#I thought he was in his early 20s jesus fuck

[alizardjae]

Torn on what Origins reveals about Almarde; on the one hand, it gives her more agency in the whole situation, but on the other it makes her a lot less sympathetic in the whole deal.

Like, yeah, Lyuvaan is ultimately the Worst (man, at least divorce your wife before hitting on the woman closer to your kids' ages than yours), but the Paramour's Secret magnus' existence suggests she knows it's an affair and that's just a bad look. Not "have the resulting kid led to believe you're just his nanny and let his half-siblings bully him into believing he's not worthy of love for reasons he doesn't know about" bad, but not good.

Almarde, darling, he's a cop who hit you as a civilian and is cheating on his wife, with two kids at home, the flags are redder than your hair, let him go.

[jonathansthickthighs]

My Sweetest Heart: Yandere! Fushiguro Toji x Reader

Description: You have a one night stand with Toji and now he won’t leave you alone.

Part 2 here

Part 3 here

Part 4 here

Part 5 here

Masterlist

Trigger Warnings: nsfw, yandere, obsessive behavior, female reader, AFAB reader, toxic behavior, stalking, smut, unprotected sex (wrap it up), alternative universe (no curses), daddy kink, age gap (reader is in her early 20’s, toji is in his mid 30’s)

A/N: hello! this is my first time posting anything here. if anyone reads this, i hope you enjoy. if you do, i might continue it :)

Not edited!

You were uncertain how you ended up with your legs on each side of your head as this beast of a man you didn’t even know thrust deeply into you. You weren’t even aware you were this flexible before this. However, you weren’t complaining as you felt the tip of his thick, hard member collide with your g-spot repeatedly. He had made you reach your peak three times by now and it was evident that stopping wasn’t in his plans. His grunts and moans only fueled your horniness, hearing a man make some noise during intimacy could rile any woman up.

“This tight lil’ pussy is driving me crazy, sweetheart. Fuck— you gonna let me feel you come on me again? Lemme feel you flutter around my cock, baby, please.” He begged into your ear, his low, raspy voice sending waves of pleasure all over your body. This man knew what he was doing to you.

You moaned loudly, feeling his dick twitch inside you. “I need it, Toji! Don’t fucking stop!”

“That’s right. Say my fuckin’ name, baby. Tell me who this pussy belongs to.” You thought this to be impossible, but he started drilling you harder, making your eyes roll to the back of your skull and forcing you to succumb into the delightful sensation that his large prick brought you. The room was filled with the sound of his heavy balls slapping against your ass repeatedly, your juices pooling on the sheets of the bed. It didn’t take long for your pussy to clench around his dick, announcing the arrival of your orgasm.

“Oh fuck! I’m gonna— I’m g-gonna come, Toji!” You gasped as you squeezed his cock, making him shudder. You were forcing him to come.

“Holy s-shit.” He cursed as you milked his cock. Long, thick spurts of semen started painting your walls white, making your combined juices overflow from your abused hole. He stilled inside your pussy as he finished riding his high, laying his head on your breasts once he was done.

You thought it was over, until you felt him starting to suckled on your nipples.

“Lemme take you again, sweetheart.” He groaned, his voice muffled by your breasts. Jesus, does this man have unlimited energy? He flipped you over onto your stomach on a swift motion, as if you weighed nothing to him. Somehow, you still had enough strength to keep yourself up on your hands and knees. He spread your ass cheeks open and watched as his seed dripped out of your cunt slowly, like it was seducing him into sliding himself inside you once more. He hissed, feeling his dick get painfully hard again.

“Gods, what a beautiful sight.” Toji grasped his shaft, stroking it a few times before pressing the tip against your entrance, forcing a moan out of you. “You want it, you slut? Wanna feel daddy’s dick splitting you open again?”

You weren’t experienced with men.

In fact, this was your very first one night stand. You wanted to experience for once in your life what it meant to be free and to have control over your own body, so when you saw Toji looking directly at you from across the bar, you knew he was going to be the one fucking your brains out tonight.

You had decided to go out with your girl friends to decompress from work when one of them pointed out the dark haired, exquisite looking man that had been staring at you the entire night. You didn’t know if it was the fact that a man that looked like that had been eyeing you up this whole time or if you were just tipsy, but you got a sudden burst of confidence that pushed you to go talk to him.

He seemed extremely pleased you approached him, excited even. He was noticeably older than you, but not old enough to be your father. You had never paid much attention to men his age, but something about this absolute hunk of a man pulled you to him. Looking at him up close made you nervous, the confidence you felt earlier, slowly turning into shyness. This man was definitely the most handsome man you’ve laid your eyes on. Judging by the smirk on his face he enjoyed your shyness. He thought it was cute.

To your surprise you had a very fluid, enjoyable conversation. He knew how to have a good time. You could feel a sincere interest coming from him, he wanted to get to truly know you, asking you questions about yourself, your likes, your hobbies and your life in general.

It was a shame you only wanted to fuck him.

At this point of your life you weren’t looking for a relationship. You had just gotten out of a five year relationship with your first ever boyfriend a few months ago and you simply weren’t ready to get into another commitment just yet. You had been with you first boyfriend since you were teenagers and you never got to explore what it felt like to be young and single. You wanted to learn how to be alone.

So you cut Toji short politely inviting him over to your place and he didn’t even hesitate to agree.

This is how to ended up with this man pounding you sore pussy from behind like a madman.

You moaned wantonly as he spanked your ass red, your ass jiggled with each harsh thrust. “Pussy’s so fuckin’ good, baby. The bes’ one I’ve ever felt.” Toji was so pussy drunk, he could barely form words.

You looked over your shoulder wanting to see his expression and god was the sight gorgeous. His mouth hanging open and his brows furrowed, his body dripping with sweat. Then he opened his eyes and looked directly into yours. You both had the same expression.

“Oh, don’t you give me that slutty face. I’m not gonna last.” Toji grunted, delivering another slap to your ass. You smirked and let out a moan as you started pushing your ass towards him, trying to meet his thrusts. You squeezed your pussy tighter around him feeling him twitch inside you.

“You fuckin’ whore. You want me to fill you up with my cum again don’t you?” He said between a moan and a chuckle. “Tell me you want it, baby.”

“I want it so bad, daddy. Please empty your balls inside me!” Your fifth orgasm was approaching as well.

“Take it!” He bottomed out releasing his seed straight into your womb, making you scream as your own orgasm took over squirting all over his crotch and thighs. Your legs finally giving up as you crashed onto the bed.

Toji pulled out slowly, groaning at the sensitivity. He laid down besides you, admiring your sweaty, red face. He thought you looked the most beautiful like this. “How about we take a shower together, sweetheart?”

So you did and you let him spend the night.

After all, how bad could it be?

The next morning you woke up with a pair of strong arms wrapped around you. You almost got scared until you remembered what happened last night, you could not believe you actually had sex with a stranger. You covered your mouth as you giggled quietly in disbelief. You knew this wasn’t going to become something frequent, you weren’t the type to sleep around, but you had to admit it had been a great experience and you were glad it had been with a man as experienced as Toji. It probably wouldn’t have worked out as well if it wasn’t for him, so you had to give him some credit.

Speaking of which, you could feel Toji stirring awake. You turned around to look at him and you were received with a sleepy smile. “Mornin’, sweetheart.”

“Morning.” You replied back feeling your shyness take over.

“Don’t get shy with me now, I saw your entire being last night.” He joked, giving your cheek a sweet kiss. Are men usually this affectionate after causal sex?

You blushed from embarrassment, he really did see your entire being. You started to get up, only to be stopped by a hand grabbing your arm. “Where you going so early, baby? Let me keep you warm for a little longer.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Toji. If I don’t get up now, I’m gonna be late for work!” You answered giving him a courteous smile. You weren’t certain why he was being so doting, you didn’t know if this was normal behavior after a one night stand. What you did know was that, that’s all you wanted it to be. Simply a night of good, casual sex with a hot guy you met at a bar. A man you would never have to see again and to you it was safe to assume that Toji was the type of man looking for the same thing as you.

“I see. Well, maybe we could grab some coffee and I can drop you off at work. How does that sound?”

“I don’t drink coffee.”

“Lunch?” He insisted.

“Toji—“ He cuts you off by pressing his scarred lips to yours, tangling his fingers with your hair.

He pulled away, his finger still holding your hair. “Baby, don’t worry. Just give me your number and we can schedule something for when you’re available.”

You felt odd. How can you get out of this situation? You hated this, you’ve never been in a position like this before. You felt helpless as you hesitantly agreed to give him your number. The weirdest part being that he never let go of your hair until you entered you contact information into his phone. It felt threatening in a way, even if his grip on you was loose.

He let go of your hair when you handed him his phone back. “Perfect. Let me just call you real quick so you can save my number.” Good thing you didn’t give him a fake number. “I’ll get going then. I’ll text you later, sweetheart.” Toji smirked, pecking your lips before walking out of them room.

You let out a sigh of relief once you heard your front door slam closed. You hadn’t realized you were holding your breath until now. You were feeling exasperated, you were already praying he never contacted you.

Maybe last night was a mistake.

Toji was a troubled man. He knew it. The people around him knew it.

They say no one is born evil, but from the moment he gained conscious he doesn’t remember a moment when he was truly good and quite frankly, he preferred it stayed that way. He had been raised around pain and suffering. He was brought into this world to become an assassin from a young age. He was brought to inflict nothing but agony and that’s all he knew how to do. He doesn’t remember a single moment of happiness from his early childhood to his adult life. He was made to believe he didn’t deserved love and he believe it because he never did anything worthy of it. He knew he wasn’t a good man.

He knew he wasn’t a good man and that’s why he didn’t feel guilty about all the times he followed you as you walked back to your place from work.

The moment he laid his eyes on you, something changed deep within him. There was a feeling he’d never felt before and it felt… good?

You first saw Toji at that bar, but Toji?

Oh, Toji first saw you at least two months before that.

Rain was pouring over him, but he could care less because what he was witnessing right now was perhaps the most breathtaking, heart-bursting sight in his entire existence. It was you. The answer to all his problems just walked past him in the torrential rain. He was amazed that not even the rain could conceal your beautiful face, he could see it perfectly clear. You were wearing some type of uniform that clung to your body thanks to the weather. Toji couldn’t help but admire the shape of your body, instantly getting hard at the sight of your nipples hardening from the cold rain under your white shirt. You had only walked by him for a few seconds, but to him it felt like an eternity. It was almost as if you were walking in slow motion. In spite of being distracted by your beauty, he was still an extremely observant man and was able to descry the name of the company you worked for on the logo planted on your shirt.

Toji wasn’t a good man. That’s why he stalks you any time he can, to him he’s just making sure you’re safe. That’s why loves breaking into your place and stealing your clothes and anything he can get his hands on that will make him feel closer to you. He particularly loves laying on your bed and smelling your sheets, your scent was simply divine. That’s why he tugs on his cock any time he caught sight of you. That’s why he would drag any man that dared approach you —hell, even look at you— to an empty alley and beat them to a pulp without a care for their sorry lives. He was an assassin, it’s all he knew how to do.

Toji wasn’t a good man, but he wanted to be for you.

He couldn’t stand hiding behind your shadow any longer, he was growing desperate. He felt pathetic, this feeling was alien to him and he hated it. He needed you to notice him.

Imagine his luck when he saw you walk into the bar that night. Toji was over the moon. Both of you were finally at the same place at the same time and he didn’t even need to fake a scenario for it to occur.

Toji was having an internal battle with himself, trying to find a way to approach you where you wouldn’t find him creepy. You were with your friends which made it harder for him to come up with a way to swoop you away. He never had trouble getting any woman to bed him, but you weren’t just any woman. You were special to him. He wanted to keep you, provide for you, protect you, love you.

He didn’t realize how long he had been staring at you until he noticed one of your friends point him out. He freaked out internally until he saw you move your gaze towards him and he swore his heart could come out through his mouth at any moment. This was the first time he ever made eye contact with you and he couldn’t wait to hold your gaze for the rest of your lives. To his surprise, you smiled at him.

He observed as you whispered something to your friend before standing up.

You were walking towards him.

All this time thinking about how to approach you and now you were coming to him.

That night he had the best time he’s had in his life. Getting to talk to you, look at you up close was indescribable to him. Although he wished he could’ve spoken to you more, he didn’t mind how the night ended at all. Getting to enjoy your delicious little body was the best part of it. He gave you his all. He wanted to make sure you were ruined for any other man, he wanted you to only think of him from that night forward.

He really thought he had achieved that.

But the next morning you were so cold to him it broke his heart to a million pieces.

But that’s okay, sweetheart. I’ll win your heart over. ♥︎

[seventeenpins]

a slight miscalculation - pt. i

pairing: Joel x F!Reader

word count: 8.3k

summary: Sarah is off to college, and Joel is about to be living in an empty nest. They road trip out together, and as she spends her first night in her new apartment, he's staying in a nearby hotel. Letting go of his inhibitions for the first time in a long time, he tumbles into a one night stand that becomes very complicated, very quickly.

content/warnings: smut, age gap, mycologist!reader, dick sucking, implied pussy eating, fingering, no outbreak au, reader likes to hike, reader also infodumps, joel miller has a big cock, he also has anxiety, reader has anxiety too, and a cat, reader is in early 20s--exact age not established, one (1) use of daddy, alcohol and weed consumption, joel is a diligent condom wearer, set in present day, discussion of girl scout cookies, joel is sweet and soft and hasn't been eviscerated by the death of his daughter

a/n: I'm intending this to be about five parts. This may change, but right now it's looking like five. I've been struggling to write for a while, unable to focus, but I think I'm back at it? as always, your feedback is hugely appreciated, and i'm kissing all likers and commenters and rebloggers deeply and with tongue 🩷

check out pt. ii

For the first time in nineteen years, Joel is completely adrift. Sarah's starting college in just two months.

It's the kind of realization that hits him like a bucket of ice water, a sudden shock and then an unpleasant trickling of anxiety wrapping about him in nasty tendrils. And then he feels guilty, because he's so, so happy for Sarah because he knows that she's thrilled, but fuck she's gonna be two time zones away and now what's Joel meant to do on Thursday movie nights when he's here without her?

It's terrifying, and it's new. And it's not that he's new to anxiety. He's usually anxious, and he has the Sertraline on his bedside stand to prove it. But if his general anxiety baseline usually hovered around a 6.4, where he was at now far surpassed a 10. It felt exponential, and totally exhausting.

When he voices his fears to Tommy, to Joel's horror, Tommy just doubles over in laughter.

"Jesus, Joel," he wheezes, wiping fake tears from his eyes in exaggerated movements, "You looked so serious I thought you were gonna say you'd killed someone."

Joel scowls. "The fuck you laughing for?"

"She's going to college, it's not like she's dying!"

"How'm I gonna be there for her? What if she needs me? What if-"

"Joel-," Tommy pats him gently on the shoulder, "She can always call you, and you can always call her. And we both know she's got a good head on 'er shoulders."

Joel snorts in concession. "Yeah, yeah. Better than yours and mine put together, and then some."

"Exactly." Tommy agrees, "And if there's ever anything that really goes wrong, you got me. We can drive out together and make sure she's okay."

Joel nods and feels the tiniest bit of tension leave him. One step at a time.

Just over nineteen years ago he found out he was about to be a dad. Suddenly, he had a purpose. Having a kid at twenty-two wasn't something he'd ever intended, but somehow he knew he loved his baby girl from the moment he knew she was a possibility. He spent a solid seven months running around, hustling, doing everything he could to get the very best for his kid. He'd take on doubles, working himself to the bone to make sure they had the best crib, and the best stroller, too. He was thrilled and terrified and so, so green.

Now, his heart feels so big he doesn't know how to handle it. His baby girl is an honest-to-god adult, moving out and going to college, and he has no idea what he's gonna do with his time now.

He has work, of course. But beyond that? He's really gotta to widen his circle, he realises, because who's he gonna hang out with? His brother?

He'd only just turned forty-one and had absolutely not come to terms with an empty nest--the few friends from high school he'd kept in touch with were so much further behind than him. The ones that had kids had them later in their twenties and thirties, and now they're raising middle schoolers while Joel's kid is a real fucking person, leaving home and everything. All the scrapping and saving he'd been doing since before Sarah was born–for his little girl to be able to follow any dream she chose–it was finally paying off. The precocious young woman she is, she graduated early and spent nearly a year working retail to save up some cash. She'd applied to colleges all across the country, and a few international ones, too. Joel had been crossing his fingers for months, hoping she'd choose something near Austin, but cheered with her all the same when she got her acceptance letter from Oregon State University. The previous summer, just before she'd started her applications, she and Joel and Tommy spent a miserable, wonderful week hiking round the Pacific Northwest. She fell in love with it, and the university offered a few of the majors she wanted to consider.

Joel didn't know what he'd do with his baby girl so far away, his life, his reason, but he sure as hell wasn't gonna tell her that. He will not clip her wings. His baby's gonna change the world and he's not gonna hold her back. He is, though, gonna require regular phone calls and check-ins and god they grow up so fast.

"Y'all should road trip out there," Tommy suggests one night over the dinner table.

Joel knew the conversation of how Sarah would get to the West Coast would come up, and it oughta be sooner rather than later. He was half afraid that she wanted to head out on her own, that she didn't need her dad anymore. Worried she would say she wanted to get a plane ticket, or take the Amtrak all the way to Corvallis. But he knows he needs to loosen his grip a little, so he braces himself when he turns to her.

"What'dya think, Sarah? You wanna be stuck in a car with your old man for a cross-country trip?"

Sarah rolls her eyes, but her face breaks into a grin. "Can we, Dad?"

This was too good to be true, he knew, but he wasn't gonna give up one last opportunity to spend some time with his girl till winter break.

"Course, baby," he tells her, and that flicker of anxiety quells just the tiniest bit.

The next few weeks fly by, and the knot of anxiety in Joel's chest feels like it's consuming him from the inside out. He's taken some time off, more than Sarah or Tommy can remember, but he's constantly trying to suggest ideas for activities to Sarah. For the most part, she's a good sport, understanding how much it means to her dad. She took pity on him, and let him drag her to places that ideally she would've gone to when she was little, but she humored him and he appreciated her dedication. He did his best to step back when she was heading out to spend time with friends--her time here was limited, after all, and she was always a social butterfly.

There are five weeks till classes start, four weeks, three, two, and in the blink of an eye, they're loading up the truck with all of Sarah's things, and Tommy is hugging Sarah goodbye, teary eyed. He gives Joel a hug, too. Joel would never admit it, but fuck he had really needed that hug.

They would take the scenic route. Make a memorable trip of it. Joel would make sure she settles in safe and sound, and then he'd head home.

6am Sunday.

You wake with a start. It's just over a week before term starts and your entire body aches. Fuck, you think to yourself, definitely overdid it with that last hike.

(The hiking part wasn't itself a problem, but one of the trails had washed out. You thought you'd found your way, but the "easy" three and a half mile hike took about five hours, leaving your calves bruised and your heels blistered.)

You roll over in your hotel room bed and, at the sound of a slight yelp followed by a gentle thud, realise with a sudden start that you just catapulted your cat off the corner.

"Shit, sorry goblin," you tell Spatula, who glares up at you with disdain as he licks at his paw. You reach down and, despite your inadvertent cat launch, he immediately rubs up against your fingertips and lets you scratch behind his ears.

"I'm sorry, baby," you soothe.

He meows, loudly. Howls, really. You take it as an apology accepted.

You sit up properly and look at your phone calendar. Nothing immediate. You don't need to get keys to your new apartment till tomorrow, nor do you meet your roommates till then–they're both moving in today, and moving is already horrible without having to navigate around the belongings of two other people. No, thanks. You can afford one more night at the hotel, and it'll make everything go that little bit more smoothly tomorrow. Besides, you have a bit of reading you'd like to get through, maybe stock up on non-perishables till you have a full-sized fridge, and get to know the city just a little.

You move gingerly, testing the ache in your muscles as you unfold yourself from the position you've been sat in and pull yourself from the bed. It hurts, but not something that won't be fixed with a little movement.

A plan forms. First, a walk, to try and loosen up your tight muscles. Then, errands. You have a whole list, with everything categorised by store, but then you enter IKEA and exit fifteen minutes later, only to find that five and a half hours have passed and it's evening now.

How was it that IKEA harnessed such a malicious power. How could anything harness that?

You need a fucking break. And a goddamn drink.

"Hey Dad," Sarah calls from the adjacent bedroom as Joel sweats, hauling another box towards her. The drive has been good, but it has been long. His legs ache. His back aches. There are parts of him that he didn't know existed that now ache.

"Yeah?" he calls back.

"Are you sure you're okay with me staying here tonight?"

Joel lets out a breath. He wants to be okay with it. And there's no way his nineteen year old would want to hang out with her dad when she could be spending the very first night in her brand new apartment. But he also wishes she wanted to spend one last night, hanging out in a hotel room with her dad. They could watch shitty movies together. Make the most of the final night before this cataclysmic shift.

But no.

That'd just be him being selfish. He can handle a night by himself. He's gotta handle a whole lotta them soon enough.

"O'course baby," he nods, hoping the smile he's plastered on his face looks totally genuine. "But we're still doin' breakfast in the morning, right?"

She nods, vigorous, and then waves her phone around. "I was looking up places! There's a diner called Tommy's," she laughs, "Wanna try that? 9:30?"

"Let's do it," he smiles, and this one is a little less forced.

"How much more do we have?" Sarah asks, nodding towards the box Joel's still holding.

"Last box," he grunts, "What else can I help with?"

He places the box down and lets out a slight, almost silent whimper. Sarah catches it, though.

"Maybe you should take it easy the rest of the day, Dad," she tells him, "We both know you have old man back."

He rolls his eyes but nods. "Guess you're right," he shrugs, "That my cue to take off?"

Sarah blushes but turns to him sheepishly. "Yeah, I-"

"No need to explain," Joel assures, "I know you must wanna get unpacked and settle in, get to know your roommates an' all."

She jumps up and, almost startling him, wraps her arms around him in a bear hug.

"Love you, dad," she grins, and she squeezes just a little tighter than usual.

He squeezes back, and they both pretend there aren't tears in his eyes.

As you step through the doors of the hotel bar, you decide you like it. The lighting is comfortably low. It's not loud, but it's not quiet, either. Colorful bottles line the shelves, the light of the filament bulbs glinting off the glass in rainbow prisms.

You take a seat at the bar and give a nod of thanks as the bartender passes you a small menu. It's unsurprisingly extortionate, hotel bar and all, but it'll do.

"Old fashioned, please," you tell the bartender, who nods in response. A minute later, he hands you a glass, delivered with a twist of orange and a cherry on top.

With your first sip, you feel your shoulders start to relax and some of the tension loosen from your body. The warmth of the burn envelops you and your stress starts to unravel, leaving only the buzz feeling good.

You order a second, and as the glass is handed to you, a voice to your right catches your attention.

"This seat taken?" a man asks.

You shake your head and offer a quick smile, gesturing towards it, "All yours."

"Much obliged," he nods, and slips into the backless stool next to yours.

The bartender comes over and passes him the same menu, but without looking at it he asks, "Could I get an old fashioned?"

You smile and catch his eye, tipping your glass towards him. "An excellent choice," you praise, "Though if you don't have a sweet tooth, I'd recommend asking Jeff there if he can go easy on the simple syrup."

"Oh yeah?" He asks, and then he leans in conspiratorially. "T'tell you the truth, I do have a bit of a sweet tooth."

You raise an eyebrow. "Is that so?"

Suddenly, he breaks into a grin and it's dazzling.

"Yeah," he laughs, "I've got cookies stashed in secret locations all through my house."

You raise an eyebrow. "If I keep 'em in my pantry, my brother'll find 'em and eat 'em all," he explains, "But ever since my kid was a girl scout, I always get cravings for girl scout cookies, so I buy an armful o'boxes and try and preserve 'em throughout the year, till I can replenish."

"What's your favorite girl scout cookie?"

"Caramel deLites, hands down."

"Oh yeah?"

"Absolutely," he nods.

The bartender, Jeff, sets the man's drink down with a clink. You catch one another's eye and both erupt into a fit of laughter.

You're not even sure what's funny. Maybe it's just been a long day? Maybe the whiskey was getting to you?

Whatever it is, it feels good.

The man takes a sip of his drink and lets out an aaaahh and it's goofy and charming and then he extends his hand.

"Joel," he tells you, "Joel Miller". You shake his hand, introduce yourself, and then take a sip of your own drink.

"So, tell me about yourself," you smile, "You coming from out of town?"

"Yes ma'am," he nods, "Come up here from Austin."

"Texas?"

Joel nods.

"That's a long trip."

"Yeah," he laughs, "It really is."

"So, you're a nice Southern boy, huh?"

"Well," he swishes his glass and tries to bite back a smile, "I don't know that I'd go quite so far, but my mama did raise me to be a gentleman."

"That so?" you ask and his blush deepens.

"I... have been known to get up to some trouble, but I like to think I've mellowed in my old age." He gestures at the beautiful little smatterings of silver at his temples, and you cackle.

"Okay, that's hot," you tell him and he chokes, but you keep going, "Old age, though? What are you, like, forty?"

He exhales, chagrined. "Forty-one."

You roll your eyes. "That ain't old."

"It feels it sometimes," he smiles, "My kid is grown. My little brother's married with a kid of his own on the way. My back hurts, pretty much all the time."

You snort. You also notice, without trying to look, that he doesn't have a wedding band. Doesn't have a tan line for one, either. Interesting.

"But more than that," he continues, "I guess I feel- I don't know. A little... aimless?"

"Yeah," you nod, and you let the moment sit. "I get that."

He lets out a little breath, and then turns back to you, focused.

"What about you? Where're you from?"

"Oof," you exhale, "All over. Spent a bit of time on the East coast. The Midwest. Lived a few months in the South, even," you tease as you bump your shoulder into his and he laughs. It's a surprisingly familiar gesture, but miraculously comfortable.

"Ever make it to Texas?"

"Naw," you shake your head, "My time in the South was all in Mississippi. After that I moved out to California, and I've been slowly working my way up the West Coast."

"And what have you been enjoying about the West Coast?" Joel asks.

"The mushrooms," you grin, and Joel frowns.

"Like, the kind you get in a little baggy from the dealer down the street, or-?"

"No," you laugh, "Or, well- Okay, sometimes. Gotta say it is great out here for that, too. But I mean fungus as a whole--mushrooms, mold, yeast, lichen. But I'm most interested in mushrooms. They're just really fuckin' cool, and there's so much we don't understand about them. And, they're delicious."

"Huh," Joel ponders, "T'tell you the truth, I've never thought much about mushrooms, besides enjoying 'em as a pizza topping."

"Most people don't," you agree, "But fuck, like-- Okay, so we know there are over five million types of fungi on Earth, but we've identified less than two percent of them. Some fungus aids decomposition. Some fungus is bioluminescent. Some are known worldwide for their delicious flavours, and others are known by the slow, horrible ways they kill you."

Joel raises his eyebrows, and suddenly you feel a little self conscious.

"Sorry, I do this," you laugh, rubbing at the back of your neck, "I get very excited about fungus and manage to alienate everyone around me."

You half expect him to stand up and walk away.

Instead, though, he leans in closer. "Don't apologise," he tells you, "I'm learning something new. Tell me more?"

"No, I should stop. Otherwise I'll never stop talking," you wince.

"How about just one more fungus fact?"

You sit for a minute, pondering. "This is- well, I guess this is one of the reasons I find fungus so fascinating. So, fungus can't photosynthesise the way that plants do--they can't produce their own food from sunshine, and water, and carbon dioxide. Instead, their mycelium-- they're these thread-like networks--they branch out beneath the earth, seeking out food, growing in the direction where it can find the nutrients it needs and breaking down organic material all around them, sometimes living organisms, as a parasite, and sometimes dead organisms as a decomposer, or both. And it's just- It's this hidden world, that exists right beneath the surface even in some of the extreme places on earth, temperature-wise. And most days, we don't even think about it."

You punctuate your thought with a large swallow of your drink, which is half-watered down now that the ice is melted, and doesn't hit quite as hard as you'd hoped, but then you look up at Joel and he's smiling at you, pensive, and--

"That's- That's actually really interesting."

Before you can respond, though, Joel glances at his watch and balks. It is getting late. "Shit," he shakes his head, "I think I oughta call it a night," he says, pulling back. "Early morning tomorrow, and if I stay at the bar I'll just keep drinkin'."

Fuck. That's a dismissal. Of course you went on too much about mushrooms. You'd fucked this up. You'd thought this was going well, but now it felt like a bucket of cold water was dumped over you. "Oh," you nod, matching his posture, and try to swallow down the sudden wave of disappointment. "Of course. Have a good night, Joel."

Joel stands up and then looks you up and down, considering. It's not brazen, but it isn't shy, either. And then understanding flashes across his face.

"Wait- Sorry, that's not how I meant it." He reaches out towards you and you melt into his touch. "I'm messin' this up." He chuckles, but it sounds pained. "Now look, I don't wanna make any presumptions. And I'm really hopin' I'm not coming off as some--dirty old man. Jesus, I haven't done this in a while. But I'm in room 308."

Your eyebrows shoot up. What you'd taken for disinterest was just--nerves?

"I reckon I'll be awake for a while yet. You're welcome to... drop by."

