think she was a revenue man come inspecting for smuggled goods, but she bit it back just in time. Cornwall’s so-called ‘free trade’ and smuggling rackets were absolutely none of her concern as an outsider, infamous though they may be, and it would do her no good to start sticking her nose where it did not belong.

The Lantern was a half-timbered, two-storey building that faced the walled harbour. Its painted sign was peeling and sun-bleached, and it squawked something dreadful as it swung back and forth in the squalling wind. Mullioned windows glinted and shimmered, though the small, diamond panes were caked with a haze of salt spray, and alongside the inn, a hand-cart rumbled down from a narrow side alley towards the harbour beyond, where fishing boats bobbed on their mooring lines at the lapping high tide.

Agatha pushed open the black-painted door but came to an abrupt halt as someone appeared to be leaving the inn at the exact same moment, and nearly barrelled into her and Nel.

“Oh, excuse me,” came a young man’s hoarse tenor, and he stepped aside within the inn’s small porch to allow the two women to enter before he left.

Nel noted briefly that he wore well-made but plain clothes, and carried a hefty looking cane in his left hand, upon which he leaned while he waited for them to pass. He was pale and thin, his undyed linen shirt hanging loosely off his shoulders, and his light brown hair was tied back at the nape of his neck into a horsetail. The moment he met her eye, he inhaled in surprise and almost immediately looked away, his large, dark brown eyes turning shy and uncertain. “M’lady,” he mumbled without looking up.

She didn’t have time to correct him and tell him she had no such title, because the moment she had stepped inside, he was off out into the day beyond, limping markedly on his right leg as he went.

Nel turned back to find Agatha waiting for her, watching. “That there was young Edmund Nancarrow,” she supplied as Nel caught up with her. “Local lad. Lots of Nancarrows in this area,” she chuckled. “Can’t move for tripping over a Nancarrow. He was a shy, skittish thing even before he went off to war in the Colonies and came back with a bad leg,” she added. “But he’s a sweetheart if ever I saw one. Tailor’s ’prentice he is now.”

At that, Nel just nodded. Something in her ached when she realised she probably wouldn’t have much to do with the folk from the village once she was ensconced up at Heath Top House, and she half wised she could. They already sounded far more interesting than the Lady Winnifred Penrose, with whom Nel had only exchanged a short flurry of letters before becoming formally engaged as her ‘companion’.

Still, an unmarried woman of Nel’s age and social standing was considered almost past her prime, and given that the few marriage proposals she had received had faded into the mists of her very early adulthood, she had had to find another respectable way to support herself. Hence, Heath Top House.

Aggie bustled her into the main room of the pub, and their arrival caused a flurry of activity that drew the eyes of a good few patrons.

Seated at the wooden bar inside, hunched over a pewter tankard, sat a tall, bulky man in his late-thirties or early forties, with long, thick, dark grey hair shot through with a shimmer of silver white. He had it tied back off his face in a low ponytail at the nape of his neck and as he turned to regard Nel’s arrival, she met unusually deep green eyes surrounded by a web of crows’ feet lines in a tanned, weathered face. His scowl was dark and full of suspicion, but even the storm clouds in his expression couldn’t mask the fact that he was handsome, in a rugged, rough-hewn kind of way.

When she saw where Nel’s attention had snagged, Aggie let out a little gasp and snatched her by the upper arm to steer her towards an empty table in a bay window, about as far from the wooden bar where the man still sat and glared at them as it was possible to be.

“And that’s Locryn Trevethan,” Aggie hissed as she saw Nel settled into a seat. “Can’t say as I’ve seen him in here more than a handful of times this year though. He’s usually out on the water. Lives alone in an old stone cottage round the bay from here, up at Pilchard Sands. You’d probably best be giving him a wide berth, miss. Not that he should give you any trouble, mind,” she amended carefully, “But he’s not for the likes of you to go mingling with.”

Nel smiled at the protective tone in the older woman’s voice, and nodded once.

With her warning given, Aggie raised her voice and called over to the old man behind the bar. “’ere, Tom! This young lady needs a ride up to Heath Top. You think you can arrange that for her?”

The stoop-shouldered, white-haired man nodded and knuckled his forehead at Nel across the space. “Not the finest, but we got a cart.”

“If you have a horse, I could ride,” she said, trying to be helpful.

“Ain’t got a saddle for a lady,” he said regretfully.

Memories of galloping through the leafy trees of Lavington Hall’s parkland with William flashed across her mind and she suppressed a smile. She certainly hadn’t ridden the grey mare side-saddle while keeping up with her childhood friend, and although it had been a year or so since she’d sat astride a horse instead of side-saddle, she thought she could manage well enough. “I know how to ride a man’s saddle,” she said, “But I do have a travel case I’d need to send someone back for.”

“I could get one of the lads to bring that up for you after,” said Tom, “But it’s almost as much effort to hitch up a cart as it is to tack up a horse for riding, ma’am.”

“Whatever is the least trouble for you will do fine,” she said, and the stoic, weather-beaten old man’s red cheeks darkened and he ducked his head.

While Tom left to sort out transportation to the house, Aggie flapped about getting some refreshments for Nel, leaving her to wait at the table alone.

In the wake of the hubbub and pother Agatha left behind her, Nel took a long, deep breath looked around to find Locryn Trevethan still staring across the room at her. Taken aback by his directness and the intensity of his glare, she tried to smile, but his expression remained thunderous beneath strong, dark brows, and she quickly looked away, embarrassed.

In a face turned to leather by the sun and sea-wind, wide cheekbones and a heavy brow framed his piercingly green eyes. Never mind that marked crow’s feet around his eyes that made him look like he would rather have been laughing; the contrast between the dark, hostile glower and the soft laughter lines unnerved her and made her feel off-balance, as though her stranger’s presence in their local pub had unknowingly raised the ire of a usually gentle man.

He had a short, neatly-trimmed, salt-and-pepper beard around full lips that were currently turned down at the corners and which bore a silver-pink scar across the middle. Despite the warm day, he wore a fisherman’s dense, woollen sweater, and when she risked another look back at him, she found him still frowning openly across the bar at her.

Nel didn’t relax until Aggie returned, at which point the man snapped abruptly out of his trance, slammed a coin down on the bar, and strode from the pub on long legs that were thick as tree trucks at the thigh. The door bounced back off the plasterwork in his wake and his boots rang on the flagstones outside.

“Not one to welcome strangers, I take it,” Nel muttered, and downed half of the cheap, watered-down wine that Agatha had set on the table for her.

“Oh don’t you pay him no mind, miss,” Aggie scoffed, settling herself down into the seat opposite her like a brooding hen and glaring at the pub door. “He don’t seem to like no one in Polgarrack save for sweet Ned Nancarrow, strangely enough. Then again, I ain’t met no one who’s taken a disliking to sweet Ned. Now, Tom will have the horse and cart ready for you in just a moment, but you just take your time and recover after your journey.”

Nel, who had felt ten times better the moment she’d taken her first proper lungful of sea air on stepping out of the swaying stagecoach, looked across the table into the older woman’s face and found a mother’s kindness and compassion in her wrinkled face, and something twisted in her gut. “You’re very kind,” she whispered, unable to muster anything more. “Thank you.”

She chuckled. “You know, and don’t you take this amiss, but you remind me of my niece a little, though she’s a little younger than you.”

Nel’s eyebrows twitched in wry amusement, and Agatha blushed at the impropriety of her words. Nel didn’t get the chance to reassure her because Tom shuffled back in and told her the cart was ready for her.

She laid a coin on the table for the wine and stood, following the innkeep out into the yard and clambering up with her case into the back of the cart. It was hardly a very dignified mode of transport for someone of her station, and when Tom said as much while they rumbled out of the inn’s yard, Nel just laughed and said she didn’t mind.

“Anything is better than that awful rolling stagecoach,” she beamed, and swung her legs back and forth like a child off the back of the cart bed while Tom clucked his tongue at the horse to hurry up.

As they trundled up the narrow, cobbled street from the harbour, they passed Edmund Nancarrow standing outside a tailor’s shop, talking with the beast of a man from the bar. Both men looked up and watched her pass like she was some kind of rare spectacle.

In a way, she supposed she was.

Still, she smiled at them despite her nerves, and Edmund knuckled a non-existent cap at her with a shy smile, while Locryn just glared.

She sighed and wondered what this next chapter in her life would bring.

___

Next chapter ->

Well, what did you think of it so far? I can't wait to hear your thoughts on it, as always!

I hope you’ll consider reblogging as well as leaving a like if you enjoyed it. Take care, and I hope you have a lovely day/night wherever you are, and whenever you read this.

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#selkie #bucca #polyamory #polyamorous romance #poly story #o #historical fantasy #shifter romance #poly shifter romance #18th century romance #shapeshifter romance #m/m/f

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swifty-fox · 3 months ago

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❝ i know i can’t protect you from everything, but i wish you’d let me protect you from the things i can control. ❞ - for outlaw au please :)) i already miss them 🥺

yessss more of them.

read the fic here

tws: Mentions of child abuse & discussion of suicide of a family member.

Gale hates South Dakota. It's much like Wyoming, flat and empty and made up of scrublands. Population is scarce and it's been nearly two weeks of rest-stop sink baths or on one or two desperate occasions water bottles and a spare t-shirt as a rag.

It's one of those quiet inconveniences of how they live. It's been months since anyone has laid a hand on him and that's worth any lack of creature comforts.

Still, he'd like a shower.

They're on the roof of the Corolla, scissors snicking gently through Gale's hair as John trims it with careful concentration. His tongue Is poked between his lips, there's an unlit cigarette tucked behind his ear and his grey Puddle of Mudd shirt is turned dark with sweat.

"Look straight, I don't want you getting mad at me when I fuck your hair up and make it all uneven."

"I wouldn't be mad," Gale says, but looks forward anyway, eyeing the blue silhouette of mountains in the distance. They appear tiny and flat, but Gale knows if they bothered to travel the hundreds of miles to the foothills they'd rise taller than skyscrapers.

John blows stray hair off Gale's shoulder, brushes it off with his fingers when that proves ineffective. The fine blond strands cling to his sweaty skin, bared by the cut-off sleeve shirt he's wearing. Likely it's Johns, the fabric loose and baggy around Gale's torso and chest in a way his own shirts usually were not.

"Why'd you start growing it?"

"My dad said long hair was for girls."

John's thumb strokes over the ball-curve of Gale's shoulder, nail tracing the raised lines of the random smattering of scars there. They extend across the wingspan of his back, harsher at the bony parts and falling off in the dips and divots. "He do these too?"

Tucking his heels up near his ass, Gale rests his chin on his knees. John clucks at him for the change of position but after a moment resumes cutting. For a while there's only the snick of scissors and the sound of coyotes howling and the sun slowly sinking into the pillow of the mountains.

"I dropped a box of my mom's Christmas ornaments," He says finally, "the glass ones, you know? The kind of special ones you put at the top and don't let the kids touch."

John hums to show he's listening, brushing fingers through Gale's hair to find any spots he's missed.

"It was an accident," He insists as if it matters to Bucky, as if it ever mattered.

"And he," Gale gestures to his head, "I was on the ground before I realized what had happened and then he was just going off on me, and I was trying to tell him that the glass was cutting me, that I'd take my licks but the glass."

Metal clinks as John sets the scissors down, reaches his hand out for the hair tie that Gale deposits in his hand. Begins braiding Gale's hair with practiced efficiency

"Spent the night in Marge's bathroom picking glass out of my skin with her eyebrow tweezers."

"Couldn't afford the hospital?"

"Wasn't lookin' to get placed with some Mormon family who'd do just about the same but also make me wear pressed button-downs."

"How old were you?"

"Fifteen."

John brushes over Gale's shoulders again, slow and gentle. Smooths his braid down his spine.

"You're done," he says.

Something in his tone makes Gale scowl, "I'm not looking for your pity, Bucky."

"You're not getting it."

Gale shakes his head slowly, feeling the tickle of his braid somewhere up along the apex of his shoulder blades rather than the central line of them. The weight of it is gone, or at least nearly negligible to what it was. He picks at the stray chunks of hair littered around them, twisting one clump around his fingers.

"I know I can’t protect you from everything, but I wish you’d let me protect you from the things I can control," John says.

"What are you able to control about something that happened five years ago?"

"hmm," John hops off the roof of the car, the whole frame squeaking and shaking with the movement. Gale uncurls from his hunched position. Hands him the scissors to tuck away safely. But not too safely. They are a weapon in a pinch, after all.

"That's not an answer."

"You telling me about it. Then I can protect you."

"How is telling you protecting me?" Gale slips down after him, tugs the blankets off the roof of the Corolla and shakes them out to get as much hair out as possible.

"Talking helps."

Gale snorts but John fixes him with an uncharacteristically sincere look

"I'm serious. My Ma made me go talk to a shrink after my dad died. it helped, kind of."

"What happened to him?"

It's mostly genuine. It's a little bit pointed. Poking at a bruise because his own hurts have been prodded at.

John smiles at him. It's awful, "He locked himself in the car with the exhaust on. Came home from ninth grade and found him in the garage."

Gale stares, looks down to finish folding the blankets.

"He was a Pastor," John continues, "He was a good man. Just kinda wish he'd left a note or something. An email. Hell, a fat life insurance policy would have been nice but they don't give you shit if it's a suicide."

"Do you pray then?"

"Sometimes, when I miss him. When I've got something important to say." John pops a lollipop into his mouth, hunts around for a sweet flavor to offer Gale, "Do you?"

Gale takes the lollipop, looks John's face over and shrugs a shoulder "No, not for a long time."

#swiftywrites #clegan #buck x bucky #mota #masters of the air #chapel au #cw mentions of child abuse

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queerism1969 · 2 years ago

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What are some of the best LGBTQ books?

Carol / The Price Of Salt by Patricia Highsmith

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

Call Me by Your Name by Andre Aciman (this was just turned into a film)

The Female Man by Joanna Russ

Valencia by Michelle Tea

The Slow Fix by Ivan E. Coyote

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

Landing by Emma Donoghue

A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham

The Kushiel's Legacy Series by Jacqueline Carey

The Nightrunner Series by Lynn Flewelling

Leave Myself Behind by Bart Yates

Now and Then by William Corlett

Dream Boy by Jim Grimsley

Les amitiés particulières (Special Friendships) by Roger Peyrefitte

Another Country by Julian Mitchell

Transgender History by Susan Stryker (good starting point into queer history in the United States)

All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M Johnson

Tr*nny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout by Laura Jane Grace

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon (dark but very engaging—the USA antebellum south but set on a generation ship)

Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman (read it in one night—archivist vampires)

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki (very cute and kind of wacky at points—includes aliens running a donut shop and Faustian deals with demons)

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin

the song of Achilles has a special place in my heart

Middlesex - Eugenides

Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun by Johnny Garza Villa.

The Bucolic Plague by Josh Kilmer-Purcell

Insignificant Others by Stephen McCauley

Let There Be Light by AM Johnson.

When Everything Is Blue by Lauren Lascarso.

Boyfriend Material and Glitterland by Alexi Hall.

The Happy List by Briar Prescott.

The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun.

The Will Darling Adventures by KJ Charles.

Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid.

The Place Between by Kit Oliver.

The Hearts Invisible Furies by John Boyne.

Bear, Otter and the Kid by TJ Klune.

Fun Home by Allison Bechdel

The Mask of Apollo - Renault

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97-liners · 1 year ago

Text

characters: mingyu, a gender neutral y/n

tags: zombie apocalypse, horror

warnings: major character death, gore, gun violence (and other violence, idk this is a zombie apocalypse setting), resource scarcity (see setting), mentions of a global pandemic (see setting)

60-minute free writing exercise

words: 2.3k

Mingyu was silent when he died.

Your hand on the trigger, his knees at your feet, you looked down the barrel to see him crying. In a moment of clarity, he had stopped fighting, and he was Mingyu again. Your Mingyu. And you knew that it was your Mingyu, that he still loved you, because he let his hands still at his sides and sat back on his heels, eyes glassy and wide and terrified, afraid to die, but afraid of what would happen if he didn’t. And because you knew he loved you, and because you loved him, loved him so much it was like a vice grip on your chest and on your finger-- because you loved him, you didn’t let his last little gift go to waste. Before the moment of clarity could pass, you pulled the trigger.

That was a week ago.

Now, you’re in your car-- his car, Mingyu’s old Toyota that he bought when he graduated college and got his first real engineering job. The days are long, and the nights are dark, but you have a destination in mind. The two of you were going to go to California together, where there’s a large settlement on the coast. In the last days before the cell towers went down, Mingyu had been on the phone with one of his old childhood friends, talking about it. “Let’s go,” his hand on yours, chest full of that stupid optimism that got him through junior year and the first six months of his shitty job in Jersey City and the time the two of you were stuck waiting for the MTA for 45 minutes, “Minghao says there's space for two.”

You’re alone now, driving through Nebraska on the I-80. There’s gas stockpiled in the trunk, and there’s still about a hundred miles until you get to Cheyenne, where you’ll get out and look for a gas station with still-functional pumps. The shotgun is on the passenger seat, accompanying you like a friend— like a lover. (There’s still blood and brains in the crevices of the gun. You spent hours with a rag next to a muddy puddle of water by the side of the road, wiping down every square inch you could see. Fresh water is hard to come by, however, and it’s not smart to stay in one place for too long. Hell, you haven’t even been able to shower in weeks. Your skin still bears the chemical burns from when you had wiped yourself down in bleach. It hurt, but you couldn’t risk the virus getting into your bloodstream, even accidentally.)

It’s sunny today. Nearly painfully bright. It feels like it shouldn’t be this sunny, not after everything that’s happened. But the sun is distant and uncaring and beats relentlessly down on the rolling plains around you.

And then, from miles away, you see it— a rest stop. The light-up sign has long since blinked out, but the shape is unmistakeable in the sea of blond grass rippling in the wind. A box-shaped building, next to it the hollowed-out remains of a Wendy’s. And a gas station. The huge kind, with two rows of pumps and a parking lot. Your breath hitches as you get closer and closer and the details materialize into view. There’s even gas prices still posted on the sign — under five bucks a gallon. That must have been put up before people started panicking in earnest and entrepreneurial gas station owners cranked up the prices to fifteen, twenty dollars a gallon, until the power lines went down and cell service went out and paying with a credit card didn’t really matter anymore. This far out into the country, when it’s been hours since you last saw anything but miles of prairie in every direction and the empty cassette ribbon of the I-80 cutting through the land, there’s a real possibility that the gas station and the accompanying convenience store might still be intact.