The disappointment melts, making way for a fluttering in your stomach.

"Twenty minutes," you assure him, "308?"

He nods and he brakes into a sheepish grin, shedding what you now realise had been something of an anxious wince. "308."

You watch him leave. When he's out of sight, you toss back the rest of your watery drink and go to pay your tab, but Jeff tells you it was already settled. You thank him and tuck your shaking hands in your pockets. You feel an electricity running through you as you take the elevator up.

When you get back to your room, you hop into the shower, just to freshen up--you keep your hair dry but scrub your body. Once you're clean, you brush your teeth.

Stepping back out of the en suite, you survey the hotel room. Spatula is lounging on the corner of the bed, entirely uninterested in your movements. You top up his dry food bowl and place a kiss between his ears before slipping out.

When you knock at Joel's door, you hear a slight rustle and clatter and then the door swings open, Joel's staring a little wide-eyed, like he didn't actually expect you to show. He's wearing grey sweats and a Johnny Cash t-shirt that looks like it's been around nearly as long as you have. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, an anxious tell that's desperately endearing.

"C'mon in," he smiles, and you step in, closing the door behind you.

You reach out to cup his face, delighting in the feeling of coarse stubble beneath your fingertips. Your first kiss is chaste. You both lean forward and press your lips to one another gently, exploring.

Then, you let out a little moan and Joel shudders. Heat surges between you, and his hands are cradling your head and brushing your cheek and he's pinning you against the closed door. You're kissing again, nothing chaste remaining, learning the taste of him, his rhythm, the crashing waves of give and take between you.

You wrap one leg around him and smirk when he lets out a throaty groan as you grind against his hard cock. You're pretty sure he's not wearing underwear, the thick bulge seemingly unconstrained in his grey sweats, the whole length pressing against your thigh.

Your head falls back and you let out soft, breathy noises as his lips trace along your collarbone, up your throat, and against that tender little spot behind your ear. When he puts your earlobe between his lips and presses his teeth gently against the skin, your knees go weak and he chuckles, strong arms wrapping around you, holding you up.

"Bed?" he asks, and you breathe yes and then, with a yelp and a throaty chuckle, you're lifted up and spun around and both tumbling into the duvet.

You're grasping at each other, desperate to keep your hands on one another. The only times you part is when you undress, and even then, you're helping each other--pulling the hem of his shirt over his lifted arms, pressing into him as he reaches around and moves to unhook your bra, but then he realises you're not wearing one and lets out a groan, his thumbs brushing alongside the tender skin along your ribs, moving gently as if to cup your breasts, but then he pulls back.

Normally you might wait, do this part slowly, draw out the tease just a little bit longer.

Tonight, though, you're ravenous.

As you fiddle with the buttons of your pants, you tug at the drawstring keeping Joel's sweats on his hips. The bow comes loose in one smooth motion, and he lifts his hips and you pull the sweats down.

Your mouth immediately waters seeing him bare, laid out for you. You watch a bead of precum drip down the head and pool on his belly. The coarse hair of his happy trail glistens with it. He's thick, uncut, and looks painfully hard, his cock head ruddy. "Fuck, you're beautiful," you tell him, and his cheeks redden but he grins. It's boyish, the way he grins, and devastatingly charming.

And, what you're saying is true. His body is gorgeous, something you wish you could sketch. Soft flesh over hard muscle, visible tan lines where his chest and shoulders are noticeably lighter than his arms. The muscles and veins along his throat are driving you absolutely fucking insane as he swallows and looks up at you.

He's got freckles on his shoulders, too, and without thinking, you lower yourself down to kiss at his shoulder. He shakes, just a little, and lets out the most beautiful gasp. It's addictive, pulling these noises from him. You follow the curve of him, giving him a taste of his own medicine--tracing feather-light kisses along his collarbone, up the tendons of his neck, behind his ear. You can feel the blood pulse in his veins as your lips brush along him. Joel goes from panting lightly to full on groaning, rutting his hips up towards you and, frustrated, meeting only air.

"Can I taste you?", you ask, and Joel lets out a half-strangled sound and nods, vigorous.

You scoot back, lower yourself, poke out your tongue and, without any preamble, lick at the slit of his head, tasting the salty, tangy precum.

Joel tips his head back and groans and you decide to be kind. You grasp onto his hips and take him in your mouth, slowly sinking down, inch by inch by inch and now you can feel him at the back of your throat, your saliva dripping down the shaft and collecting in the hair between his thighs.

You bob your head up and down, taking him deeper with each thrust, but your throat is full and there are still inches to go. You relax, doing everything you can to take him deeper, and he starts to thrust up gently.

You let him fuck into your mouth but release one of his hips, allowing him to move as freely as he needs and freeing up your hand, which you shove into your underwear, rubbing furiously at your clit.

It doesn't take much to lose yourself in it, to focus only on the sensation. You're so wet, slick coating your fingers, making the glide that much smoother as you touch yourself. Joel tastes so good, too, the intrusion of his cock the most delicious thing, feeling the way he shudders when you moan, the way he moans when you shudder.

"Fuck-" Joel gasps, and then there's a hand guiding you gently off of him.

You raise an eyebrow. "You okay?"

He swallows, hard, and nods. "More than okay. Felt too fuckin' good."

"Oh yeah?" and you lean down, as if to take him back in your mouth, but he chuckles and pulls you back again.

"It's been... a while. For me. And-" He drags his palm down his face, wearing an almost pained expression. "Christ, you just look too fuckin' good down there, mouth stretched 'round me while you touch yourself. An' it feels too fuckin' good, too. I ain't ready for this to be over yet but if you keep lettin' me fuck your throat like that it's gonna be over real quick. And I wanna feel that pretty pussy myself."

You sit back up and he pulls you towards him so you're straddling him.

"You gonna fuck me, Joel?"

"Yes," he breathes, "Yes, baby, please-"

You do an awkward wobble and then stand up, shedding your pants and letting your panties drop, stepping out of them, one foot and then the other, and the way he's watching you is addictive. He watches you with beautiful eyes, drinking all of you in, and suddenly the moment has changed into one of those quiet, intimate moments where you both exhale a laugh.

You straddle him again, and lean down to kiss him, and the electric current surges up. He grabs you by the jaw, meeting your desperation. His lips on yours are exactly the balm you need and you can taste the whiskey on his breath.

"Feels fucking good," you tell Joel as you slide up and down his length. He's not penetrating you, not yet, but the lips of your pussy are spread and you're gliding along him, feeling his head at your clit and thrusting back till you're nearly seated on his balls.

He watches you, nearly unblinking, drinking it all in. Then, he lets out a groan, and half-sits up, suddenly focused.

"Shit," he closes his eyes in frustration, "I don't have any condoms. Shit shit shit-"

You push him back down and kiss him again. Then, you hop off the bed and sift around in your jean pockets.

"Ah-ha!," you exclaim, once you've found your treasure. Joel raises and eyebrow and you wink. "Saw they were selling them in the lobby. Figured it might be a good idea."

"Shit," Joel laughs, and presses his lips just to the side of your mouth. "Clever girl," he tells you, and a shiver goes up your spine.

He leans to help, but you shoo him away and he watches, entranced, as you neatly open the condom wrapper and, with a small amount of difficulty, roll it down his cock.

"Feeling okay?" You ask him, "Shit, I shoulda gotten the Magnums. Is your dick okay? It's not being choked to death by an inappropriately sized rubber, is it?"

Joel snorts. "We'll manage," he says, and then he grips you by the hips, lines himself up. He draws his knuckles along your cunt and groans, "Fuck, so goddamn wet for me-" and, the moment you look at him and nod, he holds the head of his cock against your drooling lips and presses into you.

It's a big stretch as he lowers you down onto him, the intrusion almost painful, but before you can even take a breath, it melts into absolute pleasure. You've fucked people with longer cocks before, and you've fucked people with girthier cocks before, but never have you fucked someone with a cock that's both this long and thick and it feels like you're being split in two and it's perfect and you realise, with a sudden flip of your stomach, he isn't even fully seated inside you yet.

Then, you manage to focus on the words Joel is saying-that had really just been background noise for the past ten seconds or so-and suddenly you're tuning back in for "Tha's it," his voice low and hoarse, surprisingly gentle, "Good girl, takin' this cock so well, look at you."

His brow is furrowed and he's looking at you with such dark eyes, nearly black, the pupils are so blown. "Just a little more, that's it, just one more inch, you can do it, christ, look at you, takin' all of me."

His tone is reverent and it sets a fire through you. You can feel more slickness build and drip out of you, and from the way he moans, you're certain he can feel it too despite the condom.

"So fuckin' wet," he groans, "Soakin' my cock- grippin' me so nice-Fuck--"

He leans towards you and cradles your head in his hand, kissing you hard.

When you both pull back, you know your lips must be kiss swollen and red. His are--they're soft and bright, and you want to eat him whole.

"You're gonna be the death of me, woman."

He's thrusting into you lazily, holding you in place, but you need more, you need all of him.

You push forward and move his hand from your waist to your clit. As you manoeuvre him, his nostrils flare, and you'd wonder if he was angry, if not for the way you felt his cock stiffen even further inside of you. You start to move your hips, to rub up against the thumb on your clit, and to feel every fucking inch of him.

Urged on by the way he groans, you start to ride him, properly. Holding each other close, you fuck down onto him and he leans back, awed.

"Enjoying the show?" you ask.

"Damn- right- I- am-," Joel breathes, every word punctuated with a shuddering breath after you drive back down onto his cock, "Jesus- you- look- so- good- like- that."

You like being watched. Being admired. It sent an extra thrill through you, and your hips stutter, just a little, and now you're following a new, faster rhythm.

"Fuck, that's it, baby-" he praises, "Shit, yes- bounce on it."

You lean forward and kiss his throat, and then he makes this noise, half-strangled and beautiful.

"Shit, honey-- honey, honey, hold on-," he holds you still and you're glad he has, because your brain hadn't quite processed his words.

He's looking at you so earnestly.

"Baby, if you keep ridin' me like this I am gonna blow my load in the next twenty seconds and I don't wanna end this quite so soon."

You hum, a moment of consideration. You stare into his eyes, and part of it is calculated seduction, but another part is getting genuinely lost in the way he looks at you. The crinkles round his eyes. The way he seems able to focus on you, in a way that feels as frightening as it is exhilarating.

"How about this," You smile, "You get yours, and then you can eat me out till I get mine. And if you're ready to go again by the time I've come, we can see where we're at then. Hmm?"

You see a bead of sweat trickle down his temple, and take a moment to appreciate how much he's clearly trying to control himself.

After a moments of avoiding your eye, he looks at you again and he looks utterly wrecked. "You- talkin' like that?" He shakes his head and tries to even his breath. "Fuck, I nearly came right there."

"It's okay," you soothe, and you cup his jaw and resume you movements, riding him like you had before. "You can come if you need to-" your fingertips stroke the stubble of his chin, "You're close, huh? It's okay, daddy, you can let go."

Joel lets out a strangled noise and busts immediately.

You savor the way it feels, the pulse of his cock as he spills into you. No, into the condom, you correct yourself, but you can always pretend-

After his balls relax and you can feel him start to get soft, you hold the condom down as you pull yourself off, and you're nearly unseated when there's a sudden squelch noise that sends you both into tumbles of laughter.

It takes a while to calm down, and you find yourselves heaving, tangled in the sheets, and wrapped up in each other. The condom is hanging limply on Joel's now-soft cock and it's oddly cold and gooey as you accidentally roll against it, and that sends you both off again.

"Fuck," Joel snorts, and tugs at the condom, starting to roll it off his length, "I'd almost forgotten the weird texture of a used condom. Fuckin'... Slug-like."

"That-" you declare, "Is visceral. And I hate it. Thanks."

He snorts, and you suddenly have a question.

"Condoms not making too many appearances in your life?"

"Not many, no."

"What, you usually fuck raw?"

"Just haven't been sleepin' with anyone," he shrugs, nonplussed.

"Well, I gotta say, the good people of Austin have been missing out."

Joel shrugs again, and it comes off as casual, but you notice the way his ears tint pink. "Just- not been something I did. But now, I guess, I can. And with way less guilt."

"Why guilt? Are-" you venture, dread pooling in your stomach, "Are you married?"

His eyes flit up to you sharply, and then soften immediately. He lets out a breath and shakes his head. "No. Nothin' like that. I was married, but I've been divorced nearly twenty years now."

The tightness immediately uncoils and you realise how tense you were only a moment ago. I am not a cog in the machine of a collapsing marriage. Thank fuck.

But now your curiosity is piqued. "So... why the guilt?"

"Sorry, I- I really didn't mean to get into it. I'd rather not get into it. It's- complicated."

"Of course," you shrug, and it isn't a problem because this is just a hot fantasy hookup that you'll remember fondly, and it'll be wonderful masturbation fuel for probably the rest of your life, but you don't wanna make the poor guy go into his life's trauma, especially when he's looking at you so fucking earnestly and you are actually really fucking fascinated but no, you would not let this become a problem.

"Thanks," he says, and then steps out of the room. You hear the clang of the bin as he steps on the pedal, then drops the condom, takes a piss and washes his hands.

"You hungry?" He asks, and you realize very suddenly, you're absolutely famished.

"Yes," you jump up and he laughs when you run, bare-assed and shameless, over to the corner of the room filled with brochures and traveller info and finally, you raise it in triumph when you find it, the list of nearby takeaways.

"Okay," you look at the list, "There's one place at the top of the list here that's apparently highly rated, but I actually have plans there soon and I wanna wait till then to eat there. Hope that's okay."

Joel comes over to you and rests his head on your shoulder. "No problem."

"But... alright," you continue. "There's pizza. Or... more pizza. Or, look--there's a Southern-style place, that'll make you feel right at home!" Joel pokes you in the side and you swat at him as he grunts a laugh.

Suddenly, a warning sound starts playing on loop in your brain. It was dreadfully domestic, wasn't it? This was an absolute stranger you'd just met in a hotel bar? But... it also felt... nice? And it felt nice in ways that you'd never found yourself enjoying before. Even with long-term partners. Maybe because this was so low-stakes, you reasoned, such an inevitably temporary situation, so you weren't putting the same kind of pressure on yourself.

As soon as you think that, the eternal curse of overthinking shows itself and you suddenly feel desperately self conscious. Before you can pull away and make some excuse, though, Joel's arm wraps around you and his thumb starts rubbing little circles into a tender bit of skin between your hip and your tummy. The anxiety spiral you'd been teetering on the edge of suddenly vanishes.

"How about-," he nods at the list, "Pizza?"

After Joel calls in your order, the pizza delivery service tells you to expect your food in about thirty minutes. You remember you have a little box of edibles. You ask Joel if he minds if you take one, and he doesn't. You offer him one, and he automatically declines, but then as he starts to explain, he pauses and pivots, goes "Wait, actually. Yeah. Why not?"

A freckled kid who looks no more than sixteen pulls up with a short stack of pizza boxes and a two liter bottle of root beer. He raps awkwardly on the door after exactly thirty five minutes, and it swings open.

The room looks utterly wrecked, clothing strewn along every surface. Joel answers the door wearing a robe, his entire face smelling of sex, and his moustache still shining with the slick of your release.

"Thanks, kid," Joel nods, and hands him a small wad of cash. The kid eyes him and shrugs. "Keep the change," he tells him, and the door swings back shut.

The edibles have hit beautifully. You're both blissed out, comfortably hazy, lost in the sensation of bare limbs on bedsheets and the flavors of the pizza and it's assorted sauces. You lay together on the bed, paper plates strewn between you. In the background, an X-Files rerun plays.

"Ooh!" You sit up as you catch the premise of the episode, "I love this one! See the goo? There's a giant fungal... entity.. that's working on digesting them, and giving them hallucinations as they die."

"You and mushrooms, huh?" Joel laughs, but then looks back at the episode and contemplates the viscous yellow goo. "Jesus christ," he frowns, and sniffs, now contemplating the mushrooms on his pizza slice.

You spot his glare and snort. "I think you're safe."

He takes another bite and shakes his head as if to clear it.

"I'm getting tired," he admits.

"Me too," you agree.

"No pressure, but in case it wasn't clear, you're welcome to stay the night here."

"That's sweet," you tell him, and think it over. "If I took you up on that, would you be offended if I slip out early?"

Joel raises a brow.

"I have a cat," you explain, "And I'm working on moving into a new place, and meeting a friend for breakfast, and then I need to check out after breakfast because I won't be able to get my keys for the new place until the breakfast but I can't take my cat to a diner-"

You take a breath.

"Basically, I've got a bunch of things I need to do in the morning, but if you don't mind me slipping out around, maybe, 5-ish, then I'd love to stay."

He stares at you.

You regret saying as much as you said. You don't need to over-explain yourself to this actual stranger. He doesn't care. There's no reason for him to care. He's probably in it just for the fuck, and it was fun and if you stay then there's a chance the two of you will wake up at some point in the night, still horny and lustful and you might fuck again and you'd be lying if you said that wasn't part of the draw. You realise, though, you'd also be lying if you said you didn't care what he thought of you. All of a sudden, you are overwhelmed with caring what this man thinks of you.

How fucking inconvenient.

"I wouldn't be offended at all," Joel chews, swallows, wipes the corner of his mouth with a napkin and speaks again. "What's your cat's name?"

You don't know what you'd expected he'd say, but it wasn't that. You buffer for a moment. "It's- Spatula."

"Spatula?"

"Yep." You feel foolish.

"Huh. Spatula."

A silent moment between you.

"Got any pictures?"

You weren't expecting that, either. "I... do? Do you want to see them?" He nods. You pull out your phone to scroll through.

Joel, suddenly scrambled around for his phone, too. It was late and he hadn't checked it for hours. Had it been on silent? What if Sarah had called and he'd missed it?

His panic eased when he saw he had only two notifications. Both from Sarah, but neither were bad. He hadn't been neglecting any crises. The first text was a selfie of Sarah and an unfamiliar person, which she'd texted to him with the caption New roomie!! The second contained an address to the place they'd have breakfast tomorrow along with Just wanted you to know I've invited a friend to join us tomorrow morning! Is that okay? Realized I should maybe have checked with you? 😬

There was an ache in his chest. He wanted to keep her to himself, get to spend one last day, just the two of them. It was the start of a whole new chapter, but more than anything, he wished he could hold onto the moment for just a second longer.

But Sarah was stressed, he knew this, so he wasn't gonna make it worse and put this burden on her. He could handle it. He had to handle it. He typed back- No problem, baby. Can't wait to meet your friend.

After a moment, he followed up with another text. Gonna turn in now. Good nite!

The less he texted right now, the better. He did not want Sarah to know anything about the night he was having.

His screen lit up a moment later. Night Dad! He takes a deep breath and wills some of the tension away.

He slips his phone aside and you scoot into bed next to him.

"This," you announce, "Is Spatula."

Joel scrolls thru, his brows raising higher with each image.

With a single nod, he opens his mouth and instead of speaking, he collapses into laughter. It comes out a wheeze- "I-- I know this won't make any sense, but your cat looks just like my goddamn brother."

You're laughing now too, both of you almost hysterical, even though you have no frame of reference. You cherish the absurdity.

Then, Joel pulls up a picture on his phone and shows you, and now you're doubling over again because his brother looks exactly like Spatula.

You don't remember falling asleep. You curse your body's internal clock because you wake up right at 5am, and even though you know you should get up and leave, you wish you could have just a little bit longer.

It's such a comfortable way to wake up. One arm is folded under your pillow, and the other is slung over Joel's hip. He's asleep, snoring softly, and strands of his hair are mussed along his forehead. Your hand is holding his tummy, but you realise there's something pressing against the heel of your hand, and then realise, with a delicious jolt, that he's hard and straining against his boxers.

It's so fucking hard to get out of that bed, but with enough barely-effective reminders--you're gonna fuck up your whole day if you're late, gotta make a good impression, Spatula's gonna be so disappointed if you're late with his breakfast--you manage to bully yourself out of the warm and wonderful bed containing blankets and absolutely fantastic dick, and you tiptoe through the room, dress quickly, and, after making a note and leaving it on his bedside stand, you slip out.

Joel wakes up with a jolt, and then rolls over to see that the alarm clock (which he dared not contemplate the number of times he must have snoozed) was telling him it was 9:13.

He was late. Really fucking late. And then the panic made his brain spin faster and that's when he noticed the note on his bedside table.

I had a really good time If you're in town for a little longer, don't be a stranger?

It's followed with your name and phone number, and a rather detailed mushroom sketch across the page. He wasn't sure what kind of mushroom it was, but it was beautiful, and clearly hand-drawn, and for whatever reason you'd decided to tear it out of, presumably, your sketchbook? And you gave it to him, and he's gonna read that note and replay last night for the rest of his fucking life. It felt incredibly precious. He placed it in a book so it wouldn't get creased or folded. Made sure it was all contained and neat, totally flat in between the pages.

Then, he dragged himself out of bed and into the shower.

After scrubbing the smell of sex off of his entire body, he dresses quickly and checks his watch again. 9:28.

He texts Sarah and lets her know he's a few minutes behind. She responds with an eye roll emoji.

Joel settles in his truck and pulls up directions. It's only a few minutes away. He won't be too late.

When Joel steps into the diner, he's charmed by it. It's old school, with a checkerboard floor and bright red vinyl seats. He scans the room till he spots Sarah in a booth in the corner. She's laughing over a hot chocolate, and her friend must be in the seat opposite her.

He catches Sarah's eye and she grins at him, waving him over.

You've been at the diner about fifteen minutes, and you and Sarah are already getting along beautifully.

You'd met on a university message board and had become fast friends, but meeting someone in person was always a little terrifying. On top of that, you'd already committed to spending at least one (academic) year with this person, so you were damn sure gonna make it work.

Sarah waves over her dad. You can't see him yet, the back of the booth too high.

But then he's standing right there.

You already have a hand outstretched, but when he sees you and you see him, your stomach flips and dread runs through you. All the color drains from his face. He looks like a deer in headlights, and you'd be surprised if you didn't look the same.

Sarah looks between you, not quite concerned, but definitely confused. Sarah smiles and tries to diffuse the situation.

"Hi dad!" She grins, "This is my new roommate! Well, the other new roommate--the one in the picture, their name is Ellie, they weren't able to make it this morning. BUT. Breakfast seemed like a great time to hand off keys!"

Joel is still frozen and white-faced. Your brain whirs, and you know you've just fucking catapulted yourself into a disastrous mess, but you do your very best to save face.

Reaching your hand out further so he can't possibly miss it, he gives into some familiar social instinct, takes it and you shake. You think of his hands, how they dragged along your body last night, touched you, felt you, wrecked you.

You introduce yourself. He nods, avoiding eye contact.

"Joel." He grunts. "Miller."

Sarah frowns at him, but turns back to the menu.

This- was unexpected. Problematic. Arguably, really fucked up. All of those things and more. But it'll be fine.

All throughout breakfast, you repeat that to yourself, letting the words bounce around your head. It will be fine, you repeat your mantra, it will be fine, and you try not to feel too hurt at the way Joel's avoiding eye contact as if simply looking at you will cause him unimaginable disgust.

Everything will be fine.

Note: The fic's premise is loosely based on the book Mistakes Were Made which is a fucking excellent sapphic romance novel that utilises this trope. Would strongly recommend the book if you're into smutty queer stories.

[sturnsmadl]

bf!matt headcannons!

warnings!- swearing, angst (light ig), mostly fluff, some smut, not proof read, lover boy matt tbh, cuddling, kissing, idk what else :).

bf!matt who loves holding hands.

bf!matt who is possessive at parties.

"who's that?"

"some drunk guy. thought i was his girl."

"right.."

kisses you

bf!matt who refuses to let you do anything.

"the laundry.."

"nuh uh. move."

bf!matt who ties your shoelaces for you.

"i can do it matt."

"so can i."

bf!matt who keeps his hands warm in your jeans back pocket.

bf!matt who loves physical touch.

bf!matt who always drags you on late night walks during fall.

"we went last nightt!!"

"babe. fall doesn't last forever."

bf!matt who wipe your tears and hugs you when your upset.

"shh..your okay.."

bf!matt who adores carrying you.

"matt i can walk."

"i knowww. but carrying you is fun."

bf!matt who gets you a cat.

"its for you!"

"is it..?"

"i mean...mainly me..but yeah.."

bf!matt who can't stop touching you.

"matt its too hot. let go."

"your too hot."

"fuck off matt."

laughs

bf!matt who isn't massive on PDA but will do small touches.

bf!matt who loves hooking up in his car.

"fuck...yes baby.."

"matt! yes..fuck! yes!"

bf!matt who gets hard from you just sitting in his lap.

bf!matt who is definite that you're the mother of his children.

"we all have that phase matt."

"its not a phase. she's gonna be the mother of my kids chris."

"okay buddy.."

bf!matt who buys you a lot of makeup.

bf!matt who loves giving you hugs and cuddling.

"hi baby."

"oh hi. your back early huh?"

"yep..cuddles?"

bf!matt who made you your own drawer in his room.

bf!matt who always wants to be helping you.

"okay..lets wash this hair. huh?"

"i can wash it.."

"your tired and i love you so im gonna help."

bf!matt who needs to be near you at all times.

"where'd you go?!"

"to the bathroom.."

"jesus..could've told me.."

"wha- yeah..okay. go to sleep."

bf!matt who sits outside the shower door while you shower.

"and i was thinking. what if i just taught you to drive?"

"do we need to talk about this while im showering?"

bf!matt who loves filming sex tapes, especially backshots.

bf!matt who is extremely moody when you're gone.

"matt can you take the-"

"fuck off!"

"jesus..the fuck happened to you.."

bf!matt who hates arguing but you clearly pushed too far.

"probably my other man."

"what...?"

"what? i was kidding..matt.."

bf!matt who gives you silent treatment all day.

"can we talk..matt? come on.."

bf!matt who just cooks for himself he's so mad.

"you made my favourite? oh.."

walks away with a plate for himself

"fucking hell.."

bf!matt who doesn't pay attention to your apologies.

bf!matt who shoves past you, not realising how strong he is.

bf!matt who feels horrible when he accidentally hurts you.

"ow.."

"oh shit.. sorry baby. im so sorry okay? you're okay.."

bf!matt who finds you crying and is immediatley there.

"hey..is it still hurting? im so sorry.."

"no..im pregnant.."

bf!matt who attacks you with a hug when he finds out your pregnant.

"what?! oh my..oh my god! yes yes yes!"

bf!matt who is obsessed with your bump.

"so cute. a whole life's in there.."

"yep..you excited?"

"so."

bf!matt who is extremely overprotective while your pregnant.

"no!!"

"jesus..what?!"

"i can load the dishwasher. you sit."

"you made it sound like i was commiting a crime.."

bf!matt who always texts you while he's filming/streaming.

"can you put your phone down for 2 minutes??"

"yeah one second.."

"you said that 5 minutes ago!"

bf!matt who lets you force him into doing a tiktok dance with him.

bf!matt who freaks out at the birth.

bf!matt who takes the drive home a bit too carefully.

"babe, i know your nervous but we are barely moving."

"im not hurting the baby. im doing 20.."

"thats the problem."

a/n- this is just general bf matt unlike my others but yeah so this may push me back into my break because its absoulutely awful!! but im thinking of doing a halloween theme, doubt ill pull throught though! im so tired :)

taglist! @bellaonthelow @hrtsdollie @sturnclouds @christophersgf @ellizzyy @moonk1ss3d @phoenix062 @pixxiies @conspiracy-ash @blahbel668 @monroesturnns @gwennybenny @sturnobsessedwh0re @xoxo4chriss @pixie-sticks-are-good @wurlibydominicfike @anitahunt @ilusa @mattstrombolii @stvrlighht @asherrisrandom @amelia-sturniolo3 @lianomer

[darlingshane]

Professor Castle

Frank Castle x F!Reader

Summary: Frank has a weakness and it's named after you. No matter how much he tries to push you away he always returns to the same point.

CW: 18+. Explicit, Smut, Angst, Oral Sex (f. receiving), Fingering, Making out, Professor/Student relationships, Age Gap, Reader is an undergrad student in her early 20s. [I know this is very problematic. Don't come at me. It's just fiction.]

Word Count: 2.8k // AO3 Link.

A/N: This was inspired by this picture of Jon in Origin. I couldn't write for that character in particular, so I thought Frank was the best choice for it, even if it's a lot OOC.

As you muster the courage to enter and confront Professor Castle, you observe him through the cracked door of his office. He looks as good as ever, freshly shaved, in one of his Bexley plaid shirts in white with blue plaid lines, and a dark tweed blazer on top. His hair has slightly curled from the humid weather. His glasses slip a little over the bridge of his nose when he looks down, and he pushes them back in place before tucking a folder in his leather case. You haven't seen him in a few days. Even when you submitted the form to drop his class you managed to leave it on his desk yesterday after he left home. And just early this morning before getting to campus you got an email from him from his uni account, formally denying your request to drop. You don't give a fuck about failing and having to take another course with a different teacher but after what he told you last weekend, you can't stay in his class any longer. It'd be like torture having to see him and not being able to be with him like you desire to.