You pull into the parking lot. The windows are unbroken and the door is still chained shut — a good sign. You reach behind to grab the crowbar from the back seat, and when you twist back forward, you’re almost certain you catch a glimpse of Mingyu in the passenger seat. A flash of golden tan skin, of scruffy black hair, and you swear you could almost see his face, but when you turn around fully, the passenger seat is empty, save for the shotgun. And in an instant, you make the stupid decision to leave the car without bringing the gun. It’s quiet, you rationalize. There’s nobody out here. Nothing out here.

(In the days since he died, you think you’ve been hallucinating. You see the fuzzy figure of Mingyu in reflections, in shadows, in the staticky darkness when you close your eyes. Maybe it’s normal. After all, the two of you were always together, even before the pandemic. Since the first time he told you he loved you, this has been the longest time the two of you have been apart. Will be apart. Forever, you brain supplies unhelpfully.)

The door is easy to pry off its hinges, and the glass breaks but it doesn’t shatter. The inside of the convenience store is everything you had hoped for— dark, cobwebbed, but stocked full of mass-produced junk food filled with preservatives. They’re calories, artificially fortified with nutrients and chemical flavoring, meant to last for years on a shelf. Immediately, you head to where the granola bars are and begin to empty the shelves, filling your backpack in the process. Your mind is thinking ahead — this is more than enough food to last you the entire trip. This is enough to feed a couple of people for a few weeks. Is there food in Minghao’s settlement in California? How much should you take? Can all of this fit in your car? How many trips back and forth should you make?

Your stomach grumbles and you’re reminded that you’re hungry— it’s been a few days— so you take a Clif bar off the shelf and tear open the wrapper. You eat ravenously.

(Mingyu was always good at cooking. He knew how to make every soup imaginable, how to pull together the end of the month pantry staples and wilted produce and fill your tiny Brooklyn apartment with the smell of home. He knew how to fish, how to gut and clean the dirty little perch that he pulled from the Hudson, how to fry them over a fire to make them taste less like mud and more like food. How to build the fire so the smoke wouldn’t be seen, how to put it out so the embers wouldn’t give away your campsite.

You can’t cook. You’ve never had to learn, not with Mingyu by your side.)

Like your own shadow, little piece of Mingyu follow you as you make your way up and down the aisles. It’s just the hallucinations, you tell yourself. At the end of the cereal aisle, you stand still for a moment and stare at yourself in the fisheye reflection of the security mirror mounted on the ceiling. The store is dark, and the mirror is dusty. For a moment, you think you can see Mingyu standing next to you. You see him, tall, broad, alive, so beautiful he might be an angel.

It’s still breathlessly silent around you, however. You know Mingyu can’t be standing beside you, because the air around you feels empty. But there he is, in the blurry reflection of a convenience store security mirror. You blink, and he’s still there.

Suddenly, you begin to feel uneasy. He’s just another hallucination, isn’t he? The mirror is too blurry for you to get a good look at his face, and a large part of you doesn't want to see his face anyway. You're certain it’s him in the reflection. You could recognize him anywhere just from the way he stands. But something about his figure isn’t quite right.

You know what you need to do. You need to look to your side, where he’s standing in the mirror. You know, whatever it is you’re seeing, you need to just turn your head to the side and look to know what it is. Just look, it seems to tell you. I’m right here, Mingyu says.

You blink, and the Mingyu in the reflection is gone.

It’s just you, standing there in a dark convenience store, backpack open in your hands. And uneasily, you laugh. “Hey, Mingyu,” you say aloud. It’s been a week since you last said anything, and your voice sounds thin and reedy in your head. You don’t hear a response.

“Mingyu, wouldn’t it be fucked up if ghosts were real too?”

A few months ago, zombies were just something you’d see in a video game or TV show. Maybe it’s not a hallucination, but you’re not sure if that makes you feel better.

By the time you’re done raiding the convenience store, several trips back and forth to your car later, the back seat is stocked with all kinds of shelf-stable calorie-dense food. Like little luxuries, you made sure to leave some room for toilet paper, for shampoo and soap, for toothpaste, for a few boxes of instant coffee. You still need to fill up the two empty gas cans in the trunk, but first, you think you’ll use the bathrooms here.

The doors to the bathroom are on the outside of the building, and you find the keys hanging by the staff break room in the back of the store. It takes a few tries, but eventually the key turns in the lock and you’re able to push the heavy steel door open with your body weight.

As soon as the door closes behind you with a loud bang, you instantly get a bad feeling. Everything in your intuition is telling you to run. The bathroom is dark, save for one humming emergency light still illuminated overhead, and it’s completely silent. You exhale, and the sound bounces off the tiled walls and floors, whispering before settling back into that tense silence from a moment ago.

By the entrance, there are three sinks lined up in front of a large cracked mirror. You peer around the corner to see three stalls, each separated by a wall, with tall floor-to-ceiling doors that don’t leave even a centimeter of a gap between the wall. It’s still completely silent, but the persistent buzzing undercurrent of anxiety in your head is screaming at you— something isn’t right. You inch forward, skin prickling, and lightly push on the first door. It swings open. Then, you push on the third door, which also opens. You place your hand on the center door, and you can immediately tell that it’s locked.

But the bathroom is so, so quiet. Even when you stand still, glued to your spot in front of the stalls, and listen, you don’t hear anything. It’s empty, it has to be. You glance back over your shoulder at the wide mirror hanging over the sinks, and you half-expect to see Mingyu standing next to you again, but all you see is yourself—dirty, greasy, haggard— and the bathroom behind you. It’s empty.

Slowly and quietly, you walk past the center stall and enter the last one. There’s no toilet paper, but it doesn’t matter. You finish peeing and consider flushing the toilet. There’s probably still water in the tank. But something about creating all that noise doesn’t sit right with you, so you decide to forgo the last little bit of socialization clinging to your brain and exit the stall. You should probably wash your hands, you realize, so you step up to the sink and turn one of handles and, to your surprise, a stream of clean water dribbles out.

You put your hand under the water. It feels decadent. It feels like an unspeakable luxury, as you push on the soap dispenser and let some of the pink slime fall into your palm, as you lather it up into a foam. You scrub at your hands, trying your best to get out every last bit of dirt and blood embedded beneath your fingernails. And when your hands are rubbed raw but clean, you cup your hands and collect some water to rinse your face with. You wash your face with the same pink liquid soap you used to wash your hands, something you would be aghast at in another life, but now it practically feels like a spa day. Weeks of grime dissolving under your fingertips and swirling down the drain.

You shut off the water and reach for the paper towel dispenser. Maybe the bathroom really is empty and your instincts are all wrong. The door to the middle stall could be jammed, or it could have been locked by building staff before the pandemic even broke out. It would be stupid of you not to come back and fill a jug with clean water, no matter what your intuition says.

For a moment, you stand stock-still, just so you can get another gauge on the bathroom. The last bit of water leaves the sink drain and it’s silent again. You watch yourself in the mirror, hold your breath, try to sense even the tiniest shift in the air. It smells like Mingyu, you realize. Clean and soapy and warm. It’s the same scent his skin used to carry. Like he’s here, next to you.

The bathroom is silent.

Your reflection stares back at you. The overhead light casts harsh shadows over your face, leaving your eyes dark and empty.

The bathroom is silent.

Mingyu’s scent, but it’s not comforting at all. Not in the way you used to nudge your nose against his throat during lazy Sunday mornings and inhale his warmth. Not in the way you’d wear his hoodies and press your face against the lining.

The bathroom is silent. And then, with a click, the middle door unlocks.

#97.yn #97.writings

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jamdoughnutmagician · 1 year ago

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Easing The Nerves (18+)

Steve Harrington x Female Reader

Word Count: 1,333

Summary:Steve finds his own special way to ease your nerves about meeting his parents for the first time.

Warnings:NSFW, 18+, Making Out, Teasing, Fingering. I think that's it but if you want anything else tagged let me know.

Masterlist

After spending the entire summer together you’d come to find out pretty early on in your relationship that Steve Harrington was actually an incredibly sweet, loving and attentive boyfriend. And as the warm summer months rolled into the crisp autumn days, your relationship with Steve continued to grow stronger each day, and with getting closer came new milestones in your relationship.

Meeting the parents.

And so that brought you to where you were now. Sitting next to Steve inside in his car, parked just outside of the Harrington’s residence. A place you’d been many times before, a place in which you felt comfortable being, on the sofa, curled up next to your boyfriend with some random movie only serving as background noise to your inevitable make out session.

However, you'd never been there whilst Mr. and Mrs. Harrington were there.

And now you were about to meet them. For the first time. Ever.

Your sweaty palms flattered down the length of your skirt, a nervous energy bubbling inside you. What if they didn't like you? What if they never wanted you to see their son ever again? What if you embarrassed yourself?

“They’re gonna love you, Honey, don’t worry.” Steve reassures, his soft hazel brown eyes full of kindness, already knowing that your mind was running at a hundred miles an hour.

“But Steve…” you start, but he’s all too quick to silence your worries with a peck to your lips.

“They’re gonna love you, because I love you, alright?”

He could still sense your uneasy nerves, knowing that no matter how much he tried to ease your worries, your brain still panicked over every little thing.

“I just worry that your parents are going to think that I’m not good enough for you, Steve..” you sigh dejectedly. You were well aware of Steve’s family’s status around Hawkins. His father, being the big, successful businessman that he was, whilst his mother was a very well-respected member of the community.

“Honey…” he whispers, “I promise you, they are never going to think that, chance are my mother’s going to think ‘what’s a nice girl like you doing with my son?’” Steve jokes trying to ease your nerves.

You give a small ‘hmph’ still not totally convinced by your boyfriend’s reasoning.

“What can I do to help calm your nerves, hm?”

You shake your head at his question.

“I know what I can do.” he smiles broadly, like he’s had the greatest idea in the world. “How ‘bout I help take the edge of things, get you off with my fingers? How does that sound, hm?”

“Steve we can’t.” you protest, despite how much you would love to entertain his idea.

"Of course we can, Sweetheart." Steve reassures "My parents won't be expecting us for at least another fifteen minutes or so?" He says with a quick glance at his watch. "..and I know I can definitely get you off at least twice in that time."

You looked at Steve in his stupid polo-neck shirt and light wash denim jeans that were tightly stretched across the spread of his thick thighs. His hair in that perfectly imperfect mess that falls beautifully without him even trying. The golden haze of the evening’s slowly setting sun catching his eyes, illuminating them with honeyed sparkle.

He was always very hard to resist.

He offers up an open space on his lap and before you know it you’re jumping from your seat to sit in his lap in the driver’s seat.

“There she is, my pretty baby..” he smiles, cupping your face in one of his big strong hands, slowly stroking his thumb over the soft skin of your cheek.

You close your eyes and lean into his gentle touch, enjoying the feeling of how tender and sweet he was being with you.

He begins kissing you. Starting with nothing more than a simple peck against your lips. Before beginning to trail his kisses down into the crook of your neck.

You quickly pull him away from your neck and gently chastise him

"Hey! No hickeys! I've still got to look presentable when I meet your parents, Steve."

He smiles against your skin, sneaking in one more soft kiss into the crook of your neck before pulling away.

"Can you pull your skirt up for me, Honey?"

You do as you're asked, and bunch the material of your skirt in your hands, holding it out of the way for Steve.

Upon seeing your simple light blue cotton panties Steve can’t help the sly smirk that plays at his lips. His eyes linger on the slight dark wet patch on your panties.

“Just a few kisses and you’re wet already…that’s so cute baby..” he teases.

“Steve…please..” you whine.

“Alright sweetheart..” he smiles before hooking his fingers into the elastic of your panties and pulling them aside just enough to reveal yourself to him.

Steve brings his hand up your mouth, holding two thick fingers up to your lips.

“Suck on my fingers for me, Honey, get ‘em nice and wet.”

You open your mouth, letting Steve slide his fingers between your lips. Your tongue swirls between the two digits, making them slick with spit.

He slowly pulls his fingers out of your mouth, a string of spit connecting his fingers and to your lips as he pulls away.

“Good girl..” he tells you, his voice low and full of seduction.

He takes his spit-slick fingers and begins to trail them down the length of your pussy, before sliding them inside you. His thick fingers filling you up and stretching you out so perfectly.

He begins to move his fingers in and and out of you, causing you to wriggle your hips to over his thighs. Desperate to feel that friction.

His thumb catches on your clit, rubbing it in tight circles as he watches your chest rise and fall with each little breathy moan you try to stifle.

“Come on, Honey..I know you need it…can feel how close you are..” he mumbles, placing kisses against your lips. “Can feel how tightly you’re squeezing my fingers.”

His fingers continue thrusting in and out of you, curling them upwards to press against that spot inside you that had you clinging to your boyfriend’s shoulder as he brought you towards a shuddering orgasm.

“That’s it baby..come for me…Want you to feel good, Honey..” he cooed in your ear so sweetly as you rode out the high of your orgasm, squeezing his hand between your thighs as you do.

Steve slowly pulled his fingers from you, the evidence of his endeavours to please you clear on his fingers, glistening in the dimming light streaming through his car’s window. He then brings his fingers up to his lips, sucking into his mouth as he cleans them of your juices.

“Tastes so sweet, Honey,” he smiles broadly.

“You’re unbelievable, Steve.” you giggle at your boyfriend.

“What? Are you or are you not feeling more relaxed now?” He asked, raising his eyebrows at you.

You hated that he was right. He always knew just how to handle you.

“I’ll take that silence as a yes!” he says smugly, as if proud of himself.

He quickly glances at his watch.

“Looks like it’s time to go meet my old folks. You ready, babe?”

“Wait! Steve, what about you.. I mean your…” your eyes cast down to where his dick is bulging underneath the denim of his jeans.

"Oh don't worry about me, Honey…you can always return the favour in my room later." He says with a cheeky wink.

You pull yourself together as best as you can as you made your way to the Harrington’s front door on shaky legs, you introduced yourself and they welcomed you into their home.

And if your lips were a bit more kiss-bitten than you would care to admit too, and Steve's hair was more ruffled than usual, then Mr. and Mrs. Harrington were very kind not to mention it.

Tags:

@itsfreakingbats @harringtons-cupid @penguinsandpotterheads @seatnights

#Steve Harrington x Reader #Steve Harrington x Female Reader #Steve Harrington X reader smut #Steve Harrington x Female Reader smut #Steve Harrington smut

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jonnyescribe · 2 months ago

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I always forget about this place so please excuse the late update that maybe all of you already know about but—

I have a book coming out (titled Futbolista) next March and it has a cover! and, if you’ve read Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun, you’ve already met the main character! here’s the description—

A classmates-to-friends-to-lovers New Adult romance that's equal parts raunchy, heartfelt, queer, and Mexican-American, centered on college football (the REAL football)!

Gabriel Piña knows who he is: a college goalkeeper, a future Liga MX or MLS star, and definitely straight. He’s starting his freshman year with a lot of eyes on him and even more potential, but he’s got this. Nothing will have him straying off the path to greatness.

That is, until his philosophy classmate Vale volunteers to tutor him. Vale, the same guy who Gabi, in a moment of history repeating itself, might’ve kissed very briefly—and only once—just to help him out at a party. Vale, the smart, supportive, compassionate new friend with beautiful brown eyes and a smile that keeps Gabi, for completely inexplicable reasons, constantly in a daydream.

As a friendship blooms and the two spend more and more time together, Gabi finally begins to recognize something about himself: maybe he’s not as straight as he thought he was. But a larger and darker realization lingers. Someone like Gabi—a brown, Mexican futbolista with dreams of playing for El Tri—can’t also be bisexual. He’s seen the way his teammates and community react to queerness in their sport. It would be the exact type of straying off path that destroys his future.

Or, maybe Gabi could be brave enough to embrace all those parts of himself and forge his own path, one that includes a boyfriend and the beautiful game.

A sports romance for those who keep rewatching Bend It Like Beckham and rereading Red, White & Royal Blue and the incredible collection of queer soc—football romances out there, Futbolista follows the first semester of one guy's freshman year of college, navigating who he is, who he’s allowed to be, and who he wants to be.

so, yeah! this is my first New Adult romance (which, maybe unsurprisingly isn’t too different from the upper YA I’ve already published, except that I would say there is indeed spice in this one) and I’m very excited for y’all to read about my hard-headed, ambitious bisexual Gabi and kiss turned classmate turned boyfriend Vale and their story 💙🍍⚽️ out March 11, 2025!

#writeblr #bookblr #romance #new adult #jonny garza villa #futbolista

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slaughter-books · 15 days ago

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Day 25: JOMPBPC: Book Pile

A beautiful pile of fantasy and contemporary books! 📚💛

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bad-fucking-omens · 11 months ago

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The Witch Twin (Alec V. x OC) - Chapter 2 - Volterra

Summary: When I thought about my future, I was sure that I had the rest of my life vaguely planned out.

Then, my older sister moved up from Arizona to stay with us — and turned my entire life upside down.

I had no idea just how bad it had gotten until I was standing in a castle in Italy, convinced that I was about to die.

Length: 2.9K words (Complete fic 71.8K words)

Fic warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, death, explicit smut (M/F), referenced/implied past child abuse, emotional manipulation by sibling

Chapter warnings: None

Read on AO3 or read below

2. VOLTERRA

Bella couldn’t sit still in her seat on the flight from Seattle to New York. She fidgeted constantly while she and Alice whispered to each other, but honestly, I wasn’t paying much attention to them.

I was still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that vampires were actually real, and that the Cullens were vampires. Were all the legends about vampires true? Did they drink human blood? Could they go out in sunlight or would they burn and crumble to ash? Were they immortal?

It all sounded absurd, and yet here I was, on a plane and headed halfway across the world to save my sister’s ex-boyfriend from killing himself because he thought she had died.

I was pulled out of my thoughts when the plane finally landed in New York. We had to run through the airport to make our connecting flight to Florence, Italy. On that flight, my mind wandered away from the Cullens and vampires to Charlie.

I had made a rash decision in coming with Bella and Alice. What if Bella and I both died? Charlie would be absolutely destroyed if he lost both of us. But I knew that as risky as my decision to come with Alice and Bella was, I had to be here. I knew that Bella had to try to save Edward, but if he died, Bella would try to follow him into the grave as soon as possible. She had to save him, or Charlie and I would lose her. I couldn’t just sit at home, waiting and hoping my sister would come back rather than disappearing suddenly from the world. I could only pray that we all made it out of here alive.