Of course, you don't ever want to get him in trouble either, he has a lot more to lose than you. But if he doesn't want to see you anymore, then so don't you. So, after a moment of consideration you just clench your fist as hard as you can, set your jaw straight, and storm into the office without announcing yourself. The door slamming the door behind you is what alerts him of your presence. The loud sound makes his head snap up to look at you, standing as tall as you can.

“You can't force me to stay in your class.” You say firmly without raising your voice.

His brow knits behind the thin frame of his glasses as he processes your intrusion.

“No, I guess I can't force you. But I can't let you drop either. You missed the deadline. Unless you have a good excuse like a serious medical condition or emergency the school is not going to let you withdraw at this point. It's out of my hands.”

“Does dying of heartbreak count as a medical emergency?”

“Jesus Christ, you theater kids are really dramatic.”

“Hey, you're the one who told me to join a club.”

“Yeah, but I meant something else like uh… the debate team, the honor society, the newspaper, or the fucking model UN.”

“Well, I made my choice and so did you. I can't just keep showing up at your class and pretend that nothing happened. Can you just think of something? If I meant anything to you… just give me this, Frank.”

You never said his first name before on school grounds. It sounds like a curse word as it slips out of your mouth.

“There are only two months left. That's nothing. Are you telling me you're willing to throw all of that away for me?”

“Yes, because if I can't have you then I can't see you either.”

You catch when his Adam's apple anxiously goes up and down as you say that.

“This is all my fault. I should've never… I should've put a stop to it when I had the chance.”

“Frank—” You take a step closer to his desk, but he promptly holds a placating palm in the air to push you to a stop.

“Don't. Please. Don't throw away your future for me or for anyone for that matter. You're smart and young and strong enough to endure a few more classes. You'll be getting your bachelor's next year, sweetheart. After that… you won't even remember I was ever part of your life.”

“I won't ever forget. I'm begging you. Just let me go or take me back… but…” your frustration knots in your throat. “Stop pushing me away. I know you love me.”

“It doesn't matter if I do. We both have a lot to lose if they find out.”

“Nobody will. We'll be more careful… We could just start over somewhere else, just you and me.”

“Life is not a movie. It doesn't work like that. I know it feels like a matter of life or death right but when you're older—”

“Don't patronize me. I know what I feel. Just take me out of your class or don't. I won't show up either way.”

You turn around to leave the room at once but Frank quickly shuffles behind you and as you reach to grab the handle, he holds the door closed and secures the lock before your eyes.

“So help me God, you're gonna be the end of me, sweetheart.” His tone changes to an octave graver that sends a chill through your spine.

“What are you doing?” You turn around as he steps so awfully close you can capture the strong scent of his aftershave.

“You're going to stay in my class. Front row. Every Wednesday at 10. Then, you're going to ace your final in May. I don't ever wanna hear you again saying otherwise. Is that clear?” He states as a matter of fact, as if you had no choice but to comply with his demand.

“Why are you so convinced I will?”

You watch him up close as he takes off his glasses and lifts his opposite hand to frame your jaw. With conflicted thoughts he pushes your back against the wall, as his face leans to seize your mouth. Professor Castle slowly spells with his tongue all the secrets kept between you in just one beautiful kiss that leaves you breathless.

“Is that enough?” His head pulls back as he sets his glasses back over his eyes as you smooth the lapels of his blazer.

“I'm not sure,” you draw a breath and let the bookbag hanging on your shoulder fall to the floor. “I think I'm gonna need a bigger incentive.”

“There's never enough for you, huh?” he holds your jaw again and tilts your head to the side as he buries his mouth in the crook of your neck.

His lips hold some sort of spell that enchants your body with just a few nips on your skin. The tip of his tongue is laced with poison that intoxicates each and all of your senses as it juts out to leave a wet trace from your collarbone to the back of your ear before pulling back. His eyes turn darker behind the glass as he locks eyes with you. Your pulse picks up in your chest as he licks his lips and allows lust to take over. He watches his thumb trace the shape of your mouth before fiercely succumbing to the temptation of your lips once more, with feeling.

As your arms curl around his neck, his hands travel beneath the hem of your striped, knitted sweater to bask in the warmth of your skin. The sloppy sounds of your kisses sound like sin in this room. You should stop. He should too. But neither of you have enough strength to push the other away.

One of his hands stays pressed on your spine while the other travels down your denim skirt and slips underneath the hem. Hiking it up, his large palm shamelessly grabs your ass, molds your flesh to the shape of his fingers over your panties. Your skin quickly heats up and your mind swirls along the maddening rhythm of his tongue. He presses himself so hard against you, it feels like he's already fucking you, but it's the illusion of his fingers bluntly sliding between your legs and pressing over your opening, stirring a good moan out of you.

“Sh, sh…” he breaks the kiss and whispers a millimeter away from your mouth. “Gotta be quiet now, yeah?”

You simply nod, having his eyes gauging your expression changing as his hand viciously massages your pussy.

“Like that?” His lips pull up at the corners, and you mirror his expression as you softly pant.

“Fuck yeah.”

Then, you close your eyes and press your forehead to his shoulder, keeping your hands anchored to his arms as your juices stain the fabric of your underwear.

“You're dripping, sweetheart.” His voice echoes in your ear. “Is this what you want?”

He presses harder as your grip on him tightens.

“Yeah.”

For a second you think he's going to finish you right there but all of a sudden he stops.

“C'mere,” he locks your arms around his neck before lifting your ass in his hands without much effort. You tuck your legs around his hips as he takes turns around and walks toward the desk.

Keeping you secured in one arm, Frank blindly moves the stuff in the middle before carefully lowering you down on the wooden surface. While you lay on your back, he sits on his chair and brings your ass close to the edge. Instead of letting your legs dangle, he places your feet on each arm of his chair as he kisses one of your knees.

“God, you're so beautiful,” he mumbles against your skin as he rolls down the fabric of one of your thigh-high stockings to uncover your leg. He does the same with the other stocking before letting his lips get his reward.

The inside of your thigh leads a straight road down to hell. After last weekend, he promised himself he would never cross that line again, but he has a weakness, and it’s named after you. It's taken him through a dangerous path that puts everything he ever believed into question. He could lose his job and his reputation if someone were to cross the door to his office and find you spread like a meal ready to consume. It's lunchtime after all, and he can't think of anything better to feast on other than you. His lips trail that perdition-paved road on your thigh as his fingers softly brush the back of your leg. Your skin sticks out as you pull your knees further apart to make room for his face as it gets closer to your center. The corner of his glasses gently pokes the top of your thigh when he reaches that crucial point. You bite your lip and stare at the broken fixture on the ceiling and try to keep yourself from moaning when he pulls your panties to the side. He stretches the fabric as far as it goes, it makes a tearing sound, but it doesn't break. You couldn't care less if he rips them apart. It wouldn't be the first time either. He’s ruined two pairs already. Professor Castle has a wild side that only comes untamed when he’s with you. But this is different. He's never gone down on you right in his own office on campus like he's about to do. You both know the implications of that, but rules be damned right now. All that worry floats out of your head as his tongue makes first contact with your pussy. He draws a line from your opening up to your clit ever so softly before pulling your outer lips apart and diving in. He has just an ounce of restraint himself from going too hard and making you scream out in pleasure, even though he wants so badly to suck on your clit to hear you pleading for more. To stir out of your voice call out his name and title out of sheer joy. But he holds back. He presses an array of kisses and nibbles all over your folds as you close your eyes to focus on the torturing slow pace of his tongue. Your nipples are hard as a rock under your bra, your legs strain to stay in position when Frank slowly laps around your clit, collecting your arousal as your breathing hollows. He places a palm on your stomach, right under your sweater and catches the effects of his mouth in the way your body reacts. There’s an added edge to doing this right here, it makes his cock throb in his underwear as you mumble his name.

“Frank.” It comes out as a murmur, and he hums against your tender skin before going a little harder. There’s only so much he can do to up the pace and make you come without alerting anyone behind that door of what’s happening inside.

We'll be more careful, you said. He eats out your words straight out of your sex.

To speed up the process uses his other hand to slip two fingers into your opening and press on your g-spot. Your back arches in response. Frank has to press that hand on your abdomen a little harder to keep you from squirming too much. It feels like an eternity until you reach the point of no return, once you're there you can feel that fire burning bright at your core as a mind-numbing chill settles at the back of your head. You've never felt that intense jolt sparking your body like fireworks before. Then again you don't have much to compare him to other than the one and only boyfriend you had when you started college.

You grip at his hair as he cues your orgasm. With a strong flick of his tongue and that adamant pressing of your walls you finally come undone. You bury a moan in your throat as every cell of your body is touched by that wildfire that travels from your center out in every direction. It curls your toes in your shoes, your eyes shut, your knees clench together before he can pull his face away. As the orgasm ebbs he sets himself free from your thighs and watches you descend from cloud nine. He uses a tissue to clean up your cunt and fixes your panties to their former position. Then, Frank settles your legs down as your body goes completely limp, and straightens your skirt over your thighs with such love it almost makes you cry.

“Frank,” your voice comes out watery.

“Sh, it's okay, baby. I know. Come here.” He helps you up and pulls you onto his lap.

“I missed you.”

“I know.” He smiles against your hair as he snuggles you against his chest. “I’ve missed you too, sweetheart.”

You clear your throat and stay still for a minute while his hand soothes your back before noticing he’s still hard.

“Do you want me to take care of this?” You fondle his bulge over his pants.

“No, that’s okay. That’s my punishment for hurting you.” He takes your hand away, brings it up to his lip to kiss your knuckles.

“You really have a thing for punishment, huh?” You quip, lifting your head to look at him. It’s then that you notice his messed up hair and send our fingers to fix it.

“Not as much as you do.” His hand pats your ass reminding you of all those times you've begged him to spank you when you were being a brat.

You laugh as you take off his glasses and use the hem of your sweater to clean them.

“Can I come over this weekend?” You ask putting his eyewear back on.

“I have that wedding I told you about. Can't get out of it, I'm the best man.”

“Right. Of course. One of your marine buddies. Florida, right?”

“Yeah.” His stare goes down as he massages your hand thinking that maybe… “You could come with me if you want.”

“I uh… I don't think I'm ready for that.”

“No, you are. Nobody will know you there, and I don't wanna keep lying about you, at least not to my friends. They won't give a fuck, you know? I'm tired of being set up for blind dates and shit.”

“Oh, it must be really hard being you.” You mock.

“Don't laugh. Just think about it. It'll be something casual at the beach. I'll get you a ticket if you're worried about that.”

“I really changed your mind, did I? That's a full 180 from what you said the other day, Frank. Are you sure you want this?”

“Yeah, I was only fooling myself thinking that I could stay away from you. Which I would've if you hadn't shown up here with a fucking attitude. But you're right, we'll have to be more careful from now on.”

“And we can do whatever we want in Florida.”

“Yeah, you wanna come?”

“Only if you really want me there.”

“I wouldn't be asking if I didn't.”

“Then I'll go with you.”

You press your lips sweetly against his and let them bounce together for a moment before getting back to reality. You pull up your stockings all the way up and fix up your clothes before collecting your bag from the floor. But Professor Castle can't help but stall for a bit longer to kiss you once more until you have no choice but to run to your next class.

[justmeinadaze]

Secret Underneath Part 6 (Steddie X Plus Size Reader)

A/N: No cliffhanger this time, I promise <3.

Warning: Older (Mid thirties) Sugar Daddies Steve and Eddie/ Young (Early to mid 20s) Baby Fem Plus Size Reader, No smut in this one today, ladies and lads. I didn't feel like it worked with this chapter. I was going to make this one long chapter but I thought it better to split it :)

ANGST, Y/N confronts them about the events of the last chapter. Insecurities get in the way of them and that is explored a lot more in this chapter with mentions of their dads as well as Gina hurting them. She is sullying their image by saying lies (mentions verbal abuse and comments on how the plus size reader is "probably being used" by them because of how she looks) , she does have an incident at a bar with a guy being a dick, they defend her.

Word Count: 4853

Series here/ Donate to Me :)

You broke a rule. 

You went on Google and searched for their lawyer’s information through news outlets spouting anything they could in regard to this case. After finding what you needed, you charged into the building and past a secretary who was shouting for you to come back as you opened the door to a conference room where many sets of eyes including their shocked expressions landed on you. 

“Excuse me, gentlemen, but I need a moment alone with these boys for a moment.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Wilson, she just stormed right past me—”

“No, no. It’s alright, Crystal. Um, let’s take a breather and we’ll be back in a moment.”

As soon as everyone had filed out, your angry eyes burned into them as you slid your phone across the table. 

“That thing hasn’t stopped going off since Gina released your names and quite frankly I’m afraid to look at it.”

“How did you find out where we were?”, Steve asked as he rose to his feet.

“I googled your lawyer’s name.”

“Well, so much for that promise.”, Eddie sassed as he leaned back in his chair. 

“And so much for your promise to take care of me!”, you screamed not caring if anyone heard. “Did you really fucking think that I could stay out of this?! Did you think after what she said people weren’t going to wonder and dig into why I was with you at that party?!”

“You wanted to go and we warned you of the risks of being seen with us.”

“Don’t you dare do that! Don’t you fucking dare place blame on me! I don’t care about being seen with you or if people know that we’re together! What I care about is my job, those kids, and you two!! How can I properly help and protect myself if I don’t have all the facts?! Do you know what she’s saying? She’s saying you two promised to take care of her if anything ever happened. That you were verbally aggressive with her and--”

“Yeah, Y/N, we’re aware of she’s claiming.”, the mogul growls. “Since you’re doing your own research did you go on her social medias? Oh, a lot of fun material there. Now that a fucking judge allowed her to talk about us she’s been posting nonstop about how Eddie would demean her and make her feel ugly. That I apparently offered her money to get plastic surgery to make her look ‘perfect’.”, he sarcastically laughs. 

“You should have told me.”

“Because you think we did what she claims?”

“No, Eddie! Fuck, so I can prepare. What if parents suddenly feel like I can’t teach their kids because of the company I keep? What if the school decides that my association with you isn’t worth the attention? Now that this has come to light I need to be aware of what’s going on!”

Neither man said a thing infuriating you more. 

“Did you not tell me because you thought I wouldn’t want to be with you? Or did you think I’d hurt you like she did?” You laugh as you shake your head. “Jesus. I thought you two were different but you’re just like every other scared little boy. I thought I had given you enough reason to trust me but I guess not.”

“Yeah so why don’t you fucking leave then, you little brat.”

You weren’t sure if they saw it in your eyes but you definitely felt your heart break. Wrapping your arms around yourself, you back away towards the door. 

“I’m so stupid.”

When your teary eyes met theirs, you could tell Steve regretted his words but he couldn’t take them back. They couldn’t take any of this back. Furiously, you reach into your pocket and throw their apartment key across the table before leaving the way you came. 

##############

Instagram:

IHateithere: “Oh my god. Poor Gina!”

NeverHave_IEver13: “She’s so sweet and deserves better.”

CorrodedGirl28: “Fuck Gina Frost. This isn’t the first time she’s made claims against a partner! I met Eddie Munson backstage at one of his concerts and he was so sweet.”

E!News: Mystery Woman seen at the Charity Event with Steven Harrington and Edward Munson has been cited by the men’s lawyers as ‘just a friend.’

Twitter:

ElderEmoKid91: That poor friend of theirs. No matter what people will think they dated because of Gina. 

ChaosRains: ‘Their friend’? Yeah right. Probably as much of a whore as Gina Frost!

JusticefortheUnheard: I bet if this was a man with two women he’d be slated as a ‘hero’ but because it’s a woman with two men she’s a whore. Grow up!

Steve Harrington: Eddie and I are saddened to hear that not only has our privacy been violated but Gina Frost is allowed to continue spreading her lies until we get this matter resolved. We never once raised a voice or hand to her and took care of her like any boyfriend would which she constantly took advantage of…

Steve Harrington: In regard to the young lady that came with us to charity event last Saturday, she is a friend we’ve known for a while. We ask politely that you respect her privacy as what is going on between us and Gina…

Steve Harrington: doesn’t involve her. Thank you for your understanding and we will speak more on this situation when we are finally able.

TMZ: Steve Harrington and Eddie Munson release joint statement regarding ‘friend’ and how they feel about Frost ‘spreading her lies’!

YouTube and TV:

CBS: “Gina Frost, thank you so much for speaking with us today. Before we let you go, what are your thoughts on the young lady they were seen with? Do you have any advice for her in regard to Mr. Harrington and Mr. Munson?”

“Run, girl. Get as far away from them as you can. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if they started ‘hanging out’ with a girl like her because of our case. They always wanted me to be perfect. To look like the woman they thought would be equal to them and their status. She’s the complete opposite of what they wanted me to be so dating, or excuse me, being friends with her makes them look good.”

***

You wiped the tears that fell with your knee as you browse Daddies on your computer. Your phone was still dinging constantly so you kept it hidden in your bedside table drawer. Since winter break had started you didn’t have to deal with work and for that you were thankful. 

Your identity hadn’t been officially confirmed but it seemed to be common knowledge at this point; everyone knew it was you. 

Not wanting to be alone, you ran home into your parent’s open arms. 

“Baby! Are you ok? What’s going on? Tell us everything.”

“I’m so stupid, mom.”, you cried.

“No, you’re not, honey. Come on. I made some coffee. Let’s sit down and talk.”

You told them everything minus the exact way you met them but you did tell them that you had been dating them both and how much you cared about them. When you were met with nothing but love and zero judgement, you cried harder. 

Having fully settled in, you felt yourself getting antsy. After everything, you didn’t want a new relationship, just something casual but after having been with the guys you felt yourself cringing more and more at the stupid flirting that hit you. 

“’Sup, pretty girl? Fuck your gorgeous. Wanna suck my cock?”

“Hey babe. You got an attitude? I bet I can fuck it out of you.”

“What are you doing, Y/N?”

Your head straightened at the message from Mogul/Rockstar. You hadn’t heard from them in over two weeks. What were they doing on this site? You couldn’t help the jealousy that flowed through you even though technically you were on the site first. 

2:13am: What do you want, Steve?

2:14am: I want an answer to my question. What are you doing on this site again?

2:15am: What are YOU doing on here?! And why do you fucking care? You told me to leave remember?

2:17am: We’ve been calling you for the past couple of weeks but you don’t answer. We got worried. Steve thought maybe we could reach you through here but I thought naw. She wouldn’t get back on here so fast. Guess we were wrong. 

2:20am: Don’t you dare, Eddie. Don’t you turn this around on me. You have no idea what I’ve been through! I still can’t believe you didn’t talk to me. You really expected me to sit at my apartment while you handled all this alone. Did you really think she wouldn’t pull me into your thing?”

2:21am: Now because of all the secrecy I can’t help but think what I’m hearing is true!

2:22am: Like what? 

2:25am: Answer. Like what?

2:26am: That you only dated me so it seems like you didn’t want her to be the ‘ideal woman’.

You hear your phone vibrate against the drawer it’s nestled. 

2:28am: Answer the phone.

2:28am: No.

2:29am: Now, Y/N. We need to talk.

2:30am: Oh now you want to talk!? Go fuck yourselves!

2:30am: Mogul/Rockstar has invited you to a video chat!!

2:31am: CurveybabywAttitude declined your invitation to video chat. 

2:32am: Y/N. Answer the fucking phone. 

2:38am: Y/N, sweetheart, please.

2:44am: Baby…

2:44am: Please…

2:45am: We love you. 

2:45am: So much.

Uh oh! It looks like this Baby can no longer receive messages from Mogul/Rockstar! This means you have either been blocked or the Baby has deleted their account. 

###################

“Jesus what assholes.”, your best friend sighs as she takes a sip from her glass. “If they loved you then why did they push you away?”

“I don’t know, My. Let’s stop talking about them and dance!”

To get your mind off everything and let go, you met up with your best friend who took you to a new bar that had been built while you were away from home. Dressed in your tightest black dress and black heels, you grabbed your own drink and danced away the pain. 

Your friend took photos, tagging you together with men in the background casually touching your arm or waist. Your limbs found their way around a cute boy you had been talking casually to and allow him to kiss you. You hated the taste, missing Eddie and Steve even more but you pushed down the feeling as you pulled him tighter against you. 

“Take me home.”, you slurred, making the young man immediately jump to his feet. When you tried to do the same you fell backwards. 

“Whoa, Y/N. Maybe, you should let me take you home.”

“Naw, Mya. I-I-I M’fine.”, you assured as you lightly pushed her to the side and stumbled out the front door. When you tripped again the man wrapped your arm around his neck and began leading you to his car. “Wait—Wait. I’m…I need a minute.”, you whine as you take a seat on the brick wall behind you.

“Come on, baby. You can rest at my place.”, the man cooed in your ear causing you to cringe. “Look we don’t even have to go. We can just fuck in my car real quick—”

“Oh, that’s romantic.”

As you stood up and started to walk away, he grabbed your wrist a bit to roughly and in return, you smacked his cheek before stumbling to the concrete. 

“Ow! Fucking bitch—” As the man began to step forward, someone intercepted, abruptly grabbing his collar and lifting him off his feet. 

“Eddie, let it go, man. Not right now.”, Steve whispers before kneeling down beside you to try and help you up. 

“Get out of my sight.”, the rockstar growls, pushing him away from you. 

“Y/N, stop. I’m just trying to help you stand—”

“I don’t need your fucking help!”, you shouted as you shoved his hand away. “I don’t need anything from you!” 

Trying to push up onto your knees, you became dizzy and fell over again causing Steve to try and steady you while blocking your shoulder from scraping the wall beside you. Your hair was blocking your face but when they heard you sniffle, Eddie crouched down to balance on his heels and tenderly reached out to move some of it behind your ear. 

“I did everything you asked… I didn’t push when it came to your past or dig into your information online. I-I-I respected the anon-ymity and privacy when we first met and took a leap of faith going to that party with you. I flew to visit you anywhere you were and didn’t complain when you were gone for weeks at a time. I made myself vulnerable…for you…but still…you don’t trust me.”

“Y/N, sweetheart, we are so sorry—”

“I want to go home, please, Daddy.”

The way you said that shattered them in two. Just in your voice alone they could hear how much pain you were in yet even in your inebriated state you still yearned for them. Selfishly, it gave them hope.

“Y/N, sweetie! There you are.”, your best friend shouts in relief as she runs to you and helps you to your feet. “Get the fuck away from her. Haven’t you done enough damage?!”

“We just want to talk to her.”

“Fuck you! You had your chance to talk and—”

“Mya, please. Sleepy.”, you whine. 

When she tries to lead you away from them towards her car, you stumble over your feet again but Eddie swiftly catches you and lifts you into his arms. 

“We’ll help you get her to your car.”

“Why? So you know which one is mine and follow me back to her house?!”

“No, so we can help you get her situated and back home so she can rest.”, Steve growled. 

Mya blinks, taken a back slightly by their protective demeanors over you. After taking a moment, she finally nods and guides them towards her vehicle, watching carefully as they place you in the passenger seat. The mogul buckles your seatbelt and gently puts your bag in your lap.

Your half-lidded eyes scan his worried face as your head lulls towards him. 

“M’not her.”

“Who, honey?”

“Gina.”

Flashing you a soft smile, he begins to reach out to pet your head before forcing himself to stop and rise to his feet.

“We’re staying at the hotel by the highway; room 118. When she wakes up tomorrow, if you could tell her that, we’d appreciate it.”, Eddie conveys as his sad eyes stay on you. 

“Your fuckers, you know that?”, Mya shouts their way as they start to leave. “Like so much so that I don’t even know where to begin. She used to call me every other day and talk about these new guys she was seeing. She never told me your full names but she told me everything else. ‘Oh Mya, they are so sweet and funny. Steve is amazing at his job and works to hard to make sure everything gets done while still being able to be there for me. I love watching Eddie play on stage. He gets so into the songs and his face lights up when he hears the fans singing along. Falling asleep in their arms is my new favorite place. I finally feel safe.’”

“When the news dropped, I called her but she didn’t answer. I wasn’t worried at the time because the way she described you, I thought ‘Thankfully, they have her and she has them.’ Then she came home and told me about you expecting her to hide in her apartment with zero information on what was happening. How you yelled at her and called her a fucking brat when she called you out.”

“Oh, and the icing on the cake? You tell her you love her for the first time over a dating website AFTER ALL THIS BULLSHIT YOU PUT HER THROUGH! Holden wore his asshole behavior out in the open for all to see. You made her believe you were different, leading her on before breaking her heart. After the stuff I read, I’m starting to believe Gina Frost.”

Both men absorbed what your best friend was saying, different emotions painting their features before finally landing on anger; not at her but themselves. 

“Your right.”, Steve replied in a sullen tone. “We fucked up. Hell, we did more than fuck up…”

“We’ve never cared about anyone the way we do her and that terrifies us. Not just because of our status or who we are even though that’s why Gina used us but…”, Eddie added. “The men underneath the fame and money are incredibly flawed.”

“Gina made us afraid of her hurting us but our own personal bullshit made us afraid of hurting her.”

“So this is better?”, Mya asked.

“My…where…where your phone?”, you slurred as your hand lazily reached in her direction.

“Y/N, I’m taking you back to your mom’s, honey, you don’t know need to call them.”

“No…not mom…Eddie…Steve…I need to make dem come back. They were here an’ an’…”

“How about you call them tomorrow morning, ok? It’s really late and—”

“I don’t want dem to leave again. Mya…please…”

“Hey, hey sweetheart, we’re right here. We haven’t gone anywhere.” Tears start to run down your cheeks again and the rockstar cups your face in his hand. “We’re right here and we’ll be here when you wake up. Just let Mya, take you home and get you in bed. Tomorrow you can call us and we’ll talk then alright?”

After you nod, Eddie adjusts your body again before closing the door. 

“You guys should get going.”

“Do you really love her?”, your best friend asks.

“Yes.”

Again, Mya takes a moment to gather her thoughts as her eyes shift between your now sleeping frame and them. 

“Her parents house isn’t far. You can follow me there.”

***

“Why are they here?”, your father asks in an annoyed tone as he eyes the men up and down. 

“It’s ok, Mr. Y/L/N. They just wanted to help get her situated and then they’ll be on their way.”, Mya answers in equal measure. 

“Is her room up here?”, Eddie inquires as he gestures towards the stairs. 

“Why don’t you come with us so you can get her changed into something comfier.”, Steve follows when your friend nods. 

“Why? You’re her whatevers right?”

“I don’t think it would be appropriate right now for us to do that.”

“I can help you.”, your mom responds out of nowhere. “Come on, gentlemen.”

After they get to your room, your mother turns on your bedside lamp as Eddie gently places you down on your bed. Taping the rockstars shoulder, she hands him an oversized shirt with your college insignia on it and some shorts. 

“Maybe you should…”

“I trust you, Mr. Munson. Plus I’m right here.” Her eyes studiously watch them as both boys work to change you out of your tight garment doing everything they could to not have to look at your body. Steve’s palm carefully cradled your head to make sure they didn’t jostle you around too much as you soundly slept. 

“Do you have a washrag or wipe or something for her makeup?”

Her head tilts at his question, impressed he even thought of that. Disappearing into your restroom, she came back with wet wipes, and Eddie thanked her as he took one and gently cleaned your face.

This was a bit harder to accomplish without moving you as your face scrunched and you whined. 

“Steve…stop…”

“That’s it, sweetheart. Blame him. That way if I don’t do this correctly it will be his fault.”, he teased making you sleepily giggle. 

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”, Eddie whispers.

“Thank you, ma’am, for letting us do this. We just wanted to make sure she got here safely.”

“Hm. You wanted to make sure she got back home in one piece but didn’t think to do that when it came to all this chaos you brought her into?”, you mom scolded as she folded her arms. 

“We did warn her—”

“No Mr. Harrington. You may have warned her about your lifestyle but you didn’t do anything to protect her when the fallout of that lifestyle presented itself. Holden ‘warned’ her about what life in New York would be like but when things got hard he abandoned her instead working with her. Like him, you left her alone.”

Nodding, their heads hung as they began to head towards the door before stopping. 

“I’m afraid.”, Eddie announces. “My mom died when I was young, my dad went to jail, people around me told me I’d never amount to anything, and then our ex did what she did. When we met Y/N, fuck, I thought she was perfect… and that scares me. I don’t want to lose her but I also don’t want to be the reason that spark inside of her dies.”

“Seems like a lose/lose, Eddie. But let me ask you something… what if your relationship with her had a happy ending? What if she didn’t hurt you like your ex and you don’t hurt her like people in your life?” She smiles softly as she pats his shoulder. “It’s a risk, boys, but you just need to decide who is worth taking that risk for. You’re more than welcome to stay in our spare bedroom if you would like.”

####################

When you woke up the next morning, you had a splitting headache, thankful that your pain reliever was still in your drawer by your bed. The sound of soft breathing startled you a bit and when you leaned over your bedframe, you were surprised to see Eddie asleep on your floor using his jacket as a pillow. Steve had placed himself in the reading chair you had in the corner with his head leaning against the wall. 

You didn’t realize how much you missed them till you saw their faces and you took the opportunity to refamiliarize yourself as your eyes scanned over them. The mogul was in jeans and a polo making you smile softly while silently missing the sleek suits that hugged him perfectly. The rockstar was still dressed the same as he usually was but his whole demeanor even while sleeping seemed heavy. 

Your heart broke for them until the last couple of weeks caught up with you and you remembered why you were here. 

Reaching for one of your pillows, you threw it their way, hitting Eddie’s chest before it bounced and hit Steve’s lap. 

“The fuck?”, he grumbled as he rubbed his eyes. 

“The fuck indeed. Why are you both here? How did you even know where I was?”

“Your best friend was posting pictures of you and tagging your location on Instagram. You weren’t answering your phone—”

“Yeah, Steve, for a reason. That doesn’t give you the right to come down here.”

“Thank God we did because some asshole was harassing you and Mya was having trouble getting you to her car to take you home.”

“No, Eddie. You playing hero doesn’t absolve you of what you did. You have no idea what I’ve been through!”

“We tried to call—”

“Oh, fuck you both!” As you start to get up to yell at them, a sharp sting runs through knee causing you to wince and sit back down. 

“Shit. Didn’t see that last night. Um, do you have a first kit or anything thing?”

When you don’t answer, the mogul goes on the hunt himself as Eddie kneels in front of you to look at the scrape on your knee. 

“Yeah, you fell on the concrete outside of the bar with some asshole trying to… I told him to fuck off.” Sitting on the bed beside you, Steve opens the little white box and starts to open a Band-Aid before his friend stops him. “Dude, you have to clean it first. It’s like you’ve never been in a fight before. Gimme this.”, he chuckles lightly as he takes the box and pulls out the antiseptic.

“You don’t have to do this. I’m not… I don’t belong to you anymore.”

His movements only halt for a second before Eddie continues taking care of you. 

“I don’t mind doing this. I like taking care of you.”, he murmurs. “Unless you want me to stop.”

“I don’t want you to but I didn’t want you to cast me aside either.”

“We—”

“Don’t say you didn’t, Steve, because you did.”

“We did.” His response surprised you as you turned your head in his direction. “We talked to your mom last night. She’s a very wise woman.”, he smirks as he watches Eddie continue his task. “Y/N, I worked so hard to get where I am and I don’t just mean taking over my dad’s company and doing the deals I do. When I was growing up, I was never enough for either of my parents but especially my father. In his eyes, I could always be just a little bit better.”

“I could shorten my time by one more second in the pool or get one more minute on the court. My grades could have been one point higher or I could have gotten three grand more out of a deal. He wanted me to be perfect but I learned after I graduated high school that bar was always changing.” When his eyes finally met yours, you saw the pain behind them. “Gina knew all this… that’s why she’s saying that about me. She knows it hurts me…people thinking I’m like my father.”

Eddie finishes placing the Band-aid on your skin and leans back against the wall across from you.

“My dad was a dick…to me and my mother. He cut us down all the time verbally but after she died it got worse. He would tell me I was stupid and a freak just like the people in our town. I left my house with more bruises than I could count on numerous occasions but his words, babe. I carry those everywhere even now. I never once, no matter how angry I was, called her anything demeaning even though I fucking wanted to. She would call us every name in the book but we never once belittled her or laid a hand on her.”

“When we met you, Jesus, I swear there was no girl we had ever met like you.”

“Beautiful, sarcastic, kind, understanding…”, Steve clarified when your eyebrows furrowed. “Y/N, you are everything we’ve ever wanted.”

“Stop…”, you whimper quietly. 

“I feel like somehow she knows that. That’s why she’s saying that stuff about us choosing you because you’re everything she’s not. We wouldn’t change anything about you. Not one thing, princess. But we are so fucking scared of getting hurt again.”

“And we’re afraid of hurting you.”

“That’s not fair.”

“What isn’t fair, honey?”

“Do you think trusting you was easy after what Holden did to me? I upended everything I knew to follow him and he broke my heart. I was terrified of starting over in any relationship let alone with two people but I got to know you and allowed myself to be vulnerable for you… you should be able to do that for me to.”

“You’re right, baby, and we are so sorry. We’re willing to try.”, Eddie pleaded as he leaned up to grab your hands. “We don’t even have to be in a relationship again or do anything sexual. We can start slow and go from there. We just miss you so much, Y/N. The way you smell, your sense of humor, the way you play with my hair when we’re lying in bed or watching tv.”

“The way you listen to us when we talk even if it’s about work.”, Steve chimes in. “Your cute little laugh and the way you wrap your arms around me like you haven’t seen me in years when it’s only been a few hours.”

“Ah good morning, gentlemen and my hung over child. How are we today?”, your mother teases as she grins your way. 

“We’re fine thank you but if you could lower your voice a smidge that would be nice.”, you sass back making her chuckle as both men grin softly. 

“Your dad made breakfast if you and your guests are hungry. Just don’t throw it up or you’ll hurt his feelings.”

You smile as you playfully wave her off before turning your attention back to them. 

“Do you have to go back home for work or anything?”

“No, ma’am. We’re all yours.”

“Unless you want us to go back home.”, Eddie adds with sad inflection in his voice hoping and praying that you don’t. 

“Ok… I’m going to change and then head downstairs. You, um, you should stay for breakfast. Knowing my father, if my mom told him you were staying he probably poisoned something but…I’m sure you’ll be fine.”, you joke as you get up and head towards your closet, tossing them a little wink before collecting some clothes and closing the bathroom door. 

####################

@aol19 @paradisepoisons  @paleidiot @dashingdeb16

@lilaclazer @joannamuns9n @thwippyparker @emotionaldreamer

@aactuaaltraash @alastorssimp @mygirlchaos @starksbabie @imagine-all-the-imagines @nailbatanddungeon

[wintrwinchestr]

bite the hand

the killer & the sound - chapter 3

summary: you hadn't expected joel to put such an abrupt end to... whatever it is you two had. or, what you thought you had, anyway. you write and perform a new song on the second night of the tour about it, and the consequences aren't quite what you expected them to be. how could something that seemed so simple at first have become so complicated?

warnings: 18+, smut, no outbreak au, no use of y/n, rockstar!joel, aspiring rockstar!reader, d/s dynamics, pretty major daddy kink, age gap (reader is early-mid 20’s, joel is early-mid 50’s), pet names (sweetheart, darlin', baby, babygirl, songbird(!!), etc), big time angst, daddy/mommy issues, religious shame, degradation (joel calls you a whore), spanking, fingering, oral (f receiving), unprotected piv sex, manhandling, one (1) kiss, spitting, smoking (reader & other characters), drinking (reader & other characters), getting walked in on, characters who need therapy sooooo badly, lots of internal monologue, let me know if i missed any!!

word count: 13.2k

a/n: as always, thank you so much for your patience and sticking around to see what i put our pookies through this time. these chapters just keep getting longer and longer but it's not my fault they have a lot to say!!!!! if you'd like an idea of what reader's lil diss track sounds like, i very much imagined gibson girl by ethel cain when i wrote it. thank you as always to my best babygirl kiers i love u to death. i hope you like this one, nice comments/reblogs appreciated if you enjoyed!!

series masterlist

read this chapter on ao3

divider by @saradika-graphics

Jesus Christ, what the hell is he doing?

Joel has been in the shower for at least thirty minutes now, and he’s spent more than half of that time just letting the scalding water pound against his back as his vision goes blurry from the steam. He finished his “rinse off” within five minutes of stepping inside the bathroom, and now he’s just stalling, wondering how the fuck he’s supposed to go back out there and get in bed with you.

If it weren’t for the decades’ worth of tattoos that he can see when he looks down at his bare body, he wouldn’t be able to recognize himself right now. He’s always been one to hit it and quit it, love ‘em and leave ‘em, or whatever little figure of speech you want to use for just being a fucking playboy. Since when has he ever cleaned a girl up, given her his clothes to wear, let her sleep over after he fucks her? Though, he has to give himself some credit, it’s not like he was planning on letting you stay. He was just trying to preserve some of your dignity, but then, when did he even decide to start caring about shit like that? 

Fuck.

When the tour bus jerks to life as the driver begins the trip to the next city, the loss of balance is enough to finally snap Joel out of the uncharacteristic morality spiral he’s now found himself in. He rubs his hands across his face, pinching the bridge of his nose and cursing under his breath, knowing that he can’t hide in here and avoid you forever. Besides, he’s getting old, and he has to sleep at some point if he wants to be at least a little functional tomorrow. And what is he so fucking scared of, anyway? 

Joel turns off the water, and the knob screeches in protest as the dull roar of the shower fades into silence. He steps out of the stall and hardly makes any effort to dry himself off, solely focused on getting out of there before the fog evaporates from the mirror and he’s forced to confront his own reflection. He shakes out his hair and pulls on a clean pair of briefs, then sends out a silent prayer to whoever the fuck might be listening, begging for help in making it through the night without having to address whatever it is that’s gnawing at his conscience. He didn’t even think he had one of those anymore.

Joel enters the bedroom quietly, hoping that you’d be exhausted enough to have fallen asleep by the time he returned. When you don’t even twitch as he shuts the door behind him and climbs under the covers, he lets out the breath he’d been holding, and lays himself down as close to the edge of the mattress as he can without falling off the damn thing. If he can put as much distance between the two of you as possible tonight, maybe he can make it out the other side unscathed.

Just when he thinks he’s in the clear, having settled himself down with his back to you and situated his silk sheets and pillows to his liking, he feels you roll over in your sleep as you let out some dreamy little whine. Joel likes to keep it cold on the bus, and your shivering form must feel the heat still radiating off of him from his shower, because then you’re wrapping your little arms around his bicep and pulling him close. He wants to shake you loose, to put some extra pillows in between your bodies just for good measure, but he can’t be so cruel. Not when you look like such a goddamn angel, sleeping so peacefully with your hair spread out around you like a halo, long lashes fluttering against your cheeks. He wonders what you’re dreaming about. 

Joel isn’t sure when exactly it happened, but somewhere in between that very first rehearsal and right now, the lines started to blur between a fun little fling he wasn’t going to think twice about letting go of once the tour ended, and something that he wants to sink his claws into and claim as his own. He has to face it now, whether he wants to or not—he can’t get himself to push you away, to growl at you not to touch him and to stay on your own side of the bed, because he doesn’t want to. What he wants is to tattoo his fucking name right underneath that shitty moth on your upper thigh, and therein lies the problem.

He has a history of breaking things, of being too controlling and rough and mean when he plays with his toys, until they fight back and tear themselves apart as they escape his clutches. But you seem like something that can’t be broken, that would glue itself back together just to get played with again the next day, and that sets off some alarms he didn’t know he was capable of hearing. Maybe he does still have a conscience, after all.

At first, Joel had liked how eager and willing and naive you were, how easily he could push and pull you this way and that because you didn’t seem to realize what this was. Or at least, what it was intended to be. Whether you were smart to his intentions or not was never really his concern before, but now… You’re nuzzling your face into his arm, breathing in his scent and letting it soothe you as it coats your senses, and it’s awakening something protective, possessive, in him. Joel has never been good at romance or love or relationships, and he had resigned himself a long time ago to the fact that he’d never be able to settle down. The life he lives can’t sustain something steady or healthy like that anyway, what with the touring and the groupies and the sex and the alcohol. 

But now here you are, this fragile and yet unbreakable thing in his bed who he worries wouldn’t run away no matter how much he growled and bared his teeth. And god dammit, that scares him. Joel had thought he was done being scared, that he had left that feeling behind before you were even born, probably. And yet, here it is creeping up on him again, grabbing him by the throat and suffocating him. You’ve got real talent and beauty, with a promising future and blossoming career ahead of you, and you’d probably give it all up and follow him into the darkness if he promised to call you a good girl once you did.

Joel has never been a very good man, but something about you makes him really have to stare down the barrel of it now. He can’t do this to you, he can’t let you in, and he knows that. He’d poison you, if he hasn’t already. And he can’t give to you what you seem to think this is, what it could be, if he wasn’t so fucking damaged. So he decides it then, as he doesn’t stop his hand from brushing a stray strand of your halo out of your delicate face, that he has to put a stop to this first thing in the morning. And he has to be cold and concise about it, so that you’re perfectly clear on what the two of you are going to be from now on, even if it hurts you. You’re a big girl, and he trusts that you’ll get over it somehow, because letting this continue would hurt you a hell of a lot worse, in the end.

And you seemed to have taken it well, all things considered. He didn’t tell you the whole truth, the real reason why he decided to yank the arrow out of your heart when he was the one who shot it in there in the first place. Because then you’d know that he’s a broken man who also breaks things, and he can only shatter so many of your illusions about him in one morning. He knows this is his fault, and he was at least man enough to take the blame, he can give himself that. He had decided to paint himself as an actually respectable person who knows when he’s taken something too far, who definitely does have a conscience. Maybe you’re the one who lured it out of the dark cave it was hiding in, but he still can’t risk anything, on the off chance that he still is the same mangled man he always was and the one he will continue to be. So he lies to you, just a little bit, because what you don’t know won’t hurt you, and he can’t let you come any closer for fear of causing even more pain than he already has. 

Joel watched as your bare legs carried you out of the living area and off of his bus, the tops of your thighs just barely concealed by his shirt he had lent you the night before. He didn’t react when you slammed the door on your way out, he had expected you to do as much. But he did half-expect you to turn around and spit a fuck you, Joel at him the way he would have deserved. It might have hurt less if you did, that way you would have left a sour taste in his mouth to replace the still-lingering flavor of your pussy mixed with the cum he had spilled inside you last night. 

God, he is so fucked.

—

You had made sure to thank the audio technicians before you disappeared from the venue after your sound check, but otherwise avoided looking at or speaking to anyone on your way out. Especially him. You had held Angel close as you swiftly made your way back to your bus before Death’s Head had a chance to take the stage for their turn, not wanting to hear any more of Joel’s voice than you’ve had to today. Besides, it’s already been looping like a skipping record in your mind since this morning, refusing to let up no matter how hard you try to drown it out. 

Mistake, respect, and professional are the choice words that are chanting themselves over and over again, so many times that they almost don’t sound real anymore, just a random sequence of letters and noises that you can’t make sense of. What happened last night didn’t feel like a mistake to you, especially not when he was so gentle in cleaning you up afterwards, when he brought you a glass of water, when he let you curl up against him in his bed, wearing his clothes. He sure as hell had plenty of time to decide that you were worthy of respect before he had you act like a whore on stage in front of tens of thousands of people for his own sick pleasure. (And apparently yours, but that’s not the point.) And now you’re supposed to believe that he suddenly had a change of heart overnight, that splitting you open on his cock and using your body to get what he wanted made him finally develop a moral compass and decide that he wants to start acting like a professional? Damn, maybe you are more powerful than you thought. 

You just can’t believe you were stupid enough to let yourself feel something for him. He was just playing you like his guitar this entire fucking time, a pretty instrument that he can pluck and strum and draw pretty noises from, then put away without a second thought. He’s a celebrity, a rockstar, for fuck’s sake. Half of his songs are about sex, and if the rumors are true, he recorded the original intro to Kiss it Better while he was hooking up with some groupie in a bathroom. Just like you, he had probably used her to get what he wanted, then dropped her like it was nothing. Of course he never fucking cared about you. 

You should burn the clothes that he sent you scurrying back to your bus wearing this morning. They’re currently shoved into the bottom of your plain-looking laundry bag in the corner of your room, though you’re half tempted to just toss the whole thing into the dumpster behind the venue and set it ablaze. But you know he doesn’t care about material things as much as he does his ego, and it’s going to be much more satisfying to set that on fire than some worn-out pieces of clothing, anyway. Destroying them also wouldn’t do anything about the way you keep catching an inhale of his cologne every once in a while, the masculine smell of it wafting from his t-shirt and carving out an undesired space for itself in your brain. You try to ignore the way your cunt flutters against your will at the scent, at the memories it conjures, and hope that she doesn’t develop a habit of betraying you like this when it comes to him. She almost gets the better of you, tempting you to second guess your plan to perform your scathing new song at the end of your set tonight.

Almost.

You’re feeling good about what you wrote, and you’d be even more upset with yourself if you backed out now, if you gave in to Joel once again, without him even knowing it this time. He seems to think that he knows you better than you know yourself, that he can make decisions for you and that he always knows just what to say to get you to do as he asks. For once, you want him to be fucking wrong about you.

The show starts in just under an hour, and you’re dedicating your last bit of quiet solitude to solidifying the new words and the motions of your fingers in your memory. While you were scribbling in your notepad earlier today, you had tried to ride the fine line between calling him out so blatantly and using descriptions that were too clichéd, and you’re happy with the in-between that you landed on. The song could be about anyone, but it isn’t, and if the shoe fits when he tries it on, oh fucking well. Plenty of men wear the same size, and if he wants to make yet another thing about himself, that’s not your problem.

Ideally, you had wanted to include the song in your sound check so that your band would be prepared for tonight, until you had let your eyes drift to the side of the stage and saw Joel observing in the darkness, just like he had done while you were performing the night before. You suppose it wouldn’t be very professional of him to avoid you like the plague the way you’re trying to do with him, but still. You had averted your eyes as quickly as you had spotted him, and decided that the song was just going to have to be a surprise for everyone, not just Joel. Your band members are smart enough guys, you’re sure they’ll be able to catch on and back you up when it’s time to unveil what you had been working on all day. But if they don’t, you’re prepared for it to just be you and Angel up there, the same way it has been for as long as you’ve been making music. Until recently, at least.

You’ve opted to get yourself dressed and ready in the safety of your bus, attempting to avoid a repeat of last night’s pre-show interactions with Joel by minimizing the amount of time you actually have to spend inside the venue. You doubt he’ll try anything, but considering how unafraid he was to volunteer himself as a witness to your sound check, you’d rather not risk it. So, you do your best to keep your distance as you make your way off the bus and to the side of the stage with Angel in tow, hoping that your viscous aura alone will be enough to keep him away. 

Your band members are already waiting for you in the wings when you get there, and you tuck yourself safely behind the group of them as you wait for the lights to go down. You ghost your fingers along Angel’s strings one last time, just to make sure that your muscle memory is securely locked into place—it is, because you’re fucking good at this. You don’t need Joel’s whispered praises and soothing touches to know that you’re a star, and you don’t want them. You don’t. You fucking killed it last night, and you knew it before he told you so, because your ears were still ringing long after the audience had finished applauding and screaming for you. For your own performance, not for the on-stage degradation you endured because of a dumb teenage crush you couldn’t seem to shake off.

If your timing is right, you should’ve gone on a few minutes ago now. Each passing minute has you gnawing at your bottom lip and picking at your nails with increasing intensity as you and the audience both become more restless. You aren’t sure what the hold up is, but you just want to get out there and safely away from the possibility of Joel before you make one of your goddamn fingers bleed. You’re so consumed in your destructive self-soothing that you don’t hear the sound of jingling chains and creaking leather approaching you where you stand, followed by a clearing throat and the last voice you want to fucking hear right now.

“Tommy told me they’re jus’ tryin’ to fix a light or somethin’. Shouldn’t be too much longer now,” Joel says, and you stiffen as he speaks. He sounds earnest in the way he addresses the group of you, but the feeling of his gaze lingering on your skin tells you his true intentions.

Your bandmates hum in acknowledgement as they maintain their casual demeanors, while you shift your jaw and remain steadfast in your stoicism. Your face is calm and concentrated, but your fidgeting hands tell a different story, and the telltale habit is most of what prompted Joel to come over here against his better judgment. He so badly wants to take your hands in his so that you’ll stop tearing at your skin, to massage the worry right out of your palms and tell you there’s nothing to be nervous about, just like he did last night. Though, you’d probably bite his goddamn fingers clean off if he even so much as reached out a hand in your direction, and he wouldn’t entirely blame you if you did, considering that he’s more than likely the reason for your agitation.

Instead, he settles for asking, in as neutral of a tone as possible, “You okay, darlin’?”

Your gaze remains focused on the stage, on the mic you should be standing behind right now, if it weren’t for some stupid fucking light. After a pointed beat, you answer him with a short, “I’m fine.”

You can see in your peripheral vision that Joel nods and shifts his weight, moving a little further behind your band and closer to you. He lets a matching bit of silence pass, for some reason not using the opportunity to just turn around and walk away, before speaking again. “Quit messin’ with your fingers.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” you snap, whipping your head to finally face him. You peer up at Joel from under your eyebrows, putting on a stony face and doing your best to look intimidating even as he towers over you. Despite your efforts, your heart still flutters for just a second when your eyes meet, before he drops his own gaze to the floor and takes a step back from you.

“That how this is gonna be?” Joel asks, and you could swear he sounds a little defeated.

“Yeah, it is.”

You turn yourself back to the stage again, and he takes a deep breath, like he’s trying to steady himself and suppress a reaction to your attitude that he might regret.

“Look, can we–” he starts, but a sudden burst of screams and hollers cuts him off as the venue lights finally dim. You push past your bandmates and stomp your way towards the stage, feeling volatile and as determined as you’ve ever fucking been to give a killer performance tonight. You could’ve spit some real fire at him, told him to leave you the fuck alone like you had been so tempted to, but you didn’t want to scare him off. You don’t even need to check to know that he’s still standing exactly where you left him, and that he’ll probably stay there and watch you the whole time because he doesn’t know what the fuck he wants, apparently. Maybe you should bring him onstage for his public humiliation the same way he did to you, see how he likes it. But you have a little more humanity than he does, and if it all works out, he’ll have to watch you tear him down surrounded by his own bandmates and brother, and that’s gratifying enough for you.

When you and your band have all taken your places, you introduce yourself to tonight’s crowd with a newfound vigor, and begin your set with a chord so resonant it vibrates your bones. The sound surrounds you, grabbing you by the shoulders and shaking loose the wallflower version of you who performed these same songs just last night. It feels like a metamorphosis, like the moths that adorn the strap slung around your body and the one etched into your skin finally belong to you instead of him.

—

You sail through your set, never stumbling over a chord or missing a lyric, even in your anticipation to reach the end. While you thank the crowd and wait for their roaring cheers to die down, you finally chance a look at the side of the stage. Just as you had predicted before you went on, Joel’s silver-tipped boots are still planted in the same place they were thirty minutes ago. Perfect.

“Y’all have been amazing tonight, this was so much fun,” you pant into the mic. “I, uh… I actually have one more song before I go, if that’s alright. Just wrote it this morning.”

Another wave of whistles and applause engulfs you as you turn to check on your bandmates, who all wear confused expressions as expected. You step back from the mic to tell each of the guys the key and tempo of what you wrote, and ask if they can maintain something steady and follow along while you carry the melody. When they’ve all gotten the plan, they look at each other and wordlessly communicate a final decision, seeming to be up to the challenge. 

You resume your place at the front of the stage, taking one last look at your victim before beginning to strum the song’s now-familiar echoing intro. The tone is a little Western, and you wrote it that way on purpose, just as an extra hidden jab toward the obnoxious midnight cowboy persona Joel had first lured you in with. Your haunting voice comes in a few measures later, singing lyrics that are unlike anything you’ve written before. They’re darker, more graphic, and they tell the story of a girl and a cold-blooded man covered in leather and tattoos, who got her alone one night and ripped her clothes off and whispered things he didn’t mean while he fucked her. And after everything was said and done, the girl had lied to herself, replaying everything that had happened between her and the cold-blooded man that night, convincing herself that because it felt good, because he was good to her, that it had meant something. She had bared her body and soul to him, only to find out that he had also been lying to her that night, playing with her like a doll who didn’t know any better, who was just happy to get looked at and touched and praised by someone she had once held on such a high pedestal. You let the lights embrace you and warm your skin as you bare yourself once again, trusting this time that it won’t end in shame or hurt or tears. 

When the buildup of your lyrics and chords finally culminate in the song’s cathartic crash, the first thing you feel is relief, like a crushing weight has been lifted off your heart. The crowd’s enthusiastic response to your creation surrounds you, filling your ears and infiltrating your soul, and you can’t help but laugh at the overwhelming feeling. You gesture behind you for your band to meet you at the front of the stage, and you all bow together to another round of raucous cheering before making your way offstage. This time, you do remember to leave Angel behind, satisfied in what the two of you accomplished tonight.

You’re still reveling in the rush of your performance by the time you’re shrouded in the backstage darkness once again, so caught up in the feeling that you nearly forget what your moment of spontaneity was for in the first place. Or rather, who it was for. You didn’t have enough wherewithal to check if Joel would still be lying in wait once you exited the stage, mostly assuming that his ego would get the best of him and he’d just huff his way out to the buses for a smoke once he realized what you were doing.

You assumed wrong.

Before your eyes even have a chance to adjust to the change in lighting, a calloused hand is gripped tight onto your upper arm, dragging you deeper backstage as you exclaim in protest and try to snatch your arm out of the iron hold that traps it.

“What the—Joel?! Get the fuck off me! What are you–”

“Will you fuckin’ quiet down?” Joel hisses next to your ear. “Quit makin’ a goddamn scene, already made enough of one as it is.”

Despite your struggle against him, his size and strength overpower you, and before you know it you’re being shoved into a dressing room, the door getting slammed shut and locked behind you in a second.

“What the fuck, Joel?” you shout up at him as he backs you into the door, finally letting go of your arm to loom over you and brace one of his hands next to your head.

“I can ask you the same goddamn thing. What the fuck was that out there, hm?” He spits back at you.

You massage the aching finger-shaped marks on your skin where he had gripped you, eyeing him with an annoyed expression. “It was just a song, what is your fucking problem?”

He scoffs, rolling his neck as his brows twitch in disbelief. “Just a song, right. Everybody knew that shit was about me.”

Your heart hammers in your chest, both from the anxiety of being confronted like this and the aggravation caused by his egomaniacal tendencies. “You are so fucking self-centered, it’s insane. It could’ve been about anyone—”

“But it wasn’t, huh?” Joel interrupts. “Who else do they know that has a filthy title inked into his hand, as you put it. Gimme a break, sweetheart. As if that same title didn’t have you soakin’ your fuckin’ panties for me last night.”

You hate that you can feel your cunt flutter in response to his words. “Whatever, will you just let me go? This isn’t very professional of you, locking me in your goddamn dressing room just so you can throw a fit,” you retort.

Realization flashes across his face as he steps back from you, breathing a heavy sigh. “Professional…” he speaks quietly, testing out the word, searching for the meaning behind why you had used it so pointedly. “Jesus Christ, is that what this is about? You are such a goddamn child, you know that?”

Now it’s your turn to laugh, crossing your arms now that he’s given you the room to do so. “Didn’t seem to think of me that way last night. I’m a big girl, I can do what I want, why do you care so much if I wrote a stupid song about you?”

Joel shuts his eyes, scrunching up his face like he’s fighting against what he wants to say next. “Because, fuck—This ain’t what I wanted, okay? Said I wanted to keep it professional between us, not that I wanted you to make a goddamn fool outta me in front’a God and everybody.”

“Well, what do you want?” You push, stepping into his space as your blood begins to boil over. “Because I thought you fucking cared about me, and then you just told me to get lost this morning, like none of it meant anything to you—”

“Of course it fuckin’ meant somethin’ to me, Jesus Christ.” Joel says, so breathlessly it’s like the words escape his mouth before he can catch them. “Did this for your own goddamn good—”

“Oh, for my own good?”

“Yes, for your own good. Because I know what you want this to be, and I can’t give that to you, I can’t.”

“Why not?”

Joel doesn’t answer, but he shifts his jaw like he considers it, and lets your angered breathing fill the silence.

“Huh?” You provoke, hitting your palms against his broad chest once. Your push hardly does anything to knock him off his balance, but you swear it makes his eyes darken. “Why not?” You demand a second time.

You can tell he wants to bite back, but he suppresses the instinct, instead backing away from you as he shakes his head in disbelief. “Y’ know what, I ain’t gonna do this with you right now. We can talk about this later.”

Joel makes for the exit, but you dart in front of the door handle, feet planted firmly on the ground as you block his only way out. You grit your teeth as you stare up at him, daring him to either do something about it or finish what he started.

He takes another steadying breath. “Really ain’t helpin’ your case much right about now. I suggest you move, sweetheart.” His voice registers a somewhat eerie calm, the kind that a storm usually follows.

“You don’t get to back out of this.”

“Ain’t backin’ out. Said we’re gonna talk about it later. Move.”

You stare at each other in strained silence for a few moments, neither of you in the mood to give in to the other. You doubt that you’re about to bear witness to the first time Joel has ever submitted to someone else, so you slide away from the door, making a vow to yourself to find him after the show and force him to make good on his word.

“‘S what I thought,” he huffs, unlocking the door and slinking out into the hallway. He holds his head a little too high for someone too scared to tell you how he feels, like it’ll eat him alive if he admits to anyone that he really does have a heart.

You step out of the room and watch him walk, waiting until he gets a few paces away from you to grumble under your breath, “Self-centered and a fucking coward.”

Either Joel wasn’t as far out of earshot as you had thought, or the angry thudding of your pulse inside your head had made it difficult to tell just how loud you had said your little dig. He stops in his tracks, giving you a second to sweat before turning around to face you. “What was that?” he asks, but you already know he had heard you loud and clear. He begins to stalk towards you, and that predatory sway of his shoulders has you suddenly feeling meek.

“N-nothing,” you lie, backing into the dressing room as he continues his prowl.

“Nah, go ahead. You wanna do this right now, we’ll do it right now. What’d you say, baby? C’mon.” Joel’s movement forces you backward until the base of your spine hits the edge of the vanity table in the room. You wince at the impact and the sound of the door slamming shut again, and then he’s bracing both of his hands on either side of your hips, caging you in. Joel’s hot breath ghosts against your face as his eyes seem to glow a fiery shade you’ve never seen before. “Say it again.”