When the plane landed in Italy, Alice rushed us out of the plane and airport. She led us down to the parking garage, where she stole a bright yellow Porsche. Bella and I climbed into the sportscar.

I stared out of the car window as Alice sped down the winding Italian roads. She and Bella were focused only on Edward. I forced myself to tune out their conversation, just watching the Tuscan landscape as it blurred past us. Beautiful, rolling, green hills that were studded with gorgeous Italian villas surrounded us for miles.

“It’s Saint Marcus Day.”

“Which means?” Bella asked.

Reluctantly, I tore my eyes away from the window to look at Alice in the front seat.

Alice laughed darkly and answered, “The city holds a celebration every year. As the legend goes, a Christian missionary, a Father Marcus — Marcus of the Volturi, in fact — drove all the vampires from Volterra fifteen hundred years ago. The story claims he was martyred in Romania, still trying to drive away the vampire scourge. Of course that’s nonsense — he’s never left the city. But that’s where some of the superstitions about things like crosses and garlic come from. Father Marcus used them so successfully. And vampires don’t trouble Volterra, so they must work. It’s become more of a celebration of the city and recognition for the police force — after all, Volterra is an amazingly safe city. The police get the credit.”

“They’re not going to be very happy if Edward messes things up for them on St. Marcus Day, are they?”

Alice shook her head at Bella’s question. “No. They’ll act very quickly.”

Bella glanced away from her, looking as if she might burst into tears. She looked out of the window and up at the sun.

“He’s still planning on noon?” she asked.

“Yes. He’s decided to wait. And they’re waiting for him.”

“Tell me what I have to do.”

Alice said, “You don’t have to do anything. He just has to see you before he moves into the light. And he has to see you before he sees me.”

“How are we going to work that?” Bella asked.

“I’m going to get you as close as possible, and then you’re going to run in the direction I point you. Your sister will stay with me,” she added, glancing at me through the rearview mirror.

I just nodded. I knew that this wasn’t the time for me to argue — if Bella was going to save Edward, I couldn’t be in the way.

“There,” Alice said suddenly. She pointed to a castle city that crowned the nearest hill. “Volterra.”

The street Alice was driving through was very narrow. The red flags that seemed to cover every inch of this city were draped along the walls that nearly scraped the car, flapping in the wind. Even this tiny side street was crowded with people.

“Just a little further,” Alice murmured.

Bella was gripping the handle of her door so tightly that her knuckles were white. She was ready to push it open and run out into the street as soon as Alice told her to.

The people around us were clearly annoyed with Alice’s aggressive driving. She squeezed through narrow alleyways, making the passersby press against the walls and into doorways as we forced our way past them. The buildings were taller now — so tall that no sunlight was able to reach the pavement.

As soon as Alice stopped the car, Bella threw the door open. The pixie-like girl — no, vampire — pointed towards where the street widened into the sunlight.

“There — we’re at the southern end of the square. Run straight across, to the right of the clock tower. I’ll find a way around–”

She broke off suddenly and hissed, “They’re everywhere!”

My heart stuttered in my chest and Bella froze, but Alice pushed my sister out of the car.

“Forget about them! You have two minutes. Go, Bella, go!”

Bella began sprinting away, roughly shoving people out of her way. I climbed out of the car with Alice. I kept my eyes on Bella for as long as I could until Alice pulled me away with a gloved hand on my arm and my sister disappeared from my view.

“Come on,” Alice said to me.

I followed her as she maneuvered through the streets, around people dressed entirely in red. Alice pulled me through the narrow streets and alleys, pointedly keeping herself hidden in the shadows. I followed her silently. I was barely paying any attention to Alice or where she was leading me — my mind was focused entirely on Bella.

Would she be fast enough to stop Edward from doing whatever he thought would get the Volturi to kill him? What if she was too late? What if she saw him being taken away, or worse, executed? What would happen after she stopped him if she could reach him in time?

Alice pulled me from my thoughts when she grabbed my hand and tugged me into a dark alley. She said softly, “Let’s behave ourselves, shall we? There are ladies present.”

She brought me closer to the others, though she kept me right by her side. I let out a small, relieved breath when I saw Bella clinging to Edward, though my stomach twisted when I saw the two men in front of them. Alice pulled me along with her as she moved to stand beside her brother, her hand still gripping mine tightly.

The two others straightened up to their full height. The tall, bulky one looked annoyed, while the shorter, slender one eyed me curiously. I pressed closer to Alice’s side as my racing heart jumped up to my throat.

He had red eyes.

“We’re not alone,” Alice warned.

The vampire who had been studying me glanced over his shoulder. I followed his gaze. A few yards behind him, a small family was watching us from the square. The mother was speaking urgently to a man who was probably her husband, her eyes locked on the six of us in the alley. She looked away when the vampire met her eyes. The man walked a few steps away and tapped the shoulder of another man in a red blazer.

The shorter, red-eyed vampire turned back towards us, shaking his head. “Please, Edward. Let’s be reasonable.”

“Let’s,” Edward replied. “And we’ll leave quietly now, with no one the wiser.”

He sighed frustratedly. “At least let us discuss this more privately.”

Behind him, six more people had joined the family now, and all of them were watching us anxiously. I could feel my heartbeat in my throat as goosebumps erupted on my skin. Every part of my mind and body screamed that I was in danger. I tried to focus on taking slow, steady breaths to prevent myself from hyperventilating.

“No,” Edward said and the tall vampire smiled.

“Enough.”

The high-pitched, English-accented voice came from behind us. Alice pulled me almost entirely behind her body, so that I could only barely see the other figure moving towards us.

The girl was younger than either of the male vampires, and I guessed that she might be around my age — seventeen. She was as small as Alice and, although her body was mostly hidden under a dark, nearly black cloak, it was clear that she was slim. Her face was beautiful, angelic in a way that reminded me of Renaissance paintings of young maidens, but she was even prettier. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a tight bun and her eyes were crimson red.

The two other red-eyed vampires instantly relaxed in her presence. Even the tension in Edward’s body disappeared, though he seemed more defeated than relieved.

“Jane,” he sighed.

Alice folded her arms across her chest, a sour look on her face. Bella looked about as confused and terrified as I felt.

“Follow me,” the girl, Jane, told us.

She turned around and began to silently walk back towards where she had come from. The tall vampire gestured for us to follow her. The smug smirk that curled on his lips turned my stomach.

Alice was the first to follow Jane. Edward’s touch was gentle as he pushed me forward to talk in front of him, so that I was between him and Alice. He kept Bella tucked tightly against his side. When I glanced at her over my shoulder, she didn’t seem nearly as anxious as I felt, but for some reason, that didn’t put me at ease. I turned back around quickly, curling my arms around my stomach as my anxiety grew.

“Well, Alice,” Edward began, “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to see you here.”

“It was my mistake,” she said. “It was my job to set it right.”

“What happened?” Edward’s voice was casual, as if he was barely interested in her answer.

“It’s a long story. . . . In summary, she did jump off a cliff, but she wasn’t trying to kill herself. Bella’s all about the extreme sports these days.”

I glanced back at Bella again, my lips parted in shock and horror. She had jumped off a cliff? Alice gently took my arm to keep me moving and I turned back around, shaking my head.

“Hm,” Edward hummed.

We reached a dead end at the end of the alley. I gasped lightly and took a step back in shock when Alice dropped down into the open hole in the street. They wanted me to do that?

“It’s all right,” Edward said, making me look at him. “Alice will catch you.”

I clenched my hands into fists to stop them from shaking. I took a breath as I turned back around, taking a step closer to the drain that was sunk into the lowest part of the street. The grate had been pushed halfway aside, but the hole was big enough for me to swing my legs into the narrow gap. I took another deep, steadying breath, then pushed myself off the ledge and into the darkness.

I grunted when I landed in Alice’s rock-hard arms. She set me on my feet and I bent over, pressing a hand to my chest and gasping quietly as I tried to regain the breath that had been knocked out of me. A few moments later, Bella fell into Alice’s arms.

It was dark, but not completely pitch-black at the bottom of the drain. The stones under my feet reflected wetly in the bright light from the street above us. The light vanished for a split second each time the other three vampires dropped through the hole to the ground. They all landed lightly on their feet, so quietly that I could just barely hear them.

Edward pulled Bella against his side as we began to walk forward. Once again, I was stuck between the Cullens, with Alice in front of me and Edward and Bella trailing behind me. I tried not to stumble on the uneven, slick stones that lined the floor, especially when the dim light finally faded into total darkness. Our footsteps echoed in my ears — along with my own frantic heartbeat.

What the hell had I gotten myself into? What had Bella gotten us into? Was I walking to my death? My throat tightened when I thought about how they would kill me. It wasn’t hard to imagine how one of the red-eyed vampires would grab me and pull me close enough to sink their teeth into my neck. Would I bleed out before I could realize what was happening to me, before I could even process the pain? Or would my last few moments in this world be filled with terror and agony?

We stepped through a door, out of the dark, stone sewer and into a brightly lit hallway. The walls were off-white, the floor covered in an industrial grey carpet. Fluorescent lights shone down on us from the ceiling.