You swallow hard, nervous eyes flitting around his face, unsure of the safest place to land, or if there even is one. “Called you a coward…” you admit softly, voice trembling.

“Yeah? I’m a fuckin’ coward? What else, hm? Why don’t you use your big girl words and say to my face what you really wanted to say about me out there instead o’ that bullshit lil’ poem you wrote.” He’s just being mean now, lashing out because you hit him where it hurts. But god fucking dammit, there’s something about the way he’s standing over you, how he’s using his size to intimidate you and how the smell of his cologne mingles with the fading aroma of his last cigarette, that begins to cloud your judgment. You can’t help the way a dampness begins to bloom between your thighs as a result of his demeaning words and close proximity.

You figure you don’t have much of a reason to hold anything back anymore, already having pissed him off by threatening his ego twice in one night. “I hate you,” you rasp, which is pretty much what the lyrics of your song boil down to. You do hate him, for saying all the right things and touching you all the right ways to make you think he wanted the two of you to be something, only to throw your naivety in your face, tell you that you’re acting like a child when he’s the one who tried to give up and walk out when something became more complicated than he could handle.

“Yeah, I bet you do. Think you can do better than that, though, huh? Sure had plenty to say earlier, don’t get all shy on me now, sweetheart.” He spits the pet name at you like it’s an insult, coated in the venom dripping from his sharp canines.

“Fuck you,” you snap, eyes welling up and threatening to spill over despite yourself.

Joel spins you around as soon as the words leave your lips, pinning your wrists behind your back with just one of his hands, using the other one to grip your jaw and make you face your own reflection in the vanity mirror. You shut your eyes tightly, not wanting to confront what he’s reduced you to, and he allows you to keep them that way for now.

“You want me to? That why you’re all fired up, ‘cause you need Daddy to fuck this bratty ass attitude outta you?” Joel rumbles next to your ear.

You struggle to shake your head in his hold, mumbling, “No, I don’t.”

“No? So if I reach my hand under this lil’ dress, I ain’t gonna feel that pretty pussy drippin’ for me?”

You aren’t sure why you bother lying to him again, humming an mm-mm that sounds more like a whimper.

“Hmm, let’s see about that, then,” Joel muses, releasing your face from his hold to bend you forward and flip up the skirt of your dress. “Would you look at that… panties are ‘bout fuckin’ soaked through, ain’t they?” You whine as he begins to rub your folds over your underwear, pulling back the crotch of them and letting it go so that you can feel the damp snap of the fabric against your sensitive skin. “Thought you were such a good girl… you like it a lil’ mean, hm? ‘S that why you pulled that stunt tonight, to get Daddy all worked up so he’d treat you the way you really been wantin’?”

You feel a stinging smack on your ass before you’ve even finished muttering a complete No. Joel’s rough hand does nothing to soothe the burn as he rubs it around your smarted flesh, squeezing at the plush of your ass with a possessive grip. “Had just about enough of you lyin’ to me tonight. Why don’t you tell me the goddamn truth and I’ll give you what you want, hm? Gonna ask one more time. You want Daddy to beat up this lil’ brat pussy?” He asks, moving his hand back to the wet fabric of your panties, circling your clit over the material with the pad of his finger.

You can’t help but moan at his crude language, releasing another pulse of wetness in response. “Mmh, yes, please—” you mewl.

“Open your fuckin’ eyes,” Joel barks, and it startles you into obedience. “Yes, who?” he challenges, making eye contact with your reflection in the mirror.

He continues his ministrations over your covered clit, and you force your brain to work through the distraction, to give him what he wants and not earn yourself another spank.

“Y-yes, Daddy, I want it,” you admit, your voice drenched in a pathetic need. 

Joel swiftly yanks your panties to the side, practically tearing them clean off your body with one hand in an effort to expose your swollen core to him, not daring to release your aching wrists from the other one’s hold. He circles your dripping entrance with the rough tips of two of his fingers, not pushing all the way inside just yet.

“Think you owe me a goddamn apology first, hm?” he taunts, using his fingers to smear your ashamed slick around your entrance.

“Sorry, ‘m sorry–” you whine, pushing back into him impatiently.

Smack. “For what, baby? What’re you sorry for?” Joel presses, his harsh spank telling you to stay fuckin’ still. 

“For… for writing that song… for calling you a c-coward… ‘m sorry, Daddy, I’m sorry–” you cry. He shoves both of his thick fingers inside you as your reward, carving out space for them inside your little hole as he starts up a bruising pace, the obscene wet sounds of his movements filling the room and mingling with your broken little wails. It shouldn’t feel as good as it does, getting ordered around and talked down to and used like this by someone you said you hated only a few minutes ago, but you don’t really care to unpack that right now. Or ever. Maybe you were naive and immature in thinking that this thing you’ve gotten yourself into could ever pan out like what you’ve seen in the movies, but you think you could learn to be content with what he is willing to offer you—praise doled out as easily as he deprives you of it, a firm hand and fingers that can strum along your clit as expertly as he does the strings of his guitar, and a cock that makes you feel like someone else entirely, that can send you somewhere far away and bring you back down to earth at the same time. You let him use his fingers to pound all that angst and fire and attitude out of you as your eyelids flutter shut again, losing yourself in the feeling of him.

“How many times I gotta tell you, huh? Keep ‘em open, look, baby,” Joel commands, letting go of your wrists to deliver a light smack to the side of your face. You fall forward at the sudden release of his hold, catching yourself on the vanity table and digging your nails into the hard surface to ground yourself. His punishing hand forces your gaze straight ahead with a claw-like grip on your jaw, and your eyelids still feel so heavy, everything moving slowly as you look at yourself in the mirror. Your parted lips, smeared mascara, and unfocused gaze paint a debauched version of yourself that you don’t recognize, blurred by the sleepy submissive state he seems to be able to plunge you into so easily. “Take a good goddamn look in the mirror, at what I’m doin’ to you, and you tell me if you really want this.”

Every sharp thrust of his hand against your cunt knocks loose more and more of your ability to think, let alone speak. But you know by now that if Joel demands a response from you, he’ll get one, coherent or not. He seems to like it when your words come out a ruined mess of whines and slurred syllables, anyway, getting off on how hard and fast he can knock down those walls you attempt to put up and turn you into something so servile and saccharine.

“Want it, please, Daddy,” you beg, struggling to hold yourself up as his fingers get you closer and closer to your release.

“You sure about that? ‘Cause this is what you’re gonna get, sweetheart,” Joel grunts, the exaggerated word punctuated by the stretch of a third finger joining the other two inside your already fucked-out cunt.

“D-don’t care, just want you—ah—” you’re cut off by the sudden stroking of Joel’s curled fingers against a particularly tender and unfamiliar spot inside you. You begin to unravel at the overwhelming feeling, letting out little wanton pleases and Daddys as you continue to soak his tattooed hand.

“Fuck, gonna be the goddamn death o’ me, lil’ songbird, you know that? Tried to stop this shit before it could get started, tried to keep you away from me, but I just can’t seem to fuckin’ help myself, can I? We’d be nothin’ but bad for each other, but—shit—been thinkin’ ‘bout this tight cunt all goddamn day, couldn’t get the taste o’ you outta my mouth. Reckon I never will… In fact—” Joel pulls his fingers out of you in an instant, and you cry out from the sudden loss as you watch him suck them clean in the mirror. You feel dizzy, letting him manhandle you as he spins you around to face him and hoists you on top of the vanity table with little effort. He groans as he crouches, pulling your drenched panties down your legs and tossing them somewhere behind him. With your raw-looking cunt now fully exposed to him, he spreads your legs wide and curses under his breath, “Should’a done this shit last night, fuck—” before diving in between your thighs and licking a long stripe from your entrance to your swollen clit. He latches onto the sensitive nub, closing his eyes and sucking hard as his large hands force your legs to stay open. You let your upper back rest against the mirror as he works you over, and the cool glass sends a shiver down your spine as your hips tilt upward, allowing him better access.

He drinks from you as if you taste like his favorite top-shelf whiskey, growling into your flesh as he’s surely leaving fingertip-shaped bruises on the softness of your thighs. He alternates between swirling his tongue around your clit and fucking it in and out of your hole, beckoning you to spill yourself into his mouth. He savors every wave of slick that pours from you, each of your little cries and whimpers making his cock strain harder against the confines of his jeans. 

You can’t help but let one of your hands drift to his hair, and he doesn’t stop you from grabbing onto his messy curls as you buck pathetically against his tongue. 

“Such a sweet lil’ cunt, got me fuckin’ addicted to it, I swear…” Joel half-whispers, rubbing his thumb in circles around your clit to make up for the absence of his tongue as he speaks, your hips still desperately chasing after his movements. He spits onto your folds once, watching it drip between the curves of them for a moment before lapping up your combined juices and picking up where he left off. Your eyes are shut tight, brows peaked with need as you beg him to keep going, please, Daddy, gonna come.

Joel pulls away again just enough to tease, “Always come for me so easily, don’t you? Sing for me, songbird, c’mon.” A few more rough strums of his thumb and pulses of his tongue have you crying out, shaking where you sit on the table as you gush into his waiting mouth. Joel works you through it as you practically ride his face, your hips twitching with each overstimulating flick of his tongue over your sensitive clit.

He doesn’t wait very long for you to come back into yourself, the impatient bastard that he is, before he’s commanding you to open and using his strong fingers to yank your jaw downward. Your eyes blink open just in time to watch him spit a mouthful of your own release onto your waiting tongue, and then he’s pressing his lips to yours in a sloppy kiss, tongues twisting around each other as he forces you to taste yourself. So immersed in the distraction of finally feeling his lips against your own, you don’t notice when he loosens his grip on your face to grab one of your hands instead, placing it on his still-clothed bulge and growling into your mouth as you massage the hard shape of him.

“Feel what you do to me, babygirl?” Joel breaks the kiss to ask, voice low and eyes dark. “Even if I kept you away from me, wouldn’t fuckin’ matter. Still have to take care o’ myself one way or another, would just be pretendin’ it was your perfect cunt squeezin’ me instead o’ my hand, anyway. Might as well stick to the real thing, yeah?”

“Yeah,” you agree, lashes fluttering at his filthy words.

“Yeah? You want it? Want Daddy to split you open again?”

Your skin is burning hot, every one of your nerve endings on fire with need, and you don’t care how pitiful you sound when you answer with, “Please, Daddy.”

“Good girl,” Joel praises. He makes quick work of ridding himself of his belt, tossing it aside to join your discarded panties on the floor with a metallic thud before freeing his leaking cock from his jeans. He prods the thick head at your entrance, still so wet and stretched out from the earlier efforts of his fingers and tongue that he slides inside with hardly any resistance. “Greedy thing…” he hisses, holding onto your hips as he watches his thick length begin to slide in and out of you. A flash of silver catches his attention from the edge of his vision, and he focuses there instead, on the cross shaped charm dangling from your neck and resting between your breasts. He picks it up between his large thumb and forefinger, rubbing the pads of them along the smooth metal. “Probably shouldn’t be wearin’ such a thing anymore, hm? Now that I know how much of a whore you really are.”

“Not… ‘m not a whore,” you counter, but it’s so futile, meaning nothing at all when you really take a look at where you are now, how it all began, and how your voice cracks in your poor attempt to prove him wrong.

“Y’ are, though, songbird. ‘S okay that you are. Only for me though, huh? Jus’ Daddy’s whore? All mine?” Joel drops the cross in favor of cradling your cheek, hurrying his pace as he taunts you. There’s no use in denying it, not when his degrading words prompt your cunt to squeeze around him and provide more slick aid for his quickening thrusts, an involuntary whine escaping your throat. You’re seeing such a different side to him now than the one he showed you the night before, and you begin to wonder which one is the real Joel, or if either of them are, or if both of them are, somehow. Or if he even knows. You’re willing to take whichever one he decides to let you have, you think.

“Y-your whore, Daddy… wanna be yours, please,” you babble, his cock hitting you deep and hard as you let him fuck you so dumb you allow yourself to just give in and agree to whatever he says you are, whatever he wants you to be, just the way he likes.

“Fuck,” Joel curses through gritted teeth, removing his hand from your face and to grip onto the plush of your hip again. Your pliant state and filthy admission combined with that sinful symbol around your neck spur him on, and he uses his hold on your skin to fuck into you with abandon. “Really would just let me ruin you, huh? Tried to be a decent man for once in my goddamn life, but you just had to be a fuckin’ brat about it and start some shit, didn’t you? If you don’t want me decent, tha’s fine by me, baby. But lemme make somethin’ real goddamn clear to you,” he rambles, each slam of his hips into yours getting you closer to release for the second time. He delivers another sharp slap to your cheek with a You listenin’? and you nod to the best of your ability, finding it impossible to focus your eyes on him as that knot in your stomach begins to tighten.

“You want this, you wanna be mine, you can be mine, babygirl. Lord knows I’d find my way right back inside this sinful lil’ cunt, anyway. But this ain’t gonna be a fuckin’ relationship, you understand? Take it or leave it, songbird.” He slows his thrusts as he spells out his ultimatum, but they still make you ache, all the same. His fiery gaze bores a hole straight through your skull as he awaits your response.

“Take it, w-wanna take it, Daddy.” The desperation in your voice and painted across your expression have him returning to his punitive pace, grunting and swearing into the warm skin of your neck as your hands scramble across his back, pulling yourself into him and burying your face into his shoulder. His thick leather jacket helps to muffle your cries as he loses all control, using your body to chase after his own high.

“Course you’re gonna take it, filthy thing. Made to fuckin’ take it, Christ,” Joel rambles, your vocalizations increasing in pitch as you squeeze around him, whole body tensing as your sore pussy prepares to drench him one more time. “So goddamn desperate… Just take whatever I give you, however I wanna give it to you, always have you comin’ on my cock just the same, huh? Go on, babygirl, come for Daddy again, tha’s right…”

With his permission, and a few more just-right strokes of his tip against that sweet spot deep inside your walls, you’re spasming in his hold, whining that filthy title you had just used against him less than an hour ago. He spills his release into you at the same time, and despite the way he’s treated you and the words he’s spat at you tonight, it makes you feel whole again.

You breathe heavily against each other for a few minutes, neither of you wanting to let go as you both struggle to process what the hell just happened, what it will mean for the remainder of the tour. 

A sudden knock at the door quickly yanks you out of your thoughts, offering a taste of what the future may hold much earlier than you were expecting.

“Joel? You in there?” a voice asks from outside the dressing room.

“Huh…? Yeah, just gimme a–”

The door opens before Joel can finish answering, and you can see clear as day over his shoulder that it’s Jesse.

He claps his hand over his eyes when he notices you, but you can still see how his cheeks burn red under his fingers as he shifts where he stands, undoubtedly trying to come up with the least mortifying way to get himself out of this situation.

“Jesus, kid–” Joel grumbles, finally pulling out of you and shoving his still-slick cock back into his briefs. He zips himself up as you tug the skirt of your dress back down to cover yourself, still feeling much more exposed than you’d like as you eye your forgotten panties laying just a few feet from where Jesse stands.

“Sorry! Sorry, Joel. It’s just, uh—”

Joel turns to face him as he finishes adjusting himself, and you’re thankful that he doesn’t walk away from you completely, using his broad form to provide you with what little modesty he can afford under the circumstances. “What, Jess?” he barks, exasperated.

“Um… The guys asked me to come find you, we’re on in like a minute—” 

“Well, tell ‘em to hold their fuckin’ horses. I’m comin,” Joel orders.

“A-alright, I will, man. I’ll, uh… I’ll see you out there.” 

Jesse leaves the room as hurriedly as he had entered, nervously fumbling with the handle as he shuts the door on his way out. “That kid ever learn how to fuckin’ knock?” Joel mutters to himself, picking his belt up off the floor and looping it back around his waist. He retrieves your ruined panties when he’s done and casually tosses them over to you, a stark contrast from the attentive aftercare he had provided last night. You slide off the vanity table and tug them back on over your legs, shivering at the feeling of the cool, damp fabric against where you’re so sensitive and sore, still leaking Joel’s spend. You fidget with the hem of your dress and try to ignore the way your heart sinks into your stomach, wondering what Jesse must think of you now. You haven’t really spoken to him at all since this whole thing started, and you doubt you ever will after what happened tonight. Of course, he’d had a front row seat to your obscene little performance during Kiss it Better, but it was all just an act, as far as he knew. But he has more than enough confirmation now to know that it very much wasn’t, and the humiliation of it all makes your anxious imagination begin to run wild. Your bottom lip quivers at the thought of Jesse running straight back to the guys with a shit-eating look on his face, eager to tell them all about how he just saw their opening act with her legs spread for Joel in his dressing room. Images flash through your mind of the band you’ve looked up to for so long now shooting you dirty looks backstage and whispering about you amongst themselves, sharing their doubts about if you really deserve to be touring with them at all. Maybe they’d call you easy, say that you’re just another dumb slut who gave it up for the first rockstar who asked, that your career will be doomed unless you grow up and learn to respect yourself a little more. And maybe they’d be right.

You can’t stop a few hot tears from rolling down your cheek at your catastrophizing, but you wipe them away quickly. This is what you asked for, isn’t it? Joel had given you an opportunity to leave this where he had ended it, and you were the one who had begged to be his, even after he showed you what it would look like, and told you explicitly what it would never be. You pull your shoulders back and make an effort to stand up a little straighter as he addresses you again, not wanting to look like some pathetic, defeated thing.

“You good? Need anythin’?” Joel asks, and it would be kind of sweet if he weren’t halfway out the door already. 

You sniffle a little, but try to feign nonchalance as you shake your head and reply, “No, ‘m fine.”

You must not do a very good job of it, because he’s craning his neck to look down the hallway as soon as you finish your sentence, like he knows exactly what’s on your mind. “Don’t worry ‘bout him,” Joel says to you, giving an annoyed shake of his head. “If he knows what’s good for him he’ll go to his grave swearin’ he didn’t see anything. Kid knows better,” he reassures, and it does help to slow the unspooling of your thoughts some. 

“Okay,” is all you offer, along with a small smile.

Joel nods curtly, “Okay.” And after another beat and a rake of his eyes along your form, “I’ll see ya, songbird.”

He’s gone before you can reply, and you let the sound of the door closing ring out in your ears until you’re left in total silence, save for the sound of your own unsteady breathing. More than anything else, you just want to head back to your bus and scrub yourself clean of him, to put on unstained clothes and remove your ruined makeup so that you have a better chance of recognizing yourself in the mirror if you’re unfortunate enough to catch a glimpse of your reflection. Maybe if you hurry the pace of your walk of shame, you can outrun the feeling altogether, you think, swinging the dressing room door open and letting it slam behind you as you make a swift exit, heading straight for the one place that even slightly resembles a home to you right now. You keep your head low as you wander the unfamiliar backstage halls, and hold the skirt of your dress down against the breeze that threatens to expose you yet again when you push open the venue’s back door. More tears begin to fall as your boots carry you up the steps of your bus and lead you to your private little room in the back, and you don’t wipe them away this time, although you can’t put your finger on why they stream down your skin so impatiently, one stinging droplet after another.

You sit down heavily on the edge of your bed, although you have a strange urge to kneel at the foot of it instead. Your fingers find their way to your crucifix as you contemplate the idea, and it hits you all at once how very lost you feel. You miss… something. Your mother? Perhaps not, but maybe the idea of having a caregiver, someone to turn to when you feel the way you do now, to help you sort through the tangled knot of emotions unraveling itself in your heart and attempt to make some kind of sense of it. She wasn’t the perfect mother, by any means, but she tried, and it was her first time being a woman too, after all. You are following in her footsteps, as many daughters aspire to do with their mothers, but you don’t think she would be very proud of the particular path of hers you’ve begun to find yourself stumbling down—the one that leads you to a man who won’t change himself, who can’t, but who you’ve somehow convinced yourself that you deserve, because you’ve never known a man who’s told you otherwise. 

And now here you sit, alone, in the dark cave of your too-big bus on the second night of a career-changing national tour, crying girlish tears and missing something you can’t place but that you know you can’t go back to, wishing someone could just wipe your mind clean and tell you that you’re good and that you’re not a disappointment to your mother and God even though you don’t really care what they think of you anymore, anyway. You need someone to tell you who you are, and Joel seems to know the answer—a good girl, a whore, his songbird. You shift at the memories of when those names for you have spilled from his mouth, and you’re reminded of the wet fabric still pressed against your core. It feels good when he tells you who you are, after all, when he slots himself inside of you and makes you feel like something he owns, when he makes you feel perfect and floaty and beautiful and like he knows you better than you’ve ever known yourself.

And how could something that feels so good ever be bad for you?

—

The whiskey burns as it slides down the back of Joel’s throat, but it still isn’t strong enough. All it does is remind him of the igniting spark that led to the blaze now engulfing him—when you’d both had a few glasses of the stuff swimming around in your blood streams in the green room of last night’s venue, when he’d lured you onto his lap and teased the wet spot on your panties and asked if you’d let him touch you. He knew you were going to say yes, but it was still the respectable thing to do, and he had liked hearing you beg for it all pretty and polite. He fears that’s the last he may have seen of that version of you, that what he did this morning had stomped out the little delicate, glimmering light that had drawn him to you in the first place. And if it wasn’t snuffed out then, it’s surely nothing but a wisp of smoke now.

Joel had recognized when everything had started to become too real too fast, in the dark of his bus last night when even in your sleep, you had seemed to consider him as something warm and comforting and safe, instead of the beast that he knows himself to be, with too sharp of claws and too loud of a roar. He had tried to do the right thing for once in his goddamn life by finally thinking about someone other than himself, so why didn’t you take the opportunity to get out of this while you had the chance? What is it that you see in him that he knows for a fact isn’t there, has never been there? You had retaliated because you had wanted this to work, because he had hurt you when he shoved you away, but he can’t possibly fathom why you’ve chosen to fight so hard for this. And he’d only gone and proved himself right when he responded to your reprisal the only way he knows how, especially when you’d used that word against him that he’s always been avoidant to admit about himself—coward.

And you were right, weren’t you? Joel is a fucking coward. He does everything in his power to pretend otherwise, to show his fans and the world a version of himself who’s never for a second thought of himself as anything less than God incarnate. And maybe except for Tommy, no one has ever been the wiser to his ruse, until you. And it scares him, to be seen so clearly. Because then he might actually have to try to understand where all these defense mechanisms came from in the first place, and he can’t have that. 

Coward.

Joel tosses back the last of the amber liquid in his glass, releasing his white-knuckled grip on it and slamming it back down onto the green room’s bar cart. He knows that his band and about twenty thousand people are waiting for him to buck up and emerge from yet another hiding place, and he realizes that this is becoming a pattern with you—you awaken some long-dormant feeling from deep inside of him, it makes him feel threatened, and he retreats until it goes away and he remembers how to paint his mask back on. And the one time you didn’t allow him to run away, he lashed out like a caged animal and undoubtedly gave you a pretty solid idea of what he meant by “for your own good”. And yet, you were so desperate to be allowed any part of him at all that even in his most volatile and beastly state, with his talons out and his teeth bared, you didn’t run away. You didn’t even try. You didn’t want to. You took everything he had given you like it was a privilege to do so, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever understand why. 

Joel shakes himself out, hitting a solid hand against his cheek once in order to bring himself back from the depths of another unwanted episode of introspection and self-loathing, and lets the burn of the whiskey dissipate as he makes his way to where the rest of Death’s Head is waiting for him. He can feel their eyes on him without even needing to look, and snaps out a defensive I don’t wanna hear it before any of the guys get a chance to say anything. 

Tommy shrugs, stepping up to Joel with his arms crossed. “Wasn’t gonna say nothin’.” 

Joel finally turns to face the group, giving each member a scrutinizing once-over in an attempt to read their body language, to suss out if they’re just pissed because he left them waiting, or if Jesse ran his mouth while he was gone. When Joel’s examining eyes land on the dark-haired guitarist, Jesse’s quick to shake his head, mouthing the words they don’t know. Satisfied, Joel nods once in understanding, adjusting his jacket and cracking his neck before turning toward the stage again.

“Y’all ready, or what?” he mutters rhetorically, not bothering to wait for an answer before he marches his way into the spotlights and allows them to enshroud him, burning up what remains of that cowardly version of him, if only for the remainder of the night. Joel picks up his guitar, swinging the strap around his chest before fiddling with his mic stand as the deafening sound of the crowd reminds him of who the fuck he is, or at least, who they think he is. Who he pretends to be. And he gets to believe it for the next two hours. If he plays the part well enough, maybe he can lose himself in it entirely. But then, hasn’t he been trying to do that for the past couple of decades? It hasn’t seemed to work yet, but it doesn’t hurt to keep trying. 

Or maybe it does.

—

You feel a little better now, more at ease, now that you’ve had some time to focus on taking care of yourself. It’s easy to forget the wonders that a hot shower can do for a girl, especially when you have to fight against your own brain just to get up and take the ten or so steps towards the bathroom, when you’d much rather stay curled up in the same position on your bed until your skin adheres to the sheets. Now having scrubbed away the tears and the sweat and the tacky dampness between your thighs, you emerge from a cloud of rose-scented humidity as someone you think you understand a little better now, who deserves to be taken care of instead of reprimanded for only doing her best with what she’s been given.

With clean hair and skin and a comfortable change of sleep-ready attire, you decide to finally make some efforts to unpack your suitcase and make your little room feel more like a home. You hang your dresses up on the rack, set your shoes into a somewhat orderly line on the carpet below them, and place your jewelry neatly onto the antique tray you had carefully packed away to bring along with you. You had found it in a little thrift store downtown, when you had first left home and decided you needed something that was only yours, something pretty and special that you could look at everyday and know that it was the very first step in building the life that you had always wanted for yourself. The brass needs a little polishing, but it’s still one of the most beautiful objects you’ve ever seen, and the way the ceiling lights glint off the metal brightens up your space just enough that it feels a little more familiar to you now. 

Your earrings and other necklaces fill the blank space in the center of the neatly carved filigree, and you make the decision to add your crucifix to the pile of silver studs and chains. It’s strange how such a simple charm can make things feel so complicated. You haven’t taken it off in so long that you fear the guilt that might come with removing it, but you figure it will still be there for you if you ever feel like clipping it around your neck again. And if that feeling never comes, then you’ll deal with that then, too.

For now, you breathe a little deeper without the weight of the thing resting against your chest, and smile to yourself when you hear a small group of excitable-sounding male voices approaching your bus. Your bandmates file through the door a second later, though you’re suddenly shy to greet them as you emerge from your bedroom, worried that they might be pissed at you for what you sprung on them earlier in the night. You lean against the doorframe as they each collapse onto the living area couches, cracking open beers from the minifridge and passing them around to each other.

“Hey, you,” greets your floppy-haired drummer, Max, patting the cushion next to him. If any of the guys were to be easy going about what you put them through tonight, it would be him. You’re happy to see that he doesn’t seem to hold any animosity towards you. “You want me to crack one open for you?” he offers.

“Um… sure,” you agree, approaching the group and relaxing into the open seat next to him as he hands you a bottle. You take a few swigs while the guys begin to talk amongst themselves, waiting for an opportune lull in their conversation for you to chime in.

It comes about halfway through your beer. “So, listen,” you start, setting the sweating bottle on the table in front of you as you feel their gazes shift in your direction. “I’m sorry for pulling that on you guys tonight. This whole thing is just as big for y’all as it is for me and… I guess I forgot about that, for a second,” you say, although the end of your sentence kind of sounds like a question. “I really appreciate how you backed me up out there, that’s all.”

It’s rare that the four of you get sincere with each other like this, and your apology lingers in the air for a moment before someone else speaks up. 

“It’s alright, kid.” The comforting voice comes from Scott, your quiet and kind-eyed bassist. “We’re all professionals here, yeah? We’d be some sad fuckin’ musicians if we couldn’t improvise every once in a while.” You laugh at that, and his lopsided smile warms you when you meet his soft expression.

“I mean, I kinda fucked up a little bit,” says Joey, your rhythm guitarist, ever-reliable for lightening the mood. “You sounded badass though, so whatever. Nothin’ you need to apologize for.” When you turn your head to look at him, he looks slightly uncomfortable with the way Max has him pressed up against the wall, but his gaze is sincere. “You wanna talk about it, though? Some pretty heavy shit you wrote.”

You do consider it, but shake your head, having reflected on it quite enough for one night. “Not right now,” you reply, and he gives you a sympathetic smile in return. “One of you have a smoke, though? Think I’m just gonna get some air and call it a night.” 

“Now, how are you gonna ‘get some air’ with all that smoke in your lungs?” Scott jests, and you give him a look before standing up and holding your palm out flat to him, making a hand it over gesture with your fingers. 

“Don’t give me shit, dude, I know you have one. That’s why I asked.”

Despite his protest, he digs the pack out of his pocket and slides one out, playfully holding it hostage against his chest. “Still shouldn’t smoke ‘em, though. Gonna ruin your voice one of these days.”

You roll your eyes at him, but laugh, anyway. “Fine, tonight’s my last one, I promise. Just gimme.”

Scott extends his hand out to you, and you snatch the cigarette out of his hold. “Light, too?” he asks, and you nod, leaning down to him with it in your mouth already.