I followed Alice towards the elevator at the end of the hallway. Jane waited for all of us, her small, delicate hand holding the doors open for us.

Once we were inside the elevator, the vampires from the Volturi relaxed, which only made me tense up even more in response. They let the hoods of their dark cloaks fall back onto their shoulders. The two males both had an olive complexion, though it was slightly ashen. The bulky one had shortly cropped black hair, while the shorter one’s dark blonde hair fell across his forehead in gentle waves. Under their dark grey cloaks, they wore clothes that were modern and pale.

I looked at my older sister. Bella was clinging to Edward’s side, who had his eyes locked on Jane. Suddenly, I was surprisingly grateful to be stuck between Alice and Edward now, rather than being forced to stay close to the other vampires. My heart was still racing in my chest, though, and I was half-worried that I would have a heart attack before the vampires could kill me. I wondered which death I would prefer.

The elevator ride was short. When the doors opened, we stepped out into a posh office reception area. The walls were paneled wood and the floor was covered with a thick, dark green carpet. There were no windows, but the walls were covered in large, brightly lit paintings of the Tuscan countryside. They were so realistic that I could almost believe that they were windows to the outside. Pale leather couches were arranged in small groupings around glossy tables that held crystal vases full of brightly colored flowers.

A tall, polished mahogany counter stood in the middle of the room. The woman sitting behind it was very pretty, but here, surrounded by so many aesthetically perfect vampires, she looked plain by comparison. She seemed completely at ease around them, though. She didn’t even bat an eye at our large group, just politely smiled and greeted, “Good afternoon, Jane.”

“Gianna,” the blonde vampire replied as she led us towards a set of double doors in the back of the room.

A boy was waiting on the other side. He was wearing a well-fitted, white dress shirt, along with a pair of tailored dark grey dress pants. He looked similar to Jane in both looks and age, though his features were slightly more angular and masculine, and somehow even more perfect than the blonde girl’s. His brown hair was so dark that it was almost black, wavy, and just barely long enough for the very ends of his hair to curl over his forehead.

The sight of him very nearly took my breath away as my heart stuttered in my chest. He was gorgeous — more beautiful than anyone I had ever seen before.

The boy walked forward to greet us. He smiled as he reached for Jane, greeting her with her name.

“Alec,” she replied as she hugged him. A strange feeling twisted in my stomach as they kissed each other’s cheeks on both sides. The boy looked over at the group of us, his red eyes trailing over Edward and Bella first.

“They send you out for one and you come back with two . . . and two halves,” he noted. “Nice work.”

Jane laughed. I noticed that, just like her, Alec had a strange accent that seemed to be a beautiful mix of English and Italian.

Alec said, “Welcome back, Edward. You seem in a better mood.”

“Marginally,” Edward agreed.

Alec chuckled, his eyes moving to look at Bella. “And this is the cause of all the trouble?”

Edward smiled thinly. He froze and a moment later, one of the vampires behind us said, “Dibs.” Edward turned, a low snarl building in his chest that made me flinch, which drew Alec’s gaze to me.

#alec volturi x reader #alec volturi imagine #alec volturi fanfiction #alec volturi #twilight imagine #twilight fanfiction #twilight #volturi fanfiction #volturi

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writereleaserepeat · 2 years ago

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Hear No Evil - Chapter 4

Previous // Next

CW: bbu, bbu-adjacent, pet whump, institutionalized slavery, dehumanization, dehumanizing intent by using it/its pronouns, ableism, food mention, starvation

[A/N at the end of the chatper]

Rowan spent fifteen minutes pacing in his hallway before he settled on who he would call. A lump lodged in his throat every time he passed by the box the boy arrived in - what was he even supposed to do with it now? - and his heart fluttered whenever his finger hovered over his chosen contact.

“How are you supposed to help this victim recover if you can’t even make a phone call, you idiot?” Rowan chastised himself as he rubbed his palm against his brow. Rationally, making a call was the best way to get himself and his new houseguest some help. Rationally, Rowan knew that this had to happen sooner or later. But rationality hadn’t exactly been governing Rowan’s choices over the past two days.

It took another two minutes of anxious pacing before he sat at the kitchen table, hit the call button, and heard the phone ring once, twice, three times and-

“Hey there, Rowan,” the familiar and ever-cheerful voice said, and it hit Rowan like a ray of golden sun. “What’s up, man? You doing alright after the liquidation event yesterday? I know those are hard on you.”

Rowan paused, took a breath, and closed his eyes. Now or never.

“Listen, Grey, I might have done something a little impulsive when I was there.” The entirety of his admission wasn’t quite ready to come to Rowan’s lips. All of a sudden his throat was dry, and his knee bounced beneath the table.

“Please don’t tell me they clocked you,” Greyson groaned. Greyson - just Grey to Rowan - was the current Vice President of the Pet Liberation Front, North American Division. Greyson also happened to be Rowan’s best friend. They’d known each other since they onboarded at PLF together more than a decade ago, and although their paths had diverged, a common mission still united them. Grey had taken on pet liberation as his full-time job, and Rowan had stuck with the weekend volunteer gigs.

“No, nothing like that,” Rowan said hastily. “No cops, no drama, no one suspected a thing. I even got all the footage you asked for. But I uh… I saw a victim there. He was just different, okay? I can’t tell you what it was, not exactly, but there was something about him that I’ve never seen before. I looked at him and I just- I couldn’t say no, so I- I rescued him. Cash upfront for a lifetime contract, signed on the warehouse floor, delivered this morning. He’s in my spare bedroom right now.”

“Jesus Christ,” Grey muttered, and Rowan could picture his exasperated face from hundreds of miles away. The other man only continued after releasing a deep sigh. “You aren’t trained as a rescuer, you haven’t been assigned a rehabilitator, and there’s no way we can get him in for a medical work-up on such short notice. You're in way over your head with this.”

“I know, I know.” Rowan could concede that he fucked up, just a little, or maybe more than a little. But the boy was alive in that spare room rather than being burned to ash in the industrial cremator. That had to count for something, right?

“What’s wrong with him, huh?” Grey asked this over the sound of distant keystrokes, the frustration in his voice already dissipating. “You purchased him at a liquidation event, which means there's something they determined was defective, so this isn’t even a standard rescue case. Give me some details and I can try to connect you to a rehabilitator for emergency intervention. If you send me scans of the purchase papers - they should be in his box with the instruction manual - I can also open a rescue file in our system for him.”

Rowan let out a soft breath of relief. Grey had shifted into his rescue-oriented mindset, which meant that if he intended to continue scolding Rowan, it would at least come at a later time.

“I- I don’t know why he was sent for liquidation. He’s only been here for a few hours, and I’ve been too focused on not making a mess of things to figure it out. The WRU agent said that he had stopped listening to direct commands, but that’s all the information I got. He hasn’t reacted to a single thing I’ve said this whole time. Physically, he seems to be in decent shape. Walking, kneeling, any kind of movement, he had no problem. There’s the usual scarring and some fresh wounds around his cheeks, ears, and neck, but that’s it.” Rowan thought back to the deep wounds gouged into the boy's head, and again wondered what sort of torment would cause such persistent injuries. A shiver crept up his spine, but Grey cut in before Rowan's imagination could get the best of him.

“Hmm. Alright. It looks like our roster has one volunteer rehabilitator about five miles from your address, an Allison Herrera. She’s been with the PLF for four years now, and she’s assisted in more than ten successful rehabilitations with different rescuers in your area. I’ve sent her your contact information, and she doesn’t have any other cases at the moment, so you should expect to hear from her soon.”

“You are a miracle worker, Grey.” Unlike just a few minutes ago, Rowan was no longer in this alone. Help was on its way. Of course, as the rescuer, he knew he would have to do most of the work. The most a rehabilitator could offer him was guidance, advice, assessment. But by god, Rowan was going to take it.

Grey gave a soft, strained chuckle.

“No, you’re the miracle worker today. You gave that boy a second chance at life, and that’s worth more than all the money in the world. I wouldn’t ever recommend doing what you’ve just done, but I know you did it with a good heart and good intentions.”

“Yeah. I just… I couldn’t let him go. Not this one, not this time.”

Grey sighed again, and Rowan liked to imagine that he was smiling.

“Now get back there and try to settle your new houseguest in. Remember, it's firm suggestions, not commands, are the best to begin the transition process. Conversational tone, soft voices, lots of praise. Read through the PLF rescue manual, and then read it again. Allison will tell you more when you end up connecting.”

“Alright, I’ll do my best. Thank you, really. I promise I’ll try to call you at some point when I’m not in crisis mode.”

“Not holding my breath, bud. You just take care and keep me updated.” And with that, the line went dead, and Rowan was back on his own.

---

Pet almost let one tear fall down its face as it soaked in the newness of everything around it. Kneeling was hard after so many hours in the box, but that was okay. Pet had done things that were so much harder. These floors weren’t even cement, so it thought maybe it could even kneel all day without its knees bruising.

The food Master left was still just out of reach, and Pet's stomach was filled with the daggers of hunger, but Pet remembered Master’s words with gospel-like reverence. Don’t eat. So it didn’t. If this was Pet's first test in its new home, it would prove itself to Master, it would show just how obedient it could be.