You make a quick exit when the tobacco begins to burn, trying to fill the bus with as little smoke as possible, but not before making your appreciation known to the guys one last time. When you step out into the chilly night air, you wish you’d brought a sweater to wrap around you, but figure the flame between your lips will warm you up soon enough. 

The Death’s Head bus is parked just up ahead, and you can make out Jesse’s silhouette in the moonlight, his back leaned against the idling vehicle as he puffs his own cloud into the sky. The sound of your bus’s door shutting behind you draws his attention your way, and you give each other a friendly nod as you each burn through your cigarettes.

“Can I join you?” he asks, having to shout in order for his voice to reach you over the rumbling engines.

The fears you were ruminating on a few hours ago all come rushing back to you in an instant, but his inquiry seems casual enough for you to let your guard back down a little. It would be rude of you to decline, and it might be nice to get to know him a bit more if he’s offering, you suppose.

“Yeah, okay,” you reply, nodding for good measure in case your voice didn’t come out loud enough. His long legs close the short distance between you in just a few seconds, and you shove your unoccupied hand into your pocket in an effort to come across more relaxed than you feel. You’ve never been great at small talk, or meeting new people, especially ones who’ve walked in on you after having just been fucked by the lead singer of his band. 

You’re grateful that Jesse decides to break the silence first. “So, uh… you two, huh?”

“Mhm,” is all you offer, kicking a rock around the asphalt with the toe of your shoe.

“Yeah… Well, I don’t want you to feel weird around me, or anything. We can just forget it ever happened.”

You can’t help but release a puff of smoke through an awkward giggle. “Sounds good to me.”

“And I didn’t tell the other two, just so you know.”

His admission makes you pause, trapping the rock underneath your shoe as you peer up at him. “You didn’t? So… they don’t know?”

Jesse shakes his head. “Don’t think so. Well, Tommy might, just ‘cause he knows Joel better than anybody, but Eugene’s probably clueless. They’re all good guys, they won’t give you shit for it even if they do find out… I might, though, just for fun.” He nudges your shoulder with his as he jokes, and it makes you laugh a little more earnestly this time. “Just… be careful, that’s all. And I want you to know you have a friend in me, if you ever feel like you need one.”

His kindness is nearly enough to bring you to tears. You feel so relieved that everything the worst parts of your brain had conjured up had all been a lie, that Jesse isn’t who you feared he’d be, and that he’s offering you his friendship, even after he’d seen you in such an embarrassing and compromising state tonight. 

“Jess!” Joel yells from the doorway of his bus, and the harsh gravel voice startles both of you out of the moment you’d been sharing. “Finish up, kid. Takin’ off in a few.”

Jesse nods, raising the end of his cigarette in acknowledgement before stomping it out on the pavement. “It was nice talking to you. Remember what I said, okay?” 

“Okay,” you nod, and he’s handsome and boyish when he smiles back at you before following his orders and jogging back to his own bus, sliding through the door past Joel’s broad form.

Joel’s expression is hard, but otherwise unreadable as he juts his chin at you, wordlessly suggesting the same direction he’d just barked at Jesse. He shuts the door behind him as he steps inside, and you think on Jesse’s words as you finish puffing your smoke down to a nub. Be careful, he’d cautioned, and it’s like he had been waiting outside for you to make sure he had a chance to tell you that. Remember what I said, like it was important to him that you took his words to heart. You finally toss the end of your own cigarette onto the ground, letting it sizzle out before heading back inside and carefully passing the now-occupied bunks as you make your way to your own little sanctuary. 

You’re still buzzing from the tobacco as you close yourself into your room and crawl into bed, and you can’t decide if the emptiness of it makes you feel comforted or afraid. You don’t necessarily wish you had Joel’s heavy, lumbering form tucked in beside you, but you hadn’t anticipated how having a bed to yourself would leave you with only the company of your own thoughts. You try not to dwell too much on Jesse’s warning, instead trying to snuff it out like the smoldering end of your cigarette so that it doesn’t prevent you from getting some much needed rest.

Even for being a bed inside of a tour bus, you have to admit that it’s one of the most comfortable, luxurious things you’ve ever slept on, especially compared to the lumpy double bed from back in your apartment. You don’t fight it when sleep begins to pull heavily on your eyelids, the incoming wave of it washing away any lingering anxieties as you allow yourself to relax into the plush mattress.

You hardly rouse even as the bus heaves forward on its trip out of the parking lot, leaving everything that happened tonight exactly where you left it, the ghost of it now left to wander the halls of the venue instead of haunting you as you travel to the next one. And there’s something comforting in that, you think, in the idea that nothing on this tour is permanent, that your life begins anew every 24 hours in a city you’ve never been to that doesn’t know your name yet. 

And maybe that’s how you’ll figure this whole thing out, by taking it one day at a time, fluttering as close to the flame as possible without touching it, because you kind of like feeling the heat on your wings. As long as you’re careful when you dance around the fire, then there’s really nothing to be afraid of.

But only time will tell.

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[tojisun]

i fall to pieces

dilf!toji x college student!fem reader

!! this is a mess of tropes that i’ve always wanted to explore (such as lovingly tending injuries and being in love with your best friend’s dad) - the second one is a major CW; legal age gap (reader is in her early 20s and toji is in his late 40s); mentions of bullying (not between toji and the reader); petnames; no curses au // 2.9k words

: i had fun writing this even though i kinda forgot what the plot is midway; i hope u guys would like it <33; title is from cherry - lana

your knuckles, the ones that aren’t bruised, raps on the door, impatience thrumming in your veins. the ache in your jaw still stings, but you are far too focused on the split skin on your knuckles and how the trickling blood had turned the hems of your cream-coloured long sleeves into a garish sight. your chest heaves at another ragged exhale, your whole body trembling, feeling the burning remnants of exhaustion. 

the door opens after your last bout of knocks.

“jesus, what- y/n?”

you startle, not expecting toji to be the one to answer the door.

“what the fuck happened to you?” he asks when you didn’t reply, reaching to wrap around your less injured hand, clasping his thick fingers and warm palm around your wrist to tug you inside the quaint home. 

“uh,” you say unintelligibly, following him with unsteady feet as he leads you two to the living room. “is gumi-chan here, fushiguro-san?” is what you said instead, not really knowing where to even begin with unpacking the dumpster fire of a fight that you were in just minutes ago. 

he clicks his tongue. “i told you to just call me ‘toji’, kid.” he sits you on the sofa, your body bouncing on the plush cushions in a cartoonish way. “and brat’s with y’r other friend. the loud one with pink hair.”

you hum. “yuuji,” you say even though toji would just forget your friend’s name again.

he grunts. “yeah, that one. a’right, you,” toji points at you. “y’stay here and don’t even think about movin’.” then he disappears, his feet padding quietly on the wooden floors. 

only when he’s left do you realize how tense you still are, your shoulders poised as if expecting an attack. you force yourself to let go, feeling your body tremble at the extra effort it needed to exert to unwind your aching body. your eyes slip shut, your brows furrowing as your side throbs in pain again. fuck, you thought, the bitch got me good. 

any other day, you would’ve found yourself winning a tussle with no injuries. or, you grumbled to yourself, i wouldn’t even be in the tussle. but they had no right to pick on mai like that. 

(“heard you sucked cocks to get here,” fake blondie crooned as she wagged her stick-like finger, tutting like mai was a child.

mai bristled—who wouldn’t? 

she’s put countless efforts to get to where she is right now, and for her integrity to be questioned, because what? mai’s too pretty, too confident in herself, for a smart kid? clearly fake blondie hasn't seen enough of your friend group if she’s baffled by how someone could be smart and pretty and confident. even panda was charming, and no one even knows what he looks like underneath that mask he stuffs his head in. 

so next thing you knew nobara was throwing a punch, with momo jumping at fake blondie, and of course you had to join in; you weren’t going to let your girls fight on their own. but then one of fake blondie’s friends pulled out a bat out of nowhere and hit you at your side. 

you stumbled on your feet, almost tumbling to your knees at the sharp pain. mai’s shrill scream had been enough of a wake-up call before you were reaching at bat girl’s hair and yanking hard, forcing her to crumple before you. 

it was a blur after that. then mai was nudging you out of the alley, murmuring her thanks, before you four were parting ways.)

you hear toji walking back in and you peel your eyes open, tracking him as he makes his way back to you. he falls on the floor, almost between your legs, and your breath stutters when you realize the lack of proper distance between you and your best friend’s dad, so you clamp your legs shut and looked away just before toji could lift his head to meet your eyes. 

you startle when warm hands clasp with yours, your eyes jumping back to toji.

“easy,” he grunts like your heart isn’t thrumming loud and fast within the cages of your ribs. you swallow the lump lodged in your throat.

“ok-y,” you reply, internally cringing when your voice breaks at the end of a single word. fuck, you’re a mess. you clear your throat, feigning nonchalance even as toji begins uncapping the alcohol. “okay,” you repeat.  

he hums, spilling alcohol into the cotton ball before pressing the soaked cotton on your split skin. a hiss makes it past your teeth before you are clamping your lips tightly, trying your best not to jostle your body any more. you didn’t even notice your flinch until you hear toji’s soft shh sounds, his thumb running soothing circles on the part of your skin that isn’t wounded or bruised.

“m’sorry,” you murmur, feeling shy all of a sudden, your lips still pursed at the dull thrum of pain.

“s’fine,” he says. “should’a warned you.” toji pauses, the cotton pinched between thick fingers. he looks at you. “good to go?”

you nod, not trusting your treacherous voice anymore. 

toji’s lips quirk up in a small smile. “good girl.”

your mind screeches to a halt, your breath getting stuck in your lungs. it is like the world has stopped orbiting—it hasn’t, not when you can see toji dressing your wounds with gentle hands and even gentler touch—and all that’s left is the echoing words that toji just uttered.

good girl, he said naturally. genuinely. 

good girl, he said in a voice that denoted nothing out of the norm, the same way we’d say the sky is blue and the ocean is deep and you are a good girl. 

(his good girl.)

good girl, he said like he meant it.

fuck. fuck.

a squeal is building in your throat, your body trembling softly as the emotions seated in your chest began to expand and spill over and–

“ow!” you hiss, unconsciously tugging your hand away from toji’s hold, feeling the bite of stinging alcohol running along your tender skin where scratches and beading blood laid.

toji blinks at you. you blink at him in return, feeling prickles of embarrassment creeping from the base of your neck. 

you laugh, something so fake and brittle, feeling so ashamed and awkward. “sorry.”

toji shakes his head, huffing fondly, and his eyes crinkling in such a soft way. “c’mon kid, give y’r hand to me and we can finish patchin’ it up.”

you gingerly give him your hand again, licking your lips, wanting to say something even though words aren’t structuring themselves properly in your head, only to collapse into silence as toji’s hands cradle yours softly once again.

(he’s always been so soft with you.)

he hums, approval dancing in his tone. “y’r doin’ well, kid.”

before you could stop yourself, a wheeze punches itself past your throat. christ, the praises.

toji looks up, concerned.

“just parched,” you say before he could ask, feigning dry coughs to strengthen your obvious lie.

“…i’ll get you somethin’ after this,” toji replies hesitantly. “you still like those ramune, yeah?” 

“yeah,” you answer, your voice curling as you smile, watching as toji begins to bandage your hand. your cheeks tingle when toji’s lips tug up at hearing your quiet excitement. 

you cough, clearing your throat. “i’m shocked gumi-chan kept a stock here,” you say, after a while, wanting to break the loaded silence. “he said he doesn’t like them anymore.” your nose scrunches in judgement.

toji kept to himself for a moment and you wondered if you said something wrong. shame curls in your stomach, chasing away the previous excitement that had been budding in your chest. an apology sits on your tongue, prickling and heavy, then toji huffs. it’s only then do you notice that the bandages are secured but toji still hasn’t let go of your hand. 

“yeah, megumi’s done with ‘em,” he finally says, running soothing circles on your skin again. “i just kept buyin’ a bunch cause i know you like ‘em.”

“oh,” you mutter, feeling so breathless and choked up at the same time. 

toji chuckles without humour. “yeah. ‘oh’.” 

there’s a certain hesitancy in his next caress, an internal battle flickering from within his eyes, and you feel lost, anxiety and desire mixing in an uneasy tandem, overwhelming your veins to the point of silencing the previous beating you had. then, toji lets go.

your hands twitch, jolting to pull him back, but you catch yourself before your touch can connect. but it’s too late: toji had seen your aborted move.

he looks at you, searching for something in your eyes. a heartbeat passed, and you don’t know what’s gotten into you but you fall into his space, your knees hitting the floor with a loud thud. it’d be another pair of bruises that you’d carry home today but for now, with trembling arms and roaring heart, you let your hope choke you to the point of acting stupidly.

the kiss was chaste, cracked lips just landing on top of scarred ones. the world felt faraway yet scorching at the same time.

you feel toji tense under you and panic explodes in your chest.

stupid. stupid!

you pull back, an apology on the tip of your tongue, but you are stopped by toji’s arms encircling your waist to tug you to his lap. one of toji’s arms snake to your back, his palm coming to rest on the back of your head, before you feel him pulling you back into another kiss. this one is deeper. more heated. more desperate.

good. you think to yourself as your eyes shut close, feeling yourself drowning in toji’s kiss. so good.

you loop your arms around toji’s neck, tugging him closer as if you two aren’t already pressed flushed onto each other, raking your fingers through the straight strands of his hair. 

you savour the kiss, the moment, toji’s touch. you know that after this, there will be nothing between you and toji. a shared kiss is easy to forget as time crawls by, after all, nothing good will come out if things between yourselves are made serious. you’re not allowed to hope.

but god, the way you still do.

you hope that toji would make you his, whatever “being his” even means. you hope that he’d whisper confessions, stilted as they always are from toji’s lips, or praises. lots and lots of praises. you hope that when you two pull apart for air, toji would push himself back in your space and kiss you again, just as yearning as you are.

(you hope he loves you just as much.)

then, despite your internal cries of ‘too soon’, toji is pulling himself from the kiss. you let go, sucking in air desperately, filling your lungs with needed air to distract yourself from the searing loneliness that is crushing you already. 

you clamber off his lap, not meeting his eyes, only to pause when toji refused to let you go.

“uhm,” you begin, trying your best to ignore the tingling of your lips, when toji refused to budge. “toji-san?”

you startle when he cups your cheeks. “told you it’s just ‘toji’, kid.”

“okay,” you murmur. “toji, what’s, uhm, what’s up?”

he chuckles. “well if you keep rollin’ your hips, then somethin’s gon’ be up, a’right.”

you choke, startling on his lap upon hearing his words, the previous tensed atmosphere shattering into something light and humorous. “what the hell?”

but toji doesn’t regale you a response, instead he caresses the skin under your eye, smiling cheekily. “my pretty girl,” he coos. 

your lips part, ready for just as cheeky of a response, when toji’s eyes turn sharp and steely, chasing away the stuttering words on the tip of your tongue. 

“you fought them well, didn’t you?” he continues, his voice still in that crooning tone. “you came to me, beautiful in y’r anger.” toji’s voice has turned into measured murmurs. “and i know you must’ve won—you always do, kid.”

you nod, not knowing where the conversation is going.

“but you came to me, bleedin’ and achin’ and it terrified me.” he leans forward and presses a kiss on the corner of your lips. “and it got me thinkin’–” he pauses, going silent.

you shiver, feeling the way his lips are still pressed on your skin, ghosting with their touch—teasing, caressing. the desire keeps growing in the pit of your stomach.

then, toji pulls back, his eyes finding yours as he says, “i don’t think i can handle lettin’ you go anymore, pretendin’ i don’t love you.” 

“what.” your voice came out as a gasp, your lips (still tingling from toji’s kiss, you noticed with satisfaction) falling in surprise.

“wait,” you say because you couldn’t fathom a reality where toji said he loves you. “what?”

“c’mon kid, up-up,” he replies instead, carefully pushing you off his lap and urging you to stand before he can clamber to his feet. you follow his command, feeling lightheaded and overwhelmed by everything.

he loves you?

“let’s get you y’r ramune,” he continues, pulling you to the kitchen, like he didn’t just drop a bombshell on you. still, you follow him to the kitchen—you would honestly follow him everywhere—hovering by the fridge, bandaged hand intertwined with toji’s own scarred hand, watching as he rummages past refrigerated produce, before pulling out the peach-flavoured soda. your favourite. 

toji lets go of your hand and rips the seal off the nozzle before pushing on the ball. the clink of glass on glass is the only sound in the kitchen as toji turns and hands you the drink. 

“thank you,” you say before taking a sip.

toji leans forward and presses a kiss on your forehead. “always.”

your cheeks burn, your veins thrumming with each wild pump of your yearning heart. the affection you have for him is spilling over and even with toji’s disjointed confession, you know it’s your turn to make the move.

so you step on your tiptoes, kissing toji on his jaw, before murmuring, “i’ve loved you since.”

as if that was all that toji had been waiting for, toji doesn’t waste any time before he’s scooping you off the floor and plopping you on the counter, his lips are hot as they met yours for another kiss. he cups your jaw, tilting your head up to deepen the kiss. the ramune slips from your hold but toji catches the soda, plopping it beside you, before turning his now free hands to touch whatever they could of your body. you reciprocate with the same ferocity, tugging at black strands and nipping his bottom lip, trying to convey the want and the love and the heat simmering inside you.

toji growls, deep and satisfied, his voice rumbling between you two. it was loaded with an emotion that easily reflected the storm raging in your chest, silencing the budding uncertainty over toji’s affections for you. you scratch at his back, trying to hold onto him tighter, afraid that this is just another dream.

(you used to count every single one of them, only stopping when one of those dreams left you too raw, feeling like you have been gutted and left to bleed on your bed.

you don’t remember the whole of it, but even with only the fragments you were left with, you know why you ache: flashes of a little kid with toji’s eyes and your nose; flashes of a life beyond flirty conversations and fleeting touches; flashes of vows that lasted a lifetime. 

you woke up sobbing in your dorm room, feeling so small, so robbed of what you wish life could be with toji.)

toji pulls back, the whine in your throat cutting off into a moan when his lips latch on your throat, sucking and biting—marking you up because you are his. you arch your back, giving toji more room to stake his claim on you. 

lust and love are mixing, leaving you breathless and teary-eyed because god you’ve been waiting for this for so long. 

“love you,” you hiccup, trembling when toji’s hands hook under your shirt, tickling your skin with his ghosting touch.

“shh,” toji murmurs, fond and understanding, straightening up to gaze back at you again. “i know, baby. i’ve got you.” he loops your legs around his waist before toji is hoisting you up in his arms and, without staggering, carrying you to his room.

your eyes flutter when he carefully lays you down on his bed, his eyes watching you with reverence. 

“let me love you,” he whispers.

you nod, softly. desperately. “please.”

his touch is a gentle scorch, his bigger body easily covering yours. when he thrusts, it is deep and and strong and filling, reaching your most intimate parts with measured strokes and unwavering intensity. when you cry his name, he croons and coos, praises spilling from his scarred lips along with his promises of loving you and caring for you, something that is so sentimental even as he continues to fuck you filthily.

“my sweet girl,” he murmurs on your skin, his lips latched on your collarbone. you almost don’t hear him amidst the consistent slaps of his thighs on your pelvis. “my precious, sweet girl.”

that’s how you cum: toji deep in you, your name slipping past his lips like prayer, and your pleasure consuming your every nerve.

you know things aren’t perfect, not yet anyway, but your mind is a mush, overwhelmed with toji (his scent, his touch, his words), your body is singing with euphoric contentment so you bury the worries deep in the pockets of your chest because for now, you are in the arms of the man you love. and he loves you just as firmly. 

[fbfh]

older!logan x reader hcs

wc: 1.6k

genre: age gap, sort of sugar daddy logan

warnings: big (but legal) age gap, logan is early 40s reader is like early 20s, brief odette mention, logan is a killer lawyer, rory kinda traumatized Logan lol, I haven't finished gilmore girls or ayitl yet so don't come for me lol, logan is obsessedddddddd with reader, mildly smutty, mentions of marriage and proposals, your relationship progresses really quickly

summary: you were reading in a coffee shop when a charming gorgeous much older guy decided to strike up a conversation. little do you know that within a very short time that same charming stranger will know your dress size, your shoe size, and your ring size.

song rec: off to the races - lana del rey

a/n: the choke hold older logan has on me..... euthanize me at this point lmao

tags @yesv01 @magcon7280

As with all nsfw works, all characters are aged up to 18+ (like way over 18 in logan’s case lol)

That being said jesus christ let’s dive right into the brain rot

First things first, a little more about Logan

He’s in his early 40’s and aging like a fine goddamn wine

MEGA MEGA dilf vibes

After the whole millions of dollars sunken into a bad investment in his family’s massive media conglomerate mishap, he still faced a lot of pressure to join the family business

But with Rory rejecting his proposal, he felt so fucking down and beaten up by life

He just had two massive blows to his ego back to back

And he needed a win

Then the strangest thing happened 

He just got back from another late night of partying with his friends and switched on the tv so he wouldn’t have to fall asleep with his thoughts, and some random movie was playing

The girl in the movie is at dinner with her boyfriend and thinks he’s going to propose, but he breaks up with her instead

It hits a little too close to home and Logan’s about to switch it off

Then she decides to go to law school to prove herself

He finds himself getting more and more invested in this movie, relating more to Elle with every scene, and by the morning he confronts the idea he’s been shoving away for too long so he doesn’t rock the boat

He talks to his dad and they decide Logan will go to law school, but remain a prominent board member and shareholder of the family company

Mitchum is surprised by how responsible and well thought out Logan’s plan is

He’s forging a path to a very lucrative field - one Mitchum can tell he’s going to be very successful in - while still staying involved enough in the family business 

So Logan goes off to law school, and 20 years later he’s a total shark 

He’s a prestigious, expensive lawyer with a reputation for never losing and a long streak of killing it with really high profile cases

Now the Huntzberger name carries all the weight and power of his father’s media reach, and Logan’s success in the courtroom 

He’s excelling 

And he’s excelling enough to keep his family out of his personal life for a while 

He’s living the bachelor life until he hits 40

That’s when his parents decide it’s really unacceptable that he’s still not married 

So they tell him if he doesn’t get married soon they’ll arrange something

Some french heiress or something 

And Logan finds himself right back where he didn’t want to be

And then, like a gift from god, he sees you

Like I said in my initial drabble, Logan first saw you in a cafe reading some dusty novel no one actually reads like war and peace or crime and punishment or something

He's seen people your age do that before, reading complicated stuffy literature to seem smart and make some pretentious English class commentary that barely makes sense 

So he calls you on it

"War and Peace, huh?"

He’s expecting you to say something fake and pretentious

Some bullshit fake deep pseudo intellectual shit

But you look up at him, only pausing for a moment before you speak

You’re surprised to see such a gorgeous guy in a little cafe like this

Especially one that seems interested in talking to you

And god, the way you talk about it

The way your eyes light up

It takes him by surprise

He's not just interested

He's invested 

You start talking and realize that you've been talking for way longer than you expected to

And he wants more

He wants to know more about you, wants to see you sweet smile and hear your cute little laugh when he says something charming or compliments you

So he takes you out to dinner, his treat 

He guides you out the door and into his Porsche with his hand on your back 

It's a subtle gesture but it makes your stomach flip 

Then he buckles your seat belt for you

If you weren't sold before you sure are by now 

So he takes you to this nice fancy restaurant, wines and dines you, and he is laying on the charm thick

"Oh, come on. A pretty young thing like you must have a boyfriend."

"Really, you have excellent taste.”

You don’t miss the way he’s been eyeing you all night

And he doesn’t miss the way you squeeze your thighs together when he touches your face or plays with your fingers

One thing leads to another and after he pays the bill and leaves a generous tip, you find him ushering you back into his porsche

And yet again he closes your door for you and gets you all buckled in

This time when he drives his hand rests on your knee

He thinks he can handle this

He’s the biggest whore on the east coast /affectionate 

Then you grab his hand and move it up your thigh

There’s no going back now

He’s in just as deep as you are

Before you know it you’re tearing off each other’s clothes

His lips are all over you and motherfucker does he know what he’s doing

He worried for a moment he might have lost his edge

But as he lays you down into his big soft bed, your skin touching his silky sheets for the first time

But definitely not the last

As he finally touches you and feels how wet you are for him

He knows he didn’t peak in college

“Shh, listen,” he says between kisses that make you feel dizzy, “you’re gonna tell me if it’s too much for you, can you do that?”

You nod while he holds your face in his big hands

“You gotta say it,” he chuckles at how sweet you are, how well you respond to him, “use your words, baby…” 

You manage to choke out a desperate yes between kisses that makes his stomach twist

And that is the very beginning to your intense affair with Logan Huntzberger 

He’s desperate to see you again

He sends flowers and a dress and a gorgeous necklace to your apartment

And not the normal amount of flowers

The Logan amount of flowers

So a lot

And you can’t believe your luck finding a hot rich older guy that’s so into you 

You really like this attention

Your daddy issues are SCREAMING

And Logan likes having someone as gorgeous and intelligent and into him as you are

And he wants to do this right

But he’s rapidly approaching the deadline his family set

He doesn’t want to scare you off

GOD that’s the last thing he wants

But he is terrified of proposing and having it end up like it did the last time

Eventually he works up the nerve to talk to you about it 

He’s explaining everything to you while you pay your bills 

But it says they’re already paid

And your credit cards are paid off

And your debt has just disappeared

Even your student loans are gone

And there’s a fat deposit in your checking account 

He paid off all your debt and didn’t tell you

By the time he’s done explaining that you basically either need to get married asap or you can’t see each other anymore he still hasn’t brought it up

And you realize he’s not going to

He didn’t pay your bills to guilt you into anything

He’s not holding it over your head

He’s taking care of you

And all you’ve ever wanted is someone who will take care of you

Logan is surprised when you agree

But he’s even more surprised at how fast you agree

You sit in his lap and end up rambling about how much you love him, how you don’t think you’ll ever find anyone you like as much as him or anyone that treats you as well as he does

To no one’s surprise the conversation ends with him taking you on every surface of your apartment

Hours later you’re cuddling naked on your couch, resting your head on his muscular chest and listening to his heartbeat

“So like… are we engaged now?” you ask looking up at him

He laughs sweetly

“No, not yet. I have to actually propose first.”

You think back to your conversation earlier when you first said you’d want to marry him

“So that didn’t count before?”

His heart breaks at how little you ask for

“No, that didn’t count.” He kisses your head, “I’m going to take you out somewhere nice, give you a proper proposal, with a nice ring.”

You get butterflies thinking about it

You can’t believe how much he does for you

How much he wants to do for you 

You’re quiet for a moment, and he can feel you smiling into his chest

“...Okay.” 

Your voice is so small and bashful, and he can hear you suppressing a flustered giggle

Fuck he can’t get enough of you 

He laughs and pulls you closer, grabbing your chin and makes you look up at him so he can kiss you 

You fall asleep in his arms

And you think that you won’t mind being married so young if it’s Logan you’re marrying

Logan is looking at you with so much love and adoration

And right before he falls asleep 

He thinks that maybe it’s not too late for him to find love after all

[fallstaticexit]

*insert laugh track*

prev / next

Olive: I just feel so stupid and embarrassed. I didn’t want to keep my past a secret, but I’m tired of people acting like I’m the same 20-year-old who made stupid mistakes. I’ve changed.

Lyric: You’re not stupid. People like that—they have this warped sense of morality, and I’m sure if you go poking around in their closets, there will be plenty of skeletons there.

Olive: She wasn’t like that—like them or like anyone I’ve ever been with. She felt so real. Ugh! Why did she have to fuck all this up for them!? Why did she have to make me feel like this?

Olive: And to make matters worse, she’s so damn good in bed. It’s one thing to be sweet and kind and thoughtful and a little funny and fucking gorgeous, but then to drill me into the mattress for hours and hours-

Lyric: Oh! That’s not- you don’t have to go into any details.

Olive: [sighs] I miss her and I hate it, sis.

Lyric: I know you do, honey. I know it hurts now, and it’ll hurt for a while. You were falling in love with her.

Olive: I hate that too.

Lyric: I know. Come here.

Lyric: Hold on, that’s my phone. It’s probably about Mateo.

Lyric: Oh. Mom?

Myrah: Hellooo Sunshine! It’s about time you picked up your phone. What are you doing? Are you busy?

Lyric: Well, yeah actually. I’m with Olive. We were in the middle of-

Myrah: Oliviaaa! Tell her I said hi! She’s so cute. Your daddy’s twin.

Lyric: Mom..

Myrah: I’m cooking a big dinner and I want you all to come. I want to see my grandson.

Lyric: Yeah, I don’t know..

Myrah: Don’t say no, Sunshine. Your brothers are coming too. Mel said he’d stop by before he went back to Del Sol Valley and I haven’t seen you three under the same roof in ages.

Lyric: [sighhhs] Will you just promise to relax? Sometimes you’re too much for Mateo, it stresses him out...

Myrah: I’ll be on my best behavior. Bring Olivia too, I haven’t seen that little jail bird since she got out.

Lyric: Jesus. Please don’t bring that up..

Myrah: Well, anywho, Ernest is so excited to finally meet you all.