Usually it was easy for Pet’s mind to grow empty, for it to submit to the nothingness, to surrender wholly to a place without pain. It wasn’t meant to think, it was trained not to. But today, Pet was struggling not to think. There was too much new. It was more frustrated than ever that it couldn't quite hear its new Master’s voice. It couldn’t tell if it was a scratchy voice, or if it was a soft one, or if it was a warm, deep roar. All Pet knew was that there were distant, muted words that floated beyond its grasp.

If Pet was going to be good, it had to learn fast. Even if it didn’t have the exact words, it had to learn what Master wanted, and what Master expected of it. The better Pet anticipated its Master's needs, the less it got punished. A reliable pet was a good pet.

Even when it got hard to hear its old Master’s commands, Pet knew him well. Pet knew what time breakfast was to be prepared, how Master liked his floors cleaned, and which tools to offer up for punishment when Master was angry. It was routine, predictable, and even if it couldn’t hear every exact command, it was comforting to Pet. Every day was the same. There were no guesses, no surprises. Days and pain all bled into one another as the silence grew. Every day was the same, every ache anticipated.

That was, until it was dropped back off at the facility for re-training. Discarded.

Not all of this new was bad. New Master smelled like no other Master that Pet had ever had - he smelled almost like bread fresh from the oven. The house had soft wooden floors, not cold tile, and the light came from soft, yellow bulbs. It was warm here, and the space was snug with narrow halls and close walls. It wasn’t particularly clean, at least not as clean as its old Master would have expected, but Pet didn’t mind.

And since it hadn’t heard its new Master yell, then Pet thought that maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t suffer much more pain today. The idea of punishment made its heart flutter uncomfortably in its chest.

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t flinch. Don’t think. Calm down. You belong to Master. Master can do with you as he pleases. You are Master’s property. Your only concern is to listen to Master, please Master, obey Master’s every command.

Before Pet could try to escape to blissful nothingness once more, Master’s feet appeared in the doorway. They sidestepped the plate - still untouched - and came closer to Pet. It braced its muscles as subtly as possible, preparing for the inevitable strike. There was another mumbling of words, just as indistinct as before.

Pet stopped breathing when a hand touched its chin, ever so gently, and titled its face upwards.

---

A/N: Wow! Thank you all so much for the outpouring of love I have received for this story. I must admit I abandoned it back in October as my life got busy, but I have a total of fifteen chapters currently written, with more on the way. So yes, this work is continuing!

Reading the kind tags and comments so many folks have left genuinely brought tears to my eyes. Your kindness has been overwhelming in the best possible way. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy!

I think I got everyone who asked to be tagged for this, but please ask if you would like to be added! Please let me know if you have been added in error, and you will be promptly removed.

Taglist: @honey-is-mesi @aswallowimprisoned @kira-the-whump-enthusiast @honeycollectswhump @rekiroyalstraightprincemaru @tragedyinblue @clairelsonao3 @octopus-reactivated @maracujatangerine @peachy-panic

#bbu #whump #pet whump #whump community #whumplr #whump writing #tw dehumanization #hear no evil #chapter 4

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searchingwardrobes · 9 months ago

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Writing Patterns

Thank you for tagging me, @iamstartraveller776 ! I haven't done a game in ages, and since I'm on my kids' homeschool break, thought I'd give it a whirl.

Rules: list the first line of your last 10 (posted) fics and see if there's a pattern!

Killian wished for the first time for those garish artificial lights of Storybrooke. (From "My Life, My Love, My Lady" complete)

The last time he saw her, he was fifteen hundred miles away from this rocky stretch of beach. (From "No Wives, No Mothers, No Lovers" complete)

Emma saw the rusted shopping cart rattle past out of the corner of her eye. (From "Scarborough Fair" WIP)

yellowbug83: Hi! I just purchased your Falcon as Captain America mini figure. (From "A Strange Way to Fall in Love" complete)

“I am in desperate need of a milkshake.” (From "After I'm Gone" complete)

Emma pulls her gaze away from her binoculars to scowl at the radio as if it's personally offended her. (From "Next Stop Storybrooke" eternally a WIP lol)

“Can we use your bathroom, please?" (From "It's Been . . . a DAY" complete)

The sun rose hot and fast over the Oklahoma panhandle, baking the barren ground with its scorching heat. (From "She Dreams in Color" complete from the CS HistFic event.)

9. When ebony flashes gold, Blood runs cold. When ivory runs red, You’ll be dead. (From "Ivory Runs Red" Complete from the Captain Swan Supernatural Summer event 2021)

10. Bounce left, bounce right. (From "Not the Type" eternally WIP Bring it On AU from the Captain Swan Movie Marathon Event.

The only pattern I see is that I suck at opening lines, lol. (Which I already knew.) #4 and #10 are especially confusing if you haven't read the fic summary, and I'm laughing pretty hard about that!

Tagging @snowbellewells @jrob64 @kmomof4 @whimsicallyenchantedrose @spartanguard

#game #tag game #writing game #fic writing #writing woes #writing weaknesses lol

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lgbtqreads · 1 year ago

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hi! so I just watched the netflix show xo, kitty and I absolutely loved it!! Now I'm very much in a fun ya queer romance mood. my problem is there are SO MANY out there I don't know which to pick! (never thought this would be an issue id be having when I was a teenager! that makes me happy :)) anyway I was wondering if you could give me some recs you wish more people would read so I can pick from those instead of my massive wishlist lol. thank you!

I haven't watched the show so I don't know what's a close match, but I can definitely recommend some fun YA queer romances! Jennifer Dugan writes some of my faves of these - I personally love Hot Dog Girl most but Some Girls Do is her most popular. Love love Leah Johnson's You Should See Me in a Crown, Kelly Quindlen's You Drive Me Crazy, Adiba Jaigirdar's Hani and Ishu's Guide to Fake Dating, Alyson Derrick and Rachael Lippincott's She Gets the Girl, and Becky Albertalli's Imogen, Obviously - those are all Sapphic, and I have a few books that fit, too - Cool for the Summer, Home Field Advantage, and Going Bicoastal!

For some other pairings, I love Camp by L.C. Rosen, Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun by Jonny Garza Villa, Always the Almost by Edward Underhill, and How to Repair a Mechanical Heart by JC Lillis in m/m, and I'll Be the One by Lyla Lee is a fave for me in m/f!

#lgbtqreads #ya #romancebooks

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theglycoprotein · 7 months ago

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Shadow Bands

The world stares skywards, awaits inevitable.

A cosmic dance between two celestial lovers

known so well that we ourselves can trace its steps

across the galaxy.

And if I never again move from this island,

I will have seen ninety six rotations around the sun

before she meets the moon like this again,

before they coalesce with my being. Before fate

coincides once more over my head...

It's the only time a swathe of darkness

is met with wonder.

A deep shadow, cast a hundred and fifteen miles

wide:

if I were in Texas, I'd be attempting to translate

my English to birdsong, forcing my throat

to contort, spew forth a high pitched warble -

communicate that the world isn't ending.

That there's no reason to be frightened.

And then I remember my reference point

for fear, and pain, cannot be compared

to anyone or anything else's.

That my knowledge of darkness

may be different to a mockingbird's,

or, indeed, the sun, or the moon.

#poetry #alt lit #spilled ink #writerscreed #twcpoetry #napowrimo #day 8 #twc #poetic stories

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necromaniackat · 1 year ago

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Cruel Summer

Chapter 10: Confessions of a Saint: Part 1.

Word Count: 2.5k

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Argh!” You exclaimed, tossing your wrench to the side. You wiped the sweat from your brow with the back of your hand. The bolt that was in place didn’t want to move – you’ve been working at it for fifteen minutes and you’ve barely got it to budge. This was after you unmade the bed and wrestled not only the mattress out of the room, but also the box spring. It was a queen sized bed and you barely passed P.E in school so it went about as well as one would assume.

‘I should’ve had someone come help me – perhaps Felix?’ You thought. Butterflies fluttered in your stomach and your mind became hazy. A feeling you didn’t know pulled from within you. It was a familiar feeling but you couldn’t quite place it. But the longer you relished in the feeling the more you realized it was merely the eye of the storm. It’ll pass and you’ll be back in the storm. But by God, you basked in the lovely sensations. You didn’t know what these familiar sensations and emotions were, or why Felix, of all people, was giving them to you.

You wrinkled your nose in disgust and shook your head at the thought of asking someone for help. And you were disgusted with yourself because you were having nice feelings because of another man.

‘You’re not with Charlie anymore,’ you reminded yourself. But that didn’t help – you felt guilty for having feelings that are caused by someone you met a few days ago when you’ve loved Charlie for years.

‘I’m allowed to have feelings for people – no I’m not, yes I am,’ you battled. You grumbled loudly as you crawled out from under the bed frame. You sat up and grabbed the blue and yellow can of WD-40 before laying back down. You wiggled back under the bed and popped the red cap off the canister.

Your music was playing loudly over the speakers throughout the mansion that sunny Friday morning. After the debacles from earlier still hung heavy from earlier. Anika is slowly being alienated from her support network and Bex is on a self destructive rampage but it’s not out of anger. Bex gets socially self destructive when she has a manic episode and gets physically self destructive when she’s having a depressive episode. She’s gotten worse the last year. Your mum and Adam take her to therapy twice a week and pay for her medications – they’ve sighed her up for a personality disorder wilderness recovery program, she’s on the waiting list.

Of course Bex nor Anika see what’s going with them. Either that or they’re in denial. You didn’t want to believe they actually see what’s going on with them and choose to not act. You know different cultures have different dynamics and structures in their families but none of what’s going on with Anika and Bex was okay in any family dynamic or structure. Anika needs to wake up and set some boundaries – she’s already done the footwork by moving out and getting a job instead of getting married as soon as she’s eighteen. She just needs to out her creepy uncle and set boundaries with her family, especially her mother. And Bex needs to realize she’s a danger to herself if she keeps going down this road. She thinks she’s grown – she hasn’t even finished high school yet.

You sighed softly to yourself, staring up at the ceiling through the slats of the bed frame. Your mind couldn’t help but drift to a better place, a less drama filled place. This better place felt like the morning sun on your back as silk ribbons wrapped around you smoothly. It sounded like birds calling in the distance and the low buzzing of the desert. The desert. You’ve been there once – the Mojave desert. You were eleven when your dad got a business deal in America. You and your family spent three months in California and your favourite part was when you and your parents got stranded in the desert at a local mom and pop shop – the only shop in a hundred miles. You was the best trip you’d ever gone on; you should felt at rest amongst the mountain ranges of sand and rock.

You were jerked back to reality when your phone buzzed between you and the wooden floor. You fished your phone out of your back pocket and unlocked it. There was a new text message waiting for you.

Felix: I’m on my way with your shopping

Your heart skipped a beat and your stomach twisted into knots. A wide grin spread across your face as you texted him.

You: Don’t forget the heavy duty extra absorbent tampons :p

You let out another sigh then wiggled out from under the bed. You stood up and caught a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. A look of pure disgust masked your face as you walked closer to the mirror, examining your face and body. Your hair was unwashed and pulled up into a messy bun, you skin was oily as hell thanks to all the sweating you’ve been doing, you were also breaking out and you haven’t brushed your teeth or bathed in general in two days. You were also wearing a pair of fitted black yoga shorts and a flimsy black crop top with no bra on underneath.

You had time to either wash your face, brush your teeth and do your hair or rummage through your suitcase full of hobo clothes to find the least paint stained or generally tarnished piece of clothing you owned only to feel utterly disgusting in it and throwing on something comfortable. But you didn’t have time to do both.

You examined your clothes carefully then deemed them appropriate enough, he knows you’re doing renovations.

You rushed out of the room and down the hall to the master bedroom with master bath. You flipped on the light and nearly had a heart attack when you caught a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. The lighting in the guest bedroom was much more forgiving than your bathroom lighting. The heat exhaustion was evident on your sun kissed ivory face; dark semi circles formed under your puffy piercing blue eyes. The sweat on your forehead glistened in the light.

You turned on the faucet, cold water came rushing out. You leaned over the bowl of the sink, splashing cool water on your face. You pumped out some of your facial cleanser then rubbed the lathered face wash all over your face – focusing on your T zone mainly.

Once you were satisfied that your face was nice and soapy, you rinsed with clean water. Your skin looked much better now that it’s been washed. Your ivory complexion looked more olive and glowed with youth. Your usually rosy cheeks were a maroon color.

You turned your attention to your hair, pulling the bobble out of place – your hair stiffly fell down.

“This is what I get for leaving it up in a bun for three days,” you commented defeatedly. You quickly ran your brush under the running faucet before running the now wet bristles through your thick curly dark brown hair. You learned quickly to always wet your hair when you want to brush it. Curly hair + dry brush = not a good hair day.

You set the brush down then grabbed the canister of dry shampoo, spraying it at the roots of your hair. You worked it in with your fingertips before scooping up all your hair, twisting it up into a banana clip.

Your heart fell when your phone dinged on the bathroom counter. You glanced down to see it was Felix.

Felix: Here

You groaned to yourself in defeat. You were almost done getting ready and he came at the most important part, brushing your teeth. You proceeded to do the sniff check to make sure your breath wasn’t too bad. You brushed your teeth last night but you haven’t gotten around to it this morning so your breath wasn’t like smelling an old grave. Luckily for you, your breath wasn’t completely horrid.

You quickly skedaddled out of the master bedroom – sliding on the wooden floors in your socks. You bounced down the stairs – launching yourself off the last landing into the foyer. The entire time a gleeful smile was plastered on your face. You weren’t entirely sure what these feelings are – all you know is they feel really good and you never want them to stop.

You paused at the bottom of the stairs and quickly collected yourself; taking a deep breath. Slowly, you exhaled the excitement and calmed down to a neutral state.

Once you were completely calmed down, you wandered over to the front door. Through the stained glass window you could see a shadow hesitating at the door. A smile crept across your face as you unlocked the door and opened it.

Your heart fluttered with you caught the sight of Felix. There he was standing on your doorstep wearing a baggy ever green coloured hoodie and a pair of light grey joggers with bags of groceries hanging off his arms. He looked exhausted but in the most attractive way possible – he had bags under his eyes which meant he doesn’t really sleep. But his skin was clear instead of having stress acne which meant he takes care of his skin as well as his body (which is hot). Either that or he struck the genetics gold mine. But you were guessing the former. Who knew basic hygiene was so sexy. His fluffy chocolate brown hair was tousled – like he had bedhead but it was too neat to be genuine bedhead. But it was too messy to be styled.

“Hey,” Felix greeted with a wide smile, dimples forming on his cheeks. Your smile grew as a dusting of blush coloured your cheeks.

“Hey,” you returned. Your voice was soft and higher pitch. You felt a little embarrassed about it – you weren’t entirely sure what these feelings were or why you were having them but they felt so nice, you didn’t want them to end.

“I’ve got your shopping,” he said, yanking you back to reality. You realized you two were awkwardly standing at the front door just smiling at each other for a little while longer than deemed appropriate.

“Oh, right, come in,” you told him, stepping to the side. Felix brought the many bags of shopping into the house; marching right back to the kitchen. You closed the door and followed him. Felix set the bags down on the island counter with a sigh of relief.

“How much do I owe you?” You asked, wandering over to your bag with your wallet in it.

“Fifty quid,” he responded. You pursed your lips together as you fished out the money for him. Felix took the money from you, shoving it in the pocket of his sweats. You couldn’t help but stare, even when he pulled his hand out of his pocket you kept staring. Your brain became hazy as a voice in the thick of the haze kept shouting at you, but you couldn’t quite hear it.

You couldn’t help but notice the way his trousers would hill in certain places. It set your imagination on fire.

‘Maybe he’s a shower not a grower,’ you sweetly believed only to have the realization smack you in the face ‘–What if he’s a grower?’ Your imagination went wild. All because of a slightly above average cylindrical shape was in the crotch area of his trousers.

Mindlessly you bit your bottom lip as you gazed lustfully at that thick, long shape that hilled the crotch of his almost form fitting joggers.

“Oi!” Felix exclaimed, pulling your attention to meet his gaze. “–Eyes up here,” he added pointing at his eyes with his index and middle fingers. You felt your face heat up with blush.

“Sorry,” you apologized sullenly, your voice barely above a whisper. You weren’t really sorry, a little embarrassed you got caught but you’re not sorry.

You chewed on your cheeks for a moment before diving into the shopping bags. You started pulling things out of the bags, hustling around the kitchen to put everything away. Felix awkwardly stood at the island while you did this.

“So when is the boy toy coming down this weekend?” Felix cockily inquired. You snorted a laugh, shaking your head. You glanced over your shoulder at Felix, your grin growing when you saw the awkward eighteen year old standing at your counter.

“He’s already here,” you shot back sarcastically. This earned an ‘ah’ from Felix. Your grin twisted into a smirk as you shook you head, turning your attention to the cabinet of canned goods.

“Actually no. There is no boy toy anymore, broke up a month ago,” you explained woefully. You felt your heart shatter all over again. You felt silly for believing you and Charlie would last forever – not until graduation.

“I pity the fool who’d throw you away.” The words were uttered in a deep gravelly voice that made every inch of your body to shiver in delight. The words themselves were so sweet but the way he said them – his voice was dripping with darkness, making the words sound a hundred times better.

Your knees almost wobbled as you stood at the fridge, putting things away. You gulped when you realized what this emotion was. Horny. You were horny for Felix in ways you were never horny with Charlie. And that somewhat scared you. There was this deep burning sensation in your chest that made your skin ignite in flames and the instinct to pounce on him tried pulling you away from what you were doing.

“So, it’s just you here all on your lonesome?” Felix asked, breaking the tension that was building.

“Just me and Brahms,” you replied honestly with a crooked smile.

“Brahms… –the doll?” You stopped what you were doing and looked at Felix.

“Yeah.” You nodded. “–I know it’s weird but it’s like having an actual person to talk to,” you added.

“Y’know, if you’re lonely you can always call me and I can come over,” Felix commented with a half smile that fluttered your heart. A sudden burst of confidence surged through you like a lightning bolt. You sauntered over to Felix then leaned forward on the counter, your pretty blue eyes looking up at him through your dark eyelashes.

“How’s tonight?” You inquired with a half smirk. Felix stared at you in disbelief before letting out a scoff – his lips turned into a wide smile as his cheeks glowed a pretty shade of red.

“Tonight works,” he responded when he was able to gather himself. You straightened up, giving him a wicked smirk.

“Good, I’ll see you tonight then.”

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