Lyric: Huhh? Who is Ernest?

Myrah: You’re just going to have to come over to find out. See you soon!

Lyric: We’re invited to have dinner at my mom’s.

Olive: We??

Lyric: Me, Sonny, Mel...and you girl. She wants to see you too.

Olive: Girlll, I am in mourning!

Lyric: If you come, then at least I can have an excuse to leave early-

Lyric: I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need you, sis. An hour max.

Olive: Ahhh hell.

Sonny: I know what you’re thinkin’. ‘Did I have somethin’ to do with this’. It’s a funny story actually.

Mel: Why are you wearing a full mink coat in August?

Olive: I’m in mourning..

Mel: ???

Lyric: Let’s just make this quick. Couple photos, maybe dessert, yadda yadda, then I’m out of here.

Sonny: I mean, we can squeeze in a board game right-

Lyric: Shut the hell up, Sonny.

Sonny: Yes ma’am!

Ernest: Hey! You’re early! Come on in. I just put some burgers on the grill for the little man. I heard that’s his favorite.

Sonny: Aye man- who the hell are you??

Ernest: I’m Ernest, your mom’s husband. But yall can call me Pop Pop.

[sofa-king-lame]

Snippet Sunday

Ok so it's technically Monday here in Sydney (5:20pm lol) but it's still Sunday somewhere, right? Maybe not. Whatever.

Tagged by @playinginthunderstorms and @semperama

This is a snippet from Eddie's POV for the Buck 1.0 fic, tentatively titled 'I Save Myself, I'm Saving You' (from the song 'Deeper Water' by Deadstar).

------

So he downloads Tinder and starts swiping with Shannon on his right, providing sometimes helpful sometimes sarcastic commentary.  

“He’s kinda cute,” she muses, swiping right for him on a profile of a guy boasting that he can lift his couch with one arm. 

“Kinda full of himself,” Eddie snorts, but is maybe not so secretly very much into the thought that this guy could probably pick him up and manhandle him, so. They match and the guy messages Eddie immediately. 

Max: I could definitely lift you. Pin you against a wall and fuck you until you can’t walk for a week. Sound like something you’d be into? 

And, well. Maybe eventually. But at this point Eddie had only been with Shannon and even though he was confident he was very gay, he had zero experience with guys beyond experimenting on his own with some toys he’d ordered online. And this seemed like too big of a first step, so he ignores the message. 

“Can you ask him if he’s bi, at least? I could be into that,” Shannon says, trying to pluck the phone out of Eddie’s hand. He swats her away and goes back to swiping, matching next with a guy who looks buff enough to snap Eddie in half. His message to Eddie is just as sexually aggressive as the last one, so Eddie ignores him as well. 

“Jesus, Shannon. This is a bit much for me, I’m not looking to get split in half,” Eddie sighs, putting his phone down in front of him. Shannon snatches it up quickly, continuing to swipe. 

“Just one more match. If he’s a bust too then we can give it a rest for the night,” she argues. “Ooh ok, look at this guy. Tall, cute, blonde, goes by ‘Firehose’. And a very tame first message...messages. Chat to him.” 

Firehose: Well hello Eddie, mid-20s 

Firehose: What brings you to Tinder on this fine Wednesday evening 

Firehose: You look like you could use a drink 

EddieD: Honestly, I’m not sure. My ex-wife talked me into it and I’m wondering if I’ve made the right choice. I could definitely use a drink, though. You free now? 

“Shannon! I can’t go out now, aren’t you leaving soon? It’s my night with Chris, I need to take him to school in the morning,” Eddie huffs, taking his phone back. Shannon laughs and Eddie hates her a little (except he doesn’t, not at all. Now that they’re friends again after all the divorce dust has settled, he loves her like he did in the early days. Which, he realises now, is as a friend). 

“I can stay here tonight as long as you’re back in time to take him to school in the morning, I have to open the store at eight.” 

And, well. Ok. 

----

Tagging @smilingbuckley @exhuastedpigeon @disasterbuck @veronae-buddie @hotshotsxyz

[leafsbabe]

Aleksander Barkov - drunk in love (SMUT)

Barky celebrating the Cup with fem!Tkachuk!reader, age gap (reader is in her early 20s), off screen drunk sex 2.4k

You woke up reluctantly —somewhere in that unpleasant gap between being utterly wasted and violently hungover— because you must have forgotten to close the blinds of Matthew’s guest room when you stumbled into bed this morning. At least you thought so since the time between the final buzzer and now was kind of a blur.

Groaning you burrowed your head back into the pillow, hoping for another few hours of sleep to prepare for the next few days of drunken celebration. Last night was only the beginning.

You blamed the alcohol still rushing through your system for only enticing that maybe your stupid warm pillow wasn’t a pillow at all when said not-pillow let out a vague dying sound and rose up, nearly dislodging you in the process. Thankfully the guy stayed somewhat horizontal but the quick movement still gave you a dangerous flutter in your stomach. Then he spoke and that flutter turned into absolute dread. It took you exactly one and a half Finnish curses to figure out who you were snuggled up to.

“What time?” Your brother’s captain asked, not turning around to face the random girl in his bed —you. Great.

For a moment you debated making a break for it or pretending like you were still asleep but in the end you decided to deal with your drunken actions head on. Reaching for your phone, not plugged in and with a brand new crack across the screen, looking at it before letting it fall back onto the nightstand with a clack. 

“It’s noon.” You started, feeling him tense under you. “On thursday.”

Somewhere along the way you had lost a day, your clothes, and gained a hockey player. Sitting up hurt your head but somehow it made you feel less like you were about to throw up. The blanket that had been covering you until that point fell to lie around your hip as the cool air hit your exposed skin. Maybe you should feel more than indifference about the fact that you sat beside your brother’s teammate with your tits out, nipples hard. Well, nothing he hadn’t seen before apparently. 

“Fuck.” The Finn buried his face into the pillow, a real pillow, and you patted his back in lieu of anything better to do. “Chucky will kill me.”

That just made you laugh, gaze catching on a bottle of water on the floor. Your savior. 

“He won’t.”

Aleksander sat up next to you as you took a swig and then patted your back in return when the clear liquid in the bottle turned out to be tequila.

“Not water?” He asked, and you croaked out a no in return. He hummed before taking the bottle from you and taking a swig himself.

It was silent between you two as you tried to gather your thoughts. You were definitely in one of your brother’s many guest bedrooms which meant the chances of nobody knowing about your little drunken dalliance were exactly zero.

“Listen Barky-” You said after an uncomfortable amount of time had passed only for him to interrupt you.

“Sasha.”

“What?”

“We slept together, you call me Sasha.” He shrugged his shoulders as if it was obvious. His broad shoulders. With more than one bite mark on them. Jesus.

“Okay. Sasha.” It didn’t sound the same coming from your lips instead of his but he didn’t react so you kept going. “You wanna do this again sometime?”

This time he reacted, eyes going wide as he looked at you. It wasn’t like your brothers’ teammates usually looked at you. Like you were a kid. Like it wasn’t worth the risk. No. Sasha looked like he was actually considering it.

“You’re baby Chucky.” Was all he said.

“No. That’s Taryn. I’m a grown adult. I have a degree. I’m probably the only one in my family that pays her damn taxes. And I like to go out and drink and sleep with men I want to sleep with.” You answered. “Without asking my family for permission.”

He looked at you, eyes never straying from your face to look at your body. “Why?”

There were a lot of things you could have said had you known exactly why you wanted to sleep with him again. Maybe it was spite. Maybe it was because for the first time since your brother got traded you truly saw the Panther’s captain. Maybe you just didn’t want to have a notch in your bedpost that you couldn’t remember. You didn’t say any of that though. Instead what left your lips was: “I never fucked a Stanley Cup Champion.”

He looked at you. Then down at your state of undress. Then back up at you.

“Ugh. You know what I mean.”

It took more effort than you’d like to stand up, unashamed of your nudity. Nothing he hadn’t seen before, even if neither of you remembered.

Your body ached, both pleasantly and decidedly not. Looking down you could see bruises starting to form where you must have bumped into things. Others starting to manifest that were created with purpose. The feeling of your skin pulling made you check over your shoulder and sure enough the remnants of last night were there, dried to your lower back.

“Well at least you pulled out.” You joked.

Behind you Sasha darkened from rosy sunburn into a deep blush before falling back onto the bed and pulling a pillow over his face.

“Calm down.” You told him, picking a big shirt up from the ground and taking a sniff to make sure it wasn’t dirty before pulling it over your head. “I’m on birth control and unless you have something you need to confess we’re good.”

He looked like he’d rather be anywhere else as he spoke. “No I- we’re good.”

The bathroom was just across the hall but surely there would be random guests around Matthew’s house so you put on some shorts too. One Panther seeing your pussy seemed like enough. 

“Alright. I’m gonna go shower if you want to take that time to sneak out.”

He hadn’t moved from his spot on the bed, only sat up again, looking at you.

Men. Always worrying too little or too much. You walked over to him and bent down to press a single kiss to his lips, smiling to yourself when he reciprocated, hands coming up to hold your hips.

“See ya later, Sasha.” Was  all you said as you walked away.

-

It didn’t take long before he caved. To be completely honest you didn’t even know if either of you sobered up in the two days since you woke up together. But while you had supported your brother and the Panthers the best you could during that time you had also done it for selfish reasons. You didn’t want the man that hadn’t left your head to get distracted by another pretty girl while you weren’t around. Still it took you by surprise when he pulled you aside, trying to find a quiet minute away from the crowd.

“How are you?”

The mundane question made you laugh. That was not what you had expected to hear. “I’m good. Great. Have you decided yet?” A mean little flutter made itself home in your stomach, reminding you that you didn’t feel as casual about the whole thing as you tried to portray.

“We can’t.” He said, but at least he had the decency to look sad about it. “My parents are at my house and Chucky has twenty people staying with him. There is no space.”

While you didn’t necessarily wanted to get fucked in a random hotel room that seemed like the easiest option. You kept looking between Sasha and your cracked phone screen as you searched for a room. The sight of his shirt sticking to his body from a mixture of sweat and alcohol that shouldn’t be remotely hot but yet managed to make you understand why wet t-shirt contests were so popular.

The playoffs drew a big crowd, especially final games, but the fact that everything even remotely close seemed to be booked out completely.

Well there went that plan. 

Throwing all caution to the wind you approached him again, pulling him away from whoever he was talking to and not letting go of his hand until you were further away from everybody. The crowd didn’t care too much about you kidnapping their captain but you didn’t want anybody to overhear you.

“Make up an excuse. Say you got alcohol poisoning or something.”

You didn’t hear the excuse he makes up. If he even made one up at all or if he simply slipped out of the masses without telling a single soul. All you knew when you pulled him through the front door of Matthew’s Florida home was that everybody else was out and would hopefully stay out for a few more hours at least.

Sasha was gentle with his movements. He didn’t spin you around to press you against the door like you had imagined but he did kiss you. Softly. Cupping your face in one hand and smoothing his thumb over your skin after you pulled away.

His playoff beard tickled, not that you let that deter you. Navigating your brother’s house wasn’t easy with his captain attached to your face but you managed to find the guest room you had declared yours eventually.

For somebody that had seemed so unsure about sleeping with you again Sasha wasted no time getting you undressed. He let you deal with your bra yourself, thick fingers pulling off his own clothes rather than fumbling with the clasp. You were bare before he was, draping yourself across the bed just watching as he stripped down before you. The playoffs had demanded a lot from the team but even though Sasha had fought hard there was still a certain solidness to him.

Watching his body move, perfunctory, simply taking off his clothes, shouldn’t make you feel the way it did. Yet you still pressed your legs together in anticipation. It was Sasha that opened them again, gently prying them apart as he worked his way up the bed and between them. His lips ghosted along the bend of your knee, his beard tickling the sensitive skin.

It seemed like Sasha wanted to take his time with you, build up the tension with rough fingers and a soft tongue, but you burned for him in a way you could hardly explain. You needed him now.

His hair tangled between your fingers as you tried to pull him up. Hot breath making you squirm as he lapped at your clit, undeterred by your attempt of hurrying him along. 

“You can eat me out next time. Need you in me. Please.”

“No next time.” He said against the seam of your leg.

It only hurt your heart a little but at least he told you that he only wanted a one (well, two) time fling and didn’t keep you guessing, stringing you along like some other people did.

Your thoughts were interrupted by him nipping at your thigh again, close enough to where you needed him the most that you could feel your arousal cling to that beard of his.

“Fine.” You gave in before following it with a gasp as his lips sealed around your clit, sucking gently before wandering lower to eat you out. He was good at what he was doing —very good, in fact— but you wanted him to hurry anyway. There was no telling how much time you had before your family would return and you desperately needed him to fill you up before they did.

Sasha’s lap had been covered by your blanket the day that you woke up together but seeing him strip down in front of you had only confirmed what you had already known in your heart. Sasha Barkov had a massive dick. And he knew how to use it. You didn’t need to remember your night to know that. 

When you came it was with a shout, thighs wrapped around his head and shaking. So much for the stubborn idea of holding out and urging him on through that.

“Thank you.” He pressed a kiss to the soft chub below your naval. Another to your sternum, between your boobs. Part of you wished he would kiss you —because kissing him felt nice, especially when he kissed you sweetly and sometimes a girl just wanted to be kissed sweetly after an orgasm— but Sasha didn’t kiss you. No. His mouth attached himself to your neck, lips sticky and rough. There was no telling how marked up you would be come morning but the simple fact that he was marking you up at all was enough to drive you half mad. You weren’t his yet he made sure to let everybody know you were owned.

The first nudge of him, light and teasing, was enough to have you reaching down. Sasha let you, playfully biting down as you took him in your hand only to have the bite turn into a muffled moan against your skin as you guided him inside you.

Even with one orgasm already making you feel relaxed the stretch of him was significant, He gave you little time to adjust but that suited your needs all the better. No matter how sweetly he would treat you, you would definitely feel him tomorrow.

Sasha didn’t hold back and put all his strength into it. The headboard hit the wall again and again, loud thumps accompanying breathy curses and cried encouragements. Every tiny action was rewarded by a bigger, even more pleasant reaction.

When you came it was with your sweaty body pressed into the bed by his, filled to the hilt and with your nails clawing at his back. Sasha fucked you through it, keeping his pace even with your shaking legs wrapped around his middle. And then, just as the feeling became too overwhelming, he came too.

The two of you laid together as you both calmed down, heavy breathing evening out, your bodies silent and twisted together on top of the blanket. The moment seemed calm, Sasha almost purring when your hand found its way into his hair, gently tugging on the strands and scratching his scalp. His cum started to slowly leak out of you but you couldn’t stand the thought of having to go get cleaned up. The afterglow of your orgasms just felt too good not to bask in it.

At least it did before you heard the front food to Matthew’s house slam shit and your family yell your name.

[choiwonder]

APRIL 20 . PARK JONGSEONG

tw/cw ༝ 0.7k wc, profanity, very fluffy!!! established relationship, slight teasing, kisses for jay!!!! mwah mwah, uses the pet name sweetheart, soft jongseong hours, happy late birthday jay!!!!!

jay was never the type for birthdays. his excitement dwindled down for each year that swung on by. usually, he’d just buy himself a mini cake or a dozen donuts from krispy kreme as a minor celebration but with you around this time, it seems his plans of another uneventful birthday had gone down the shitter.

since the first day of april, it was the nonstop tormenting of asking what he’d like to do for his birthday, what did he like to eat? did he want any gifts? you were so curious to know but was left with witty responses, simply shrugging off the idea of a plan.

but today was the day. his birthday. waking up this morning, jay expected an empty bedside. you had work and jay demanded various times for you not to take the day off. his eyes are barely open, sighing as he pats all around his bed, searching for his phone in hopes of sending you a good morning text.

however, though it’s never a major occurrence, there are a few things that jay didn’t expect this morning. one: to be burned by a liquid sitting on his vanity that causes him to seethe, “fuck,” he whispers to himself, sitting up from bed rather quickly. two: to see a note in your handwriting, ‘for when you wake up <3 let’s enjoy your day.’ three: a tray filled with breakfast items that were still suspiciously warm.

and last but certainly not least, four: you slipping in the bedroom, with a cake in hand.

he’s truly attempting to collect his thoughts, even blinking to make sure he wasn’t seeing things, “what’re you doing here?”

“it’s your birthday…?” you scoff, tilting your head as if the answer was obvious, “why else would i be here?”

he scratches his scalp, brain still foggy from the early morning, “what happened to work?”

“i requested the day off.”

“…i thought i told you not to do that.”

you roll your eyes, hoping for him to be better spirited rather than acting like the grinch. you ignore his statement, standing closer to the edge of the bed, “make a wish and blow out your candles.”

“i’m not five,” his face scrunches.

“do it.”

“you can’t be serious…”

you look at him, furrowing your brows as you hold the cake up. oh my god, you’re being serious. he huffs, succumbing to your command. aiding in holding the dessert up, his lips form into an ‘o’ but you cover his mouth.

“make a wish first.” why? he almost dares to ask but sees the threatening look in your eyes, giving up in retaliation.

“oh my god, i hate you,” he closes his eyes for a few seconds, making a wish just like you asked.

“now blow.”

and he does, earning a light ‘yay’ from you.

“good boy,” you grin, squeezing his cheek, ignoring the fact he pushes your hand away, “see? that wasn’t so hard. what’d you wish for?” you set the cake beside the tray, crawling over him to lay on your side of the bed.

“for you to kiss my ass,” he answers swiftly.

he was hopeless but you stuck by his side nevertheless. rolling your eyes, you point at the food tray, “eat your food.”

“are you my mom?”

you pinch his thigh, ignoring the hiss he makes, “i made it for you! eat it.”

“jesus christ,” he pulls the tray from the vanity, settling it over his lap.

the first item he reached for was the bacon. with one delicious bite, leads to multiple, jay silently eating the entirety of the dish you make.

he may complain about your actions and what you say but moments like these where he basks in what you’ve done for him, he understands why he wants to be with you.

“good?” you tilt your head, eyes focusing on him drinking the coffee.

jay hums, setting the tray back on the vanity. he turns, hand cupping your cheek, thumb pacing back and forth on the skin, “thank you,” he mouths, initially settling for a small peck but couldn’t help the movement his lips made against yours.

it’s warm and smooth — just like the coffee you made. it’s difficult to not smile against his scarred lip, straddling his lap when he pulls you closer to him. it’s unfortunate, but jay takes a breath, bowing his head to rest it against your chest. you coarse your fingers through his hair, kissing the middle of his scalp, “happy birthday, jay.”

“thank you, sweetheart… i mean it.”

© choiwonder ༝ do not copy, translate, modify or repost any of my work on any platform, or claim it as your own.

[hellowoolf]

on strawberries and masonry: chapter iv

series summary: you atone for your sins, now, in a jackson garden, learning to care for soft things and yourself. joel miller is a lethal sort of similar, and misery loves company

OR

you live in jackson and meet joel and you’re both damaged little babies and fall in love (but i’m drawing this shit out🫶🫶)

warnings: angst, age gap (reader late 20s/early 30s, joel 50s), mention of killing, mention of knives, SMUT, thigh riding/dry humping (…), fingering, pussy eating, some feelings…. (as always, let me know if i missed any !!)

word count: 5k

authors note: and so here's the thing about this is that-🏃🏼‍♀️💨💨

series masterlist | masterlist

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

you wake up with a tug between your legs and your hand around your throat. you smile at the space of your room; you fucked joel yesterday. he was unflinching and hard, concrete under your inky wetness, but you walked away leaving him stained, you know, and this is enough. at last, you feel you’ve marked him just as irreparably as he has you (you cannot linger on this thought for too long).

you killed yesterday, too. sliced someone open at your feet just as you did all those years ago, left the body to rot with the rest of the mold outside jackson’s walls, and the ease of it certainly should frighten you, but the great lifting of your fuzzy secret from your shoulders lightens you as you pull yourself out of bed. joel knows the whole of you now, and in your first moments of consciousness this morning you can admit that the bareness of that pleases you. 

you’re off patrol today, jesse insistent on beginning his rounds, so he and noah have inherited your and joel’s route for the day; maria figured the early light would make the induction less horrifying than it is. you want joel again, you think, maybe once the sun’s gone down, and move through your kitchen on your first free day in months.

of course, joel has always seemed attuned to your most secret thoughts, and so when you open your front door to greet your little fruits in the morning sun—you did this so little, these days—he’s there, waiting for you. the curls of his hair reach out every which way and you want to run your fingers through them again like you did yesterday, but he looks worried, almost frantic, so you refrain. there’s mud cupping around his boots and track marks behind him in the newly thawed dirt, like he’s been walking circles outside your doorstep.

“hey, are you o-”

“can i come inside?”

something in your stomach turns over. you step aside to let him through. he paces across the floor, hands tightened into balls and then running over his jaw.

“listen, baby, i been thinkin and i don’t think we can do that again. what we did yesterday. i…you’re tommy’s friend, and ellie likes you so much, and you’re half my goddamn age i mean, jesus.” he says all of it with his back turned to you, but spins to face you, now. “we go on patrol and i…i don’t mind your company, really, but it can’t, i can’t. we can’t.”

joel is sort of winded with the words. you flare up, first, with a searing anger—you’d murdered and confessed and given yourself to him, and it’s taken joel all but 12 hours to decide none of it was worth it. and it was so good, you want it again without compromise. you flinch to lash out, to yell and scream and plead with him.

but then you think of baby. baby. baby is an artifact of the act of yesterday, of him inside you and the stretch and the warmth. despite the rest of it, you know you have him, with baby you have him. so you allow him this moment, allow him to believe himself righteous and you willing to let it go.

“okay, sting. it’s fine.”

because he knows you—an unintentional mistake, but one that will kill you someday, surely—he looks unconvinced. “fine?”

you hum. joel’s knuckles are white with the fists he’s formed at his sides, and you’re certain if you asked him to open them there’d be crescent marks in his palms. you almost break, looking at his tightness there, almost grin at him and laugh that it’s inevitable he will fuck you again, it’s inevitable. but he looks so disconcerted here, a few steps from your doorway. you nod, solemnly, wetness collecting between your legs thinking of when he’ll take you next.

“yeah, joel, come on, i’m a big girl.” he rustles. “it doesn’t have to be a big deal. we can forget it happened.” no we can’t. and it’s your internal dialogue, but joel seems to hear it, too, because he rocks back and forth on his heels, waiting, it seems, for you to convince him further. you say nothing, shifting your weight onto one leg. he nods, to you and himself, and gulps down a sigh.

“alright,” and then more sure, “alright.” he walks to your door, half-turns his face to you with a hand on the knob. “thank you, darlin.” 

once he’s gone, out through the door with his musk wafting down your hallway, you consider yourself, and the mud he tracked inside. you know he’ll seek you out again, from how off-put he seems with you now, and the way he twitched in his jeans, but still, a part of you bleeds, wounded at his attempt at rejection. what is wrong with you? it is strictly physical, you repeat to yourself for the millionth time since he came back to jackson. you think of leaving the dirt he streaked on your floor, a reminder that he came for you, but this is precisely the fear, the fear of wanting him for more than what he can give you, and so you move to wipe it up. you figure that joel is likely right; however this ends, it will be widely destructive and perhaps unfixable. but you’re right, too. it felt too good, and you’re both too unforgivable, to feign goodness now. something like giddiness bubbles up in your stomach—even against the doom you’re so adept at conjuring and the deep shadows joel casts, you’re eager, elated, thinking of him and how he touched you.

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

the next day, you and joel return to your rounds like normal. like normal. almost normal. you talk at him from horseback, call him sting because you felt how it made him harder against your dripping seam, and he grunts responses back at you, doing his best, you feel, to believe in the normalcy. 

but he watches you. you suppose he might have always eyed you this way, but it’s more feral now, unconcealed. you catch him glancing at your ass as it bounces on the saddle, the curve of your neck when you lean down, the grip of your fingers on the reins. your arousal grates at you, screams from your cunt and up your spine, and you hush it with tenderness. you will be sated again. 

“so you heard about tommy and maria?”

joel bristles a little. “yeah, i did.”

“what, you aren’t happy for them? have a heart, sting, he’s your brother,” you smile.

he gives you a tight lipped grimace back. “yeah, and he’s irresponsible, thinks himself a fuckin hero.”

“no, not a hero. he knows himself too well to think that. he’ll be a good father, you know that.” joel stays quiet, and you look him over on his horse. the breeze makes space for the ghost he saddles up with, the one you’ve yet to meet. he is so brittle, always, but you remember how he’d asked where to touch, how intent he’d been on gentleness, at least at first. so you say, “you’ll be a good uncle, i think.”

joel looks at you surprised, and then down at his hands. you’re learning the language of his face; you watch him turn his hands over, reins slung through them, the both of you measuring their size. you’re slapped across the face with that devastatingly terrible want to hold him, the one you felt when he came to you about ellie, though you can’t bring yourself to cut through it as mercilessly as you did then.

“i hate to be the one to tell you, but you aren’t as horrifying as you think you are.”

this shakes him, but so too does it brush some of the mournfulness from his shoulders. joel looks back up at you, a little amused and a lot guarded, and says, “yeah? is that what i think?” he’s deflecting, shielding himself with your shared sexual tension, but you let him.

you hum, grinning. “mhm. you walk around like you’re this big awful beast.”

“i think i might be.”

“well, there are worse things to be.”

joel snorts. you think he likes when you criticize him. “and you’re the authority on this, huh, darlin?”

you twist a little in your seat, your own wetness more insistent. you do your best to smirk, look unaffected, defiant. “yeah, i think i am.”

he shakes his head, smiling more in earnest, trying to keep the ends of his mouth down. “you’re somethin, baby, i’ll give ya that.”

the pet names seem to come naturally now, coming and going as they please, and you notice him shift in his saddle. you know he’s just as coiled up as you are now, can feel the buckle of his body under the memory of you beneath him. you urge yourself to be patient, to wait him out, bate him to you, and let silence fall over the both of you as you trot back down to jackson, hoping the quiet soothes the sparkling ends of your open wiring.

it’s not until you dismount in your horse’s stall, saddle shucked to the side, and walk out to meet joel outside the stables that you’re struck with how immediate the inevitability you’re both playing with is. 

he notices your limp—slight, nearly imperceptible to anyone other than him, and far better than it’d been the day before—only as you pad over, his side leaned against the doorway. you make it to him, his features strung together and mouth open slightly, and with frustration that teeters on offense he says, “why are you walkin like that?”

you look down at your legs and back up at him. you can feel your heartbeat in your pussy. “walking like what?”

joel rubs a hand over the side of his face and huffs, lowly and enunciative, “you know what the fuck i’m talkin about. why are you walking like that?”

you know you won’t get the words out properly, so you keep your eyes on him and stay silent. he brings a hand to grab around your jaw, and it reminds you of that night on his porch with the strawberries, but this time he keeps it there, squeezes, inspects the push of your skin. he whispers a goddamnit, mainly to himself, and then pulls your face closer to his and you breathe into each others mouths.

“this real? are you—fuck—are you fuckin limping? or are you tryin to set me off?”

you don’t hesitate. “real.”

joel nearly growls at you, and gives your head one last tug before he drops it. “let’s go,” he grits out, and starts storming towards what you know is his house. a shudder runs through you and you feel yourself clench around nothing; a part of you makes to refuse him, to decline to follow behind him like you need him for the sake of stubbornness and point-proving. in the end, though, you let yourself be led, for the knowing that you’re pulling at him in someplace irremediable.

as soon as you walk through his door he’s got a paw on your bicep, pressing his fingers deep into your flesh, and another at your throat, holding lightly to keep your head close to his. you push your face forward to feel his tongue in your mouth, but he ducks his chin back as he hauls you to the couch in his living room, giving you a satisfied mm-mm and a shake of his head. he sits himself in the center and pulls you down onto one of his thighs, running his hands up and down your sides, under your ass, up around your tits, pressing and pulling. you duck your lips down to his again but he catches you by the throat.

“no kissin this time.”

you whine in response, but he presses his thigh up and the friction on your clit through your clothes makes you mewl. you drag your cunt, soaked through, along his pant leg, and tip your head back with a moan. “i thought you wouldn’t fuck me again,” you say, breathy and mainly to his ceiling.

joel groans watching you, pulling your hips back and forth along his thigh. “an’ i won’t.”

you grip his shoulders and glide your pussy on him, hoping he feels the wetness and unbearable heat there.

“but-”

he lets a breath out hot along your collarbone and you arch further into him. “but nothing. keep going. make yourself come on me,” he pants.

you’re sure you’ll draw blood, even through his coat, with your hold on his shoulders. your moans grow high pitched and loud, wrecked, as pleasure pulls through your limbs and swirls around your clit. and it’s so good, but your self-destructive insistence still finds a way out, between moans letting out “joel, i-” but joel moves the hand on your throat to your jaw, pulling your mouth open with his thumb and pushing the tip in. you swirl your tongue around it, accepting silence and accepting him at last, and he moans wildly as you suck on his finger.

“please darlin, just give me this, just let me watch,” and he sounds so fucking desperate you can’t help but move faster, pressing yourself further into his leg and feeling the dampness you leave in your wake. you move like that, his thumb in your mouth and watching you, intently and mercilessly, while you pant and mewl with your clothed cunt rutting along his jeans, until you feel your orgasm tapping down your shoulder blades. 

“jesus, darlin, you’re soakin me, fuck, you see that?”

you nod, his thumb corking any foul response you could possibly throw back at him.

“you need it that bad? sweet thing,” he purrs into your neck.

from around joel’s finger, you moan, “oh god, joel, i’m gonna come.”

joel grunts and groans back at you, “that’s it, baby, make a mess, fuck.”

you go tight and press further into him, thrusting faster and harder, and you’re so close when you realize he’s tipping his hips up and twitching as he moans, and oh fuck he’s coming from watching you. you spasm as you come, screaming into his skin as he pushes his thumb further down your tongue. the taste of his hands, the hardness of his cock as it presses into your leg when you thrust forward, the spreading heat from his come in his jeans, all of it twists you up, hot arousal dragging through you until you’re spent.

you both pant, clothes trapping your come to your body and his to him. he lets himself one deep breath in of your scent, running the curve of his nose through the light sheen of sweat glistening down your neck, before placing you next to him. he’s delicate with your body, limp and all limbs and elbows, as he sets you on the cushion, but still you feel him deflate. you’ve returned to that place at the edge of his bed, of his drowning in self-condemnation and your straining to keep him afloat.

“joel, let’s not do this again, it’s fine, you’re fine, i’m fine. what’s wrong with this?” it comes out lighter than you intend, voice still narrowed by your fading orgasm.

he clears his throat of something thick and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, but he’s not as decisive as he was that first time, and a piece of you lifts. “so much.”

“you’re just being combative now.”

he laughs, then, sort of delirious, but your cheeks warm with it anyway as he says, “it’s like i…” and then he raises his head to peer down at you, “i can’t help myself. i don’t know.”

you sigh. “are you planning on trying again? to help yourself?”

he looks around the room, mostly untouched despite your coming. “i guess so.”

you nod, brushing your pointer finger down his bicep. he doesn’t flinch. you find you aren’t angry at him, what with the overwhelming sense that it’s unnecessary. there’s a resignedness about him, one that’s unbiting and soft; it will give under your fingertip, if you push it. 

“okay. come find me when you give up,” you say, and there’s no malice in it. he leans back on the couch and runs a knuckle down your hand splayed between you.

“alright.”

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

by the time joel looks for you again, you’re altogether impressed—he held off, this time, for a whole 48 hours. when that soft spot you prodded two days earlier finally caves in, he comes to bang on your door in the near twilight darkness. you let him in, and he insists, repeats like a hymn into your stomach as he gets on his knees, that this ain’t fucking either, and pulls your jeans off.

you don’t tell him it’s your first time having your pussy eaten; in your experience, men find the end of the world a wholly viable excuse for avoiding it. the lack of it hasn't bothered you until he presses his face into your cunt, swirling his tongue around your clit and anchoring his hands on your hips.

“oh jesus fuck oh my god, sting,” you moan, still pressed up against the wall by the door. you pull on his hair to grind yourself further onto his face and he groans into your skin “so good, darlin, so good.”

joel laves his tongue over your clit, circling and rolling it on his taste buds. you’re screaming, and hitch a leg over his shoulder. “fingers, joel, please.”

you feel him smirk, frenzied, into your cunt, tongue and teeth still eating at you there, mumbling, “say it again.”

you whine, “please, please,” but he shakes his head, and the friction pulls your spine from the wall into an arc in the air. your toes curl as the heat of his mouth spreads from your pussy through your body and you know you’ll be close soon, but you want to feel him inside. “i’ll say it as many times as you want me to, fuck, please.”

“my name, my name, say it again,” he corrects, sounding about as lost as you are.

you respond immediately, pleading, “joel, joel, joel, please, your fingers, joel,” and as he growls at the sound of his name in your mouth he pushes two fingers into your aching sex. you feel your cunt swallow them whole, pulsing and buzzing around them.

“jesus, so fuckin tight.”

you dig your heel into his back and he thrusts his fingers faster, stroking your walls and reaching for your cervix. the sound of you, around his hand and dripping down his wrist, makes you both rasp out something unintelligible. you try to mewl out something like i’m so fucking close, and joel seems to understand, nodding slightly. as you tug tighter on his hair and pleasure comes roaring at you, world humming and white as you gush, joel pulls his fingers from you to position his mouth under your hole, pushing his tongue in and out of you. you scream, at him and yourself, that it’s so good, and he moans in agreement, lapping up everything you give him. 

when it’s over, you slump slightly against the wall, and he leans back on his haunches to assess you, naked from the waist down and barely standing. he looks down at the fingers he pulled from you, wetness shining here, and then back at your bare thigh. without a word, he begins to bring them up to your skin.

“joel, what are you-”

he looks possessed, almost, unresponsive, as he wipes his fingertips across you. you look down, light catching where he’s touched you. J. the sight of it makes you slide fully to the floor, something quick and beastly baring its teeth within you. the silhouette of his cock, stiff in his pants, draws you in. you feel him watching you as you stare.

“can i?”

he shakes his head, out of breath. “no.”

“please?”

“i think i really will die if i see my cock in your mouth,” he heaves, and you both sputter at the thought. you bump your head on the wall behind you and close your eyes.

“thank you, sting.”

you hear him sniff as he lifts himself from the floor. the door creaks open.

“wasn’t for you.”

he leaves you to cope with whatever that means, dripping onto your floorboards.

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

neither you nor joel ever say, out loud, that your rapacious meetings are confidential, but it’s an unsaid promise you keep regardless. the moments come to you much like the strawberries, small and saccharine and due for rot, but yours. he holds you taut against the side of the stables to pet his middle and ring fingers into you, stretching you like a promise he knows he cannot keep; he finds you, before patrol and after, to fuck you on his tongue, leaving marks down the backs of your thighs, blushing letters of his restraint; a few times he allows himself the demeaned enrapture of rutting his cock, through his jeans, along the seam of your pussy, rasping out soft and terrible things about the way you look and feel. all the while he reminds you, into your clit or along your hairline, that this isn’t fucking, though you suspect he says it more for the way it reverberates through you and comes back to him.

you find yourself unused to being someone’s secret. your first, danny, was dark moments in a treeline with the rest of your group feet away; the lot of you were shameless, an incestual sort of family, and nobody minded the noises. you’ve taken a few men home in jackson, too, but they unanimously found merit in the achievement of fucking you, reclusive hermit as you have been, and set the stories of you loose to circulate through the commune the morning after. you might have minded, the first time, but in time you supposed the rumors humanized you, at least, made you more woman than you sometimes let on. besides, such objectifications never materialized; to avoid castration or some other gruesome slice of a death, the whispering always quieted as you walked past, and quickly became uninteresting. before joel, it’d been a year, at least, since you’d taken someone to bed, and now you find yourself more woman than human with him, but the rest will never hear of it. a piece of you remains convinced the secrecy, for joel, is born of his mortification, disgraced by your body and the ways he meets it; this truth is an unrelenting one that twists something smarting through your chest. the rest of you remembers the J he drew on your thigh, painted on with your own slick, and thinks (hopes, if you can be honest with yourself) that he is just as possessive of you as you have become of him.

you sit on your porch bench with a strawberry in hand, red wetness staining your skin as you slice it with your knife. ellie told you a few days ago that she saw a magazine once, with food and chefs in it, and they had a page about fruit art. the both of you laughed at how trivial that sounded, doubled over on the floor of the greenhouse, but when the laughter died out, you found yourselves shoulder to shoulder wondering how exactly one made roses out of little fruits. you make nicks in the strawberry and pull them down with the flat of your knife to fan them out. it looks much more like a little pine cone.

“the hell is that?”

you don’t have to look up to know who it is, but you can’t help watching him approach. the warmth of late spring continues to dance through jackson, and you feel a heat curl in your stomach watching his forearms press from his rolled flannel sleeves. you grin down at your strawberry.

“it was supposed to be a rose, but i don’t feel too convinced.”

the soft rumble of a laugh rings through your ears. joel pulls your open hand toward him to inspect the thing.

“hm. maybe if i squint real hard.”

you pull your hand back, biting your tongue behind your cheek to keep from beaming at him. “you’re impossible.”

“uh huh,” he smirks, and sits down next to you. a second of quiet spreads its legs between you, feline and satisfied. his breathing comes slowly, deeply, and you feel your lungs synchronize with his, continuing to cut at your strawberry and spinning it in your hand.

“why’d you come?”

joel clears his throat. “not for that.”

you hum. “just the pleasure of my presence, then?”

with a smile he tries to hide from you he says, “somethin like that.”

another open moment, the wet scratch of your fathers knife reverberating in the air. joel watches the people of jackson walk by, on their paths to food or sleep or love somewhere, squints his eyes as the horde makes its way and does not turn its head to you.

“you don’t…” he circles his thumbs together, shaping his words very carefully, “you don’t got a lotta people to talk to here, huh?”

“is that what you came here for? to ask me that? don’t be an asshole.” he shrugs. you let out a tiny huff. “i don’t know, i guess not. but i don’t do a lot of talking, so i don’t need that many listeners.”

“don’t do a lotta talkin?”

“no, not really.”

“well shit, darlin, you talk a helluva lot with me. why’s that?”

something biting sinks its teeth into you, cheeks flushing and hands closing more over the strawberry, nearly mutilated now (the both of you). “cause you refuse to say anything and the silence gets exhausting.”

“i’m exhausting?” and there’s a smile in his voice that you take in like a tonic and nearly spit back up. you will not feel this feeling, you will not.

“yes, you are,” you insist, and you know you’ve laid your cards out now with the waver in your voice, feeling him shift beside you. you think he’ll let it go.

“really…” a breath, “why d’you…talk so much to me?” the emphasis, there, to me, surprises you.

“what do you mean why?”

“i been told i ain’t good company.” you smile something tragic at your feet. he continues, “and you’re so young. pretty little thing. and you don’t have any friends your own age. it’s sort of…odd.”

you could turn around, storm inside and slam the door behind you; you consider this option. but what’s one more awful truth? what’s a million more? you seem to relinquish them all, at one point or another. pretty little thing, oh god, oh god.

“i think you’re a lot like me, sting. a lot like me.”

joel shakes his head, admonishes, “don’t say that.”

“i mean it, you are.”

“i ain’t.”

“you are! i am violent and ruthless and the killing doesn’t bother me anymore. i get nightmares and i think i’m saved, but then they slip right off. the people here are so tormented by the blood on their hands, or they have none to begin with, but i don’t even mind it. that’s so much fucking worse.” joel opens his mouth to say something but you stop him. “and that’s what you are, too. i know you’ve killed people, joel, a whole fucking mass of them just like i have. but then you’re…” and here’s the most horrific part, you brace yourself for it, “you’re sort of gentle with me. did you know that?” you look at him, now, and wish you didn’t. he winces at you like you’ve punched him square in the stomach. still, you don’t rush the words, let them crawl out slowly. “that’s not forgiveness, that’s apathy. you don’t care about the things you’ve done. and i don’t either. so i…” you make one last scoring line with your knife before setting it down, cupping the fruit between both hands and letting the juice seep out. “i guess i thought talking to you would feel good. it does feel good.”

joel’s eyes are brown and gleaming at you, and you watch as he unties the things you’ve said. he looks over your eyelashes, the bridge of your nose, at the plush of your lips, and then out onto the street ahead, slouching over. please say something, say anything.

“you got a real keen eye on you, baby.”

something heavy and unforgiven washes out of you, but he sounds like absolution, you think, with the drawl and the sugar in his words. “you think so?”

“mhm.”

the tone of his voice reaches around you, shakes a grin along your lips as you hold back deep heaves in the column of your throat. his broadness sat next to you, his unrelenting appraisals of you, it’s all deeply intimate; he twists you in his palm like you and your little fruit, but he does not slice you open. he raises a thumb to cup around the back of your head, stroking the pad back and forth along your hairline. you don’t dare move. 

he whispers, “so soft here.” you shudder, and the bench creaks as he leans over. you feel the heat of his lips press, light as anything but intentional, decided, right under where he’d dragged his thumb. threading his fingers up through your hair he holds you in place, dipping his canines a moment into the line of your neck before pulling back, flickering his lips one final time on the little mark he made. goosebumps raise down your shoulders and wrists at the closeness of him, scent of his spit and skin. 

you’re certain he’ll leave as he sits back in his spot, certain he’s pulled you both back to his terror of the sweetness of you. but his hand stays, he stays. you sit there, unspeaking with wet fruit in your hand, until the sun dips below the horizon, his palm behind your neck, brushing his fingers over the fading indent he left. a ravenous thing tugs below your navel, pulling your wetness out, swelling your clit in your jeans, and you greet it like an old friend. but the grip up higher, around your trachea and through your arteries, is new. the beating heart of it grows with the swipe of joel’s fingers, and you know you are fucked, but oh, you’ve fought so hard. you’re condemned to love him—you’re nearly there, it occurs to you. maybe martyrdom and death in halfway love with him is worth it, if he can keep his skin on yours.

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

taglist: @koshkaj-blog @shotgun-shelby @limerence4u @5oh5

[noellawrites]

Baby Bear - Richie Jerimovich x Berzatto!reader

summary: as the youngest Berzatto sibling, you know you’re screwed when you find out you’re pregnant with Richie’s baby.

warnings: pregnancy, grooming mention & abortion mention.

Nothing, nothing could’ve prepared you for two pink lines on that goddamn test. Your hand trembled lightly as you placed the piece of plastic on the dirty bathroom counter.

Your stomach dropped. How the hell were you supposed to tell Richie? And what would you say to your siblings? You were screwed.

You showed up early for your shift at The Beef in order to take the test, which you’d nervously purchased earlier from the local bodega. You thought it was just a few missed periods due to stress, the restaurant, stuff with Mikey. You never actually thought you could be pregnant.

Carmy and Sugar would kill Richie. And all three of them would kill you. Mikey would probably crawl out of his grave next, just so he could beat Richie up for knocking up his kid sister.

As the youngest Berzatto, you’d worked in The Beef from the ripe age of twelve. You washed dishes and waited tables for Mikey, your favorite sibling and oldest brother. Now, in your early 20’s, you worked as The Beef’s primary bookkeeper and waitress.

There had always been something between you and Richie, and your friendship became more after you turned eighteen. You were attracted to him, but waited to make your move until you were old enough to consciously do so. You ate every meal together, treated his daughter like your own, laughed at his dumb jokes and never got bored of each other. Plus the sex was gentle, loving and passionate.

But more than that, you were each other’s shoulder to lean on. You cried in each other’s arms once you’d gotten the news about Mikey and you ran The Beef together until Carmy got back from New York.

You and Richie had managed to keep your relationship a secret for the four years since you’d started seeing each other, but you had a feeling that you wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret for much longer.

Because now, you were pregnant with Richie Jerimovich’s baby.

—

“Congratulations Miss Berzatto, you’re about eight weeks along. Here are the printed pictures for you to take home. Would you like to discuss your options?” the nurse chirped. She was young, not much older than you, with a short blonde bob and bright purple scrubs.

“How much does an abortion cost?” you asked, already knowing what Richie would tell you. He was already a deadbeat father to one kid, why make it two?

“It depends on your insurance, but—"

"I don't have insurance, I'm just a waitress," you interrupted.

"In that case, it'll be around five-hundred dollars for the abortion pill if you visit Planned Parenthood. They're the cheapest in the city. You can only take the pill up to ten weeks, though," she explained, handing over a bunch of pamphlets with the sonogram pictures on top.

You stared down at the pictures as tears formed in your eyes. That was inside you, right now, a little tiny baby made from you and Richie. You could hardly believe it.

—

"You're— what the fuck? I didn't even know you were seeing anyone (y/n), jesus christ! How could you be so irresponsible?" Carmy yelled.

You were sitting in the office, leaned back in the chair as you stared at your brother. You knew he wasn't going to take the news well, but he was in disbelief. He ran his hand through his hair while contemplating his next words.

"You keepin' it?"

"I don't know yet, I still have to talk to—"

"Who's the dad?" Carmy seethed.

You couldn't do it. You just couldn't tell your brother that you'd been fucking Richie. He'd kill him before you'd get the chance to tell him.

"I can't—“

"Yes you can, just—just tell me, okay? I'm your brother, we'll figure this out, it'll be fine," he promised, crouching down and meeting your eyes.

"It's Richie," you gulped.

Carmy's face twisted into an expression of pure rage. He stood up, unable to look you in the eye.

"Carmy wait—" you gasped, but he had already thrown the office door open.

"Where is that asshole? Where the fuck is Richie?" Carmy yelled, storming through the kitchen.

"Carmy wait, stop!" you begged, pulling on your brother's sleeve. It was no use, he was on a mission.

Sydney and Tina looked up with confusion as Carmy turned the corner with you right behind him.

"And I told him, 'that's what we're doing today!' But he didn't fuckin' listen, so we're stuck on the turnpike when— hey, 'cuz," Richie laughed, noticing Carmy while in the middle of telling Ebra a story.

He glanced at you quickly, noticing your wide eyes and nervous expression.

"What the fuck, Richie?!" Carmy screamed, lunging at your not-so-secret boyfriend.

"Carmy!" you yelled as the two of them fell to the ground and tussled.

"You knocked up my little sister, fuckin' asshole pervert!"

"What the fuck? I didn't knock (y/n) up!" Richie said, landing a slap across your brother's cheek.

"How long'd you spend groomin' her, huh? She could be your fucking daughter!" Carmy growled as he grabbed at Richie's neck.

Marcus and Sydney rushed over, attempting to pull them apart.

"Quit it, you two!" Sydney yelled, restraining Carmy.

In the midst of the chaos, you noticed Fak sliding a five-dollar bill into Ebra's palm. You rolled your eyes. They'd been betting on you and Richie? Figures.

"I, um, I have some news," you began. The room was silent and all eyes were turned to you.

"I'm pregnant, and it's Richie's. Richie, I'm sorry, I really didn't mean for you to find out this way. And Carmy, I know how this looks but I really, really love Richie. And everyone else, I'm really sorry for this disruption," you explained with a sympathetic expression.

You glanced hesitantly at Richie, who had his hand clamped over his mouth and eyes wide open. Everyone else returned to their stations quietly, and Carmy kicked the metal table leg before returning to the office.

"Congrats, mija!" Tina smiled, patting your shoulder.

"Thanks, T," you said, giving her a small smile.

"So?" Richie asked. He walked closer and pulled you into a hug.

"It's true, you knocked me up," you laughed.

"You wanna keep it?"

You pulled away. "That depends. You wanna step up and be a father?"

"I do, babe. I think we can do this, for real. I'll talk to Tiff, maybe we can have Eva over more. She'd love a little sister or brother," Richie said, giving you a reassuring smile.

"I'd really like that, Richie."

[hitlikehammers]

just the facts

rating: t ♥️ cw: Lady Applejack's enduring awesomeness ♥️ tags: established relationship, rockstar!eddie, teacher!steve, rockstar husbands, steddie in their 20s, erica sinclair, steve and eddie stay local until the entire party is safely graduated, slice of life, softness, canon fact: erica coins term 'dumpster fire' for the ages, SCOOPS TROOP FOR LIFE 🍦🍨

for @steddielovemonth day fifteen: Love is Co-Parenting (@shares-a-vest)

still the boys who grow into the husbands in je ne regrette rien but let’s roll back to the early 90s ♥️

“So, Stanford?”

She raises a brow around the straw in her mouth when Steve speaks and god: she’s grown up so fucking much, but that look, when Eddie glances back to the table as he listens in to their conversation: that look’s the first time he encountered the formidable half-elf a fucking lifetime ago when he was an asshole and she schooled him from the start—he should have been better prepared for the emotional whirlwind to come, at least, from there; or if nothing else, more mindful of the foreshadowing.

And he thought himself some masterful storyteller, Jesus fuck: he was both cocky and naive.

“When I go to law school it’s gonna be on the east coast, so,” she slurps noisily, unbothered, around the ice in the glass; “cover both bases.”

“Take the country by storm,” Steve nods with that warm grin that melts liquid in Eddie’s chest, every time, every day, never stopping: “very you.”

“Can’t run until I’m 35 which,” Erica shrugs, but then she flips her hair and shoots that grin that holds all the fucking secrets: “America without Erica is a travesty,” she’s got her thumb and forefinger pinched as she emphasizes the syllables hard, then snorts so derisively she might as well be the originator of the term; maybe, like, in a past life or something.

“I could run right this minute and do better than what’s there now,” she rolls her eyes and snaps her wrist decisively before stating, y’know, the obvious:

“Just the facts.”

Eddie catches Steve’s lips curl down, brow furrow as he words something out and he’s so fucking gorgeous, he’s so goddamn precious, and Eddie’s heart just kinda flip-flops around to watch him like this, relaxed and soft and happy and proud and a little bit piqued by the innocuous, and they all worked damn hard to get here, but, like.

Here is incredible.

“He just got into office in January,” Steve points out, and Eddie grins as he gathers their orders and arranges on the tray for balance, loves how he wasn’t even worried for what his partner was mulling over with the crinkle in his brow, didn’t even pause to think it was something bad and that’s such a…a new normal and Eddie wants to leap into the air and whoop for the joy of it, but: kinda got his hands full.

Maybe later.

“Plenty of time to impress me, and fail to,” Erica’s scoffing in reply before she huffs: “considering the dumpster fires that preceded him.”

“The what fires?” Steve asks, eyes so big, so fucking pretty.

“I said what I said,” Erica leans back in her chair, crossing her arms and…it’s so comfortable. It’s so innocent, the whole scene, the three of them here, and Eddie loves this, he loves them, he’s just…

It’s a life he never imagined, y’know? It’s a reality he didn’t even factor in when spinning the wheel of possibility in his head, and yes, okay, they went through hell for it, he almost died for it, but he found a family in it; he found the love of his life in it—on balance there’s no fucking question as to where he landed so far toward the good that ‘good’ seems kinda insultingly inadequate as a descriptor at all.

He needs to think up a better word, for sure.

“M’lady,” Eddie bows as he unloads the tray when he gets back to the table, presenting Erica’s five-scoop tower of ice cream with a flourish: “many effusive congratulations to you,” he settles the bowl in front of her and leans to drum his fingers on the cap with the floofy tassel they’d badgered her to bring for photos; “on to new adventures far afoot,” Eddie continues, unloading Steve’s banana split—a true treat more for Eddie to watch him eat than for Steve to taste himself, because fucking hell—and then his own hot-fudge sundae with whipped cream topped higher than the fucking glass, before he plops down next to Steve, the pair of them side-by-side across from Erica in the booth as he grins at her, because shit: he’s fucking proud, too:

“The denizens of Palo Alto will stand in awe of your grandeur,” he gestures with extra grandiosity with his spoon before he grabs the cherry, glances around for safety before offering it straight to Steve’s mouth, pulling the stem out teasingly when Steve bites and hiding the full stretch of his smile behind a big shovel-full of chocolatey-flakes on the whip.

And he and Steve are quiet, but don’t really dive in because they’re watching, waiting: Erica rolls her eyes at their antics, even if they were subtle, and goes for a bite herself, and okay, moment of truth—

Her eyes speak for her again, then, but to get very, very big as she stills, then slowly takes the spoon from her mouth and pins them with a stare:

“This is,” her mouth works around a whole lot of silence as she stares at her perfect quintuple-scoop array, because it’s all one flavor. And it’s all a flavor she mostly ragged on for being annoyingly on-brand that first summer, Eddie’s heard the stories, but still asked for extra samples of it every goddamn time, to when he and Steve had both been talked more than once to drive out to the nearest location and ‘fulfill the contract’ sworn that fateful July, a task that got more difficult every year as the chain thinned its numbers, until there weren’t any on this side of the state, then none on this side of the border, then just: none in the Midwest, period, and Erica?

She could try to hide it all she wanted, but she was sad. Because that girl had a favorite. And this, here?

Fucking U.S.S. Butterscotch? Hell yeah, it is.

“Called in a favor,” which Steve probably means to sound like he leveraged Eddie’s currently less-than-moderate celebrity or something, but what actually means he charmed the minimum wage high schooler in Portland, because Scoops Ahoy was out West now, and only had about 10 locations left—but he’d convinced the kid to let him buy a whole gallon, paid a premium for cold storage shipping, and then bribed the owner here with ample documentation of proper product preservation and transfer prior to sale, plus a couple crisp Benjamins, to convince the guy to sell it for one day, only to Steve and his guests—given it was a licensed product the parlor wasn’t a retailer for. The favor was the real power behind what passed for the Harrington charm for all those years and it was simply genuine and full-bodied Steve: charming, god yes, charming as fuck but good and kind and earnest and determined, pushy and snarky but more often wielded for the benefit of others than for himself—not to mention persuasive with those puppy-dog eyes.

Because, like, fuck: all these years and Eddie’s still weak for those goddamn eyes.

He lets himself stare at Steve and just, take him in for a little while until Steve feels his gaze—doesn’t take long, they’re aware of each other as a default mods—and lifts those impossible eyes for Eddie to drown in and feel warm inside his veins when they light up for the smile Steve flashes his way.

Fuck, but Eddie loves him.

“When are you coming to visit, then?” Erica breaks the spell; licks her spoon clean before aiming it at them pointedly. They glance at each other—she kinda means the world to them, they’ve grown close with her especially once all the other kids skedaddled, and Eddie thinks he’s not…he’s not surprised, and he thinks he knew she’d want them to visit. He thinks Steve knew that, too.

But he knows, like he knows his own heartbeat and Steve’s even better: Eddie knows Steve feels just as warm and touched and like, fucking moved a little by how she treats it like a given.

“When do you want us there?” Steve asks and yeah, he’s smooth about it, composed and shit, but Eddie knows his voice inside-out and backward. He can hear the emotion stayed back underneath.

“When are you planning to move?”

They don’t even really pause at the way she knows without them saying; she’s the only person who hasn’t outright suggested they get the fuck out of Hawkins, finally. Kinda like they never had to say they were staying until all of their family was accounted for and on their way in the world, safe and sound and whole.

“Nothing’s in stone, yet,” Steve offers, poking Eddie’s foot under the table.

“But you’re looking,” Erica, again, already knows; doesn’t pose it as a question.

“Yeah,” Eddie smiles down at his sundae, and links his hand with Steve between them on the seat; “we’re thinking Chi-town,” because that’s been the front-runner for a while, now, of the cities they’ve considered. Because it doesn’t even have to be forever, they don’t have to commit to a place and never leave—because the only forever-thing in all of this, in anything, is them. Just Steve and Eddie, them two: together.

Wherever they end up.

“Mmm,” Erica considers before scooping another spoon of mostly-butterscotch swirl: “I can see that.”

“You can, can you?” Steve volleys with a smirk, and she lets him goad her into laying out how she knows them, how she sees them, because…it’s maybe strange but then maybe not but it’s always felt special, with her. Maybe because she’s grown up more than any of them, for Steve and Eddie to watch. Maybe because she’s so goddamn smart, that her observations come out near-unchallengable.

Maybe because they both know she loves them, and she knows they love her, and it’s never been…awkward, like it had been in spots with the shitheads over time. It was just understood.

“Big but not huge,” Erica ticks off the reasons for her assessment; “music scene’s decent,” she nods to Eddie, who nods back gracious; “good schools,” she leans to Steve, and yep, that was a huge factor, whether Steve could love his job; “liberal…ish,” she eyes them, and how close they sit, meaningfully before tacking on: “familiar weather.”

Steve huffs a little laugh and Eddie just beams at her: not a single thing wrong there. She’s got them dead to rights, and he kinda loves that about her; so much.

“Semester ends first week of December,” she focuses back on her bowl and speaks with authority, like whatever she’s proposing isn’t a suggestion, just a notice: “if you guys are still here,” she shakes the full spoon in her hand and raises an eyebrow: “I expect ice cream.”

Steve just nods as she pops the spoonful in her mouth whole-on.

“Scoops Troop for life,” he agrees and Eddie perks, always ready when that label pops up.

“Plus honorary trooper,” he chimes in, and Erika grins around her spoon a little as Steve leans close and can’t kiss him here, but Eddie knows well what it means to feel Steve’s breath against the line of his neck like he’s jest stretching past him, like it could be innocent as Steve murmurs low—

“Always.”

And can feel the heat rise in his cheeks, and the flutter in his chest, because…because he’s in love, goddamnit, and it’s been one of the most incredible surprises to learn that he can love so big, and get love so big back in kind, that the feeling never fades, he can always feel weightless and boneless and overwhelmed in the best of ways for just this man near to him, just the pitch of his voice and the promise of his breath on Eddie’s skin.

“You’re cute,” Erika says, the judgement in her tone tempered low as her lips still quirk; “and this is delicious,” she points her spoon again at the remaining ice cream and the tiny puddle it’s melting between the remaining scoops. “So I’ll allow it,” she nods to their pressed-together shoulders and goes back to eating, but never loses the tiny grin and he and Steve both know how much that means, from her.

“But if you’re already there,” she continues when she starts collecting the saucer bits at the base of the bowl: “Chicago’s a decent layover spot, probably,” she shrugs; “but still, here or there,” and she pauses with intention before narrowing her eyes with intention:

“Ice cream.”

tag list (comment to be added): @pearynice @hbyrde36 @slashify @finntheehumaneater @wxrmland @dreamwatch @perseus-notjackson

♥️

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